Episode 358
358. Is your studio a Food Hall or a Restaurant?
Studio owners often think they need a new trend, new machine, or new offer to stand out.
In this episode, Raphael and Heath argue the opposite.
They explain why the studios that win are not the ones chasing novelty. They are the ones with a clear style, a consistent client experience, and a team that delivers the same standard every time.
They also unpack the difference between running a food hall, where every instructor does their own thing under one roof. And running a restaurant, where the whole team delivers one clear product, as a team.
If your studio feels inconsistent, vulnerable to staff turnover, or harder to grow than it should, this episode is for you.
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Transcript
Welcome to Pilates Elephants. Heath Lander, welcome to Pilates Elephants.
::Thanks, Raph Bender. Yeah, good to be here with you. Although,
::really, you're in England and I'm in Australia.
::Yeah, but we are here. We are here, whatever that means in a spiritual sense.
::Um today yeah something that's really top of my mind uh is,
::i spend you know most of my days these days talking with bloody studio owners
::and going through their numbers with them and talking talking about what's going
::on in their business and what they need help with and a recurring theme i would
::say with a substantial number of people i talk with is that they feel anxious
::they feel stressed they feel the business is,
::under threat, maybe not existential threat, but it's under some kind of pressure
::by just a plethora of new studios opening up, pop, pop, pop,
::pop, pop, new studios coming up everywhere.
::And so I see a lot of studio owners, you know, wanting desperately really to
::differentiate themselves and set their studio apart.
::And they're worried that, you know, their instructors will go work for the competition
::They'll lose their clients at the competition. They'll have to put their prices down.
::You know, the good old days when all you had to do was just write Pilates on
::a sign and open your door, you know, and had a queue up around the block,
::you know, those good old days aren't coming back again.
::And, yeah, so I see people trying to, you know, really wanting to differentiate themselves.
::And by and large, I see a lot of people wanting to differentiate themselves
::by doing kind of, I guess what I'd call superficial differentiation,
::like, you know, whacking in some kind of new modality, infrared sauna,
::hot mat, Pilates, you know, whatever it might be,
::offering, you know, oh, we don't use a regular reformer, we use some special
::version of a reformer that's got extra handles on it or something um basically
::you know former yeah any mega former core former kx former um you know anything
::but just increase the quality of the product,
::you know um and we're all about increasing the quality of the product here creating
::something of timeless value it's funny though because you know jumping on the
::latest bandwagon is very tempting,
::you know, like I'm tempted by that shit as well.
::But the thing about it is when you jump on the latest bandwagon, two things.
::One is, well, you're jumping on the bandwagon with everyone else.
::So you're just literally making yourself like everyone else who's jumping on the bandwagon.
::It's like, that's the opposite of standing out and the opposite of differentiating yourself.
::So that's one thing. The second thing is when you jump on the bandwagon,
::you put in your infrared sauna or your Lux bathroom or your core former or,
::you know, whatever you put in.
::Well, great. People, people who like jumping on the latest trending thing will
::jump on your business. I'll go, great. You've got core farmers and Lux bathrooms. Fantastic.
::But guess what? Five minutes later when the new fucking latest trending,
::you know, when that's yesterday's newspaper and something, the new latest thing
::comes, like they're going to abandon you just as quickly without a backwards
::glance as I head off to the new latest trending thing, you know?
::So it's just a recipe for short-term, you know, short-term thinking, I think.
::So, the solution is, guess what? Improve the quality of your product. It's boring AF.
::It's just the old-fashioned way. It's not a hack. It's not a quick fix.
::But it's like, well, guess what? That's what makes strong businesses.
::And I think in a bigger sense, if we look back at the businesses that survive
::these bubbles, Pilates is expanding massively.
::The industry is becoming crowded.
::And it's not going to continue indefinitely. It's not going to get to the case
::where like literally four out of five buildings in New York City are Pilates studios, you know.
::So at some point it has to stop. And then guess what? A few businesses are going
::to go out of business and some are going to remain.
::Which ones are going to remain? The latest, greatest, trendiest ones?
::I don't think so. I think the ones are going to remain.
::They're going to have a few things in common. They're going to have strong unit
::economics, like good profit margins, you know, good operations.
::They're going to have good fucking quality service and good results for their
::clients you know just like good
::old-fashioned you know just good pilates classes uh and um yeah i i'd i'd.
::I just don't see how, um, and you know, if I look at, you look at restaurants,
::that's got a famously high churn in that industry, you know,
::bazillions open, bazillions close.
::The ones that stay open, they're not necessarily the ones that make sushi that's
::flavored like a Big Mac or, you know, some kind of weird thing.
::It's like, it's just like a good restaurant.
::You know, they're the ones that survive, but, but also efficient operations
::that they can actually make a margin out of it.
::So anyway, we're going to talk about the good part.
::So, so what do you do if you're a studio owner and you've been going for a while,
::maybe a year, maybe five years, maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years.
::And you know, life's been good. Life's been great. You just hung up your shingles,
::said Pilates, you know, clients came, they paid you money. It was all great.
::You never had to advertise.
::You don't even have a Google ads account, you know.
::And now all of a sudden life's not as easy as it was.
::And there's like 17 Politi studios opened up in a 12-block radius of your location,
::and now you're worried and now you realize that you've got a team that is not 100% perfect.
::You know, like great people love them, heart of gold, but maybe you've got some
::of these symptoms like they're not, I don't know, your instructors just treat the place like a job.
::Like they don't say yes to covers enthusiastically, They take time off,
::they call you in to cover, you know, that their classes aren't as full as yours.
::They don't want to teach Saturdays anymore.
::You know same old story yeah well they're good enough right yeah they're good enough,
::they're okay or have been it have been good enough they were good enough in
::the old in the good old days when the streets were paved with gold yeah i think something for people,
::that well so sure for people when when i when when i when i'm working with the
::studios that come across my desk as it were one of the things that's very extremely
::consistent if not uniform in those conversations is, um,
::you said, um, in your setup there.
::You know, just deliver good Pilates and that, that is differentiation, um, with a good team.
::But so one, one question is what
::does good mean in terms of reliable service
::and consistency for the clients and quality but
::also before that is understanding or
::maybe it's a mind shift and it's probably more like a yeah
::it's a shift in outlook from i
::think we've talked about this before pilates is just pilates yeah you
::know you know but doesn't actually matter where you trained
::where what you learned uh because the the metric is just are your classes full
::enough and now we're in a new world where classes aren't as full as they were
::because of the competition and you have to start asking.
::What does my Pilates look like? What happens in my house?
::And that's an uncomfortable situation.
::And sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes just completely unfamiliar
::or foreign moment for a
::studio owner you know that i mean well
::we've been talking lately with people about
::the idea of a restaurant versus a food hall and the
::shift being from running a
::running what seems like a great food hall because it's busy lots of
::people are coming in and trying the different stalls where the
::instructors are the stalls right and the food hall the food hall
::analogy is where basically you the studio owner
::own the food hall and food hall is your pilates studio and
::the various different little fast food places in the food hall
::are your different instructors all teaching their own different individual unique
::flavor of pilates the way they teach it yeah whether
::it's some overlap like you're getting carbs fat and protein but
::how it's organized is different
::according to the instructor where they were trained how they were feeling that
::day what they've been working on this month what they did in a class somewhere else
::this week and the difference being a
::shift to a restaurant where you decide what the dishes
::are and the dishes that go out are reliable yeah and you
::train the whole team to deliver your menu yeah and
::you know to be to be fair to that shift there's a lot of work to do for a studio
::owner to do that because that's not how the industry is organized you know is
::it probably about the same amount of work that would be to take a literal food
::hall and turn it into a restaurant.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe a little bit less building permits, maybe.
::But I mean, I just think if you had like a gaggle of, you know,
::20 vendors, you know, there's the Indian place and the sushi place and the hot
::dog place and whatever, you know. The burger place. The burger place.
::And it's like, okay, now we're going to turn this into one team that delivers Italian food.
::Hmm yeah so it is it is it
::is a lot of work uh and it's a lot of it's
::a lot of actual work like hours spent but
::it's also a lot of psychological work because you've got to have some hard conversations maybe
::some people on the currently on the food hall aren't
::actually going to be the right fit to be on the restaurant team yeah
::and and again some of the stuff also
::the the studio owner needs has
::to go through a process of recognizing that they want to run a restaurant right
::they that they are and in fact but maybe more importantly in a lot of cases
::it's almost like in an egg and again i think we've talked about this an existential
::moment of realizing that far enough in that this is what they do this is no
::longer a side hustle or a bit of fun or a.
::A a a passion project because i'm
::i'm in deep enough now that this is what i do i am actually a
::pilates studio owner oh shit what does that mean okay
::that means i've got to define what happens in my business and
::right well and so i want to i want to grab on that then what you're defining
::what happens in your business because that's what you said before about uh you
::know a lot of studio owners seem to take the view that pilates is pilates which
::is paradoxical because we have this whole like you know whatever you're doing
::is not real pilates thing going on in the Pilates as well,
::but at the same time, we have a lot of studio owners who just hire instructors
::and they don't really give them much of a recipe of here's how we teach here.
::You know, it's just kind of like, okay, well, you're a Pilates teacher,
::you'll figure it out, you know, studios that way.
::Yeah, or very, very broad guidelines that are generic.
::So it's like, this is what we do, but it's so broad that it's effectively generic
::anyway. Give me an example of that.
::You know, work through the whole body.
::Well, to be fair, I have had a couple of studio owners tell me,
::like, they've got an instructor who doesn't do arms.
::Or something like that's new
::right yeah so so they're even
::further back yeah yeah and so
::yeah so the the the things that often are not specific enough to be measurable
::or observable or trainable or or they're like so generic that okay if you're
::not doing these things like okay work the whole body through all planes of motion
::it's like what the fuck are you doing you know like if you're not even doing that,
::you know, but just because you're doing that doesn't make it a good class.
::Like that's a bare minimum prerequisite to be a good class, but it's not sufficient
::to make, like you could do that and still be a terrible class, right?
::There are lots of other ingredients that make it a good class.
::Yeah. And-
::If this was the thing that you were grabbing on a moment ago,
::there are also lots of ways to run a good class.
::And the food hall analogy is you don't want nine different kinds of good class
::where what's a good class?
::Well, for the person we're talking about so far in their journey,
::a good class has been one that's profitable enough, which means it's well-trained
::enough that you haven't had to worry about.
::So, yeah, I think that's exactly – I want to jump in the food hall versus restaurant gravy train there.
::Which is that, okay, so you've got nine different instructors teaching nine
::different versions of a good class and maybe they all are good instructors, right?
::They engage the clients, their programming's good, their queuing's good,
::they're friendly, all of that stuff, it's all good.
::But one's a bit more classical, the other one's a bit more contemporary,
::the other one's a bit more fitnessy, the other one's more slow and meditative,
::you know, the other one sort of does yoga on the reformer, whatever it is,
::like they're all just kind of different, right?
::And so the clients are effectively going to that food hall where they get a
::different experience with each instructor.
::They might love one instructor, hate the other instructor because they hate
::the slow meditative stuff or whatever, or vice versa.
::Whereas when you change to a restaurant, you say, okay, our style is this style.
::You know, we're athletic reformer or we're classical Pilates or we're,
::you know, slow meditative, whatever.
::And everybody teaches to that style, right? And so good means doing that style
::well, which is very, very different from just doing any kind of random thing
::that happens to vaguely resemble Pilates well.
::Yeah. Which goes back to what you were saying at the beginning about as your
::market gets more crowded,
::and that's geographical for most studio owners because we're a bricks and mortar
::a business model as your area gets more crowded.
::Classes that were once measured by
::just how full they are are all of a sudden not full enough to be viable or worryingly
::low in attendance because that's the measure then you have to think okay what's
::happening and the catch of what you've just described or we're describing is
::if you've got nine instructors running,
::what are good classes again as you say this is not we're not
::shitting on instructors as a as a community that they're
::doing a good job they're doing their best they've been
::running busy classes but the clients
::are picking and where the way
::the way this clicked for me is when i realized it was happening is
::what i'm doing is running a studio that allows six
::or seven people to run their own small business in my business but
::because the clients aren't coming for the what happens
::at my studio they're coming for what happens in that person's class on wednesday
::morning and that person's class on friday afternoon and if that person the friday
::afternoon person is sick and covered by someone else it's a completely different
::class they're not going to go to that class and the worst case scenario is when
::that friday person who got full classes decides.
::They want to teach somewhere else if it's if it's close enough which can happen
::then those clients go with the instructor because they're not coming to your
::business for your your business they're coming for that instructor.
::That's worst case scenario, but that's the logical conclusion of that model.
::Well, I think it's a reasonably common case scenario. I mean,
::I work with people who have that fairly regularly.
::And the reality is, even though you might've paid for ads or whatever to get
::those clients, the clients see themselves as being clients of that instructor.
::They follow that instructor around on your schedule and they follow that instructor
::to the studio up the road,
::no different and class pass
::as an example of like my experience in melbourne and others
::of class pass as a business model actually uh promotes
::that like it facilitates right if those of you out there if you're thinking
::about class plus or doing class plus take a deep breath and realize that what
::that does is skim that business model off all of the bricks and mortar businesses
::that sign up to it i just think class pass i mean class pass is.
::Is very dangerous for Politi Studios. If you haven't tried heroin yet, don't try it.
::And if you haven't tried ClassPass yet, don't try it. Don't try it.
::I want to talk just briefly about what you said about the clients.
::I think that's mirrored in the instructors.
::And that if you run a business where it's essentially half a dozen people running
::their small businesses within your small business, they've got no real loyalty to you.
::I mean, they run, you know, they probably each teach half a dozen classes at
::your studio and then half a dozen classes at two or three other studios.
::And they probably teach the same classes that they teach at your studio at the
::other studios up the road.
::And they see themselves quite rightly as basically just hired guns.
::You know, they just kind of ply their trade at different locations and they
::just show up, do their thing, you know, deliver a good class,
::good programming, good queuing, good connection with clients, et cetera.
::And then they move on to the next thing. And so they quite rightly see your
::studio as just a job, you know, just a paycheck, you know, clock in,
::clock out, show up, do, you know, do what's required.
::And so you will see symptoms as a studio owner, like those people not being
::very engaged in the studio culture, you know, not volunteering for covers,
::taking frequent holidays,
::you know, not contributing to special events, never posting or sharing your
::stuff on social media. that kind of thing.
::And it's like, that's not because they're bad people or bad instructors,
::it's because you've created an environment where that's the culture,
::you know, and to create, and so the antidote to both of those things.
::Is to run a restaurant, not a food hall, you know.
::I've worked in fine dining restaurants.
::Particularly in French and Italian restaurants, where the culture in those places
::is just fanatical adherence to high standards and hard work and just loyalty to the brand.
::And people are just, the people who work there, are by and large just incredibly
::bought into the vision of what the premises is delivering.
::And that's what you want in your studio. You want instructors who love what
::you do and they're emissaries for your brand because they're so bought into the vision.
::And I think, Heath, one of the greatest gifts that you've brought to this company,
::to Breathe education is that,
::you know, we, you have built that, we have built that in our training team,
::you know, like every single one of our trainers,
::you know, is a hundred percent bought into the way that we teach and the way that we, you know,
::the way that we teach people to teach and a hundred percent engaged.
::Like, there were these fairly long, passionate threads in Slack multiple times
::a week about, like, how many inches
::should the palms be from the feet in fucking Pike, you know? Like...
::Which is awesome. Training team, if you're listening, you're fucking awesome.
::I love you. I love watching those debates.
::But to see people so passionate about what we do,
::so passionate about the minute details of what we do,
::I've got zero doubt that every single one of those people on our training team,
::when they're delivering our workshops, that they're doing it to the highest
::level of integrity to the way that we want it done.
::Like they're not just making some random shit up and teaching whatever the fuck,
::you know, like they truly believe in what we do and they truly excel at it.
::And so I think you've, you know, you've really developed a high level of skill, Heath, in doing that.
::And, um, I think, yeah, we could, uh, we could all do with a few pointers on,
::uh, how do you, how do you build a team of fanatically loyal, highly engaged,
::you know, brand like super advocates as your instructor team?
::I think the most reliable model that I've seen at the studio in a studio context
::because one of the things that has made it,
::uh let's say scalable for us if not necessarily easier is that we are online and so we can,
::draw from a pool that's essentially global and they're exposed been exposed
::to what we do and what i do for years via online thank you to covet essentially
::well i don't know i mean i think i think yes the essence of that is we take
::our super fan clients and turn them into our staff,
::and that's what i was going to say is that i was just kind of caveating that that,
::by being on zoom it maybe makes
::it throws the net wider but in fact
::no i'm going to disagree with myself because in a
::bricks and mortar studio when you do a good job and when i say you i mean the
::studio owner the founder when you do a good job of just being awesome at what
::you do and clear on what you do you will build a culture and community in your
::studio and you know that's happening because you've got full classes and you
::need you need to hire instructors.
::The best most reliable model i've seen is when you tap clients on the shoulder
::and say would you like to be an instructor and you do the you go through the
::process of training them up,
::as your instructor who's who's grown up in
::your in your in your in your community and
::part of that is as you said before
::there's there's so many different kinds
::of pilates and yet it's also somehow hard to
::describe how it's different and
::then you've also you've got to get a certification which when you
::send people away to do that that's already the first great
::risk you know you brought them up as a pup as a client then you're going to
::send them off somewhere else to get trained that's the first great risk in that
::process which you will have to do unless you've got your own training program
::but yeah but that that's the best one and.
::That's the best most reliable way and as as as our
::work with studio as we work with bigger and bigger studios it's more and more
::clear that the ones that well that there's a nice big juicy problem to have
::which is needing more instructors than you can find in your area so then you're
::going to have to advertise and pull people in but if you can draw them from within your classroom,
::and get them trained in a way that doesn't clash with
::what you're doing that's probably the best
::model yeah yeah i think i think yeah
::100 agree um obviously because that's
::the business that we've built together no i think you're all wrong um that you
::know and the way we've we've gone through many iterations of our hiring policy
::for trainers and we've now arrived at a policy where we,
::and dear listener, if you ever wanted to work for us, this is how you do it.
::We only now hire people who've done multiple ref packs.
::So that's Heath's advanced reformer live class, which runs for 10 weeks.
::And basically you start out wherever you, you know, you have to have already
::an existing Pilates practice and you work up over weeks, months,
::or years, however long it takes to do the really fucking cool advanced Pilates moves.
::And so we now only consider people for working in the company who have done
::multiple 10-week blocks of the ref pack.
::And the reason we only consider that is because those people already voted with their.
::With their time and their money multiple times that they truly want to be here, you know?
::And so we know, we know that they are true believers, you know?
::And so everything else from there is easy, pretty much, like training them in
::the specifics of how we deliver the workshops or whatever.
::It's like we can ramp someone up in under three weeks these days.
::So, and I think you, dear listener, as a studio owner, you can do something
::very, very similar which is hire people from the front row of your reformer
::class, your people who were there four times a week for the last two years.
::It's like that person's a true believer in what you do, you know.
::And so if you can align with them and offer them an opportunity that they're
::excited about, then you know they're going to deliver the classes right.
::But then you have to send them off and they take 18 months to get certified
::and come back with all these newfangled ideas, teaching different than what
::you teach. So yeah, how do you solve that?
::Especially if you need an instructor on Tuesday. Yeah, that's right.
::And I mean, that is, that's the, that's the, that's a hard thing.
::It's a hard thing to solve.
::But if you are sending someone, if you are hiring from within,
::the opportunity slash the work you need to do is it's not enough to just think
::okay cool well i'm hiring from within or i'm going to hire from within um and
::therefore because they've grown up speaking.
::Australian english or french english or whatever french english english whatever
::whatever language they've grown up speaking it's not enough to assume that they're going to,
::come back speaking that. And so you need to be crystal clear on what it is that you do.
::When you send them off- Just chase that metaphor.
::Rather than just speaking the language, you have to be able to explain to them
::the grammar of that language.
::You've got to be able to go. When you send them off to get educated,
::that is not a flavor neutral or value neutral,
::experience for them like they come back they will have been imbued
::with some philosophy of and some style of
::how to teach and you want to make sure that that is as compatible as possible
::with the way that you teach yeah and and in in many cases that works because
::if i've been trained in x system i'll send you away to train in x system yeah
::but the the unfortunately Unfortunately.
::Here's where it very frequently breaks down, is that you might have been trained
::in X system, Stutt, Bazzi, Polestar, you know, whatever it might be,
::and you might be a great instructor.
::But there are lots of other instructors who are trained in X system who are
::fucking shit instructors, or are just not as good as you, right?
::And maybe you've hired some of these people and their class is just not as full as yours.
::And you might look at them teaching, you might think, oh, technically they're
::proficient, but they're just not good at connection.
::Yeah, that means they're not a good instructor. it might be yeah yeah and
::the you the you in raf's uh example there is the studio owner and what i see
::time and time and time again like this is i'd say a hundred percent consistent
::i can't think of anyone that i've coached as a studio and a manager who hasn't had this blind spot of,
::you graduated one way or another decided to run a business you're now running a business and.
::Unbeknownst to you, your teaching has shifted from what you were taught is good
::teaching to what is good teaching in your restaurant.
::And you don't know what that is. You don't know that the way you cut the onions
::now is different to the way you were taught to cut the onions at school because
::it's changed incrementally and over time.
::And so then when you go, I'll go and train there, they come back and you're like, oh.
::They didn't teach you all the things you need to know to kill up and kick ass in
::my studio and one big
::problem with that to speak specifically to the industry
::is everything i see
::is most of these organizations are still training
::from a one-on-one model but they're
::not it's and so much of the disagreement in
::pilates land on the fucking instagram shit i see
::is like you're all making all this noise about uh
::whatever the semantic differences and the difference is
::actually the training programs aren't focused on group teaching
::skills you you're coming out of school for being taught all this stuff and now
::you're looking desperately for support essentially because you weren't taught
::the actual skills of teaching a large group you know it's like it's a skills
::differential and so i've gone off on a sidebar here,
::but that the, the, the thing that the studio owner doesn't realize is that they
::have solved the problem of teaching a group and they weren't taught that at school.
::And then they send people off to school and then think, why can't you do what I do?
::And it's because the gap is the skills of teaching group. Yeah.
::And, all right, so what if you can't find, or maybe you find someone amongst
::your clients, but, you know, and even if you send them to us,
::which by the way, you can send them to us, dear listener,
::they can be trained up in around about four months, depending on how hard they work.
::But even like maybe four months is too long for you to wait,
::you know, let alone 18 months if you send them somewhere, one of the major players
::that require them to do hundreds of hours of self-practice.
::So maybe you do need to hire someone who's already
::certified and so we have a
::couple of concentric circles that we recommend for people to
::do to find someone who's a great fit and the
::funny thing in the pilates world is like the default is i just
::see people advertising on indeed.com and going you know wanted you know we're
::hiring must be comprehensively certified 450 hours apply within you know must
::love pilates must love helping people i was like okay great That describes literally
::every fucking Pilates instructor who's ever been born, you know?
::So it's like, great, you've whittled it down to 100% of everybody.
::And so what instead, and even when people apply, like I see people interviewing
::instructors before they even watch them teach.
::It's like, well, how do you know if you want to talk to this person if you haven't seen them teach?
::It's a waste of time talking to them if they can't teach, or they can't teach
::the way you want. So, you should, first thing I would do if you...
::If you can't fill your vacancy fast enough by a client, I would definitely tilt
::up a client on the shoulder because you're going to need someone in four months anyway, right?
::So yeah, like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
::The second best time is now.
::And, but you know, in, in four months, you'll wish you'd, you'd done something now about it now.
::Um, but be that as it may. So the first thing I would do is,
::uh, probably just go and look and poach.
::I'll just go and do some classes at local studios and I'll just go into the
::receptionist there and say, hey look, if you were bringing your best friend
::into town who'd never been here and you wanted to impress the shit out of them,
::and show them the studio, like whose class would you take them to?
::It's like, great, book me in with that person. And then I'd go to that person's
::class and if they'd impress the shit out of me, I'd approach them outside of
::the other studio, very bad taste to do it inside the competitive studio, you know.
::Approach them as they Leave the studio.
::So how can I buy you coffee? You know, want to come work for me? I'll pay you more.
::Which hours do you want? I'll give them to you.
::That would be number one. Number two would be, because the audition is you do
::their class, and if their class isn't amazing, you don't have the conversation.
::Number two would be you advertise, but you advertise based on what your style is.
::You know, you don't just say, we're hiring, must be comprehensively certified,
::must love Pilates, apply within, you know. What do you say, Heath?
::Uh well yeah the the circle there overlaps with doing the work to know what
::it is that you do differently to other studios so you you,
::the way i have helped people with that is rather well first make your make your
::make your advertisement as specific as possible.
::So, but also say, uh, attendance at class will be required pre-interview, something like that.
::Like there's no point coming for the interview if you haven't done a class and
::decided you like it. And that goes both ways.
::If you're an instructor applying for a job or you want to work somewhere,
::don't just walk up and say, can I have a job?
::Make sure you've been to the class and decide you do want a job and you can talk to what happened.
::And if you're the studio owner, make sure that you say you will need to have
::attended class to ensure that you want to work.
::Well, like, yeah, note to self, you know, we're talking about this from the
::perspective of the studio owner.
::Just flip this and this is the exact recipe of how you get a job in a Pilates studio, right?
::Exactly. This is how you get a job, yeah. Yeah. And then when you're a studio
::owner, the thing that I...
::Let's assume you've got an an an application that reads okay to you so even
::if you're desperate so this is the raf example the raf the example raf just
::given us you're desperate you need someone,
::by next tuesday you've got some applications your interview process firstly
::should it and mostly it does involve a teaching example your your applicant
::will teach you but here's the thing that i'm still amazed at how few studios do.
::Because frankly, you don't care what the fuck they teach elsewhere.
::You want to know how they're going to go teaching in your studio.
::So create an asset, create like a thing that you can give them.
::I'd say a video, if I could get my brain around the word, give them a video
::and a lesson plan of 15 minutes of teaching and say, you're going to teach me this exactly like this.
::And most studio owners go, what? Serious? I want to know how they go teaching.
::It's like, why? I don't care what you do in the other studio or down the road.
::I want to know how quickly you can pivot to what I do in my studio.
::And if I can't describe what I do, which most people can't, I certainly couldn't for years.
::The easy thing is just fricking record it, record yourself doing something that
::you think is good for your clients.
::All right. So I'm going to, I'm going to jump in on that because here's the
::pain point for most studio owners.
::And I think here's the unlock is most studio owners, not all,
::not all, but most would say, well, what I teach is basically it's just plain
::Pilates, contemporary Pilates, or it's classical Pilates, or it's strength-based.
::Like, it's just, it's not highly differentiated. It's just regular Pilates.
::But this is the thing, dear listener, it's not.
::You actually don't teach. Like, if you went back to stop Pilates or Bassey or
::Polestar or Balanced Body or wherever that you did your certification.
::Or Bree. Or Bree, you probably don't teach exactly the way you were taught to
::teach in the course. You teach a bit different, right?
::100%. right and so what is that
::difference and what is what is it that you know
::that you teach and so the way you do this is you just like take us like we all
::instructors we all have sequences that we teach regularly whether we know okay
::this sequence just works really well you know it's good layers it's everyone
::gets it it's simple it's great work good if you have sequences that you teach
::teach take a sequence that you teach frequently film it.
::Turn it into a program, write the list of exercises, the spring choices, equipment settings.
::That's what you send to your applicants and say, this is what I want you to teach.
::Teach, like don't teach something resembling this, teach exactly this.
::Verbatant. Yeah. And be clear about that. Like I want you to replicate this
::exactly, brackets, you quietly know to yourself that's impossible.
::So you don't fail them if they fail, because they will fail. but
::what you want to see is their ability to pivot lean in give
::it their best shot and do a pretty good job of
::it right and if we if we think about the restaurant analogy which
::i just think is such a brilliant analogy plus i'm going out for dinner with
::my wife in about 20 minutes uh which is like okay if you if you run an a high-end
::italian restaurant okay and you're interviewing new sous chefs and you know
::you've got this guy's come he's got this amazing experience his last job was
::at a Japanese restaurant,
::or what do you want him to cook when he comes into your restaurant, some Japanese food?
::No, you want him to cook something off your fucking menu.
::You know, I don't give a fuck how good you can cook Japanese food,
::this is not a Japanese restaurant.
::So I want you to show me that you can cook my recipe, you know, the way I want it cooked.
::That's the audition. And if you can't do that, I don't care what else you can
::do, because that's the job.
::And so it's the same at your Pilates studio, dear listener. Like,
::you're hiring them to do a very specific job.
::And if you're not hiring them to do a very specific job, well,
::then you're just going to get generic Pilates and you'll be undifferentiated
::and you'll have all of those problems we talked about at the start.
::And if you, like, paradoxically, and here's the paradox.
::A lot of studio owners, I think, sort of shy away from this idea of sort of
::like dictating, you know, how people should teach.
::And I think my instructors, you know, they love their creativity.
::The clients love the variety. you you know how am i to
::tell them what to do you know i don't want to like you
::know just rain on their parade and turn into like these cardboard cutout
::robots you know doing just my exact bidding but it's like here's the thing that's
::how you inspire great loyalty excitement you know passion in in people now is
::everyone going to love you know cooking your italian food no some people don't like Italian food.
::Right? Fine. They can work elsewhere.
::But some people fucking love Italian food and they love it when it's done just
::right, the traditional way, right?
::And if that's the way you do your Italian food, well, you're going to attract
::people who are passionate about that, right? And if you say in your job ad,
::hey, if you're not passionate about traditional Italian food,
::don't fucking apply, right? Well, guess what?
::The person who's passionate about Italian for you, you're going to read that
::and go, fuck yes, I've been waiting for this job ad for years, right?
::This person gets it, you know, this is where I want to work, right?
::Whereas if you just say, you know, comprehensive instructor required, you know,
::send your curriculum vitae, you know, within, it's like people are just going
::to spam you with their fucking resume with no thought, care or passion whatsoever.
::You know, it's literally just a job to them.
::So I'm a bit on a soapbox here but you have to you have to stand up for something
::you have to stand for something otherwise no one why would anyone give a shit.
::Yeah. And I think just on that, I get on a tear like that with studio owners
::all the time because I'm equally as passionate about it.
::And you can see them sometimes think, well, firstly, sometimes I think they
::look at me and think, okay, I'm stuck in a resume room with a crazy guy here.
::And other times they think, okay, that sounds good, but I don't know how to do that.
::And I can't, and just to what Raph was saying is if you're thinking,
::well, that sounds good, but I don't know what that is or how I would do that
::is if you're a studio owner and you need to hire an instructor,
::you've already got your studio style.
::But like you might not know what it is but
::the fact that you have the problem of needing instructors
::is a test is evidence that you have
::developed a style that gets enough clients in and keeps them long enough that
::you've got the problem of needing instructors and so you're doing something
::that keeps people long enough and that's the critical moment you know I think
::I look back at my progression and so many people have seen now,
::it's the sooner you can acknowledge the fact that if people come back to your
::class more than three times, you're doing something that is unique enough for them to do that.
::It's not just time for time, time scheduled.
::It's not just, you know, convenience. And.
::If you've done that enough that you've been running your business for six or
::12 or 18 months and you need some more instructors, you're doing something that
::you can capture and differentiate from other people and you can share it.
::It's just work you've got to do.
::And that is the work you'll do to scale.
::It's the tree analogy, right? The sooner, the moment you've got the problem
::of needing more classes and more team,
::the sooner you start describing and capturing what it is that you do and being
::able to describe it to others, the easier your life will be in the future.
::Yeah. And that's an iterative process. You know, you can change it.
::You can change your standards document.
::You can share that with your team. But if you hire people and you don't have
::a standards assessment system, call it what you want, quality control,
::team alignment, whatever.
::If you don't have it when you hire them, bringing it in is way harder.
::Oh, so much harder. Yeah.
::And it's not fair on the instructors as well. You hired them under one set of
::expectations and then, you know, later on you're changing the rules like Darth Vader.
::So yeah, it is hard when you've got an existing team, but it's not impossible.
::I mean, we've, we've done it multiple times, um, with businesses and in our
::own business multiple times.
::Absolutely. It's just a change management process. But I'm just like,
::I think the more important point I was wanting to make there was that,
::you know, you spoke passionately about that process.
::And when I do that, I sometimes feel like I'm almost scaring people off because
::they think, yeah, but that's not me. Like, I don't know, I don't know what those
::things are about my business.
::And my point is, you might not know them, but that doesn't mean you're not doing
::them. It doesn't mean they're not there. Right. Yeah.
::So you, there's a simple process to capture that.
::Yeah. Simple, but not necessarily easy. Right. Well, I think one,
::one mental kind of exercise that I think can work really well,
::and I'm conscious we've got to finish up in a second, is,
::uh, just think about, okay, dear listener, if you imagine walking into,
::you know, one of your classrooms watching, you know, you just say you had a
::guest instructor teaching your studio, right?
::Someone you haven't met before and they're doing a cover or whatever.
::And you walked in, just imagine you're teaching, they're teaching and you like,
::what if you walked in to watch them teaching, would you be like.
::Shocked and like mortified that
::they're delivering that you know what would bad look
::like in your view right well that's
::the opposite of what you what your style is right so
::if they if just imagine okay they don't do arms
::they don't do abs uh you know
::700 reps of side lying leg series on
::a red spring um standing behind
::the clients you know where the clients can't see them mumbling music
::too loud right what what's your horror list
::right yeah you spend half the time cueing one client who doesn't know how to
::their ass from their elbow and everybody else is left to their own devices you
::know what's what's your what's your what's your on your not to do list when
::you teach flip all of those that's it that's a good sort of rough starting place of your style,
::good talk yeah thanks Raph
