Coaching Call with Pilates Instructor Karrie Grinter

Show Notes

Karrie Grinter joins me for a coaching call to figure out how to double her pilates business before she retires.

Karrie's website:
https://www.northantspilates.com/

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Host

Jonathan Stark

The Ditching Hourly Guy • For freelancers, consultants, and other experts who want to make more and work less w/o hiring

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[00:00:00] Jonathan: Hello and welcome to ditching hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. And today I am joined by Carrie grantor, Carrie, welcome to the show.

[00:00:07] Karrie: Cute. Hello?

[00:00:09] Jonathan: Hi, good to have you nice. It looks like a nice day there. I know this is audio only for most people, but get a beautiful garden outside with some goats in it, wandering around.

[00:00:19] Jonathan: Yes. So let's start off by telling folks what you do. Could you give folks a background about w where you're at right now and with your.

[00:00:29] Karrie: Yeah, I'm a philosophy teacher. I teach in north Hampton share and then UK, I started 24 years ago. So I was at the beginning of the sort of explosion of cooperatives in the UK at the time. Now I run the business with my son who was six when I started training and is now 31. I was hoping to retire or not retire, but wind down a little bit.

[00:00:57] Karrie: At the beginning of last year, and then this bug thing came along and threw a spanner in those particular works and plans. So here we are a year and a half home having had to transition overnight into online ditch face-to-face temporality. And now we're building back up again.

[00:01:19] Karrie: So that's where we're at.

[00:01:22] Jonathan: Fascinating. Let's talk about the remote challenge, the non-face-to-face challenge first, because Pilates, for those who don't know has like a bunch of, large equipment. So how so how do your remote people deal with that?

[00:01:38] Karrie: Okay.

[00:01:39] Karrie: Where we predominantly are math based. So we do mat classes with smaller equipment. We do have reformers in our main studio, but we were teaching in four locations across the county where we live. My main studio is based at the county cricket ground in north Hampton where the equipment stuff was.

[00:02:01] Karrie: So we literally had to shut that overnight. And that's quite tough to be honest, because I started that. And I was joking say, I, I started my business last century and we, I started that the cricket ground in 1999, March, 1999. So it was exactly 21 years to the, almost to the day that I started there.

[00:02:25] Karrie: And I found myself home the day before lockdown having to, close the building, turn the lights off and set the alarm and pack up the gates. I've been home in tears thinking this is 20 new day, 21 years of my life. And my work and life has been in this building. And, I don't know when we're going to go back in there again,

[00:02:46] Jonathan: So is,

[00:02:47] Karrie: it wasn't until the 1st of October.

[00:02:50] Jonathan: oh, wow.

[00:02:51] Karrie: Yeah. So it was a long haul to get back to, to class in my studio.

[00:02:58] Jonathan: Do you, so where you, do you rent that or you own it

[00:03:01] Karrie: No, I meant. I

[00:03:03] Jonathan: were you paying rent the whole time while it was closed?

[00:03:06] Karrie: Yeah. No, they were great. I was really lucky, actually they were really understanding.

[00:03:10] Karrie: We were good, unlike a lot of people. So we literally, in, in nine days we turned it around. At the time of COVID closing down the world, we had 400 people in class every week and three venues paying a monthly direct debit.

[00:03:31] Karrie: And that went overnight.

[00:03:32] Jonathan: Wow.

[00:03:34] Karrie: say that was so we had to email everybody and say, okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to go online. We dropped the price Right.

[00:03:44] Karrie: down to get to be a five or a class because we didn't know that we could deliver it.

[00:03:49] Karrie: Here to also, the USP is always being small.

[00:03:52] Karrie: The classes hands-on, it's, we're not there. I haven't got a microphone. I could run a small nation with, I'm not bouncing around in what was, or whatever, having my own luck. I've spent 24 years bending over people on the floor, pulling screaming. So we'd bring equipment around. You back speed, our passion.

[00:04:16] Karrie: You like, ah, I guess a lot of the people we teach are people with back problems. So that's been our sort of speciality. So it's could we do that? Could we deliver that online? So we dropped the price right down. We had, we gave them two options. This option one is we put your direct debit on hold until we can start again, option two, we reduce your direct debit to five quid class.

[00:04:42] Karrie: And we put you into online class. Some of them came up with options three and option three was, we want to do online, but keep the money to save. Don't reduce the money. I'll carry on paying you what I was paying before

[00:04:58] Jonathan: Isn't that interesting.

[00:04:59] Karrie: cute. Lots of crying.

[00:05:01] Jonathan: It's interesting. Isn't it? Because we had, so just to maybe commiserate there, I have two, two similar situations in my life where I'm the customer. And one was my personal trainer who I saw twice a week for years. And I was like, when it first happened, he was, he didn't know what he was going to do.

[00:05:23] Jonathan: He'd never, he didn't know what zoom was. He's just not a computer guy. And and I was like he just was like I guess we'll just stop having appointments until we see what happens. I was like, no way, dude. I won't do anything. And he was like I'll send you, I'll just make you some the weekly the two sessions each week, he has this little like plan and he's I'll just keep making your plans and send them to you.

[00:05:43] Jonathan: Don't worry about it. You don't have to pay me. And I was like, all right. And he sent them to me and I did one. And then I was like, I just couldn't make myself do it without someone yup. Not yelling at me, but so I insisted. That I, I don't think I'm remembering this wrong.

[00:05:59] Jonathan: I think I explained to him what could work. And in one week he had all of his clients plus some new ones that were remote doing remote zoom classes, because the value isn't in me showing up at the gym. There's some good things about that there's equipment there that I can't, that I don't have at home, obviously, like I pretty much know equipment at home, but.

[00:06:21] Jonathan: The importance was just having an appointment with another human being that I w wasn't going to skip, wasn't going to reschedule. I was going to actually do it. It was an official meeting in my calendar. And without that, I was just not doing it. It was just not happening. And then the question of money is in their minds, the seller's mind.

[00:06:40] Jonathan: It's this isn't as hard for me. I don't have to travel. They're not getting the hands on whatever, but in the, at least in my case, in the buyer's mind, that's not really what I'm paying for. What I'm really paying for is to actually do it. And I know that if I don't have an appointment with another person, I am not going to do it.

[00:06:58] Jonathan: And then, before, it, two weeks turns into two months, turns into two years, and now I have back problems again, or now I'm whatever I'm not happy. And the same thing with my karate school. So myself and my two kids are all in the same karate school and they did the same thing. They switched over to zoom and the way they did it.

[00:07:16] Jonathan: Was similar to yours in your plan where they were like we don't know what we're doing, not computer people, but we don't know how long this is going to be. So they made a really quick and theirs was the same similar with you. They have probably about 400 students very complicated, very difficult communication thing with email and all that.

[00:07:35] Jonathan: And get everybody on the same page and teaching them how to use zoom and making sure they're in the right class. And they, their payment thing was, we don't know if, how this is going to work if this is going to work. So you can opt to stop getting charged monthly or do they offer discount?

[00:07:54] Jonathan: No, I think they just said it's going to be free. Yeah, they just made it free. It wasn't even a choice. We're not going to charge anybody. For the first month I think. And after that, definitely by the end of that first summer, they were like, okay we're going to start charging again. It was like up to everyone if they were going to stick with it.

[00:08:11] Jonathan: And I don't think they had gone back to any in-person it might've been, it doesn't matter. But the point is that it was, I appreciate what a huge undertaking that is to switch into an online version. But just to give you some reassurance from the other side, and maybe you've heard this at this point, the appointment is the important thing really for me.

[00:08:32] Jonathan: Okay. So what was your experience? And this is actually gonna factor into pricing and other things too. So it's not just, it's just a fun walk down memory lane or a not so fun. Walk down memory lane. So what ended up happening, were months and months into this is so

[00:08:46] Karrie: so we lost we lost a few people completely because they didn't want to do zoom. We we kept a lot of people and we gained a few people, so people that have moved away and then haven't been able to recreate the experience had with us. So

[00:09:03] Jonathan: Right,

[00:09:04] Karrie: that's been, that was lovely. So we're to, we've had a bit of a mixture in it.

[00:09:10] Karrie: We upped the prices after three months to a slightly more sensible price. So we went from five quick to eight quick

[00:09:18] Jonathan: But it's still per class.

[00:09:19] Karrie: yeah. Cut costs.

[00:09:21] Jonathan: didn't go, you didn't go back to monthly.

[00:09:23] Karrie: I don't know if that we've just changed the direct debit. So it went from, I think it was about 35 quid pre lockdown down to 16 pounds then went up to 26 pounds.

[00:09:36] Jonathan: Okay. And they're entitled to some number of classes for that. Is it used, is it use it or lose it or.

[00:09:42] Karrie: We, the way we run all classes, we basically run in six blocks through the year. So that is 3,900. So then that's where the pricing is always quite tricky. Because we know also of the gym, it's not open sort of 24 7. We have a goal legs of teachers. We have limited numbers. We only have a set number of people in each class.

[00:10:07] Karrie: So that's where pricing cause has always caught me out in the past, and it does for lots of teachers who teach like I do because we don't run drop-in classes.

[00:10:19] Jonathan: Right. So do that. Now that you are doing remote stuff, zoom stuff would drop in classes actually be a problem, or do you, or does it, is it really important to keep the class sizes.

[00:10:33] Karrie: if we still keep it to 12. But we never teach more than 12. No, that's not sushi. I'm happy if I see people wait this time, I know them. And I know my class cause I've been teaching for so long. I'm like that. A couple of them in, but I actually, I do. I'm doing here now with you. I am sitting. Like I'm looking at my, but above that, I've got this big screen on an uncle.

[00:10:56] Karrie: So 12 little squares, your next suit. Move your bottom. Jonathan. It's not gynecology for beginners. Did you think about. That's the 40 side of my teaching. I'm sorry.

[00:11:17] Jonathan: I'm sure.

[00:11:18] Karrie: That comes up quite a bit. But does help them get their alignment a lot better? Yeah, we still keep classes kind of unit

[00:11:30] Karrie: Because that's, I don't want to compromise. I don't want to teach 50 people are the points of that. I'm not teaching them. I'm just shouting instructions and any idiot can do that and call it. do it for free crap on YouTube and Christmas. What else out there? Don't pay for it. Don't pay to watch somebody else have a workout.

[00:11:50] Karrie: That's bogus.

[00:11:53] Jonathan: Yes, but they don't get the body humor that way. So there you go. Value add.

[00:11:58] Karrie: Yeah, exactly.

[00:11:59] Jonathan: Okay. So I th I want to come back to the different ways to price this, the pricing models. And but first let's talk about Let's talk, even though it's a weird situation, let's talk about current, think about where you are currently described that the class that the enrollment has roughly netted out equally, but you've decreased your prices by 25% or so.

[00:12:20] Jonathan: So that's not great. And I assume you're, it sounds like you do have the studio back open.

[00:12:26] Karrie: Yeah with Bacco now. We are the first, 1st of June we started back, but then we had a problem because my studio is quite small. And then what we know about COVID is there's less risk on sort of surface transmission, but it's airborne. So because the studio was small that Ben had to go and buy two air cleaning machines.

[00:12:49] Karrie: So they're running constantly that we're in that. And we could, we started off having seven people in the studio instead of 12, just to see. And actually that was the restrictions as well of the size of the space. So we couldn't have, we couldn't have more than seven people. So we have to start back. We put the prices up.

[00:13:11] Karrie: Face-to-face that went up by a pack. And it's also meant that I had to teach more because we couldn't really afford to pay a teacher to teach a class and we're going to go seven people in the room. So I think having to teach more we've just got back now to we start back the week after next with a class of 12 again.

[00:13:32] Karrie: So we're back to a class of 12

[00:13:35] Jonathan: Okay.

[00:13:36] Karrie: that we rechecked the timetable quite a bit too.

[00:13:40] Jonathan: Okay. So what what does that mean for the zoom stuff? You're going to keep doing the zoom stuff,

[00:13:44] Karrie: Keep doing so. Yeah.

[00:13:46] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:13:46] Karrie: So we've got a whole raft of pricing stuff about it makes my head spin. I leave it to my son, his brains younger than his mothers. And I've never been good with numbers, so I'm much better with kind of words and stuff.

[00:14:01] Jonathan: Do you intend to, do you intend to even if the studio, even if the pandemic is completely over, would you still keep the zoom stuff?

[00:14:09] Karrie: Yeah. without staff, it would be absolutely bonkers to get rid of that because it's worked so well for so many people.

[00:14:18] Jonathan: Yep.

[00:14:19] Karrie: I made pre pandemic. We just have one offering by that too. We have Mac class or reformer class, and that was it. Now we've got people doing one Mac costs a week. We've got people doing one zoom class a week.

[00:14:34] Karrie: We've got people doing one math class, one class a week, people doing a great phone calls, the whole shebang. It's been amazing.

[00:14:43] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. We had the same experience with our karate school. We're doing a, the kids are doing one socially distance in person. We, there were, they're still not allowed to be max capacity where we are. So they're got masks on and they're spaced way out. And then we do one zoom class with them each week.

[00:15:01] Jonathan: So they're still doing that. You're supposed to do at least two classes a week. And yeah. And it's, as the show for the family, it's a pretty nice actually my wife did some chauffeuring this week, but usually it's me driving back and forth and back and forth. So being able to cut that in half is pretty nice.

[00:15:18] Jonathan: And it's, of course there are some things yeah. In the class that you can't do in a house, just because of space constraints. We don't have a giant basement. Doing jumps, spinning back kicks smashed into the TV and, yeah. So what so do you notice, is there any pattern.

[00:15:36] Jonathan: Either demographically or psychographically between the folks who seem to prefer the zoom experience for all the reasons don't have to travel, don't have to whatever brush your teeth, and then the in-person is there a group of people that just hated zoom and couldn't wait to get back into the class and what do those people have in common?

[00:15:58] Jonathan: And are there people who much prefer the zoom experience?

[00:16:01] Karrie: It's honestly, if you would think that it was going to be the older people that were typed, I assume I'd be absolutely resistant to it. And the younger ones that didn't want to do it, there is no there's no pattern whatsoever. It's just, it's beyond bizarre. If you like, we've got we've got older people.

[00:16:23] Karrie: Perfect and happy on stage. And we've got others that just couldn't wait to get back. Then we've got younger people that just wanted to do soon because it suited them people with young children apps to be the best thing ever, because, I haven't got to get a babysitter. I haven't got wait for my husband to come home, get off the train

[00:16:45] Jonathan: much less stressful.

[00:16:45] Karrie: that. Yeah.

[00:16:47] Karrie: It's just, there's, it's completely random. We've got people that have got health clinic to be vulnerable. So they're happy because they can stay safe from, they're still getting their plot, his class, they're still keeping back's healthy and have a nice hotel. So yeah it's, geographics type as the little bit of that, because some people were driving quite a long way to come to a class.

[00:17:13] Karrie: If they're happy that they're not spending two hours to do a one hour Colossus club.

[00:17:19] Jonathan: Got it.

[00:17:20] Karrie: no, no sort of rhyme or reason to any of it. I was so off. I can sell it.

[00:17:26] Jonathan: There was a little bit of rhyme and reason people with little kids and people far away.

[00:17:30] Jonathan: It seems obvious, but that's

[00:17:32] Jonathan: Yeah. And people who are vulnerable. I'm hoping that

[00:17:35] Karrie: yeah. Type cold. If that's a way. And then the mixture is it's just completely random

[00:17:42] Jonathan: yep. Yeah,

[00:17:43] Karrie: that are being either not far from the graph that the studio just did not want to do online at all. People didn't want to do it because they're online all day. So I just want to get away from it.

[00:17:57] Jonathan: Yup. Yeah. I don't do the online card classes cause I'm on zoom all day. So it's I was like, I can't. Yeah. Yeah, not doing it. I love karate, but I'm not doing that. So I tried a few and I was just like, oh man, it's like being on zoom 12 hours. It felt like extended, cause my class would be like, it'd be on zoom three times during the day, four times, maybe for five hours.

[00:18:16] Jonathan: And then, and then after dinner, 8:00 PM go back on. So then like on zoom until 9:00 PM. So yeah. So I totally get that.

[00:18:25] Karrie: there was one thing that I did notice after about two months in, it was, we've got quite a lot of older people, so people in their late sixties, seventies, early eighties. So in our classes I think that for some of them, the liberal men, Oh it was awful because all of a sudden you have a little snapshot of what your life may well be like when you are not able to do, to get out

[00:18:55] Jonathan: wow. Interesting.

[00:18:56] Karrie: Yeah and that, that sort of struck me after, just talking to a couple of them. So I found that what I was doing was I would log on early and I'd stop chatting if they came in and I would leave it running at the end and I'd go off and make a cup of tea and just leave them chatting between them. They just need to do it. But it's, I jokingly call where I'm they have incontinence clicks everything beyond to me down there was a bungalow it's God's waiting room. The ambulances come sick

[00:19:32] Jonathan: Wow.

[00:19:33] Karrie: quiet. I can remember somebody saying a friend of mine used to help a friend who had to florists and every Valentine's day mother's day, Christmas Eve, he would help them do the RAs.

[00:19:46] Karrie: And he would come to a few of the people down and hated it on mother's day. Hated it. And the reason he hated Dick was because he said, I'd go up to someone at long day. Give her a bunch of flowers and it would, and she'd be just disappointed because all she's got was a bunch of flowers for kids. Cause they can't be so sad to me.

[00:20:06] Karrie: These are my awfully clients who normally would have a very busy lifestyle and be, out and about and coming to class and suddenly nothing. All God, you can't go out, you can't shop, you're stuck there and you see how cells, this is going to be me in 20 years time when I'm incontinent and the cardboard one big in the frame.

[00:20:27] Karrie: And you've got that snapshot of life. And actually That's when the mental health stuff really kicks in. If that's the unit that most that contact on a weekly basis on a chat after class is way more important than throwing the X amount. And yet.

[00:20:47] Jonathan: right. How well did these people know each other before lockdown?

[00:20:51] Karrie: The closest is get to know each other. Cause I've still got the first person that ever got in touch with me. When I first qualified in 1997, she still incomes

[00:21:00] Jonathan: Wow.

[00:21:01] Karrie: us. Cause I'm just such a crap teacher. Hopefully she'll get better, but I do tend to stay. We have incredible longevity with our clients, so they do get to know each other.

[00:21:15] Karrie: So yeah, it was really nice for them to see the same faces. We tried to put them into the same classes. We had a pretty much a similar timetable to what we have before as much as we could. So the same faces were in. So yeah, they were catching up a little bit. How are you doing them? All of that.

[00:21:35] Karrie: So

[00:21:36] Jonathan: Did you get anybody in zoom? I know you said you, you got some people back in zoom, but did anybody brand new start without ever having seen you in person?

[00:21:45] Karrie: yeah.

[00:21:46] Jonathan: How did those clients come in?

[00:21:47] Karrie: I just went on Instagram on Facebook, just did stuff in the stupid stuff in here. That's I'm an early riser, so I would get up kind of six o'clock in the morning or seven o'clock in the morning to come and do some philosophies. And then I thought, oh, this woman's mad.

[00:22:04] Karrie: I'll throw them past.

[00:22:06] Jonathan: okay, so you and your bio, you had a link to the school website or whatever.

[00:22:10] Karrie: Yeah. Yeah. So they would come and join us and yeah. Yeah. And they've stayed. Some of them were stayed online. Some of them have come into two face-to-face classes now, too.

[00:22:23] Jonathan: Are most of them like reasonably local to you? Or are they from all over the place?

[00:22:29] Karrie: The ones that are coming in a relatively local, we do have we, I think we've got some does mom who stand in Devon, which is a long way away, obviously done down on the south coast. I think she's in class. We had a couple of people move to in lock down, so they've left the area so that they carried on.

[00:22:48] Karrie: But from wherever they've gone to,

[00:22:50] Jonathan: Okay, interesting. But still most people are, you're not getting people from the United States.

[00:22:57] Karrie: not so far, no

[00:22:59] Jonathan: Yeah exactly. Not yet. Maybe now.

[00:23:05] Karrie: pelvic floor is hanging between your knees. Feel free.

[00:23:09] Jonathan: I do have a dodgy back and I went to Pilates. There's a Pilates studio right around the corner from me. And years ago it was bad. And I was, and someone suggested that I go over to see Cheryl Turnquist and I won and it was great. Totally worked for my lower back. Yeah, it was fabulous.

[00:23:27] Jonathan: I should go back actually. Or maybe I'll just take your class. But we did reformer, we did the machines and stuff. I did a few. They had I think they're called TRX classes, which isn't Pilates, it's still I don't think it's Pilates, but.

[00:23:39] Karrie: I think some of the stuff that, Joan was doing in, on the reform or on the tar and stuff, this is almost exactly the same sort of stuff you may do on a TRX and shoes. So it's gravity and stuff, so

[00:23:53] Jonathan: Yeah. It is a good thing to, to, I would imagine it's one of those things that you can get away with, it's like with in karate, you can too, it's good enough. And when you bring in all the other aspects, like you don't have to commute, you don't have to worry about getting a babysitter.

[00:24:07] Jonathan: You don't have to worry about getting sick, even if it wasn't a pandemic, some people are germaphobic and yeah, all of that stuff, then it's okay. This is still helping me physically, which is the ostensible surface level articulation, the explicit articulation of what the benefit is, but there are all those other benefits that are, I think once you, I suppose you could sell those benefits as well.

[00:24:31] Jonathan: And then but certainly once someone has the experience, they, may or may not consciously recognize it, but there are gonna be these other things that they derive value from. All of these things.

[00:24:44] Karrie: I think as long as you are out there then to go for cable

[00:24:48] Jonathan: Yeah.

[00:24:49] Karrie: or phone or unit, the first thing I do when I see somebody one to one, when I'm trying to explain about what we're going to be doing is I show them a picture of the skeletal system with the plumb line. And then I give them a five kilogram medicine, bull poop, and then I say to them, okay, so hold out in front of you so that your rocks can kin Yeah.

[00:25:17] Karrie: That's your head. Pretty wholesome say, cause they average head.

[00:25:32] Karrie: He's saying that every time you spend shopping a mass chin, Pope posture or dry thing, I'm not for most of our clients do I'm spending hours over people or a top of the teeth thing or steering wheel. And then they get high. When they sit on the safer and they've got a remote and then I got bear. It's

[00:25:53] Jonathan: yeah.

[00:25:55] Karrie: been about business. I'm like their joint mobility. And it doesn't matter whether it's your spine or your hips or your knees or whatever else, it doesn't matter what it is. It's just getting you moving, but I'm not why we kept to small classes and why you've done online. We've got to small classes because I want to be looking at people.

[00:26:18] Karrie: I want to be able to give them that feedback to stop them normal posture, time, open stuff up and.

[00:26:26] Jonathan: Yep.

[00:26:26] Karrie: So getting them to think that actually, yeah, this is what painful, because I can do it for free. I can do it. Whichever Wix we like. So you might not know how it works over here. This this, that culture, Wix.

[00:26:38] Karrie: Who's not a personal trainer, but he got on board with lots of, publicity stuff. And he's been on breakfast, TV and CBDs, which has kids programs. And then I get cubes. I got home really helped my head. So how did you do that? Oh, I was two gen weeks with my grandchildren.

[00:27:00] Jonathan: Okay. Yeah so you're actually bringing up an interesting point. So th there's pros and cons to having gone online, which on the one hand now you could start getting clients. W what do you call them? Clients or customers, or, yeah, so you could start getting clients from the United States, but you're also in competition with every other.

[00:27:23] Jonathan: You no longer have this kind of installation of being perhaps, one of very few number of Pilates studios in a geographic region. So there's a little balancing act to do there, but maybe you could go on morning TV, certainly the personality for it. So get more people in your class.

[00:27:43] Jonathan: So if you were going to, so let's think capacity wise, right? Cause I skipped over a piece because I'm making a big assumption. I think before we started recording, you mentioned retirement yes one to three years down the line, where would you like the business to be?

[00:27:59] Karrie: My son.

[00:28:05] Jonathan: Got it. Okay. So that's good. You've got a succession plan in place and the, okay. So that's that answers that. And is the how far away, I guess how far away what's the difference between now and then? Is it, does it seem like you're on the path to that? Or does it seem impossible?

[00:28:21] Karrie: I think when actually in the last few weeks, I just feel like I'm beginning to see that could happen. Whereas you day beginning of this year I, yeah, I couldn't see that was going to happen because we were, we'd have the horrible Christmas crap we're in lockdown again. And yeah, it's I guess as well, I do, I am concerned about what the future is going to look like.

[00:28:49] Karrie: It's of the moment everyone is spending money. Quite a lot of money. Over here, we've got an we've got a real shortage of HTB drivers, cause we've also had to deal with Brexit. So the, you can't get a table in a restaurant for love nor money because they haven't got staff. You have to book months ahead.

[00:29:10] Karrie: If you want to go into a decent, a lot of big restaurants are only open for dinner, or they're only open for dumps because they literally cannot do a full service restaurant thing

[00:29:21] Jonathan: of the staff, not the tables.

[00:29:22] Karrie: got the staff.

[00:29:23] Jonathan: Yeah. Same here.

[00:29:24] Karrie: We've got HGB drivers. We were about hundred thousand shorter parents. So we've got a supply chain problem going on now.

[00:29:33] Karrie: I've just had to drive 10 miles to try and find a Senator, both which for anyone so green let's stick to this. So still like I do worry that, yeah. We've got lots of people inquiring about our classes at the moment. Is this going to last, what's this going to look like in 12 months time we've had stuff here. I don't know whether you have that in the states.

[00:29:59] Karrie: We, Boris was paying loads of wages for

[00:30:03] Jonathan: Oh yeah.

[00:30:04] Karrie: a lot of people that you know getting paid for doing nothing. So there's lots of jobs going.

[00:30:10] Karrie: And this may sound pretty horrid. But there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of really lovely people from Europe. Particularly Eastern Europe, we're doing the jobs the Brits didn't want to do so tax paid Brits like me

[00:30:26] Jonathan: Okay.

[00:30:28] Karrie: to still not work. I don't know.

[00:30:30] Jonathan: Yes.

[00:30:31] Karrie: Maybe that's a little controversial, but

[00:30:34] Jonathan: yeah, we don't want to get an, a wrestling match. But the point is the big point is you, it's just very unclear. What's going to happen

[00:30:40] Karrie: yeah.

[00:30:41] Jonathan: So is it going to last? So I think so the good news is you've demonstrated over 20 years that you know how to keep a client

[00:30:49] Karrie: Yes. Thank

[00:30:50] Jonathan: somehow.

[00:30:51] Jonathan: So it feels like your churn, which would be like the number of people who leave every month. Your churn would be, probably remained pretty low, as long as you could keep adding people into the customer life cycle. How many, let's talk about capacity in your current configuration. How many students could you handle?

[00:31:10] Jonathan: I think you said 400 at one point, but I think that was in person.

[00:31:14] Karrie: That was over. Yeah. That was over three, three venues, I think at the moment, we're about at, just over 300 in two venues. So we've lost a venue essentially because that that closed down last Easter, so that's gone and we've not gone looking for another one.

[00:31:32] Jonathan: Okay.

[00:31:33] Karrie: I mean our biggest issue is teachers.

[00:31:36] Karrie: Because we're very fussy about the quality of the teachers. We have them, but we also pay them really well, too. They don't work for Twitch quit an hour, which is what they're likely to get if they work in a big gym chain, for example. But then we expect more of them and I think it's, that's the difference is, we are, our service is very different, we're not open 24 7, we're not open seven days a week.

[00:32:03] Karrie: We're not open 365 days of the year. But in your, in the same class every week. So we'd get to know you. Whereas some of those big gym memberships, you're paying to use the facilities. When did you actually turn up, do that? It's neither here nor there, but most of you actually not doing that all day.

[00:32:21] Karrie: The last thing I needed, everyone turning off. Cause they would be, and if somebody takes any notice Of you then, you're doing well. So our model is completely different,

[00:32:32] Jonathan: Yeah. It's very S your model is very similar to my karate school. Because there's there, there's one thing they do. That's slightly different. I wonder if it would be a good idea for you. It's a little bit of a pain to set up, but the way it works is that you pay a monthly fee and you're allowed to come to as many classes as you want.

[00:32:53] Jonathan: And when, and that was true, even before the way it worked before was. As you might imagine, some classes were jammed, jammed, and some were like dead, and you never knew you couldn't predict, we've talked. I talked about it with them. I'm like, isn't there a way to smooth out this he's you just never know.

[00:33:11] Jonathan: It's whatever, if there's a long week, you could always tell when it was a long weekend because the, the classes were Monday through Thursday. And if Monday was a holiday, the Thursday class would be packed, and they have and the other thing is there, like probably four or five, five classes per night, for different age groups, there'd be like little champs for the kids, five to seven and then seven to nine and so on and so forth.

[00:33:34] Jonathan: And the adult class. So they had four or five classes going to studios to they're overlapping. And it was just a crush of people. In between classes like ch changing it and changing out. So now that they've switched to, and it was a problem that they knew it was a problem, but they were never, they didn't come up with a way to solve it.

[00:33:51] Jonathan: So the way that they do it now, and they're not going to go back to the old way because they like it so much better. Is that on Monday they release a new yeah. And you have to go in and register. And if, and you're expected to show up and there's not like a penalty or something.

[00:34:07] Jonathan: And in fact, I have canceled the last minute, but it's like very embarrassing because that you're really taking somebody else's spot and they're not going to be able to fill it. And so you're really being a jerk. And if, when now, of course the classes are much more predictably sized.

[00:34:23] Jonathan: There's a, and it is a, I guess you'd call it a, use it or lose it policy because they. You could you pay no matter how many classes you go to, you can go to as many as you want, or as few as you want technically. But there's also this social pressure to go to. You're supposed to attend at least two classes a week.

[00:34:42] Jonathan: If you don't attend two classes a week, you could go to four. But if you don't attend to, you're going to hear about it. They're going to say, Hey, I noticed you only came in once this week. What's going on, and they'll, they'll really, they're nice about it, but like there's pressure, there's social pressure and other people in the room who, oh, I thought you were usually coming on Thursdays.

[00:35:02] Jonathan: I was hoping we could have, whatever spart or worked out together. So they have these a variety of. There's some structure and there's some social, there's some structure, technical structure and there's culture. And those two things work together to keep people from not going enough.

[00:35:19] Jonathan: So you never feel like, oh, I spent, I don't even know how much it costs to be honest, but you spend so much per month and I didn't go at all. I'm such a loser. It's not their fault, but why am I paying for this? I'm not going. They solve that problem by politely shaming you for not showing up.

[00:35:35] Jonathan: Instead of thinking yes, we got that money for free. They're like, cause they know first of all, I think their hearts are in the right place and they want people to be progressing and get better. But they also know that if you're not coming, you're going to stop paying. So they address that.

[00:35:49] Jonathan: But now they've solved the problem with that. It's all you can eat. It's an unlimited thing. You could come every single night if you wanted to. And that like the gym problem, that could be a problem for them. But if you have to register in advance, it fixes it.

[00:36:02] Karrie: Did they do they live with the numbers in those

[00:36:05] Jonathan: Yes. Yeah, there is. Yeah, yeah.

[00:36:14] Karrie: We wouldn't want, Oh as I said, there's no way I would teach more than 12 anyway. Cause I want that continuity with people. So all clients have a recurring booking, so they're in the same class every single week.

[00:36:25] Jonathan: Oh, okay.

[00:36:27] Karrie: They don't have to book in. Let's just say they can flop house a bit, if they do that, that to remember that thing that we used to do called thanks.

[00:36:38] Karrie: They have that whole day thing happened again. Then they Got they count on, and they have a COVID to get it.

[00:36:43] Karrie: to catch up. So if you join in January, you've basically got 39 classes between now and December, as long as he won't pay your direct debit. So if you swapped out of any classes, you have a calendar yet to catch up with them.

[00:37:01] Karrie: So it's up to you. Look on the system buy to space and swap in,

[00:37:06] Jonathan: But you just have, they picked at once and then that's it until they change it at some point. So like they're coming on Tuesday and Thursday at five forever.

[00:37:15] Karrie: Yeah. So

[00:37:15] Jonathan: Okay. That helps.

[00:37:18] Karrie: get it cause they're paying for it. They know, I do have people sometimes you think just sending money to my bank account is going to fix that back.

[00:37:27] Jonathan: Yeah.

[00:37:27] Karrie: could live with that.

[00:37:28] Jonathan: Yeah.

[00:37:30] Karrie: So that's Okay.

[00:37:31] Karrie: If you want to do that, but to be honest if they do it a couple of times and I do say, look, if you're not going to come, can I get the space away?

[00:37:38] Karrie: Because somebody else could have it and they have, we've got email notification. So if they don't turn up to class by mark and miss us, you never know, show them the registered. They get an email from me. We have this amazing booking system called Go-Team up, who are just fantastic.

[00:37:54] Jonathan: really? What's it called?

[00:37:55] Karrie: Go team up.

[00:37:56] Karrie: They all brilliant. I think the guys who built it are in the states somewhere. There's a team over here, but they are outstanding. I have to say I've been with them quite a few years and I recommend them like crazy. And if anyone wants to then please tell me, cause if you get a referral from me, I get mommy.

[00:38:16] Karrie: Right?

[00:38:16] Jonathan: Nice, nice.

[00:38:21] Karrie: But they are, they, within days of COVID hitting they managed to get together zoom integration. We've got onto stuff as well. So we link all our own tomorrow. They were absolute superpower. I cannot praise them enough. If you need a long line looking consistent for a kind of gym membership or school stuff that just the very best,

[00:38:46] Jonathan: That it was very good to

[00:38:47] Karrie: personally I was with my bolting and I just feel sick to death of the price going up and up every single time.

[00:38:54] Karrie: And you can't have, if you want to do that, you've got to go up to the next level.

[00:38:59] Jonathan: Yeah.

[00:39:00] Jonathan: Yeah. I think the karate school uses perfect mind or something like that. And I know they don't like it and

[00:39:05] Karrie: tell them to check out Mo go team ups and I'll send you a link to them. Check them out. They are just brilliant. I'm very fond of them. Sorry. I slightly digressed off that.

[00:39:19] Jonathan: Okay. But you clarified that. So the CRA our credit school basically is all dropping classes. That's all it is, but now you have to register for them. So w would you be able to, I'm trying to see, like, where's the capacity, where's the limit

[00:39:33] Karrie: It's yeah. It's times of day because it's, it's can you drop the kids off from school and then rock up to class? Nine 30 is a good time, half one's quite a good time, because then you can, you've got the day free. Then you can go into class, half, one to two, then you'd go to the school run at the other end of the day. 5 30, 6 o'clock, seven o'clock around those times. You're catching the end of the

[00:39:59] Karrie: working day, depending on where people are. so, yeah.

[00:40:05] Jonathan: and so it sounds like kind of people who don't work during the day, or, have the kid drop off thing. What about midday lunch type stuff? Is that just a dead zone?

[00:40:13] Karrie: Not too bad. We have a fairly busy a sort of mid day. So that seems to work quite well, too. We're all spread of clients is I guess the youngest like teams and the oldest ones are in the eighties. So there's a big spread of ages, a bit of a taste requirements.

[00:40:37] Jonathan: Okay. And what, so you basically have two levers to pull for, to create, whatever, call it enough money to retire financial independence or whatever. There's really, you could raise the price or you can increase the number of clients or some combination.

[00:40:56] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:40:57] Jonathan: Because it doesn't sound like, there's also the lever of cutting costs, but it doesn't seem like that doesn't seem, you're going to, you're paying for teachers and you're paying for space.

[00:41:05] Jonathan: You probably, you like to pay more for teachers. So it doesn't seem like there's a lot of play in the cost cutting lever. So if you were going to, what, how would you, let's say you kept your prices the same, but doubled your clients, what would have to happen?

[00:41:23] Karrie: We have done a biggest CTA, so we run two classes simultaneously. And we'd have to find probably five more teachers

[00:41:33] Jonathan: Okay,

[00:41:34] Karrie: to cope with the extra classes.

[00:41:36] Jonathan: so you have five teachers now.

[00:41:38] Karrie: We have eight teachers now.

[00:41:41] Karrie: But yeah, so it's, we could do it with probably five more if they had consistent work.

[00:41:46] Jonathan: Okay. And do the do new teachers, is it like the personal trainer model where they bring their own clients or is it more like you pay them and some amount of money per class and

[00:41:58] Karrie: They paid, we paid them monthly for whatever classes that they've taught. So they're all self-employed most of them work elsewhere as well, or they do their own stuff too, as well as working for us.

[00:42:10] Jonathan: But who's who actually charges the clients though. Do they? Or do you, you do. Okay.

[00:42:16] Karrie: yeah, they teach, w slightly more than that, I say there were a few things that we asked them to do, but genuinely yes, we do All the organizing, the whole, the timetable, the whole system, all the backroom stuff is all done by.

[00:42:33] Jonathan: good. Good. Okay, good. And, okay, so you wouldn't have to double staff to double the clients.

[00:42:40] Karrie: No, we could we it's space, you

[00:42:43] Jonathan: What if all of the, what if the doubling was all in zoom?

[00:42:51] Karrie: We could probably do it with our existing self if they do to do soon. I'm not a lot of them want to do so

[00:42:59] Jonathan: same thing happened at our gym. They lost half their trainers.

[00:43:02] Karrie: Yeah. We had, we've got, we've had some that will upstate also because of where they live. They were traveling in to teach at the studio. So now that they're happy to stay on soon and we've got others that don't want to do

[00:43:15] Jonathan: Is there a model where you could teach on zoom or maybe you do this already teach over zoom from the studio? Or does everybody teach from zoom at home?

[00:43:24] Karrie: Wait. Yeah. we will teach them zoom at home. I teach from here, which is like Michael and studio space at home on the office, teach from the homes. I guess it's partly because it's really easy to work from home on SU you just need a map

[00:43:38] Jonathan: Yeah.

[00:43:39] Karrie: preview that you don't need. It doesn't need to be flashy at all.

[00:43:43] Karrie: I'm, it's nice seeing the houses the pets that,

[00:43:48] Jonathan: Yeah. It's a little more personal, right?

[00:43:52] Karrie: so it's do You really need that check? Cause that's a nice angle. Just the place for it.

[00:43:58] Jonathan: You like shopping.

[00:43:59] Karrie: Yeah. I know. You can mute them and then they can uni kind of coughs me screens fault. Nobody knows it's not the same class, obviously. So

[00:44:08] Karrie: Don't have to worry about anything.

[00:44:11] Jonathan: Yeah. Pros and cons.

[00:44:13] Karrie: Always.

[00:44:14] Jonathan: All right. It seems, that seems like, all right so that seems like a big potential. That seems like a big potential because you wouldn't have, you might have to hire different teachers, but you wouldn't have to dramatically increase your costs.

[00:44:28] Jonathan: You wouldn't have to go through the, it sounds like it would probably be, if you had to hire five teachers would probably be pretty hard and to keep them.

[00:44:35] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:44:36] Karrie: I think, when we did all the such a summons when we were in when we just had the online classes, all of the stuff and some of the costs that we've had prior were just not there. So yeah. It was quite an eye opener. But I guess we were grateful that we were ticking over.

[00:44:57] Karrie: We had such lovely clients keeping us going. I was desperate to get back in the studio and just to get more mics on people.

[00:45:05] Jonathan: right. Yeah, of course.

[00:45:07] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:45:08] Jonathan: But you wouldn't want to do twice as much. In-person probably

[00:45:12] Karrie: no, I wouldn't want you to trust as much of anything.

[00:45:15] Jonathan: Half as much.

[00:45:16] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:45:16] Karrie: If we could spread it Yeah.

[00:45:17] Karrie: Around with, our loving teachers that we have just, having them working that suits them we keep everyone happy and the client's happy and everything's ticking over then.

[00:45:27] Karrie: That's the best kind of thing, it's, I think it's, when you're getting new people, the tool it's, we get people, email them and say I've done lots of done it on my chin and perfectly well, that is not what we do. And like you saying to them, you need to do a beginning of stigma.

[00:45:45] Karrie: You need to do something because I can't just document to class. It would be like telling me not for intermediate Russia and you haven't done the Guinness. So that's one extreme. I know. And people don't get that. If they've never had the experience of our classes they struggle to understand that.

[00:46:03] Karrie: And it's what, and I've got to pay, oh, you're only doing 39 weeks since a year. What kind of come every week? It's a sick, getting that across is quite difficult. And the pricing for that too, because it's, like the group of former classes, if they do a reformer class for us, I'm trying to think the membership for that it's about 58 pounds the months.

[00:46:25] Karrie: I think so that's, but they're only getting one cost a week for 39 weeks, but how do you sell that? The benefits? There's only a few, oh no, what's going on with you and you, and lots of attention in my attention. You've got to get my experience and my input to try and help you sort out your daughter shelter, your

[00:46:49] Jonathan: So that, yeah. Keep going though, because the first half of what you said was features in the software business, we'd call it. Those are the features it can do. It's better than the other thing because of that, how does it help? What's the benefit who cares if you're amazing at what you do? And the answer is because you're actually going to feel better.

[00:47:07] Jonathan: You're going to feel better, faster with someone experience. Who's got 20 years in the business who has their original customer is still coming to them. Okay. So

[00:47:17] Karrie: yeah.

[00:47:21] Jonathan: I don't think so. So here's the, yeah, it's like a Stockholm syndrome okay. I have this picture in my mind of using the studio, at least in part. And again, we're assuming there's post pandemic gates. Using the studio as an onboarding kind of thing, where new students have to come in or certain kinds of new students have to come into the studio for an orientation or an assessment or something like that.

[00:47:50] Jonathan: So they get the feel for it. And that if they do that, I have to imagine that they're going to be more likely to stay longer term than someone who just signed up on zoom. Never met you in person, never was in the room. And I'm trying to imagine, cause if I did Pilates, like initially if I just I'm going to sign up for dates and I signed up online, I wouldn't have gotten it.

[00:48:16] Jonathan: Like I would not have gotten. At all. Cause it's like you do need it. It really helps to have somebody there, like you said, like bending over you and no bend your no seriously bend backwards more or whatever it is. And you're just like, that's impossible. I can't do it. And they'll just hold your hand a little bit or something.

[00:48:35] Jonathan: So you can feel that it's going to work. And, but once you get the feel for it. And I think I probably only did it, I don't know, 10 or 20 times 10 or 20 classes. And then I was feeling a lot better. I started doing martial arts at that point. I switched cause then my back felt better. Yeah. But they got me back on track.

[00:48:52] Jonathan: It was amazing. So I think, so it seems obvious. Okay. Th the other lever is price this, so the other lever is price you're. I can tell from the story. Like the fact that you lowered your price on zoom. I can tell that you're probably reluctant to raise your prices. I'm guessing that you feel like there's a strong price sensitivity in your clients and it would be, raising the price would be met with pitchforks and torches,

[00:49:19] Karrie: but we did put our prices up.

[00:49:21] Jonathan: Not back up all the way.

[00:49:23] Karrie: We did,

[00:49:24] Jonathan: Oh, you did. I thought you

[00:49:25] Karrie: yeah we did we went five quid online first, and now it's eight pounds. Actually. It's not, it's eight pounds. If you have a regular membership and it's not like a pounds for a drop pen. And then when we went back to face-to-face classes, we upped it to 12 pounds.

[00:49:40] Karrie: We went up a pound,

[00:49:41] Jonathan: on zoom also.

[00:49:43] Karrie: The own face-to-face classes. So then class is online classes are now eight pounds,

[00:49:50] Jonathan: Okay. But it's, I guess there's some confusion in my mind about.

[00:49:54] Karrie: sorry.

[00:49:54] Jonathan: it monthly or is it per class,

[00:49:57] Karrie: Oh, sorry. That's per class.

[00:49:59] Jonathan: but they pay monthly

[00:50:01] Karrie: debit. Yeah. They pay monthly.

[00:50:02] Jonathan: and it's always the same number of classes.

[00:50:05] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:50:05] Jonathan: Okay. So it's monthly. So I wouldn't even think of it as a per class. So monthly is eight times, eight class, however many classes it is, what is it like eight classes or does it, it must change a little bit.

[00:50:18] Karrie: Yeah. If that's where it's like the tricky to try and explain to somebody because we run roughly school term time, which I know sounds completely bonkers, but I started out like that because I had a small child,

[00:50:34] Jonathan: You took summer loss, right?

[00:50:35] Karrie: So

[00:50:35] Karrie: I took summer off. I took back some stuff and we just kept to it. Because we were more expensive than most classes, but we're still more expensive.

[00:50:47] Karrie: Meaning local classes, the pivot tools that you can just rock up if you want or not, or someone says time to go for a pint or what was going to go to Florida. Say we are more expensive than most local class. I know we do get people say, oh, you're too expensive. I'm like, I wait. And then there's the whole thing in the fitness world. The seasonal trends that come along and there's been a trend over the last few years that, on your website, you are supposed to offer a free session.

[00:51:26] Karrie: We're also supposed to offer a high value. And it could be any old crap, you sick, you're brown, Don, some recipes, kale smoothies, or some other rubbish, then alone, two people just chime tool people. And if you look at most kind of fitness places, there's all this kind of stuff going on.

[00:51:50] Karrie: That's what everybody else is doing. I not interested. I just think, you know what I know what I'm doing. If you want my services, you can pay for it. Actually

[00:52:05] Jonathan: You know what, what attracts people more than a free toaster align. If there's a line outside the restaurant, that's going to attract people. So if you had a waiting list instead of a free gift or a free trial or whatever free session, and you can't sign up, you can't just sign up. You have to get on a waiting list

[00:52:23] Jonathan: Yeah. We'll see it demonstrates. Yes, you've got the hair flip and everything. I wish this was a video. But if you did that, it's, it is, here's the thing about the free class and that, that puts all that. It has what my friend, Blair Ann calls the stench of desperation and it puts all the power in the client's hands.

[00:52:46] Karrie: yeah.

[00:52:47] Jonathan: You're not, yeah, it's making them the prize. You're desperate for new clients. You're so desperate for new clients that you're giving away free, garbage. And instead of if you flip it around and say this is exclusive and not in a fake way, but in a genuine way, because you are wanting to be intentional and thoughtful about who you bring in.

[00:53:05] Jonathan: And they need to qualify to be a client of yours that has a powerful, attractive effect on people. And if you, if that was the case on your, let's say on your website, it's oh, click here to join the waiting list or to apply and have them fill out this big. So they have to do something, tell us your medical history or whatever you would need to, whatever it comes through.

[00:53:25] Jonathan: You do ask people a bunch of questions,

[00:53:28] Karrie: that

[00:53:28] Karrie: People don't do it on your phone. You're just throwing your phone at the wall because they're off their Preston's to help them actually practically need you a bra size and inside, like meshing them together.

[00:53:42] Jonathan: right. So this, so that would be, so that's my response to the free session, free gift, garbage that's garbage. So the, you're doing so many things, I do think the, I think the way that you presented the pricing to me was very confusing. And I do pricing all the time.

[00:54:02] Jonathan: You have monthly pricing it's is it the same? Every month? The same amount every month. Okay. So it's monthly. It's not per class.

[00:54:10] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:54:11] Jonathan: They get a bunch of things for this monthly fee, including some classes.

[00:54:16] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:54:17] Jonathan: So I would urge you. I think you will find that it's much easier to talk about it. If you say it's monthly, it's a monthly subscription.

[00:54:24] Jonathan: It's like Netflix for your back oh, please do. Yeah.

[00:54:32] Karrie: Cause I've been listening to your podcasts. Whilst walking the dog, I'll drive them to class. And there was one the other day that said, you don't want to sit. You don't floss your teeth 365 times per night before you go to the dentist. And I'm like,

[00:54:50] Jonathan: you have to keep up with it.

[00:54:52] Karrie: Once walking up to class once a week, not going to fix your back

[00:54:57] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:54:59] Karrie: every day, just like fixing your teeth.

[00:55:02] Jonathan: And the other thing about the waiting list that ties into this kind of exclusivity is would be if you had a policy, I don't know if it's explicit or if you just invoke it when needed, but it might be good to explicitly say if you canceled two classes in a row, you're on probation.

[00:55:21] Jonathan: And if you miss one more class after that,

[00:55:27] Jonathan: But who's the price. If you want to be the most expensive one, because, and here's the reason why, you could soften it, of course, but if you, but the idea, you can put it in a nice, nicer than I just put it. But the idea is that the flossing story is what it's like. You're not paying for classes, you're playing for your back to feel good.

[00:55:46] Jonathan: And your back's not going to feel good if you keep canceling classes. So I'm here to help you feel better. And I'm going to drill Sergeant you a little bit, if you're going for a pint instead of coming into class. And my karate school actually is extreme. They have a much more, they have a better bedside manner than I do, which is probably why I don't run a karate.

[00:56:09] Jonathan: But they'll, they, they would articulate it in that kind of a way. It's look, this is for you. If you are canceling, I don't want your money because your back is going to hurt. What you're selling is not classes. What you're selling is fitness or whatever. It's. It's the feeling of being able to pick up your grandkids without worrying that you're going to snap in half, that's what you're really selling.

[00:56:33] Jonathan: It requires that they go to a certain number of classes per month. And if you miss two in a row, you're on probation. If you miss a third, we're going to cancel your credit card. Yeah. You're out or whatever, you can soften the terms, or you can give them more of a probationary period or something, but they need to feel, you need to the problem with any of this physical stuff, like personal trainer karate.

[00:56:54] Jonathan: Any of that stuff is that the real payoff is way in the future.

[00:56:57] Jonathan: And it feels really good to have a point right now, instead of rolling around on my back in a zoom class. So you have to bring the pain. Now you have to bring the pain and the payoff to the present. And by creating this culture of look, you're outta here.

[00:57:12] Jonathan: If you do that one more time, that brings the future back pain into the present. It would, it's a different kind of pain. Do you see what I'm saying? It creates a pain in the now attention or problem in the now not maybe someday when their back doesn't cause they feel great. Oh, I can skip a class.

[00:57:27] Jonathan: I feel great. It's oh, I floss my teeth enough for one lifetime. I never have to floss again. It doesn't work like that. I phrase it however you want, but that is a way to do it.

[00:57:38] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:57:39] Jonathan: All right. So doing stuff like that would allow you to increase your fees? It might not, but still, it doesn't feel like the lever.

[00:57:48] Jonathan: It doesn't feel like the biggest lever be increasing number of clients. This is and it was zoom would be the way to do it the obvious way to do it.

[00:57:56] Karrie: Yeah. Yeah, no, you're right. Even if we had met so just chatting to you now listing tool, the supplements, taking your way and thinking, because we were limited with space at the students, but maybe we have a class where they do three classes online and then they come in for a to,

[00:58:17] Jonathan: Exactly. Yeah. Cause you said a lot of people do mix.

[00:58:20] Karrie: Okay.

[00:58:20] Karrie: Yeah. Some, yeah, some people are doing both. They're doing a weekly zoom class and a weekly face to face class. But so far, we have offered a kind of a class where they're doing mostly soon, I'm coming in once a month or whatever, once every four weeks. But that might be quite a good thing to do because then that gives them a bit of hands-on and then they can go back to that living room floor with they've had a bit of counseling say that.

[00:58:55] Jonathan: Yeah, I think, that, that does limit you geographically to a certain extent. If it was a requirement, if it wasn't a requirement and it was like a new thing, and this thing is like 25% more than anything else you sell per month. And the new thing is that you can have, you can freely mix one in person per week with, I don't know, three or four.

[00:59:19] Jonathan: I don't know how many days a week a person can do Pilates and have it without diminishing returns, but I would think it, you could do it daily. I'm sure you do it. Here.

[00:59:27] Karrie: Yeah. If we just, I think just moving some things daily is fairly important and it doesn't have to be a whole hour.

[00:59:35] Jonathan: You could create a new package that would give you the freedom to experiment with pricing without having to raise it for 400 or 300 people and deal with the blowback from that you could say, Hey, we're offering a new thing. What's your highest monthly price right now.

[00:59:52] Karrie: She was on the eight pounds, I think.

[00:59:54] Jonathan: Okay. So you've got a new, 185 pounds a month.

[00:59:58] Karrie: Yeah.

[00:59:58] Jonathan: What is it, create a premium, offering something that is something that, and try not to throw classes at it, throw, try to throw experience at it. So what is the experience that you create that would be premium luxury experience for the cream of the crop, subset of people who money's no object anyway, and they, but they want to have this like pristine experience.

[01:00:21] Jonathan: I don't know. I have no idea what that looks like. Maybe they get champagne when they come into the studio. I don't know. Or some kind of I suppose maybe not that but some kind of, I don't know, some kind of pampering, some kind of experience in the studio they'll get a massage afterwards or something, or who knows what, whatever.

[01:00:35] Jonathan: I don't know. I'm just like, those are terrible ideas, but that, but like thinking outside of the box there could be something special about the in-person experience that, that is unlocked with that that tier. So that is one thing you could do, but great new packages and higher tier offerings.

[01:00:51] Jonathan: But I really think that I really think that it's, it seems like the obvious choice would be to scale up the number of clients that are zooming.

[01:01:01] Karrie: Yeah,

[01:01:02] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. Your capacity is that's where you have all the extra capacity. You don't have to increase your costs. Probably trivial increases costs.

[01:01:12] Karrie: no, it works really well. So I think we've really proved that we can teach effectively on soon. It can't possibly be the same experience as being face-to-face. But when I compare other stuff that I've seen unit people, they're all people paying sort of subscriptions of identity 14, 20 quid a month, just to watch somebody do on demand videos, just to watch somebody have their own workout.

[01:01:41] Jonathan: Yeah, we have Peloton. We pay 70 bucks a month for it. No one uses it, but that's not the business you want to run. Like you don't want the gym business model. You want people to feel better.

[01:01:50] Karrie: No. No, exactly. And my whole 24 years of teaching has been getting to know people and making it about them. And that is still so important to me. I don't, I've had teachers that work in that gym environment and they don't work for us because they're very much, they were always saying, can we move the classes closer together, but why?

[01:02:17] Karrie: Because then I'm not give up standing there talking to people at the end of class or before the next time,

[01:02:24] Jonathan: Yeah.

[01:02:26] Karrie: if you want to work in that environment, get 20 foot amount, 30 big stuff.

[01:02:31] Jonathan: Yep. Yep.

[01:02:33] Karrie: Absolutely not what I want to do and never have done, which I guess is why we have that incredible loyalty with our clients.

[01:02:42] Jonathan: sure you're right.

[01:02:44] Karrie: So

[01:02:45] Jonathan: Yeah.

[01:02:47] Karrie: really important.

[01:02:48] Jonathan: Okay. So w we've I think we've identified your opportunity for

[01:02:52] Karrie: Yeah.

[01:02:53] Jonathan: So before we wrap up, because I've been keeping you on for so long before we wrap up, you need to tell me about your dog pricing story, and we

[01:03:00] Karrie: Oh this 7 cents, I have a small Jack Russell called money. And unfortunately how bum regularly gets locked up. I see some adults get locked up, so she has to have them so I could get a bum squeezed regularly. It's a very depressing thing. I was seeing another Yvette store thing shop with a friend of mine and she was in there for something.

[01:03:30] Karrie: And while I was there, I said, oh, how much do you charge for

[01:03:37] Jonathan: Yeah, I know.

[01:03:41] Karrie: So she said, oh, it's 15 pounds. I said it. Okay. And then she said, and it fit, there was 15 pounds for the nurse. So I said first 30 quid, then No, it's 15 pounds. And I said, but you've just said that it's another 15 quid from us. Yes, it is. I said, why don't you say I've make it make an appointment, then I just won't be, I know cramps don't need enough. So I just want to pay 50 quick, just

[01:04:18] Jonathan: Yeah. That's irritating.

[01:04:21] Karrie: And then the fat came out and he starts talking with me and I said, stop lying. And to the point, I say, it's such a quick, must have anyway, I wouldn't be booking in, cause my battery charges me 30 pounds 50.

[01:04:37] Jonathan: Yeah. For the nurse and the glands

[01:04:39] Karrie: But yeah. So the next time I went to my best, I told them this and I said an accident.

[01:04:43] Karrie: I've got my idea from you. I said, when I go to my coffee shop, I said, every 10 cups I paid for, I get a free cup of coffee, some squeezing

[01:04:56] Jonathan: frequent flyer.

[01:04:58] Karrie: to keep me coming back. Otherwise I might go down for me.

[01:05:01] Jonathan: Maybe they teach lessons and you can do it yourself, then they could charge the lessons.

[01:05:07] Karrie: No. I'm really happy to say that experience.

[01:05:10] Jonathan: Talk about value based pricing.

[01:05:12] Karrie: Absolutely. I just said, I think the loyalty card thing should be something that they want to introduce

[01:05:18] Jonathan: Keep you coming back.

[01:05:20] Karrie: Yeah. But I haven't done it so far and I have to go there every four or five weeks.

[01:05:25] Jonathan: I think they know they have a captive audience.

[01:05:27] Karrie: Yeah. I'm going to send her out begging soon

[01:05:31] Jonathan: Yeah. Pull your own weight many

[01:05:33] Karrie: to get out there and on some money.

[01:05:37] Jonathan: the hard way. this has been delightful. Hopefully it's been helpful in some way and have good.

[01:05:46] Karrie: really, I'm sorry. I'm not going to flood every bottle. Every suddenly get a load of Colossus tips again. You'll know why

[01:05:55] Jonathan: I guess so. Excellent. Excellent. I'm a big fan and hopefully you'll keep in touch and let me know what happens.

[01:06:02] Karrie: I will. Absolutely. Don't you worry? You'll be getting another email from that map.

[01:06:09] Jonathan: Before we go, tell people where your website is in case they want to

[01:06:12] Karrie: Oh, no, not Lottie's dot com.

[01:06:16] Jonathan: All right. There, you have it. Maybe you'll get an influx of zoom.

[01:06:20] Karrie: I would not get if I have to do a class where I have to turn things down a bit or change my humor for the states. So be it. I can do that.

[01:06:30] Jonathan: I wouldn't worry. I wouldn't worry. A bunch of software developers sit around all day with bad backs.

[01:06:36] Karrie: Perfect. I've got just the thing. All of your neck, shoulders felt you needed still two hips, the whole shebang. We can cover it all, but I'm not squeezing your mom.

[01:06:52] Jonathan: And on that note.

[01:06:56] Jonathan: Thanks again. And yeah, keep it, keep me posted, shoot me an email and I'd love to send out an update.

[01:07:03] Karrie: Thanks Jonathan. Have a lovely day over in the Southern states.

[01:07:08] Jonathan: Exactly. Yes, you too. All right, folks, that's it for this time. I'm Jonathan Stark and you've been listening to ditching hourly. Would you like to learn how to get paid? What you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? What about making more money without working more hours? We worked through all of this together in the pricing seminar.

[01:07:33] Jonathan: Registration starts soon. So head on over to the pricing seminar.com to add your name to the announcement. That URL again is the pricing seminar.com. I hope to see you there.