The Studio CEO: Business Coaching For Yoga & Pilates Teachers & Studio Owners

The Productive Routine I Use to Grow My Business

• Jackie Murphy • Episode 10

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Unlock the secrets of crafting a business routine that not only fuels growth but also offers peace of mind. Ever wondered how the prefrontal cortex can be the game-changer in your daily planning? Join me, Jackie Murphy, on the Studio CEO Podcast as we explore the art of mindful scheduling and the power of strategic action to keep procrastination at bay. Learn how to harness your brain’s potential to align every action with your goals, ensuring consistent progress and productivity.

Discover the transformative impact of effective daily planning in alleviating the stress of indecision. From organizing your tasks to prioritizing self-care and fostering meaningful client relationships, I’ll share my personal approach to maintaining momentum in business. Whether it’s planning your day the night before or setting your weekly priorities, a well-structured routine can free you from the mental clutter of unfinished tasks. Let’s talk about how focusing on small but important tasks consistently can prevent overwhelming backlogs and create a path to long-term success.

Step into a balanced routine that thrives on flexibility and stability, even when managing the chaos of raising toddlers or handling unexpected life events. I'll reveal how personal workouts can rejuvenate your energy and release stuck emotions, an essential element for those in demanding roles. Additionally, learn how I turned transitional periods into golden opportunities for growth, laying the groundwork for a successful future. If you’re curious about advancing your business skills, especially in the context of yoga or self-coaching, consider joining the Business of Yoga course to prepare for a year of significant growth. Let's build a routine that not only supports your professional aspirations but also enriches your personal well-being.

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Speaker 1:

Having a productive routine in your business not only keeps momentum moving forward for your revenue and for your growth, but it is also going to help give you the peace of mind that you are craving. How many of you would love to have a routine where, every single day, you feel productive walking away from work that day? Inside this episode, I give you a glimpse of what that could look like. Welcome to the Studio CEO, the only podcast that empowers yoga and Pilates teachers and studio owners to step confidently into their role as CEO. If you are ready to show up with passion, take your business seriously and scale to new heights without burning out, you are in the right place. I'm your host, jackie Murphy, an award-winning certified business coach with over 12 years of experience inside the yoga industry. I have seen firsthand what it takes to build a profitable and scalable business. Join me as we dive into strategies, insights and real world advice that will help you grow your revenue, build a thriving team and create a business that serves you as much as you serve your students. It's time to embrace your inner CEO and make more money without working more. This is just the beginning. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Studio CEO Podcast. Hi, I'm Jackie Murphy, and today we're going to dive into what a productive routine can do for your business, and I'm going to give you a glimpse of what my routine has become over the years so that I can continually take action and keep momentum going forward. Now, this is something that I have seen for years, but with my most successful clients. Part of the success that they have is due to the fact that they are always in massive action in their business, and massive action doesn't mean that they're always doing giant things and doing big, enormous new marketing campaigns Not at all. Massive action in my world just means that they are consistently taking action in the right direction of the results that they want to create. And sometimes that massive action can be really small, but it feels massive because of your internal resistance to it or because of your schedule, because you're busy. So I want to share with you what I consider to be the way to think about a productive routine and then give you a glimpse of what my routine is, so that you can take massive action in your business and really see growth and momentum in 2025 and the rest of 2024.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing that we have to talk about is how your brain works. If you have listened to episodes of the podcast, you've listened to me talk about this before, but we think about two major aspects of our brain the limbic system, which is back here, and then your prefrontal cortex, which is up here, and most of us plan from our limbic system, which typically does not lead to a productive routine, because the limbic part of your brain is designed to keep you efficient. I mean, just doing the same thing you do every single day is designed to have you avoid discomfort, like getting out of bed early to work out, and it is designed to seek the momentary, quick, pleasurable experiences, like watching netflix instead of doing a follow-up sales call. So if you have been using the limbic part of your brain and you have really had things on your to-do list for months or even years, that is a big part of why, because, of course, even the things that you want to do don't get done when you're letting that part of your brain plan and take action and evaluate Now the prefrontal cortex of your brain. This is the part that actually knows how to plan, that can look forward and set a goal and then figure out a strategic way to reach that goal, and this is the part of your brain that you have to use in order to have a productive routine. So the first little tip, golden nugget, that I have for you here is that you have to, in order to have a productive routine, decide ahead of time what you are going to do in your day, specifically in your business, before the time comes.

Speaker 1:

So if you've been waking up on Monday mornings or Tuesday mornings when this podcast comes out and then you ask yourself, what am I going to do today? Or what is my schedule today? Or, oh my gosh, what can I get done today? And you're asking yourself, in the present moment, it is too late. Your limbic brain, then, is driving the actions that you take. So, instead of doing that, what I want you to do is plan ahead of time what your day will look like. Look like either the night before or the day before, or some people do it and plan their entire week before. So you could look at your calendar the night before and say, okay, teach class at 930 and 12. So I have the hour between those two classes and I have some time before and some time after before I have to pick up my kids. What am I going to accomplish in each of those time slots? And when you do that, when you're done teaching class at 930, you'll skip the whole game of what do I need to do now? What should I do now? I don't know. I'm so overwhelmed. I have so much I could do. I don't know what to prioritize and you'll just keep moving forward in a productive way to accomplish the next thing.

Speaker 1:

Now, before I had kids, I did like to plan out a week in advance and I would plan out what I'd be doing on every single day. And then, after I have kids, I've really found that the night before works really well for me, because life changes so quickly and so drastically. So that brings us to the first objection that I can hear that you may have, and that objection is that, oh my gosh, I couldn't be that planned out. That would be too rigid or too structured for me and I would hate that. But this type of planning actually gives you the masculine structure that you need in order to create the freedom or the feminine aspect of your calendar that you want to have, because when you know, between the 9.30 and the 11 or 12 o'clock class at 11, you're going to do five sales follow-up calls.

Speaker 1:

Then, after you're done teaching at noon, you're free. You're free and you don't have to keep it in your mind of, oh my God, I should have done this but I didn't do this yet and I don't know. I feel like I didn't get enough done today at work. I know what it's like to be a business owner. There's always stuff on your to-do list and there's always more that you could do. And I don't want you walking away from every single day feeling like I didn't get enough done, there's more I could have done and spend your free time thinking about work or trying to sneak in work.

Speaker 1:

When you have a schedule and you're deciding ahead of time what you'll do, you will know. Okay, I didn't get to that today, but it's in my calendar for tomorrow at 10. So my free time I can actually relax, I can actually take a beat and just be present where I am. So the first thing is plan ahead of time pre-plan either a week out or a day before what you're going to do. Now, when you are planning, be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. You want to make sure that you are prioritizing your wellbeing, which could be rest, or it could be working out. It could be self-care and you're prioritizing connection. This could either be with your students, your clients, or with your family, your friends and that you're also always prioritizing your own self-development and the development of your business moving forward. So when you have those three things at the end of the day that you have taken care of yourself and you've connected with other humans and you've moved yourself forward in some way in business, you will be able every single day, to take that deep breath and say that was a productive day.

Speaker 1:

I feel fulfilled today, even if I still have stuff on my to-do list that I'm going to tackle tomorrow or next week. I feel like today was meaningful, purposeful and I was productive. That is what you want at the end of every single day in your business. You have to be reasonable with yourself when you're planning ahead of time. Don't book yourself back to back to back to back to back with no lunch breaks or restroom breaks. Give yourself space to arrive early and stay 10 minutes late to be present with your teachers, or give yourself space to eat lunch with no other distractions. Plan ahead of time with kindness, being reasonable for what you can actually accomplish.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of our overwhelm or my most unproductive days come from me thinking that I could do 10 jobs and 10 projects in one day and then at the end of the day, turns out I couldn't. And my most productive days are when I say it's this, this and this top three things I'm going to do to move my business forward, and I prioritize those things. So the top three things to move my business forward and I prioritize those things. So the top three things to move my business forward. Let's talk about that, because I know you want to know what I prioritize to constantly keep the business moving forward.

Speaker 1:

The first thing that I will prioritize every single day is my team. I will look at Slack, I will check in with my team. I will prioritize a team meeting to make sure that they feel supported, nurtured and they have what they need to move forward for the day. The second thing that I will prioritize is my actual clients, the delivery of what I do. So for me that's coaching now, but for you it may be teaching, and I make sure that that is scheduled in my calendar. My mastermind clients and my suite level clients have access to me on Voxer. So every single day. I have time in my calendar to respond to their Voxer messages and be in connection with them, or this could be a coaching call for the business of yoga. That's on my calendar.

Speaker 1:

So my team, my clients, and then from there I prioritize sales, and this is a follow-up with someone seeing where they are in their decision, having a sales conversation, helping someone get to a yes, get to a no. And then, finally, the last thing I prioritize every single day is marketing. And this is reaching out to people who don't know me, getting my message out to people who have not come across me before. And I found that those four things, if I consistently do those every single day, that marketing could be creating content like this, recording a podcast or doing a reel, but if I do those four things every single day, then I have the forward momentum of what I need to do to keep my business going forward. It sounds so simple, right, but when you think about doing those four things every single day, there's a couple of things I want you to keep in mind. Number one in order to sit down and make the sales call or record the reel or record the podcast, you need to have a clear mind and a clear environment.

Speaker 1:

My poor husband would probably call me a little OCD and I like things very organized and very clean within our house, and I was the same way with the studio. I worked at Lululemon early on and I had someone share with me there something that has always stuck in my head. She said the back room of your business, the drawers, the closets for us it was like where the clothes are for a retail store is a reflection of what you can accomplish front of house. So, like your kitchen and a restaurant, is a reflection of what you can offer people and the quality of the food they'll get at the actual tables. Your environment if it is cluttered and disorganized and it is hard for you to even focus because there's a lot going on, it is going to impact the quality of the marketing and selling and the work that you can do. So I really encourage you guys to set yourself up a very intentional, organized space to work.

Speaker 1:

This doesn't mean that you need to go rent an office and spend tons of money although you could if you have that in your revenue but you just need a space where you have a desk and it's clear and you can sit up and work every single day without everything else distracting you. Now that everything else distracting you space where you have a desk and it's clear and you can sit up and work every single day without everything else distracting you Now that everything else distracting you is also important. It may be that you get in the habit of making your bed every day or doing the dishes before you, putting the dishes in the dishwasher before you sit down to work, so that the rest of your environment is also not a distraction. If you know that there's a load of laundry or like a kid's birthday party gift that you have to get done and that's just like sitting there looming and not on your calendar, that will distract you mentally. So putting those things on your calendar and making sure your workspace but also your personal space, is not a distraction is setting you up to focus, are very key. So you need a clear environment, but you also need a clear mind.

Speaker 1:

Every single morning when you wake up, your brain is like one big giant junk drawer, and we love it. We're not mad at it for that, but there is so much stuff, thoughts that are the same from the day before, and so if you wake up and you roll out of bed, grab your coffee, brush your teeth and go right into work and you haven't cleaned your mind out yet. You're coming in with yesterday's worries, yesterday's stresses, yesterday's task and focus, maybe the future task and focuses that you're thinking about. So what I teach all of my clients to do and if you're listening to this podcast, I recommend you do it too. I teach them exactly how to do this within the business of yoga course is that you do some self-coaching every single morning so that your brain is cleaned out of the murk that will just tear your business apart Self-doubt, blame, victimization, confusion, overwhelm. You have to clean that out of your brain, clean it out of your body and then put in intentionally what you know is going to serve you to create what you want for the day so purposeful, focused thinking like a business owner. Again, there's a specific method for how we do this inside the business of yoga. If you want to join us, we'll teach you how. But that is so, so important because if you walk into work with a dusty mind, with a cluttered mind, it's really hard to sit down and think okay, what should I make hook in my reel be today, because your brain doesn't have the space to do that. You need white space in your brain in order to create so clear mind, clear environment and we could even go as far as to say clear body.

Speaker 1:

I was reading a book this morning and one of the quotes in there I love this. It said if you don't work out, you act out, and I think that's so key. Prioritizing moving your body and, just like your brain, getting those stuck emotions, that old energy shifted and out of your body is so key to you showing up with energy and focus and determination. Now, most of my clients work out because you own a yoga or Pilates studio or you're teaching your clients all day long. But I just want to make sure that you're prioritizing your own personal workout and not just taking class to give feedback or taking class while you teach, because your body needs time to work out the emotions that are there and I promise you you will have more energy.

Speaker 1:

One of my business coaches actually she says on days where I'm super busy, those are the days where I don't want to work out, but those are the days that I know that I need the workout because I need the energy to get through the day even more. So. If you're super busy, this is especially important to you because you will have more energy. For me personally, with my two kids and our puppy, I have to have the energy to run after them, quite literally. At the end of a workday, that's when we're on the move even more, and so I have to prioritize that workout so that I can be my best self. So clear mind, clear body, clear environment.

Speaker 1:

And then the last thing that I really want you to think about is the law of little things, and it essentially means that if you take care of the small, little actions every single day, the big things will take care of themselves. So this could be the laundry. If you do a load a day, then you're not going to ever have the mountain of laundry pile up. But this could also be for your sales calls If you connect with people who did your intro offer but didn't convert to membership. If you connect with three to five people a day, then you're never going to have a hundred people who you haven't talked to, who don't know about your offer or you don't know why they did or didn't buy. It could also be for marketing If you record a podcast today and a podcast next week and a podcast next week. In a year you'll have 50 something episodes. If you don't miss right, if you don't miss a week, 52 episodes so that you can look back and say here's like this content bank, this long form content bank that I've created over the year. It is wild to sit down and be like, yeah, I could record 50 episodes at once there's probably someone out there doing it but it doesn't work for me and the way that my life is set up. So, load a day of laundry. Think about the law of little things. Small action makes it so that things don't pile up and you keep the momentum moving forward.

Speaker 1:

Finally, this last piece is from a book called Eat the Frog, and the whole entire premise of the book is that, essentially, the thing that you want to do, least the thing that you'd like to push off, the thing that is going to take your discomfort and your energy maybe it's new, maybe it's uncomfortable and hard that thing is the thing that you do first, because if you avoid sales calls and you save them to the last hour of your day, it is very easy for you to overwork, not have the time and not do the thing that you didn't really wanna do in the first place. None of that. What you're going to do is actually do that thing, eat the frog first thing in the morning so that it's done and for the rest of the day you can do the things that are more pleasing to you. One of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners make, specifically in this industry, is that we go with, like, what we want to do, what feels good, and sometimes, in business especially, the thing that you want to do is not going to feel good in the moment, it's going to feel good in the long run. You are essentially delaying short-term pleasure by putting yourself out there making sales, making offers for the long-term gratification of building the profitable and sustainable business, and so it is vital that you learn the skill of really leaning into the thing that you don't want to do. Leaning into it first and the rest of the day will be so smooth. Okay, so you may be listening to this thinking lean into it first and the rest of the day will be so smooth. Okay, so you may be listening to this thinking, jackie, that sounds really nice, but you don't know my life. My life is super busy. I have a nine to five or actually run two businesses, or I'm a caretaker for someone, and I want to really tell you that you have to use your circumstances not as a determining factor, but use your circumstances as the motivating factor. If you are in a nine to five and want to get out of it, or if you're a caretaker and want the ability to pay for the best care for your loved ones, use that as the motivation to be more productive and create a productive routine. Because here's the truth you can either use your free time to escape the current life that you have, like zone out watching Netflix or zone out scrolling, or you can use your free time to create the life that you want to have.

Speaker 1:

And I did this between Studio 3 and shifting to the coaching business. It's typical for most studio owners we had a noon class and then our next class wasn't until 4 pm, so we had three hours that were essentially open and at this point the studio was running so seamlessly. I didn't have a ton of studio work that I had to do. So I had, essentially in my mind, three free hours and I was so tempted so many times to go take a nap before I come back and teach again. But I started to get to this place where, instead of escaping the life that I had during those three hours, I took business coaching clients and I started creating this business and my processes and my systems and getting people results, and from that I've now created, five years down the road, this life that I have.

Speaker 1:

So, whether it's the three hours between classes or the three hours after your nine to five, or even the weekends, I want you to use that time to create the life that you want to have in the future. Now escape your current life, and that is something that we can all do, and you don't have to always be on. I'm not saying always be being productive, but what I am saying is be really pre-planned, mindful about the results that you want to create, prioritize those, so when you are off and you're resting, you can actually deeply rest and not have this nagging feeling of there's another life I'd like to have. There's something else I should have done. I didn't get to do the thing eat the frog and then see what happens. So the last thing I'm going to do is talk you through what my current like schedule is, so that you can kind of get a sense of how I'm doing this, and this is just to be an example for you to start to think about what is going to work for you.

Speaker 1:

So we have two kids and I decide to wake up ahead of them so that I can have time to clear my mind, clear the environment and be ready for when they wake up. So typically I get up between 4.45 and 5 and I use those first couple hours of the day to unload the dishwasher or do a load of laundry, or that is when I do my self-coaching, that's when I read a little bit, it's also when I do my red light mask for my skin. It's like me pamper hour, and so by the time my kids wake up around seven, I am ready to go into mom mode, and it's breakfast and getting them dressed and then out to school. Now we do have daycare, which is incredibly helpful, and if you are really serious about taking your business to multiple, six or seven figures, I think having support for your childcare is really vital. It doesn't have to be full time, it doesn't have to be daycare, but it does mean the more money you make, the more support you need, and so saying yes to that, so we get the kids out of the house around 8am and I spend the first 30 minutes of that time doing yoga or Pilates, typically in my living room right now by my Christmas tree or downstairs in the garage, because I no longer have the time to drive to a studio and take an hour class and then need to shower. So the days for that are the weekends Spend 30 minutes getting my body ready and then I get ready for the day and I go right into work and this is when I'm prioritizing team first, client delivery next, and then I go right into sales and marketing and I have my calls typically later in the afternoon.

Speaker 1:

So I spend the morning getting done when I need to get done or doing the afternoon. So I spend the morning getting done when I need to get done or doing client delivery, and then my coaching calls or my meetings are later so I can do those, and then I wrap up around 3 pm. I go get the kids from three until seven when they go to bed. It's totally family time. So as much as I can, I try and get off my phone. I'm not always great about that, um, but I really try and put my phone down. Make dinner, be at the park, really be present because I've done what I need to do, and then, after they go down, it depends on how I'm feeling, if I have the energy and I want to send another email.

Speaker 1:

I love to write emails right now. If you're not on my email list, get on the email list, I'll write another email, or I'll write a post, or I will pop in to check in with my clients. That's if I have the energy, I'll do that. And then I'm typically reading and going to bed, because if you wake up that early, you're sleepy early or my husband and I will connect, we'll watch a little bit of a show, we'll just talk and hang out. We try to prioritize date night once a week and then we're going to bed from there and then repeat the next day. So it's a little bit.

Speaker 1:

We're at a time in our lives where this routine really helps the structure, because two toddlers and a puppy is a lot, and I know that there are a lot of you who have a lot on your plate. So giving yourself the routine to fall back on is incredibly helpful, because if we start to have an off week or someone gets sick or something gets added to our plate. Then the routine helps us thrive in those moments because we can fall back on it versus being totally um shaken up from an outside obstacle or unexpected event. So that's what works for me. Take it if you like it.

Speaker 1:

I'd love to hear your thoughts from the podcast. You can tag me at the business of yoga. If you are not in the business of yoga and you want to learn how to self coach, to clear your mind and also how to market and how to sell, prioritizing those things, then please join us inside the business of yoga course. It literally could never be in a better time. It's just so much growth next year is possible for all of you. So I will see you there and I will talk to you in the next episode.