Waitlists Are Costing You Money: The Hidden Bottleneck in Your Pilates Studio

In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield tackles one of the most misunderstood signals in a boutique fitness studio business: the waitlist. While a waitlisted class can feel like the ultimate win, Seran breaks down why it might actually be a hidden bottleneck quietly costing your pilates studio revenue, burning out your best clients, and capping your growth potential.

Seran walks through the three most common mistakes pilates and boutique fitness studio owners make when demand outpaces capacity, including why treating your waitlist like a passive parking lot is one of the most expensive habits in your business. If your classes are full but your revenue feels flat, this episode is your wake-up call. Discover how to read your waitlist as a powerful data point, design your pilates business for intentional growth, and optimize your pricing and positioning to match the demand you've already created. Because the goal isn't just full classes — it's a profitable, sustainable studio that supports your life, not consumes it.

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Transcript

Waitlists As A Hidden Bottleneck

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Wait lists feel like a good problem, right? Like your classes are full, people want in, demand is there, you should feel like you've really made it. But for a lot of studio owners, a wait list isn't actually a sign of growth. It's actually a sign of a bottleneck. And even worse, it could be costing, quietly costing you revenue, burning out your clients, and capping your business without you even realizing it. Because the truth is that a lot of folks don't actually know what to do with a wait list. They just let it kind of sit there. So in today's episode, I'm going to break down the top three mistakes that studio owners make when it comes to wait lists and how this one small blind spot could be something that is holding your business back from the next level. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah 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 Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. If we've never met before, I'm Sarah and Glamfield. I'm the founder of Spring 3 Studio Business Consulting, and I help boutique fitness studio owners just like you build profitable and sustainable businesses that actually support your life, not consume them. And I think that's what we're all aiming for, right? Now, today I want to talk about something that, on the surface, often feels like a massive win. In fact, many, many studio owners kind of wear this as a badge of honor. You know, my classes are waitlisted. Um, and they're sort of so excited when they have that, right? And I want you to think about this. Maybe you've been there too, when you've looked at the wait at the schedule and seen a wait list and thought, oh my goodness, yes, I've made it. Thank goodness that class is full. So a lot of folks then don't know what to do about that because obviously it's like a very positive sign for your business. Um, but you also know that perhaps there's a little bit of friction there. And a lot of studio owners feel a little bit weird about complaining about it because saying, you know, I've got this massive problem, all these wait lists feels a little bit like bragging, right? I know. But behind the scenes, I know that for studio owners, it can often feel kind of stressful, a little bit messy, perhaps a little bit inefficient. Um, and you know, you're you're aware that some of your clients, some of your best clients, might be annoyed at the fact that they're sitting on a wait list. Maybe your team doesn't know what to do or how to handle it, and you're seeing this demand pile up, and it's probably perhaps creating a little bit of stress for you because you're not sure what to do with that, right? And so you've got all of this demand, but revenue is staying the same, and it probably feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. So you probably will either ignore the wait list and just hope it kind of resolves, and these people who are on the wait list find themselves in other classes. Um, maybe you add yourself back into the schedule to teach more. Maybe you make some promises you're not sure if you can keep, like we're gonna add more classes soon, or we're gonna add more equipment soon, more spots soon. Um, but you don't really have a plan for it. Um, and and over time, what might feel like something really, really good often might become something that feels really, really heavy. And, you know, a wait list in and of itself is not a scheduling issue alone. It's actually to do with more about the way that you're designing your business, your leadership, and your decision making. Because that wait list is actually data for you. And if you don't know how to read that data, you will likely mismanage your growth in the next phase. But when it's handled well, these wait lists can actually create momentum and growth. When handled poorly, they create frustration, they diminish your brand, and for sure are a missed opportunity. And there's a big difference. And this is something that I'm honestly seeing across the industry right now. Studios are getting busier. Yes, classes are filling, yes, it is all great, demand is through the roof. Um, but that growth, that next phase starts to feel a little bit messy. It feels very reactive, or you probably feel kind of capped. And I think that one of the biggest constraints that studios are walking into right now, many studio owners are walking into right now, is capacity. Um, and so the question is no longer how do I get more people in the door necessarily? It's how do I manage the demand I already have in a way that is smart, that is aligned with the way that I want to build and grow my business and my role in it. Because if you don't, then you're gonna stay in a place where you are reactive, where probably you are overworking and your revenue stays plateaued, flatter than it should be. I talked about this in last week's episode as well. So I want to dive into some of the mistakes that it comes to when I that I see studio is making when it comes specifically to wait lists and some of the things that might need to happen if you want to grow from here forward. So I think the first mistake that studio owners uh make often is they sort of treat the wait list like a parking lot. So people sign up, maybe they get in, maybe they don't. That's it. And it's a bit like a passive overflow sort of holding sort of capacity thing. Um, but there's no real engagement with the folks on the wait list, there's no real follow-up, there's no intention, there's no plan, um, and there's no connection, there's no, there's no interactions at all. And so think about this for a minute, because when you're that person who is on that wait list, right, they are a hot client. They are someone who wanted that class, they wanted that time, they wanted that instructor, and then they get nothing. There's no experience, no communication, perhaps no next next step at all. And what happens when this sort of exists for a long period of time is that your clients eventually will stop trying. They will disengage, they will remove themselves quietly from your studio and they will go elsewhere. And this is crazy when you think about it, because these are the most qualified clients in your entire ecosystem. They've already come in and purchased some one of your packages, your offers, your membership. And they literally raise their hand and said, This is what I want. And then they get ignored. And I think this is ties directly into some of the biggest sort of results, or as I should say, that's that sort of next stage of impact that we see as a result of this, which is, you know, a frustration from our from a studio owner perspective is that the retention tends to be quite low, or we feel like our clients are completely unpredictable and we don't know what's going on. But often it's not to do with your clients being, you know, a little bit chaotic in their scheduling. Sometimes it's to do with the systems that don't exist in your business. And so when we think about all of those people on that wait list, there is demand there, right? And we want to make sure that we are nurturing those folks in the same way that someone who had come to class had felt that they had had that sort of same kind of experience, right? And so the question isn't, oh, look, like this is nice, it makes me feel good that my studio has got wait lists. It's actually the perspective should be how much revenue am I leaving sitting on the table on that wait list every single week? And what can we do to make sure that those folks don't gradually leave the studio? Now, the other thing I see is that we have this very reactive um response, right? So you'll see a wait list and you immediately think, I need to add another class, right? And now this is not, and I'm not saying this is the wrong thing to do at all. Definitely we want to find solutions to this to make sure you can capture that revenue, but we want to make sure we're doing it in a way that is not chaotic or super reactive, that is proactive, that is thoughtful, that is aligned with your long-term growth strategy and plan. So it isn't about squeezing in an extra class and you're teaching it as the owner, perhaps. You want to make sure that you're being thoughtful about your schedule. Because without that thoughtfulness, right, your schedule will get messy, your energy will get stretched, your team will get stretched too, and your business will start to sort of feel like it's being held together by in this very sort of, you know, duct tape kind of situation where uh it's you're just constantly just moving and changing and things to try to make it fit something. And I think this is a trap that a lot of studios are falling into right now, which is growth without structure. So you're not designing your business for growth, you're just reacting to the pressure. And the result is that you stay stuck in this cycle of more demand, more classes, more burnout, and no real scalability plan in place. We have to be really careful what we do with that sort of wait list as a signal, as a data point, because it may be that it's not just about adding a class, it might be that we need to add capacity across the entire system of operations, right? Maybe that means also adding teachers and teacher training and um, you know, the other changes to the schedule as well. So not all of this demand has to be handled in the same way. Some demand should shift, some should be redirected, um, and and some perhaps may not be able to be accommodated at all. But that's where your big strategy and your plan, your growth plan really comes into play and becomes so, so critical to being able to manage this situation as efficiently as possible. And that means that you're able to capitalize on that additional demand, make sure that you're leveraging that into your growth, right? And we're not missing out on that opportunity. And I think that is one of the other pieces of this that we don't often consider because when it comes to um that pricing and positioning opportunity, you know, when we see a class with consistently with a wait list, there is a signal there around pricing and positioning as well. And I think that often studio owners ignore ignore it because perhaps there are other classes that are not as popular or as weightlisted, right? As packed. Um and so they keep the same structure, the same pricing, the same offer, even though literally the demand is telling them this is valuable. And so what happens is when you haven't optimized your pricing and your positioning effectively, then you end up with some classes that are very, very, very packed and waitlisted, um, and others that are not so much. But you're perhaps not maximizing revenue in the way that you know is there, that is money literally sitting on the table. But you're probably working at or beyond the capacity that you'd liked without being compensated for that all of that incredible demand that you, as the leader of your business, has created for the value that you deliver in your studio. And this is where that frustration often starts to build. I'm so busy. Why is my income not reflecting that? Right. Sounds familiar. I see, I hear it often. And I think that this is where your business really has leverage when it comes to wait lists, because there is a scenario where perhaps not everything that you offer is priced equally and not every class is positioned as the same, right? And you have a lot of options here. And it has to, again, match with your growth plan and growth strategy. But you want to make sure that you are being and you want to make sure and you want to make sure you're being thoughtful about that. Um, but when you know that you have got these different opportunities in your business, it doesn't necessarily come around to chasing more and more and more clients. It starts to become about optimizing the relationships that you already have inside of your studio. Okay. So the biggest takeaway I want you from today's conversation is that wait lists are not a necessarily something to celebrate, but they're also not necessarily a massive problem either, right? They're a signal. They're a signal that there are things happening in your business that people want what you have to offer, but that you're missing out perhaps on the opportunity to take advantage of that incredible demand that you have created, right? And there's a little bit of missed revenue there. You're at the perhaps a little bit of a um risk of uh, you know, on the edge of perhaps burnout or or or a little overcapacity on your part. And I want you to avoid that. Um, but we also want to make sure that we're not stalling growth. So the three mistakes that we talked about today are treating wait lists as a passive parking lot for people, right? We don't want to ignore the people on those wait lists. We want to make sure that we are finding them what they want, which is movement in your studio. We want to make sure that we're not reactive without being strategic. So we want to make sure we are designing our business for additional capacity in a very robust way. And then we want to make sure that we're not missing anything when it comes to pricing, right? Because there's some signals there that we want to look at some other data points as well to make sure that we aren't missing anything, but there could be something to look at when it comes to pricing. Now, these aren't small things, these are the differences between a studio that feels busy and is doing well, and a studio that is actually scaling in a profitable and sustainable way. Because honestly, the goal isn't just full classes, it's a profitable, intentional growth that supports your life and doesn't just consume it, right? And if you're at that stage right now where your classes are filling, your schedule is tight, you know there's more potential in your business, perhaps for more growth, but actually also for you to step back a little bit more, then that's exactly the work that we do inside of Thrive. So we help you take what you've already built and refine it so that it grows faster and easier with smarter systems, with better decision making, with stronger leadership, and a business model that actually holds as you grow. So you can learn more at springthree.com forward slash thrive. The links are in the show notes. And if this episode hit home for you, just take a quick second, ask yourself, am I sitting on untapped revenue right now in my business? Because the answer to that question, that's where your next level of growth is going to come from. I hope this episode was helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business. If it was, please do go to wherever you're listening to this and rate and review this podcast. It would mean so much to me. And get in touch and learn a little bit more about how I work with studio owners inside Drive. 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.