Pilates Business Podcast

Stop the Seasonal Slump: How Smart Studios Stay Profitable Year-Round

• Seran Glanfield • Season 23 • Episode 227

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Is your Pilates studio stuck in a seasonal cycle of feast or famine? Do your classes fill up in January only to empty out by summer or the holidays? In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield shares exactly how successful studio owners flatten the seasonal revenue curve and maintain steady income all year long—without resorting to frantic discounts or burnout-level hustle.

Whether it’s summer slowdowns or holiday no-shows, Seran explains how to plan ahead, align your marketing with seasonal rhythms, and keep clients engaged and coming back. From building retention systems to launching strategic promotions, this episode is packed with actionable insights that can help you create a more predictable, profitable Pilates business.

This is a must-listen for any boutique fitness studio owner who wants to ditch reactive panic and start running their studio with CEO-level strategy. ✨

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Speaker 1:

Do you secretly dread summer because you know your class attendance is about to nosedive? Or maybe December always feels like a bit of a ghost town, while you keep the lights on and hope for the best? Well, you're not alone and this episode is for you. Today, we're unpacking why seasonal slumps don't have to be inevitable, and exactly what it is that smart studio owners do to flatten the curve and keep revenue flowing all year round. So if your studio feels like it's stuck in a seasonal cycle, especially right now, one that maybe is a bit of feast and a bit of famine, and you're not really in control, then keep listening. This episode might just change how you look at your calendar forever. 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. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah Glanfield. I'm thrilled that you're here with me today on this sunny summer's day. Yes, it's officially summer in my house, absolutely. My kids are climbing the walls, we are navigating all of the chaos that comes with it, but also the fun and joy as well, and I thought this would be a fantastic time for us to talk about, perhaps seasonality in your studio business. It's a big topic actually, and it's something that I talk a lot about with the studio owners inside of Thrive, my group coaching program.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it comes to seasonal slumps, you know what I'm talking about. This is the frustratingly slow periods, that sort of sneak in at certain times of the year just like clockwork. After that new year rush fades. Or perhaps when summer hits, everyone kind of disappears. Or you know, when those holidays Christmas and so on roll around and perhaps you find those classes more empty than you would want. And so, when it comes to these seasons and when seasons change, what we found and working with studio owners for well over a decade here at Spring 3 is that even if those seasons are changing, that doesn't mean that your growth and your revenue has to move with that season. And I know that many, many folks will say well, that's just how it is, this is what I'd expect. This is what happens here, or this is how it happens in my town or my area, but what I have seen over and over again is that the most profitable and most successful studios actually see these patterns coming ahead of time and they prepare for them Now, not necessarily with gimmicky sales and massive, massive discounts or big flash sales, but with smart, strategic moves that create more consistency in terms of revenue.

Speaker 1:

And today I want to talk a little bit more about this, because I think it's time that we all stop feeling like we're at the mercy of the calendar maybe the school calendar, maybe the holiday calendar and I think this episode and what I'm going to share with you today might open up a little bit of a new way of thinking about things and hopefully give you the opportunity to take a little bit back, a little bit of that control over your revenue growth and, obviously, that consistency in your revenue as well, which we all really really like. So let's talk a little bit about perhaps what I often see and hear most of all when it comes to seasons in the business and when we look at data. This is where I often hear these types of phrases come along, and it's sort of things that studio owners will say are things like well, yes, that was a slow month because so-and-so was traveling and they come three or four times a week, and this other person was traveling because they also come that many times a week, and then a whole bunch of the parents are off because the schools are out, and that was just because that's just how it is. It's always slow at this time of year, or maybe it's back to school month, and you know that that is perhaps tricky, and you know what we often see is that, yes, these are real scenarios that happen in every single studio, are real scenarios that happen in every single studio, but they are not a reason necessarily for you to experience a slowdown or a dip or drop in revenue.

Speaker 1:

When we know these events are coming right, then it shouldn't be a surprise to you. And what we are actually in fact observing more often than not is not surprises but actually more of a pattern. And so, instead of being in reactive mode and sort of almost pretending to be a little bit surprised by what the data is telling us, we were actually thinking ahead and using the data that we perhaps have been tracking, hopefully over a number of months or years and actually started planning for these periods, these different changes, different seasons, and so when you're tracking those data points, you can start to see these patterns emerge, and your business will be very unique in the types of patterns that emerge for your business, so you will probably have a sense to know when a lull might be coming. Now one of the things I often see happen is that many studio owners will hope that they don't see perhaps that dip this summer, or don't see that dip happen perhaps in February or March, and so instead of perhaps preparing in advance, we're just sort of hoping it doesn't happen, perhaps hoping that because of all of our hard work and we keep on, we've had such a busy few months, or a busy January or a busy December, that it will continue, I hope.

Speaker 1:

But we probably should be more strategic than that, and the most successful studio owners have a plan already in place to keep their schedule and their income steady. And so what we know is that when you have predictability in your business, you have power and control over your business right. So when you're able to really anticipate that ebb and flow, you can start to redesign your marketing efforts, your attention efforts, your engagement efforts and align your messaging and your offers and also the energy that you have in your business and in the studio for that ebb and flow, whichever direction it's going in, and when you are able to bring that into the way that you think about your growth, then you stop scrambling and truly start leading your business forward. So, just like you might not train a client or train a team member without a long-term plan, I don't want you running your business without one either. So think about mapping your year out well in advance, not in terms of days or maybe a couple of weeks, but actually in terms of months and even quarters, because these seasons tend to have rhythms to them and every studio is slightly different, and so it's really up to you to perhaps look at when your season has a season, or when your studio has a season of fast pace and lots of activity, and when it's perhaps a little bit slower, perhaps a little bit fewer faces, perhaps a few more classes that don't have a wait list. That's something that you should have a feel for in your business, and if you don't, the data will give you all the information that you need.

Speaker 1:

So let me guess you might have had a really, really busy January. Right, you know, perhaps everybody is back to the studio, back in it, wanting to get back to movement, get back in their routine. Your classes are full. You know everyone is reaching out, maybe following you, extra followers on social media, maybe some more email being sent to you, maybe some more phone calls coming in, maybe some more people dropping by. You have a lot of inquiries, and then March hits, and you know, perhaps you're still busy.

Speaker 1:

Perhaps, though, you're exhausted, and suddenly, maybe you decide that you cannot deal with responding to those emails, or you cannot deal with your email marketing campaigns, or you cannot deal with social media any longer, because you are just worn out, and I see this often right, and I see this often as sort of this sort of consequence or knock-on effect of going at full speed and trying to just squeeze as much juice out of the lemon as possible whenever we have a busy season, and we need to perhaps pace ourselves and perhaps prepare for not just the slower seasons, but also prepare for those busier seasons. Right, because we, despite being busier, despite having, perhaps, full classes, we still need to be thinking about our marketing efforts, and it's not something that you just pull out when things get quiet. Actually, in marketing, we have to be super consistent with our marketing efforts. So it's really important to build out not just your campaigns around your slow season, but also campaigns during your busy seasons as well. And what I found is that when you are really thinking ahead and very proactive with your marketing campaigns and your calendar, then you are not scrambling to react to whatever is happening, whether that is a slow or a peak season of your business, and you can also, when you take the time to plan ahead, be so much more creative with the content and with your engagement activities and with your events and with all of the different ways that you are creating visibility and buzz in your studio. For each kind of campaign, a different message, a different vibe, and you're also usually able to be more creative but also more aligned with your marketing messaging, so it doesn't just sound the same as everyone else's. Now, one of the big reasons why I encourage all of my studio owners that I work with and inside of Thrive, we actually give you a calendar and many different ways to implement all of these different types of campaigns throughout the year.

Speaker 1:

The reason why I'm so sort of passionate about that is because one of the things that I really, really want you to avoid, and any studio owner to avoid, is reactive discounts. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had studio owners call me in a scramble saying I just did this promotion and I sold a lot of it, but I'm really not me. I haven't paid myself all month and next month it looks the same and it's not looking good and I'm really scared. And we look at the numbers and we find out that that discount is unprofitable for the business and has put them in a really dark, terrible place and it's not pretty to dig out of that hole, crawl out of that hole, as it were. So I don't want to see anyone doing those sort of reactive discounts and I don't think you need to when you are planning ahead.

Speaker 1:

And so instead of perhaps just throwing out massive, deep discounts off of class packs midsummer because you're feeling desperate and you're worried that you'll never see another client in the studio again, or because you, you know, are seeing these, your class attendance drop significantly, you know we often have sort of these scrambling reactive scenarios happen and you know it's common. So if you are in that place right now, you know you're not alone. Just make sure whatever you're doing is, in fact, profitable for your studio business. Now, in an ideal world, we aren't reactive in that way. We're not. We don't find ourselves in that desperate place at all, because often, when we are in that place, it not only perhaps damages your profitability, but it also creates a lot of stress. It can also chip away at your value and your sense of value in your business and, ultimately, your confidence in your business overall.

Speaker 1:

And instead, what we recommend is that you have planned promotions. These aren't a sign of weakness, by the way. So if you think you need to have a promotion because your business isn't doing well, that is not the case. In fact, when done well, planned promotions can really reinforce your brand and really create fantastic results for a studio without undercutting your integrity. So there is things that you can do around summer bundles that reward consistency and attendance, or bring a friend week right before the holidays, or a seasonal challenge that motivates people to show up when they're most likely to fall off the schedule. And when you build these types of campaigns into your annual marketing plan, they feel exciting to you, they feel doable, they feel exciting and they're not frantic, they're not chaotic. They actually help to build momentum and they're not frantic. They're not chaotic, they actually help to build momentum. You know what's coming, you can plan for them and you can plan well in advance for them as well. So it's about using promotions, and when I say promotions I don't necessarily just mean discounts. It's something that you are promoting and it's time to use promotions not just as band-aids for your business, but actually as tools to create growth and momentum.

Speaker 1:

Now we also not only want to be planning ahead and thinking ahead about campaigns and promotions at various times of the year. We also want to make sure that we have, underneath all of this ongoing sort of the ongoing sort of stickiness that we want to create in our community for our clients, right. We love when clients come over and over and over again. We love when they come back. They feel a part of your community, they are friendly with other clients, they welcome new clients in and you know they help to create that wonderful energy that you have in your studio. And when the clients don't feel that sort of connection to your business or each other, they tend not to stay. So we want to look for ways to encourage that sense of connection and community, and especially when we find that life gets busy or perhaps like this time of year for me, you know, it gets very difficult to have a very consistent routine. And it's not personal necessarily, it's just how we operate. And when there are other sort of pulls in our time, it's not unusual to have clients sort of fall off the schedule or dip out of the schedule for a few weeks or a few months even right.

Speaker 1:

But if you can give your clients a reason to keep coming back, if you can give them a goal or a milestone or a reason to really kind of stay plugged in, then that will only help your retention levels. And retention is critical because when it comes to those ups and downs, retention is one of the things that helps to create a lot more consistency in your studio growth. And so it's not just about new clients coming in or converting new clients, it's also about retaining your existing clients and keeping them as active as possible as well. And what I find is that, over and over again, what is super helpful is having systems behind the scenes that you and your team are able to easily implement in your business. Not complicated necessarily, not complex, not necessarily even super time consuming, but simple systems that work best to encourage attendance, to track progress, to reward loyalty, and they don't have to be high tech, they don't have to be complicated, but they do need to be actually quite meaningful to your clients.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I'd encourage you to start thinking more about how you can engage your clients in a way that is not just sort of trying to help them to hang on when they're one foot out the door, but actually to reward them when they are at most active as well. So think about your client's lifestyle, think about your seasonality in your business and start to think more in seasons, not just about one session to the next, and then how you can perhaps align what you're doing in your studio with some of those rhythms that you know exist within your community, right? So there's a lot that you can do when it comes to building more stickiness in your business and helping your clients to stick around a little bit longer. And when your clients feel like they're on a bit of a journey with you, right, when they have some milestones, when they have goals, it creates a buzz between members within your community as well, which we really like, and it helps to obviously keep them more connected to your studio as well, which we really like, and it helps to obviously keep them more connected to your studio as well, and they'll feel like they're on a journey with you and they'll want to stay with you. So, even if they take a step out of the studio, they perhaps drop their attendance a little bit over the summer or perhaps during the holiday season. Then they'll come back to your studio versus perhaps going elsewhere.

Speaker 1:

So I also want, before we wrap up this quick episode, I do want to share something with you that I think might be the most overlooked but possibly the most powerful shift that you can make. When it and teachers especially often get stuck in teacher mode, you're head down, you're in the trenches, you are teaching and scheduling and coordinating your other teachers and rescheduling and rebooking people, and that you are kind of like in the weeds of the business a lot of the time, if not all of the time, and I want to encourage you to take a step out of your business and perhaps take the time to look at your data, look at your numbers, not after the damage is done, so not perhaps at the end of July or the end of August, but actually ahead of time, right at the end of July or the end of August, but actually ahead of time right. So what we do in Setter Thrive and I show you how to do this step by step is we look ahead, we project forward and we look ahead into the next few months and across the next year and we're thinking always about how we can be ready for whatever comes next. So that you're pulled out for maybe just that one hour of our Thrive meeting each week to focus on your business and thinking bigger picture and being prepared for what might be coming down the pipeline at you. Because the most successful studio owners and CEOs of every business of any size those generating zero in revenue to those generating millions and millions in revenue they are looking ahead.

Speaker 1:

And I think running your business without thinking about what's coming next and without forecasting and without projections is like teaching a class with no plan. Right, it's probably quite chaotic, it probably does not feel aligned, it probably feels uncomfortable and it keeps you in a reactive mode instead of in a calm and control mode, right? So I invite you to think about perhaps what might not be coming just this week or just next week or this month, but think even further ahead than that, review your calendar, even further ahead than that. Review a calendar, set seasonal revenue goals, sketch out campaigns that support those numbers. Because when you start to forecast like a CEO, when you're looking ahead, then you stop feeling behind, actually, and you start to make decisions from a place of clarity, with direction, and you also feel perhaps a little bit more inspired and excited about what might be to come. So there you have it. I just want to give you a quick recap of what we talked about so that you can take away perhaps some things to think about and implement in your studio business today.

Speaker 1:

And while seasonal slumps might feel frustrating, I don't think they have to be inevitable and in fact I've seen that they don't have to be. And what we really find when we discover there are these seasonality slumps and ups and downs in the business is that there often is a gap in terms of planning or in terms of that marketing rhythm or in terms of member or client engagement. So you don't necessarily just have to work harder during the slow seasons, but you might need to work a bit smarter, you might need to be a bit more proactive ahead of time to help smooth sort of the curve a little bit and avoid that dramatic dip in revenue that you might be experiencing. And I encourage you to think more like a strategist, from a place of strategy, from a place of planning, instead of being from a place of perhaps scrambling right. And I encourage you to build a rhythm into your marketing calendar and think about how you can plan ahead, forecast ahead, and you can use that to support various different, very creative and actually very, very fun campaigns to give your clients reasons to stick around and stay active and engaged in your community, even when perhaps it might be more challenging for them. Invite you to perhaps remove the thought that slow seasons are just the way it is, because I've seen that it doesn't have to be at all. So if you want help creating your own year-round marketing and retention game plan, if you're ready to ditch that seasonal stress and you want to have a business that brings in more consistent revenue, then let's talk, because inside Thrive I prepare the studio owners well in advance so they're never chasing the tail when it comes to seasonal shifts. With the resources and the playbooks to give you the step-by-step, alongside our live coaching calls, you get the answers and the guidance when you need it. So I hope this is helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business.

Speaker 1:

If you loved what you heard, please go ahead and give this podcast a quick review and rating. It would mean a ton to me. And don't forget, you can always check out the show notes for all the links to get in touch and learn more about how we can work together. 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.