[00:00:00] Melissa: I love this time of year. It's the time when we get to sit and look back and see what we did and how it affected our lives, and then setting ourselves up for the next year, thinking about wouldn't it be cool if you guys, I invite you to my next workshop, create your epic life. If you didn't know you are the creator of your business, you are the designer of your life. And I want you to wake up every day and go, man, I cannot believe this is my life. And I want you to be excited about it. I want you to be like so excited to get out of bed and start your day. Come to my workshop, create your epic life, december 30th at 11:00 AM central standard time. This workshop I just do once a year, but it's something that you can apply anytime in your business, it will be recorded, but this is a time to just really dial in on what you want out of your life, not just your business, but your life and setting yourself up for success for 2022. Come join me December 30th, 11:00 AM. Central standard time as we go through and design your epic life, you can grab your seat at MsMelissarose.com/epiclife.
Hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of brick and mortar visibility. How are you guys? How are you doing it is a beautiful day when I'm recording. The sun is out. It is a bit chilly, but man, when the sun is out, that makes all the difference doesn't it. I am super excited about our guest today. We are going to talk to the beautiful Seren Gladfield And she is going to share with us a little bit about goal setting and how she does it with her people. Before we dive into that episode, I do want to give a listener, shout out. If you do not know, you can leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and tell the world about what you think about brick and mortar visibility. This one is from the hug box. Happy to discover you. I have been looking for a podcast that focuses on small town, brick and mortar so I can't wait to listen to the rest of your podcasts. This interview was my first listen. I just picked a random podcast and I so resonated with it. Thank you for thinking of the small businesses that are still somewhat new and wanting to grow, but having a hard time finding that specific information to do it. Thank you so much for leaving that review the hug box. That is exactly what this is about. Getting you ideas to scale your business so that you can become the only option in town and get the right people in your doors that become raving clients so that you can get more clients in your door, more revenue in your pocket so that you can hire out and have more time freedom. That is what I want for you. So I'm super excited about that review. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that. If you have not done that yet, I invite you to do that so I can show you out on the podcast. All right, everybody. This episode today I am really excited about. Seran is a business coach for Pilates studios, and I listened to her podcast because I learned so much from her. We have similar industries and I just love her. We were also part of a coaching group together. So I wanted to bring her on this podcast to share with you, her wisdom on what she does and how she does things maybe just a little bit different because know what?I believe there is enough to go around and we can learn from everybody. She is a beautiful soul. She lives in Florida. She has three kiddos and she has run her Pilates coaching business for 10 years already. If you enjoy the podcast today, I invite you to connect with Seran on social media or connect with her through a website. She is just a joy and really a giver in this world of marketing and business and growing your studio.
Alright Everybody. We have the beautiful Seran Gladfield here, sharing with us all about goal setting and setting ourself up for success. In 2022, you guys are in for a treat. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:03:56] Seran: Thank you so much for having me on this. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:03:59] Melissa: I ask everybody this before we even dive in, like just the icebreaker question. What did you want to be when you grew up?
[00:04:06] Seran: You know, I saw myself in a suit in an office, like high powered business executives. That's what I thought I wanted. I mean, that was kind of probably later, not when I was like really young, when I was really young, I wanted to be a fashion designer, but I realized that probably was a lot of reach for me. I wasn't that good at drawing. Then I saw myself in that powerful executive role. I'd read an article. I remember very clearly being very inspired by this strong female entrepreneur who, you know, had crushed all the goals and done all the things. And I was like, oh, I want to be like her. Yeah. That's, you know, that's not really what I...
[00:04:46] Melissa: You did go there. So tell us about your journey of where you are and how you got here.
[00:04:50] Seran: Yeah. I mean, I took a little bit of a winding road. I think, we all do , right. There's no one path. . So yeah, I grew up in the UK, in a very remote part of the UK and ended up going to university in London and working in finance, in the city of London, long hours, super long hours, super intense environment, lots of a type personalities, very intense and very, very stressful. That journey took me from London to New York and then back to London again. So it was a very . Intense period of my life. I realized very quickly it was something I couldn't do long-term. It was tough. It was tough. And so I kind of gotten to the point where I got so frustrated by it and so stressed out that I knew I needed to take a break but I didn't know where to go and how to do that. So I decided to do something that I was not a part of the plan and not a part of anything that I thought I would ever do. And I quit my job and I went and enrolled to become a palates teacher. And that was in New York city. And, I felt really fortunate to have landed in a place where there was some really amazing teachers. And I just immersed myself in that world because I really enjoyed the movement and the method. It really pulled me in. And so I got to work with a lot of dancers and a lot of dancers come from the dance world and into palates for lots of different reasons. And so I have a lot of friends who are former dancers or continue to teach dance, and incorporate palates into their movement or become palates teachers. And so that was a world that I never thought I would be a part of, or was even a world that I knew kind of really existed. It was just wasn't able to just wasn't on my radar, but then I was fully immersed in it and loved being in that world where, you know, movement is kind of such a big part of the day-to-day of living your life, which is for me at the time was so incredibly refreshing and exactly what I needed. And from there though, my business brain kind of like started to take off and I was like, okay, well, how am I gonna, what I'm gonna do next? Because I love to teach, but I, you know, I didn't feel like it was my calling necessarily to teach Palates as much as I loved it. I think my business brain was pulling me back into that world. And so I thought I'd be opening studios and I thought I would open like a, you know, perhaps a series of studios. But then, uh, you know, my family life took me back to London and you know, when you start a business, there's a lot, I'm sure of your listeners know, and I'm sure, you know, too, like you can't start a business and then leave a business like that. Like you can't open a studio and then leave again in two years because you just spend the two years getting stuff started to then close it down again, or to try to sell it, which is always a challenge. So I decided, instead of opening my own studio, that I would help other studio owners to grow their businesses. And at that point I was getting a lot of questions. I'm getting asked a lot of questions about that. And it's just I had been in a world of business, I'd studied, it studied marketing for a long time. It's what I love to talk about . I'm kind of a problem solver. So I kind of love to work through some of these challenges with a lot of my peers, who were teachers and studio owners and, and we're on the journey to growing a business. And so that's when I kind of like took this sort of different direction and started to build my business, which was helping other people build their studio businesses. And I was so fortunate because I got to work with a lot of people that had done a lot of my teacher training with who I adored and, got to work with some really phenomenal people who just inspired me as, as a teacher and as a sort of movement practitioner, you know, I got to get back a little bit to them by helping them to build and grow their businesses, which has been really a wonderful part of the journey that again, never knew I'd end up in this spot, but this is where I am.
[00:08:22] Melissa: Right Right. Okay. So I assume that you took Pilates before going into teacher training yes?
[00:08:30] Seran: Yeah, I fell in love like quickly and hard with palates. It was probably doing parties for about, I would say maybe six months and once I was in it, I was just like, this is really interesting. And I think I was just, it was just a timing thing at that point, I just was ready to make a change and it was right there and I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. We'll see what happens.
[00:08:54] Melissa: And Pilates it's one of those things that you either love it, or you don't love it. Right. Would you agree? So I can see where you don't take it for a long time and you either love it. And I was one that didn't love it. Okay. So I appreciate it. But what I love about your story is that Pilates is very structured. There is definitely a regimen or a system to follow. So that makes sense. Business wise. Be cause there's formulas. There's a way there's a system. There's a process. It's very direct that way in my experience with it. So that's interesting that you wanted to go into the business of that that makes sense.
[00:09:31] Seran: No, absolutely. And it was it, you know, it was interesting because I'd come from a world that was very structured, very rigid. And it actually felt, it's so funny you say that because it actually felt to me, like, it was just like this like totally open book of like, what do we do here? Yeah, I dunno. There's not like there wasn't like this solid structural kind of progression of career or direct, you know, and not everyone's on the same path and it's like a lot of different figuring out as you go situation. I felt there was a lot of challenge for me in that because I, I actually didn't feel there was as much structure. And so that I think every, you know, the thing about palates that makes it actually quite interesting is that there are a lot of different schools within the palates world and they all teach slightly differently. And it sort of, a lot of it depends on which one of those schools you kind of end up in, as to how they teach you to teach and things like that. So, I was in a program that was a bit of both. But it definitely pushed me, outside of my comfort zone, for sure.
[00:10:25] Melissa: Okay. So you're here as a guest to share with us. Setting us up for success for 2022. What that looks like? How can we be intentional about where we are going? Because this is the time of year. We sit around the Thanksgiving table or we're sitting around the Christmas table and we were looking and reflecting on our past year and going, yep. There are some things that went well, maybe the revenue was there, but you weren't home ever. Or you grew your clientele, but you didn't have any extra time. So. Let's dive in.
[00:11:01] Seran: Yeah. That way. Yeah, absolutely. You know, goal setting is one thing, but I kind of think about it more of identifying what you want for your business, the vision that you have for it. When people think of goal setting, I think we often think of just like, okay, well I want to increase my revenue by X. And sometimes that doesn't really jive with what we want to do, in our business and what we want to do in our lives, you know? The way that I approach it with a lot of my studio owners are saying to them. If you could build a business that you really wanted, what does that look like? And literally. Picture it in your mind, step into that place. And then take a look around you and think about who's there with you. Think about what you're doing, like what you're working on, how many hours you're working, what kind of clients you have, maybe, what does your studio look like? Where is your studio located? Do you have more than one studio? so it's really thinking about, okay, when I'm working every day, where am I going with this? And it's really picturing what that is, because once you have that picture, first of all, you realize kind of quickly, okay, well, if I want 17 studios, then I probably need to hire someone, right. Or a few people. And so you kind of realized quickly that, you know, if you want your business to grow, there are sort of components of it that you need to add over the course of the next 12, 24 months or so that are going to help you to be able to reach that vision that you have. And so I always start with sort of thinking ahead, okay, so what do you want to achieve from that perspective, which is one way to do it? The other way to do it, of course, is to take a blank sheet of paper and to just throw all of those ideas that are sitting in your head about what's possible and what you could be doing. And I kind of encouraged a lot of my studio owners to do that on an ongoing basis to have like a , Google doc or a notebook where they just throw all their ideas down because to be honest, our brains are fantastic at coming up with lots of ideas, but absolutely terrible at thinking about how to implement them or how to manage them in our heads so that we don't get overwhelmed. The best thing we can do if we're an ideas person is to get them out of our heads and down on paper. So that's the second part of what I encourage people to do at this time of year is just to sort of take a minute. I'm sure there's a lot of things floating around in your head right now, put them all down on paper. And then it's just a matter of thinking about once you have kind of those two things really kind of seeing with there's some, a marriage between them and thinking about, okay, which of these ideas that I just had . Help me to get to the goal that I want. Right. And so often we'll have some fantastic ideas, but they don't necessarily help us to move towards the goal, the vision that we have for our success. And by the way, when I say vision for success, I mean that we should be also incorporating, not just the business, you know, many of us, are parents, are caregivers, you know, we have other responsibilities in our lives and other, needs for our time. And so we want to make sure our business is something that allows us to also do other things. Right. I think most people want that. And so, as you're thinking about how you can build and grow and thinking about those ideas, you want to make sure that you're thinking about, well, actually, I'd like to take Fridays off. Right. And doing all these things that I want to do is that going to really help me to be able to reach that goal and that vision for my business and my life. So there's a lot of moving parts at this time, but it's a lot of just, I would encourage just a lot of, kind of brainstorming and throwing ideas down on paper. And then once you have it down, then you can kind of like. Scratch out the fact that you want to, maybe someone told you to do 10 reels a day on Instagram, and that's going to help you, right? Maybe that doesn't really serve you maybe what will serve you better is to think about how you can change your pricing on when that makes sense to do that. Or perhaps there's a new program you want to roll out and what you might need to do, to be able to do that. And then once you have that, Kind of ideas that you know, that you want to commit to, then you can reverse engineer some of those action steps that will get you there. And then it's not about doing it today and this week, which is again, the tendency we all have is that we want to get things done now. Especially for the business owners, I find a very much go getters and doers. You know, it doesn't always support that balance in life to do it all at once. So to think about, okay, well, if I want to roll out a new program. It's like, when does it make sense? When you look at the calendar and you think about what needs to happen, then you can say, maybe it doesn't make sense. Roll this out until march perhaps, or the end of February to give yourself time to perhaps set things up and, map it out from a marketing perspective. So, you know, once you know where you're going, then you can kind of figure out the route to get there. Right. But without a destination, you're just like flip flopping from one place to the next.
[00:15:35] Melissa: You guys there's no work-life balance. It's all life . I recently heard this. We are the creative director of our business. So we get to decide what our business is. We went in business for ourselves, but not to be by ourselves. And when we create a business. And it's all business goals and it's so tempting. Most of us are like this, like, okay. All about the business, all about the business, all about the business and the, oh yeah, we got kids. We got family, we have friends, we have our spiritual, we have our health, we have our finance, we forget about that aspect of it.
[00:16:06] Seran: We can show up in our business and push through. We can show up in life and push through, but one of the reasons we go into business is because we want that flexibility and we want to be the person who makes the rules generally. That's, that's why most people tend to go into business. Like I don't want to work for someone else. I want to do this my way. I have a great idea and I want to do it my way. The gift of that is also the fact that you get to design how you want to build and grow your business so that you also can do other things in life. And so it's important to keep that balance in mind. And one of the things I really encourage folks to do is to, is to really think about what your boundaries are for balancing. Your work part of your life, right? Because it has a tendency to flow into everything else that you're doing, whether that's just the fact that you're thinking about things when you're doing something else, whether that's the fact that you're scrolling on Instagram, trying to reply to DMS or what have you, as you are doing something else, you know, it's very exhausting trying to multitask, right. And the best thing we can do for our businesses to show up fresh and ready to go and then show up doing other things fresh and ready to go. Most people quite kind of enjoy getting things done in their business and checking boxes. And boundaries are very important and that can often look like really, truly sticking to work hours and work days. And it sounds so simple and it sounds doable, but so many small business owners are replying to emails, text messages, you know, at 9 30, 10 o'clock at night, which is not that helpful for them, nor does it set really a great precedent for how their clients and when their clients should engage. And when perhaps even team members are expected to be involved. And so, thinking about the hours you want to work, perhaps building out, what you want your week to look like. And in that week, what's your downtime, what's your fun time. What's your family time, whatever it is you want to do thinking about when in your week, it makes sense for that to happen.
[00:18:06] Melissa: I heard a quote or somebody say that, you can say it's a priority, but unless it's on your calendar as a priority, it's not a priority. Meaning if you say your kids are your priority, but you're not making time for them in the off hours or going to their game or whatever, it's not showing like a priority. And I find myself guilty of that too. Last night, even, you know, I worked all day, the computer's off, but I still have my phone or I'm still checking things or checking messages from team. And I'm like, Melissa, you're here with the kids just turn it off. And like you said, what am I showing my team that they're able to chat with me at these certain times or whatever. And honestly, my team's great. I, I do have to watch myself and they've called me on it too. Like, Melissa, if you could tell me if this is urgent, when it's off hours, because you know, when it pops in your head, you just do it. And I never mean for them to answer me at 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning, but that's when it came in my head. So I'm just going to get it off my head. So I, I have learned to, be better about communicating. This is not urgent, or please don't reply until Monday, but just wanted to get it off my head. So I didnt forget,
[00:19:17] Seran: right. Yeah. It's funny. It's how know we are so connected. We can be available all times and it doesn't mean that you have to be at all, you know, , if you're a small business owner, you've got clients who you have good, strong relationships with. They will be more than happy to respect those boundaries. If you tell them, you know, I, I will answer your text messages. If you want to change this class time or this, you want to move schedules and so on, but I only do it until 6:00 PM and then I'll answer. It depends on, you know, again, who's doing it in your business and how you manage all of that. But for some smaller studios, that's something that comes up and then yeah, for your team, the same thing, as a leader, you want your team to show up fresh too. So. You really want to make sure that you're kind of saying to them, look, this is a downtown. And then I expect you to be fully, you know, fully accessible from this time to this time or fully working during these hours. Those boundaries are really important and you'd be really, really thoughtful about them. And this is a time of year to do it right. You know, when we get this time to reflect a little bit on perhaps the year gone by and, and perhaps what worked and what didn't work and what we enjoyed and what we didn't enjoy. And this is often the opportunity, as you enter into the new year to think about how you can perhaps do more of what you enjoy doing and perhaps a little bit less of what didn't work so well. Taking that time to reflect is also kind of a really big part of being successful when it comes to planning full for the year ahead.
[00:20:38] Melissa: When do you do this seran? Do you like delegate a day, for you personally, or is it a week when do you take this time to do it?
[00:20:46] Seran: Good question. So I'm in the process of doing it right now for my business. And I'm working with my studio owners right now to do the same thing. So I tend to break it up into two slots of time because I found that doing it all in one go I tend to sort of go away and process and then come back with other ideas. I have a, kind of a planning formula that I use every year that I follow for my business, I have my workbook that I've put together for my business with, I don't really know how to review my numbers. What worked, what didn't. Best business decisions, worse decisions, like what was better than expected was, you know, and just a full sort of, sort of like, looking back, what worked, what didn't work, what did I enjoy? What did I not enjoy? And being just kind of, you know, honest to myself about some of those things. And this is the process I share with my studio owners as well. And you know, it's, it's helpful to just take that time to reflect. Once I do that, then we move into sort of, what's next. I'm thinking about that vision for the future, thinking about how we want to, I want to feel in the next year and what that looks like. Who's around us in that vision. And then the brainstorming and the ideas, and then the process of prior in choosing which of those ideas are a priority in which are feasible, and you know, which are feasible immediately and which might need to wait based on some other things. And so I tend to split it up into two parts that's, what's kind of works for me. And then that's kind of what works for my studio owners as, as well. I have my little booklet that I give them and, I say you just keep this handy because you know, things will pop into your head and you might want to jot that down. The goal is that we come out of the planning period with a plan for what our focus is for each quarter. Potentially each month, depending on how many projects and ideas and how comfortable people really are with planning and kind of putting things down on paper. But definitely for the first quarter of the year. And then we review each quarter as a group, we review and work through those next 90 days. It usually takes me a couple of hours for each session. Um, but I definitely have my little workbook so that I can like on my desk because I'll, I will get ideas. I'm sure. Just like you, pop into my head when I least expect it. And I don't like to try to hold on to ideas. Cause that's for me is when I start to feel overwhelmed.
[00:22:58] Melissa: I love that you said the auditing, of your year . Because we forget. I have my tracking sheets that's where I do it. And I write down everything that we've done, numbers and all that good stuff to then go back easily, visually so that I can see what worked. And that's something that we have to remember. I think we forget sometimes that one. We always remember what didn't work. But we sometimes forget what did work and forget that we did that. And we're like, oh, we should go back to that because that was really working for us. So going back, taking an audit of the year and that's probably one hour or so of time, like just to really be intentional about that and then taking the next day or time to go, okay. Now what, what would it be like? Or how would it look if this, and then figuring out. So kind of like a three-step process there of doing that. I like that. That's very good, very helpful. I love this stuff because everybody kind of does it their own little way. They're a similar, but everybody takes it a little bit differently. So I hope you guys grabbed some information here from Saran and that you could apply to your business and life. Because like I said, it's all wrapped up. There's no work-life balance. I don't believe in it. It's just life and we make it the way we want to. So where can people best find you Seran?
[00:24:14] Seran: Yeah. So I am on Instagram at seran_spring_3. That spring three is my business name. And you can find me at springthree.com and I would love to hear from anyone who's got questions about anything we talked about. I also, I love, love talking about planning and productivity and all of those good things to keep us, moving forward and not getting stuck. Cause that's just the worst. So, I'm happy to answer any questions.
[00:24:38] Melissa: And she also has a podcast sharing your podcast.
[00:24:41] Seran: I do have podcasts. It's the pilates business podcast and we talk a lot about, marketing and business tips and guides for small boutique studios. There's a lot in there as well. And it got some great ideas. With some fabulous people.
[00:24:59] Melissa: I love listening to her podcast because I always take something it's always good to listen to people in your same industry to learn from them and also to support and encourage where you can too. So this has been a great collaboration and, I thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom with all of us here.
[00:25:14] Seran: You're so welcome. It's been wonderful to chat.
[00:25:16] Melissa: Awesome. All right. ThanksSeran .