I was recently accepted into the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. It is a rigorous business education initiative, and the onboarding process requires answering specific questions about where my studio stands today.
Simple enough. Except I keep finding myself comparing every answer to where I was four or five years ago. The contrast is giving me pause. So today, I’m writing from the heart.
Five years ago, I had more clients than I knew what to do with. My problem was finding quality teachers, paying them something between what I could afford and what they asked for. And investing in their development because better teachers meant clients would stay.
We were absolutely thriving, but I was constantly scrambling to keep up with demand. The primary constraint back then was on the people side of the business. This is where that expensive lesson around payroll ceilings came into play.
The journey between then and now has been filled with additions and adjustments to the business. Most notably, an apprenticeship program intended to create a pipeline of well-trained teachers. And it did. But many of them graduated, worked with us for a while then returned to corporate life, left Austin or opened their own studios.
Today, the newer teachers on my team have standing openings. This is partially the nature of our work: unless you’re hired into a departing teacher’s schedule, it takes time to build from scratch. But there are some underlying issues. I’m clear on what they are, but I’m not ready to commit to the solution. So the business is feeling it.
In short, and in comparison to five years ago, the constraint has shifted from a people issue to an experience issue.
I don’t state this lightly or to cause alarm. Most studios deal with this at some point, and I’ll see it through when I’m ready to institute the changes needed.
But sitting with a Goldman Sachs questionnaire asking me to describe my current challenges forced a realization about mature businesses in general.
Earlier this summer I wrote about deciding not to replace my studio manager when she gave notice. What looked like a staffing decision was actually a gut-check: was the business model I hired her into still the right model? For me, right now, it’s not. So what does the right model look like? That’s the quest I’m on.
I also shared my Q2 findings, which inspired some soul-searching about the way many of us run our studios. Consumer confidence had hit a historic low and boutique fitness was getting squeezed from both ends. It began to feel like a pivot was in order.
This is the part of mature business ownership that does not get discussed enough.
A studio that has been running for many years has real advantages: a client base, a reputation, systems that mostly work and a reliable team. Those things take time to build and are worth protecting. It also provides some cushion when I need to take a moment and reassess what the hell is going on in our industry.
On the other hand, stability can create a kind of inertia. The instincts that built my studio were sharpened against the challenges of a different decade and a different season of business. I can be doing everything right by the standards of five years ago, but it may not be enough to take me into a new chapter.
So here I go, taking my minimal spare time and investing it into an intense business program. I’m still a week away from my first class and it’s already doing the work. Just one prompt surfaced a comparison I’d been too busy to make on my own: five years ago, my constraint was staffing. Today, it's experience. Same studio, different season.
-Amanda