The 3 Things Your Teachers Tell Me When You're Not in the Room

Before every onsite VIP day, I send an anonymous upward feedback survey to my client's team. It's the fastest way to read the real culture of a studio, the stuff owners can't see because they're too close to it. And after running this survey at studio after studio, the same three things come up every single time.

In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on exactly what your teachers say when no name is attached to their answer. Not to make you nervous, but to give you a head start, because there's a very good chance your teachers are feeling the same way right now.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:00] Welcome
[02:15] What a VIP day is, and the anonymous upward feedback survey explained
[04:30] Why this survey matters: leading a mostly part-time, passion-driven team
[06:10] #1 Teachers want more feedback on their teaching
[08:00] The 3-to-1 feedback ratio and the one-thing-only rule
[10:15] #2 Teachers want more continuing education
[12:30] How to build a CE budget and quarterly cadence without losing time or profit
[14:20] #3 The one that surprises owners: teachers want more business communication
[17:00] What teachers actually want to know about the numbers
[18:30] The fear of transparency, and the question to sit with if it feels loud
[20:40] The simplest move of all: just ask

KEY TAKEAWAYS

An upward feedback survey is the fastest way to read the real culture of your studio, because owners are usually too close to see it themselves.

When you give a teacher feedback, name three specific things you loved for every one thing to work on. Give just one thing, then follow up in two weeks.

Set a continuing education budget at the start of the year and aim for one event per quarter. Who shows up tells you who your all-in teachers are.

You cannot over-communicate with your team, but you can communicate badly. Streamlined beats scattered group texts every time.

Sharing your membership goal and progress rarely leads to raise requests. It usually makes teachers more bought in and more willing to help you grow.

PULL QUOTES

"Your teachers are hungry to grow. They are just waiting for someone to help them."

"Give one clear thing to work on. If you overwhelm them with too much, nothing gets integrated."

"I have never walked into a VIP day and heard that an owner over-communicates. Only the opposite."

"If you want to know what your teachers want, ask them."

FAQ

Q: What is an upward feedback survey?
A: An anonymous survey that lets your team give honest feedback to the person who leads them. It surfaces what it is really like to teach at your studio.

Q: How often should I give teachers feedback on their classes?
A: You do not need to be in every class every week. Aim for intentional, specific feedback with a two-week follow-up so teachers can actually improve.

Q: Will sharing business numbers make my teachers ask for raises?
A: Rarely. Teachers do not see your full P&L, so they lack the whole picture. You decide what to share. Most teachers just want to help you hit the goal.

Q: How much continuing education should I offer?
A: One event per quarter is plenty. Use the feedback patterns you notice across your team to choose what to teach.

Have a topic you want covered on the podcast? DM Jackie on Instagram @studioceoofficial or email the support team.

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Transcript

Welcome And Summer Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Studio CEO, the only podcast that empowers yoga and Pilates teachers and studio owners to step confidently into their role as CEO. If you are ready to show up with passion, take your business seriously, and scale to new heights without burning out, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Jackie Murphy, an award-winning certified business coach with over 12 years of experience inside the yoga industry. I have seen firsthand what it takes to build a profitable and scalable business. Join me as we dive into strategies, insights, and real-world advice that will help you grow your revenue, build a thriving team, and create a business that serves you as much as you serve your students. It's time to embrace your inner CEO and make more money without working more. This is just the beginning. Hello and welcome back to the Studio CEO Podcast. I am Jackie Murphy. How are you? I feel like it's been a minute since we have caught up. This episode will air the day after Memorial Day. So it is in the States, the unofficial start of the summer. And we are in full swing where I live with summer activities, beach, pool, being outside all the time. And there's so many fun and amazing things that happen with summer. And I know for so many yoga and Pilates businesses, it can feel like a really stressful time. So if you're there, just know that I see you. If you want an episode on summer specifically,

VIP Days And Anonymous Upward Feedback

SPEAKER_00 2:20

let me know. I'm happy to record that. But today's episode, I want to talk to you about the things that your teachers want to tell you. This is inspired because I just got back from a trip down to visit one of my clients. One thing that I have been offering is a VIP day that is on site for brick and mortar businesses. So I fly to the studio and we spend the entire day. It is fully customized to what's going on in your business at that point in time and what we need to focus on. And a lot of the times it follows a similar outline in that we're talking about team, hiring, leadership, and potentially talking about marketing and sales, creating a 12-month marketing calendar. These are the things that happen pretty consistently with the VIP day. One of the things that I do no matter what, that gives me a really good picture of the culture of the studio is called an upward feedback survey. So about a week before I'm about to be in person at the studio, I create an anonymous survey that the owner of the business sends to the team, typically to the teachers, and we collect feedback in this survey of what it is like to be a teacher at this studio. And no matter what, there are three things that typically come through in every single upward feedback survey. So I wanted you to know what all of the on-site visits have had in common in terms of the upward feedback, so you can kind of know, like, hey, this is probably what my teachers may also say, or just some insight into what they are feeling right now working in your business. If you are new to managing people, if you opened a studio without experience of how to hire or lead or grow a team, then an upward feedback survey is one of the best ways to get insight on how you are doing managing that group of people. And it's a very unique circumstance in the yoga and Pilates industry because a lot of the times the team that you're managing is part-time. You may have a few full-time employees, but they're mostly part-time and they're mostly teaching because they love it, not because of the paycheck. And so managing that group of people requires a different leadership skill set than let's say if you had 10 full-time employees that you were managing who were working for you for the paycheck. So the upward feedback survey can give you a real sense of how am I doing as a manager of people within the yoga and Pilates space. These are the three

How To Give Teaching Feedback

SPEAKER_00 5:40

things that I see every time I do this survey for my clients. Number one is that the teachers will very commonly give the feedback that they want more feedback about their teaching specifically. Now, this doesn't mean that you need to go press or pressure yourself to be in every single teacher's class every single week or every single month. I'm just telling you what the survey says. And you get to take this knowledge in and figure out how you want to use it in your business. But most commonly, teachers will say, Hey, I would love if the leadership team, if management, if the owner came to take my class more and gave me more feedback. Or they'll say something along the lines of, I would love if we could partner up with another teacher or in groups and give each other feedback on our teaching. Across the board, teachers typically want more feedback on their classes. And I think there's a couple different reasons for this. But once you graduate certification, there really isn't a clear path for this is how I can continue to receive personalized mentoring feedback and grow as a teacher. As a teacher, that's kind of a path that you have to figure out on your own. And so some studios may have mentoring programs, some studios may give informal feedback after classes. But the amazing thing is that your team wants to continue to grow their skill set as a teacher, and they're hungry for that. Very, very often they're hungry for that feedback on how was their class? How was the playlist? Was the sequence good? Did you get a good workout? Did you feel it in X part of your body? Was it relaxing? Obviously, it depends on the type of class that they're teaching, what kind of feedback that you're going to give. But I just want you to know that your teachers are usually looking for more feedback. That doesn't mean they're looking for a list of critiques. When you give feedback to teachers, just rule of thumb, you're supposed to give three times as many, four times as many positive pieces of feedback for every one piece of critique, we'll call it. So the way that I want you to think about this is let's say that you were like, oh, I would love to get in my teacher's classes, or I realize I've taken Wednesday 9 a.m. for three months, but I haven't taken the Wednesday 12 o'clock class. I'm gonna switch it up and give this other teacher feedback. When you do that, what I would recommend is that you pull out three things that you loved really specifically. I love when you do this, this song in the playlist felt like this, this sequence felt like this in my body. Do more of X. And then give just one thing for them to work on. Just one. You may have 10, you may have 20, you may have 30, you may leave the class being like, oh my God, I need to fire the person. But in that moment, you just give one clear thing that you want them to work on. I want you to work on your confidence, your ability to hold the seat of a teacher, your sequencing, your cues, your music, whatever it may be, give one clear thing. Because if you overwhelm them with too much, it's really hard for your teachers to take it in and integrate it. Then go back to their class in two weeks. Follow up. Do you see improvement on that one thing? If this became your practice or your cadence, or your leadership leadership team's practice or cadence, you would start to have a team of teachers that not only do they feel like they're getting feedback, but you're helping them grow. You're helping them follow up on that feedback and implement it and make sure that their teaching is evolving and changing. And that environment is going to be so attractive and fun and welcoming for building a team of A players in your business.

Continuing Education That Retains Teachers

SPEAKER_00 10:11

The second thing that is very common when I run these upward feedback surveys that happens on every single one, or I say has happened on every single one that I've run so far. There always could be an anomaly, is that teachers will always, always, always ask for more continuing education, credits, workshops, trainings. Just like teachers want feedback in order to grow, teachers want to learn in order to be able to grow. And so this is a really great way to add that extra benefit of why do you want to teach at this studio specifically? Why do you want to teach in this business specifically? It's probably not because you're paying 10 times more than the studio down the street. And if you are, we need to look at your profit and make sure that's right and smart for the business overall. But it may be that they want to work for you because you're consistently bringing in top talent for them to learn from. Or you're consistently hosting workshops that give them access to trainings and materials that they wouldn't have, or you're consistently highlighting the teachers who have a ton of knowledge already, and you're giving them a platform to share their knowledge with the rest of your team. Now, this is one of the things that, like, you probably are like, Yeah, Jackie, I would love to be able to offer more workshops or continuing education credits for my teachers, or I'd love to bring in guest teachers. That sounds amazing, but when am I gonna have the time to do that? And how do I have the money to do that? You can set a budget at the beginning of the year of this is our continuing education budget. Now, this is money that we're gonna spend on paying for workshops, paying for guest experts, paying for classes, and then you stick within that budget. Now, when we used to offer this, we would aim to offer one continuing education workshop or event per quarter. So every three months we would offer one thing. Sometimes that would be completely free for us because we are the leadership team, we're paid by salary, and we're gonna deliver this workshop on X thing. And sometimes that would be we'd pay for this person to come in and teach this thing, and that's part of our budget. Now it doesn't have to be mandatory. You don't have to force teachers to come, and it's gonna give you a really good insight of who is wanting to grow, who's really wanting to learn, who's willing to plan their calendar, plan their time, be their live for the workshop, take you up on the cool things that you're offering. And those are gonna, those are gonna be your key teachers. Those are gonna be your team that you're like, these people are all into what we're doing here. And it's so fun for everyone to be back in the seat of a student for a second and then put that into practice in their classes. Now, the next level of this, the like ninja level of this, is you're in everyone's class, you're giving feedback, like we just talked about. Maybe there's a formal way that you do it, maybe not. There's a way that we teach inside the mastermind for you to do it formally, but you're giving feedback consistently, you may see that like you're consistently giving feedback on playlist on musicality in class. And so instead of consistently saying the same thing to every individual individual teacher, you may be like, oh, we need to do some continuing education, some training around musicality. And now you're like knocking two birds with one stone, you're seeing what your teachers need, and then you're making sure that they have the training that they need to have in order to deliver the way that you want them to deliver to give the client experience that you want to have. So this is the second thing. Again, this doesn't have to be a go overboard. It's like, who do you already have on your team that could teach an extra workshop on anatomy or teach an who's really, really great at making a playlist? Can we have them teach a workshop on musicality?

Business Updates Teachers Actually Want

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Then the third thing that is on every single upward feedback survey that I've done is going to surprise you, probably. The first two are not that surprising, in my opinion. The third one may surprise you. But every single time that I run these upward feedback surveys, teachers are saying we want more communication on the business side of things. This is something that we teach inside of the mastermind that you should be updating your team consistently on what your business goals are and where you are in terms of reaching those goals. And this is what we see in the Upward Feedback Survey. Your teachers want to know, they have to know the vision of the business, but then they want to know where are we in terms of achieving that vision? They want to know what offers are being promoted more, they want to know what marketing campaigns you're doing more. And you may think, well, Jackie, I send an email and I tell them and they don't read it, right? That is like the common thing that I hear when I talk about this. And that is great. And still send the email, but you may decide that you want to add in a monthly team meeting, or you may decide that you're gonna create teacher signage in the studio next to the front desk where they can read everything that was in the email, but very easily as they're checking people into class. Oftentimes, teachers want to know what's your membership goal. How many new members did you uh get last month? How many members did you lose? They want to know how many new students are coming in, they want to know what their attendance should be and how many people should be in their class, if they're hitting that mark or not. They, like I said, want to know about marketing campaigns and sales campaigns. You can't over-communicate. Uh, let me say that differently. I have not seen or ever come into a VIP day with the feedback that you're overcommunicating. For at this point in time, I have actually only ever seen the opposite, that they want more communication around the business. Now, you may quote unquote overcommunicate if your communication is not streamlined and organized. What I'm not talking about is a group text where you like send a text when you're running a new thing for summer. That will get lost. I'm not talking about just the quick one-off, hey, make sure you clean the studio. That again will get lost. But what I'm really talking about is building a way for your teachers to consistently get information from you, the leader of the business, on how they're doing as a team to make the vision of the business actually become a reality. And they want it in a streamlined, easy way to consume. And it's up to us to make that super easy to consume. Email in studio signage, you can have a monthly meeting, you could have quarterly meetings. It depends on how

Transparency Fears And Pay Raise Worries

SPEAKER_00 17:15

you want to do it. The client that I was just visiting was like, Jackie, what's the downside? Like, what could be the potential downside of sharing this information with the team? And I think that that is beautifully said because that's often the fear, right? If I tell them, if I tell my team how many members we have and how many members we want to have, then they are going to do the math and they're gonna figure out how much money the studio is making and they're gonna ask for pay raises. Like that's the underlying fear. But that often does not happen. I mean, maybe you'll have one or two people who are doing that, but for the most part, your teachers will say, Oh my God, thank you. I wanted to know this, I want to be a part of it. I want to help you grow, I want to help you succeed. I want this, I want attendance to improve, I want membership to improve because they care one about you, they care about the business, they care about their own classes doing well, they care about their students. And so if you're worried about the potential downside of having some teacher do math and ask for a pay raise, I would ask you like, where are you not trusting yourself in leadership at that moment? Because it's not that they can't ask for a pay raise, it's not that they can't do the math. But oftentimes teachers don't have the actual profit and loss statement where they're seeing what you're paying for your rent or your mortgage if you own the building, what they're seeing their utilities are, what your marketing budget is. They don't see the full picture. And so when you trust yourself as a leader to say, I have the full picture, I know what I am comfortable sharing with the team. I wouldn't recommend sending your profit and loss statement to your entire team, but maybe you're comfortable sharing your membership goal and where you are. I know what I'm comfortable sharing and I know how to back it up or navigate or manage when a teacher asks for a pay raise, then that fear totally goes away and you can open up that transparency with your team. It will usually only get them more bought in. And it's really, really hard. A lot of people come to me, they're like, I want my teachers to be selling, I want my teachers to be marketing, but they haven't shared this information. It's really hard for them to care. It's really hard for them to know why they would, because that hasn't been communicated transparently to them. So I would really recommend that you figure out how often and how and what do I want to communicate with my teachers if they're asking for more communication. This also may require you to plan ahead a bit. If you know that you're gonna launch a July 4th annual like sale, whatever you have going on, then we really need to be telling the teachers that that's coming and getting them prepped for it in June, early June. And so it may require for you to look ahead and make decisions a bit more proactively

Ask For Feedback And Send Requests

SPEAKER_00 20:00

as a CEO and then share that information with your team. Now, there are so many other things that I could pull from these upward feedback surveys, but these are the three patterns that I see most consistently that I wanted to share with you. I would say that if you want to know what your teachers want to hear and what they want from you in the studio and what they want more of, and what they want less of, ask. Ask them. We ask them anonymously, and I collect the results. So then I deliver the results to the client because sometimes feedback can sting, or sometimes we can take it personally when we know the teacher and we have the history. And so having me or my business as a third party being able to deliver this for you makes it really consumable because I know how to deliver the feedback in a way that makes sense for you and for you to use to grow your business. And so consider collecting feedback, but just make sure that you're supporting yourself in the way that you are doing it. All right, my friends, if you have any requests for the podcast, please will you let me know? You can send me a message at studio CEO official on Instagram, or you could email our support team and let us know. We are prepping for recording podcasts right now. And so if you want to know specifically about summer strategies, back to school strategies, if you want to talk marketing more, sales more, leadership, like let me know what would be really helpful for you. And I would love to just hear from you that these episodes are impactful, useful, and any questions that you may have, I'm here to answer on the podcast. I will talk to y'all in the next episode. Bye, guys.