Episode 349
349. Great Instructors Fill Classes
Studios hire Pilates instructors to fill classes with happy clients.
If your instructors' classes are not full, by definition are not good at their job - yet.
As a studio owner, it's your job to help them become good!
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Transcript
As a Pilates studio business, your product really is your instructors.
::You're a service business and you provide that service through other people by and large.
::And so the quality of the people that you have, when I say quality of the people,
::I don't mean their value as human beings.
::I mean their ability as professional Pilates instructors really is pivotal to your business.
::In fact, it is in many ways what you sell to people, to your clients.
::So one of the things that Heath and I coach studio owners on the most is building an excellent team.
::And one of the, probably the biggest problem or blocker that we see is essentially
::not having clarity on who's good and who's not in your studio.
::So, or really, shall I say, deep down actually knowing who's good and who's
::not, but not admitting that to yourself.
::Uh, and that comes in the shape of, you know, I mean, I can't tell you how many
::times, you know, we've had this conversation with studio owner where we're talking
::about, you know, how, you know, we talk, we talk about many things in the studio.
::We talk about pricing, the intro offer, the scheduling, and then we talk about the team, obviously.
::And we go through each team member and we say, okay, how's, you know,
::and how's Sally? Oh, Sally's a great instructor. Okay. How are her class numbers?
::Oh, her class numbers aren't that good. You know?
::Um, okay. But she's a great instructor. She's a great instructor.
::And um you know have you done her class yeah i
::didn't really like it uh but she's you know she's a really great instructor you
::know it's a bit too slow for me or it's you know she teaches
::a completely different style to the way i teach um but she's
::a great instructor and so i i want to dissect you know what it means to be a
::great instructor here because i think there's a lot of stuff that goes into
::that and uh if you've got someone who's a quote great instructor whose class
::numbers aren't great i'd say by definition you know unless you've got them teaching
::the graveyard yard shift exclusively,
::by definition, they're not a great instructor because my definition of a great
::instructor is someone who can fill classes, basically.
::And in order to be able to do that, you have to deliver good classes,
::but there are multiple components.
::So with that extremely long setup, welcome Heath.
::Yeah. um yeah so so what
::do you you know
::what do you uh you know talk me through sort of like the
::the the average you know conversation that
::you have with someone that you coach a studio owner that you coach when you
::kind of audit their instructors you know at the you know relatively at the beginning
::of the coaching relationship well i think one the first thing just from your your preamble,
::your framing to catch is one of the things that, um.
::I think probably challenges what you said without actually uh contradicting it is is that,
::definitely often when we do the audit and we work through the team and we look
::at the numbers there is very often the situation that you just described about
::sally where the studio owner or the manager believes that this is this is great
::sally's a great instructor and then,
::the fundamental metrics leading with class numbers and class retention don't
::stack up But there's also an almost as frequent presentation of class numbers
::and retention do stack up.
::But when we start to explore what the studio owner wants from their business,
::we discovered that the great instructor who has full classes is teaching in a way that is,
::if not misaligned,
::sometimes, you know, 180 degrees opposite direction to what the studio owner
::wants or what the brand is. So, right.
::And that manifests itself as, yeah, Sally's got great class numbers,
::but Sally's students don't go to other instructors' classes.
::Or if they do, they, you know, when the instructors give them cues,
::they're like, oh, well, Sally tells me to do it the opposite way to that, you know.
::Yeah. And I think that gives us one of the kind of metas about this whole situation, which is.
::The, in that instance, a good way to think about that is that Sally's running
::her own business within your business.
::And the, the concept, and you gave me this years and years ago,
::and I have to admit, it took me a little bit of thinking to kind of really make
::sense of it, but I've found it to be probably the,
::one of the most challenging and most powerful ideas for people to get their
::head around is that at a certain point,
::a business in our world reaches is a certain size and it's it's when there's
::let's say more than three instructors and the and the owner or founder is teaching
::less than say 20 of all of the bodies per week there's kind of like a.
::Like a tipping point where it becomes centrally important to the success of
::the business that the owner and subsequently the instructors understand that
::the instructor's client is the business, not the people in the room. Yeah.
::Yeah. And, you know, that's, I would hazard a guess that, well,
::based on the studio owners I've talked to over the last four or five years,
::more than 50% stop when you say that and say, what?
::Like, what? Yeah. And this is exactly what I did. This gets to such a crucial
::sort of deep-seated fear, which I think is a realistic fear.
::And I've seen this multiple times with various studio owners,
::is when they've got an instructor like that who maybe is a really popular,
::but just teaches in a way that is not aligned with the studio owner's way of
::teaching or the official studio way of teaching,
::that when that person goes,
::all their clients go with them because they don't want to do your classes.
::I don't want to do anyone else's classes because I love Sally's classes and
::she teaches complete, like she teaches classical and you're doing,
::you know, strength-based reformer or, you know, whatever. And so it's like, or vice versa.
::And so, you know, they don't like, they, they don't like your studio as such.
::They like Sally's classes, which is, which are really not what your product.
::Right. So, you know, the, the, the massive danger here is like the,
::the only thing worse than Sally being unpopular is Sally being really popular.
::You know, if she's, if she's not teaching the way that you teach, right.
::So that is a real problem. And of course, then if Sally goes on holiday even,
::you know, like how do you, you know, someone else goes in to cover her classes
::and all the clients are like, yeah, no, we're not going to come to this,
::you know, I don't like classical and I don't normally do strength both to a
::formal with Sally or vice versa.
::And so, you know, you've just got a massive hole in the schedule there.
::So either way, it's not a good thing, whether Sally's popular or not.
::So I guess, I guess it's really about alignment, but I think alignment has,
::you know, alignment by itself is not enough. if you need alignment and skill.
::Yeah. So, all right. So, so this is, uh, you've got this instructor who's,
::who's been teaching there for a while.
::She's a wonderful, wonderful person, you know, hard of gold,
::never say a word against her.
::Uh, but either her classes aren't that, her class numbers aren't very strong
::or they're noticeably less strong than the average or her class numbers are really good.
::Possibly she's your most popular instructor, but she teaches just a completely different style.
::Like you're hired. She was your first kind of hire. you didn't know
::your ass from your elbow when you were hiring her you just hired her
::because she's got active wearing a pulse and she's so nice and you
::know so she started teaching and you know you sort of
::like when you when your kids in primary school you know
::and you're like oh you're a kid i'm a kid let's be friends you know that that's
::all you need to have in common you know but when you're when you get to be 50
::you're a little bit more discerning about who you want to be friends with you've
::got other criteria and that's sort of the same when you make your first hire
::like oh you're a pilates instructor oh you're on a pilates studio great you
::know let's work together whereas after you've been running a business for a
::few years, you're like, yeah,
::I've got a few other questions I want to ask you first before we start working together.
::And so maybe you hired this person early on and she'd been working for you for
::a while, but they're not aligned.
::They're not aligned as in they don't teach the way you teach.
::They don't teach the same style as you teach.
::Maybe they don't cue in a way that's consistent with how you cue or progress
::in a way that's consistent with how you progress.
::They might call the exercises different names. They might teach a lot stronger
::or a lot softer class than you.
::They might, you know, emphasize, you know, breath a lot more or a lot less,
::alignment a lot more or a lot less, et cetera.
::So basically, clients don't mix between this person's class and the other instructors'
::classes because they just get like, oh, Sally always tells me to do it this way.
::How come you're telling me to do it that way sort of thing? or maybe they are
::aligned but they're just not that
::good you know as measured by their class numbers because ultimately if.
::What he said is true, which is that the client of the instructor is the studio.
::Well, who's paying the instructor? The studio is paying the instructor.
::So therefore, the studio is the instructor's client.
::And the studio hires the instructor to do what?
::Fill the classes. And so if the instructor is not teaching full classes,
::well, objectively, they're not doing their job.
::And so if they're not doing their job and they're trying, that means they're not very good.
::So if their classes aren't full, unless they're teaching the graveyard shift
::on the Thursday, objectively, they're not very good at their job.
::So, yeah. So, all right. So how does the conversation go? Because this is where
::we get into this tricky conversation.
::Kind of situation where, you know, where studio owners might look at the numbers
::with us and go, yeah, Sally's numbers aren't great.
::Or they might look at the numbers and go, Sally's numbers are great,
::but she teaches, you know, strict classical and weird strength-based reformer, right?
::You know, and so how does that conversation go and what are the,
::what are the blockers or blind spots or,
::you know, I mean, basically we don't want to tell Sally that she's not a fit
::and she's got to go because she's a lovely person. So how does the conversation go? Yeah.
::Well, uh, the, the, so again, so the two, those two Sally's present different
::situations, you know, different, different, different things that have to be made sense of.
::And the thing that I've found that sits above that is what is,
::well, the way, the way we work through it is what's,
::what's the what's your business's mission you know like what
::what do you promise and you know to what raf was what we've just
::said what is your business promising so what's the promise that you're making
::to your client so if your promise is classical uh reformer with the focus on
::breath patterns that's what your instructor needs to deliver in a way that is
::skillful and charismatic enough that their classes are full.
::And so if someone is teaching strength-based reformer in that studio,
::then that's the misalignment, even if they're popular.
::And equally, if you're teaching a strength-based reformer model that promises
::to make people stronger and more flexible, and this is where I kind of resonate
::because that's who we work with mostly, then that's what should be delivered.
::And if you're delivering popular classes that are not that, well,
::then that's the misalignment.
::And then if you're teaching in an aligned way, but your classes are not popular,
::fundamentally, then you've got a skills gap.
::It's like if you're aligned in, you know, orientation, but falling short in
::terms of metrics, then it's a skills problem.
::And I think, you know, to double click on the skills thing just for a second,
::a lot of times, you know, a studio and I, you know, I work with them and they'll
::say like, I've audited their class and they're a great teacher,
::you know, just a bit too slow or they're a great teacher, but they just don't
::have a great personality. You know, they're kind of quiet and whatever.
::It's like, you know, that's, I think those are all skill things, right? Yeah. Yeah.
::A great teacher, part of that, you know, part of that skill is like,
::okay, knowing your anatomy, part of it is knowing effective cueing,
::part of it is programming, part of it is progressions, part of it is your eye and looking at points.
::Part of it is smiling and standing up straight and being at the front of the
::room where people can see you. Yeah.
::So the thing, and I want to just catch this before we move on and I forget,
::basically, is that the mission statement conversation is really, really high level and.
::Sometimes studio owners kind of, their eyes kind of glaze over.
::Usually they've worked in a government.
::When I first did it, my eyes glazed over. Because I'd done mission and values.
::So how's the mission statement? We provide quality goods and services to our stakeholders.
::Right. And you do an offsite for a half day to get clarity on that.
::Then you go back to work and forget about it and get on with the shit about the work. Yeah.
::So the way that we approach this is that the mission statement is really important.
::And in fact, every single word, or at least every word except the conjoining
::words, has a direct relationship to what happens in the studio.
::So then. Yeah. We get people really fucking strong by doing hard things, something like that.
::Yeah. And, you know, in a class where everyone feels supported,
::safe and whatever, but there's lots of different ones.
::Or we, we teach, we teach, you know, original contrology, you know,
::to progress our clients to doing really cool shit.
::Right. And so that, so then it becomes an activity where often the studio owner
::that we work with thinks, oh yeah, I know my mission statement.
::And then when I say, well, what does that word mean? What does that word mean?
::What does that word mean?
::How do you know that word's happening in your studio? It's like, oh, uh, okay.
::And then, so to kind of finish answering that question about the conversation
::we have, that trickles down to extremely specific stuff.
::Like Raf said, yeah, I audited the class. It was great. It was just a bit slow. Okay.
::Somewhere between the mission statement and what you audit and take
::as a standards checklist in your studio something has
::to reflect the tempo of the class has to be objective um yeah
::objective measurably objectively oh hold
::on see it standards checklist i'm sure yeah yeah
::i've got my standard checklist yeah it's i'll just write here it's uh you know
::i've got on my clipboard ready to go what is
::this standards checklist so a standards checklist would be
::something like okay so just say you have a mission statement that we help
::people you know build strength flexibility and skill on the
::reformer you know by doing challenging progressions that are fun you
::know that's a bit wordy but let's just say something like you know fun and
::community or something like that right and so it's like all right well you
::know when your checklist should basically check off each of those things okay
::to you know are you building strength are you building flexibility are you building
::skill was it fun was it progressive was the community like all of those things
::it's like you've got to have you know check check check check check and it's
::got to be like and then we've got to double click on each of those things so
::building strength what does that mean how do you know that occurred Okay.
::Well, you've got to take each major muscle group to a point of near fatigue
::at least once during the session. What does that mean?
::Then we double click on that. Okay. Fun. What does that mean?
::Okay. You know, how do we know that that happened? Right.
::So there have to be observable behaviors that you can see in the room,
::not just like kind of like the vibe, but it's like, okay, you know,
::was the instructor visible?
::Did the instructor project their voice? Were they smiling? Did they make eye
::contact? Did they verbally, you know, connect with each client,
::you know, at one point during the session? Did they use people's names?
::These are the things that would be on that checklist and if you do all of those
::things then you hit the mission.
::And, and, and part of the, one of the things that's interesting about this is,
::and I'm sure a lot of people listening are thinking, yeah, yeah.
::Oh, that's, you know, Raph stating the obvious. I say, okay.
::But what's interesting about that conversation is that if I list through the
::sorts of illustrations that Raph did for, as examples, the owner will often
::say, yeah, that's what I want, but I've never, I haven't measured it.
::I haven't seen it. I didn't, you know, it's like, and when, when you do, you realize, oh, okay.
::No that instructor didn't use everyone's name twice great
::so until they do we've got a job to do uh that
::instructor wasn't standing at the front door greeting everyone and at
::the front door saying goodbye to everyone okay if they're not doing that yet
::we've got a job to do so and and what's interesting is that the founder or so
::if you've got if you've survived long enough to have the problem that raf is
::talking about you have started doing the majority of these things because it's
::your ass on the line. You're probably doing it. Yeah. Exactly.
::And you don't realize you're doing it because that's just what you've learned
::to do to get clients coming back.
::So then what we do is kind of hold a mirror up to you and say,
::whatever it is you're doing right down to the, and one of the things we do is,
::especially if people are having
::trouble identifying it, is you film yourself for five or six classes,
::watch yourself back and just note everything that you do in every single class.
::And that starts to build out your brand and your standards checklist for you.
::Yeah. And, you know, we've kind of, because we've done this a lot,
::we've developed a little matrix kind of template and we,
::and that is pretty universal and you can, you know, studio owners can kind of
::just, you know, tweak it to their individual, you know, preference and style.
::But it's like, you know, being friendly is going to be part of,
::part of the skill matrix, regardless of what style you teach or whatever.
::So there, you know, being on time, being, you know, dressed cleanly,
::et cetera. So we evaluate on five dimensions, programming, queuing.
::Refinements or corrections, effective use of equipment, and personality.
::And we give a score of one to four for each of those things,
::one being terrible, not a fit, and four being amazing.
::In an example, let's get the rest of the team doing the same as what this person's doing.
::And for example, on the programming side, like a score of one would,
::and again, we sort of distill these down to observable behaviors, not vibe.
::And so a score of one, like not acceptable, would be
::you know programs random stuff off the internet no clear
::structure to the class intensity level is mismatched to
::the stated class level um you know stuff like
::you know missing major body parts like you know we didn't do arms sort of thing
::um so you know frequently started a sequence that was either too hard or way
::too easy for most people you know or several people in the room so you know
::that those would be like you know as an example of a one score on programming Whereas on a four score,
::which is like the highest possible score would be like users layered clusters.
::So basically, you know, starts at an easy level and progresses everybody to
::their own unique level of challenge.
::All clients were accommodated regardless of fitness, skill and injury status.
::Class had a clear structure, challenged all body parts through full range,
::challenging all clients at least once per movement per class.
::You know, so those types of things would go on the programming dimension.
::Well, let me just catch that.
::When I work through this with individual studios, as opposed to working in the
::broader sort of one to many,
::what we do is take that and then go through a process where the unique studio
::checklist is even more granular than that.
::So what Raf's just talked through is kind of the universal principles.
::You could apply that to pretty much any studio. But then by the time we finish
::the process, when we're working directly with studios, each studio has one and
::it goes right down to the specific exercises that represent the cool down.
::Or again, we're not mandating this, this emerges from the studio.
::Right. Taught our specific standard warmup that we do in 12 reps of cat stretch or whatever.
::Yeah. Whatever you do. And this is one of the things that's interesting.
::We're talking at the beginning, I was saying we do a mission statement and at
::the end, you've got this checklist that's even more granular than what raf was describing which is.
::Short of pulling one up and reading it because they what the
::final product requires the
::studio owner to to identify are you
::happy with the trainer doing anything at this point
::or do you want to be in and everyone sits a slightly different point
::on the continuum but at some point you have
::a checklist that actually represents what should be happening in
::the 50 minutes that are in your classroom and it and
::it but by the time you've done it all even if you're
::giving your instructors areas of great creativity the
::the print the the the
::the requirements are objective enough and they they overlap enough that actually
::you've got quite a specific set of behaviors that make your studio and what's
::really interesting about this took me a long time to understand this is you
::know at a certain point you go don't we all just teach pilates and it's like
::well yeah at a certain point we already teach Pilates,
::but actually when you think about it, every studio is going to have.
::Things that are universal, if they're doing a good job, but actually when you
::zoom, really, really zoom in and are prepared to be granular and apply X number
::of years of attention to detail, you realize,
::oh crap, actually this studio is really different to that studio,
::even though to the untrained eye, they're probably exactly the same.
::And that's, that's how studios develop their differentiation.
::You know, the clients won't notice the difference, but someone looking at the
::checklist who knows what they're looking at will recognize that studio is doing
::some really So I'm going to push back on that. I think the clients really do notice the difference.
::And I think this is the biggest kind of,
::I guess, fear or pushback we sometimes get from studio owners,
::working with them is like, oh, my clients like variety and I don't like to kind
::of tell my instructors, you know, exactly what to do.
::I like to give them, let them be creative and just, you know,
::teach what they want to teach.
::And to that, I say, well, I mean, dear listener, have you ever been to a Pilates class?
::Have you been to more than one Pilates class with different instructors?
::Do you believe that there are different levels of skill?
::Have you ever been to a class that was better or worse? than a different class,
::you know, or do you think like truly every instructor, once they're certified
::is just an identical, you know, clone that produces the exact same quality,
::but it's slightly different flavor.
::You know, of course, of course there are better and worse Pilates instructors.
::I mean, you've had better and worse, you know, chiropractors,
::you know, dentists, lawn care people, mechanics, doctors, you know,
::like there are better and worse, you know, plumbers and, you know,
::of course there are better and worse Pilates instructors.
::And, you know, this is not just a matter of individual taste and preference,
::although that does come into it.
::You know when a plumber comes to fix your sink you know if the tap still leaks
::afterwards like that plumber didn't do a great job right and if
::you go to a pilates class to get stronger more flexible and have fun like if
::those three things don't all occur like objectively that person didn't do a
::great job and so you know if you you know if you if you don't uh if you just
::hire people who are certified and nice people and you don't train them coach
::them and give them you know standards and hold them to those standards,
::you just get random shit, you
::know, people teaching, like you just get the average Pilates instructor.
::Now, some of those people by pure chance might be great and some of them by
::pure chance might be pretty awful.
::And they're going to cluster around a midpoint somewhere. And so the more that
::you do that, the more that you just hire people who are certified and don't
::tell them what to do or how to do it or audit their classes or have a specific
::way that you do things, the more your studio just becomes average and commoditized.
::I mean, these instructors are probably teaching at the studio up the road when
::they're not teaching with you and they're probably teaching the exact same thing
::they teach in your studio at that other studio.
::And so that is the very definition of a commoditized product because the clients
::can go have literally the same class with the same instructor at the other studio.
::And if they're a pound or a dollar or a shekel cheaper than your studio,
::it's like, well, why would they come to your studio?
::So if you have an organizing principle where that instructor comes to your studio
::and teaches your specific style in your specific way, with your specific format,
::your specific level of difficulty, et cetera,
::then they can't, the clients
::can't just go and get that same experience up the
::road at the other studio yeah so let me just catch
::so when i ran on before i guess what i meant was
::that at a to the client to a person who's not super
::nerdy about pilates looking at the checklist they'll
::all include programming they'll all include client connection they'll all include
::studio craft and you know those sorts of overall dimensions yeah but as exactly
::as you say it should be so granular that what happens is the clients get a predictable
::and repeatable experience that differentiates you from other people.
::And, and, and our job and the studio owner's job is to share that with.
::Uh, the instructing team so that they understand and can, and develop the skills
::that align with those granular promises.
::Yeah. And, and, and, you know, when we say differentiate yourself,
::we don't mean by doing like crazy shit that you saw on Instagram,
::you know, or putting in like, you know,
::pediples or chairs or towers or, you know, like, hey, you know,
::doing, hanging the reformers upside down off the ceiling or,
::you know, doing hot reformer.
::That's not what we mean. Those are all firmly in the category of,
::in my opinion, gimmicks. Gimmicks.
::Oh, the pedicle's a gimmick. Oh my God. That's a conversation for another time. Let's bookmark that.
::But what we talk about, what we mean when we say differentiate yourself is differentiate
::yourself in the mind of the client in a way that the client cares about.
::And so what the client cares about is the experience and the results that they
::get. Is it fun? Do they feel welcomed? Do they have friends?
::Do they get stronger, more flexible? Does their back hurt less?
::So is the parking easy? Does the booking system work? All of these things.
::Those are the things. And so if you think about all the businesses that you
::patronize, dear listener, you know, restaurants, you know, which ones do you go to?
::Do you go to the ones with the, you know, the crazy brand of oven?
::No, you don't give a shit.
::You know, you go to the one that brings the food quickly, that you can always
::get a reservation last minute. They're friendly.
::The music's not too loud. You know, you go to the one that does the job of giving
::you a pleasant experience with a nice meal, you know, best, right?
::You don't give a shit about what brand of oven they use. And just the same,
::your clients don't give a shit what brand of reformers you use.
::Um and so you
::know differentiation in the mind of the client is all about them
::having experience and getting results it's not about
::the what equipment you use or what cues you
::use or what you know they don't give a shit about any of that but they do give
::a really give a shit about their experience and their results and the other
::thing is you know the other and the kind of the foundational principle underneath
::this is that quality doesn't happen by itself quality is not the default setting
::I mean, if you've tried to build a business,
::a team, you know, you, you will know that.
::And this is really just comes down to a fundamental law of physics,
::which is that entropy always increases.
::And what that means is by default, shit goes wrong, right?
::You know, the default state, if left to its own devices, you know,
::if you never audit any of your instructor's classes, they're not going to magically
::all be awesome, right? Like the default is they're going to be average.
::And if you do nothing, they will regress towards being average, you know, over time.
::And so you have to constantly fight averageness and drag kicking and screaming to be quality.
::And just to catch this, like in terms of where you started the conversation
::and what we see, is let's be really clear that...
::When we, when we go back to Sally, who's a lovely person, right?
::Saying someone is average as an instructor has nothing to do with what,
::how nice or good a person they are.
::It's based on the metrics of this studio and what we regard as success,
::which includes revenue, retention, et cetera, but also what you're teaching,
::then, then that's what we mean by average.
::And if, and then, and what, what's critically important there is that that doesn't
::make, It's not on Sally, right?
::It's on the organizer.
::It's on the owner and the manager to share what excellence means and to build
::excellence. But why isn't it on Sally?
::Shouldn't Sally want to be the best possible instructor that she can be and
::just figure that out herself?
::Well, maybe she does. But even if she's scouring the internet for excellence
::tools, they'll only have a certain amount of overlap with what excellence within the studio means.
::And one of our current studio mentees had this, um, the insight for her,
::which I keep bringing her back to was when I, when she clicked to this,
::she went, Oh, it's like when my husband comes home and he's been running or
::riding and his shoes are dirty and he wants to walk in.
::And I said, no, you can't come in. I love you, but you're not wearing your shoes inside.
::Right. And that was the, it was like, yeah, great. You can have instructors
::and they can be, you can love them, but they're not coming in unless they're
::wearing the right shoes.
::Right. But if you come into my studio, you're teaching Pilates in the way that we teach Pilates here.
::You can do whatever they want out there. You can teach it any way you like.
::But when you cross the threshold, we have standards and this is what they look like.
::Yeah. And I would also say that, you know, in a perfect world,
::every instructor would, you know.
::Take their shoes off before they come in and, you know, self-educate voraciously
::and, you know, become better and better and better over time.
::And some, you know, they all do to a greater or lesser extent,
::you know, some of them very close to zero, some of them a lot,
::but the ones that are truly in the unicorn category that become amazing, well, guess what?
::Dear listener, if you're a studio owner, they're you, right?
::They open their own freaking studios, right?
::So that person's not working for you teaching your Tuesday night class,
::or if they are, they're not going to be there very long.
::So that person who's just like going to be a hundred percent self-propelled
::and he's going to like fight back the forces of entropy and is going to become
::excellent all on their own.
::It's like, congratulations, they're not going to be with you very long or they're
::never going to work for you in the first place because they already opened their own studio.
::So the people that you get in your studio are the ones who don't have that extra level of.
::Self-directed, you know, excellence, you know, but I think almost by definition now,
::not to cast aspersions on people who work in studios i
::think it's a fine thing and there are some amazing fucking instructors
::who work in studios but i think you know
::by and large my observation is the
::best instructors you know don't stay
::working at you know the local studio for a decade
::and never kind of open their own thing or you know do their own
::you know like they they typically gravitate towards
::starting their own business whether that's one-on-ones from home or opening their
::own studio or whatever it might be yeah i
::think i think one thing that i i broadly
::agree with that but one that i was something that i've seen in our
::industry a lot enough to be notable and worth pointing out is you can have that
::instructor who is oriented towards excellence and self-efficacious about it
::but they've also got other commitments maybe it's family maybe they run another
::business with their partner and they,
::they decided that they want to be the best they can,
::but they, for one reason or another, don't actually want to run their own business.
::And if you get ahold of one of them, hold on with both hands and do not let go.
::Yeah, but I think essentially the more self-efficacious somebody is,
::you know, there's some kind of threshold, but the more self-efficacious,
::the more agency somebody has and the more skillful they become,
::eventually they're going to go, well, hold on, I'm getting paid like 40 bucks
::an hour to teach in this class.
::I could be paid like 160 bucks an hour if I was doing it in my own business
::and, you know, I could do it the way I want it done.
::And so eventually, Dear Studio Owner, that person becomes you, right?
::Because that's what happened with you. and so i think there is a filtering mechanism
::there but you know there are those rare unicorns that like are that person but
::maybe they're in a day job they're a corporate superhero or whatever and they
::just only want to teach four classes a week but they're never going to be the
::stalwarts of your of your schedule you know they're not going to be 20 classes a week for a decade,
::yeah yep yep so all right so sally's been teaching for a couple of years at
::the studio her classes are either not very popular or even worse they're very
::popular um you know and um We've discovered that there's either a lack of alignment
::or a lack of skill or both,
::you know, as evidenced by the numbers, as evidenced by the class audit with
::the checklist that we didn't check off multiple items on the checklist.
::How do we go from like, okay, I've never given you a single word of feedback
::in the three years you've been working here to like, I'm going to start auditing
::your classes and we're going to start working to this checklist.
::You know, how do you go from that, from A to B?
::Uh well that's the i mean it's the at a
::high level the process we go through is by the time we're having that conversation
::you're at a certain point in the stages of a studio um you're doing so many
::things right to have this problem so the first thing is sort of be mindfully celebrate that and then.
::With the studio owner, I'll work with what is it that you want to give to people?
::What's your mission and how does that trickle down? And all of that happens
::long before we talk to the team.
::So then when we do talk to the team, we're sharing, this is the mission,
::this is what we've been doing, and this is the problem we've got,
::i.e. the problem is the business is now at a point where it needs consistency across the classes.
::And we're doing lots of things right, but here are the things we're going to
::do differently slash better.
::And this is what it's going to look like. It's going to be a training process and there'll be.
::Kpis metrics standards quality control call
::it whatever you want it'll be something that means it's not a
::personal thing it's a skill thing yeah we
::take our shoes off before we come in the in the house right and we
::put them by the door in an orderly fashion and we bang the mud off
::when it dries or what you know whatever the the set of behaviors
::are and then just to
::jump in here like most studio owners have kids
::you know if you're in your 40s 50s whatever you
::got kids right you know that kids don't by
::default just grow up you know well behaved and
::organized but you have to like drag them kicking
::and screaming so you know you have to reinforce you know a million billion
::times those behaviors put your shoes away you know tidy your room you
::know put your plate on the sink etc it's like it's no
::different with instructors because instructors you know kids are humans
::instructors are humans and it's like those behaviors are a
::little more pronounced in kids and teenagers but they
::exist in adults as well like we don't you know we're me heath you know dear
::listener yourself everybody we're all lazy you know if we can get away with
::you know having someone else clearing the table and doing the dishes you know
::most of the time we will so you know like you know do you ever you know squabble
::with your partner about how you like the dishwasher.
::Yeah and if we grab that metaphor you you don't you don't expect your child
::to know what a clean kitchen is without teaching them. You don't expect them.
::Well, hopefully, you don't point at their messy room and say,
::clean your room, unless you know they have the skills required to clean the room.
::And if they don't, you go in and you go, okay, where does teddy bear live?
::I don't know. Okay, let's give a teddy bear a home.
::So you've got to build the skills. And so that's the process.
::And so this is what skill is going to look like. We don't expect you to know it all by heart.
::And in our case, we come in and run workshops. We put you in the programs and
::we support you as you develop the skills.
::And then it's a process of, is the person leaning into the feedback or are they
::leaning away from the feedback?
::And just very briefly, because we're just about out of time,
::because I've got to go and talk to some studio owners. Um.
::You know what's what's the what's the
::risk mitigation strategy because a big fear instructor studio owners
::have and it's a realistic fear sometimes is that if you go for
::this kind of big cultural change where it's like okay for years you haven't really
::had any process or feedback or it's just
::been like a free-for-all and now all of a sudden we're going to like okay no
::we're going to this is how we tidy our room this is where teddy lives you know
::like maybe that won't suit sally maybe she just wants to teach the way she just
::wants to teach and she's not interested in learning to do it your way you know
::um so you know what do we what's the basic risk mitigation strategy around that.
::Um
::um
::You go ahead. Yeah. It's a trick question. I mean, I know the answer to that.
::That's kind of more my department.
::But because we coach in tandem, dear listener.
::Heath does most of the Pilates coaching, and I do more of the business and hard
::conversations and getting to know your numbers.
::Well, let me answer because you asked and then you pick up the gap.
::So I mean, I had this conversation today with the studio that one way I explain
::it is if you think of it as a continuum, right?
::At one end, it's this is what we're doing. It has to be done like this by next
::week. And if you don't do it, you're out.
::There's massive risk to that. You could end up with no team.
::At the other end of the continuum, it is, we'd really like you to do this,
::but we're not going to require you to do it.
::And we don't expect you to meet any standards, but hey, here's the programs.
::If you want to join in, be really great if you decided to change the way you're
::doing stuff, but we won't check what you're doing. We'll just trust you.
::Nothing will change. So what we've got to find is the point in the middle of
::that, that the studio feels comfortable with, and that will actually facilitate change.
::And what Raf might be about to say, I don't want to predict this.
::I'll just likely be wrong.
::But what we've found is that if the studio aligns with what Breathe teaches,
::and this would be true for anyone that was coaching and mentoring you,
::if there's that alignment,
::then the more you do things the way we can teach you to based on our evidence
::and experience, the more success you're likely to have.
::Not because the only reason for that is that we've had more experience.
::It's like, you know, we've tested it. We've
::made the mistakes already that's right we've just made a lot of mistakes yeah
::um so yeah i agree with that it's in
::terms of like how you phrase the messaging and the time you give people and the
::the the context you give them and that
::you know the the the opportunity that you give them to think about and be part
::of the process and sort of understand the reasons why and all of that that is
::very important uh but essentially a really powerful lesson that i learned you
::know uh is never have a conversation where there's a risk of somebody leaving
::until you have a plan B in case they leave.
::And so ultimately if Sally doesn't want to teach the way that we're going to start teaching you know.
::You got to be okay, dear listener, with Sally not being on the team six months,
::a year down the track, you know, and that's, that's because you,
::if your goal is to have an aligned team with full classes,
::then there's not a place on the team for somebody who that's not their goal.
::You know, like if you've got someone on the team who's, that's not their goal,
::then you don't have that team.
::Yeah. And that brings us all the way back to what we said at the beginning,
::what Raf just said was, you know, beautifully concise. If you want to have a
::team that's aligned with full classes, these are the steps you're going to take.
::Because you're not going to have
::a team that's aligned with empty classes because you've got no business.
::And you're not going to have a team that's got full classes,
::but it's misaligned because you're still not going to have a business because
::you'll end up in a commodity race and the studio down the road will race you to bankruptcy. Right.
::All right. Well, there's lots more conversations to have around this process,
::but we've got to go because we've both got to go do some coaching.
::Good talk. See you, Raph.
