I saw a post on Instagram recently that made me laugh (and wince). Eight reformers, £25 a class, eight classes a day, seven days a week. That's over £11,000 a week, and according to the post, it's all profit. Obviously.
If only. That sum leaves out rent, instructors, equipment, software, marketing, tax and the small matter of whoever's actually running the place. But I get it, because I did exactly the same maths with my first business.
My first 'studio' wasn't even Pilates. It was a dance business, and by most measures it was a roaring success. We hired a hall for a flat fee, sold 12-week courses and filled every single one.
My maths was beautifully simple. Course income, minus the hall, minus the instructor (often me), equals profit. Easy.
What I didn't count was everything else. The weeks I spent standing in a shopping centre with a clipboard, asking bemused shoppers how much they'd pay for a class. The flyering. The website I built myself. The marketing I wrote at midnight. The instructors I recruited and covered. The trips all over the city to look at yet another draughty hall.
If I'd counted all that, and looked at what was left over it would have been, well... not a lot. Certainly not enough to justify the hours. ( I'm fairly sure I also ignored tax costs. Yawn. Which only made things worse.)
If I'd been honest about my time and true costs of my business, I'd have earned more stacking shelves at the supermarket. Or, more to the point, teaching at someone else's studio, where I'd have done the bit I loved and gone home.
Thankfully, after a few painful lessons in what not to do, I finally figured out how to have a business, not an expensive job. Fast forward to today and the business owner's hat is well and truly on.
I see a version of that story in almost every studio owner I coach. It's never a lack of talent or passion. These owners are brilliant teachers and community builders. But teaching, or looking in from the outside, only shows you the part of a studio that makes money. Owning one means seeing all of it, often before you even open your doors.
So here are the six mistakes I see most often. If you recognise yourself in a few of them, welcome to the club. (I was a member for years, but you don't have to be!)
1. You don't know what your studio really costs to run
The symptoms: You set your prices by checking out the studio down the road, or by what you'd happily pay for a class yourself. Not because it's a great idea, but because you don't actually know what it costs to run your studio, so there's nothing else to go on. And your hours? They don't feature anywhere in the sums.
What it's costing you: If you don't know your real costs, you can't see your path to profit, so every price you set is a guess. And the cost most owners leave out is themselves. Let's say you spend 10 hours a week (and yes, that's likely an understatement) on admin, marketing, emails and frantically finding cover. At £20 an hour, that's over £850 a month of work your pricing isn't paying for.
What owners do instead: Work out what it truly costs to run your studio, then price from there. List every task (including any classes you teach) and how long it takes, and give that time a rate. Add it to rent, instructor pay, software, insurance, equipment, marketing and tax. That's your real cost base, and your prices need to cover it with profit on top. Not vibes. Not the studio down the road.
If you're not sure what you're worth, I suggest an experiment here. Use a time tracking app for a few weeks to get a real view of how much time you spend on different areas of the business, from marketing, to admin, to teaching, and everything else in between. Then work out what an hourly rate would be for those roles so you can see what the true value of your work is.
Most importantly, you can see how much it would cost to replace you. That annoying admin task that could be done by someone else for £15 an hour, and you dread every week? Gone. That leaves you able to focus on the higher-value tasks that actually need you and potentially drive revenue, like membership conversations, delivering workshops, or planning your expansion.
If you can't pay yourself properly yet, work out how long you can afford not to. In the meantime, pay yourself something anyway, even a small amount. It's a habit, just like paying your team, and the sooner you start, the less weird it feels. If actually transferring the money to yourself feels out of reach, then start by moving it to a savings space within your business account on an automated schedule. (More on that below.)
2. You think money in the bank means profit
The symptoms: You sell drop-ins and class packs. Packs fly out, the bank balance looks lovely, and you start wondering whether you're actually quite good at this.
What it's costing you: Here's the catch. When someone buys a class pack, you get the money now but deliver the classes over the next three months. So next month you need new pack sales to cover classes you've already been paid for. And the month after that. You feel profitable, but you're always relying on the next sale, which starts to look suspiciously like a pyramid scheme and leaves you panicked in naturally slower months.
What owners do instead: Get to know the difference between cash flow and profit. It's not the most thrilling reading, but it changes every decision you make. Build your core offer around memberships priced to cover your real costs, with a proper system for moving intro pass clients onto them.
Then take tax out of the equation before you can spend it.
I love the Profit First system, where every two weeks a set percentage of revenue goes into a separate account for corporation tax and VAT, as well as team costs, operational expenses and, as the name suggests, profit. Out of sight, out of temptation. If you're interested to know more about this, the book, "Profit First for Microgyms" by John Briggs is a great place to start.
Elle Kealy, co-founder and CEO of Move Union
3. You make decisions on a hunch (then announce them to everyone at once)
The symptoms: Something feels off, so you react. You haven't raised your prices in three years, panic, change them overnight and email everyone: "Hi all, our prices have changed!" Or you decide you really should have memberships, so you pop some on the booking system and launch them with no plan for actually selling them. Or a class type feels like it isn't working, so you pull it from the schedule without checking the numbers. (Cue the complaints.)
What it's costing you: Decisions made on a feeling rather than facts, and changes that land like a bombshell. Members panic, your team gets caught off guard fielding the fallout, and the people who've backed you from day one feel like they're being punished for their loyalty. Some of them leave. Even a good decision can go badly if it's rolled out like this.
What owners do instead: Check before you change. Look at what's really happening in the business. Is that class actually empty, or just quieter than the rest? Are your prices genuinely out of date, or is something else going on? Then ask one simple question: does this decision take me closer to where I want the studio to be?
If it does, plan how you'll roll it out so it feels like an act of service to your team and your clients, not a mass panic. Brief your team first, so they can answer questions with confidence. Give the people affected time, a choice and a proper conversation. With new memberships and pricing, for example, new clients simply start on the new structure, while existing clients get something closer to a second launch that rewards them for being with you from the start. That's the service people expect from a boutique studio anyway. Done well, everyone wins.
4. You wait to be chosen
The symptoms: As an instructor, you may never really have had to sell. So now you're the owner, selling feels a bit... icky. You avoid it, or you discount until it feels less awkward. Or you hope your stunning interiors and socials will do the selling for you, and you pray it works.
What it's costing you: Empty spots, endless discounts and lots of money spent getting someone to try you, only for them to never return. Selling isn't always easy. Picture a junior team member on your front desk, possibly on minimum wage, being asked to sell a premium membership they're unlikely to buy themselves. If they don't believe in the value, they can't sell it. So it's not just you who needs to believe in what you're selling. It's everyone.
What owners do instead: Think of selling as prescribing. When you go to the doctor, you explain what's wrong and they tell you what you need. Do the same. Train your team to ask clients what they want and why they came to you, then match them to the option that will get them there. Instructors are actually brilliant at this, because they know exactly how often someone needs to come and which classes will get them results.
Yes, point people towards the longer memberships. Not because you're greedy, but because one month won't get them what they came for. A membership gives them structure, support, accountability and a plan. Lots of people have unsuccessfully tried to get into a fitness routine before and are terrified of failing again. They need you to believe in them so they can bet on themselves.
Once I saw it that way, selling stopped feeling icky. Now I genuinely love it.
5. You build the schedule for your people, not your business
The symptoms: You give your instructors what you'd have wanted as an instructor. Guilty. I've built a schedule around an instructor who wanted three classes back to back, not because a single client was asking for them or because I had enough members to cover it. Or, you build it for the handful of vocal clients that tell you they'd definitely come to a 5am class, but when you finally run it, they never book in.
What it's costing you: Higher costs, a run of very quiet classes that nobody loves attending or teaching and a margin that gets thinner by the week.
What owners do instead: Build your timetable from true client demand, then fit your instructors around it. Look at how full each class is, protect the busy slots and move or cut the quiet ones. Review your attendance rates every month. Give new sessions time to build, but set a clear cut-off point and targets they need to hit to stay on the schedule.
Your instructors are vital. Invest in them, care about them, support them. Of course give them back to back classes where you can. But you can't run your studio for them, because if the studio doesn't work, there's no studio for anyone to teach in. And that helps nobody.
6. You never clock in as the owner
The symptoms: You teach, you clean, you answer every email and you probably fix the loo. Looking at the numbers feels scary, so you don't, and the receipts go to your accountant in a carrier bag at the end of the year. (No judgement.)
What it's costing you: You find problems late, make decisions on gut feel, and never quite get round to asking whether your offer or your pricing is right.
What owners do instead: Put a weekly owner hour, or morning, in your diary and treat it like a class you can't cancel. Use it to check a handful of numbers: revenue, new intro passes, how many intros become members, cancellations and how full your classes are. Get to grips with the grown-up stuff too, like VAT, cash flow, margins and which receipts you actually need. Put aside time quarterly to plan ahead, set goals, and map out what you can actually do to hit them.
And ask for help where you've got gaps. I worked with a coach, which simply wasn't a thing in our industry when I opened my first studio. I wish it had been. It would have saved me years.
How many of these sound like you?
Be honest. Nobody's watching.
Do you know what your hours would cost if you paid someone else to do them?
Could you tell me your profit last month, not just your takings?
Is your tax already set aside, in a separate account?
Do you make big decisions from your numbers, not your gut?
Do you and your team feel confident selling long-term memberships?
Is your timetable built on what fills, not who asked?
Do you have time in your week that's just for running the business?
If you said yes to these, then congratulations, you're on the right path. If you said no to a few, it doesn't mean you're bad at this. It means your studio was built on passion, and now it needs a plan.
Making that shift doesn't mean loving Pilates any less. It means building a business strong enough to protect the thing you love. And paying yourself properly while you do it. Imagine that.
This is exactly what we work on in Move Union's 12-week studio coaching programme: pricing, memberships, sales and the systems that hold them together. Find out more at moveunion.co.
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 27 of 30, come back tomorrow for the next blog.
