The Teaching Trap: Why Being Your Studio's Best Instructor Is Keeping You Broke and Burned Out

In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield tackles one of the most overlooked growth blockers facing boutique fitness studio owners today - the teaching trap. 

If you're a Pilates or boutique fitness studio owner who's fully booked, running back-to-back sessions, and still not seeing the revenue growth you know your business is capable of, this episode is your wake-up call. Seran explores why being your studio's best — and busiest — instructor may actually be the very thing quietly capping your growth, stalling your revenue, and keeping you locked in a cycle of exhaustion. 

She dives deep into the real strategic cost of over-teaching, the identity shift required to step into your role as CEO, and why building a studio that thrives beyond you is not just possible — it's essential. Whether you're struggling with a revenue plateau, inconsistent marketing, or the fear of what stepping back might mean for your clients and culture, this episode will shift how you see your time, your role, and your business's potential. 

If you're ready to stop being your studio's best employee and start becoming its most powerful leader, this one's for you.

🎧 Listen now and discover what it really takes to build a Pilates business that grows — even when you're not in the room.

Learn more about working with Seran inside Thrive: www.springthree.com/thrive

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Transcript

The Hidden Cost Of Overteaching

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if the thing that you love most about your studio, the teaching, is actually the very thing that is keeping your business the size it is right now? I know that is a bold statement and maybe even a little bit uncomfortable to hear, but stay with me because here's what I see often with studio owners. They're talented 100%. They're passionate, absolutely. They're deeply experienced and skilled, yes. But they're often also completely maxed out. Teaching often 20, 25, even 30 sessions a week. And somehow, despite being fully booked, they're still not making the money that they should be. They're not growing in the way that they imagined, and often they're exhausted. So in this episode, I want to talk about the real cost of being the one both teaching, the reformer, the Matt, at the front of the room every single day. And not just the physical cost, but also the strategic cost, the business cost, and the cost to your future. Because you cannot build the studio that you really want from inside of a 55-minute session. And once you understand why, it changes everything. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah and 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. This is the PowerTees Business Podcast. Well, hey there, and welcome back to the PowerTees Business Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. If you're new, I'm Sarah and this is where we have real conversations about building a boutique fitness studio business that is something that you love, something that is fulfilling, something that actually works, is profitable, and actually brings you the life that you want. A business that pays you well, runs smoothly, and is something that you're really, really proud of. And if you've been around for a while, welcome back. I love that you keep showing up. I hear from all of you guys all around the world tell me that you've been listening in for months, years, every episode. And that tells me something about you. That tells me that you are someone who is genuinely committed to building something great, to continuing to learn about how to build a business. And truly, that matters more than so much. So today's episode, I know that maybe I'm touching on something that we maybe try to avoid talking about, but I do want to talk about it because I think it's so important. And that is how to how how does running the business side of the business sit alongside the teaching part of the business? And I want to be clear from the very beginning, 100%. I am this is not about not teaching. This is not an episode about stopping teaching, not even close. I know teaching is your craft. It's what you do, it's the part of who you are, it's your gift. And it's the very likely the reason that you started doing what you do and decided to open your business in the first place. And honestly, the love that you have for teaching is huge. That's huge. But the one thing that I've noticed from working with hundreds of studio owners across the country and around the world is that often there becomes a point. And it comes up for every single one of us, where teaching more is not really an option because that actually is not strategic in terms of your growth. It actually becomes a bit of a trap. And I think sometimes studio owners don't even realize they've walked into it until they are well into it. Because they're teaching back-to-back classes, they're subbing for instructors last minute, they're filling every gap in the schedule. And meanwhile, the business side of things, well, they're trying to cover all that as well. And marketing often is then scattered. Systems perhaps are a dream, a wish, maybe a one-day thing, right? And revenue is unreliable, right? Inconsistent even. And this idea of having a business that runs like clockwork, that is flowing and easy, becomes this very distant dream. And I want you to walk away from today's conversation with the understanding that you're the this, actually, which I want to just take a moment and pause around because I think it's sort of the biggest thing that we can learn from being in the role of a business owner and entrepreneur. And that is that your time is the most valuable resource that your business has. And how you allocate that time is one of the most important strategic decisions that you will ever make as a business owner. So I want to talk a little bit about why it is so hard to manage those things, right? And why we often default into teaching too much. I'm going to talk a little bit about what it's going to cost you, perhaps it's already costing you. And most importantly, I want to talk you through some of the shifts that might need to happen before anything else can change. And I might make things a little bit uncomfortable for you. I'm talking about something we don't talk about very often. And I'm going to ask you to look at your role in your business a little bit differently. So if you're open to that, I think what you'll find on the other side is really, really, really exciting. Okay. So let's start at the beginning because to understand why you're in a spot that you might be in where you're over-teaching, we have to talk about identity. Now, most who open studios do it because, first and foremost, you're teachers. Myself included, I was a teacher, I owned a studio, and we did it because we were teachers first, practitioners, movement lovers, right? We built our reputation, our community on the equipment, in the room, teaching clients. And that's often where we feel good. I mean, it's a huge amount of satisfaction and fulfillment that comes from working so closely with clients. And that's often where we feel we have a strong sense of purpose and most importantly, a strong impact. And when you open a studio, you know, when you decide to take that jump and that leap into becoming a business owner and you open your own studio, that identity comes with you. And you know that you're going to be teaching in your studio from the day one. There's no very, I don't think I even, I don't think I can even name a single studio owner that was a teacher. And on day one of opening their studio, did not teach in their studio, right? This is why you open a studio, because you want to teach in your space, right? And so oftentimes when we find ourselves in a spot where things feel uncertain, we often find ourselves going back to what we know. So perhaps when clients aren't showing up, when things aren't working, when the marketing isn't doing as well as you would like, right? When you're you're thinking about the software piece that you know you need to spend time on and learn more about, oh, it feels hard and tough. So we just go back to what we know, and what is we know is deeply fulfilling to us, right? So you pick up another class, you add that extra client, right? You know that there's going to be an impact on your revenue at some point, somehow, and you fill in the gaps and you teach. And it feels productive. It also feels safe, it feels like you're doing something and taking an action. But being a great teacher and being a great business owner are a completely uh different set of skills, but also require a completely different version of you to show up. And oftentimes the studio doesn't need more of you as a teacher. It needs more of you as the leader of the business, as the CEO of the business. So when you are leading a class, teaching a class, you are in that moment unavailable to your business. And that's okay, as long as, right, you do also spend some time balancing that with thinking about strategy, right? You're thinking about marketing, you're thinking about your team, you're thinking about the client experience, you're thinking about building systems. Okay. And by the way, if that isn't happening, this isn't judgment at all. Okay. It's I I am, I said that this might be a bit uncomfortable. It might be because oftentimes those are the pieces that we're actually we're not doing. Those are the pieces that are getting sidelined for more teaching. And so I want you to perhaps take off that hat for a moment and see your role not as a teacher, but as a teacher and, or even as the business owner, where you are not an instructor anymore. You own the business. You're an entrepreneur, you are a leader of your business. And one part of what you do might be teaching, but there's a whole lot of other things that your business requires you to do. And I think there's a lot of costs to you as the as the leader of your business when you teach too much. And I don't mean just the physical exhaustion of getting up and early in the morning and teaching until late at night. Although, yes, that is real. And I do think it's important to acknowledge that it can take a very real toll. Okay. But I also want to talk a little bit about the strategic cost, right? The opportunity cost, the cost that doesn't show up as a number on your PL at the end of the year, but is quietly eroding inside of your business every single day. And so I want to ask you the question, and I'm kind of curious as to where your mind goes when I ask you this question. So think about it for a moment. What is an hour of your time actually worth? Not what you're paying yourself per class, not what you earn when you teach, but what is an hour of your attention applied to growing your business actually worth over time? Now, when we're thinking about teaching a class inside of Thrive, we have projections and spreadsheets and that we use to understand exactly what those numbers are, right? How much is a class worth? What are you teaching inside of who's teaching it? What are we paying them? All of these things. The earnings are an amount that we actually know. So maybe it's 50, maybe it's 60, maybe it's 30, maybe it's 25, maybe it's 75, whatever it is, it's a number, right? And when it comes to teaching a class and the impact of that one hour of your time on your business, that class has a revenue ceiling. There is a limit to how much can be generated in that one hour. But when you spend that same hour doing something else in your business, perhaps building out a marketing funnel, perhaps building out some new programming, perhaps developing retention strategies that keeps clients for 12 months instead of just three weeks, or creating perhaps some team training that helps your team to step up and into some of these roles and take on more responsibilities around client experience. Frameworks and systems and strategies that empowers your team, okay, that hour compounds. So it's not a one-to-one uh return ratio, right? That the hour that you're spending on strategy multiplies. And that hour can be worth thousands of dollars over the life of your business. And this is where things get a little bit more interesting because it can be hard to hear, which is that, you know, every hour that you spend on the reformer when you could be working on your business truly is a choice that you are making. And yes, in the moment, it may not feel like a choice, but it is a choice. And it does have a cost. That choice has a cost. And again, to repeat myself, I am not saying don't teach, but what I am saying is be intentional about what you are choosing to spend your time on and be really aware of what you are giving up. Now, it's very rare that I come across a studio owner who has done this math. It's very rare that I come across a studio owner who has sat down and truly reckoned with the fact that their schedule, the one they built, probably ran their teaching, is also the reason that their business hasn't grown. And so when we have this conversation and we start to really think about how much time you have and where we're spending it, there's a lot that we can shift. Now imagine that you're trying to build a second floor on your house, right? You're excited, you've seen the vision, you know exactly what you want it to look like. But every day, instead of working on the second floor, you spend all your time maintaining the ground floor, cleaning it, fixing it, rearranging furniture, making it perfect. So the ground floor looks great. But the second floor never gets built. And this is a little bit like what overteaching does to your business, right? Your classes, your sessions, they're the ground floor. They're essential. Yes, they have to exist, right? But they're not the thing that actually builds the second floor. They're not what gets you to that next level of revenue or impact or freedom. And the thing about ceilings, you guys, is that you often can't see them until you've hit them. And the studio owners that I work with have been doing this all for years and years and years, and they are working incredibly hard and they love what they do, but there is often an invisible lid on your growth. Revenue fluctuates, but never really climbs. The class schedule stays about the same, but clients come in and you're losing people almost as quickly or just as quickly. And when we dig it all in together, almost every time there is a similar root cause, right? And that is that the owner is too embedded in the delivery of teaching and classes and schedule to have the bandwidth to build that second floor, right? You cannot see the whole of your business from inside just the four walls of your classroom, right? You need to be able to zoom out and to look at that full picture to make strategic decisions from a really clear vantage point. And you simply cannot do that when you are teaching 25, 30, even 35 sessions a week, you guys. So the question then becomes okay, perhaps you're thinking to yourself, great Saren, I get it. I know it. I see this. I'm aware this might be the thing that is stopping me from growing. And you want to perhaps step up into that second floor, that next level. So the question becomes, what would it look like to step back even just a little? What would it look like to maybe teach less? But if you were teaching less and being intentional about then where you were spending that time so that you could build more. And I think that makes a lot of folks nervous. I get it. I really, really do. And I want to gently encourage you to be thoughtful about what is possible when you're able to allocate a little bit more time and energy to growth. And when you know what to do with that time, I think that's when you can really unlock that next shift of potential in your business. And I think that I want to talk about a little bit of what I think is really, really underneath the okay, I'm gonna say it, the fear of letting go of teaching a little bit, even just a few hours, even just a couple of sessions. And I think it often is it's not even about the money. Although I think on the surface, that is what we sort of talk about, right? If I teach fewer classes, I'll earn less. And and that's the thought, right? And we often have this direct association because yes, the impact of investing in more strategic growth is not as immediately as immediate as making, you know, the$200 a class or session or whatever it is that you are making on your sessions, right? So we often say, well, then I'm just gonna see a drop in revenue immediately. And then I can't, I can't possibly stop teaching classes. I know you're thinking that already. I know you are. It's okay. And what I find when we dig into this is I think a fear of something that is much, much, much, much deeper. And there's a lot of layers to it. I think there's two big things that come up. Number one is okay, I am on board. I do want to stop teaching, and maybe it's just a few hours, right? But the fear is then what will I do with that time? I don't know. Okay. And I see this often, which is why inside of Thrive, when you come in to Thrive, we take you through the process of getting really clear about how you want to spend your time and exactly where to focus and give you the play-by-play step or the step-by-step plan, I should say, with the playbooks of where to spend your time. So you can get very quick results from that extra two hours that you are putting into your business growth. Okay. And what we see, because we're giving you that guidance and that clarity, that you're able to really see such very, very quick wins when it comes to growth. So you're seeing an very immediate impact from that time that you're dedicating to your business growth. It's so powerful to have the support like that. So, not really knowing where to start and where to spend that time and a worry that it's going to be a waste and that it's actually never going to ultimately end in an increase in revenue is one of the concerns and fears that often is behind the reluctance to re-engineer your uh where you're spending your energy and your time. And I think the other is this fear on one level that without you in the room, the experience won't be as good, right? That perhaps clients will leave, that the culture will change, that clients, well, you're a part of the studio. You are the studio, you are the leader of the studio. And if clients don't see you there, then maybe that's, you know, that's gonna impact how clients see you and the studio. And honestly, it makes complete sense because without a doubt, you're probably one of the best, if not the best, teacher in your studio, right? You are the reason many of your clients, if not most of your clients, first fell in love with your studio. But if your studio can only be great when you are in the room, honestly, it's not a strength. It's a dependency. And you can never scale out of that no matter what. The studios truly that grow and scale beyond one, two, three locations, the studios that grow and scale beyond one or two instructors, they do it by building something bigger than one person. They're building a culture, they're building a brand, they're building systems that don't just live in your mind and your body, right? And that is actually a far more powerful legacy than anything else that you can think of doing. Your clients don't just love you because you're a great teacher. They love what you have built within your studio. They love how your studio experience makes them feel. They love the people that you've also been able to bring into your community that they enjoy seeing at your studio. And the good news is that all of that, the feeling, the community, the impact that the classes have can be designed into the experience of your studio, not just your classes that you teach. Okay. But to build that, kind of have to get off of that teaching schedule long enough to be able to architect it. Okay. So let's let's just wrap up a little bit really quickly. I want to come back to a couple of points that I made earlier on because there was a lot to unpack here. And I hope that I have given you a few things to think about when it comes to your time and your energy and your focus and what it is you're really truly here to do. Because I want to make sure that you're walking away from today's conversation with the clarity that I really wanted to give you. So here's what we covered today. First of all, your identity as a teacher, as beautiful and as important as it is, can become a bit of a trap if it keeps you from stepping into your identity as the leader of your business. They are two different roles. And oftentimes, your business is not seeing as much of the second one as it would like. Okay. And this doesn't mean that you're losing your identity as a teacher at all. It means that perhaps we need to lean a little bit more into the identity of being the leader of your business. Second, teaching too many classes, okay? Not to, I, and again, teach the classes. Please teach your clients. I think it's fabulous that you do that. And I really want you to continue to do that. But teaching all of them, teaching too many, truly does have a real cost, not just from a physical exhaustion kind of place, but from a strategic uh perspective as well. There's a strategic cost to every hour that you spend delivering a class when you could be building something that is systematized in your business, um, focusing on parts of your business that are perhaps lacking, parts of your marketing plan, parts of your brand awareness, parts of your retention strategies. And the math adds up in ways that you might not even fully see yet. Okay. Because that ceiling that you're at right now, if you're experiencing perhaps a plateau in revenue, you're not really breaking through. It's it's not typically a marketing problem. It's not necessarily even because of the competition or your location. It is often a capacity problem, but not from a studio perspective. Capacity problem from your own capacity, right? And the solution isn't to work harder in and add more hours to add to your capacity. It's actually to change the way that you're working inside of your business. Number four, the fear of stepping at back and out is real, truly. But I encourage you to reflect on that a little bit because there is a couple of things that might well be holding your back, right? If your business can only thrive when you're in every single room, you've built something that's codependent on you, you guys. And that doesn't bring you freedom and doesn't always bring you fulfillment either. And certainly is not a business that can grow. Because the path to real strong, stable, consistent growth is actually building something beyond you, bigger than you. And the version of your studio where you teach what you love, where as often as you like, where you lead with clarity and a fabulous team around you, where you have a business that is growing even when you're not there to hustle and grind, right? That version of success is a hundred percent available to you. But you do have to be willing to do things a little bit differently and perhaps stop doing some things that feel really safe and start doing things that actually move the needle. So what would it mean for you if your business were in your business, you actually taught a few fewer classes and instead invested that time into building something for your growth for part of your business instead? Okay, what would it mean for your business if you taught a few less classes this week, took that couple of hours and put that into doing something that will bring your business to real growth? Just sit with that for a minute. But if you're actually ready to take that next step and do the work to shift out of the overteaching, to build the systems that support real growth and to start leading your studio with strategy and with intention, I'd love to have you inside of Thrive. Thrive is my business coaching program. It's specifically designed for boutique fitness studio owners who are ready to build a profitable, sustainable, and scalable business. We go deep on marketing, operations, retention, leadership, all of it. You can learn more and book a discovery call. We're at springthree.com forward slash thrive. And honestly, you guys, just go check it out. See if it's something that you'd be interested in. Because if you've already done the hard work of setting up your business, of building something beautiful as it is today, now it's time to build it smart. All right, super. So thank you so much for being with me today. If this episode hit home, share it with a studio owner or a friend or a teacher or an instructor who needs to hear it. Leave a review if you haven't yet. It genuinely helps more people to find the show and to continue to get this out there into the world so that you have the support that you need to continue to grow. Take care of yourselves and your businesses. I will see you in the next episode. 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.