IAM1818 – Author and Pilates Teacher Coaches Pilates Teachers and Studio Owners to Grow Their Businesses

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”:

In this episode of the I AM CEO Podcast, host Gresham Harkless interviews Lesley Logan, an author and Pilates teacher who coaches Pilates teachers and studio owners on how to grow their businesses. Lesley has been teaching Pilates for ten years and has led Pilates retreats in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Maui, Hawaii. After publishing her book “Profitable Pilates: Everything But the Exercises,” she turned her focus towards coaching and helping other Pilates professionals achieve business success.

Lesley shares insights and strategies on how Pilates teachers and studio owners can effectively grow their businesses. She emphasizes the importance of taking care of scheduling and prioritizing personal goals within one's calendar. Lesley also encourages individuals to make choices that align with their aspirations and start from where they currently are.

Throughout the episode, Lesley highlights the value of freedom and bringing value to more people as a CEO. She discusses her websites, including profitablepilates.com, lesleyloganpilates.com, and onlinepilatesclasses.com, as well as her social media profiles on Facebook and Instagram.

Overall, this episode provides valuable advice for Pilates professionals seeking to expand their businesses and make a positive impact on their clients' lives. Lesley's experience and expertise in the industry make her insights highly relevant and useful for anyone in the Pilates teaching or studio ownership field.

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Transcription:

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Lesley Logan Teaser 00:00

I am a big fan of taking care of my schedule first. So any scheduling software that you like, I say is a hack. You have to put your goals for your life and your business in the schedule every week, like standing appointments. So white space for creating.

Intro 00:19

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:45

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we've hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different. Where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, just like you, what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on CEO Hacks and CEO Nuggets. This is by far one of my favorite questions I asked on the show. In other words, I asked what are the apps, books, and habits that make you more effective and efficient? Those were the CEO Hacks. Then I asked for a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or something that you might tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine. Those were the CEO Nuggets. That's what we'll focus on this month and some of the top ones that can instantly impact your business.

I love all the questions, but with every episode, I felt I would walk away with something I could look at and implement right there to save the precious resources, time, and money. Or I would also learn about the advice, tips, and tidbits or tools of the trade on how to level up our organization. So you'll hear some of these this month. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lesley Logan of lesleyloganpilates.com. Lesley, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Lesley Logan 02:21

Thank you so much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 02:23

What I wanted to do was read a little bit about Lesley so you can hear like all the awesome things that she's been able to accomplish and do and learn a little bit more about her.

So Lesley Logan has been teaching Pilates for 10 years, leading Pilates retreats in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Maui, Hawaii for two years after publishing her book, Profitable Pilates, Everything but the Exercises. She has been a Pilates coach and teacher and studio owner on helping business owners to grow their businesses.

Lesley, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Lesley Logan 02:53

Let's do it.

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Gresham Harkless 02:55

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. The first thing that I wanted to ask was to give you the mic, so to speak, and hopefully tell us a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Lesley Logan 03:03

Oh yeah. I never thought I was going to ever be like a CEO. I just thought I would sell jewelry for a high-end retail company and then keep growing in their company and I don't know, be an adopted child that ends up like running their stores for them. Then the recession hit.

Gresham Harkless 03:21

Wasn't fun, right.

Lesley Logan 03:22

Yeah. And I happen to have been learning to teach Pilates as a hobby, which is so ironic because I really tell a lot of teachers today, like teaching Pilates is not a hobby. It is a job. Stop treating it like a hobby. But I thought it was a hobby and make some money to pay for my Pilates pants and my Pilates classes. What was crazy was in this recession, I ended up becoming so busy teaching Pilates that I had to quit this job where I would work for other people and run my own business.

I couldn't be in denial that I was running my own business for very long because you have to do all the things and you start to realize, it's all you. So I was really grateful I got to actually run nine studios for a corporation because of my management background. So I really got to dive into the Pilates world from both sides of the business just teaching it and then managing teachers and hiring teachers. then I also got to be a teacher trainer, teaching people how to teach Pilates.

A few years ago after I published my book, I launched my second website, profitablepilates.com. It's like a hub for teachers. It's everything but the exercise, like the book says, and that forced me to live like, oh, I have two brands now and start to think of things as more than I just teach, my clients each week. So it's been an organic growth into being a CEO. I think I probably didn't admit that I was one until the bank made me say what my title was when I opened my account. But sometimes it just finds you.

Gresham Harkless 04:52

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So I wanted to take some time to drill a little bit deeper. I know you said you had two separate brands. I wanted to get an idea of what you do and what your products and services are for each of those brands.

Lesley Logan 05:02

Yeah. So there, and as we speak, literally just launched a third website. So there is Lesley Logan Pilates, which is lesleyloganpilates.com that has a couple of heads. So I do teach Pilates still to people in Los Angeles when I'm in town, I also teach via Skype. So we have offered sessions both in person and on Skype. But because I can't be everywhere to everybody, it's really important that I had online access for people.

So I have online mat classes that every week there's a new class and Lesley Logan Pilates also has YouTube videos. So why that's important for the brand is that we actually had to split it off because it became so huge. So the third website that just launched this week is onlinepilatesclasses.com. I'm sure people listening have been there. You're like totally doing the projects and all of a sudden you realize some of these projects take on their own journey. So to keep things really clear when people come to Lesley Logan Pilates, we had to go, okay, how do we make it easy for people to find the exercise information that they want? And then also the classes so that they're not getting confused with where are they taking their session.

So Lesley Logan Pilates also has retreats. So I lead retreats all over the world. I have a retreat center in Siem Reap, Cambodia. My favorite place, but to take people and so it has this travel aspect, but we're trying to keep Lesley Logan Pilates more of, you're working directly with me and then taking the online stuff over to onlinepilatesclasses.com. Then the other little tree of this family and this little branch is the Profitable Pilates. There we have my book, which is now an e-book in English and Spanish. Then we have courses, online courses for people who want to take a course for their business on like how to attract new clients, how to retain clients.

Most Pilates teachers don't learn any business skills when they are in their teacher training. A lot of them fall in love with qualities because they discovered it at the gym or as a dancer. And so it's not necessarily in their anatomy or their business. They're like their repertoire to be talking business, right? So I was looking up to not come from a dance background I came from a business side of things. So I've made all these courses that I know teachers struggle with and students struggle with.

Then we started creating online webinars. So every two weeks, I go live and people can join me for a one-hour workshop on one topic and they can get their questions answered. But which we find is really popular amongst teachers, there's that accountability aspect of they have to show up at a certain time and then they feel like they have direct access to me and then we have weekly blogs. I just give out information for free to help people because I believe that the more teachers that are successful the more people who are doing Pilates and then it keeps me in a job.

Gresham Harkless 07:57

It's very important to do that. I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know obviously you're able to do have that rare ability to have the hope that being able to teach Pilates, but also understand the business aspect of it and combine that together.

Do you know if there's any other kind of maybe secret sauce or unique aspects of your business that makes your organization unique?

Lesley Logan 08:17

Yeah. I definitely think the way I have a team, which I don't think a lot of people in the Pilates community really have the ability in their studios. And if they do, I don't know that they are able to use it as much as I think that they should. I think this goes for any business. Having a team is really essential so that you can show up as your unique self. It's really hard to be to do all the things. So one thing I know for sure is I'm not very good at a lot of things, but I'm really, really good at a few things. The more I rely on my team who I specifically hired based on what their strengths were, the more I get to be fully myself.

For example, I went to an event just a couple of weeks ago to teach 50 to 100 people in each class. And, I actually had my partner there and he was filming and he was able to talk to people. He was able to do things that are not necessarily my total strengths. So I could just show up, teach the class and be the person that I am and that everyone expects to show up and get a class from and not worry about, Oh my God, I have to remember to email that person. Oh, I have to also email that person. That person wants this. Like I don't have to keep all those notes.

So I think it's really important when you are running your business that you know exactly what you're really, really good at and then you hire people who strengthen your weaknesses. You just go, I'm not good at those things and you let them do them and you let them do that their best way. It's not a secret, but it feels like a secret sauce to me.

Gresham Harkless 09:40

Yeah. I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack, and this can be like a resource, a book, or just an app or something that you use or turn to on a regular everyday basis that makes you more effective and efficient.

Lesley Logan 09:52

I'm a big fan of taking care of my schedule first. So any scheduling software that you like, I say is a hack. You have to put your goals for your life and your business in the schedule every week, like standing appointments. So white space for creating. If you love to work out, that has to be in there. My own personal where everything really helps keep me inspired to grow and to continue on. And like almost sometimes it's like a reward, right? I put those on my calendar first because then I actually have no problem, you know sitting at my computer one day and writing six hours of blogs because I got to do something that was really important for me.

So I don't have a calendar that I would recommend for you necessarily, because I think you all have things that we like to work on, but work your calendar so that it actually has you in it. That would be my hack. It's not very original, but it is something I think people forget. They go to work every day and work becomes a priority. Running the business becomes the priority and we forget why we started doing what we're doing and what the purpose was at the end. Like, where is it taking you?

Gresham Harkless 10:58

I love it. So, that brings me now to what I call a CEO nugget, which might be like a word or wisdom or piece of advice that you might have for other entrepreneurs and business owners. Do you have a CEO nugget for us?

Lesley Logan 11:07

Yeah. Choose your choices and start where you are. Those two things I have to constantly remind myself of. Sometimes we don't like where we are, but the choices we made brought us there. So choose them so you can own them. Once you own them, you can reverse engineer and rework failures to being benefits and learning lessons to things. So if you find yourself in a spot that you don't like, recognize that you made the choice to be there. You can make the choice to change it and then starting where you are is really important because I think in the day of social media it is really easy to compare where you are and your outtakes to other people's like perfectly edited reels.

I know for a fact that I'm definitely guilty of making sure that all the Instagram channels and Facebook Posts and everything make my life look and sound amazing. People have a hashtag LLC winning at life. I hope because it's not real because they think it's perfect. But, my very first YouTube video is still on YouTube. I hate it. It sucks because you have to start where you are. So I think you can look at other people's stuff and you can see the potential for you, but you cannot compare that to where you are today because you are exactly where you're supposed to be and that you started there and you have to grow.

It's important to grow organically because if you end up somewhere too quickly, you're not going to be able to sustain what that business is. So those are the two little nuggets that I remind myself of as I write them down, especially when lunch doesn't go as well as I thought. Or I see a friend of mine launched a similar product and it did better than mine. I'm like, okay she's actually been teaching for 20 years. I've been teaching for 10. The fact that I was even in the realm of things is actually awesome.

Gresham Harkless 12:46

Exactly. I wanted to ask you, this was probably my favorite question is like the definition of what it means to you to be a CEO. We'll have different types of quote and quote CEOs on the podcast, and I wanted to get an opportunity to hear from you exactly what you think being a CEO means to you.

Lesley Logan 13:01

I think it means being free. I know people a lot of times say freedom, but being free. I definitely did corporate world for a while and would get frustrated when what I wanted to do in the business wasn't appreciated. They didn't think it was right or good. It was impossible to implement because it's a corporation. Everything has to be done a certain way in a certain order, and it has to be very much the same everywhere. So when I stepped away from that to do my own thing, I felt almost lost. I didn't know where to start. Where do I go? Where do I go from here? And then I realized, Oh, I can go anywhere because I'm free to do anything.

So in being free and working for myself, I wanted to have a retreat space in Cambodia. So I did it. I wanted to change my schedule. So I did it. I wanted to change how we build clients. I can actually do all the things I want to do and it's not like knee-jerk reactions. These are gut reactions that I feel make the user experience friendly, and make me able to reach more people. I don't know if anyone's ever heard of the law of income, but the law of income is, the more people who you bring value to, the more lives bring value to, is the correlation to higher income.

So we wonder why athletes make so much money. We'll think about when they play a game, how many millions of people's lives are they adding value to? Not saying that it's the best value, but they're bringing something to them. So for me, I'm always trying to figure out how can I bring what I love so much and I think people can do to more people. If I wasn't my own CEO, I would probably not get my way as much as I want. I think it's when you own that title and you really go, okay, this is mine, and what feels right for me, you're going to come up with ideas that are really going to take you to the next level. That's pretty damn cool and it's very freeing.

This world's so big, we have so many things we can do in it. It would really suck to feel like you were tied down.

Gresham Harkless 15:02

I love it. I love it. So I think that's an awesome definition and I appreciate you for that. I appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. I wanted to give you the mic one more time to see if there's anything else you wanted to tell us, Lesley, about your business or any pieces of advice. And then also how people can best get ahold of you.

Lesley Logan 15:17

First of all, I know many people who are CEOs are at their desks all the time. Even if you're at a standing desk, you probably are not in the best posture and it's really important to me. If you want to find more information or talk to me about anything, the best way to reach me is actually by email. I know it sounds crazy to get your email on a podcast, but you can email me, lesley@lesleyloganpilates.com and I'm happy, I read all of those emails.

If you are more of a social media fan, then I have two Instagram profitablepilates and lesley.logan. So you can check out either one of them.

Gresham Harkless 16:00

Awesome. We'll have those links in the show notes, just in case anybody wants to follow up. But Leslie, thank you so much for all the awesome things that you're doing and all the incredible value that you provided to us.

I truly appreciate you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Lesley Logan 16:12

Thank you. You too. Hopefully, maybe I'll see all your CEOs and Siem, Reap one day.

Gresham Harkless 16:18

There you go. We will add it to the list.

Lesley Logan 16:20

Sounds good.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase it's a community.

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Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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