Client Retention Secrets: How Successful Pilates Studios Create Loyal Communities

In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, Seran Glanfield dives into one of the most overlooked growth strategies for boutique fitness studios: client retention. While many studio owners focus heavily on lead generation, marketing, and social media, the studios experiencing sustainable growth are often the ones creating exceptional client experiences that keep members coming back year after year.

Seran shares why retention matters so much in a Pilates studio or boutique fitness business, how loyal clients become your most powerful marketing tool, and the small but impactful ways studio owners can create a sense of belonging that clients can’t stop talking about. From building stronger relationships to designing a memorable studio experience, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help studio owners improve profitability, increase referrals, fill classes more consistently, and create long-term business stability.

If you’re feeling exhausted constantly chasing new leads and want to build a thriving, sustainable Pilates business with stronger community, better retention, and more predictable revenue — this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Retention As The Real Growth Lever

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if the secret to growing your studio wasn't about getting more leads? What if it wasn't about more Instagram posts or more paid ads or more promotions? What if the biggest growth opportunity in your studio was already walking through your doors? Because what I'm seeing right now in the boutique fitness industry is that leads are getting more expensive. Competition is high. And studio owners are working harder than ever to bring in new clients. But they're also quietly losing the ones they already have. So in today's episode, I'm talking all about why retention is the place to focus and how creating an experience that people brag about might be the most powerful growth strategy you have. 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. I'm Sarah Glanfield. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about something that I think is one of the biggest missed opportunities for boutique fitness studio owners. And time and time again, you know, I talk about this inside of my Thrive group with my studio owners, and we focus on it as actually one of the pillars of the entire program, and that is retention. Now, the reason that retention matters in a boutique fitness studio is something that I have personally experienced over and over and over again, as you probably have too at some point. There are studios that I have been attending very, very frequently and stick with over the years. And then there are studios that I've stepped away from occasionally for sometimes weeks, sometimes months at a time, because life got busy, work shifted, my routine changed. And this is true for I think many of your clients as well. But what I've observed, and I reflect back, you know, having been in this industry as both a consumer, a client, a teacher, and a consultant, is that we tend to always go back to specific studios. And it's not usually because of a promotion, not because of a discount necessarily, but because I know the people there. I know the teachers, I know the quality of the classes or of the sessions or of the teaching, I know the studio owner, I know what it's going to feel like when I walk through the door. And there's something really powerful about being familiar or familiarity in a movement space. Because when I think when a when a studio becomes part of where you go, right, as a human being, as a person, or part of your life, not just a part of like a checkbox for a workout, it creates that deeper emotional connection. And I think this, or I know that this is one of the things that drives that long-term retention for Boutique Fitness Studios. Your clients want to be seen. We all want to be seen. And they also want for people to notice when they maybe haven't

Why Familiarity Keeps Clients Coming Back

SPEAKER_00 3:40

been there in a while. They want to walk into a room where they don't feel like a stranger, where they don't feel like everybody else knows what is happening and they don't. And when you walk into a studio and you feel safe and you feel comfortable and you look around and you feel familiarity, like this is where you belong, you know, that's really hard to replicate across many, many, many studios. And honestly, it's one of the biggest advantages that boutique fitness studios have over larger chains and franchises. And this has always been the case. This is one of the reasons why I love the work that I do, because every single one of your studios is unique in the way that you do what you do and deliver the way that you do it. And I think that creating that third space, that space that people feel comfortable, is absolutely fundamental to building a robust and sustainable business. And what's interesting, having worked with so many studios for so long, because when I work with my studio owners, we work with, we work together not just for a couple of months, but for actually often years. And over that time, we see their business evolve in a lot of different ways and we observe a lot of the behaviors of their consumers and their clients. And what's interesting is that people don't just stay connected to studios for just a few weeks or even just a few months. They stay connected for years. And we see that in the data, we can track that in the data, and we can see the long-term retention for some studios. And it is crazy high for some of the studio owners that I work with. In fact, recently at our retreat that we did for our Thrive members here in South Florida, we were just chatting about this exact topic, actually. And I asked everyone to raise their hand if they had a client that had been around for longer than a year, longer than two years, longer than three years, longer than four years, longer than five years. And it was incredible to see the number of hands still raised when we finally got to like that eight and nine year period point. And incredible to think about the journey that you have been on with those clients over that time and all the things that have happened in your lives. And for that relationship to be intact means that what you're doing in your studio is working really, really well. For those of you who've got studios that are newer, what we're gonna be talking about today is how you can continue to make someone, uh, make your studio someone's home base, especially as people move through different seasons of life. You know, you're gonna see people come into your studio at a in a particular season, and then there is gonna be a change in career or a change in home life or children being born or injuries or stress or uh fresh starts or having to take care of other loved ones. Um, they may leave temporarily, by the way, but if the relationship is really strong, then they will often come back and they often bring people with them and they're they have this quiet impact that we often really see, um, which is that they often tell people about you, right? They tell their friends, they recommend the studio at dinner parties, they talk about their favorite instructor, and they become ambassadors for your brand. Sometimes you may not even be aware of that.

Long-Term Clients Become Brand Ambassadors

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And even for those clients who are not even participating in your studio. And this is especially important in towns and cities where you have people who come and they live there for a very long time. In communities where you have a population that is active, that is not transient, that is, you know, people come to and they they they spend their lives there, right? And in that place, type of place, your business has the opportunity to really be woven into the identity of the area itself. And that's amazing, right? So you're not just another gym that's popped up. You become the place that people know, the trusted place that people, place that people return to. And that kind of retention, that kind of awareness in a in a community creates a lot of stability in a business, creates a lot of predictability, and it protects you from these huge sort of roller coaster swings in growth and decline. Over time, you're building something that is actually far more valuable than short-term growth. It builds reputation and community. Because at the end of the day, the studios that last are really the ones that are constantly chasing attention and attention and that short-term revenue boost. They're the ones that invest in their brand, in their uh relationships, in their visibility and awareness consistently and over a long period of time. And then they're the ones that people remember, that people return to, and that people recommend even when they're not an active participant. And that's the real power of strong relationships that drive strong retention. And I think that when a lot of studio owners think about growth, they think about more leads, more clients, more visibility, more marketing, more discounts, more promotions. And while some of those things absolutely matter, underneath it all, there's something even more powerful that often gets overlooked. And that is keeping the clients that you already have. Because I think that when we see that studio owners are working so hard to get new clients in, as so many of you are, you're posting on social media, you're running promotions, you're probably spending maybe an increasing amount of money on paid ads, on software and people to close those sales, um, trying to build awareness, trying to close uh those memberships. Um, and at the same time, you're possibly seeing those clients quietly slip out the door, right? Not because your teaching isn't good, not because the studio isn't beautiful, and not because you don't care, but because the experience is not intentionally designed to keep them. And this is where things start to shift. Because when retention improves, you don't need as many new leads. Your revenue becomes more predictable and more stable, your classes fill more predictably, more easily, and the whole business just becomes more sustainable for you as a business owner. It feels a lot less chaotic. And the interesting part is that studios with strong retention don't just grow from keeping clients, they grow from referrals too. Because when clients really love your studio, when they genuinely love the experience, they talk about it. They bring friends, they share your studio, they become advocates, and suddenly your clients become your marketing and oftentimes even clients who are no longer active. And that's why retention efforts and relationship building is no longer just a nice to have. It's actually your underlying

The Leaky Bucket That Kills Growth

SPEAKER_00 10:32

most powerful growth strategy. So let's talk about where we see some of the problems with this in a lot of studios. Well, first of all, as I've mentioned already, a lot of studios focus heavily on bringing clients in, right? But perhaps the focus is so much on that that they're not, there is not a lot of focus on keeping them. It kind of creates what I call the leaky bucket problem. The leaky bucket is where you are pouring energy into marketing. Um, you're getting new clients coming in, but at the same time, clients are leaving. So what happens then is that actually growth is becomes stagment or plateaus or is grows only very, very slowly, even though you are pushing and pushing and working harder and harder and harder. And this is exhausting because you're not seeing the impact in your business that you want. You're constantly simply just replacing the clients you're losing. And it probably feels like you're on a hamster wheel or on the treadmill where you're running, you're running, are you running, but you're not quite getting ahead. And what you see when retention is low is you see a lot of classes that don't fill very consistently. You see a lot of spottiness in the schedule when you're teaching one-on-ones, you see a lot of revenue fluctuations and purchase in terms of sales. Um, you also see that you don't quite feel like your marketing is working as well as you want to. And when we pull back all of the data there, we see very clearly where exactly the problem lies. And the reality is that you don't always notice the retention problems immediately. They're not sort of this next week sort of feedback data loop that you often get from other things in your business. So you don't, you know, you don't know. You don't know when clients are leaving because they don't tend to tell you, right? They just quietly slip away. And this makes one of retention one of sort of the the most invisible problems, but also the most invisible growth opportunities, right? Because growth doesn't come from just adding more people, it comes from keeping them longer. Because when clients stay longer, their lifetime value increases. So that means that they are spending more. Every client is worth more at your studio. Classes are filled because they're more active. Uh, we see a lot more stability in revenue, and we often that's when we see also that revenue growth that is becomes more predictable. And then we see referrals increase as well because you've invested in those retention efforts, which also probably means that they feel like they're getting a wonderful experience and a deeper relationship. And when you do this, all of this obviously feels a lot more better, a lot more like it's flowing, like business is better and you start seeing your business work with you, not against you.

Great Teaching Is Not Enough

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Now, a lot of studio owners also tend to find themselves focused heavily on teaching quality. Now, I want to say very clearly, this is absolutely fundamental to having a successful business. You have to invest in your training, you have to be refining your teaching skills. And I know that you're doing this because I know that you care deeply about what you do. And all of that matters. It really, truly does. In today's world, without strong teaching, you have no chance, truly. Okay. However, a lot of people are focusing on strong teaching quality. So just relying on that alone is probably not going to cut it. People stay because of the entire experience. So, yes, great teaching is a very significant part of the experience, but it is not the entire experience, quite. Not quite the entire experience. It is an incredibly significant experience. People stay, though, because of a lot of other small things that I don't want you to miss and overlook because they're so small that you would be kicking yourself if someone left because of some of the things I'm about to share with you. Okay. So the things that matter to people, as well as quality teaching, is how they're welcomed, how they feel in the space, how clean the space is, how connected they are to the teacher and the studio and the team, how supported they feel, and how easy it is to be there and show up. And what we see sometimes, very occasionally, and I don't think this is a long-term strategy, but it in the short term, I do see some studios with very average teaching do well because they have nailed all of these sort of additional experiences. Um, and they can outperform, especially in the short term, studios with incredible teaching. And we cannot afford to lose out to, in the short term or the long term, to other studios at this point in our in the in the in the industry. So what we know is that these other pieces work and are important too. I have to say for myself personally, I've been to a number of incredibly talented teachers who have an incredible amount of expertise, but because of another poor experience in that studio, it hasn't worked out that I've become a long-term client. And I know that is also the case for a lot of other people who have experienced similar things from speaking to other, you know, consumers in the industry, right? So we know that experience is something that you can intentionally design because you're not just running a studio. In in 2026 and beyond, this is not about just doing a class. You're

Design An Experience People Brag About

SPEAKER_00 16:01

creating an entire experience. Every touch point matters before they walk in, be when they walk in, during the class, after the class, between the visits. And when that entire experience feels thoughtful and supportive and consistent, clients don't just come, right? They belong. And they belong in your studio. And that belonging is what drives the long-term retention, which is what we want. Okay. Now, what are what else do we see? What other problems do I see pop up when it comes to retention? Um, often again, it's about where we focus as business owners. Oftentimes we're in the weeds. We're focused on schedules, we're focused on the class, you know, offerings, the the various different types of classes that we may offer, what times those sessions are, what times we're teaching. Um, and the reality is that that is not what sends people your way when they're when your clients are talking about your studio. Clients don't brag about those things. They don't usually say, you have to try this class, their class schedule, you know, is amazing. They brag about more about how the studio makes them feel, right? Like it's the best this, it's the best that. And it, you know, it's such a great group. They have great energy, the teachers are fantastic and all of these things. And when clients start sharing these experiences, that's when organic growth happens. If they're talking about, oh, they have got a 7:30 class on the schedule, and that's why I go, it is a little bit flatter, right? So we want them to feel a fabulous when they walk in, we want them to feel fabulous when they leave. We want them to feel like they belong and can go away and talk about this amazing experience with anyone else who is in their community because you guys, people are talking about their workouts every day of the week in the world we're in today. This is a shift that didn't exist 10 years ago. 10 years ago, we had to figure out how to get people to talk about where they work out. Today, this is a part of many, many people's, especially your clients, a part of their day-to-day, right? So your most powerful marketing is your client experience, right? Because when clients love your studio, they're gonna tell their friends, they're gonna peep bring people in, they're gonna post about it, they're gonna tag you in their post, they're gonna share your posts, they're gonna stay longer, they're gonna spend more. And all of these things create momentum. Because we know, you know, you guys, this is like not a secret. Referrals convert faster. When someone brings a friend to you and they've been recommended that you they come, they will come and convert quickly and they will stay longer and spend more. And they trust you way more before they've even walked through the doors. And that's when we see this real potential for such opportunity because that's when growth just becomes a lot easier. And you guys, I'm not talking about spending thousands and thousands and thousands on meta-ads. I'm talking about implementing small tweaks and changes and refining the experience that you're already delivering to your clients in your studio. Now, I I've seen behind the scenes in so many studios. I've seen, and and you know, we look at the numbers together and I look at the key numbers, we look at the dashboard, we build this the dashboard out for so many of our studio owners. And I've been doing this for so long. And my goodness, when retention is low, when retention is weak, everything feels heavier and harder. It is something, again, that you don't always see as happening. People often just jump to the conclusion that they need new clients coming in. Um,

Retention Creates Stability And Confidence

SPEAKER_00 19:40

and so you're always then in that place of chasing those new clients and worrying about numbers and the revenue is not where you want it to be and it's not growing. And that creates anxiety, right? And you're wondering, is it always going to be this way? Because you never quite feel stable. But the reality is that investing in your retention efforts, taking care of your existing clients really well and delivering a phenomenal experience is what creates stability in your business. And that stability has a lot of ripple effects and knock-on effects, not just for your revenue numbers, but for you as the leader of your business. It's gonna bring you confidence as a leader. You're gonna understand your business better, you're gonna have deeper relationships with your clients, which is gonna make you feel a lot more fulfilled about the impact that you're having in your community. And ultimately, it's gonna make your business be a lot more predictable. And what we know about a business that is predictable is that that is when you actually feel like you have a lot of flexibility in your business because you know what to expect and you can step out of reactive mode because you know that it's going to run well because you've got these systems in place that help it to do that. So when clients stay longer, you're not hustling as much for new leads. You don't have to worry about empty classes and you can focus on growth instead of just surviving. And that's where your studio starts to feel that sustainability. And you can let your shoulders drop, you can breathe more deeply, and life feels good. And you can look at what you're building and feel really, really good about it. So if you want to grow your studio, here's what I want you to remember retention is important and critical uh for you to focus on. Great teaching is important, it is everything, but it's it's it's also not enough. So we need great teaching, we need great quality classes, great quality instructors. They will always rise to the top, but the experience matters too. Clients will brag about how they feel from your studio, the results they get. So make sure that you're really intentional about designing those things for your clients. And remember that retention is what creates that sustainable and stable growth. And I have to say, you know, I think that oftentimes we just kind of go from one thing to the next and focus on whatever is in front of us, whatever fire needs to get put out. But when you intentionally design your studio experience, you don't just retain those clients, you're also creating advocates. And they become really

Thrive Invite And Closing Reminders

SPEAKER_00 22:14

powerful for your marketing as well. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I know retention matters. I'm not sure how to improve it. I'm not sure how to design the experience for my clients that I really want to make sure they're getting. This is exactly what we work on inside of Thrive. So inside inside Thrive, we help studio our studio owners, our members to improve retention, to strengthen that client experience with very specific things that you could be doing in your studio that are not expensive, but are these small adjustments that lead to these big knock-on effects. We show you how to build systems around those activities that create very sustainable growth. And we show you how you can increase profitability in your studio because you don't always just need more marketing, more promotions, or more meta-ads. You probably also need a studio experience that people just can't stop talking about. So you can learn more and book a discovery call to see how it can help you build your business at springthree.com forward slash thrive, or you can send us a quick DM on Instagram at discovery. And then remember, the studios that growing the fastest right now, you guys, aren't always the ones with the most new clients. Just saying. They're the ones that actually people just can't stop talking about. So I hope this is helpful to you as you build your boutique fitness studio business. If you enjoyed what you heard today, I'd be so appreciative if you could go to wherever you're listening to this, take a quick minute and rate and review this podcast. I would love to hear that what you have to say, and it would mean so much to me and would help to get this out there into our amazing community of teachers and studio owners who will feel also encouraged and supported on their journey and their industry just like you. 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.