Why Your People Keep Saying 'I'll Think About It' Instead of Booking

You've got a retreat coming up. A membership to fill. A teacher training launching soon. And you're getting lots of "I'm interested!", but not a lot of "I'm in."

Here's what's actually happening: you've been told that urgency is manipulative, and so you've swung all the way to the other side. No deadlines. No pressure. Just "the door is open whenever you're ready." And y'all, that's not kindness—that's actually keeping your clients stuck.

In this episode, Jackie Murphy breaks down the psychology behind why humans delay decisions, the critical difference between false urgency and ethical urgency, and why creating clear deadlines is one of the most powerful leadership moves you can make as a studio owner. 

Episode Outline:

[02:15] The Instagram Threads moment that sparked this episode
[04:30] Why studio owners reject ALL urgency (and where that instinct comes from)
[06:00] Defining false urgency — and why you're right to reject it
[09:00] What ethical urgency actually looks like in a studio setting
[12:00] Reason #1
[14:15] Reason #2
[16:00] Reason #3

Key Takeaways:

✔ Humans are wired to delay. The brain defaults to "later" to conserve energy—this is called cognitive ease. A real deadline interrupts that pattern and gives people a reason to move.
✔ Indecision is stressful. Leaving clients in an open "I'll think about it" loop isn't kind—it's actually adding to their overwhelm. A deadline helps them get to yes or no, and that's a relief.
✔ Action is where transformation starts. Not intention. Not "someday." The moment of decision is the moment everything changes—and deadlines create that moment.

Quotes:

"People don't become ready and then decide. They decide and then become ready."
"Your job is not to keep the door open for every person forever. Your job is to create clear opportunities for people to step into."
"Without urgency, people stay stuck in intention. Urgency moves people into action—and action is what leads to transformation."

FAQ Section:

Is urgency in marketing manipulative? Not if it's real. If your intro offer expires, your retreat has a capacity limit, or your founding price actually goes away—telling people that is clarity, not manipulation.
Why do clients say they're interested but never actually sign up? It's not about interest. The brain defaults to "later" to conserve energy. Without a real deadline, "later" wins every time.
How do founding memberships work as an urgency strategy? You offer a special rate to your first wave of members—and when that window closes, the price changes for good. It rewards early commitment, creates real incentive to act, and sets the precedent that your pricing isn't flexible forever.
What ethical urgency can I use in my studio right now? Early bird pricing, intro offer conversion deadlines, retreat bonuses that expire on a set date, enrollment windows for programs or challenges, founding member pricing.
Can a deadline actually reduce stress for my clients? Yes—and this is the part that surprises most studio owners. Unmade decisions create anxiety. A deadline helps clients get to a yes or no and move on.
What if someone misses the deadline and still wants in? Honor it. Every time you make

Work with Jackie Murphy

• Say Hi on Instagram @studioceoofficial
• 3 Marketing Mistakes Yoga & Pilates Business Owners Make:
  https://www.jackiegmurphy.com/3-marketing-mistakes
• Join The Studio CEO Program: https://www.jackiegmurphy.com/studioceo

Transcript

Welcome To Studio CEO

SPEAKER_00 0:12

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 earning 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, welcome back to the Studio CEO podcast. I am Jackie Murphy. Are you crushing it in your business? Are you? If you are not hitting the goals that you want to be hitting, or if you just know that there's a next level for you to grow to, I want to let you know that the Grow Mastermind is going to open for enrollment in April. Now listen, we have a mastermind that sells out, has a wait list, and we have people who are ready to hop into this next round already. And because I'm having baby number three, the way that we are offering this mastermind is unique, never been done before, plus will only be offered one time this year. So I just want to give you the little heads up that if you know that you've been looking at the Grow Mastermind, April, it's going to open for enrollment, and that will be your only chance for all of 2026 to get in. So it's time. Yeah. Now, how many of you like threads? Instagram threads, their like social media app. I have been dabbling on there, not posting, but I like to read threads now and I like to respond to people on threads. I follow like a yoga thread, and someone posted in there, oh my gosh, my retreat is not selling. I'm almost to the point where I'm gonna have to cancel and I won't make any money and I'll lose money from not selling out this retreat. Like, what do I do? And a ton of people were giving her lots of advice, and I just popped in and I said, my two cents. But one of the things that I said was, you're going to want to create some sort of urgency, either with like bonuses or discount deadlines in order to get people to sign up before the retreat happens. The retreat she was trying to fill is happening in June. So there's like lots of time, lots of time for her to get this retreat booked. And she wrote back and she liked my first idea. And she was like, but I am not about creating false urgency. So I'll just tell people when the retreat is. And like that's the deadline. Now, this person is not my client. They have not hired me. It is a random person on threads. So I was just like, okay, go for it. But if you were my client in that moment, I would have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, sit down. We have to untangle this mess because this is a mental mindset block that is literally going to, hopefully not, but literally going to make this retreat host not sell their retreat, right? That is the power of a mindset block. And you have to have a coach that is going to be like, whoa, do you see this as stopping you? Two, can we remove this, rewire your thinking process so that you sell out your retreats, so that you are fully booked, so you are creating the revenue that you want to create. A good coach is someone that's gonna tell you the truth. And if I, if this had been my client, I would have in that moment been like, yikes, gotta tell you the truth. Like that's gonna stop you from selling spots out. And it's gonna feel really awful for you. Now, is this person alone in this line of thinking? Absolutely not. This used to be me. I literally grappled with this for so, so long. I don't want to create false urgency. I am too ethical for that. That is not okay. It's not right. And so I had to do my own mental mindset work to overcome this block. And I've helped lots of clients do this as well. Like it's so common for people to think like, I don't want to create urgency in my marketing or sales because I don't want it to feel manipulative. I respect that instinct. Like you have come into this industry because you genuinely care about helping people. So the idea of quote unquote pressuring someone, you can't see me, but I'm doing air quotes, pressuring someone to buy feels like the opposite of what you want to do. But here's the thing: those clients and the people and me who in the past avoided urgency are also the people that come to me and they tell me, this person keeps telling me they're gonna buy, but they haven't yet. Or like they said yes, but they haven't paid, or they keep telling me they want to try a retreat, or come try my class, but they haven't shown up yet. People say that they're gonna join membership eventually, but they don't join during their intro package. If that is happening in your business, we're gonna dive into why that happens psychologically today. Because the reality is humans rarely take action without a deadline or some sort of real consequence. And when you understand that, not that you have to agree with it, not that you have to think it's fair, not that you have to love it, but when you understand that, you can get yourself to the place where urgency stops feeling manipulative and actually starts looking like leadership. Now, before we dive into that, let's just define false urgency. Cause that was this person's words on threads. I don't want to create quote unquote false urgency. So let's just clear that up. False urgency absolutely exists. And there are so many people who do create false urgency. And I almost want to say that, like, if you're intuitive, you can feel it. You can tell. I was once purchasing this VIP day from these sales coaches. And they were like, oh, there's only one spot for this VIP day. And then all of a sudden there were three spots. And then I'm in this conversation with them, and she makes a point to like go to her operator and be like, oh, oh, oh, can we, is there still just one spot left? And I was like, girl, I know you were lying right now. I know that you guys are gonna take however many people want to sign up for this offer. Like you can feel it in that moment. I was like, who, who do you think you are playing right now? By the way, I still signed up, so I don't know what that says about me. But false urgency is when businesses create pressure that isn't real. Like saying there's only one spot when they're actually gonna take anyone who wants to pay the money. Or saying there's only two spots left and you actually have 12 spots in the retreat. Or using like a fake countdown timer, saying that like this discount or this price point is gonna go away, but then it doesn't. Like that's so weird. Or the same thing, like offer expires tonight, like you can only get this tonight, and then tomorrow you're like, oh, that thing is still available. That is manipulative, it's fake. And if you're creating artificial scarcity, you're like trying to get people to believe there's not many spots, but you're selling as many as possible. That is manipulation. And you are right to reject that. I am right to reject that. Like that is a sleazy, manipulative sales tactic. That is not what we're talking about here. And that rejection of false urgency is why most of my clients, yoga and Pilates business owners, come in and reject all urgency. And then that's when we have a completely different problem because there's a difference between false urgency and real urgency. So, real urgency is when you actually do what you say you're going to do, when you are communicating real timelines. For example, a lot of uh studios that I work with give a special offer to clients in their intro offer package, if they sign up within that window. Once their intro offer is over, once that package is done, that offer no longer exists. That is ethical urgency. There was a real timeline, there was a real consequence if you didn't say yes to the offer and it's no longer on the table. Or let's say that you are teaching a sound bath workshop, or like you have singing bowls coming in and you're gonna offer um hands-on assists, like you have a limited number of spots in that workshop. That's real scarcity. You you have to communicate that to people. Same thing with retreats. Like you can't tell the people who are thinking about your retreat that there's a limited number of spots. They need to know when spots are limited so that they can take you up on your offer. You can't take an infinity amount of people to your retreat. And I will say, like, the thing that I get asked here a lot is like, Jackie, but what if I have an online membership and I really could have like thousands or 10,000s of people on my online membership? I'm almost like, that is true and also not true for right now. I also, in that moment, I look and I ask them, could your back end, could your operations, could your team actually support 10,000 people joining your membership today? The answer is probably not if you haven't prepped for that. So even in that moment where this container could be unlimited, you actually are still limited by client experience, client delivery. How many people can come in? Because you have to have the team, you have to have the infrastructure, you have to have the system set up to support that certain number of people. Founding memberships are a great example of ethical urgency. Like this is a really common thing to do before studio is open and after studio is open. The price changes, the founding membership changes, it goes away. These timelines are not tricks, this is not manipulation. This is just you communicating structure for people to understand why there is ethical urgency to help them move. Now, why I think you should be using ethical urgency in your business is because number one, humans are wired, they are wired to avoid expending effort, meaning they're wired to do the same thing again and again and again, to conserve energy. Trying a new class, signing up for a retreat, joining as a member, starting a program, all of that requires effort. It requires them doing something new, scheduling time, trying something unfamiliar where they might feel uncomfortable or awkward, walking into a new environment, spending money. Even when people want the outcome, it is natural for your brain to be like, oh, we should do that later. Not right now. This is called cognitive ease. The brain prefers what is familiar and effortless. And a deadline interrupts that delay. Instead of being able to say, I'll do it later, it's like, wait a second, I only have this option right now. And this option that I have before this deadline actually does give me more ease. Now, psychologically, I have a reason to move. Number two, humans are far more motivated by avoiding loss than gaining something new. Psychologists call this loss aversion. In simple terms, people feel the pain of losing something about twice as strongly as the pleasure of gaining something. This is why so many people find it hard to take that initial risk investment in their business. Because we are so wired to think about the potential downside of that risk, of losing something. We think about that twice as much as we're spending time thinking about what is the actual potential upside. Usually the potential downside is capped at some level, like you can only go down so far. But the upside is infinite. There is so much potential upside, but our brains don't focus on that. So when there is a deadline, the brain shifts from I'll do this later or I shouldn't do this now to oh my gosh, I don't want to lose this opportunity. This change drives action. Number three, making decisions for humans creates stress. So people will just avoid making them. Without urgency, the brain will keep postponing decisions. I've talked about this before on the podcast. You are literally out there trying to help your clients de-stress, have less overwhelm, feel happier. But oftentimes when we leave them an indecision, meaning they haven't said yes or no to the offer, that indecision has been proven in studies to create stress. Literally to do the opposite of what you're trying to do with your client. So we want to almost like force the brain or move the brain of our clients from, I'll think about it, I'll decide later, I'll let you know, I'll get back to you. Like that is adding stress to their plate. We don't want that decision to be an open tab in their mind. We just want them to make a decision and urgency deadlines. They make the brain think, oh my gosh, I need to decide now, yes or no. And that is in service of your clients because it literally helps them have less stress in their lives. Does that make sense? Like this is so, so huge. This is why it's ethical for you to get people to making a decision. The moment of decision is when actually finally happens. So deadlines don't just benefit the business, they can actually help the client reduce overthinking, simplify decisions, create momentum, encourage commitment. And the most meaningful change in their life is going to start with the moment of commitment. It starts at the decision. Deadlines help create that moment. And without it, many people stay stuck thinking about it for so, so long. Now, again, I get it. If you have been resisting or avoiding creating urgency for emotional reasons, you don't want people to feel pressured. You believe that they'll just come when they're ready, that you don't want to be salesy. But the reality is you are meant to be the leader in this situation. You are meant to help people understand that they are never going to feel quote unquote ready. That's just like a made-up feeling. They become ready when they make the decision. And that decision has to happen by some sort of prompting for them to take action now. So here's what I want you to consider. When you say, hey, this offer ends on Sunday, you're not pressuring someone. You're literally providing clarity and structure. Leadership requires both. Leadership requires boundary boundaries. Your job is not to keep the door open for every person forever. That would be so much pressure for you to hold and not good for your clients. Your job is to create clear opportunities for people to step into. So urgency is a part of that leadership. So let's go over some examples that you could use, right? Like we already talked about founding member pricing, special intro offer, deadline pricing, bonus add-ons that expire. Let's say if you are hosting a retreat and you give people a bonus 90-minute massage, that add-on ends when they sign up by March 13th. This could be programs with clear start dates, right? If you have challenges, you have to cut off the challenge enrollment at some time. This could be enrollment periods for teacher training. There's usually some sort of pricing at the beginning of a teacher training launch, some sort of pricing at the end. And like that's okay. It's also okay that you listen to your people. And if you're enrolling in teacher training and they really care about learning how to create awesome playlist, you can create a bonus about making an awesome playlist that's available for them to have when they purchase within 24 hours that literally just helps them move forward or say no. These are all honest and effective. So if you have been avoiding urgency because you don't want to be manipulative, I hope this made you reconsider. Without urgency, people will stay stuck in intention. I will someday down the road, now's not the time. And urgency helps move people into action. And action is what leads to transformation. So where are you avoiding urgency because it feels uncomfortable for you, even though your clients may actually need it to move forward? If this is something that you struggle with, this is my jam. This is why I'm the best at.