How Pilates Businesses and Instructors Can Benefit from the Pilates Alliance of Australasia with Sharan Simmons – PAA President

How Pilates Businesses and Instructors Can Benefit from the Pilates Alliance of Australasia with Sharan Simmons – PAA President

Learn how you can best make use of the Pilates Alliance of Australasia for your Pilates business or Pilates instructor career.

In this episode 4, David interviews Sharan Simmons the President of the PAA.

Sharan discusses various topics with David, from how the PAA has been able to help during Covid, to how we as businesses and instructors can best assist the PAA to create clearer career pathways for instructors to work at the highest levels of quality Pilates.

They also talk about where the studios stand in that process, in the reality of a Pilates world that has an abundance of choice and more than a touch of market confusion.

Unfortunately, Sharan and David are not able to find immediate complete solutions for the issues currently being hotly discussed on social media.  But they do uncover some practical hints, useful general principals, and positive directions for our Pilates business industry.

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Show notes

  • [00:00:00] Welcome Sharon Simmons, President of the PAA, Pilates Alliance of Australasia.
  • [00:00:42] The men and women in the arena.
  • [00:01:35] COVID ready for battle. ……. It’s just been a hard year.
  • [00:02:03] Discovering assets that we have built up over the years.
  • [00:02:42] Developing that strong connectedness of the PAA and members.
  • [00:06:00] Websites and social media; how the PAA uses those two assets?
  • [00:07:20] Login, and there’s the member only portal that’s only for PAA members.
  • [00:10:04] How to differentiate qualifications via your membership of the PAA.
  • [00:12:51] We shouldn’t underestimate our role as business owners and instructors.
  • [00:13:15] It is our responsibility to educate the marketplace, starting with our own clients
  • [00:14:25] Broadening membership and how do you reach young people?
  • [00:16:06] Book “Range: How generalists triumph in a specialized world” by David Epstein.
  • [00:17:38] Journey along the way, is slightly different for all of us.
  • [00:18:39] Sharon doing a great job of tactile podcast cueing; explaining with her hands.
  • [00:19:25] A training and a methodology that requires its own full training.
  • [00:19:37] We can be very welcoming rather than snubbing our noses
  • [00:19:55] One story of a Pilates Journey,
  • [00:20:34] Because if you’re a mum, who only has a couple of hours a week to do something, your entry point may not be the full diploma.
  • [00:21:11] Professional Pilates instructors that can be full-time if they want to, certainly are an option in the marketplace.
  • [00:21:27] There needs to be a wide base encouraging people along the path.
  • [00:22:12] Rates of pay are certainly a challenge for studio owners and for the industry.
  • [00:22:54] Studios have the ability to create shifts of Pilates work for instructors.
  • [00:23:11] Contractors taking on a little bit more of the risk within the business, to satisfy the tax office that they are actually contractors rather than sham contractors. Then we can also afford to pay them a lot more …
  • [00:23:58] Fairly easy for studios to build up, 20, 25, 30 hours…. Is it?
  • [00:24:52] Efficiency is not running here because they pay you $70 and running the other side of Sydney because that’s the other $70 class,
  • [00:25:08] Trying to build it as a career, …. or just want to run from one to the other or you
  • [00:27:03] Opportunities galore for the well-qualified instructor who also wants to.
  • [00:28:05] Opportunity and different pathways are great, but that complexity also means sometimes, the people that are coming new into the industry, can get a little bit lost and perhaps go down a path where they didn’t realize there’s a dead end.
  • [00:28:54] You can learn a lot in a course, but the main learning is out there on the job. It’s working with experienced instructors and with new different types of clients and working out how to do that.
  • [00:30:00] Now David is also demonstrating tactile podcast cueing, speaking with his hands
  • [00:30:02] Studios want a “two way street”. Whilst willing to support and educate and help people through a pathway, they also want to have some payback, as in the instructors being loyal and able to help build that business in return.
  • [00:33:00] Standard operating procedures (SOPs) and how you do things.
  • [00:36:27] Puppy dog stories
  • [00:37:12] Thank you very much, Sharon. All the best.

“Because if you're a mum, who only has a couple of hours a week to do something, your entry point may not be the full diploma.” - Sharan Simmons, President of Pilates Alliance of Australasia

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Episode Resources

"Pilates Studios want a “two way street”. Whilst willing to support and educate and help people through a pathway, they also want to have some payback, as in the instructors being loyal and able to help build that business in return." - David Gunther, The Pilates Business Podcast

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