Getting Raw Ep #18 Tanya Winter - Studio Pilates

Hey, how you going? It's Richard Mark Toutounji and welcome to Getting Raw. Today I'm with the gorgeous Tanya Winter from Pilates Studio—

Studio Pilates International.

Studio Pilates International. And today I want to talk about the success of this Jade and Jay are your husband? Yep. How long have you been married for?

6 years today, but we've actually been together for about 17 years.

Oh my gosh, it sounds like me and my wife. We go, how long have you been together? Been together 12 years, married 5.

Yes. Same sort of stuff, hey?

Yes. And so it's your wedding anniversary today? Yes. And I don't see him anywhere?

No, unfortunately I'm over here at WayFit, which is great, but he's back at home.

I hope his flowers came or something.

Yeah.

Oops, sorry, Jay. So you've obviously built this business up, and if anybody has seen your studio, it's Australia's largest Pilates studio. Is that correct? I'm saying that?

Yes, yes.

Okay. You've got about 700 to 800 people coming through a week.

Yes.

And, you know, even for a studio size, that's a lot of numbers just for such a small niche.

Yes.

Pilates. Yes. So I'm very interested to know how you built a huge business just around this niche. You've got to have passion for something like that.

You do. You absolutely have to have passion. I mean, when we started, it It was just myself and Jade and a tiny studio that was probably, I don't know, about 50 square meters, so it was quite small. Yep. And we worked really hard and we both have an absolute passion for Pilates, so I think if you love what you're doing, it shows. Yep. And we were really focused on client customer service, making sure that they were getting what they wanted, what they needed. And luckily with Pilates, it's a bit of a niche thing, so if you're good at it, people don't stop coming because they love it. Yep. They get results and they know that. They just keep coming. And over time, you know, it took us a while, but through perseverance and, you know, focusing on doing a good job, you know, we now have 12 different staff instructors. At the studio here? At the studio, yep. And, you know, they look after the clients now, so our focus now is on looking after them, making sure that they're doing a good job and looking after the clients as well as what we would. And that's the challenge, I think.

And how long did that take you to build up that, you know, to where we are now since you started?

We've been going for about 10 years. Probably for about the first 5 years, it was predominantly just the two of us, and then we slowly—

Slogging away for like 5 years.

Yep, yep, and then we slowly brought some other people on board. And actually, one of our clients was a business coach. Yep. And one of the best things that we did was, you know, do some sessions with her and realized that to grow the business, our focus had to be not on the clients anymore. It had to be on our team and helping them best deliver the service to the clients. Otherwise, you know, if we kept doing all of the instructing and the work ourselves, we were never going to grow.

And that is a very, very important point because today, you know, it's February. I've just learned that you're taking a large trip over to America for a while.

Yes.

And so to do that, obviously you have to systemize your business and it hasn't just started yesterday. It's been a process for a while now.

Yes.

And this is what I really want to talk about because you've got your studio, you're turning out 800 clients every week in there. You've got your staff now set up correctly. You guys haven't stopped there. You told me before you found the need. Tell me about that. You found the need for, I guess, to train the trainers. Is that correct? Yes. And now you're running courses for trainers. Yeah. So about this.

Yep. So the studio, I guess, in a sense takes care of itself, which has freed us up to focus on.

I just I just want to say that just don't you just love that takes care of itself?

Well, it doesn't. The team do because they're fantastic.

But the team's fantastic. You set up to take care of yourself, and now you can move on to something bigger and better. Yes. Which I love. Okay, let's get into this. Yes. And so I guess.

Yes, so to get the team in the first place, what we were finding was that new instructors would come on board and they wouldn't be up to a standard that our clients would be used to.

Right.

And we would spend a lot of time training them up. And, you know, over time it became evident that our training methods were quite good. All the people that would come on board would say, wow, this training is fantastic, you should really delve into doing it. And so our focus for the past kind of 5 years has been more on the education side of things and teaching people to become instructors. And travelling around and doing that Australia-wide. So both for mat work and also for studios as well. There's more of a demand for mat work because a lot of fitness trainers and personal trainers and gyms have mat work. Studio training with the equipment is more specific to studios.

And that's where your studio can come in handy with that, with actual equipment.

Yeah, absolutely. But the bulk of the training is actually catered to the fitness industry and for gyms.

Okay, and that's a really good point because now we're heading into 2012, it's all about wellness and it continues to grow that way, I think. And I think Pilates Pilates will be, again, just keep growing and growing and growing as well as that. So how many trainers are you putting through these courses over time? And for example, are they trainers or are they just people that are wanting to get into Pilates straight up?

A bit of both. Our main target market is trainers, fitness trainers and personal trainers. We also have physios, doctors, chiropractors, nurses, and people who just come through with no background that we teach the anatomy and that side of things as well. So a broad spectrum, but I would say that 80% are fitness trainers or And

are they wanting to actually grow their business with Pilates, or is this interest for them?

You get a mix of both. You get the personal trainers who might be just wanting the edge because, you know, it's kind of cutthroat. There's lots of trainers out there, so it's a niche thing, and people love Pilates. It helps you to rehabilitate your clients better because I come from a physio background, so we do a lot on rehab. But it also means that you're just giving your clients something different. So a lot of personal trainers do the course for that reason, and also just to have more knowledge on the body. And then you also get others that come in and want to be Pilates instructors and kind of delve more into that route. And group fitness trainers that want to teach Pilates classes as well. So you get a mixture of all.

And I guess in setting this up, I mean, where the hell do you start setting up an institute for training for Pilates? I mean, is it a hard process to go through? Because there's a lot of people out there that have their business to a size and they're doing those staff meetings and the training They write the manuals. There must be people going, well, I'm nearly doing that. How hard is it to actually take that step to go, I'm going to launch this?

You know what, the hardest thing is setting it up. And then it's just having the balls to do it.

To go and do it.

To go and do it. And have a plan of how you're going to market it and who the target market are. It's all about contacts and networking and finding the best avenue to advertise and get people to know that it actually exists. Actually, that's probably the hardest thing is getting it out there to people because, you know, if it's a new product or service, it You can be great, no one knows about it, they're not going to come along.

Well, yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, I knew you guys were doing studio Pilates because it's marketed that way, and I've slowly seen more information about your courses. So you are doing, I think, a good job. You're getting out there. Tell me your strategies to actually get out there. Is it a— do you have a marketing team? Have you gone down that avenue? Are you doing it yourself? Where are you at with all that stuff?

No, we're doing it ourselves, and actually most of our marketing is probably referral and word of mouth. From the people who have already done the course.

And is there a referral system that you've got in place?

Yeah, we do. There's a system again, I like it. If people refer someone and they book in, we send them a $100 voucher that they can use for more courses or buy these products because we also make equipment and products and that sort of type of thing. But just attending conferences and networking with people and the gym chains as well has been really worthwhile. And we haven't spent a lot of money on marketing. So that's the way you want to do it. Yes, referrals.

And you told me something really exciting, which I thought was exciting. You probably had your excitement already, but you're coming in now to the next level, I believe. So past the education, we're going next into getting into gyms.

Yeah.

Why? You've got your studio, you're educating trainers. Why don't you guys just stop? You know, why do you have to keep going? Is there a drive to— like, what's the end goal there? What are we reaching for?

We're quite driven, Dave and I, anyway. But a bugbear of mine and his, and a lot of Pilates instructors, is that there varying different levels of courses and instruction. And, you know, a lot of people think that Pilates is really easy or boring or whatnot, and a lot of the gyms struggle to implement Pilates programs into their clubs because of lack of consistency between instructors, the classes just being way too easy. Because, you know, when you go into a gym setting, people want to work hard. And then people go, I've done Pilates, it sucked. It's really frustrating when you know that if it sucked, it obviously wasn't very good. Right. And so for a long time, actually, And actually, we've been— it's been a thing that really annoyed us because it affects everyone's reputation in the Pilates industry. But it just so happened that, you know, we came into contact with Fitness First and they were having these issues and we had a solution for them in terms of, well, we can provide the training. But even with providing the training, it's still up to the instructor to deliver a good class and they can still pick really easy exercises and not sequence them well. Sure, yeah. So what we've actually done with Fitness First is we're doing choreographed classes and it's also using the Pilates circuit. We have a range of systems and beds which we sell to teams. Provide to you? Yes. So the trainers will do the training through us and then they can teach the classes in Fitness First. And obviously that's going to be made available to other avenues as well. That's great.

And the connection with Fitness First, I just want to take a step back. You said, you know, you're out at— we're at WAFIG today in Perth. You're based in Brisbane.

Yes.

So you're always networking. And then obviously Fitness First didn't come onto your doorstep and knock on your door, I'm sure. No. Already with the industry, I'm sure. Is that how it sort of progressed?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it was actually my husband Jayden, and he was talking to one of the group fitness managers at Fylex. And, you know, how's your Pilates? And she just so happened to actually be a Pilates instructor as well as the group fitness manager. She's like, you know, it's terrible, we just can't get traction with it. He said, well, we can help you. Let's give this a go. And it has gone so well. They had in all of their clubs, you know, They had really small numbers in a lot of their classes and they ordered a certain amount of equipment. They just had to order a whole lot more because the classes have worked so well. And I guess for them—

That's a good problem to have.

It is a good problem. Yep, and they're very, very happy with it. So it's now branching out Australia-wide. Awesome, that's great. But from the gym perspective as well, there's so much competition now with all of these, you know, Snap and Jet.

So Fitness First is needing some different ways to keep it up.

Well, I guess some, you know, the difference So that you can make, you know, to the gyms that don't have classes such as group fitness. And that's why I think a lot of people still go to like the bigger gyms that do have group fitness because it offers a different service. And Pilates is very specific and very different, and you do get a lot of people who will be attracted to that gym because they simply love doing the Pilates class. And I mean, even in our studio, a lot of our clients also go to the gym. If the gym had a fantastic Pilates class, you know, often they then leave the gym to come to our studio. Oh yeah. Okay, so if the gym had a great Pilates class, they probably would have stayed at the gym, done the gym as well as the great Pilates class.

So it's retention for the gym. And so you're now going to focus in all gyms or just chains, or what's the process?

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably we'll start with like Fernwood and Virgin Active. The ball's kind of already rolling with that. But what we also want to do is there are also a lot of instructors out there who want to run their own classes in halls or parks or whatnot. And, you know, being able to supply them with the marketing tools and the class format will make their classes a lot more popular. And from our perspective, to know that they're going to actually go out and teach fantastic classes is better branding for us as well.

Yeah, I mean, branding's coming out. I mean, I think it's awesome because you said it right there. If people just go in the gym for one purpose and now they can go to professional Pilates class, not a, you know, I learned Pilates in a week sort of thing.

Yes.

Really understand it. I mean, the benefit for the gym retention.

Yeah.

The whole nine yards.

Definitely.

I guess my only Pilates experience is I had some training in London. I used to work on cruise liners and they said, come and do a quick, it was a 3-session course in Pilates on the reformers. Then I went out and taught it and it was unbelievable. It was a load of fun. Yeah. I want to know now, I'm going to put you on the spot. I want, this is getting raw and I'd love to hear, you know, you've got such success as you and Jade and how you've been going step by step and step, working hard, really driving. What are the biggest setbacks that you've had in your business career here over the last

Setbacks that

really hurt. Setbacks or very hard challenges that have cost you a lot of money, time, pulling your hair out. Yeah. That's really—

Okay, staff.

Staff, okay.

Yeah, definitely staff. And finding staff to start with who were already trained Pilates instructors, that was a nightmare. So that was part of the reason also why we wanted to do the training. Hence the reason why you went to— It was a double whammy. So that's really solved that. But I think too, as fitness trainers, when you start out, When your business is quite small, your focus is on being a good fitness trainer or a good Pilates instructor. It's not on being a good boss and having your workplace systemized and organized and all the rest of it. So I guess the biggest challenge for us was changing our mindset from, I'm a personal trainer/Pilates instructor/physio, to, I'm a business owner and these are my team and I have to manage them and look after them. Yeah. And because the business will go nowhere if you don't have a good team to help you. And to have a good team to help you, you have to focus all your energy

So

that was probably our biggest hurdle. Staff? Yes, was the team and systems because if you don't have systems, you find that if people don't know exactly what they're doing or where to look up to find it, you end up jumping back in all the time to solve it.

So this was the issue, like you guys kept jumping in and kept doing the work and never being able to get out of there?

Yes, seriously writing manuals and video recording everything that needed to be done and making sure the jobs were clear, setting up meetings with people and delegating. Delegating and you've had trouble delegating. We both did. Okay. Because you know when you start the business yourself, you do everything.

Of course.

And it's your little baby. Yeah. And also trusting. Not that you don't trust them, but you know it's the kind of thing where you think. I even think you can always do things better than someone else, but you just know like you know when you're doing it. It's your baby set up. Yeah. Is trusting them, and if people aren't doing it as well as you like, it's not their fault. You haven't trained them enough.

I like that. It's not their fault. You haven't trained them enough. Yes. So again, you took. Taking ultimate responsibility. Yeah. So I haven't trained enough. Now, you guys work together. Yeah. Do you work at your studio or do you work at home? Where do you do most of your work?

A little bit of both. We find that if we're down at the studio all the time, and we're not working on studio stuff, we're working on the education side of things, I'm very social, so I just chat to the clients, they all know me. I chat to all the staff, it's all very fun.

You can't stay there working.

No, so we have a home office that we work from predominantly.

Great. And I know, I used to work I work with my partner quite a lot, my wife, and there's sometimes challenges. Tell me, tell me, has there been, you know, hard challenges working together? Has there been ups and downs?

Not really.

It's been a good partnership?

Yeah, I mean, we gel very well together, and we both have different strengths and weaknesses that complement. We're both quite placid in nature, so there's not really many arguments. That's fantastic. Occasionally, but I think the hardest thing for us working together is because we're so driven and perfectionists and hardworking by nature, is actually leaving work.

Leaving work? Yeah, that's the big challenge.

That's the only challenge we face because sometimes one of us might be having a day where we're like, oh, I don't want to think about work today, and the other one comes up with a great idea that they just want to talk to you about, and it's back into work mode. Yes, we all know it too well, don't we?

It's just work, work, work. So tell me, how do you then separate? Do you have a day off? Do you have to say, this is my day off, and do you go away? What do you do?

We do different things. We usually go to the beach and we'll say, I don't want to talk about work today. We just have to respect that. We try. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. Sometimes I'll have a day where I, you know, 'cause we work closely together, I think it's important to have time apart as well.

Definitely, that's a good tip, good tip. All right, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. We've gotta

go.

Thank you. We film anymore, we've gotta edit, edit, edit. I don't like editing. I like to show it all on Getting Raw. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing the studio brand in all the gyms going forward. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Thanks.