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

Listener Q&A: How I Plan My Week, Prioritize What Matters, Pivot in Marketing & Build Rich Relationships

Jackie Murphy

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In this special Q2 listener Q&A episode, I’m diving into four smart, real-world questions submitted by you—from weekly calendar design to building rich referral networks. 

You’ll hear how I plan my weeks for maximum momentum, what I coach my clients through when they’re stuck choosing between 12 “important” projects, how to know if it’s time to stick or pivot your marketing strategy, and how to connect with pelvic health professionals in a way that builds trust and reputation over time.

This is one of those episodes that blends strategy and mindset, visibility and relationships, and the kind of advice you can apply this week—no downloads, no drama, just clarity.

In this episode, we cover:

  • How I batch my calendar based on energy, not task
  • My 5-day rhythm for studio CEOs and why it works
  • How to prioritize important work using the Eisenhower Matrix
  • The biggest marketing mistake I see (and how to fix it fast)
  • When to stick with a strategy vs when to pivot
  • How to build Rich Relationships that lead to real, lasting referrals
  • One simple weekly practice that grows your business without burning you out


Doing more doesn’t mean you’re moving forward—it just means you’re tired. Let’s fix that.

Work with Jackie Murphy
Sign up for our free Workshop on June 18th
Say Hi on Instagram @studioceoofficial
Learn about The Studio CEO Program

Speaker 1:

What do pelvic floor partnerships, priority planning and marketing pivots have in common? They're all the things that we overthink and delay until they cost us time, energy or momentum. In this Q&A episode, I'm answering your real questions with grounded strategy and real life coaching, from calendar design to relationship building that actually grows your business. Let's dive into it now. 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. Welcome back to the Studio CEO Podcast. I am your host. I am your business coach, jackie Murphy, and I just want to say thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I genuinely love recording this for you guys every single week. I look forward to it. It really feels like a conversation, and today is a special episode because we're doing a listener Q&A episode. So it really does feel like a conversation between you and me. So thank you so much for being here. Pop in your earbuds. We have about four questions. We're going to try and get through all of them in one episode. We'll see what happens.

Speaker 1:

But before I dive in, I just want to share a win from one of my clients. This past week we were talking and she was like you know, jackie, I took two weeks off in May and we prepped ahead of time and we got her studio set up to take those two weeks off. But she looked at me and she said I am making more money in May than I did in April, and I took two weeks off, and it doesn't surprise me. However, it is not necessarily the norm. Specifically in May, we are approaching in the Northern hemisphere, the Southern, the Southern slump, the summer slump, and this is typically a time period where you might see your attendance slow down. You might see the number of new students you're seeing slow down and your revenue. Your goal might be to hold it steady over the summer, versus like to next it over the summer, and so, knowing that it's like the start of the summer slump, plus, she took two weeks off and she's making more in May. It's just such a huge win and I want to share that one, to shout her out, but also to sometimes I feel like if we don't know that those things are possible, you don't know that those things are possible. And so if you're in a business where you're like, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine two weeks off, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine like growing my revenue during the summer, I want to tell you there are ways to do exactly that and there are strategies, but also there's ways that you can lead a team that can set you up to make that happen. And if that's something that you're interested in, I would just highly recommend that you come and get coached, because as much as I can teach you on this podcast, it really does need to be a back and forth conversation where I can specifically help you with your business. So the studio CEO program is waiting for you and I would love to coach you inside of that program.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's dive into the first question, shall we? And I thought this question was so lovely. So typically I post on my Instagram stories and I say, hey, I'm doing a Q and a episode, like listeners do have any questions. So I did that today. But then I also sent it to my mastermind clients and they dropped some really good questions. So the first question is from my client, tabby, and she says I just finished 10 X is easier than two X, and I heard something about scheduling similar types of work together so that you can move seamlessly through them and be more efficient. Then I saw on your Instagram story that you had a whole day of coaching and calls on one day, and so now I'm wondering if this is what you do, or do you have a different process? But could you literally you can literally talk for an hour about anything. I love it. Tabby, thank you so much for submitting that question.

Speaker 1:

So this is something that I do do in my business and it's something that I've done for so long that it's almost just a habit. Now. I have not recently read 10X is easier than 2X. I read it, I want to say, about like a year, two years ago maybe, so I don't know how he specifically talks about it in there, but for me personally this was like a trial and error of what works for my schedule and I did find that like context switching really killed my momentum.

Speaker 1:

So if there was like I have a coaching call at eight and then I have two hours to work and then I have a coaching call at 12, and then I have an hour to work and then I have two hours to work and then I have a coaching call at 12. And then I have an hour to work and then I have a meeting with my team, my brain after a day like that feels disorganized. It's kind of been all over the place. There's open to-dos and things that I need to do from every little thing that I spent time on that I need to organize and plan, and so I really thought about what is going to work for my schedule, for the way that I work and for what needs to be done in my business. So I almost bash my calendar based on energy, not just like category of what I'm doing. I don't just group coaching calls together because they're calls, but I group them together because they require me to be fully present, give all of my attention to those calls and to be in a place of holding space and to be in a place of leadership. That isn't the same energy as if I'm like strategically thinking about what ad to put up or searching reels for the next trending audio, like there's a different energy to that.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that I got really clear on in my life and this may be helpful for you is I wanted freedom bookending my work week. So if we travel as a family, typically we'll travel on a Monday Sorry, we'll travel on a Friday and we'll come back on a Monday. And so if I had calls on Mondays and Fridays, then anytime that I traveled I'd have to rearrange those calls. But if I just have to like write a sales page and we are traveling, it's much easier for me to fit that freedom into my life. So I found that for me, tuesdays and Wednesdays are pretty typically I'm like in the office, I'm doing any kind of coaching call, and then Thursday right now, is a little bit more open but also reserved for team, and if I have any other calls, I always schedule them on Thursday so that I keep Monday and Friday open. Now that may be the best way for you to work and you might be like, oh my God, that sounds amazing, let's do it. And it might also be totally opposite, like you might find that you want Monday, tuesday, wednesday and then Thursday, friday, open.

Speaker 1:

Just really think about what's going to work for your life and what's going to benefit the type of time freedom that you want to have within your life. Now, the other thing that I want to say here is I for the longest time followed Monday Hour one by Brooke Castillo, so I'm certified through the life coach school as a coach. That school, the certification was created by Brooke Castillo and one of the things that she teaches is a specific weekly planning system called Monday hour one. There is a version of this inside the studio CEO program. That is not quite what Brooke teaches because it's relevant to the type of business that we are in, but for the longest time I was very, very strict about my calendar and then, when everything happened with my husband and kind of the past two years, I have completely fallen away from scheduling anything else on my calendar until today, which I found so ironic that Tabby asked this question today and this experience came up for me today. Today, I scheduled everything that I needed to do on my calendar in certain time blocks.

Speaker 1:

Now, I don't want to overwhelm people. This is really just so that it's not in your brain what do I need to do next? What do I need to do next? What do I need to do next? It's so that you take time and you spend time planning and thinking strategically. Time and you spend time planning and thinking strategically, casting vision. You spend time really in the CEO mode, and that time spent is a very, very, very different energy than time spent in execution mode. When you're in execution mode, you don't also then want to have to pull in CEO mode and start to plan what you should do next. If you do batch your calendar in any sort of way, that's probably the easiest and the best way that I would recommend that you do that, but the time that you spend in CEO strategy, vision planning, evaluating separate that from time you spend doing such as writing an email, creating a post.

Speaker 1:

So today, for the first time in literally two years, I did this on my calendar and it felt so amazing. It was so good, you guys. So I'm going to give you an example. I spent from seven to 8am, planning, like I wrote down everything I needed to do and put it on my calendar, so I gave myself an entire hour to get it all organized. Then I wrote a letter to my past self. My business coach gave me some homework to do, so I did that. Then I watched some thing that I need to watch to my to update my program. And then I wrote a outline for a class I'm going to be teaching pretty soon Stay tuned. And then I wrote sales page copy or landing page copy for that class that I outlined, and it was so easy to be like okay, time's up, what's the next thing, time's up, what's the next thing? And get right into it, because I didn't have to be like, oh my gosh, what else do I need to do? What do I need to do? What do I need to do? So if you take anything from this question which I should start to wrap up pretty soon because I've been talking for too long that's the one thing that I would take away. Like, don't make your execution time the same as your CEO time.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to give you an idea of what a weekly rhythm might look like if you were to do this within your calendar. And again, this is just like to give you ideas and brainstorm. This may be what you do and it may not be what you do, but let's say you decide to test this out on Mondays. You set Mondays aside to be strategy and planning. Monday I really think of the day that you are going to do the weekly momentum tracker. If you haven't gotten that yet, head over to my Instagram. You're checking in with your goals. You're checking in with what's coming up that week. You're planning ahead of time. You're creating strategy for the weeks ahead or the numbers ahead. You're getting really clear on your priorities. Monday is really about proactively choosing what matters most and sitting in that CEO seat.

Speaker 1:

And then your Tuesday could be all about marketing and leadership. This could be the day that you really focus on visibility. You focus on being in the energy that you have to be in to be well-known and perceived by lots of people, and you would maybe meet with your team and focus on getting them aligned with your vision and the marketing that you want them to do. Focus on getting them aligned with your vision and the marketing that you want them to do. And then Wednesdays again, wednesdays are the days that I like to coach. You might like to teach on Wednesdays. So give yourself space to be the talent of your business on this day. Be the technician if you will, you can. If you coach, you coach. If you teach, if you teach, do the thing that you know that you were already good at. This is your expression day and this is your day to kind of like put aside the business, be fully present in what you're doing. Bring that presence to your, your classes, to your clients.

Speaker 1:

Then Thursday I like to do Thursdays as team days because I like to like kind of catch them up on what's happened throughout the week. So I have one-on-ones on Thursdays. I'll add any extra meetings on Thursdays. You may want to host your like all team call on Thursday. You can also spend Thursdays really focusing on your client journey or your experience that your students get within your business. So you may be working on like okay, can I tweak the onboarding process that my students go through when they become a member here? Can I focus on retaining students before they drop off? If they haven't been here for 30 days, this might be the day that you're doing that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

And then Friday I think this is really key. Friday is the day that you put aside for finance. This is the day that you're going to be with your numbers. Call it a Monday date. Make it really fun. Look at your P&L, look at what happened over the week not just revenue, but you can also look at like what leads did we bring in? How do we grow our visibility? And also, I think Friday is a beautiful kind of buffer day where if I'm creating something new like today I was writing new copy for a new class I'm going to be teaching I like to have Fridays to be like okay, that's the thing that I'm going to do on Friday. Now, that's just an idea of how you would do this. You don't have to do it that way. Really think about what's my energy, what is going to best support my overall life and schedule, and then what activities require me to execute or implement, put those together. And what activities require me to think, analyze, plan, be strategic or cast vision and put those CEO activities together. Great question, all right, let's keep going these Q&A episodes. I just talk so much.

Speaker 1:

The next question is from Lily, and Lily says how do I decide what's most important on a list of important tasks and projects without letting the less important tasks on that same list slip through the cracks. Now, this is so funny because it kind of relates to the other question, which I think is beautiful. When I sit down and I write out everything that I need to do, it can be overwhelming for a second. If you've ever done this, if you have a giant to-do list, you're looking at it like, oh my God, there's so much that was in my head that I need to get done. How am I ever going to sort through this? And in that moment, everything is going to feel important, and it's not that there are things on there that aren't important that you're not imagining that, but not everything is urgent and not everything is strategic.

Speaker 1:

So here's how you can filter this. You can look at the tasks that you've written down and you can think about okay, is this task directly tied to revenue? Is it directly tied to me retaining the students that I already have, or is it tied to me increasing the reach that my business has? The other question that you can ask is will completing this task move me closer to the outcome that I've already decided is most important? If you haven't listened to the episode from last week. We talk about the whole entire team being committed to one goal for a quarter or for six months. And so let's say that you sit down and you write out your to-do list and one of the things that's on your to-do list is like create a meditation training which could increase your revenue or retain old clients. However, maybe you've already decided that your top priority for this quarter in your business is onboarding an amazing team. Then you have to be really honest with yourself and say, okay, this is an important idea, but I'm literally going to put it in my Google calendar for three months from now, so that way I don't have to keep it in my brain right, I don't have to remember to remember it. But also two, three months from now I can revisit. Does this move me closer to the goal that I have right now?

Speaker 1:

Now, this is called the Eisenhower matrix, and you can use this to kind of filter through what's urgent, what needs to get done and what can be pushed it. It breaks it down into four different pieces and if you were drawing this, you draw like a plus sign and each section of the plus sign is a different part of the matrix. So the first first section is urgent and important. This means you need to do it right now. There might be like a payment error, the um. I always use this one, but I got a call one time that was like the ceiling of the studio is falling down because someone left the humidity on overnight. I had to get to the studio right away.

Speaker 1:

The second part of the matrix is important but not urgent, and this is something that you definitely definitely have to schedule within your calendar. This is something like prepping for your new student campaign next month, prepping for that launch you're going to do. This is like you figuring out how you are going to convert more sales next month. These are things that probably aren't going to be a meeting with another person, so it won't make it to your calendar unless you put it on your calendar. It goes back to the other question of like my aha today, of like scheduling out the stuff that I needed to get done on my calendar. The exact same thing is true here. You want to be proactive, taking care of the important but not urgent things.

Speaker 1:

The third part of the matrix is urgent but not important, and these are things that you can maybe delegate. So if it's urgent but it's not really going to connect you specifically to your goal that you've decided. Can you delegate it? Is this a client services issue? Is this basic support that someone else can do? Is this something that an AI can do? An AI Is that proper grammar, I don't know An AI tool, maybe Is this something that you can delegate to someone on your team? Really, like you want to move that around.

Speaker 1:

And the fourth part of the matrix is not urgent and not important, meaning you delete it. It's not important for you to spend hours and hours and hours editing the Canva graphics that you've already created. That will be good enough to go out for an ad. So be kind of brutal with yourself when you look at your to-do list, like, what do I need to edit, what do I need to delegate, what do I need to schedule out Because it's important but it's not urgent. And what is urgent and important? If you don't do this, what will happen is you'll always spend time in that top quadrant the urgent and important and you'll find yourself just like chasing thing after thing after thing after thing in your business and you'll be like but this project, this thing that I know is going to move us forward isn't getting time. Sometimes that may be a bandwidth issue and you might need to hire, but a lot of the time that's a scheduling issue that you just have to put it on your calendar and it feels so good to put the thing that you want to create. That's important, that's not urgent, it feels so good to put that on your calendar so you can always look at it like that. And then you can ask yourself this question too If I only got one thing done this week, what would actually create momentum? Very different than asking yourself, if I only had time to do one thing this week, what keeps the lights on Right? And the answers to those questions are going to be very clear about what is urgent and you deem as important, and what is urgent and you deem as important and what is really the needle mover that's going to create momentum moving forward. So try this. Within the studio CEO program, there is an entire lesson about said module. There's an entire lesson within a module about planning your time. So if this feels overwhelming or if you're just like I think I need help with this, definitely go check out that lesson.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the next question is from Kelly. She says I haven't gone through all of the modules to know if this topic is included, and it's not. So I love that. And her question is I'd love to hear your thoughts about knowing when to press into a marketing strategy and when to pivot. Haven't we all had this thought before? Maybe this marketing strategy is just not working and I need to pivot and I need to try something else, try something different. There's another strategy out there that's going to work. There's another type of ad that I can run that's going to work better, and there is just an abundance of strategy out there that's going to work. There's another type of ad that I can run that's going to work better, and there is just an abundance of strategy out there.

Speaker 1:

And one thing that I want you to do is make sure you don't go on the how hunt, searching for the quote, unquote, missing right strategy that will solve all of your problems and get you to be a millionaire overnight, because I say that kind we want to believe there's just like one perfect strategy out there. At the end of the day, business is all kind of the same and strategies all do get you to the same end result if it works, and so I don't want you to believe there's like one right one. Instead, I want you to sit with like this is the strategy that I am going to choose for now and make it right, versus looking for the right one Once you've stuck with a marketing strategy for like six months to a year, like you have to give it some legs. You got to give it some time to grow. Once you have done this and you should be doing this the entire time too you're going to be evaluating the data that you see, because most often, it's not like the strategy in its entirety is bad or good. It will probably be like this specific part of the strategy needs to be tweaked to perform better.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let me give you an example with this. I was talking to my client this week. She has a new student evergreen, meaning it's always running funnel on meta bringing new students into her studio and it works so beautifully, like chef's kiss. It's so amazing. And so we sat down and we went through, number by number, every single part of the funnel, starting with like, how many landing page views does she have, total, all the way down to okay, well, how many people converted, and we spent probably 30 minutes analyzing. Is there a part of this strategy that we're using, a tiny part that we can tweak, like so tiny that we're talking like, let's change the headline here, let's change the button color here, and those are the tweaks that you make to the overall strategy that are going to make the strategy work even better.

Speaker 1:

It would be very different if we sat down and we're like oh, meta ads, they're not performing as much as they as we want them to, even though they are for her. But let's say that they're not. Let's scratch it and let's go to Google ads and YouTube abs and abs, youtube, abs, what's happening? Youtube, abs, what's happening YouTube ads. And then like, try something totally new, tiktok ads. Or let's screw ads altogether and let's just do print mailing, like that is when you get yourself into trouble because you'll constantly be shifting and you'll never really know, like, what part of the strategy did work, what didn't work. And if I was going to tweak it, what would I tweak?

Speaker 1:

If you are looking at tweaking your strategy, you're going to be asking, okay, is this a messaging problem? Like, are people not even caring when they see an ad? Are we saying the right thing? Do they care? Are we stopping the scroll. You maybe want to ask yourself is this a, like, demographic and market problem? Do they actually want the thing that we're offering? Or have we created something that we don't even know if people really want yet? Or is this just a consistency problem? We haven't shown up long enough, they haven't seen us as much as they need to, and we need to just be in front of them more.

Speaker 1:

So, if you are getting like some traction with whatever strategy there you're using right now, there are things that you can evaluate within that strategy. This is like my jam. Like I told you, we spent 30 minutes going into our funnel. We could have spent even longer, because this is where I nerd out. This is a strength of mine strategy. And so, again, if you want support with this, the studio CEO program is the place that you can come in and we can be like okay, what is your headline, what is your message, what is your niche and is this a market issue? Or just tell me, like, how long you've been doing this and do we need to actually pivot or just give it some time? So that's one way you can think about it.

Speaker 1:

Think about if your strategy feels aligned, like you, like what you're doing but it's underperforming. Just go to like I'm going to optimize this, not abandon, not abandon it. If the strategy feels forced or flat, then you're allowed to pivot. But be honest, because you need to know if you're pivoting because it isn't working or because it's uncomfortable but sometimes I do. What I mean by forced or flat is if you love listening to podcasts and you like a microphone and you like to teach people, then podcasting is a really aligned strategy. That's what I do, right, I genuinely like to podcast. Now what I don't love to do is um, let's see, what do I not love to? I like to do it all now because I've, like, trained myself for so long.

Speaker 1:

But a lot of my clients, they don't like to go to networking events. So if their strategy was solely like in-person networking, there would either need to be a lot of coaching to get them aligned with that or we would need to pivot the strategy because it feels forced and flat and no matter what we tweet, no matter what we optimize, it was never going to work because it wasn't connected to what they actually wanted to do. Now there's more I could say. There I'm going to stop because we got to keep going. We have one more question. If you have more questions about that, join us in the studio CEO program, cause I could keep teaching all night.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the final question that I got. This one was on Instagram, so I'm going to pull this one up. It says I would love advice for new pelvic floor yoga grad trying to connect with PTs and clients. Okay, so this is an amazing question. However, I'm going to assume that you mean one thing and you might mean another. So if you are asking this question because you want to genuinely connect and build your network, the answer to that question is different than if you're asking this question I'm a new pelvic floor yoga grad and I had this new service and how do I get clients Because that answer is going to be different. So I'm going to answer the question as if you're asking how do I connect? And if that's not what you wanted, let me know and we can save it for the next Q&A episode, or you can join us inside the studio CEO program.

Speaker 1:

But I wanted to answer this in terms of like collaboration, because I'm currently reading a book called Rich Relationships and if you want to view collaborations and relationships as a strategy that you're using to market your business. It's a very good strategy and it's a very good idea. You want to build deep relationships and referral pipelines and you have to start by being genuinely curious about the other person's work. If you are looking to connect with other people, you're really looking to build relationships with other people within the same network. Right, and often that relationship is going to be built on shared values, it's going to be built on mutual benefit and it's going to be built on generous follow through. So you can't go into try and connect with PTs with a mindset of like, what can they do for me? How can I get clients from them? Instead, you have to go in to the relationship with a mindset of how can we serve each other and what can I give to them. So if you're a pelvic floor yoga grad and you're reaching out to local PTs, lead with generous service, curiosity and the deep desire to actually build a relationship.

Speaker 1:

This was my downfall. So when I was working for Aviva, which is Lululemon's girls line, I opened to the Aviva in the triangle area. I did not have this mindset. One, I was very young. Two, I was very scared. And three, I had no idea what I was doing and I went to every relationship that I was building because I did a lot of relationship building but I went to every relationship that I was building with the idea of like how are they going to help me grow the Aviva in town? How can they help me? How can they help me? And it turns out that like that didn't really work. I built relationships, but they were superficial and transactional and you could feel it and so this was. I was so young when I was doing this, but when I then pivoted and had experience opening the three studios, like I had failed at this before.

Speaker 1:

So I I literally intentionally was like I'm going to build relationships with people, literally intentionally, was like I'm going to build relationships with people, meaning like I went to a local chiropractor down here and we were going to partner as like a perk for the membership and we did some events with them and if I was looking at that transactionally, that's probably all it would have been. But instead, like we went out to get sushi and we hung out and I actually got services from them because I needed them at the time and like genuinely liked. These people still follow them on Instagram. We're not besties, but that relationship is still there, and that's the mindset that you have to go in with. So, how to build deep relationships you are going to speak clearly from like true alignment of I really want to help you, I want to learn from you, I want to be in connection and relationship with you.

Speaker 1:

You can co-create, like the chiropractor and I did. You can host a joint workshop. You could record a collaborative reel. You could create a freebie together. There's lots of different ways that you could create or you could create for them, by the way. You could give them something to give or give them something for themselves, and then always, always, always have them in your mind to refer them to other people, to say, oh my God, I have the perfect person for you, like here, and show them that not only are you there to support them, like them personally, but you're also there to support their business and help them grow. And when you take this perspective, this is when your relationships typically do bring an ROI for your business.

Speaker 1:

And so make sure that you're thinking about it. Might not be like the quick fix, right. I'm not going to say it's the fastest strategy out there. It might not be like the quick fix, right. I'm not going to say it's the fastest strategy out there and might take longer to build, but think about what can happen on the other side of a deep, rich relationship.

Speaker 1:

And I will recommend the book Rich Relationships. I haven't finished it, I'm just started, so I can't recommend it like fully. But in good faith I can say, read the book Rich Relationships and so, yeah, start connecting now and don't just network nurture. Give to these people, serve them, show up for them, connect with them, be there for them, surprise and delight them, like any way that you can show that you deeply care, be someone that they are so grateful to know. All right, my friends, I can feel this in my throat, so I need to stop podcasting at this point.

Speaker 1:

I am going to be announcing very soon a new class that we will be hosting in June of 2025. If you're listening to the podcast at different times, stay tuned for that class. Once it's up, I'll put it in the show notes. If you want more conversation like this and you have your specific questions and you want more like coaching these are conversations, right? Coaching is much different than this Then I would highly highly encourage you to be inside the studio. Ceo program. I would love to help you plan your time context, batch your calendar, figure out what tasks to focus on, figure out what tasks to delegate. I would love to help you look at your strategy, tweak your strategy and help you decide how to really play the long game of building rich relationships for your business. All right, my friends, I'll see you inside the Studio CEO program and I'll talk to you in the next episode.