At the end of each quarter, I look at my numbers and reflect.
Q2 had a lot to say.
Memberships were up. Going into April, we sought to convert five package clients to 12-month contracts before June 30. And so we did. But we lost five package clients as well. Some stepped away for summer, one moved and another one who ghosted.
Package clients pay as they go and are casually committed. But contract clients, they pay every month and attend more regularly. So those five clients moving from one model to the other is an overall improvement to our financial structure. Big win for us there despite the attrition.
Leads held steady from Q1. But our intros dropped significantly.
Before making assumptions, I had some questions. We had a couple of days where 12+ leads came in. All with suspect emails and no phone numbers. Were they spam? Our automations hadn’t been updated for over a year. Was it stale?
And the biggest question: how easy is it to purchase an intro on our website?
A lead who doesn’t convert is not a lost client (yet.) She’s still a lead, ideally one conversation away from coming onboard. So there was some work to do, but nothing major.
Intro-to-long-term pricing option was also down. Upon seeing it, I leaned into a specific refinement I’d been considering for a while.
In late 2023, we moved all sales and client management to the front desk. Since that time, the desk has followed up on leads, presented packages and scheduled new clients in.
But our front desk doesn’t teach and isn’t present on the floor where the actual experience happens. So those initial sales conversations are coming from someone other than the teacher. That experience could land as abrupt no matter how well-scripted.
I wanted to shift those intro-period sales back to the teachers. Connection before commerce. A teacher who spends an hour with a new client is more authentic than a post-session sales pitch from the desk. So that’s a refinement we’re working on.
Gross revenue was slightly down compared to the same quarter last year.
Despite the immediate anxiety it produced, the downturn was felt by many of my peers and deserves context:
Consumer sentiment in the United States fell to its lowest point on record in April 2026, according to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. That’s below the levels recorded during the 2008 financial crisis.
Boutique fitness is being squeezed: budget gyms are picking up price-sensitive clients while high-end clubs are capturing clients who want to spend. The middle, where most independent studios operate, is feeling it.
According to Bain and Company’s spring 2026 luxury market study, bookings for dining, leisure and entertainment are up over 30% this year. People aren’t spending less. They are spending differently, and this quarter they spent it on vacation rather than their standing Tuesday session.
Any revenue drop is painful. But it’s not the same as losing long-term clients. Our active roster is largely intact. The revenue drop is a combination of factors: slower new client conversion, seasonal attrition and a genuinely difficult spending environment for premium service businesses.
I’m choosing to not panic. I’m looking at the data, comparing it across previous quarters and asking what’s mine to solve.
These six numbers tell most of the story. You can build a simple version of this in a spreadsheet or pull it from your scheduling software reports.
Quarterly P&L summary
Total active clients (described in How Many Clients Do You Actually Have?)
Package holders versus contract clients
Leads, intros sold, conversions to a long-term option
Payroll as a percentage of revenue
Operating expenses as a percentage of revenue
All this to say, Q2 was instructive. The numbers confirmed some things I’ve been observing about our industry and what that means for studios like mine. That is a longer conversation, though. More on that later.
-Amanda