Successful Fitness and Yoga Studios don’t make mistakes that are going to cost them their business or all their savings. It happens all too often that a struggling studio has either underestimated the costs of building the business or they have run into slow times and they panic. Suddenly their revenue is not where they feel it needs to be and they are offering all kinds of deals, changing instructors and classes in order to “boost sales.” Successful Studios don’t do this.
Successful Studios don’t knee jerk. Before making big changes or doing anything, they make sure they are seeing the problem clearly. They delve into the reasons why sales are slowing. They know that making big changes to their business model is disruptive and costs them money. With the wrong choice it can cause them to lose clients or students, piss of their loyal instructors or just generally cause chaos. Instead they stop and dig into the data until they understand exactly what is not working. Is it a particular time, a particular class type, a particular teacher that is resulting in lower head counts? And then they take that particular weakness and drill down deeper. What about that class isn’t working? Is it too hard, too easy, is the marketing not right so that new students aren’t getting what they expected?
That’s what successful Studios do. They drill down, drill down. They figure out the real problem so that when they create a solution to the problem they create the RIGHT solution. It may take them more time, but it ultimately saves big money and a lot of wasted time. You can’t succeed by responding to the wrong problem.
Sometimes a Studio finds under analysis that their overall numbers are weak across the board, all times, all teachers, and all classes. Then upon further checking in the community they find other studios are experiencing the same as well. In this case it is more a result of a weak economy than something that they are doing so making a big change in their business model would simply be costly and defeating. They are better off cutting costs where they can and offering a reasonable promotional discount just to keep their name out in the community and keep some activity happening.
So how do you know? How do you drill down to figure out the problem? You start with good Management Software. My Best Studio Online Management Software for instance generates reports that will isolate all the different facets of your business and show you in real time what is not performing. You can take this information and do some interviewing of instructors, staff and even a student or two to get the best, most accurate, picture of what is really happening in your Studio.
Successful Studios are not precious about their business model or advertising. They look at performance with an objective eye that recognizes that the customer is always right. If customers are not responding to what they’re offering, they will understand what it is that the customer prefers and offer it too them, or they will market to new clients that are more suited to their business.
By making smart choices and introducing solutions strategically, then tracking the results of the solutions with My Best Studio’s Reports you will know exactly how the improvements or advertising you’ve made are affecting your Studio’s performance. You will know what is happening and why so that you can tweak your solutions or celebrate when the time is right.
Education, clear vision and a willingness to make the right choices is the path to happy studio doors swinging wildly! If you have an experience to share, maybe something that worked or didn’t work for your studio, please send me a note.Jeff@Mybeststudio.com
Happy travels,
Jeff Haywood