Opening Is Just the Beginning: What Happens in the First five Months of a Pilates Studio?

When we opened the doors to Santéva on 1st May, everyone kept asking me the same things: “Are you proud?”, “Can you believe what you've achieved?” and “How does it feel to finally be open?”

Of course I was proud. We'd taken an idea, created a brand, built a studio, recruited a team and put a huge amount of work into pre-launch. We opened with Founder Members already committed to us and a strong pipeline ready to come through the doors.

But I always found those questions slightly difficult to answer, because I never saw opening day as the finish line. I knew it was when the real work would start.

I've worked in the fitness industry for a long time and have run different styles of fitness businesses over the years, so I wasn't going into Santéva blind. I understood sales, retention, staffing, timetables, customer service and all the considerably less glamorous things that sit behind running a fitness business.

But experience doesn't mean you can predict everything a completely new business will throw at you.

Movement was never going to mean the same thing to everyone

One of the ideas behind Santéva from the beginning was movement for everybody.

Years of working in fitness have taught me that there isn't one way to train that works for everyone. Some people want to feel strong and challenged. Some need to slow down. Some love Reformer. Some want to sweat in a heated room. Others absolutely do not.

I wanted Santéva to reflect that.

So we deliberately created a multi-modality studio with Reformer, mat Pilates, heated classes, yoga and different styles and levels within them.

I knew that would make the business more complex, what I perhaps hadn't appreciated was just how many questions it would generate.

Injuries, medical conditions, teenagers, beginners, pregnancy, heat tolerance, class levels and grip socks... so many questions about grip socks.

Some have a straightforward answer. Others have involved us sitting down as a team, talking through the different considerations and using everyone's experience to decide the right approach.

Sometimes that answers one question, sometimes it creates a whole new policy. You realise very quickly that putting great classes on a timetable is only half the job. You have to build the framework around them too.

Then more than 500 intro offers arrived

The work we put into pre-launch paid off.

We opened with Founder Members and within our first months more than 500 introductory offers were purchased.

An incredible start, and a very quick way to test everything we'd built.

We had far more complete beginners than I'd anticipated. Some had never stepped on a Reformer, some had never done Pilates and others were returning to exercise after years away.

Suddenly, we weren't simply selling classes. We were educating people.

Where should I start? What's Foundations? When can I progress? What's the difference between Pilates and Sculpt? Is this class going to kill me?

When you look at the timetable every day, it all seems perfectly obvious. When you've never been to a Pilates studio before, it really isn't.

It's made us constantly rethink how we explain what we do and how we make a studio with lots of choice actually feel simple to use.

I still thought we should be growing faster

Despite hundreds of new people coming through, I still kept thinking: we need to grow faster.

More leads, more intros, more members, fuller classes.

There is always another number you can chase when you run a business.

But eventually I had to ask myself: if we'd grown significantly faster, could we actually have serviced that growth properly?

Probably not.

I've learned that capacity isn't simply an empty bed in a Reformer class. It's having the right instructors, enough beginner-friendly classes, systems that can keep up and enough time to actually support the people you've worked so hard to bring through the door.

More than 500 intros isn't simply 500 sales. It's hundreds of individual experiences, questions and first impressions.

There were probably moments when I was trying to push the accelerator on growth when the business actually needed time to catch up with the growth we'd already created.

Knowing when to move fast.. and when not to

This has probably challenged me personally as much as anything.

I've always been someone willing to take a risk. If I have an idea, my natural instinct is: great, let's book it in for tomorrow and then move heaven and earth to make it happen.

There are times when that mentality is exactly what's needed. It's helped me build businesses and get things off the ground rather than endlessly talking about them.

But Santéva is teaching me that knowing when not to move quickly is just as important.

With a bigger, fuller team, every decision has more moving parts. Something that feels simple to me might affect instructors, members, the timetable, communication and systems behind the scenes.

Sometimes slowing down isn't a lack of ambition, it's making sure that when we do something, we do it properly.

I'm still learning the balance between trusting my instinct, taking the risk and recognising when the better decision is to walk before we run.

Freelance doesn't mean disconnected

Multi-modality also means a bigger team of freelance instructors with different specialisms, personalities and ways of working.

I've learned that freelance instructors need more connection and support than you might initially think.

I don't want Santéva to be a studio where instructors simply turn up, teach their class and leave. I want to bring them on the journey with us, give them space to develop and make them feel part of what we're building, while still respecting the independence that comes with being freelance.

But that takes time. It takes planning, communication and, most importantly, trust. It's not something you create with one team meeting or WhatsApp group.

We're still working out what that looks like for Santéva, and I think we will be for a while. But if we want the studio to feel different, the people delivering it have to feel part of it too.

Experience has also taught me to ask for help

One thing I haven't been afraid to do is ask for help (and pay for it).

Having experience doesn't mean having every answer, if anything, experience has made me quicker to recognise when I don't.

I've asked experts, brought in support and paid for advice where somebody knows considerably more than I do.

Protecting cash matters, particularly in a new business. But trying to save money in the wrong place can become very expensive. Sometimes an hour with the right person saves weeks of figuring it out yourself, or stops you making a much more costly mistake.

Five months in

We're only just reaching the end of month five, and there is still so much we're figuring out.

We're building relationships, setting boundaries, improving systems, developing our team and learning more about our members every week. I'm sure there are things we do today that we'll look back on in another six months and wonder why we ever did them that way.

But I'm clearer than ever about what I want Santéva to be.

Movement doesn't look the same for everybody. I want us to keep creating a studio where people can find the way they like to move, feel comfortable trying something new and, above all, trust the space they're walking into.

So yes, I am proud of what we've built.

I'm just much more excited about what we're still building.

Five months in, we've learned a lot. We've got plenty wrong, changed plenty and asked more questions than I could count.

And I wouldn't want to stop doing any of those things.

Because I don't think the goal is to reach a point where we've got Santéva completely figured out. It's to keep learning enough to make it better.

30 Blogs in 30 Days

Throughout October, we’re sharing one new blog every day, bringing together studio owners, instructors and industry experts to share their experiences, knowledge and perspectives on the Pilates industry.

Day 3 of 30, come back tomorrow for the next blog.