I sold 10 Pilates memberships in 26 days. Here’s what I wouldn’t do again.

Until now, you have heard about everything that went right—and generated exceptional results—during the Pilates studio’s membership growth sprint. Today’s piece looks at what could have gone better and what I would change next time around.

Hindsight is 20/20. After six weeks spent dissecting the initial membership sprint while continuing to work with the same studio, the actions that created leverage—and those that did not—have increasingly come into focus.

The first four weeks of working with the studio were incredibly time- and energy-intensive. In hindsight, I can now see that there were tasks I spent hours, and even days, on that did not get the studio any closer to the eventual result: ten sales of its £180, 10-class monthly membership.

To save you from wasting those same hours and days, this week I am sharing what is—and is not—worth your time during a membership sales sprint.

Once again, this is based on my personal experience of selling 7.4 times the historic monthly average of the aforementioned membership in 26 days. It is not a universal prescription for every Pilates studio. It is an effort-versus-impact audit of one sprint and the operating lessons I would carry into the next.

Pattern & Practice:

Endless hours spent scribbling ideas, eureka moments and hypotheses into my notebooks—alongside conversations with current studio members and other studio owners—have enabled me to begin extracting the core lessons from that four-week experience.

This week’s Pilates Prudence looks beyond the symptoms of what did not turn out as hoped and focuses on the root assumptions behind those outcomes.

Here are five assumptions I took into the studio sprint. Each was either disproven or shown to be incomplete, followed by what I would now do instead.

Assumption 1: Followers and engagement equate to buying intent

This assumption cost me days of time.

I sent 218 cold DMs and 13 voice notes to people who followed the studio’s Instagram page, watched its Story sequences to the end or interacted with its feed content. Although this outreach helped generate some sales, comparing effort with impact showed that it was not an effective strategy.

The strategy was based on the false idea that everyone following the page was looking to buy Pilates classes. The reality was far more complicated. People follow a studio for many reasons, ranging from supporting the studio owner, to liking the page’s vibe, to working for a competing studio.

In future, I would not spend time DMing as many page followers as possible. Instead, I would only reach out to people who had demonstrated interest in the membership by interacting with specific pieces of content about it—either on the feed or through Stories.

I would also automatically welcome every new follower to the page and tell them about the membership offer within the first hour of following.

The “storytelling” Instagram Story sequences I used were incredibly effective at helping prospects see themselves using the offer. I would double down on these sequences, rotating through different formats daily and adding polls and sliders to help identify genuine membership interest.

This would turn engagement into a qualifying signal, rather than treating engagement itself as buying intent.

Assumption 2: Being in the studio increases the likelihood of sales

I lost hours of time and interrupted productive work windows by going into the studio to speak with individuals.

Although I did close sales in this way, not having the necessary permissions to process payments within the studio significantly limited the method’s effectiveness.

For several prospects, the in-studio excitement disappeared as soon as they walked out of the doors. “That sounds great—I’ll book when I’m back” became the most common objection I heard.

As these prospects expressed interest and then either ghosted or later declined the membership, I also invested considerable time following up with and chasing individuals—sometimes across several days.

In future, I would change my approach in two ways.

First, I would hold two or three designated sessions in the studio each week, organised around the busiest class times, and encourage interested prospects to visit during those windows. This would create a low-pressure opportunity to understand what they wanted from Pilates and prescribe the membership accordingly.

Most importantly, I would secure the ability to process the sale then and there.

Being present only creates commercial leverage when there is also a closing mechanism. Without one, it simply creates another list of people to follow up with.

Assumption 3: Better marketing automatically improves the entire business

This oversimplified assumption positioned marketing as the final piece—and the missing link—in the studio’s growth puzzle.

Rather than automatically improving the entire business, the marketing strategy began to expose gaps, inconsistencies and areas requiring improvement within the wider business infrastructure.

The marketing increased the volume of leads and prospects entering the studio, but the funnel behaved like a leaky bucket, with leads and even paying customers lost along the way. This meant trying to patch gaps in the funnel while simultaneously creating daily content and selling memberships.

In future, I would dedicate the first one to two weeks to reviewing the studio’s existing infrastructure, adding refinements that support membership sales and improve the customer experience.

I would map the entire journey from initial enquiry to first visit, purchase and fulfilment, manually validating each handoff and automation before relying on it at scale. I would also secure the necessary access and permissions before the sprint began so that everything could run smoothly once sales activity increased.

Finally, I would brief the instructors so that they could support sales inside the studio and personally help new members feel welcome.

Assumption 4: All content supports sales, and more content means more sales

This assumption was driven by the studio’s lack of organic visibility following an inconsistent posting schedule.

I felt the need to create two types of content: content designed to improve the studio brand’s visibility and positioning, and content designed to sell the membership. Both were valuable—but not in the same way.

Content focused on helping prospects embody the identity of the membership buyer outperformed content primarily designed to establish the studio brand’s identity and presence.

The cinematic content filmed with one individual and two instructors helped to shape the studio’s visual identity and establish its positioning, but it did not directly generate membership sales. It established the promise of the world members were joining and supported studio awareness.

Membership-orientated content, coupled with proactive outreach and nurturing, was what actually generated the sales.

In future, before publishing the first post, I would determine whether the studio needed awareness content alongside sales-focused content.

Based on the studio’s existing awareness and wider position in the market, we would create a feed content plan with a deliberate balance between the two. The goal would not be to publish as much as possible. It would be to give every piece of content a specific job.

This would be supported by a daily “storytelling” Instagram Story plan and an email plan designed to nurture former clients and current clients who had not yet subscribed to the membership.

Assumption 5: Selling more memberships only requires a team of one

This assumption can be true—but only when there is sufficient support from the studio’s existing team to make the process run as smoothly as possible.

Promises made through the marketing and sales became significantly harder to fulfil consistently within the studio itself. The absence of an established in-studio process, clearly assigned roles and defined communication routes made fulfilling those promises far more time-intensive.

In future, I would establish a more integrated approach across the studio’s sales, marketing and delivery before the sprint began.

I would sit down with the owner to define studio roles, channels of communication and response deadlines. The in-studio team would also be briefed on the membership being promoted so that they could answer questions, direct prospects appropriately and recommend the membership to clients who would be a good fit.

A one-person sales sprint can work when the wider studio team understands how to support it. A one-person attempt to market, sell, fulfil and repair the experience in real time cannot.

Proof:

Reflecting on what I would change does not make the ten memberships sold any less significant. It makes the result more useful.

Those ten sales in 26 days proved that the first version of this approach could work. This effort-versus-impact audit is now beginning to show me how the second version could work even better.

It leaves me with a more interesting question: what could have happened if the audience had been qualified earlier, every in-studio conversation had a closing mechanism, the wider customer journey had been reinforced before launch and every piece of content had been given a specific job?

Could the result have been 15 memberships, 20—or even more?

The only way to answer that question is to run the experiment again—but not from scratch. The next iteration begins with the lessons the first one had to uncover.

Over the last few weeks, I have continued trialling and testing these ideas with the same studio outside the confines of the original membership sprint. Each test is helping me separate the tactics that worked once from the principles that can be repeated.

Every learning is slowly but surely being condensed into a clearer framework: one designed to reduce wasted effort, strengthen the studio around the sale and generate even better results when it is deployed again.

The first sprint produced proof of the result. What is happening now is the work of turning that result into a repeatable method.

If you are planning a membership sprint of your own, I hope this audit helps you direct your time towards the work most likely to move the result.

And if you are looking for someone to organise and execute the sales sprint for your studio, email me at jessicasabry@eastxwestmedia.com or send me a DM. We can schedule a call and explore what the next iteration could look like inside your studio.