Pilates Business Podcast

The $10 vs. $10,000 Hour: The Simple Shift That Grows Your Pilates Business Faster

• Seran Glanfield • Season 25 • Episode 245

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Feeling like your studio runs you instead of the other way around? In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield dives into why so many boutique fitness studio owners—especially Pilates, barre, and yoga studio owners—end up working endless hours and what’s truly keeping them stuck.

Seran reveals the hidden habits that bury your brilliance under busy work and walks you through the simple yet powerful shift that frees up your time while fueling real growth. You’ll learn how to step out of the $10-an-hour tasks that drain your energy and focus instead on the $10,000-an-hour strategies that drive impact, profit, and freedom.

Tune in to discover:
 💡 Why overworking isn’t a sign of dedication—it’s a signal something’s missing
 ⚙️ The systems that help your business run without you
 📊 How to reclaim your “CEO time” and lead with clarity
 💬 The mindset shift that separates busy studio owners from thriving leaders

If you’re ready to work less, earn more, and finally feel like the leader your business needs, this episode will show you how.


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Work with Seran:

🌟 Join the Thrive Business Coaching Program and get smart strategies that drive growth (and profit) in your boutique fitness studio

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SPEAKER_00:

You love your studio, but let's be honest, are you working way more hours than you ever thought you would? Teaching classes, handling admin, answering client emails late at night, way past your bedtime, posting on social media only to feel like you're still not moving the needle. Well, the thing is that overworking is not a badge of honor. It's a sign that there's something else missing in your business. And in today's episode, I'm going to unpack why you're working too many hours right now and what's really behind it. And then the systems that can actually give you back your time without sacrificing your growth. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah Glamfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset, and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio. This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Hey there and welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah Ann and I am the growth strategist and founder here at Spring 3 Studio Business Consulting. I help studios around the world build profitable and sustainable businesses. Businesses that don't turn themselves into making you a martyr in the fair in the process. If we haven't met, I've spent years in the boutique fitness industry. I've supported Pilates studios, bar studios, yoga studios, fitness studios, spin studios, dance cardio studios, and everything in between. And I've helped studio owners go from I do everything to I lead my business. And I've seen what works across these different modalities, across different business models. And for people that have different sets, as everybody does, of talents and skills and expertise. And I've also seen every single day how much brilliance is getting buried under busy work. So I'm glad you're here today because this topic is one that I know that just resonates with so many studio owners, so many business owners all over, you know, the longer hours, the more hours, the more hours, the more hours, the endless to-do lists, and that constant feeling of maybe being just that bit stretched way too thin. So if you opened your studio and you find yourself thinking, okay, you know, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I know it's gonna be a lot of work to start with, and then, you know, I will, it will settle, you know, once we get to a certain point, it will, we'll find our pace and our rhythm. But you're still in that place years later. And maybe you're wondering, you know, I just didn't open my studio to get this, to be this busy. You're not alone. This is a really common position to find yourself in. And I think it's a common position for many, many, many entrepreneurs, folks who've started their own businesses, who are willing to put in the hard work and effort for this idea and goal that the rewards will eventually come. Because the reality is that most people don't go into business because they love spreadsheets or they love putting together social media posts or because they like to set up those automations in their software. They you most of us do this because there is an impact that we want to make. You want probably want to share the love of that movement method that you teach, the way that you teach it, the impact you know it can have with a community of clients in your studio. And you opened your business but probably because you wanted to kind of do it your way with a bit of freedom and flexibility to make that all happen and to perhaps build that space that has that fantastic energy that you really want. And often happens what we start off willing to put in that effort, which is, you know, absolutely the right approach and idea, but it quickly turns into late nights, not just in the first sort of stage of business growth, but constantly and continually and ongoing. And there's perhaps no real downtime, um, even if you've been in business for years. And when we see this, it's it's often down to some of the habits and the way that you know you run your business. And there are often a few things missing. And I think if you're finding yourself in this place, you know, it you are not alone. And there are some simple ways to really shift things back to a place that can feel more manageable so that you're not just pouring more and more and more hours into your business and perhaps not getting back from the business what you really need. And this really matters, and it matters to me. And when I work with my studio owners, that they're so fantastic. And the the members in Saddle Thrive are just, I mean, they are the best, they are the best. They are so um generous with their energy and their enthusiasm, with their desire to make the impact and build great relationships and give a great experience to their clients. And they're willing to to work hard to make all of that happen. And one of the things that we are really focused on inside of the Thrive program is to help you to thrive not only as a business owner, but in life too. And that means that you probably have other things going on in your life that you want to balance with this fabulous business that you are building and running and can find very fulfilling. And that means that you have to show up as the best version of you, right? And that isn't always easy. And it's certainly not something that we have to expect ourselves to do every day of the week, but we want to make sure we're doing it that way more often than not. And the problem is that when we are working all hours of the day, those early morning teaching the classes, coming back to the studio in the evening to sub a class and in between doing all of the admin and all of the things, then you might find yourself exhausted. And when you show up exhausted, your clients feel it, your team feels it. And ultimately your business growth is capped because you're stuck in the weeds instead of you know, steering the ship, right? So I want to talk a little bit about what we see when I start working with studio owners and what I'm I've observed from working with hundreds of studio owners over the last decade of coaching and consulting in the boutique fitness space. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the things you can do to perhaps hit the reset button, uh, reclaim that time, perhaps put your energy in a better spot and allow yourself to enjoy your business and love your business and studio again. Now, if you're finding yourself a little bit overworked, you're often, it's often because we know that we'll wear a lot of hats, you know, and and there isn't always a quick and easy and fast way to take those hats off, right? We can't throw those hats away unless someone else is wearing those hats, right? Um, but if you find yourself um teaching classes, managing operations, posting to social media, answering every single client question, it probably does feel quite endless. The solution isn't just working more hours, right? That is really not the solution at all because your time is actually spread out across many different tasks. And that I think is one of the first um sort of issues that we strive to solve is bouncing from one thing to the next, uh, very different types of tasks is actually very, very draining for us. Um, so the the task bouncing is something that is a is a bit of a habit and a sort of a boundary that you might want to consider setting for yourself and thinking about how you structure your day and the tasks that you know might may come up. Um so it's not just that your time is spread across many different types of tasks, from creative tasks to problem solving to um managing people, um, and to to perhaps some of those sort of dull tasks from time to time. Um it's also that you are often spreading yourself off across tasks that are um low value in that they are, they need to get done, but they're not going to actually help you to move your business forward. And when you find yourself doing all of these different types of tasks and you are pulled into these tasks that are, you know, what we would call perhaps low impact tasks, you will probably find yourself feeling exhausted and burnt out. And again, I want a massive caveat here is that there are times in your business where, yes, you do have to step into that role. It ultimately falls down to you if people are out and things need to get done. Yes. But if you have been doing these tasks or are continually doing these tasks, you're the only one doing these tasks, then you will find yourself in a spot where you probably feel a little bit burnt out. You might find yourself resenting your business. You might even find yourself resenting your clients, right? Getting frustrated because they can just come and go and you're here, right? And the problem is, and ironically, is that the more you do it all, right, the less time you have and the less room you have for actual activities that drive growth. So you get stuck in the busy work and miss out on opportunities for growth, for scale. Um, and so I think one of the first things that we kind of have to wrap our heads around when we kind of go from being a, you know, sort of the deliverer of the things, so that the instructor, the teacher, right, which is often where we start from, and we move perhaps into that business owner role, which you have once you open your business and you're in control of your schedule and your pricing, is we have to move away from this idea, first of all, that working more equals success. Because working more hours doesn't equal more success. In fact, the opposite is often true. Some of the biggest growth that you will experience in your business will come when you move away from doing everything to focusing only on what drives revenue, on what drives impact, and on what drives growth. And it's really easy, you guys. I see it, I feel it, I'm in it with you to get pulled back into those tasks that you know how to do quickly and easily, right? Um, that no one else may know how to do in your business. Or it might take longer for someone else to do. The reality is that for every 10, 20, 30 minutes you take doing that quick task, right? I'm in ear quotes, quick task, um, that that's time that you could have spent elsewhere on bigger growth opportunities. And I think that, you know, we're we're we're sort of programmed, I think, from an early age to think that the solution or the goal is to push harder, teach more classes, run more promotions, stay later, finish the admin, send that email late at night, check your text messages to see who's cancelled, right? And that's sort of what we, you know, what what was in in we hear often being called sort of the hustle harder mentality. It can, you know, feel like you're doing a lot and maybe feel productive, but it is a bit of a trap, right? And, you know, when you are wearing all of the hats and you've kind of a your schedule looks like a bit of a patchwork, right? You are of of classes, of admin, of team management, you are always on. Um, and then you will never without sort of, you know, a bit of a reset, you won't find yourself moving out of that space. The impact is that, yes, you're gonna feel a bit resentful, you're gonna be tired, you know, you're probably making a hundred micro decisions every day about something. Um, you're the only one who knows how to do the things. So you can't, you, you, you kind of might feel like your business is sort of a weight. And people say that to me sometimes when they're sort of, ah, that place, it just feels heavy. And, you know, there's not a lot of space for that creative freedom and flexibility that you really, really wanted. And so that space, that growth opportunities comes from opening, having the ability to really almost dream about what's possible in your business. And that white space is so powerful, right? And the reality is for a lot of us, you know, we see ourselves as um as both a teacher and and a business owner for sure. And sometimes you're paying yourself by the hour that you teach, sometimes you're pulling a drawer, an owner salary, an owner drawer. Sometimes there's a combination of both. Sometimes you're just paying yourself based on what's left over, depending on how you structure your business and I encourage you to structure it in a way that allows you to get paid first. Um, but you may not be paid for everything, right? But the thing that you are and should get paid for is the quality of decisions that you make. So you are the only one who can really make decisions about growing your business, about taking your business forward. And in order for you to make those important decisions that only you can make, you need to have space to do that. And that means that that owner time is so critically important. I think it's the highest return on investment of any time that you can have in your business at all. Recently, I was so fortunate to get to spend time with some of our Thrive members at our annual retreat. And we took a lot of time to talk about sort of the bigger picture, the next steps, the business model, the opportunity, the gaps, where they want to take the business. And I think one of the most powerful things that all of those ladies did was to actually take the time to step out of their business and immerse themselves in this type of work. And it's really hard to do on your own. It's what we do a little bit of every single week instead of Thrive. It's that one hour on our strategy call each week where you get to focus on your business and not just be in your business. So this is not just a nice to have. This sort of CEO time is what we call it in Thrive. It's not a nice to have. It really is sort of a resource that is necessary and required for you to grow it because your business needs your attention. It needs your brain power, it needs your creativity, it needs your ideas and your thoughts and your input. And I think if we think about our time and break it down perhaps into sort of different value tiers, right? So maybe there's the$10 an hour tasks that might be scheduling someone in for a session, basic admin, um, data entry, right? The basic tasks. Then maybe there's the$100 an hour tasks. They might be look like, you know, your customer service, your client service, perhaps your teaching, maybe, you know, that, and you know, I'm saying these dollar numbers as sort of an example, not necessarily that that is what people should get paid. But just to think of it as the$10 an hour task, the$100 an hour task. Then you've got the$1,000 an hour tasks as well. This is where that's things like your pricing strategy, your um, your processes in your business, um, collaborations, right? And then you've got the 10,000 hour tasks. And that is your leadership development, investing in yourself, thinking beyond the next two or three months, thinking 12 months down the road, three years down the road, right? The folks that are overworked, overwhelmed, and exhausted live in the$10 an hour tasks and the$100 an hour work because it's the thing that's right there in front of them that needs to get done. But the studios, the studios that scale, the studios that grow, the studios that have owners who are fulfilled, who enjoy their studio and what they've built and truly feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement, they spend a lot of time in the$1,000 and the$10,000 an hour work. And because that is where you build the business that actually pays you back. And I encourage you to carve out that time and to protect it like you would protect an appointment with your favorite instructor. Okay. Because that is the time that will ultimately fuel your business. Okay. So this is the this is a critical time to spend on things like your goal setting, on analyzing your data, on um on analyzing what has worked and what hasn't, recognizing the strengths and the weaknesses and the gaps in the business. Okay. We do a lot of this in SAT of Thrive with our assessments that we have, with our ongoing workshops we have around goal setting, um, and with our annual train, with our with our monthly training sessions as well. Um, and so everyone in SATA Thrive is automatically working on the$1,000 an hour tasks and the$10,000 an hour tasks just by joining and joining our calls. So if you are interested in learning more about what those look like, then get in touch and learn a bit about Thrive. Okay. So the the shift I want you to think about is when you think about your time and where you're spending it in your business, are you spending it on$10 an hour tasks or are you spending it on$1,000 an hour tasks? Right. And it's not that you need to work harder, it's more about where you're putting your time. Okay. And yes, when you want to move from the$10 an hour tasks to the$1,000 an hour tasks, naturally, those$10 an hour tasks still need to be get done, right? For sure. So the question is, what system or structure are you going to put in place to facilitate that happening and removing yourself from that task? So who else can do it? Does it need to happen? And does it need to happen right now? So without structure, your business is going to feel chaotic, right? And you may constantly feel like you're putting out fires. You're in a very reactive mode. And I'm a big believer that, you know, calm and confidence comes from being sitting in a place of being proactive. And so there's not a productivity hack, there's no magic to this, truly. It's about building a system that helps you to organize your studio and what needs to happen around some sort of buckets of activities, marketing, client service, operations, leadership. And when you develop processes and um procedures for the different activities that happen in those buckets, you can help remove yourself from them. And that means, yes, you may need to delegate some of these items to others, which means that again, that's where your leadership skills are going to be required. Your leadership skills might be stretched a little bit there. And if you want to grow and if you want to scale and if you want to step off of that hamster wheel, it's really important to lean into your leadership skills. And if you feel like you don't have them, I would encourage you to invest in developing them in a program like Thrive. So my goal for the studio owners that I work with is to help them to build their business to run like a well-oiled machine. So it works whether they are there or not. It runs smoothly whether they are there or not. And they simply can come along and they can, you know, turn it up a little bit, turn it down, tweak it a little bit, and fuel it when they want to. And I want your business to do the same as well, right? Because once you have that machine running, oh my goodness, it gets really fun, you guys. It really, really does. And I've seen so many people come to me, you know, in that place where we know we talked about earlier, where you're feeling really stretched, where you're feeling like you're drained, where you're feeling like this, it's a weight, or you're nervous, or you're fearful, you're scared that it might not work, and you're living month to month and you're concerned that maybe next month is a month, you're not going to get a dollar out of your business. And I've seen them turn, A, turn their business around and B, actually have fun with it. And they go from being folks who perhaps join my program saying to me, and I'm thinking about one or two members in particular, but saying to me, you know, this is it. This I'm throwing my all my eggs in one basket, Sarah and I need your help, and this is the last thing I'm gonna try. And if it doesn't work, I'm closing the doors. And so, of course, I hear, I hear them and I take them through the processes that we have inside of Thrive. And oh my goodness, they're on our calls, they're laughing, they're smiling, they're happy, they're taking a week off here and two weeks off there, you know, maybe even a week apart, they're in and out of their studio because they built the machine, right? And I think that that is possible for you too. In fact, I know it's possible. Because when you have the systems in place and when you know what levers to pull in your business and how to drive it forward with the right strategies, the right systems, the right tools, the right support, then you can build your business to be whatever you want it to be as well. Because you guys, as the owner of the business, your role is not to do everything. Your role is to design the system so that everything can get done, right? Because systems create predictability and help to really free up your time as well. Okay. Now, I know that there is a lot wrapped up in all of this, right? Um, and so obviously you should not expect one podcast to change, um, change your business forever, as it were. Um, it takes um consistency, it takes a consistent review of your business, it takes a consistent review of your energy and time and where you're spending that. Um, but I think it also is about mindset and our expectations. And there is often this fear that if you step back or do less, that your studio will shrink, right? And I think that's what often keeps so many um in that sort of cycle of more, more, more, do, do, do. Um, and sometimes maybe you're worried that if you say no and you don't do it, and you say yes to that client who wants to take a to do a class at 6 a.m., even though you're already teaching at 7 p.m., that you're like, you're gonna, you're gonna, you know, that's that'll be the end of the business, right? And it means saying no to clients and it's it means saying no to revenue. But the truth is that ultimately your growth won't come from just adding more hours. It cut will come from making shifts to the way that you work. And when you are really, really, really thoughtful and intentional about where you spend your time in your business and focus on those perhaps higher impact activities, like designing your client experience, like strategic marketing, like leading your team, you will actually create more growth and you'll get more from your every hour that you spend in your business. And the reality is that that's a has a sort of a trickle-down effect into your other parts of your business that you may not see yet. Your team will be inspired and be excited because they see you stepping up. And your clients will love it too because they want you to be successful as well. They'll love it when you walk in the studio smiling, bouncing full of energy because you're not exhausted from teaching, you know, every hour of every day. And they'll feel your energy shift. And your studio will become that hub that is filled with great energy, and you will be fueled by that also. So a quick recap. If you feel like you're working too many hours, truly it's not because you're not dedicated enough. You are. It's probably because there are a few simple systems missing. And adding more to your plate and to your to-do list probably won't fix it. But shifting into focusing on systems and structure and your leadership probably will. And I want you to remember that your business is here to serve you, right? Not the other way around. The hours that you put in should multiply your impact and you know, not just drain you. So if all of this resonated with you and you want to get smarter about the way that you're building your business, you want to build a business that is sustainable, not just profitable, but is profitably sustainable to you, then I would love to invite you into Thrive. Inside, I take you through the building blocks of the exact systems that help studio owners to earn more while working perhaps the exact hours they want to work. So you can learn more at springthree.com forward slash thrive because truly I know that you are capable of building the business that you want, and you deserve the business that gives you freedom and profit, not just more work. So I hope this is helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business. If you enjoyed what you heard today, I would be so appreciative if you could go to wherever you're listening to this, take a quick minute and rate and review this podcast. It would mean so much to me and help to get this out there in front of perhaps a few other studio owners who could use a break. Alright, until next week, you guys, have a good one. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to springfree.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder. There is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So, whatever it is that you want to do, create, or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.