How to Achieve Your Pilates Business Goals

You don't have to have big goals or lots of goals, you just need to know your goal

Your Pilates Business Goals and Visions

I talk about goals and visions all the time! I’m not the only one. There are plenty of people out there telling you to make resolutions, set goals, do visualization experiments. You’ve heard it more times than you can count. I bet you’ve even set a few here and there and achieved some or let go of others. Today, I want to talk about achieving your Pilates business goals.

Business goals get tricky when you work for yourself (or even a Pilates studio) because it can be hard to separate what’s possible from what’s possible when you’re in the thick of it.  Sometimes we set goals because they sound good, goals that others before us have set, so we assume that must be what we should set. For example, you may be struggling to keep your schedule full, so having a goal of teaching 20 hours a week can seem like an uphill battle. Then you start off feeling defeated and ditch the vision altogether. Or, you think 20 hours a week sounds like a great goal, so you put it down, but you really don’t have 20 hours of availability to give, so you’ve set yourself up to fail at the start.

I don’t want you to avoid goal setting and I don’t want you to feel weighed down by your goals either. Goals should make you feel excited and even a little uncomfortable (in a good way) to strive for. This week I want you to start chewing on the idea of achieving the goals you set for your Pilates business. The only catch: They have to be truly all yours and not anyone else’s. So here we go!

Build your Pilates Business Dream wooden blocks.
You get a sense of excitement and motivation towards hitting your goal when you share it.

Tips to Reach your Goals

1) Don’t quit your day job: You may want to dive into teaching full time or hand over more of your clients to your studio teachers so you can focus on your next project (hosting a teacher training, expanding the studio, etc.). It’s important that you don’t give up where the income is from just yet. You’ll need to straddle your “two lives” a bit until you can fully jump over to the other side. Why? Because putting pressure on a goal too early can cause you to make decisions that you normally would not make. Maybe you want to teach only in the mornings. You give up your side gig and then need a little extra money because you haven’t fully filled your morning cup. You end up saying yes to a night client. I know—it’s just this one time. Until it becomes next week and then another client joins in…. Suddenly you’re teaching mornings and nights, and you feel as if you are no longer in charge of your schedule. Instead, wait until you can make the leap to mornings without putting pressure on yourself to teach whenever someone asks. When I first started teaching, I was still managing a jewelry store. I opened up a teaching schedule for three hours in the morning before work, three days a week. Then when those filled I opened up the next two mornings. When I had all of those hours filled, I quit my job.

2) Add your goals to your calendar: Writing your Pilates business goals down is one thing. It’s not that hard, and it also doesn’t take much commitment. Creating a goal, setting a deadline for it, and then making up an action plan that works backward from the dates in your calendar requires thinking and planning for each step. Think about a road trip from LA to NY. Would you jump in the car and drive northeast? Or, would you grab a map and plan the stops along the way, making sure you not only got there on time but also in the most direct way? I know you’d probably use Google maps to create the plan. But even then you would still plan your rest breaks so you didn’t end up sleeping in your car on the side of the road! When I wrote my book I didn’t just write my goal “publish Profitable Pilates” and then go start writing. I created the goal: “Profitable Pilates book final draft,” and I added a date. Then I wrote, “edit Profitable Pilates,” and put a date for that. I also wrote dates for when each chapter was due and then dates each chapter outline was due. Then there was a date for the table of contents…. You get the idea. See how each goal gets you one step closer to your larger goal? Closer to the day I was writing the big goal. Those little stepping stones made the big goal seem far less cumbersome, and because I put each one on my calendar, I could then arrange my other commitments around these benchmarks. No excuses for not having time.

3) Go through the obstacle: That’s right! Hurdle over it instead of going around it. When you are planning your goals and putting your mini-goals in your planner, think of the possible things that can go wrong—hurdles, obstacles, etc. This is not to discourage you. Nope, that’s why we are thinking about them now! Now we are not so “in it” that we can’t see the forest for the trees. If you have an idea of what can go wrong, then you can make “to-do lists” to avoid those hurdles from even being an issue. You won’t be able “to-do” it all away, but you’ll have all the tools to leap right over it. Also, by having your obstacles laid out now, you won’t hit one and throw the towel in on the whole project. Even if one pops up you didn’t anticipate, you will still be able to handle it because you had planned for so many other things—your mental will and active brain will be ready for action. Let’s say your goal is to raise your rates. You’ll pick a deadline when the new rates will go into effect. You’ll work backward with benchmarks that can be traced to today’s tasks that need to be completed to raise your rates. Then you’ll think about the roadblocks that could come up. What will your current clients say? How will you handle that? What if a client wants to purchase 5 packages at the current rates? Will you let them? Thinking up as many scenarios as you can now will help you articulate the rate increase in a way that mitigates these potential road hazards.

4) Celebrate mini benchmarks: when you hit one of the steps that leads to your goal, take a moment to celebrate your achievement! This way you don’t feel like you’re going full steam ahead 24/7. Reflection allows you to reenergize your efforts and build confidence. If you wanted to get three clients to add an extra session each week, then as soon as one does go pat yourself on the back! Have that treat (not a shopping spree,) but a treat that marks you hitting the first of 3 benchmarks. Then, you’ll be more motivated to get that second and third one. You must celebrate your wins! Another reason why celebrations are great is that we tend to think back on the moments we celebrate. This will help you recreate what worked with the first client so that you can achieve success with the next and so on.

5) Have a coach: You have to have someone who is holding you accountable. It’s too easy to put something on the to-do list or the calendar and then push it off to the next day, week, month, and then all of a sudden, it’s been a year! Don’t have one? Then contact me. I’ll help you take your vision, set your goals, and hit them!

Achieving your business goals isn’t easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. Think about it. The times you’ve felt the most excited, proud, and strong were when you did something you thought you couldn’t. We manage what we monitor. We attract what we track. Do you want to hit your Pilates business goals? You need to know what they are, write them down, plan and schedule, get your armor ready for hurdles, grab a coach, and then go for it! Need help getting the vision? Take my course on “teaching your vision” or contact me, and we’ll do it together! You don’t have to have big goals or lots of goals. You just need to know your goal.

Goal Get ’em,

xx~LL

Female Pilates Instructor being trained by her male Pilates Coach
Having a conversation with your Pilates coach will help you take your vision and set your goals

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

<a href="https://profitablepilates.com/instructor/lesley-logan-2/" target="_self">Lesley Logan</a>

Lesley Logan

Lesley Logan fell in love with Pilates after her first 100! From side-hustle to full time, she jumped from teacher to manager to running multiple studios. She wrote a book that focused on the business of Pilates, which grew into ProfitablePilates.com and is now a business coaching program called Agency. Take class from LL at OnlinePilatesClasses.com and listen to her podcast at LesleyLogan.co/podcast. When not in Las Vegas she travels, leading workshops and retreats around the world.

2 Comments

  1. claunvarro@hotmail.com

    Hello Leslie, just wanted to thank you for this blog, it so puts mi thoughts in words plus got the information accurate right from a pilates coach. Thanks so much! Love to receive much more info !

    Reply
    • Lesley Logan

      Thank you so much for reading this week’s blog! It just felt like time to share. And, it sounds like it was perfect timing for you! Have you signed up for my newsletters? There is a lot of good info in those every week. And, you can make sure you get these blogs sent to your inbox! xx~LL

      Reply

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