Hello and welcome to another episode of Chat EYT. I'm gonna go off script a little bit today and not cite any emails or phone calls that I've had. These some conversations that I've had organically with people in the industry students who've come through my halls. And I think important to talk about with the larger Pilates audience. The first is talking about who our target audience is. And as someone who's been in this industry for a long time, I can say that it used to really be more of a middle age to senior clientele who we focused on. People who maybe weren't as. Intense on the aesthetics of what Pilates brings to the table, but more about increasing flexibility, keeping their mobility strong as they age, injury prevention and looking at it more almost from a rehabilitation standpoint. So I think a lot of the older teacher community, and I put myself in that category, and by older wiser. We really cut our teeth on people who have injuries and people who have just life in their joints, life in their bones, life in their muscles, and they've lived. But as we've seen, there's been a dramatic increase in a younger audience, and that's wonderful. So much of me is so happy to see that because. As we all know, Pilates is kind to the body and something that is gentle but intense. It's still hard work, but it's gentle on our joints. And we very often would see people coming to us in their fifties because they were running marathons and that's why they're now in pain. Now, I think that the younger audience has been drawn to Pilates because there's been a real glamor that has come along with it in the most recent couple of years. The studios are beautiful. They're built out to the nines. Everybody who does Pilates is beautiful. Everybody is in shape. Everybody's fit. Everybody wears a matching set from the latest and greatest brand. We have a real image that has evolved and come about in the Pilates world. And I think that's also making people get into the business. There's a lifestyle that there's perceived to go along with Pilates, and people are attracted to that and wanna become either teachers and embody that image. They wanna become Pilates influencers in some way, or they wanna become studio owners and build out a space that looks gorgeous and makes them feel good about what they're doing. And I fully support and applaud all of that. However, the one thing I will say from experience is that. The younger audience tend to chase trends. Pilates, is a trend right now. It's never gonna go away. It's been around forever, but some of the shine will certainly dull. And the next thing, whether it's. P vol or whether it's whatever the next dance craze is gonna be that steps in and arose a little bit of Tracy Anderson's market share, whatever it might be. The younger audience is going to be the one that chases it. The younger audience also has less disposable income, so when it comes to building a business, they are probably going to be the ones who are class passing it. Or trial offers or intro months and committing at the lowest tier possible and trying to, maybe even do trade for classes. I'll post on your social for you. I'll make videos if I can take classes for free. And while that's fine, none of this builds a sustainable business. And if you are going into this because you wanna actually build a sustainable business, you want this as a career path, you want to be able to pay your bills, perhaps you wanna contribute to your household income. And this isn't just a vanity project. You have to really think about those things. And when I was coming of age as a studio owner. I always looked at it as like the women who are in their thirties and they would come to us almost as though they wanted to get their body back after baby. Pilates was something that was recommended. It's core strength worked on their abdomen, which they wanted to tighten up and that was all well and good. And I would have some of them say, you should really do some sort of a promotion with the daycare or with the preschool and all the moms can just come right here after drop off. I would smile and say, thank you for the suggestion, but that's not where, really where I wanted to put my effort. And it's because I always found that age group was going to drop me as soon as the next shiny object came about. We're in a suburb of New York City, so things that were popular in New York City, within six months they made their way out to the burbs. I'm sure it's like this in a lot of your regions I knew that the next thing that came they would move on and go and try that. And I was right. Any younger clients that I had when SLT moved into town, they all dropped me in a hot second and went over to SLT. SLT did not last very long because they built their business on the trend seekers. Flywheel opened up and Fly Bar opened up and they dropped me and ran over to Flywheel and Fly Bar. And guess what? Flywheel and Fly Bar didn't last a year. SLT lasted probably 18 months. All of them came back to me because I was there with a sustainable business. And the companies that really made their mark on the trend and the people who looked beautiful, they weren't paying the bills. And so my approach was always like, I love to have you. Great. I embrace you doing this, but who I really am going to build my business on is your mom. I wanted all of these women's mom, because when you get to a certain age, Pilates takes on a different form in the body and how your body takes it. And people who are over 45, they're starting to wake up in the morning with a little bit of extra. Creakiness, shall we say. They're perhaps feeling the history of whether, they were an athlete perhaps it was pregnancy complications and lower back problems. Perhaps it was marathon running. Perhaps it was CrossFit, whatever it was that they did in their younger years. It's starting to punish them a little bit in their middle aged years. And so while mentally they still might want that endorphin rush of a nice long run, their body and their knees and their hips are saying, no not right now. And so they come and they start doing Pilates, and they feel the difference in their body. Their body simply feel better. When their body feels better, they actually can continue to do the things that they love, like running, CrossFit, whatever it might be. Pilates almost becomes a requirement in order for them to live the life, the physical life that they're really looking to live. Some people never go back to those other movement modalities and they stick with Pilates forever, and that's wonderful, but. Over the age of 45, there's an appreciation for what we do that just simply doesn't exist in the younger segment. On I'm obviously making major generalizations here. I was falling in love with Pilates in my early twenties because I had some back issues and it changed my life. So obviously there's room for that. I'm making, broad stroke statements here, but. Women and men who are over 45, they just take it in a different way and it becomes a must. It's not a nice to have. It's a must have. They also have more disposable income. They're less likely to start nickel and dimming you. They're less likely to use ClassPass. They're less likely to find the lowest possible package that you sell and go with that. They're likely to be more. Consistent. There's just a dependability that you get with someone who is over the age of 45 that just simply doesn't exist in the younger segment. So my advice, if you are building a business, starting a business, think about the target audience that gives you sustainability, not what gives you good imagery. So that would be my advice when it comes to thinking about who your target audience is. Alright. The second thing I wanna talk about is Pilates a full-time job? This. Came about from a conversation that I had with my son who is going to college this coming September. He's gonna be a freshman and he's studying psychology and he really has an image of himself, like being the next Frazier crane, right? He's wants to be a therapist. I don't know that he knows whether he wants to do. Couples therapy, family counseling, individual practice, do sports therapy. He's not there yet, but he's definitely, sees himself in a private practice and having a career. And he asked me the other day if I thought that being a therapist could really be a full-time job. Having this conversation with him made me think about how to answer this question for. People who are considering becoming teachers themselves. And I think that there's a lot of similarities between being a therapist and being a Pilates teacher because we both are in the human business and. Both jobs require a lot of emotional and energetic capital. So there is a limit to how much we can really do in a day and how many people we can really see in a day. And I think that's the case in both of these. Fields. I think there's similarities also, just as a side note, because so many people actually use their Pilates or their movement sessions as therapy, right? We become very close with our clients and they share a lot with us. Just a lot of energy that is. To put out there between ourselves and our clients in both of these industries. And so my answer to him was, I think that there's a limit to how many actual sessions that you're gonna be able to give in a day as a therapist. I think there's a limit to how many sessions that we as teachers can give in a day and every person's ability and their limit is gonna be different. Think of it as the battery on your phone, and that's how I described it to him. There are some patients, in his case, clients in Ari case, that take up a lot more energy. Perhaps they're difficult personalities, perhaps they require a little bit more motivating, perhaps they're not very good listeners and there's more demand on our battery pack. That would be like running a Zoom call on your phone, right? It's using more power on your phone than simply reading email, so those clients might drain your battery by a full 20%. And then you have other clients that really only drain it by 5% or it's nebulous because they inspire you, they fill your cup. They might even power you back on. But regardless, you're gonna have to end your day with a certain amount of battery power to get you through the rest of your day. You have to make sure that you've got the reserves to go and do the other things that you need to do. So throttling how many sessions in a day is a personal choice and based on the personalities that are coming in the room. But let's just say your limit is four. You have to think, okay, if I can only really see clients for four sessions a day, and I'm charging a hundred dollars an hour, it's $400 a day, and I'm working five days a week, so I'm making $2,000 a week, therefore making $8,000 a month. Is that something that I can consider a full-time job. It might not be a full-time job from an hour standpoint, right? If 40 hours a week is the standard, quote unquote full-time job, it might not equal 40 hours, but it's paying me in a way that satisfies a full-time job for me. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe you're supporting a family of four on that and the $8,000 a month is not even gonna come close to what you need. So you have to then think, okay, what are some other revenue streams that I can draw from that are within this industry that use my expertise, that creates an additional income for me I was talking to Jack about it and saying you might write a book and once you write a book, you now have something to sell. So you're seeing four patients a day, plus you work on your book and you have some book sales. Maybe you do some podcasts to talk about your book sales. Maybe you also have a podcast. And that podcast is about whatever, your. Brand of therapy is perhaps you do a speaking tour, perhaps twice a year you speak at conferences and that gives you, an additional 10, $20,000 in the bank account. There's all different ways for you to leverage your role as a psychologist in the world. That can create other forms of revenue. Perhaps you do groups. Groups, maybe moderating as opposed to really taking on a lot of energy from one individual person. So I would push back to our Pilates world and say the same thing. How can you take your expertise as a Pilates teacher and leverage it into other things outside of just simply privates and semi-private or privates and classes, you may only have the wherewithal to do for a day. So what does that look like? Maybe you start teaching workshops. If you're an employee, maybe you also work as a manager. Maybe you get into some mentoring and you take on a mentorship role with an apprentice and you charge them a fee. Perhaps you do some talks at different, physical therapy offices or schools to the teachers association. And you go out as almost like a marketing agent for the studio, and you make a commission on that. There's different things that you can do. You can start an online class portal where you teach different classes online and you have a database of prerecorded classes. And the people who love you can maybe take you three times a week, where only twice is face to face. The third time a week, they're doing one of your recordings and you're charging them a fee for it. Maybe you have web designs skills, and because you understand how Pilates works, you understand the vocabulary of our industry, you understand how people interact with booking. Maybe you also leverage your experience and you become a. Web designer specific to Pilates studios or individual instructors. So there's a lot of different ways that you can leverage your knowledge and pull in different resources and income streams from that knowledge. You just have to be creative. I think this day and age, almost every single industry people need some sort of a side hustle, right? Teachers have been doing it for generations. They work until three 30, and then they probably have two or three tutoring sessions afterwards. They might even have a tutoring school where they employ other people. Maybe they also do private college counseling. Maybe they do essay writing for college admittance applications, and they do editing of college essays. There's a lot of different ways that teachers make additional money. We used to hire an English teacher to moderate our book club, a high school English teacher, and they would lead the discussion and they were English teachers, so that was another kind of. Side hustle. That wasn't them standing in front of a classroom with teens, they were with adults. It was thoughtful discussion, and they probably even leveraged some of their own lesson plans that they did in class, and they used it with us. If you just broaden your view and your scope. There's lots of different ways for you to. Earn an additional income. That's my riff for today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. So please send an email, Jessica at EYT pilates teacher training.com and I'd love to hear from you. Bye. Thank you for listening to Chat EYT, the podcast. And a special thanks to Christy Carrubba at Next Chapter Exchange for producing and editing. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, leave us a rating and a review if you like what you heard. We'll see you next time