Operational discipline isn’t flashy, but it consistently shows up in the studios performing at the highest level. In a recent episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, Julian Barnes and host Seran Glanfield unpacked the operational choices that shape real profitability, from how owners spend their time to the systems they run. Here’s how their conversation connects to our State of the Industry data and what it means for Pilates studio owners today.
According to the 2024 BFS State of the Industry Report, “The Majority of Pilates studios, both in the city and suburbs, have a higher profit margin compared to other modalities and all studios overall.”
The data shows:
As shown in the chart below, Pilates outperforms every other modality in profit margin distribution.
Seran Glanfield, founder of Spring Three and host of the Pilates Business Podcast, highlights what she sees inside the most profitable Pilates studios:
“What if I told you that the most profitable Pilates studios aren't those that are the biggest, but perhaps even the smallest, or that the studios pulling in half a million or over a million in revenue aren't just grinding harder. They're working smarter with tighter class caps, premium pricing, and very fantastically driven teams.”
She adds that owner-operators who commit deeply to the management of the business outperform peers:
“There are many owner-operator founders who spend or dedicate themselves to the management of the business and who have exceedingly successful businesses and are exceedingly profitable.”
And she points to the pivotal operational shift:
“The key is the dedicated element. They have dedicated more of their time towards business management, investment in their business growth, and have perhaps replaced themselves in teaching. There are a few different ways to get to that outcome. Sometimes it's hiring externally, sometimes it's hiring externally to replace other roles in the business and sometimes it's sort of replacing yourself.”
The operational patterns Seran describes mirror what Julian Barnes observes across profitable studios:
“The most profitable studios are implementing, some might say, boring basic SOPs, and they're implementing them consistently and rigorously. By that, I'm referring specifically to a framework we call FER: consistently finding new leads every month, enrolling those new leads into your community, and retaining those members by minimizing churn and achieving a long LTV. Find, enroll, retain.”
He also notes the role of dedicated management:
“Profitable studios have a dedicated manager whose full-time or primary responsibility is to implement the SOPs to find, enroll, and retain. Someone whose job it is to make sure that they are following the FER framework”.
Q&A: Practical Questions Pilates Owners AskQ: Does being a smaller studio limit my revenue potential? Q: What operational shift helps owners improve profitability? Q: What operational framework drives consistent profitability? |