The Studio Owner's Weekly Routine: What Should You Actually Be Doing?

As your studio grows, your role as an owner inevitably changes.

You build a team, you delegate, you put systems and processes in place, you might have someone managing operations, someone looking after sales and someone running your marketing.

And that’s exactly what should happen. But there’s a difference between stepping out of every task and stepping away from the business.

I believe a studio owner still needs to have a pulse on their business every single week. You need to know what your members are experiencing, what your team is experiencing, what your numbers are telling you and what needs to happen next.

So, what should a studio owner actually be doing every week?

1. Be present in your studio

For me, presence is still one of the most important parts of being a studio owner. I think owners should teach regularly where possible, even if that’s only four sessions a week.

Not because you should be filling gaps in the timetable or because the business should depend on you teaching, but because teaching gives you an insight into your business that a spreadsheet simply cannot.

You hear what members are talking about, you notice when something in the studio isn’t working properly, you understand which classes have energy and which feel flat, you see what your instructors are doing brilliantly and where they might need more support.

And, importantly, you start to understand the different customers using your studio. The person attending at 9:30am may want something completely different from the person rushing through the doors for a 5:30pm class after work.

If you’re never on the studio floor, how do you really know?

And if teaching isn’t part of your role, presence still should be. Spend time checking members in, greet people, watch classes, speak to instructors, listen to conversations, ask members how they’re finding things.

You cannot know everything that is happening behind closed doors if you are never physically inside the business.

2. Know your numbers every week

You shouldn’t wait until the end of the month to discover whether you’ve had a good month, your numbers should be something you look at weekly.

Even if you have a finance team, bookkeeper, operations manager or sales manager producing reports, as the owner I believe you should still understand the figures yourself.

At a minimum, I want to know:

* What are our occupancy rates?
* How much revenue have we taken?
* How are we performing compared with last week?
* How are we performing compared with last month?
* Where possible, how does this compare with the same period last year?

Then go one step further and ask why. If occupancy has dropped, where has it dropped? If revenue is up, what has driven it? If one particular class time is consistently underperforming, is it the concept, instructor, time, marketing or simply a change in customer behaviour?

Numbers shouldn’t just be reported, they should inform your next action. A performance-led studio isn’t managed on gut feeling alone.

3. Review your marketing activity

Marketing isn’t something you turn on when classes become quiet. Every week, I want to understand what we are doing to keep our brand visible and our community engaged.

What content is being scheduled? What are we communicating to existing members? What campaigns are running? Are there local networking opportunities, partnerships or events we should be attending?

What are we doing to generate new leads and what are we doing to retain the people who already love the business?

You don’t necessarily need to personally execute every piece of marketing, particularly as you grow. But you should know what’s happening.

Because marketing, sales, operations and the actual studio experience cannot operate as four completely separate functions. They all feed into one another

Reformer Pilates at Studio 281, founded by Georgia Testa.

4. Check in with your team

Your instructors are one of your biggest sources of information. They’re speaking to your customers every day. They’re seeing which sessions are filling, hearing feedback and noticing changes in behaviour.

So talk to them, and don’t make every conversation about performance.

Ask:

Do you feel supported? Is there anything making your job unnecessarily difficult? Is there education or upskilling that would help you? What are members asking you for? What could we improve?

A strong studio needs instructors who feel confident, educated and invested in what you’re building. Sometimes a small operational change can make somebody’s working week considerably easier, but you’ll never know about it unless you ask.

5. Keep looking outside your four walls

Being immersed in your own business is important, but so is occasionally looking up.

What’s changing within the industry? What courses are available? What events should you be attending? What new concepts are emerging? What’s happening within fitness and wellness more broadly?

And yes, what is your local competition doing?

This isn’t about copying other studios, it’s about understanding the market you’re operating in.

Your business doesn’t exist in isolation. Customer expectations change, trends change, technology changes, the studios around you change.

Staying curious is part of staying relevant.

6. Think three to six months ahead

One of the hardest transitions as a studio owner is learning to stop spending your entire week reacting. Staff sickness. A customer complaint. A broken reformer. A timetable gap. A campaign that needs approving.

There will always be something.

But while you’re managing this week, part of your brain needs to be thinking about the next three to six months.

What will your customers need next season? Are your timetables going to need changing? What are you launching? Where are the potential revenue opportunities? What education does your team need now to be ready for what’s coming? What needs fixing before it becomes a bigger problem?

The strongest businesses aren’t constantly surprised by what’s around the corner. They’re preparing for it.

The 1% mindset

I don’t think running a great studio is about making enormous changes every Monday morning. It’s about consistently asking: how can we make this 1% better?

One improvement to the member journey, one better process, one conversation with an instructor, one timetable adjustment, one improvement to a class, one new partnership, one piece of education.

Individually, they can feel insignificant. Over the course of a year, they compound.

There’s a quote I come back to often: “we overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year.”

I think that applies perfectly to studio ownership. You don’t need to transform your business every week. But you do need to be present enough to see it, analytical enough to understand it, curious enough to keep learning and forward-thinking enough to know where you’re taking it.

Your job as the owner isn’t to do everything, it’s to make sure you know enough about everything to keep moving the business forward.

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 10 of 30, come back tomorrow for the next blog.