Just Wear One Hat

As a pilates instructor you wear many hats – teacher, movement specialist and sometimes friend. But, as an instructor and studio owner, you wear quite a few more!

It probably means you are pretty good at jumping from teaching to scheduling to chasing payments and paying bills, organizing maintenance to optimizing your package prices. It also means you have probably gotten used to working on what has to get done, no matter what time of day, or day of the week.

Being productive and knowing how to best manage your time over the course of a day, a week and a month will help you to get on top of your business. New research shows that single-tasking not multi-tasking is the way to go. Yes, you read that right – doing multiple things at once makes you LESS productive.

Single-tasking means doing one activity at a time with as few distractions as possible. For you, this could mean blocking out time in your schedule to focus on a specific part of your business. For example, make Friday afternoons your time for end of week admin. Knowing that you have that time blocked to pay your bills, take care of invoicing clients or setting up your schedule for the week ahead will give you peace of mind during the week. Or spend one afternoon a month with your marketing hat on and focus on creating lots of content for your email or social media campaigns – it’ll help ease the pressure of trying to do it bit-by-bit each day.

Top tip: switch off your phone, shut down your Facebook browser and close the office door. Complete one task at a time and give yourself a short break every hour to refresh your mind.

Good Luck!

Seran Glanfield, founder of Spring Three (www.springthree.com), is a small business strategist who works exclusively with boutique fitness studio owners and instructors. Using tried-and-tested methods and tools, she helps her clients get clear about their business, stand out from the crowd, and set the foundations for strong and sustainable growth.