Chat EYT Episode #6: When to Pass the Magic Circle

Episode 6: Ride the Mat Momentum: Generational Transition & Reflection

In this candid episode of Chat EYT, Jessica Spillane reflects on one of the busiest teaching seasons of her career—and the surprising trends emerging in the Pilates industry.

She shares why younger generations are flocking to Pilates teacher training, what their career aspirations reveal about today's workforce, and why mat certification is experiencing an unexpected resurgence. Whether you're a studio owner, teacher, or aspiring instructor, Jessica explains why now may be the perfect time to embrace the growing demand for mat Pilates.

Jessica also answers a thoughtful listener question about one of the biggest challenges independent instructors face: creating a sustainable business model. She breaks down the pros and cons of packages versus memberships and introduces the semester-based system that transformed her own studio by improving cash flow, reducing burnout, and creating healthier boundaries for both teachers and clients.

Finally, Jessica offers a deeply personal reflection on knowing when it's time to step away from client teaching. Drawing from her own decision to "hang up the magic circle," she explores the importance of recognizing when your greatest contribution shifts from doing the work yourself to mentoring the next generation of exceptional teachers.

She closes with a teaching insight that sparked fresh inspiration after 25 years in Pilates—revealing how connecting Spine Stretch Forward to Elephant created a breakthrough cue that instantly clicked with her newest teacher trainees.

Whether you're building a Pilates career, running a studio, or simply passionate about exceptional teaching, this episode is filled with practical business advice, honest reflection, and inspiration for embracing what's next.

Transcript

0:06

Hello, hello, hello my friends. This is Jessica Spillane, your host of Chat EYT, the podcast. Thank you so much for listening in for another episode. I've been thrilled with what we've been seeing in our downloads and stream numbers after only being live for a couple of weeks. So thank you to my wonderful Pilates community for the support. Really means a lot. I love just chatting with you and hearing what you say, and I love getting the emails that come in with questions or DMs in many cases. And it's helping to keep my inspiration going and helping to keep my battery charged. So for that, I am extremely appreciative. I'm gonna give you a full disclosure. I am exhausted today. I feel tired to the bone. I'm bringing that up because the reason why I'm so tired is because I think I have taught I think the last count was maybe 12 seminars in the past six weeks. And for those of you who are not familiar with EYT our seminars are about six to six and a half hours long, and they cover the repertoire, beginner, intermediate, advanced, depending upon what the apparatus is. The reason why I'm bringing that up to you is because there's been a shift in what I've seen, we have had two major upticks that I've noticed in the market in our teacher training, and the first is people looking for mat only certification program. And the second is the age of the people who are coming into the program are getting younger and younger. And that part might not be as shocking because we know that Pilates is, trendy right now. We know that Pilates is taking over the zeitgeist and it's a hot new thing, and a lot of young people are jumping on that trend. But it's younger people who are looking at this as a side hustle or as a potential career path because of so much uncertainty in the marketplace and uncertainty in what AI is going to do to their jobs or entry-level jobs what they are looking for in terms of how they want to construct their future. I've spoken to a lot of them just in our breaks and in between things as, we're waiting for a group to finish practicing, I would have a conversation with one or two of them, and it was really interesting to hear their perspectives. We have women who are either s- just starting out in a nursing career or are nurses themselves. We have people who graduated college, started a career that is for either a startup or some sort of a corporate job, and they hate it and it's disorganized or it's data entry, or they feel like AI is about to take it over. We've had young women who are yoga instructors and want to add Pilates to their credential and get more teaching hours in at the yoga studio where they teach. We have college students who wanna go back and teach on campus because they have no interest in serving tables, this they feel, is a better option for them. We have one young woman who is awesome, and she actually stopped going to college. It wasn't for her, and she's looking to carve out her next path, and she's working a few different jobs right now trying to figure out what path she wants to go in. So it was really interesting to have some of these conversations and to see a lot of the independent thinking that this generation is showing us, and the fact that they are very much kind of carving their own path, much more so than I say I did. When, I was in college, I felt like I had to follow this system. I had to follow this path. When I graduated college and I started my first job, I hated it too, but I didn't necessarily take action or think of something else until I was much later in my 20s when I sought to pursue Pilates teacher training for myself. So I'm really encouraged, and they actually are very anti the big corporate stuff. They're very anti the franchises. They've, have vocalized that they wanna learn it the right way. They are exceptional note-takers. They have been studying. They are coming back with really thoughtful questions. It's really encouraging to me in terms of how they're approaching this what is driving them to come to us, and what their vision is for their future. That is important. And then there's the mat component, which I'm bringing up because I feel like if you're a studio owner who's listening to this, there's something going on out there, and mat seems to be really, really hot. I've never had this much interest in mat. I think we had 40 people sign up for mat just in the month of May. That's wild. I've been doing this for 18 years, I've been doing teacher training, and most people I had to basically tell, "Sorry, I can't give you just reformer without taking mat. I can't give you just Cadillac without taking mat." It was like strong-arming them into the mat work, and I'm very encouraged by the fact that there's so much mat interest out there. I know a lot of studios are offering hot mat or infrared mat, or yoga studios are now trying to differentiate and bring in some Pilates. So I know that's the reason behind it. But I like the fact that there's respect and that there's an interest in pursuing mat. I just did two weeks straight specific 18 to 23-year-olds, was this teacher training program. Put them all together. They had each other's vibe. They asked similar questions. They bonded. They are gonna be perfect practice partners. So it was a really good idea to say I listened to everything that was coming in around me and said, "Okay, there's something here. I'm gonna do a teacher training program just for 18 to 23-year-olds." So it was two weeks straight. We did last week we did all mat, six hours a day. Then this week we did all reformer, six hours a day, and now they all start their apprenticeships. And they start their practicing, and they start the work of really growing into being a teacher that's why I wanted to explain why my voice might sound a little raspy. I might sound a little tired. But there's a lesson in it, that there's something going on in the marketplace, my friends. So lean into it and start offering some mat. If you're one of my teachers, don't be so afraid to do some mat classes. Everybody seems to be into it these days. So ride that wave, my friends. Ride that wave. It's summertime. Go to a public park and do a mat class All right. I'm gonna dive into my inbox and read a question that came through. It actually came through a DM, I shouldn't say inbox. It was from someone who is in the Pilates studio owner network, and i'm giving you background. They had done a lot of searching in the Facebook group to figure out, what they should do as far as a business structure goes. And they saw that I had done a live in the past, which expired or it disappeared. There were comments or other posts about this live that I had done on a business structure, and so they had sent me a DM asking me for my advice. I asked them to structure it into a little bit more of a formal question so that I could read it here and then I did a coaching call with her. But this is her question, and I think it's relevant to people who are just independent teachers and certainly relevant to studio owners. "Hi, Jessica. I need some help thinking through the business side of teaching because honestly, nobody covered this in my teacher training, and I feel like I'm making it up as I go. I've been running my own small teaching practice for about two years. It's a mixture of privates and a couple small group classes, and the way I've structured things financially has become a disaster. For a long time I sold packages, 10 classes, 20 classes, that kind of thing, that appeared to be the industry standard. On paper it seemed fine. Someone buys a 10-pack and I get the lump sum up front, great. But then I go three weeks without anyone buying a new package, and I have no idea what my income is going to look like at the end of the month. So I switched over to monthly membership model because that seems to be what the big chains do, and I thought it would solve everything. The predictable monthly revenue is genuinely better, but now I have a whole new set of problems that I didn't see coming. My members feel like they're paying for a specific number of sessions per month, which they are, and the moment they go on vacation or get sick or have a crazy work week and miss a session, they come back wanting to make it up. I understand their perspective. They paid for four sessions and only got three, so they want what they paid for." But I'm the one scrambling to find a slot to fit them in, sometimes teaching extra sessions I wasn't planning on, and the whole thing just creates this constant low-grade chaos that I didn't have a solution for when I designed the membership in the first place, and I also have no time off. I feel like I've tried two different models, and both of them have some version of the same problem. Either my cash flow is unpredictable or my schedule is unpredictable, or both. Is there a smarter way to structure this that actually works for the teacher and not just the client? Because right now, I feel like I'm always absorbing the inconvenience. All right. So this is a massive industry problem, and it's, highlighted specifically when you are a solo teacher or maybe you have only one other teacher working for you, and that's because you have no off-ramp. So let's start first with explaining why the package system does not work. Everybody I speak to, every time I do a teacher training, I talk about not doing the package system. The benefits of the package system is you're getting a commitment. You're getting a commitment up front for five sessions, 10 sessions, 20 sessions, whatever it is that you've sold. The industry standard, we really modeled it after personal training, and personal training always sold it in 10, 20, and 30 packs. So when the Pilates businesses started and the boutiques started many years ago, and I am guilty of this, we did the same thing. We just followed the same protocol, assuming that we were exactly like personal training. However, the cash flow disaster that creates is something that is a problem that you will never escape once you've set the system up this way. You have someone who gives you a lump sum. Let's just say it's $500 and they're getting a 10 pack of classes or sessions they come once a week. So that means if they come to all of them, they have 10 weeks before you are going to see new money. That is two and a half months from now. So two and a half months from now, you are going to have two cycles of rent Two cycles of insurance, two cycles of electricity, gas, water, whatever it is that you're paying for. You may have two cycles of payroll, not sure. It depends on whether you have anybody working for you. Or actually, you might even have four cycles, or actually, now that I'm thinking about it, if it's 10 weeks, you might even have six cycles of payroll that you have to, or five cycles that you have to pay for. And that's if they repurchase on time at the 10-week mark. Now, what happens if that person goes away on a two-week vacation? They didn't late cancel, so it's not like you're charging them or they're losing the session. Now, that 10-week cycle has just been expanded to a 12-week cycle. Now you're not getting new money for 12 weeks. So now you have to pay rent for a third month, and still haven't gotten new, fresh cash. So you are working off of fumes at that point, 'cause generally speaking, when that lump sum came in, chances are you paid your bills. And you relied on the faith that you would get someone else to do another 10-pack or 20-pack before the next first of the month. But that doesn't always happen. What if everybody is on somewhat of the same cycle? You are running on fumes, and that creates stress, you may be going negative into your bank account. You might actually be profitable, like your margin might be okay, but you're cash flow negative. And that's because you have to constantly run on fumes before all of a sudden you refill, then you run on fumes and you refill. And who wants to live like that? Yes, you got a bigger nut upfront, but now you may legitimately have to wait six, seven months before you get any new money from that person. That is a problem. That is why packages need to die. Everyone needs to stop with packages. And there's a reason why every company in the world is trying to generate monthly recurring revenue. And that's because cash flow any other way is a challenge. Just think about Verizon or AT&T Wireless. We used to be able to just go in and buy a phone, and you would pay for the phone, and then your service was on a monthly fee. But then Verizon realized, "Oh my goodness, they're paying for their phones, and then they're holding onto these phones for three years, and the only way I can encourage them to get a new phone is by giving them an up being, quote-unquote, 'ready for an upgrade' at their two-year contract. So that's how I get them to re-sign their contract. But I don't have any fresh money coming in to pay for my stores. I don't have any fresh money coming in because these devices are being paid for upfront." So now you don't have a choice but to actually go on a monthly payment plan for your phone. So they mark it up so high if you want to pay for it in full, that everybody just does the $34 a month. So that now Verizon has this monthly recurring revenue on a device that I would have much rather just paid the $1,000 and gotten the phone and not be indebted to Verizon every single month. But everyone has figured out that monthly recurring revenue is the value to your business. If they want to sell their business, they need monthly recurring revenue. They need strong cash flow numbers. They need to have these types of contracts in place. So they switch to memberships And then it became four sessions a month, essentially once a week, two sessions a month, essentially eight sessions, or three times a month, that's a 12 session membership, right? And the same package theory was applied, and the bigger the membership, the lower per class rate. Fine. But what happens when they go on a cruise? They're on a 10-day cruise. They have their monthly membership was for their 12 sessions, but they're on a 10-day cruise in the middle of the month. So now they've paid for these sessions, and when they come back, you need to fully expect that they are going to want to make up their missed five classes. And where are you going to put them? Okay, so option one is they can fill an empty spot in a class that's already going on. But what if it's a private? Now you have to find five extra sessions during the remaining two months, or, maybe you say, "I have two months to make it up," or something like that. Maybe you have to find time slots, so now you're working longer. And you're actually working harder to have that benefit of the monthly recurring revenue. So cash flow problems have been solved, but you're actually working more, and you're burning the candle at both ends, so it didn't solve that problem. The other thing that happens is you get no time off. What happens when you want to take a vacation? Are you supposed to adjust the membership to only a three-week membership that month? Then that changes your monthly recurring revenue, doesn't it? And that actually hurts your cash flow from that standpoint. So how are you supposed to solve all these problems? I learned this by going through this process, right? I've been around a long time, so I've tried everything. I did the memberships I did the packages. I learned that cash flow was killing me. Then I learned that I got no time off, and people wanted makeups, and I was actually working my ass off. That wasn't working for me. And then I said, "You know what? I am switching my entire business to a semester. This is how it's going to go. I'm going to work a fall semester, I am going to work a spring semester, and I am going to work a summer semester." And by doing it in the semester model, I am building in two weeks off for myself in between each semester, and I'm building in a quote-unquote studio is closed week Thanksgiving week perhaps, Christmas week perhaps and then February break or spring break, so I can line up with my kids, and that is how I'm going to do it. So I sat down with a calendar, and I said, "Okay, this is going to be my spring semester. It's gonna be the Monday after Labor Day through the 23rd of December." How many weeks are there? I'm making this up. I don't have a calendar in front of me, so just bear with me. Okay, there's 13 weeks, but I wanna take off Thanksgiving week. Nobody's gonna be around anyway, people are gonna cancel, so we're just gonna be closed that week of Thanksgiving. So it's a 13-week semester. We're only gonna be open for 12 weeks. Okay, so they are paying for the semester, and here are the number of sessions that are available to you in the semester. So if you come once a week, it's actually 12 sessions. If you come twice a week, it's going to be 24 sessions, and if you come three times a week, it's actually going to be... 36 sessions. My cost per session, let's just say for math... Oh, I'm making this complicated. Let's just say whatever thir- whatever I'm charging a session, I multiplied it by 36, 'cause that's how many weeks there are in a year, in the semester. I then divided it up by month and they paid. So the 36 session in a semester person came and their price was $500. I divided that into a September bill, October bill, November bill, December bill. So it was $500 divided by four, and that was what they paid per month. So I got the recurring revenue. I got my Thanksgiving week off. I got my week off between Christmas and New Year's. And if they wanted to enroll for the next semester Then that would be a new semester that maybe was 16 weeks and I was closing February break and I was closing Easter break so that it was 14 weeks, but really only 12 active weeks. And divided again by month, so I got my recurring revenue and then I was closed for a week or two before the summer semester started. And my summer semester was only June and July because I always take the month of August off. Sometimes I wasn't going away. I had no problem coming in on a Monday that it was a closed week and doing a makeup for somebody if that's what you wanted to. Or maybe I said we're-- I'm gonna make the last week of the month for makeups and if you don't use it, you lose it. Or you have the entire semester to make up a session by doing an extra class that week, coming in an extra time. If you don't, you lose it. It was modeled after basically what my kids' dance program was or your kids' karate class. It's the semester, this is how much it amounts to every month, but we're, the studio is closed on these particular days. All of a sudden I had regulated cash flow. I had a good profit margin. I had time off. People had much more time to make up their missed sessions, but I didn't have to jump through hoops because they had 12 or 13 weeks to pick from that there may have been a hole in the schedule. I had a cancellation so I could have dropped them in or there was an extra reformer available, they could have made it up. And I was very clear, if you don't make it up during the course of the semester, you lose it. It's that simple. It organized my life so much better and I cannot tell you that every studio owner that I have coached on this and changing the business model to this, they actually are more profitable and they are working less and it is nothing more than changing your calendar. I strongly encourage you to think about this. We have the summer coming up, people go away. September is a great time to start with new rules, new policies, new ways of doing things. If this didn't make sense in any way, just send me a message and I'm happy to explain it to you, in another format. I, sometimes talk myself into a circle where I start asking myself to do math and I'm like, "Wait a second, I don't have a calculator in front of me. Why am I making myself do math while people are listening on the spot?" So forgive me for that part, but hopefully you get the concept. I strongly encourage you to start looking at your business in that way and I think it really can be a life changer for you All right. Last topic of the pod today this is gonna be more relevant to some of my veteran teachers who may be listening. It is all about how do you know when it's time to hang up your cleats? And it's an interesting thing to think about. And that's something that I've been thinking about for the past couple of years because I've been doing this for a long time. When, you work in this kind of business where we care so much about our clients, we've had such a positive impact on people, we've created such wonderful, beautiful relationships with people, what we do really does become part of our identity. And sometimes because of that, we can overstay our welcome. We can stay when we're past our prime. We can stay when we should have maybe dialed it back, cut back our schedule, and perhaps even just retired and left it to the new generation to take over. I've been thinking about that a lot because, as a Gen X-er, I feel like a lot of the people who I looked up to as a kid, the people who I grew up maybe musically listening to or TV shows I watched, i've gone to some concerts "Oh my God, let's go back to the-- see this concert," and it was a band that we loved, and they sounded awful. And I'm like, "Oh my God, they should have hung up their cleats," right? They should have retired. They're still out touring, and they're past their prime. I feel like a lot of people say that about Howard Stern, like he should have hung up, his microphone a couple years ago when he was more on top. He's starting to lose a little bit of his Howard Stern-ness, So it's something that I've been thinking about also. And this past year, officially, "hung up my magic circle," and stopped teaching clients And I stopped teaching clients because I wasn't doing the best job anymore. I just simply wasn't. I was tired. I was burnt out. I loved them. I loved what I did, but I realized at a certain point I was still teaching because I wanted to spend time with them, And I loved them, and I loved seeing them, and they made my day, but I actually wasn't serving them in the way that they needed to be served. And it was a tough realization to come to, and I realized that wasn't fair to them. And I have all these wonderful teachers who I've trained who it's time for them to step in and become who they're supposed to be and for them to have success. And it's time for me to do what I do really well, which I'm not burnt out from, which I'm thriving at, which is my curriculum development, which is the licensing of the EYT Pilates teacher training program, which is teaching teachers all the fundamentals and the basics and the purity of the system and seeing it through their eyes. That still excites me, so I'm still in that. But teaching clients, I wasn't really doing my best work anymore, and I wanted to go out before I started to actually suck, right? And at some point, you're gonna suck just because you may not give those extra cues. You may not actually correct them. They may come in, or a new person comes in, and they have some sort of a thing going on, and you just don't have the passion to dig in there anymore. Now, maybe many of you do, and that's awesome. Then keep at it. I noticed in myself it was fading so I made that decision to hang it up and introduce all of my existing clients to the new people. And you know what? They're happy. They're well taken care of. I still see them. We go out for lunch. I see them when they come into my studio because some of my teachers use my studio while I'm sitting here working. So I still see them. I still text them, ask how their grandchildren are doing. I still engage in those relationships because they matter to me outside of just Pilates, outside of just a business relationship. They matter to me just on a human level. So it's important to look at how you are engaging with your clients, looking at the product you're delivering, and asking yourself "Am I doing my best work? Share another story, and if my dear friend Sarah who's, was a client of mine for a long time, and her teacher who I trained, Alana, if they're listening, you'll know that this is for you, babe. I saw Sarah and Alana, and I had taught Sarah for years, and Alana is now her teacher. And Sarah was talking about, something her husband had said at a party, and he was talking to somebody else, and that person was saying "Oh, I heard that your wife just started Pilates and my wife does it too." And Sarah's husband said "You have no idea. Alana has completely changed Sarah's, body, her mindset. She feels so much better." The husband, was singing the praises of Pilates and Alana. And so when Sarah was telling this story, she said it, and then as soon as she said Alana, she sort of hiccuped for a second and said, "And you and Pilates in general." I smiled inside because obviously she was trying to, give me a compliment also. But I know that it's because Alana has completely changed Sarah. Alana stepped in when I was getting tired, and I wasn't doing my best work, and Alana's the one that has moved Sarah to being in the position she is now. Her posture is fantastic something that Sarah was always working on, and I worked on it wholeheartedly for many years, but then I just started to probably not do my best work or lean into it. Alana is fresh. She's hungry. She's excited. She wants to make an impact. She's smart. She's knowledgeable. She's an exceptional teacher. And she picked up where I left off, and she delivered, and Sarah has had an amazing experience, and it made me so proud of both of them. My feelings were not hurt. I did not take offense even though Sarah probably thought for that split second "Oh no, I hope I didn't just offend Jessica because I said Alana did it." That wasn't the case at all, and I couldn't have been prouder. So I hung up my magic circle when it was time, and maybe even stayed a little bit too long. But I stayed until I got the feeling that it was time to go, and I don't see clients anymore because I just don't have the same, passion for private sessions or group sessions that I once did. And look, it's been 25 years, so I think I had a good run. But I encourage some of the veterans to think about that. Are you doing this because it's your identity? Are you still doing this because you don't know how to stop? And if so, maybe it's time to start thinking about pulling back a little bit and trusting the next generation. I opened up this episode, with talking about how encouraged I feel about this next generation. Give 'em a chance, the baby boomers sat in their jobs and their political offices for way too long, right? And they never gave us a chance to step in, and now they're finally hanging it up and the millennials are stepping in and skipping over gen X entirely. That's because they stayed too damn long. Don't be one of those people. Don't stay too long. Trust the next generation. Know when it's time to pass the torch, and you are actually serving your clients better by doing so. I am going to close with an exercise like I have been. So I just got off of two weeks of teacher training, and one of the things I always try to do is, encourage these students to see the links between all the different exercises across apparatus. So what exercise do you see and feel here? What exercise is this like? What exercise does this remind you of? And go through all of that. For the first time, I actually found a cue that I hadn't used before, and it really improved the way my students connected with elephant I related it to spine stretch forward on the mat. So when I teach spine stretch forward, I draw to their shoulder blades, and I work on the unplugging and plugging of the shoulder blades. So when they unplug their shoulder blades, they're really reaching through that thoracic spine and sending the bra strap back, right? And we're hanging our cervical spine down, creating that length only in the top of the spine, right? Thoracic and cervical. So that's where the emphasis is. The lumbar is actually taking a pause. We've given lots of attention to the lumbar spine in our half roll down and our roll-ups. But spine stretch forward is a chance for the thoracic to have its moment. And the second week I took them over to the elephant and I'm trying to teach them and I say it's so common for elephant to be misunderstood as a downward-facing dog. How many of you are always saying that the tailbone goes to the sky and that's where they get their lift when elephant is supposed to really be that ribcage, bra strap, thoracic spine lifting. And all of a sudden connected for me. I've been doing this forever, and I never saw spine stretch forward in elephant before. And I was so excited and I said, "Oh my goodness, I want you to unplug your shoulder blades just like we did in spine stretch forward last week." And as soon as I said that, boom, they were in the correct posture. Maybe this is not new for some of you listening and you're like, "Oh, Jessica, how could you never have seen that?" I just didn't. I just didn't see spine stretch forward in elephant. Obviously, I see front support in elephant and I see lots of exercises. I see our lower lift in elephant, right? With the legs reaching back and the abs drawing them home. So I see lots of other exercises in our elephant, but I never saw spine stretch forward And so when I added that cue, they all got it instantaneously and I was so excited that even this old dog can still see new magic in this system. So the next time you teach elephant or you do elephant, try to see your spine stretch forward. So that is my observation of the week, those are my exercises that I wanted to highlight and the beauty of the repertoire. Thanks again for tuning in on my particularly tired episode. I'm grateful to you all for continuing to come back, listening, and I will see you next week 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