Pilates Business Podcast

🛑 Stop the Chaos! Here’s How to Streamline and Scale Without Burning Out

• Seran Glanfield • Season 22 • Episode 214

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 In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield shares a game-changing perspective for boutique fitness studio owners who feel buried under admin, burned out by constant decision-making, or just plain overwhelmed by the daily grind. If your studio feels like it’s held together with duct tape and your to-do list never ends, this episode is your permission slip to breathe—and build better systems.

Seran dives into exactly how to streamline your operations, from scheduling and client onboarding to team training and automations. She unpacks how disorganization is quietly costing you revenue, time, and peace of mind—and what to do about it.

If you're ready to scale your Pilates studio, yoga space, or barre business without sacrificing your sanity, this episode is a must-listen. Discover how simple systems can unlock major freedom, drive growth, and give you your life back.


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Speaker 1:

So I know that some days, you feel pretty stuck in the day-to-day grind of running your studio, but I want you to take a moment to think about a world where your business runs so smoothly it feels like it's on autopilot. In today's episode, I'm diving into the strategies to streamline your operations, claim back some time and focus more on the things you love most about running your business. By the end of this episode, you will learn how to implement seamless systems that save you hours, have less stress, and all while driving growth. Well, hi there, I'm Saren Glanfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real-life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio.

Speaker 1:

This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Well, hey there, friend, and welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. This is where we help people just like you boutique fitness studio owners to build thriving studio businesses without losing their passion for teaching. I know many of you get in touch when you're just at that point, but please don't wait until then to get a little bit of support and a little bit of resources and a little bit of coaching, because often by then we have to do twice as much work of coaching, because often by then we have to do twice as much work. Now I know many of you are in a place where you feel like perhaps your business is duct taped together behind the scenes. You're just hanging on by a thread. But I want you to know that there is a different way of doing things, and that's why I wanted to put together an episode like this just for you, because I love talking about marketing and I love talking about branding, I love helping you solve your pricing challenges.

Speaker 1:

But what we know is that when you don't have systems in place behind the scenes to help your business to run really, really smoothly, it just creates a lot of overwhelm and potentially even burnout. And the truth that many studio owners don't even realize until it's far too late is that you don't rise to the level of your goals. You actually simply fall to the level of the systems that you have in place, and what that means is that, no matter how lofty your goals are or how much you're willing to work hard, or how incredible your classes are, or how great your community is, if the behind the scenes, the back end of the studio is chaotic or messy, your growth will always hit a ceiling. And so if you've ever, you know, tried to teach a class where none of the props are in the right place, the springs are not set up the way you want or the things are in the wrong spot, the bar's not where it's supposed to be, you know it slows you down, you know it's frustrating, and we like to work in a world where you know things are not chaotic. We actually work better when things are streamlined, and so we don't want I don't want to see you get slowed down or stopped actually, or stuck because your systems are not there behind the scenes to help you to grow. And so if you're constantly reacting and you're not in that space of flow and confidence and abundance, then perhaps it's not necessarily your marketing that's the problem or your attention that's the problem. It might be that there is a little bit of disorganization in your studio, and most of the burnout that I hear from studio owners is not because they're teaching too many classes. Actually it's because they love that part. To be honest, it's actually managing that chaos and being in that reactive mode constantly and always feeling like they're on the back foot.

Speaker 1:

So I want to talk a little bit today about what you can do to create a bit more operational efficiency right, to make sure things run a little bit more smoothly behind the scenes. And that means there are certain things that you want to be thinking about and good at, and that is things like having some processes in place, having a management style that is supportive of encouraging a high achieving team, and it's about having systems and it's about your leadership and organization as well. And now, none of those things might sound terribly exciting to you, but they are absolutely critical. So I want to talk a little bit, first of all, about the bigger picture and why having this sort of efficiency behind the scenes, having these systems and processes in place and your studio, is actually so important. And I know that you know how that feels when you're constantly busy, and I know that you know how it feels when you're constantly busy and you open up your software, your scheduling software, and you look at your sales and you think to yourself oh my goodness, I am working so hard and I feel like I work harder every single week and I feel like I added more things to my to-do list every single week.

Speaker 1:

But perhaps billing errors or chasing people down is time that you can't spend on big picture goal setting, on mapping out your growth plan, on growing your business or even just catching a breath. So it's a bit like having a leaky bucket where you keep pouring energy in but it's draining out just as fast. And you know there's a shift that often comes when you get to a certain point and you kind of realize that maybe you are the bottleneck in your business. And I think every stage of growth we find this and every business owner finds this, no matter the industry that they are in. And every business owner finds this, no matter the industry that they are in. And that is when you have that shift from thinking that the more you do, the more you work, the more you'll grow, to thinking about how can I systematize this, how can I create a process where I actually remove myself from this part of the business? And so when you approach your business with that mindset instead of oh yes, I'll take that, I'll wear that hat, I'll do that, I'll add that to my list. I'll do that tomorrow and you're taking more and more and more on. Instead, when you think about how you can actually get rid of those tasks or not take on more of those things because you're creating systems and processes for it, then it shifts so much right?

Speaker 1:

Growth without systems is like building a house on sand. Eventually it's going to collapse under all that pressure, and that may be where you're at right now, and I know a lot of people think that systems and processes are restrictive and sort of keeps you kind of are not freeing, but the reality is is that those processes actually create a tremendous amount of freedom in your business, and so without the systems, you're going to only find more chaos and more stress, but with systems, you're going to be able to find a lot of freedom for yourself, and that allows your business to grow. And so efficiency will bring out something for you that you probably can't even put a price on, and that is that sense of peace of mind. It's the knowledge that your business can actually run, perhaps without you having your hand in everything, and imagine if it was able to do that and still do everything the way that you wanted, right? So when things are running really smoothly. You're no longer putting out fires, you're planning ahead, you're thinking big picture and, yes, you might even be taking a day or a week or even two weeks out and off of the studio a day or a week or even two weeks out and off of the studio. So let's look at the different areas where you can streamline your business. That will probably give you the biggest return.

Speaker 1:

Now number one this is something that we can very easily fix, very quickly, very easily fix, and that is scheduling and class management. If you are in a place where your clients are texting you as the studio owner to book or cancel classes on your personal cell phone, then you will find you have got a big problem. There's no closed sign on your text box, your text inbox, and that means that you're probably getting text messages at all times of day and night, which puts you constantly in reactive mode, and I don't want you there. I want you to be able to leave the studio and relax and switch off so you can show up the next day energized. So, instead of having that text, that phone, glued to you constantly and feeling like you have to always respond to it, no matter what time of day people are texting you then instead, you want to have a user-friendly scheduling system that you are encouraging your clients to utilize, and it's a shift that, yes, it might be painful for those conversations you're having with those clients who've had yourself a number for years, but you want to shift people into using your scheduling system and you want to automate and set up those automations for those reminders. You want to set up the automations that manage your waitlists and you want to set it up so that you are no longer the point person for every single client's schedule. And when you do this, you are freeing yourself up tremendously, not just from the burden of what might feel like and you might think to yourself oh, but it's a couple of minutes here and there. You're freeing yourself up from that burden of always having to be on, and there are every software that you have access to, and I have a few of them I love that are in my resources page on my website. We'll all do this for you really, really nicely.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to add to this the second one, another area that we often see that some studios struggle with still, and that is billing and payments, and if you are someone who still receives checks or cash for what you do, then you are probably chasing people. You're probably taking time out of your day, your week, your month to check payments are made, to perhaps invoice your clients. I still very occasionally see this, although not very often, and if you are doing that, then I just want you to know that auto billing and having the ability to auto renew packages is a very powerful thing for your business and for your time as well. So I would encourage you to have your clients book online and buy online as well. Credit card fees are a part of doing business. They are in a business expense and I want you to use that and think about all of the time that you are winning back because of that.

Speaker 1:

Software is a tool that really facilitates so much scale, and that means that we want to make sure we are using it as much as possible. So all of these features are in your scheduling software already. I want you to make sure you are using them all All right. So scheduling, class management, cancellations, billing and payments are all things that are really time consuming and also kind of stressful, because you're dealing with a lot of people and this pricing and money and transactions and like that, all the things that often make us all feel kind of like, oh, I have to. You know it's not such a good feeling. If we can get that off of your plate, oh boy, how much happier you will be right.

Speaker 1:

So there's a couple of other things that you can do, another couple of areas as well that will help you to really, when you streamline them, will help give you the biggest return on your time back, but also in terms of your business growth. The first is client onboarding. What we know is first impressions matter and a new client should feel welcomed and cared for without you doing it all manually. And that means that you can have either templates or automations in place that welcome clients in either via emails or text, and I highly recommend you leverage these to really nurture that relationship early on. But when you do this, what you're doing is you're also setting those expectations, and when you set the expectations with your new client early on, guess what happens later on? Retention is much higher and you're setting the tone for the rest of that relationship and for it to be a long and fantastically fruitful relationship for both of you. So you want to have sequences and automations or even task reminders in place for welcoming new clients into the studio, for making sure that your clients are engaged with their sessions and scheduling their sessions in the studio, and then even to move from perhaps that trial or new client special intro offer into that long-term package.

Speaker 1:

And finally, the fourth core area that I think, as your business grows, is really important to also streamline is your team communication and training. And if you've expanded in the last couple of years and you've been very, very busy, you might have overlooked this part of the operations. But as your team grows, you want to give them as much clarity and direction as possible. And that doesn't mean micromanaging, it just means having processes in place for the where and when you communicate with your team and on what, and so some folks will use a group chat, whatsapp, some people will use emails, some people will use even Slack for updates. Whatever it is that or however it is that you communicate with your team, you want to make sure you're doing it in the same place so that they know where to go to get those updates. And when you hire people and bring them in, you can let them know that's where they go to have these conversations. And please, please, please, please, please. I want you to create a very simple training for anybody that joins your team, and this means you're training them on not just the way that you want them to perhaps teach your classes or their sessions in your studio, but perhaps etiquette around how to communicate with clients before and after class. If there is anything else that you want them to do as part of their role in your business, you want to make sure that you have processes and documentation that are step-by-step, that shows them how to do this. A Google Doc will do. You can also make videos. You can do voice recordings of tasks however it feels best for you, but make sure that you have some processes in place and when you have this, it really ensures that your brand stays consistent and you're not sort of retraining everybody Every time you come in. You're not starting from scratch. You've got a document there in place.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you're wondering where all your time is going right now, you're not really sure that you're getting the most out of the hours that you're spending on and in your studio. Sometimes it can be really helpful to do a time audit Now, yes, this is the most painful thing you may ever do in your business, however, it is incredibly enlightening. So what we do is we would track your time for about a week, and during that week you will log pretty much everything that you do. So if you're teaching, if you are scheduling clients, if you are organizing your team, if you're responding to emails, if you're doing outbound marketing, you want to track your time and track your tasks, and once you have that kind of data set, what you can do is you can look at those tasks and perhaps you can already see some tasks that are draining to you that you dislike. That you perhaps could then delegate to others, and when we have this sort of clarity around where you're spending your time, you can then get strategic about where you want to spend your time or where your business needs you to spend your time, and so doing a time audit can be actually incredibly powerful if you're wondering if you're doing the right things for your business.

Speaker 1:

Anything that gets done on a very repetitive basis that you can train someone else to do, I highly encourage you to hand off as soon as you can, and if there's anything that you're doing that can be automated, so that might be something like I mentioned earlier. Maybe it's billing, maybe it's scheduling, maybe it's client onboarding, maybe it's retention activities, maybe it's team communication right, all of these things you could automate or streamline into a process in some way that relieves you of that effort and gives you back that time. So there are a number of tools out there that can help you with streamlining your operations as well, and I think that the right tech really does make all the difference, and that's why I really recommend that you have an all-in-one studio software. I am very fortunate that the studio owners that I work with inside of Thrive I think we have been working together for a while, and often the question comes up when they join of which software should I use? And I will always recommend that you use an all-in-one studio software. That means a studio software that does scheduling and payments and marketing, as well as reporting as well, and that sort of that one one stop shop will just help to make your life a lot easier, and so you want to make sure you find one that fits your studio and your budget, and that's.

Speaker 1:

It makes a lot of sense to have you know, to explore what is out there for your business, but don't be afraid to put everything into one of the most. You know some of the better softwares out there. We've had them all on the show, so you know them. I really would recommend that you do, and I also. Within those softwares you want to make sure you are using those automations. The email sequences, the journeys, the follow-ups, the win-backs all of those will really save you a ton of time, and what I see every day of the week is that they will drive more revenue into your business. But not only that. Inside of those softwares, you can often allow for task automations as well, which means that you get reminders to perhaps check in with that new client, and so not everything is completely automated. It just facilitates the processes a lot easier as well.

Speaker 1:

Now there is a bit of a mindset set shift that comes when you get to this sort of point where you can't grow anymore because there is no more hours in the day for you to actually work or you're exhausted by it. Right and that and so when we get to that point, it's often it's not just necessarily about hey, what are the actions you need to take or what are the tools you need. It's also about having a healthy mindset around what you want your business to look like and what you want your role in your business to look like as well. And when it comes to growing your business, it's you have to let go of that myth that only you can do it. And this is a big one, you guys, because I know that probably for many of you, especially in the early stages of your business, you were doing it all. You have done it all and you can. You can do all of those tasks, you can do all of those jobs. You are able to do it, but that doesn't mean that you should be doing it all. And so what I want you to focus on, and what the smartest way to grow, is for you, as the CEO, to focus on the tasks that only a CEO can do, focusing only on those high value tasks. And that means you're going to need to delegate some and you're going to need to automate some and you're going to invest in efficiency.

Speaker 1:

And so, when it comes to systems, they don't have to be perfect, but they do need to just work, and once you have a system in place, you can always refine it and edit it. I know behind the scenes here at Spring 3, we have a lot of different systems, a lot of different pathways and processes, and we're constantly looking for ways to improve and make sure we're getting the outcomes that we want. Without the baseline system in place, that baseline, step-by-step process we wouldn't even be able to do that. So that's just where you have to start, and I always say you do want to be thinking about that. It's not about being perfect. It's quite possible, by the way, that no one will ever be able to do it as good as you, and that's OK, right, but an 80 percent effective system that runs on autopilot is probably better than manually doing it 100 percent yourself, and sometimes money upfront to create these systems, but they should always save you so much more in time and energy and sanity as time goes on, right? So, yes, there might be an early setup time, and that is okay as long as you're investing that time, because it's going to bring you back more time down the road.

Speaker 1:

And so, like I said, you want to make this efficiency a habit. You want to look for things that you can make into a system. You can make a process from that. You are, if there's things you're doing on repeat, that you have a system and a process in place for either making sure those things get done or that they get done by someone else. And when you do this and you review your systems and that's when we start to see this sort of really nice sort of machine working behind the scenes for you, because you can figure out very quickly what's working and what's not working. So it becomes a bit of a habit and a mindset shift to think about okay, can I do this in my business? Is this going to just require and drain more of my time, or is it something that I can build into a system that I can either allow to run automatically in my business or that I can train other people to help me with? Okay, so it's critical to be thinking about how you can grow and scale your business without you being the one to do it all. Quick recap, because I covered a lot very, very quickly today and I want to make sure that we are, I'm really clear on what this looks like for you in your business.

Speaker 1:

Now, I have to say that this operational chaos behind the scenes has a very obvious cost, and that is that it's keeping you stuck. But the hidden cost is that it's also probably making you feel a little frustrated and a little overwhelmed and possibly even burnt out, and so you cannot scale a studio without a strong foundation, and that operations is really a critical component, and that's why, inside of Thrive, it is the third pillar of my studio success blueprint and we focus on that inside of Thrive to make sure that you are running your business as effectively and as efficiently as possible. So you want to make sure you're at least streamlining the four areas of scheduling, onboarding, payment and team communication. Those are the core areas that usually take up a lot of time but that can be quite straightforward to streamline. And I want you to use the tools and the automations that you have already at your fingertips first to simplify not to complicate, but to simplify and then perhaps consider adding other tools and automations as time goes on tools and automations as time goes on. But, most importantly, I want you to embrace that mindset that systems equal freedom, and I want you to have a business that brings you fulfillment and income and the freedom that you want.

Speaker 1:

Now, if this episode hit home and you finally want to get out of the weeds and build a studio that runs smoother, I would love to invite you into Thrive. Thrive is my studio success. There's a system for success for studio owners. It's an accelerator for you to be able to build that business that you want inside. We help you to build, to implement the systems and strategies that will help you to run and grow your business in the most efficient way. We help you to optimize what you have and to grow and scale from there. So you can check that out at spring3.com forward slash thrive. We look for wherever your biggest operational leaks are and then we give you the playbooks and the tools and the resources and the steps towards putting more flow into your business. So I hope this is helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness business.

Speaker 1:

If you loved what you heard today, I'd be so appreciative if you could take a quick minute, go to wherever you're listening to this and rate and review this podcast. It really would mean a ton to me. We'll help get the podcast out into our community so that more teachers and studio owners, just like you, can feel encouraged and supported on their journey in our industry. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go. One last reminder there is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.