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

Stop Building Someone Else's Dream Studio

• Jackie Murphy • Episode 60

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0:00 | 14:20

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In this episode, Jackie breaks down how to get out fast—starting with one question you need to answer before you hire another teacher, expand, or change your strategy: What do you want this business to do for your life?


Episode Outline

[00:00] Introduction + Studio CEO Agency announcement 

[01:20] What the comparison trap is and why it happens 

[02:45] The one question every studio owner needs to answer first 

[05:00] What happens when you ignore what you want 

[06:15] Enterprise vs. lifestyle: the two business types 

[07:10] What an enterprise business looks like for studio owners 

[10:00] Why Jackie runs a lifestyle business right now 

[12:15] Decisions from clarity vs. comparison—the CEO shift 


Key Takeaways

✓ The comparison trap slows your growth by pulling you toward someone else's vision instead of your own.

✓ Enterprise businesses are built for scalability and exit. Lifestyle businesses are built to support how the owner wants to live. Both are valid—but they require completely different strategies.

✓ Knowing your business type gives you a filter for every decision. Clarity is the antidote to comparison.


Pull Quotes

"I define a successful business by a business that gives you the opportunity to have the authentic life experience that you want to have."

"You're not making decisions from clarity. You're making them from comparison."

"If this business isn't serving you, then in the long run, just ignoring that and focusing on serving and giving will actually grow into resentment. It may grow into burnout."


FAQ

What is the comparison trap for studio owners? It's when you measure your studio's success against someone else's Instagram and make reactive decisions based on what you see—leading to constantly shifting strategy and building toward someone else's vision instead of your own.

How do I stop comparing my studio to others? Answer the question: "What do I want this business to do for my life?" When you're clear on that, you have a filter for every decision and you stop needing to look sideways at what everyone else is doing.

What's the difference between an enterprise and lifestyle business? An enterprise business is built for rapid scalability and eventual sale. A lifestyle business supports the owner's preferred way of living—consistent income, flexibility, and freedom over explosive growth.

Should I want to grow my studio into a franchise or multi-location brand? Only if that's genuinely what you want. The strategy looks completely different for enterprise vs. lifestyle owners. The only wrong move is chasing someone else's version of success without knowing what yours is.

Why do studio owners burn out? Usually because they're over-giving without a clear picture of what they want in return. Without defining success personally, you keep adding more with no stopping point—and that becomes resentment and burnout.

How do I know which type of business I'm building? Ask: Am I building this to eventually sell it, or to live and work inside it sustainably? The answer shapes every decision from here.

Work with Jackie Murphy


SPEAKER_00:

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. What's up? Welcome back to the Studio CEO podcast. I am Jackie Murphy. How are you doing? What's going on? Have you checked out the studio CEO agency? We will definitely link it in the show notes if you have not checked it out. That is our brand new done for you meta and Google Ads agency that we just revealed to the public. And I am so excited that now I can talk about it and really dive into ads and share more about how ads are working really, really well for 2026. So definitely check that out if you have not checked that out yet. But today we are going to talk about how to very quickly get out of the comparison trap. And this is so common. I hear it from my clients. I've experienced it myself very often, where you are building your business and maybe you enjoy it. Maybe you actually really like it. And then all of a sudden you see, wait, what is that business doing? How come they're making millions of dollars more than me, 10 times faster than me? Should I be doing something different? Do they have a strategy I don't have? And then all of a sudden you're stuck in your head spinning about why it's not working faster for you, why you aren't having the same results that XY and Z businesses having, why you need to change everything to match what XY and Z business is doing. And this is so, so, so common, but it is one thing that will really slow down your success. Mostly because I define a successful business by a business that gives you the opportunity to have the authentic life experience that you want to have. And so in this episode, we're gonna help you identify hmm, have you been caught up building someone else's dream studio, dream business, or are you actually building the business that you want to have before you hire another teacher, before you expand to a different location, before you work more hours trying to do more and keep up with the studio down the street? Really get clear and ask yourself, what do I want this business to do for me and for my life? And I really am encouraging you to pause the episode, write down that question, or write it in the notes app of your phone. What do you want your business to do for you? And I will just put a little caveat here that a lot of women will shy away from that answer because we have been taught not to need. We've been taught to be the giver, the caretaker. You maybe even started your business to serve other people. And all of that is extremely important. And equally, it is very important for you to know what you want your business to do for you. Because if this business isn't serving you, if it's not helping you create what you want to create, then in the long run, you just ignoring that and focusing on serving and giving will actually grow into resentment. It may grow into burnout, it may grow into overwhelm. And I've seen a lot of businesses shut down that way. I actually just saw a reel this morning of someone who was shutting down her yoga studio because she was so overwhelmed last year and burnt out, most likely, I don't know this person, but most likely from overgiving to the business without thinking, wait, what do I actually want this business to do for me? How much money do I want to make? How much money do I want to bring home? Do I know how much money that means the business needs to make? Do I want to expand this? And there's no right or wrong answer here. I just think the only quote unquote wrong answer would be staying in the comparison trap, staying in building what you think you should build versus what you actually, genuinely, authentically want to build. So answer the question: what do I want this business to do for my life? There are different business models for different answers to that question. This was a concept that the Wealth Collaborative brought to one of our grow mastermind in-person retreats. And I love the way that they talked about it. What they taught us there is that there are two types of businesses. Type one is an enterprise business, and type two is a lifestyle business. And when you think about an enterprise business, that is a business that is focused on rapid growth, on high scalability, of maximizing the value. And it really requires more systems, more processes, a strong, independent team. And it's aiming for significant, fast, and explosive growth. They often have to raise capital or have capital for that type of growth. And it can really be that the person building an enterprise business is thinking about it as an asset. They want to build a business that is so scalable and so successful that at some point in time they can turn around and sell it and they plan to have an exit plan. Now, that is not every client that I work with, but there are some clients that come to me that I love. I love the ambition. Their main goal is to start a franchise. Their main goal is to build a brand like Solid Core. Their main goal is to have this enterprise just expand and grow. And so from the get-go, when I'm coaching that type of client, the coaching shifts slightly because we're going to be so much more dialed in and focused on profit, because that's what makes people want to buy your businesses, profit, making sure there's an owner's salary in there. We're going to be very dialed in and focused on do you have systems? Do you have a repeatable way to train and hire instructors and a clear class format of how you want them to teach? Like essentially, can we take what you've created and copy and paste or have someone else come in and have it be just as successful as when you were running it? That is how I think about enterprise business. The other type of business is a lifestyle business. And the lifestyle business is designed to support the owner's preferred life, prioritizing freedom, work-life balance, consistent income over that aggressive expansion. And I would say lifestyle businesses, that is where our coaching shifts to what ex what type of lifestyle exactly do you want to have? What personal network do you want to tap into? What do you like to do when it comes to marketing? Really, you want to be embedded in your business at that point because you're building it to have a lifestyle, to live the lifestyle that you want to live versus building it to be an asset to sell later. So the best example that I can give you of that type of business is this coaching business. There are plenty, well, I think I know two. There are two consultant type businesses within the same industry for yoga and Pilates. And they have built more of the enterprise style where when you sign on with them, you don't really know who you're going to be coached by. They have tons of coaches. They are running it more like, hey, this is a process. You are, I don't I don't want to say this. I don't mean that a cog in the log, but that's what's coming up. Like you are moving through their system to get the result. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying those businesses are not good. It's just a different way to set up this type of business where I look at my specific coaching business, and when you join my offers in this coaching business, you're getting access to me, you're getting coached by me, you're getting my thoughts. It is very much me embedded into the business. So if someday I was like, you know what? I'm gonna sell this business and I'm gonna check out the business would probably take or require some massive shifting to still be just as successful because a lot of what this business is built on is me. Does that make sense? So it gives you an example of the lifestyle versus the enterprise business. So why do I have a lifestyle business at this stage in my life? Why not an enterprise business? Well, I mean, hey, I'm always open. Last year I looked into franchising. Anyways, but right now I have two young kids. It matters more to me that I am there in the morning with them, that I control my schedule, that I make the money that I want to make to support them in their activities and what they need to do to learn, but that really I'm there for them. That's my main goal. And I make the money that I want to make. So, me answering the question, what do I want this business to do for me is incredibly important. When we get into the comparison trap, oftentimes you're looking at businesses that are maybe scaling as enterprise businesses, fast growth growth, big revenue, like massive, massive expansion. And you're thinking, oh, I should be having that as well. But you can't see behind the curtain. You can't see how much they're spending on ads. You can't see how much they're working or how much they're away from their family. You're really just looking at the highlight reel from Instagram, most likely, and being like, that looks nice. I'd like to have that without understanding the full picture of what that person is putting in to create that. And I'm not saying this to say that you can't work hard and create an enterprise business. If you want to do that, that'll be authentic and that would be your successful path. But what I see so often is I get clients who want to make this a lifestyle thing. They want to run a studio. They maybe will have two, three locations. They're like not opposed to expansion like that. But at the same time, they want to be able to pick their kids up from school and they want to be able to take the summer a little bit slower so that they can be home. Like all of that is okay. It's just when you don't know what your goal is, all of a sudden you're caught up in the comparison trap. What if? What should I be doing? How come that's not me? How come it's not faster? And it makes your decisions in your business a lot harder because you're not making them from clarity, you're making them from comparison. And so really nailing in which type of business do I want to create? And what do I want this business to do for me? Do I want it to be an asset that I sell later on and then I cash in? Do I want this business to be a lifestyle thing where I make X amount per month? But these are the hours that I work, or this is what I'm able to do with my family. I think just labeling this alone before you really go deep into 2026 is going to be so, so, so key. So I hope this is helpful. And if you want to chat about it, as always, you can send me a message on Instagram at the Studio CEO official. Don't forget to check out the agency. Let me know what you think. Ah, I love it so much. All right, my friends, I will see you in the next episode.