Welcome to she sales radio. So my guest today is an amazing example of how to take one customer and turn them into just a boatload of raving fans who are going to want to work with you, keep referring you and help you really scale and grow your business fast. So, Leslie Logan is my guest today. She broke six figures in teaching Pilates classes and then went on to create profitable pilates.com, where she trains other Pilates instructors, how to grow their business, as well as this is a great domain, by the way, online Pilates classes.com, where she offers exactly what it sounds like online, Pilates classes, but part of what is so cool about Leslie is how quickly she achieved success in her business. And it really started off with just one customer. You know, she talks on the show today about how she got instantly booked when she started her own business and like what she did to do that.

And so you can take those same principles and apply to your own business. She also teaches how to make your customers obsessed with you. So they refer you to everyone. They know this piece that she taught, I thought was really fascinating. I’ve never heard it before, but she taught us how to set rates for your services based on how much you want to work. It’s a radically different approach, but if you were in a service-based business, to me, this makes so much sense, especially if you’re trying to streamline the amount of time you work, and maybe you only want to work a couple days a week. Maybe you want to take a good chunk of time off for family vacation, whatever it is during the year. She’s going to teach you her formula for that. And she also gives just exceptional advice for how to break through those first six figures.

If that’s the target you’re shooting for right now, Leslie is so smart. She’s been featured in Vogue, BBC. I mean, the woman is on fire. She’s doing so much with their brand and I just love learning from her. And even for me, you know, clearly I’m not in the health and fitness space, but I got ideas for my own business that I’m going to implement. And I think you’ll really enjoy learning from her as well. Now, quick reminder, if you haven’t yet checked out the weekly sales accelerator, I definitely want you to come join us. It’s an on demand sales coaching platform that I’ve created specifically for you as a woman coming from just years of my own experience of the sales coaching training, and just in the corporate sales space. I saw such a need for sales training that really is designed for women in mind, honoring all of who you are, your gifts, your talents where you can’t, you don’t have to feel like you’ve got to be somebody else to be successful.

I did for so many years I’ve I’ve learned how to be successful, really stepping into all of who I am, and I want to help you do the same. So go check it out. Elise, archer.com/training. You can see our upcoming trainings there. You can get signed up. I really, really hope to see you joining us. And I can’t wait to meet you. So with that get ready because this is such a fun inspiring and just a really good opportunity to think differently. As we learn from Leslie Logan in this interview, let’s hear from Leslie. Now, Leslie, welcome to she sells radio. We are going to have so much fun in this conversation today. I could already tell from our pre-chat. So thank you so much for being here to me. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You guys is going to be a lot of fun and you have been such that you’ve been so gracious.

I already had to stop us to say, Hey, my baby needs a bottle right now, let me run out and get it. And you were like, yep. Do your thing. So I appreciate you. You know, I think this year we were also talking about how, just how we’re all being called to be flexible. And I appreciate you being flexible with me and can already tell I’m just what a gracious, amazing human you are. So with that you have, like I was saying in the in the intro, like you have created an amazing business model and you’ve broken through six figures selling these Pilates classes, which you’re doing all online now. Right. so tell us about, tell us a little bit about like what got you into your business and to Pilates and specifically tell us a bit about your business journey, like breaking through that initial six figures.

Yeah. So thank you for having me. I, everything goes back to the day that I actually discovered Pilates. So before I discovered Pilates, I was working for other people and I actually really enjoyed my job. I managed a high-end women’s boutique with accessories and selling diamond pretzel necklaces, and a lot of things you didn’t need, but I had a really good time. And, and I actually learned a lot about sales through end of relationships in that job. However, I was never going to break six figures on that job because I worked for somebody else and I was really searching for like, what was my next thing, you know? And so when a friend invited me to apply this class, I actually joked and made fun of it. I said, polite it’s is an infomercial workout. It can’t do all the things that claims it can do, but I wanted a friend I’d graduated college and really didn’t have a lot of friends where I was.

So I went with her to this class and instantly I knew I was hooked. I changed my entire schedule to do it. And I did dates every day with the at the studio. And then I, I decided I needed to move. And so I moved from this beachy area and Southern California to Los Angeles, which is like the wild West. And and I couldn’t find a class that was feeling the same as the teachers that I had met, where I lived. And somebody said, you should be a polite teacher. And I was like, Oh, well, I can do that. So what happened was everyone, this is during the 2008 recession. When I decided, let me be a service-based business. I love it. I love it like a great time when everyone is like, ditching their water deliveries and cutting back on their cable, I’m like, I’m going to start fishing clearly a necessity, right?

Total necessity. Here’s what happened. I instantaneously was booked and I was booked in a way that was actually not super healthy for my life because I was teaching people a couple hours before I went into my store to run it. I was teaching people a couple hours after I was teaching on my days off. And so I was working seven days a week, not making six figures. But it was split with what I learned in that time is that I was so in love and so passionate about what I was doing. And I knew what I was teaching was going to help people. I knew it was the missing link to what they needed. And so I ended up quitting my safe, secure salary job with health benefits and a 401k to be in a service-based business in 2009 at this point, which was not exactly a better year than 2008, but it was for me.

And it was it was that time that really set me off on this path to where I am today. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m really curious. I, and this is so great. I want you to keep telling us your story, but you said you were instantly booked when you kind of put yourself out there. And I think, you know, as a listener, I’m thinking, okay, what did you do? How were you instantly booked, especially in 2008. So that’s an amazing question. And I had someone say to me the very beginning, like a little angel, say, get your first client and pour into them and make them obsessed with you. And they will get you every client. And so I was, I was very lucky that the woman that said I should teach, she had a client that she could not teach. And she gave this person to me.

And it was a couple actually, and they’re husband and wife duo. And they’d already been doing Pilates was very nervous because I hadn’t been teaching very long. And now like, I mean, they’ve been doing probably as longer than I’ve been doing Pilates as long as I’ve been teaching. But I was like, I’ve been given this gift. I just needed one client. I’m going to pour into them. I never let them miss a single session when they’re like, Oh, we’re going on vacation. I’m like, you have to do two this week. We can’t miss, because I knew that they had to be consistent so that when they walked out the door and people were talking about, Oh, why do you stand so tall? Compared to me? I mean, there were 70 years old. So all their friends are getting shorter and they’re getting taller. And within the first month of teaching them, they’d already referred me clients.

And then those people had referred me clients. And so that’s how it was, it was just really pouring into them. Now while I was pouring into them, I wasn’t sitting back waiting for the referrals to come in. I was really intentional about every extra minute I have. Cause remember I had a full-time job and then I was teaching. So when I would go to the Starbucks, I would, this is when you could chat with people online. And I know we’ll be there again soon, but I would talk with people and I would just open up conversation and I would go, Oh, are you, are you headed to work today? Because the area I was in was very corporate building area. And I go, yeah. And I go, me too. And because I was wearing gym clothes like that, that starts a conversation. Like why do you get to go to work?

Looking like that? And I would tailor what I said to the person I was with. So if it was a guy who had poor posture, I would talk about, yeah, Pilates, I work with flies and it helps people with lower back pain from sitting at a desk, do a lot. I would make assumptions if they’re rounded forward. They’re probably spent a lot of time at a desk. If it was a woman who had like, what looked like a diaper bag, I would say, yeah, applies is one of the best ways to get you back to feeling strong after you’ve had a baby it’s really safe for you. Also it’s just really nice to have a moment that’s all about you. And so I wasn’t lying to anybody. This is just obvious things that, but I knew Polis could help that person with, with that pain point that they had.

And so I was walking around, making time to talk to people while I was waiting for clients. And that did eventually pay off as in people started taking my business card and, and telling their friends about me. And so between my own clients referrals, and then just me taking the time to actually just talk to people just one-on-one that is what really helped me get booked very fast. That’s such good advice. And I’ve never heard it said that way before, too. Where where you, where you heard it said like, get your first client pour into them, make them obsessed with you. I, man, I love that. Like that feels, it feels fun. Right? And that’s one of the things that I’m hoping to, to, to change with this show is just helping us actually make sales fun. That feels really fun.

It’s like, how can I delight this person? How can I make their day? Like you said, how can I make sure they have such great results in their friends are talking about them and asking them like, what, how did this happen? How are you standing up taller? Right. whatever your version of that is. So that’s such good advice. So, okay. So what I’m hearing you say is you pretty quickly got yourself to the point where you were booked, booked, booked, and then something had to give, so kind of take us from there until where you are now. Yeah. So what happened was I left my retail job. I ended up managing a Pilates studio because not many Pilates teachers actually have business backgrounds, which gave me a lot of insight on how, how much does it cost to run invalidates? So I got a lot in there.

And but none of that was actually what got me to six figures. What actually got me to six figures was noticing that most people don’t actually book up an as applies teacher very quickly, most, even most many service-based businesses, especially the women. They they’re, they weren’t actually booking up as quickly as I wasn’t. It wasn’t because they’re not great teachers. The fact that many of them had been teaching many years longer. What I noticed was they were trying to sell the product or the service. They were not trying to sell the time with them and the value that they brought. And so what I started to see was if you can make people feel seen, and if you can make sure that they feel heard and you can show them how, what you offer will take them from where they are to where they want to go.

That’s how you actually are going to to come take a client from being a first time client to an actual client and becomes twice or three times a week and comes for year after year. And so if you, if you can think about what you actually offer is very unique. You’re the only person who can do what you do, the way that you do it. And if you can’t take whatever their goal is and show them, okay, so I hear this as your goal. I also see that your body needs this. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to do both at the same time. This is how much, how long it will take for us to do this. And so I also think people love honesty. And when someone would come in and say, I want to be wedding ready in three months, I could say, okay, well, how much time do you have to dedicate to work?

Not like I can do once a week. I can go, okay, here’s what I can do with a once a week program. Here’s what I could do. If I see three times a week, here’s what I can do. If you have homework instantaneously there’s trust built because I didn’t go up, get, can do that. And so, because of that, people didn’t just stick with me until they got to their wedding date and go by. They stuck with me for years. And then they sent all of their friends to me and to my studio to get there hit their goals and get their needs met. Wow. I love just the kind of the break down there and the examples you shared too. And, and I think it’s so true. Like just being really honest with here’s what I can actually do. Here’s what I can’t, you know, I just, I got off of training right before our interview with my weekly sales accelerator group.

And we were talking about like, I think so often in our sales training, we’re taught like you, everyone is a customer and always tell them, you can give them what they want. And it’s frankly, a lot of times it’s a lie, you know, but that’s a lot of what’s taught. And what I love about what you’re saying is it’s more of like the lean back and the like, okay, here’s what you can actually expect. And we don’t have to like dazzle people with some, some pie in the sky result that that’s not actually it’s going to happen for them. It’s like, we just actually need to be honest and build that trust. It’s I mean, the thing is, is that I’ll, I never want to discount anyone’s reason for trying Pilates, even if like they tell they heard somewhere that they could lose a hundred pounds of Pilates and, okay, hi, I’m glad you’re here.

I can’t do that. I’m not a nutritionist. That’s actually where weight loss happened, but here’s what I can do with wise with you. Here’s all the resources that I have towards this goal. And if this person is like, totally like, I don’t care what she has to say, I’m going to go do this. They’re going to find someone who will tell them that. And I hope that that person hasn’t heard them, but most likely they’re going to go home and go, Whoa, that was really cool. Someone was really honest with me. They saw me, they heard my goal. They shared what they could do and they didn’t try to sell me just anything. And I think people, you know, really love that. And then they’re they’re fans for life because you were honest with them. I had a client back in LA. I only worked with her for five sessions.

Our schedules really didn’t match up, but she loved how honest I was with her about her goals and about what her body needed. And then I helped her find a teacher that actually could work with her schedule. She referred me, she was a therapist. She referred me probably seven clients over two years that stuck with me. Didn’t just like, give, didn’t just take my number, but actually came and then were with me for years. And it was because of those five sessions where I was just honest with her. So I I’ve really encouraged people to do that. And I think just to go back into that, pouring into the people that you have, you know, we’re always thinking I need more clients, but you have those super fans already with you. If people who’ve already said yes to you, even if it’s one person, if you focus on them, they do all the work for you.

I think that today still even with social media and ads, that I still buy things online from a friend who said, I bought this thing, you should get it. Like referrals are still the number one way to get your clients. Absolutely, absolutely. It’s so true. And I want to hear from you because one of the things that you, you mentioned that like really peaked my interest before we got started was how to set rates for services based on how much you want to work. And I thought, Ooh, that’s a sexy way of setting a price. So tell us that, sorry, it’s a real, I love this. It’s a really fun formula. And it really it’s, it’s different way of setting a price. I think a lot of people set prices, including myself. I looked around at what other plies teachers were pricing their services ads.

And I was like, okay, well, they’ve been teaching 20 years and this person has been to Dean five years. So, okay. So that’s what I’ll teach. That’s my price. Right? And I’m like, it makes sense. Cause you’re like, okay, well that’s what everyone’s doing, but there’s no way to make enough money when you do things that way, because now you are setting a price based on other people. You don’t even know that the last time they raised their prices or how much their bills are. And then the only way to make more money is to teach more or work more. And so one of the ways that I love to do this is I tell people, okay, so think about like how much you want to gross in a year. So it depends where you live in the world, you know what your taxes are.

You got to consider that with how much you want to gross. Then take that number divided by how many weeks in a year you’re going to work. Your business might have seasons. So when I lived in LA, I pretty much can consider two weeks of December minimum gone two weeks in January minimum gone. So when tell schools we’re back in, that’s out, Thanksgiving is not just a week. It’s more like nine days, right? So then there’s that. And then there’s spring breaks and a summer vacation. So I knew that I probably fully booked could work maybe nine months fully booked, right. There might be a couple of weeks in there where I’m half, but I was like, I’ll just take nine months. And if I’m still working to another month of that, if it’s half filled, it’s going to be okay, so take how many weeks a year, your business you want to work?

Then you go, how many days a week do I want to work? Do you want to work five days, four days, three days, like how many? Right then you have to go, okay, how many hours a day am I going to work and be realistic as a teacher, I really can’t do an eight hour day of teaching because it’s, it’s very draining, not in a way that I don’t love my clients, but like I’m so focused on them. And then I’ve taken all of their energy on this. I need me time. And then that means I ha don’t have time to do my emails or checking with other clients. So be really realistic about how many hours a day you want to work. So then what you get is your hourly rate. And so that means that for every hour I’m teaching, this is the lowest I can charge.

So let’s say you get a number and it’s $90 and you’re like, but I want to have an intro offer. Well then you’re going to have to either price everything a little higher. So your intro offer can be that, or know that for every intro offer, you have to have something else. That’s counterbalancing that. So if your intro for $60, something else you have to have has to be $120 to average out that night dollars. But what’s so cool about this is instead of thinking, I need more clients, you can go, okay, I actually need two more clients a week. Right. You can get really specific. It also helps you hire staff and hire a team because you can go, okay, well, as long as the person I’m hiring is less than $90 or less than whatever your hour is, it’s saving you money. Yes.

I love that. That’s so simple. It makes so much sense. I’ve never heard it broken down that way before. That’s really good. Yeah. I actually, I got, I learned years ago from Chris harder, so I’ve got to give him the props to that. But what was so freeing about that was I was able to leave a salary job again, based on using that formula and going, okay. So to leave this job and to make up this amount of money. So for those of you who have a side hustle, and you’re trying to make your side hustle, your full-time hustle, instead of just, I just need more, clients need to make more money. You can get specific, how much money are you giving up? Okay. How much of, so what does that equal in terms of your product or your services? Okay. So I only had to get six clients privately a week for nine months of the year to leave a job.

Well, that’s not that much. And that job was 40 hours of my life and I only need six hours of work to make that up, starts to get really interesting. And you can really make decisions based on that. Yeah. I love that. I love that. You know, one of the questions that comes to mind, Leslie, as you talk, I think, you know, someone can hear about your story and think, man, it seems like a lot of this feels very natural to you and it sounds like it’s like you’ve been very successful in what you’ve done. And I’m also curious, I’m sure. Along the way, there was some sort of an obstacle or challenge for you when it came to sales and growing your business. Like, what would you say has been the biggest obstacle you faced in terms of sales? Have you overcome it? Yeah.

I I’m grateful for that, that opportunity because I do think it’s easy to hear me or anyone else on your show who’s hit six figures. Well, it must be really easy for her. And I think it’s important, you know, along my journey of making six figures, there was also a time where I was actually without address. So I was literally making six figures and had no place to live and my studio was closing and I, my car got totaled. And so I think it’s you can be making the money you want to make. And then that stuff like that in air quotes will still happen. And it was, I do think that like my, my childhood and the way I grew up being ready for a shoe to drop and like going, okay, so this obstacle happened, what can I do is kind of my go-to.

So what I will say is if you can just write that question down, what can I do and save that in the back pocket for when things don’t work out for you, like the way you want it. Okay. What can I do? That is something that I use all the time, but yes as we when I, so as applies instructor, I was teaching in-person and I got to six figures teaching in-person. That is a lot of hours to actually teach. It was still about 25 hours a week of teaching to make that happen. And I was being called to help more people make their Pilates and fitness businesses grow. And so then I started what’s called profitable Pilates. And I had this amazing idea of like, I knew what teachers needed. I’ve been seeing all of them make all the mistakes and how they’re trying to sell Pilates and not actually try to get people to know them like we discussed earlier. So I created this whole membership site, this coaching site. I had a book that I wrote on how to be a heavy prophesize instructor and I put it out there and I was like, yes, this is it. This is how I’m going to cut back on my teaching because everyone’s going to sign up for this. Like, no one’s doing. And just so you know, if you build it, they don’t come.

I know

So many people for like discipline. So it didn’t work for several months. I really tried really hard to get people to buy this membership. And it wasn’t even that much was $50 a month. It was like, I just was like, I want to make this affordable. I want to make it accessible and nothing. So how we got around that was, I was like, okay, so what is one part of this that I can actually put out for free? So then we had to change the whole website and we, I started doing weekly blogs, just giving out valued information. And then on the blog posts that I saw were doing really well, I did a webinar and then those webinars started selling really well. So they weren’t free webinars. I actually charged for them. They started selling really well. And then I started to notice that the same people were buying the webinars every month.

And I was like, okay. So after about a year, I just said, so I, I love how busy asking her about this. This is what I’m thinking of doing for the same cost of a webinar. I have this membership for you. So you’re going to get a webinar every month, but you’re also going to have access to me to ask me questions whenever you want. And so we basically got to go back to my original idea, but we had to go, had to go back and meet people where they are. And I think that was a mistake that I made is I didn’t realize that the, that people weren’t actually looking for advice on their business from me. Right. They didn’t know it. They didn’t know that I was this expert. They didn’t know that I was making six figures. I hadn’t done that work to show that off.

So that’s how we solve that problem. And I mean, I always go back to things like that. I’m like, Oh, okay. Have we done the home? Like the groundwork? Have we like made sure that we have shown people that we see their problems just like we did with the Pilates. Right. Have we made sure that we’ve brought people along on the journey? And so that’s, that’s my advice to people. If something you’re doing, isn’t selling just like, are you actually meeting people where they are? Are you selling the results, which is what I was selling or are you like seeing their problems and then taking them to where they want to go. Yeah. And like asking, right. Like stopping and asking like, Hey, would this be useful if I do it this way? Would this be helpful in what I think is cool about that?

As you found out your idea, wasn’t a bad idea. It was actually a great idea. Clearly it’s worked well, but it was just like you said, it was almost like the cart before the horse. Oh yeah. And yeah. And you spoke to the power there of building your reputation and your brand and your space, which, you know, I always, I kind of joke, like I think it’s weird that I do sales training and mentoring. Cause I don’t think I’m a great, closer I, but what I am good at is marketing and really good at marketing myself and positioning. And I think that’s, we have to kind of know our strengths and know like, if you’re, if you’re kind of wired more like me, then it’s, you know, putting valuable content out, like you said, you did over time, builds trust, and you honestly don’t even have to be that great of a closer people just need to trust you.

Well, I think that, that, I love that you said that I hope everyone heard that. Like, it’s actually not about the closing. Cause like I think a lot of people can be taught how to close. I feel like there’s scripts for that. There’s all these trainings for that. And you’re just like, but I actually think that it’s more fun when the person is making the decision on their own and they’re committing to it. And it’s based on the stories you told and the groundwork you laid in, the relationship that you built. I really do think that cause people don’t buy a business, they buy a purse. Like they buy stories. Right. That’s what it really is. And so I love that. That’s what your strength is and that’s why it’s actually helping you be successful. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Tell us, I mean, this has been so good. Like I so appreciate this cause I’ve gotten a lot of ideas too for my own business. I wanna, I want you to tell everybody where they can connect with you, but before you do Leslie, if you could give a woman who’s trying to break through her first, six-figures like one piece of advice. What would that be? Oh gosh. Only one.

You can do a bonus if you want.

I think you have to believe fully in yourself that I think that a lot of people are looking for like the next hot tip. And I do hope that some of the tips I said today really do help you break through that. But what I really think would have helped me sooner is if I had had the confidence that I could hit six figures, I didn’t have that. I just, I was just like hustling and hustling. And the moment I realized that when I fully believe in what I do, it always comes back to me and cause people can feel that passion and they feel that comfort and they, they can trust you because you’re trusting you. And so I think that that’s actually the biggest tip. And then all of these strategies are going to be useful. But if you don’t, if you have a little bit of doubt in yourself that you can actually break six figures, I really do think that there’s always going to be that little doubt and there, and you’re not going to fully commit to any strategy or any tip that anyone can give you. Yeah. That’s so good. Thank you so much. Tell us, tell us your amazing domain that people can go to.

I was like, how did you get that sister? That’s good.

Yeah. So online potties classes.com is where I teach online plus classes. But I want you to go to online politics, classes.com/free. And here’s why it is a free 30 minute math class. You can take as many times as you want. I truly believe that if you are to yourself, then you can connect more to others. And so in my class class, are you going to get any tips on how to break six figures? No, you’re not, but you are going to be inspired to pour into yourself first because when you give 100% to yourself, then you can give to others. And when you are moving on your mat with me and you’re hearing yourself say, wow, look, I did that. Just imagine like how you’re gonna approach your work and your projects. But when are you hear me offer up something and you’re like, I can’t do that.

I’ll never really do that. Then you have awareness like, Whoa, I’m really coming from a mindset of a fixed mindset today of scarcity of lack. What can I do to get out of this? So it really helps you be really aware of where you are in your body and in your mind before you hit your Workday, before you start working with your clients and it only takes 30 minutes a day. And so that’s, that’s my hope for you all to try out and let me pour into you so that you can pour into others. That’s so good. It’s like a business class while on a mat. I never even thought about it like that. That’s so good. Yeah. It’s a mirror for everything else. That’s awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much, Leslie. So, Oh my gosh. This has been amazing for me. I’ve learned so much from you and I know everybody listening has as well. So thank you for your generosity, your wisdom. I’m thinking differently about referrals and marketing. And so I just, I so appreciate you. Thank you for your heart, for who you are and really, really appreciate you being here today. Thank you. This I’m going to fly high now that I’ve given this out to the world. I love it. I love having me. Absolutely.