Excerpt from Pilates Hour #127 “Finding New Clients Online” with BizHack Founder Dan Grech
If you believe in what you do, and you are selling someone on becoming a member of what you do, such as buying a 10-pack of classes or scheduling their next session with you, you can learn to look at this as you giving them a gift to stay in touch and helping them stay on track to reach their goals.
Telling Your Business Story
This is what I believe in, this is why my company exists, and this is my deeply personal reason for doing it! My personal story of how movement and movement science connect for me is…
This is telling your business story. The goal is to do this in a systematic way across all of your marketing. This is the underlying melody behind all of the notes in your marketing symphony.
Sustainability in The Pilates Industry
Customer communications are the most powerful form of marketing. What you say before and after a session is your most powerful form of marketing and it’s where so many Pilates instructors fall short. I’ve never met a Pilates professional who isn’t doing the work for the right reasons.
If you don’t have your marketing and your business practices tightened up, you can’t do your work in a sustainable way. The way you can shine your light more brightly is to be efficient and effective in your marketing so that more people get touched by your greatness! Without efficiency, you are at risk of burnout. This is one of my concerns about working with Pilates professionals.
These are stars who burn brightly and then fade unless they have a unique sustaining patron. But you don’t need a patron to make a profitable Pilates business. There are a lot of successful Pilates businesses out there, and they all share something really important to give to the world.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
Simon Sinek
10 Benefits of Leading With Purpose
1. Gives meaning to the work you do
2. Makes you more money: Visionary companies have beaten their competitors by a 16:1 margin on the stock market (from Jim Collins’s “Good to Great”)
3. Attracts your ideal customer. When you talk about your authentic self and why you do what you do, it becomes like a magnet for your perfect customer.
4. Differentiates you from the competition. The competition is not just for other Pilates studios. It’s also all the other exercise and movement-based methodologies that are out there competing for people’s time and attention.
5. Attracts new employees. If you are good about talking about your ‘what’ and ‘why’ you do what you do, it becomes much easier to recruit and retain talent. This is probably one of the biggest things holding back small businesses today.
6. Motivates your existing employees
7. Guides employee behavior, making them more competent, committed, and contributing. When your employees are upselling, cross-selling, or doing the necessary work of running a business, they are doing it in a way that isn’t ‘slimy’ but is actually coming from a great place!
You must believe in what you do, and the goal is to sell someone on becoming a member of what you do. Maybe this is buying a 10-pack of classes, or scheduling their next session with you. You can learn to look at this as giving them a gift to stay in touch and make sure they stay on track to reach their goals.
It’s just like that Joseph Pilates quote, Feel the difference after 1 session, see the difference after 10 sessions, and change your life after 100 sessions.
8. Sets clear guard rails on what your company does and doesn’t do.
9. Creates the foundation for the public image of a company
10. Increases your impact on the world.
We should all be hungry to touch more lives, and this is what effective marketing will enable you to do.
This is Not a Channel-Driven Approach
This system is not how to use Tik-Tok or any other social media channel to build your business.
Don’t fall into channel-based tactics and strategies. You will overwhelm yourself. Everyone should be on Instagram, it is the natural place and home for a Pilates professional. However, just mastering Instagram will take you the rest of your life. It is constantly changing.
You are not an Instagram expert, you are a business owner and entrepreneur. So you need to understand how Instagram fits into the bigger picture, but don’t get confused about channels, versus strategy.
When we focus on the bigger picture, we can apply these skills across all of our marketing.
To learn more about our new course “How To Find Customers Online” Click here.
I will be brief since this is a whole course in itself! We know that Idiopathic (no known cause) Scoliosis (IS) is a 3 dimensional spinal disorder that begins with anterior vertebral wedging due to RASO (relative anterior spinal overgrowth) during bone development. We also know that the rotational component of scoliosis exists as
both inter-vertebral torsion (rotation of one vertebra relative to another) and intravertebral torsion (an internal rotational distortion within each vertebra), most notably at the apical vertebra (the vertebra most deviated laterally from the vertical axis that passes through the sacrum).1
This distortion contributes to less joint motion at the apex of the curve and more at the transition points of the curve.
We see this to a greater degree in adults and to a lesser degree in adolescents who have a more flexible curve before bone maturity. This is apparent in a supine lateral flexion X-ray that assesses curve flexibility.
Better posture can be achieved by emphasizing the most fundamental principles of all intelligent movement disciplines: axial elongation and breathing. Scoliosis curve concavities are constantly under compression by gravity. Axial elongation encourages a natural re-alignment of the spine by using neuromuscular activity to reduce multi-plane compression and collapse of the concave side of the scoliosis curves.
Once the concavities (which include the ribs) are expanded, then breath can be used to further open the collapse through:
A research article was published in 2014 claiming that scoliosis curves can be reduced by doing side planks on the convex side of the curve, and was sensationalized in a WSJ article.2 But the research had many flaws3 and while interesting, it cannot make that claim. Muscular activity on both the concave and convex side of a scoliosis curve is inefficient and exercises that address each side are optimal for IS, including the Side Plank. Consider benefits of the Side Plank based on curve type:
Life takes us out of neutral spine…shouldn’t we train our scoliosis clients how to move their spine effectively out of neutral? The answer is of course yes…. but which movements and how much? This depends on your assessment of the client: Are they in pain? How much movement does the apex of each curve have? What is the curve type? What other muscle imbalances or injuries exist? What are their goals? Considering that the scoliosis spine tends to move more at the transition points and less at the apices, we may want to limit end range movements and emphasize elongation in postural shapes that minimize compression of the curve concavities. This will be more difficult for those with a double curve. So it is important to make critical decisions with your client based on your evaluation and their goals.
