What’s a Funnel & How Can They Help Your Business Grow?
What turns someone into a raving fan… if they’ve never met you before. On a recent episode of Female emPOWERED, that’s exactly what Michelle Fernandez and I chatted about! Michelle is actually my personal Facebook ads and funnel expert — and she helps both my personal coaching brand and my Pilates studio locations get more people interested in them.
How does she do that? Through funnels. I highly recommend listening to the full episode here, but I recap what we talk about in the blog below!
So… what is a funnel?
It’s in two parts:
1. Marketing, i.e. building awareness, driving traffic, etc.
2. Sales, i.e. the path a customer takes to purchase — from interested to purchase
Every business has a sales funnel, because you have to sell to someone to have a business. Even if you’re new, you’ve got a sales funnel. Think about the referral you just got, how you hopped on a call or met them in-person, and...
Let’s Make Your Business Burnout-Proof
If you’ve been in business for more than a few months, you know the feelings that can come up. Overwhelm, frustration, exhaustion, and sometimes even anger. These are actually signs of burnout, but most of us (especially women) just associate this with our busy lives and trying to grow a business.
While there is actual medical research on how to reverse burnout, I want to talk about how to prevent it in our businesses. Especially as female fitness and wellness professionals who’ve weathered a huge hit to our industries and livelihood (thanks, pandemic!), we need to get real about it. Our businesses are meant to support our lives, not the other way around. So let’s dig into what a business can look like without burnout.
Identifying business models that lead to burnout
The first step in fixing a problem is admitting you have it, right? The same goes for figuring out how to avoid burnout in your business. If you’re constantly overfilling your...
The Business Basics You Need to Confidently Run Your Studio or Practice
As a physical therapist, I wanted to make people feel better. When I got certified in Pilates, I knew that the two of those services went well together… and I began dreaming about what it would mean to start my own Pilates and physical therapy studio.
That was in 2007, and since then, I have built a multi-million dollar Pilates studio business with multiple locations. But it wasn’t like I went from “I want to start my own studio!” to “a million dollars in revenue” overnight. It also wasn’t an easy road, trying to figure out everything that went into growing a successful business.
Starting a business to help people didn’t prepare me for all the terms and systems I needed to understand. There was the whole pricing problem, figuring out my income and expenses, understanding lease agreements, hiring instructors… it felt like a lot. And it was a lot! But I didn’t let that stop me, and I don’t want it to...
How to Cut Down the Cost of Marketing
Imagine this… you’ve just finished conceptualizing your ideal brand and your healthcare, wellness, or fitness services are all perfectly lined up. Maybe you’ve already booked great clients and you’ve got the best team behind your back. Most businesses start out with a great passion and a ton of excitement — and it feels like nothing can go wrong!
Until it does.
In a recent episode of the Female emPOWERED podcast, I talked a little bit about my biggest business mistake when I first started out: Ignoring my marketing plan. I don’t want you to make the same mistake! That’s why I’m sharing the best marketing advice I know of for a health, wellness, or fitness brand — and 6 ways to start marketing your business without spending a dime.
The top 8 marketing strategies to help you book more clients
After I realized I needed a marketing plan — STAT — I started playing around with a few...
Introducing the Female emPOWERED Podcast!
2021 News: Introducing the Female emPOWERED Podcast!
Here at Christa Gurka Headquarters, I started off the New Year with a bang… By launching the Female emPOWERED podcast!
What you’ll get from the Female emPOWERED podcast
In case you’re new to me and what I do, I am an Orthopedic Physical Therapist specializing in Pilates-based rehabilitation. I own, operate, and teach at Pilates in the Grove, which serves the Coconut Grove and South Miami communities with two premier South Florida locations. Our studios set the benchmark in Pilates instruction and physical therapy interventions in our local community.
This podcast is my way of sharing my experiences growing a thriving, multi-million dollar business! I created it for...
- Females in the healthcare, wellness and fitness industries
- Business owners or those who are thinking of becoming one
- Independent contractors and solopreneurs
But what am I talking about? Well, you can expect...
2020: A Year in Review
As a business owner, you might usually set goals for the New Year, get all excited about some downtime or time to do admin stuff… and, if you’re like me, do a year-end review. Of course, that was pre-2020. Now, the idea of doing a year-end review might make you want to hide.
Even though 2020 has been hard on my fellow health and wellness businesses, I do think a year-end review is valuable. And here’s why: It helps you make a plan for 2021 — and makes it easy for you to see what did go well, so you feel a bit more confident going into the New Year.
Ready to do a year-in-review? Let’s go.
How to complete your year in review
Ok so here’s how I do my year-in-review with my team and myself. We start by asking:
What did we want to do in the last year? What goals did we set?
Usually, this is revenue goals, but it’s also a number of clients or studio sessions booked, growth into a new studio location, adding new...
5 Steps to Make End of Year Prep Less Stressful
Are you preparing for 2021 in your business? We are coming up on the holidays and I want to make sure that you have maximum time to relax and recharge. Especially given everything that’s gone on this year, I think we deserve it big time.
That’s why I want to talk to you about the 5 things I do in my business to wrap up for the year, and plan for the start of the new one.
1. End-of-year performance reviews with my team
With two studios, I have a number of instructors and physical therapists who work with me at Pilates in the Grove. That means I actually prep the reviews at the end of November/early December so that I can get those out before the end of the year.
If you have anyone else on your team, now is the perfect time to plan for an end-of-year review or schedule a meeting to touch base. You can either use a formal “interview” process, or you can provide an email or phone call review where you present their review and any...
Why I Have a Problem With Black Friday Sales (or Any Sale on Your Services)
As we approach the holiday shopping season, I know that there is a lot of noise out there for business owners.
“You need to make a Black Friday sale!”
“A big sale is a great way to flood your business with cash before end-of-year!”
“Your customers expect a Black Friday sale!”
While some businesses may benefit from a Black Friday sale, I’m going to disagree with these sentiments for service-based movement, fitness, and wellness businesses. Here’s why…
Reason #1: You’ll eat into your profit
Let’s start this with an example:
Let’s say a yoga instructor offered 10 yoga classes (usually $500) for the price of 7 classes ($350). Sure, they might get more people in the door with that deal, but what’s happening to their bottom line?
That’s $150 less per person to pay studio fees, pay instructors if there are any, pay taxes, etc....
How Spending $65,000+ Completely Changed My Business
Do you want to know what I learned the hard way when I first started (and then tried to grow) my business? Not all Google advice is good, and not all free strategies apply to your business.
If you're trying to start your own gym, serve physical therapy patients, grow a studio and help people feel better in their bodies... you have a unique kind of business. Generic business advice doesn't always get you where you want to go. That’s why I want to share with you what happened when I finally admitted I needed to trust the experts and invest in my business.
Prefer to watch instead of read? You can see my whole Facebook Live about this here!
That Time I Spent $5,000 and Almost Fainted
I started my first Pilates studio in 2007, A couple years later, when I opened my second location, we were barely scraping by. My team didn’t have enough clients to really make them feel stable and things were just… tight. Soon after opening that second location, I...
The #1 Way to Convert More Clients Without Selling
Do you struggle to sell your packages or book new clients?
When I talk to female health and wellness pros who struggle with this, my first question is: “Are you having conversations with people?”
So often, we get stuck thinking we have to have a sales conversation or we have to be showing our value to our potential clients or patients.
But I’ll let you in on a secret: Sometimes, you just need to have a real, human conversation.
How conversations lead to conversions
When I talk about converting clients, you might think that you need a fancy marketing plan or that you need to be having free discovery sessions or fit calls. That’s not always true.
Sometimes, customers come to you simply because they like you as a person, and they feel relaxed and comfortable around you. Yes, potential clients or patients want you to be experienced, but they also want to feel like they have a connection to you. Like you're a person they can...