Good Opportunity

Cv19 is teaching us more than how often we should be washing our hands. This time is revealing to you where you’ve been building your business on a shaky foundation. Sure, you might miss and wish you could “go back to normal” but was that really working out for you? If it was then you’re not someone who is worried during this time if you’ll survive. But, after reading the many emails and dm’s over the last two months what I’ve seen is many teachers and studio owners walking a fine line of being in business and not. And, this pandemic is affecting more than just our health and way of life. It’s truly affecting many teachers and studio owner’s future livelihood. And, sure, you can sit back and lament over all that you’re losing or you can read on and see why it is good that you have this opportunity.

Evaluate Your Business

Now is the time to be evaluating these areas of your business:

1. Your Prices: If you are not sitting there with the runway to get through two to three months of low to no work then it’s worth looking back at the prices, sessions and packages you were offering. Do you know your lowest dollar amount you can work for and make your living? My AGENCY members (and next week my AGENCY MINI members) know how to figure out what they need to be charging to make the money they want to make. And, while EVERYONE has been affected by this virus they are able to still charge their rates and make close to what they were making before.
2. Your Offerings: let’s get honest, it’s not going to be anytime soon that equipment classes and even big mat classes will be allowed. And, even if where you live they are allowed whose to say people will feel safe coming. Now is the time to explore what classes, offerings, packages and memberships were actually serving your business and which ones were not.
3. Your Schedule: very few teachers out there were working their ideal schedule. Unless you had a hard set schedule to work around like many parents or people who teach as their side gig you were likely working 6-7 days a week with classes and sessions sprinkled throughout the day. Leaving you with little time to do anything that propelled your business forward. Or time to do your sessions, self-care routine etc. Do you really want to go back to a time where you are overworking but being underpaid?
4.  Your website and social media: when times are “good” we tend to let things go. Or, just continue to do what we think is working but rarely take the time to evaluate it. When is the last time you updated the pictures on your website? Are you attracting your ideal client or still trying to talk to everyone? Are you posting pics on social to attract people to classes or are you taking the time to serve them? Talk to them and engage with them? Or, worse, are you scrolling and leaving social media feeling like a failure, imposter or like you’re not able to compete with the other teachers out there? Now is the time to revamp who you want to be talking to and how you want to talk to them. This pause is exactly what you need to reset!
5. Your vision: When’s the last time you took the time to sit with your vision? When was the last time you reviewed it? Who is in it? Where you live? If you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing then it makes it really freaking hard to get up and go for it. In fact, it makes it really hard to know who to say ‘no’ to. I am a massive fan of vision setting and filtering all decisions through them. Its times like these when you feel you’re at the bottom or getting close that sitting with your vision is the most important. It’s how we know which way to go! Here’s a podcast where I talk about vision setting.
6. Get honest: Was your life really what you dreamed of before this? Look, I loved my life before this but that doesn’t mean I want it back. There was some things in my work schedule I wanted to get rid of. And, there were things I was doing in my life that I liked but I didn’t feel like they were serving me. So, sure I hate that this is happening to us all. People are getting sick and dying. Pilates studios and other small businesses are suffering so much. Many will close. But, we cannot go back. You know that before this your business needed some tweaking. You’ve been given the time to make those tweaks happen. Plus you can blame all of it on CV19.

Look, my friend, this time is beyond rough, its extremely sad, we are not even close to be through it. But, if you’re sitting there counting the days until you can reopen without taking inventory and making the changes in your business now you won’t survive the up’s and downs to come. This reentry to life is not going to be “back to normal.” There will be some services your space can offer and others you cannot. If you’re not taking the time to see how you can creatively serve your clients, your ideal clients, and proactively make changes to your business you will feel the effects of this longer than others. But, if you are taking the time to evaluate everything and making those changes you can go through this and end up with multiple offerings that allow your business to be nimble and move with this crazy, unprecedented, and pretty freaking scary time.

So, what are you going to use this time to do in our business?

xx~LL

PS You don’t need to do this alone. And in fact, you shouldn’t. Brad and I brought back our raved about AGENCY MINI sooner than we had planned to help teachers and studio owners thrive their way through CV19. Get 7 days of business coaching, community, and strategical actions! Sign up here for our waitlist so you can be notified about our next AGENCY MINI.