Embrace the tricky journey of decision-making in our empowering season finale of Your Studio Podcast.
Join Chantelle and Michelle as they courageously navigate through difficult decisions and uncover hidden empowerment along the way. This episode is a beacon of hope for all studio owners grappling with tough choices and seeking solidarity in this complex world.
Get ready for an enlightening journey of growth, evolution, and the sweet relief that comes from making those tough, yet necessary calls. Tune in!
Please make sure to subscribe and review if you like what you hear!
If you’ve got a studio problem you’d like us to solve, leave us a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeaveEvolutionAVoicemail
Be sure to follow us for more content perfect for Studio Owners!
Instagram: @thestudioevolution
YouTube: @thestudioevolution
Facebook: @TheStudioEvolution
And if you’d like some more support, find out how we could help you here:
Website: studioevolution.com/start
Chantelle Bruinsma (00:00)
Welcome to Your Studio Podcast, sharing strategies for studio owners. Chantelle Bruinsma and Michelle Hunter are co -CEOs of Studio Evolution, an online global community for studio owners who run dance, music, acting, visual arts, yoga, pilates, even woodworking businesses. Over the last decade, they have transformed the lives of thousands of studio owners, helping them to create wildly successful and profitable studios
giving studio owners the life of their dreams. So welcome home. Grab a cuppa, let’s get started.
You look so like dreamy I look like I’m in a morgue can you turn your warm light up which one is that is that like a B or left I forgot which one’s left and right
They both look the same! I don’t know to answer that question. Okay, I’m just going to my notes.
I haven’t made any. Yeah, either have I. I’m just looking over podcast for… The notes we’ve said, hard decisions. Yeah that’s it. Shut up, bitch. That’s it. Just looking over my notes, three words, Michelle. You make yourself sound so organised.
I see you. I know, I know. I’m like, I make didn’t make any notes. I thought I’d made more and then obviously not. Two words.
Excellent. Okay, we’re off. That is so funny. That is like the funniest shit. Anyway. Have you noticed on the side, can you see this? It’s got the people and it takes a screen grab of us like when we’ve just logged on and we both look like shit. Can you see that? can. I’m like triple chinned and you’re like dead in the face. does that. I think it’s great. So tell me about your weekend. It was so great. So Madeline had this idea like a week ago, she wanted to do a shop.
don’t know where she got this idea from, but she was like hell bent. She wanted to do a shop and I was like, okay, well, there’s a lot of prep. They want to do it now, right? They want to do this job right now. was like, well, there’s a lot of planning. Then we spent the next week baking and creating. made homemade crayons. We did jelly cups and she did this whole sign of drawing a picture for each of the items she was selling and then writing out the label she’s six. It was really cute. I said, what’s the shop called? She said,
The shop of stuff. That’s a great name. Love it. It’s a great name. So Madeline’s shop of stuff. Perfect. Yeah. So then I texted all of our friends in the neighborhood and said, Madeline’s doing a shop of stuff. You’re invited to Madeline’s shop of stuff and we’re selling crayons and jellies and cupcakes and cookies. She went through her toy room and got a whole lot of toys and put them in a basket and she sold them. She made little glitter butterfly kind of magic fairy bottles.
Adorable stuff, right? Loom bracelets. And then we priced it all up and we set it up at the top of the driveway and, and we had a probably of like a lot of people. So she made $103 in about an hour and 15 minutes. What time did she open the shop? So was 8 .30 till 10 .30, but we actually sold out by 9 .45. my goodness. But what was so interesting was seeing the dynamic between my two girls as well, because Madeline is super creative and just very observant.
And Delilah, the three -year -old is like just very herself, very herself. And Madeline’s there kind of, you know, watching people come and she’ll go up and she’ll kind of really be attuned like, you could see this and here. And then you’ve got Delilah, three -year -old just like walking up to the strangers, walking down the street saying, do you want to buy something from my shop? We got cookies. We got cupcakes. Do you want to buy something? Absolutely salesman. So I was saying to like you two. I was going to that duo is magic.
Madeline’s so creative and it was really interesting. Trav and I were talking about this and we were saying to Madeline, do you know that you actually come from a family of entrepreneurs? Your grandparents were both grand entrepreneurs, both your parents entrepreneurs. We’ve all had our own shop of stuff. Daddy has a shop of stuff selling golf. Mummy has a shop of stuff helping studio owners. What I kept saying to Madeline through the whole process was, see how easy it is to make money? Yeah. See how easy that was? See how fun?
You just created something and then you offered it to people and they wanted it. And that’s how you got to make it. because you know, particularly working with so many clients, like we do, there’s a lot that we have to do with like money mindset work and all of the kind of the old stories of like money doesn’t grow on trees and like all of the kind of scarcity that we grow up in families. And it was like, she’s six and like just being able to like put messages into her brain of like, this is a core memory.
It’s easy to make money. It’s easy to make money. You just get to be creative and invite people into your shop. So, so powerful that Trav and I like, yeah, this is, this is what it’s about. hundred percent. And it’s a gift. It changes there. It changes there. Cause we’re all holding those stories in our head. How amazing. And yeah, it’s been really special. And has she spent it? Yeah. Amazing. We were at Kmart within.
four hours but she knew exactly what she wanted. She was very clear and she bought a double pram, a double stroller that had for kind of her two dollies and she has taken it everywhere. It goes next to her bed. It’s parked next to her bed at night time. And then the stroller comes to the park. The stroller comes to the dinner table. It’s yeah she’s in. cute. So sweet. Love it. Long may the dolly era last forever.
Hello everyone. How are you? It’s Chantelle and Michelle here and this is our final episode of the season. We’ve arrived. It’s a big day. It’s a big day and this season has flown hasn’t it Chantelle? Yeah. my gosh. It’s been, I’ve had so much fun. I’ve nearly wet myself more times I’d like to admit. Yeah. If we could go back through all the tape, I think there’s probably more tape of us talking and laughing than the actually edited podcast.
And so we would love to know what you think. We actually get emails all the time, but we got a lovely special one this morning and saying how Alison just loves listening on her commute and that it gives her that like studio owner solidarity. I thought that was so beautiful. And so if you are willing, friends, we would love to hear from you. Would you please leave us a review if you’ve enjoyed this and what you want more of. So thank you for taking the time to make it do a review of our program. It means it makes a huge difference to how we go.
We appreciate you greatly. Yes, we do. And today we’re going to dive in, you know, we thought today would be a bit more vulnerable, didn’t we, Chantelle? We’re going to share something we thought we’re going to see out the season. We’re probably going to give you a bit more of a glimpse into something that happened to us recently. And today is about making those hard decisions, not only in business, but how it also transfers to personal life as well. For sure, for sure. We’re going deep today.
So was a few weeks ago, I came to Michelle and we were booked to go do an event in the US, a live event. And we had lots of clients booked and kind of ready to go and airfares all booked and catering all booked and room blocks all paid for. we know we’d done this big thing and there was this just in my tummy, there was just this big feeling of like, I don’t think you should go. And the reason for that was that Michelle has had some
significant, extremely significant medical experiences recently. And I’ll let you kind of maybe go from here, Michelle. But I had to come to her thinking like, we’ve got to make a hard decision here. And so like, I’ll let you fill in, fill everyone in what was the context? so we, as Chantelle said, we had a big US event booked in Atlanta. And it was so exciting, because it was like the first time we were returning to the States in a really long time and going back to Fox Hall in Georgia.
And we have so many previous clients that we were getting to see and new members in our community that we’re connecting with. But in the midst of goodness, Chantelle, how long has it been even since last surgery? It’s been like the last four months. You know, I got given some really surprise news and, you know, studio owners, public service announcement. Don’t forget your pap smears if we can say that. But yeah, I.
Yeah, we can. Good, good. If there’s anything that comes out of this, it’s that and that awareness. And they found in a regular checkup that got escalated that I got diagnosed with a really rare form of cervical cancer. I was, know, God willing, I had the most amazing team and I was actually told this news and I was in surgery within like a week or two, Chantelle. We kind of just like moved everything and that happened and I got really amazing results. So it’s quite
okay for me to talk about now. Looking back, I had really clear margins. The surgery was really successful and I wouldn’t have to have any further treatment if I had a complete hysterectomy and quite quickly. that all kind of factored in, but I think in my normal kind of mind, we just, you would like Michelle, how are you going? How are you feeling? Let’s, know, and I kind of just powered through and it wasn’t until we kind of that the pre -op appointments and the appointment actually
got changed very close to our US event, Chantelle, and it didn’t even come into my mind of, okay, maybe we need to make a decision here. Because I think I was so like, I’m not going to make this hard decision right now. I’m just going to continue. So I continued to plan to have this major operation and also fly to the States at the same time. And it wasn’t until you kind of held a mirror up to me, I knew we had to make this really.
really big and hard decision and cancel the event.
And it’s not easy because we knew that we were going to disappoint a lot of people. And that’s difficult when you genuinely care about, and you’re excited to see these people you have great relationships with. And also financially we were going to lose tens of thousands of dollars. Like we knew that off the bat we were going to lose a lot of money by not going. And I remember just like I had this takeaway coffee and I was walking around a park just like.
grappling with this. I had a conversation with my husband the night before, like, it’s just not right. She’s going to get off the plane. She’s going to walk into surgery. That’s not like there’s so much risk. And if she can’t have the surgery, there’s a massive flow- on effect. was like, that kind of feeling of what are we really valuing here and what is the priority? And we could get on that plane. You know, you and I could have done it, right? And we would have put on a great event, but you would have had such a cost.
That’s the mirror that I wasn’t willing to risk for you. too precious. You’re too precious, hon. Thank you. But you know what? It’s and I know other people listening in, it’s the story you tell yourself when you are in that situation and you know that you’re going to be, you know, you’re going to make, have to make that critical decision, that hard decision. It’s what you think in that moment is actually going to happen to what really can happen when you have to make a hard decision and in turn pivot.
because that’s what we had to do. We had to pivot significantly in a very short period of time as a result of that decision. And I remember like the day that we had the conversation, we kind of like, sat with it, we kind of swung back to it. And then that time came that you were going to send the email out to all of our people who were registered for the event and you couldn’t do it. Like you were just sitting there going up and you like the anxiety of how people are going to respond and what people would think of you.
And how they would feel was so you felt that so that was the weight that I was carrying. Like I almost felt sick. And I remember I was voxering Holly, I was, and I stayed up that email was meant to go out like pretty soon after we made that decision. And at like four or 5pm, I still had the draft sitting there at 8 .15 at night. And I just was looking at it in a blank space. And then I think I called you and I said, can’t do it. I need help. I can’t physically press send on the emails. it was, I think it was one of the hardest.
decisions I’ve ever made within the company since being here. I took it really personally. You know what’s interesting is that, and I had to be really strategic in how I communicated to you. came to you with a full kind of, okay, here’s what I’m thinking, angle, angle, angle, angle, and why this would be the impact. But when you’re a solo business owner, you don’t necessarily have a business partner who loves you and who has your back and can kind of see what you need. We’re just the stoicism of studio owners. You just kind of persevere through, right?
That’s so real. And we kind of get so hooked into what the students are going to think, what the families are going to think, what the team are going to think. And at the end of the day, the response was so beautiful to you. my goodness. Like I was just in tears. So the team, as Chantelle said, Chantelle was so strategic, like Michelle does not even have access to that inbox during this period of the whole communication. She’s not to know responsive. She can know after when we deal with the vendors and suppliers. it was, the team just kept on forwarding me like,
beautiful responses. And every time I heard that, it’s like the anxiety just kind of dropped a little bit more and a little bit more until I got back to a very even kind of playing field, you know, with managing my emotions in that time. And you know made me realize even, you know, when you go to make those hard decisions, it always, and you know, we do this with our clients. It’s like when you make a big pricing decision, right? Or you roll out a new brand and they’re like, what are they going to think? And we’re saying, you might only get
One or two, you might get a handful of negative responses out of 150 students. And I still felt like that before we went to press send and the response was just beautiful. we do know making hard decisions is tricky. and the studio owners, as you said, they sometimes feel like they’re doing it solo Yeah, it’s true. And you know, no doubt you’ve had to make some hard decisions in your business, you know,
I can think of other times when we’ve had to let go of some team members who we personally adored, loved them, but they just were not performing in their role. That is so difficult and you sit with it and you try different things to connect, but it’s really difficult because you have such a bond with them. We’ve had some hard times with that, we? completely. First of all, was like, what else can they do within the company?
on the wall. And I think once you stop making the excuses or trying to find another way, no, no, this is the only way. You know, it’s a hard decision that needs to be made. It doesn’t make it easier, but you know that the only way to fix it is through it. And it’s interesting, like this whole decision not for us to travel to the US this year was so big because, you know,
As business owners, as studio owners, we know that we could have continued, We could have continued, but the cost to ourselves is what we don’t appreciate. And even like when you’ve got a difficult student, right? Who might be kind of, just making your life difficult, giving you sleepless nights, giving you that angst. And you, we just kind of like, part of it. You just kind of tolerate it. You just kind of suck it up, right? Sometimes for months, maybe even years, right? You just kind of like, let it hang on.
But the cost, the cost to you is enormous. And that’s what I was kind of wanting to ask all of you today. Like if you had someone holding a mirror to say, Hey, that actually is not really in your best interest. Like that’s actually, it doesn’t feel great for you. Someone who could hold you with love. Like what would that person be saying to you today? And
When we ask those questions to studio owners, I can think of a myriad of issues. Even the simple thing of delegating, know, we see a lot of, you know, overworked, underpaid studio owners who still do all the things, all the teaching and at the end of the day, are still clearing the inbox. And that is time away from their families. That’s time from, you know, loved ones. It’s like, what hard decision could be made that
that day or even in systemizing their business that will prevent you from having those, you know, at the end of the days and then logging back onto the laptop and checking those emails. It might be that program that has never really taken off, but still takes a lot of your energy. Maybe like it’s low cost numbers and you really want to offer this kind of genre, but it just isn’t getting traction. And it’s that kind of opportunity cost. Like I do believe that.
If it’s the right decision, holistically, there’s a whole range of blessings that kind of come from making the hard decision. Right? So if you choose to let go of that program, even though you believe in it, you believe in it you want it, but it just hasn’t worked. When you get to the point of being able to let go and go, you know what, maybe this program, maybe there’s another thing I could be putting my energy into. And then you let it go and people will be disappointed and you can sit in that. We can actually withhold the discomfort of those
that day or two where you’re kind of receiving the discomfort of people. You are strong enough. You can do these hard things where you can sit in there, right? Because what’s on the other side is that you have got such more bandwidth for creation. And that’s important. That’s important. It’s so true. And yeah, when you were just talking then, you know what my mind went to? Do you remember at the recent, we had an Australian event this year, Elevate and Reunion. And we had, with our elite members, had a member, her name,
has gotten away from me. But she had a hard decision about a class. Remember, she had a class that wasn’t having a lot of people attending. And once we kind of workshopped that hard decision with her, the relief, you could see when you said, open up the bandwidth. And we also saw that with our evolution clients when we had reunion as well. We kind of workshopped that out. And the absolute relief of making the hard decision, like the feeling is like, And then I do really believe Chantelle when we…
know, with studio owners, once they get over making a hard decision, they get better at making more hard decisions as they go. It’s really true. Actually, one of my favorite bits of feedback we get consistently from grads is that in the past, something would happen in the studio and it’s like a stop sign. It’s like it just takes over their life and the thought of how am going to deal with this and what are we going to do? And like it’s all consuming, right? And because we’re kind of working on
resolution really have a lot of issues in Studio Evolution like clean that up, clean that up, get it down, out, cleaned up, right? What was used to be a stop sign is now just a little speed bump. Like, yep, keep on rolling. Yep. I know how to handle that. Just proceed, proceed. And what I love about what you say, Michelle, and I saw this within you, you know, you’re making the right decision. Like there are hard decisions for sure, but you know, you’re making the right decision when you get that like flood of relief. like that’s a reunion. remember one of our gorgeous clients, Bianca.
And she’d been, she’d kind of rebranded the studio and this rebrand just hadn’t worked because it had taken her away from where she’d been very successful in the past because she was trying to cater to what the students wanted. But actually the business model had morphed away from like her true heart. And so in that moment at Reunion, I looked at her and said like, what if we actually just like re rebranded or unbranded, unbranded, guess, going back to the core brand before. And you could just see her whole body just like melted of like.
Relief and for you, can look for the days after we made this decision was like, it was pure relief. I remember you texted me the next day and said, how do you feel? And I said, so relieved. So, so relieved. So that’s what it’s about. That’s when you know, a decision needs to be made.
So what are your hard decisions, friends? What’s the hard decision that would be?
giving you such relief.
And that we know we’re going to disappoint people, but hey, that’s fucking life. And you’re not disappointing everybody. You might be disappointing a few.
And what a joy, what a joy to sit in the feeling of actually this is the, for the bigger picture, this is actually the right thing. And knowing that it’s okay for us to do what’s right for us. And there’s such a deep empowerment when you start feeling your, your worth, you know, Michelle, you were worth not smashing yourself energy wise.
the day before you were going to have surgery, getting off a plane, getting on, getting back to the doctors. Like it was just the right thing to do. And all of you have that too. So I want to know what are the big decisions we’re making my friends. would love for you to kind of respond to this, this podcast and let us know the big decisions you’re making in your business. The one that’s been on the periphery for a while. Maybe it’s been kind of just tapping you on the shoulder for a while now and just going, it just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right. What is it? What’s not serving my business anymore? What’s not.
you know, what’s happening that I’m also carrying a toll for. Because when you drop it, when you start to gently release it, a whole world of freedom opens up.
And you know what, Chantelle, I think when, when you do make a really pivotal, hard decision and for the studio owners out there who are thinking on this, you’ve probably got one in your head. You know, I can really attest and say that once you go through an experience like that and then come out the other side, it really brings you to a new level of leadership. and you know, kind of gets rid of all that conditioning in your head. The show must go on this and that. It really brings you to a new place.
There’s a story we teach in evolution that’s about a man who won the Nobel Prize, name was Ilya Prigogine He won the Nobel Prize in 1977 for studying the second law of thermodynamics. I’ve always loved this story because it actually represents to me what you just said. It’s these moments where your leadership completely compounds. Second law of thermodynamics, it’s kind of like the principle of like imagine in a forest.
A tree falls over and dies. Over time, over many, many years, that tree just starts to disintegrate, starts to decay. Over time, that tree is going to turn into the soil. Then over time, those layers of earth, that compounded matter will move down through the earth. As those cells of the tree move down through the earth, they’re going to become under more pressure.
those cells are going to be compressed and in fact, heated up. It’s like many, many millions of years, right? that tree from millions of years ago is going to go down through the earth and get this kind of heat and intensity applied to it as it goes down the layers. And that heat and that intensity actually kind of like makes the cells. So what he was studying was that the cells actually receive this energy, right? And it kind of like makes the cells quiver.
And there comes a point where this intensity of these cells, where everything feels like nature is just, everything’s falling apart, everything’s going to chaos, right? It’s actually not. So what he won the Nobel Prize was is that he realized that things kind of weren’t completely just kind of going like this for no reason. When the cells of the tree were under pressure, they were actually ultimately reorganizing and evolving into a more complex cell. So that tree.
That little bit of bark, that cell from a little tree of bark went down through the earth, got these levels of intensity until the point where the cell looked like it was quivering so much, it couldn’t take any more and you think it’s just going to burst or bust. It actually reformed into a more complex cell that could handle more heat and more pressure. That’s what leadership is, It’s the whole thing of like that same cell from a tree went down through the earth and turned into coal. Then after time, that piece of coal
was able to take more heat, more pressure, more kind of energy and actually reorganize itself into a diamond. That’s what these types of experiences do for you in your business, that you can stand in this heat, in this energy where there is some intensity and you’re like, I don’t know if I can handle this. This is a lot. This is a lot. Then it somehow just opens up.
And that’s how you turn into a diamond. That’s how you turn into someone who can find ease of like, this is not a stop sign anymore. It’s just, you can just flow with it because you know, you trust in yourself. You have the capability to do it, right? That’s the magic of perturbation. That’s what he won the Nobel prize for. And that’s what these hard decisions give you in your biz. They are brutally difficult sometimes, but what’s on the other side is such knowing of yourself.
It’s actually quite beautiful, Chantelle. It’s out with the old. It’s no longer going to consume you, those hard decisions. Yeah, you can find more ease in it. That’s what you want, right? Completely. And to not be flattened by it either. The more we step towards this, the more we can stand in this heat and know, okay, this is not an ideal situation, so what am going to do about it? I saw a meme, a kind of little video on…
on socials the other day and it was a doorway and a parent of twins had put masking tape, two just stripes of masking tape over the door and the twins crawled towards it in their little nappies, their onesies. Then one of them looks and just crawls through the gap between the masking tape and the other twin just sits there bawling their eyes out like, I can’t get anywhere. I’m stuck. It’s like, that’s what life is.
You can either kind of find the gap and crawl through it, or you can sit there like, this is hard. don’t like this. can’t go anywhere. Exactly. Go through the hole. Go through it. Find the gap.
Yeah, Chantelle, there’s only one way and that’s through it. Exactly. Just what you said. And, know, and I have to thank you for, for holding that mirror up to me. And today studio owners, if you’re listening, maybe we can hold that mirror up to you. Maybe you can share with us or, send us a DM or pop us a note of what’s your hard decision right now. but that was a big one. Chantelle, we, didn’t, we didn’t go out of the season lightly and you know, what we have experienced even in the, in the last couple of months.
Studio owners have been so generous and so open with, you know, telling us their studio journeys and how their studios are and how they’ve evolved to the place they are. So actually it was a joy to share that with you all today and just the hard decision we recently made. It’s probably worth letting everyone know that so Michelle’s about to go in for a very, very major surgery But the prognosis from once having the surgery is really, really good. So she’s going to be, she’s going to be good, my friends.
And she’s in the best care. And really good place. And going into this knowing that coming out of the surgery, it’s going to be really positive news and great prognosis going forward. So thank you everyone for all your wishes and all the studio owners who have been in touch. We love you, hon. You are very, very precious. Very, very precious to us.
So, this is the end of our first season. It’s been such a joy. Thank you to everyone who was sent in your solving your studio, little voicemails. love receiving them. If you still want to send us in one, we are collecting all for season two. So please do jump on. You can find in the show notes, the link to leave us a little voicemail and we can help solve your studio’s problems and we’re going to see you next season. Thank you for leaving us a review too. love seeing that. And Michelle and I are going to be back for more Your Studio Podcast.
Very soon. In season two. Bye friends. We’ll see you soon. guess who’s here? Do you want to see someone? Quickly, before we go? Yeah. Wait there. Two seconds.
It’s Marley! Marley! Let’s sing her a song.
Okay, I’ve got to change this one’s nappy, Delilah.
Did you hear that Delilah? Do you want to tell mum? What did Michelle say? I don’t want to tell her. You don’t want to tell me? I just said I’ve got to change Marley’s nappy. said she’s just got a dirty nappy. She’s got a stinky poopy nappy. And then she’s gone blowing raspberries. Look at how cute she is Delilah. Thank you for the nursery rhyme She’s loved it. She’s making noises.
Goodbye! Bye!
Love what you hear? Make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and leave us a review. Interested in working with us and want to find out more about how we can help you? Head to studioevolution .com forward slash start.
