3 Pilates Studios in 1 Year w/ Cassie Piasecki - The Full Routine

Alan Li (00:01)
Welcome to opening soon, a podcast where we interview retail founders about how they started and run their brick and mortar businesses. I'm your host, Alan Li, I run Signs and Mirrors where we make beautiful signs and furniture for retail stores. I also help run FotoLab a self-portrait studio with locations in New York city and Houston.

Alan Li (00:22)
Today's guest, Cassie Pieseky, is the founder of The Full Routine, a dynamic workout where Pilates meets full body transformation. Cassie has three locations spread throughout Southern California and is expanding rapidly. We dive into how much a location costs to open and the number of bookings across her three units. We also hear from Cassie on how she thinks about competition and how to differentiate yourself as a fitness studio.

Alan Li (00:48)
Cassie, I'm super excited to have you on the Opening Soon podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Cassie (00:52)
Thank you for having me on, I'm super excited.

Alan Li (00:55)
So before we jump into the full routine I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background. I know that you have a very illustrious career starting a business at 18 and working as a CEO at Grit Cycle and Fight Camp, but maybe give me some of the highlights and what you've learned through those experiences that led you to starting your own business with the full routine.

Cassie (01:15)
For sure. I definitely qualify as one of those serial entrepreneurs. And like one of my favorite guys, Gary Vaynerchuk says, you know you're an entrepreneur when you literally crawl out of your skin working for someone else. And even though I have worked for other people, I did crawl out of my skin a lot during those careers. I would actually say my first business was when I was like 10. I was like making things and selling them.

Alan Li (01:33)
Hahaha.

Cassie (01:40)
Then opened up a clothing store when I was 18 Had ⁓ a couple clothing stores. I've had a couple online businesses. I've had a brick-and-mortar nail salon All different little things I had my hands in and at the same time Fitness was always woven through my life

Alan Li (01:43)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (02:00)
And in 2013, the indoor cycling craze was just coming to Orange County. And like I said, I'd had all these different small businesses.

that kind of led me to retiring from everything because I was like no one wants a 50 year old aerobics instructor, my daughter.

Alan Li (02:16)
Hmm.

Cassie (02:20)
was just getting ready to go to boarding school, so I wasn't sure what direction my life was gonna take. So I had closed whatever businesses I had at that time, and the indoor cycling craze came into Orange County, and it pulled me right out of retirement. And I was like, I have to get back into the fitness industry. And SoulCycle was really big, and a company started here in Costa Mesa, California called GritCycle, and I started off as an instructor. And right around the same time,

Social media was definitely a thing. We had Facebook and Yelp and different things that were tied to business. And I had my hand in a lot of social media stuff. I'd obviously opened up businesses and sold businesses And the people that owned GRIT knew that I had these other...

I don't know if you call them talents or experiences, And when Grit opened, I said, hey, know, if you want me to, can do social media also. And I think that was like the doorway into them getting to see me on the business side of it versus, you know, just being an instructor.

Alan Li (03:08)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (03:24)
and I took all of these experiences that I had from when I had my first clothing store and we literally took a note card and we wrote down someone's name and address and telephone number and birth date on an index card and I put them in this thing called a Rolodex and every month I would say who was born in October and I would call them or send them this thing called a postcard with a stamp on it. I took all of those experiences from

I kid, but it's kind of true. From direct mail to advertising on Yelp and getting onto Twitter early on, I took all those experiences and started to put them into building the business and the marketing behind GritCycle and taught there for a couple years.

Alan Li (03:55)
Yeah.

Cassie (04:10)
In 2017, they decided they wanted to create the CEO role. And I felt it was a unique situation because I talked about that entrepreneur just like working for someone else makes you want to crawl out of your skin. But I was really fortunate to work with a team of owners that owned Grit who trusted me and let me...

Alan Li (04:15)
Hmm.

Cassie (04:33)
make decisions, run grit as if it were my own. So it felt very entrepreneurial. Whether I had key experiences or talents that the owners lacked or my experiences and talents.

worked really well that we could collaborate together.

It was so cool and we were able to take Grit Cycle where at the time when I took that larger role, we had two studios that we built from the ground up and we were building studios at a cost of around a million dollars a studio and that's because...

indoor cycling is so music driven, you had these giant sound systems, you had to build a soundproof room within your retail space that you were renting so that you didn't disrupt the neighbors. And it was super expensive to build these soundproof rooms. And then you have your plumbing and everything for showers. And so at the end of the day, with equipment and everything, you're looking at about a million dollars. And one of the owners and I,

Alan Li (05:18)
I see.

Cassie (05:32)
We wanted to open up more studios, but we knew we couldn't do it at the pace we wanted to at that price tag. And so we kind of reinvented the wheel. And we started searching for...

Alan Li (05:38)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (05:43)
indoor cycling studios that were already built out that maybe weren't as successful and they kind of wanted to get out of the business. And through that business model, we were able to open up another four studios over the course of about a year. So we went from two studios to seven in...

Alan Li (06:02)
And was that acquiring

the other studios or was it taking over their lease because they were struggling or like a combination of both? I see.

Cassie (06:08)
It's a combination. we would go

in, we would find studios that were for sale. typically rock bottom pricing. And when I say rock bottom, they might've been listed for 150, but I was able to negotiate, I negotiated one down to $30,000.

Alan Li (06:13)
that's so smart.

a million dollars to open, but you bought it for 30,000 and they have the soundproofed rooms and equipment.

Cassie (06:28)
They had

the soundproof room. So I don't know how they did their construction on that particular studio, but it had plumbing, it had a shower, and it had a soundproof room. Whether they spent a million dollars on that one, I don't know,

Alan Li (06:35)
Yeah.

Cassie (06:42)
But they for sure spent $300,000. Somewhere between $300,000. My guess is on that one somewhere probably between $300,000 and $600,000.

Alan Li (06:45)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah. And was grit growing through just profits that they were generating or did you all have venture funding or family and friends where did the capital come from?

Cassie (06:59)
We were privately funding everything. We opened up the first studio in Costa Mesa, California, SoulCycle was driving the popularity of indoor cycling, but had yet to come to Orange County. So we were kind of quenching the thirst of those who wanted that SoulCycle experience, but didn't want to drive to LA for it. And we built...

Just a huge brand in and around Orange County and that's where you know where other studios were failing at that time the grit cycle brand was so big that we could go anywhere and You know take over one of these studios and kind of have a built-in clientele with so many people driving from all over Orange County to go to the Costa Mesa studio so over

About a year and a half we went from two studios to seven studios following this new business model. Well, two studios to six studios following the new business model. The seventh studio was our first studio in...

Northern California and we actually partnered with class pass This was a unique situation that I don't know if they're still doing it but they started this program in 2018 and it was called studio empowerment and class pass succeeds when they have a lot of members in a concentrated area that has a lot of studios and class pass was finding that they had huge

Alan Li (08:00)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (08:24)
demographics in cities that were underserved in certain styles of boutique fitness. So they came to us and said, we'll help you fund a studio in one of these underserved populations. Where do you want to go? And I said, well, it doesn't matter where I want to go. Why don't you tell me where I'm going to be the most successful?

Alan Li (08:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Cassie (08:48)
You know, like, don't give me the zip code that's a, if I say, well, how about this zip code? And you're like, yeah, well, that's great. It's on the list. Tell me which one's on the top of the list and I'll go to one of those. So we brokered a deal, Flywheel is another intercycling company that at that time was closing all of their studios. So we brokered a deal to take over a Flywheel in Walnut Creek, California. And did you?

Alan Li (09:11)
I used to go to Flywheel.

Yeah, I used to go to the ones in, they had some in New York, I believe. And it's where there's like three zones and it's like a little bit competitive. Yeah, it was fun actually.

Cassie (09:17)
Yes, yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People who like indoor cycling, they either went the SoulCycle route, which was like dancing on a bike, or they went the Flywheel route, which was a little bit more competitive with the leaderboards. So we took over the Flywheel, which was great, because it had the soundproof room in it, and ClassPass financed it for us, the rebrand, because we had to go in and rebrand it.

and we opened up in February of 2019. Sorry, February of 2020.

Alan Li (09:49)
Hmm.

Cassie (09:52)
so stick a pin in that. were also at the same time, because our brand had gotten so big, we were having shopping centers come to us and say, we'll build a grit cycle to your specifications on the house.

Alan Li (10:07)
Yeah, because they want to attract

more customers to their venue location.

Cassie (10:10)
Correct.

So we had brokered one of those deals at a shopping center here in Long Beach, California. So that would have been studio number eight. So March of 2020 happens, and Walnut Creek is open not even a month, and we have to shut down.

Alan Li (10:26)
man.

Cassie (10:26)
And in Northern California, the restrictions for opening were much stricter than they were in Southern California.

And we had to stay closed for a pretty long time. And we got to open for about a month in June, only to get shut down again. around that same time, just through a series of events, I decided that was not a good place for me to be anymore and resigned, actually.

Alan Li (10:43)
Mm.

Cassie (10:54)
and in, so I resigned in July of 2020 and the Walnut Creek studio never opened and, or sorry, yeah, never reopened. And the Long Beach studio kind of got stopped in its tracks, the one at the shopping center. The company Grit Cycle was sold to

Alan Li (10:57)
Yeah.

Cassie (11:12)
another group of people. And they went through and kind of reorg what they wanted to do with studios. And we all just took a step back and took some time to recover. Cause we went through a lot of growth in a short amount of time. And then a lot of experiences, you know, during that time with COVID, it was a COVID and Black Lives Matter and you know, a bunch of things that happened.

Alan Li (11:14)
Mm-hmm.

I

That was a lot.

Cassie (11:37)
that really affected everyone's life. mean, everyone's business, everyone's life, and fitness, in-person fitness was hard. So I took a step back and took a little month respite and wanted to get back out there. I'm a...

Alan Li (11:40)
Yeah.

Cassie (11:53)
I love to work, I love fitness, I love all of those things. But at that time I was 50, 51, I thought, you know, it's definitely time to retire from in front of the camera. And I was fortunate that there was a company called Fight Camp that was based in Newport Beach where I live. Fight Camp is the peloton of boxing and kickboxing, if you will.

And they had a role for a senior talent producer, which is somebody who worked with the instructor, the trainers on camera to manage them and then help them be stars. Before I was with the SoulCycle Rise, trying to work with grit to reach that same kind of star factor. And now Peloton Stars. And I had this group of fighters that I was teaching to kind of rise up with Peloton.

Alan Li (12:37)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (12:44)
And it took me from in front of the camera to behind the camera. And it was not brick and mortar, it was all online. At the end of the day, it was really a tech company. They had gone to Y Combinator, was a young group of guys, and they catapulted to success because of COVID. So it was a really unique situation to step into working from home, and even though the offices were right down the street.

Alan Li (12:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Cassie (13:12)
not doing in-person fitness. was just, it was really, really different.

Alan Li (13:16)
Yeah.

I'm curious with GRIT cycle, obviously COVID put a stop to a lot of in-person businesses, but up until then there seemed to be a lot of momentum. And you had also mentioned there were other similar cycling studios that were closing down or having trouble struggling. What was leading GRIT to outperform the other ones? And I know that you were...

leading social media at some point, like how was it more successful than the other ones

Cassie (13:40)
Yeah, it was, it started off with a unique situation of being that kind of first to market in Orange County before SoulCycle laid their flags down. And we had built this, you know, when you're first to market with something and you can create.

passionate community and I'll talk about how we did that in a second. It doesn't matter if SoulCycle comes in, you've already built your group.

So we did that through a couple ways. One, we had very charismatic owners of the company. One had her father was a...

huge celebrity and so her name drew in a lot of people and another was this guy, Matt, Matt is six foot four with dreadlocks and an ex-soccer player and, you know, handsome guy who played, you know, all the music, could have been a DJ.

Alan Li (14:21)
Hmm.

Cassie (14:35)
And he was like a great coach and everybody wanted to go to Matt's class and girls would get dressed up to go and you saw your best friend there and you, you know, if you got into Matt's class, like that's where you, you just kind of became like the place to be. We had this, this deck, was a freestanding building. We had this deck, this patio and people would come early and just sit out there and it's Newport beach. So it's sunny.

Alan Li (14:39)
Hmm.

Ha ha.

Hmm.

Cassie (15:05)
and it's warm and it's inviting and it was just kind of like the place to be and we created kind of this it factor through that and again because we were trying to emulate a lot of what SoulCycle was doing we were watching how the instructors kind of rose to stardom and when I

had transitioned into my corporate role there. I had another instructor coordinator that I worked with and we would do that same thing. We would try to pull out what...

I fondly referred to as Zaza Zoo or Charisma or Star Factor in instructors and we weren't hiring what I also referred to as neighborhood instructors. We were hiring stars and made sure that everybody had a personality that was unique to them. That was who they were. We weren't trying to make them something that they weren't. We wanted them to lean into who they were that made them different.

Alan Li (15:41)
Mm. Okay.

Mmm. ⁓

Cassie (16:01)
And I think the other studios that were opening up around us didn't have a grasp on that same style of hiring and training. And they would just hire whoever or training programs were their business model. And they let anybody go through their training program and charge them to do so. We just had this unique it factor and we worked it.

Alan Li (16:10)
Yeah.

Hmm

Cassie (16:23)
doors open.

Alan Li (16:24)
you're much more curated

with the people because you're trying to make them stars and everyone wants to go there because that's where all the stars are. Got it. And that translates really well to Fight Camp because you were basically trying to replicate finding those stars to promote the boxing equipment.

Cassie (16:30)
That's where all the stars are. Yeah.

Fight Camp had equipment that you bought and they basically tracked your punches, let's just call it that, in a bag. And then the app had the fighters on there teaching the workouts that you did on the Fight Camp bag. So you wouldn't take, you couldn't take the equipment to like a gym and just hit a bag and it would work. You need to be taking the classes on the app. So I had this group of fighters who,

I would say they're just as much stars as they are fighters. They have to work crowd, they have to intimidate their opponent, they are very charismatic. They are stars in their own right and so it was teaching them

how to connect with one person on the other side of the screen that they never get to see, you know, the client using their, taking their class, how to connect with them, how to have eye contact, what to wear, what to say.

then some of the like just technical stuff of like this is the bicep and when you punch you know know teaching them anatomy or you know they all knew what bicep was but teaching them anatomy all the things and creating programs and programming and different class you know structure and all of that and then teaching them that they are actually the star of the show and they need to have

Alan Li (17:39)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Cassie (17:55)
that Zazazoo to be able to connect with just one person, even what they say. You don't say, okay you guys, let's all hit the bag. Where is everybody else? It's not you guys, I'm here in my living room by myself, it's just me. And that's one of the hardest habits to break when you're working one-on-one on camera is you gotta talk to the person. So it was really cool, it was really interesting to work for a tech company. And I knew what Y Combinator was.

Alan Li (18:07)
Yeah.

Hmm

Cassie (18:20)
It's a tech incubator for startups. And I was fascinated that I got to be on the ground floor of a company that just did that because, you know, I'm a techie girl and...

I was going to work for a fitness company, I definitely was working at a tech company and was super interesting, And through a chain of life events, one being getting divorced after being married for 30 years.

I decided that it was time for me to open up my own concept. I decided I had once again retired from fitness and then I was like, no, I'm going back in. that's how the full routine was born. And yeah.

Alan Li (18:58)
Wow.

I mean, I could see how those experiences prepared you very well for what you are doing at the full routine. And for our listeners who maybe aren't as familiar with exactly what the full routine is, could you give a quick overview of how the full routine works and how it's different from other fitness studios?

Cassie (19:16)
For sure. Classically trained Pilates instructor thought I always wanted to have my own reformer studio. And so through those life changing events, decided to open up the full routine, which is a classical reformer studio. But at the same time, I created this other class called TFR Mat. And in the first studio, I wanted to offer both.

I had a really small studio that could only fit six reformers. And then when we did the math classes could only fit six or seven people. And I figured, well, this is my proof of concept. what the first video was like 500 square feet and it was in the back.

Alan Li (19:46)
how big, how many square feet was the first location?

Okay, all right.

Cassie (19:56)
of another studio. So I took over the garage. So it was this long, skinny garage with cement floors. And I had six reformers. And the reformers I bought stood up. So every other night, whoever taught last would put the reformers up on the wall to make room for Matt in the morning. And I would run over there at like 5 a.m., turn on these two tiny little heaters and the sound system and close the garage and then go about my day. And the girls would come in and

TFR Matt in the teeny tiny garage was actually called Matt make it hot at the time we changed name they were rolling around on sweaty floors and It caught on very very very fast But you asked me what makes What makes the full routine different? I'll start by this One or what started to make it successful right from the get I

opened it up in Newport Beach where I had been teaching fitness for many, many, many years. And I had a small but strong clientele that was just waiting for me to open up something else. So when I opened up the reformer studio with only six reformers, I already had kind of like a built-in clientele. But I have a way of teaching that is very important to me. And I saw that that was lacking in

traditional Pilates studios in that I teach a very athletic high-energy class and often times you go to a studio and you go to your favorite instructor who teaches the style class that you like and then next week there's another instructor who walks in and says well today I'm just gonna stretch and I just go uh-uh. So my way of quality control and making sure classes were taught the way that I wanted was that

I program all of the workouts and I film them and my instructors and I all teach the same workout Monday through Sunday and then every week it switches. So it's great for me because I ensure that everyone's getting the same workout

And then it's great for the instructor because they don't have to program classes, which takes a lot of time. So for the reformer studio, the reformer classes, it's done in that way. For TFR Matt, when we started off, was, and still to this day, I program.

There's three sections. programmed the middle section, which is the Pilates mat section. So TFR mat is a 60-minute class that's driven by the beat of the music and the heat of the room. There's three sections. There's an arms routine, a Pilates mat routine, and a full body sculpt routine. And we are first to market with something like this.

Alan Li (22:23)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (22:24)
and first to market before hot Pilates was a thing. Because if you're in the fitness industry or anywhere on social media, you see everybody doing hot Pilates. We are not hot Pilates. We are TFR mat. We have a Pilates section, but we are not teaching Pilates. And the majority of people that are out there on social media are also not teaching Pilates. They're just teaching a heated sculpt and calling it hot Pilates.

Alan Li (22:28)
you

I do see it.

Cassie (22:51)
But we were first to market with this here in Orange County. And for the most part, there's only one other company that does something similar to what we do. And they have one studio in Los Angeles. Outside of that, there's no one doing what we're doing. And so I went, opened up that studio in September of 23, where we did both Reformer and Matt in the back of a...

other Pilates studio on the very first day, I said to the girl that I was subleasing the garage from, said, whenever you're ready, I'll take the front too. And she kind of laughed at me and I said, no, really, I'm serious. And she's like, okay, whatever, we're fine. So we taught both back there for three months and outgrew the space for the mat studio. And so in January of 2024, I found a

Alan Li (23:20)
Interesting.

Cassie (23:39)
1800 square foot studio across the street from the reformer studio where we opened up TFR Matt solely dedicated studio in March of 2024 by mid April so six weeks into it it was running at about 80 % capacity meaning 80 % of the classes for classes were 80 % full and

Alan Li (24:04)
are full. Wow. And for

for the 1800 square feet, how many how many people could you have, I guess, at a time?

Cassie (24:14)
Yeah, so we can have 26 people in the room at one time. And it's a heated class, so we're building a room within a room, kind of like the indoor cycling studio, but we don't do them soundproof. ⁓ But you are building a room within a room, so it does cost a little bit more to open up these studios than I would prefer.

Alan Li (24:17)
Got it.

Yeah.

Cassie (24:33)
So they're at within like six weeks it was running at about 80 % capacity and today it's running at about 97 to 99 % capacity. The Matt Studio, the Reformer Studio runs at about 82 to 84 % capacity and I took over the entire Reformer Studio.

Alan Li (24:44)
That's incredible.

What happened to hers? They were struggling or?

Cassie (25:01)
No, she, her business model was private lessons. ⁓ She had the bigger room, but she had a couple of instructors, they all did privates and they worked with different populations of clients and we were super high energy

Alan Li (25:06)
Hmm

Cassie (25:18)
and she just said, one day, do you want to take it over? I think, you know, at the end of the day, were we loud? Yes. But, you know, we weren't loud because we were like screaming and yelling at each other. But we were just loud. We played music, whatever. And I think she just had different goals in mind. And she said, do you want to take over the whole thing? And I said, yep.

Alan Li (25:18)
I see.

Cassie (25:37)
in October of 2024, I took over the entire space. so Reformer is dedicated to that one building, but TFR Mat is the other. that will be the only Reformer studio I ever have. Everything from here on out is TFR Mat. Reformer is my baby.

Alan Li (25:54)
I

Cassie (25:57)
but I will only have Reformer wherever I live and this is it. So we'll have that Reformer studio, but all the other studios, I'm opening our TFRMAT studios.

Alan Li (26:06)
I see.

And how many, now that you've taken over the front of that studio, how many more reformer machines can you have in there?

Cassie (26:12)
So we still only have, for the group classes, we have six reformers and then we flip-flopped it so now our reformers are in the front and then in the back I have a private section. So we have all the different apparatus that are involved in traditional classical Pilates we have in the garage.

we see special, we do the same thing, you know, pregnant, injuries, that kind of thing, or people that just want the experience of working on the other equipment associated with classical Pilates is all back there. And the reason for only six still is as a classically trained instructor.

I fully believe that if you have more than eight reformers, it's dangerous. And I just would never teach to that many. And I do a lot of mentoring with other people who are opening up Pilati studios. And there's this kind of, there's not a lot of money to be made in true reformer studios because of how many machines that you are limited to. So even if you don't come from the same school of thought as I,

Alan Li (26:53)
Mmm.

Cassie (27:14)
do with no more than eight. Some of these studios I see opening, whether they're reformer, Lagree studios with 20, 23 reformers, you get to a tipping point where either it's just too many people for one instructor to control on these big piece of equipment or the amount of rent that you have to pay to have

Alan Li (27:34)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (27:39)
20 reformers and the amount that you can charge for a class just starts to go like, you know, it just doesn't

you might look at the business models of companies like Club Pilates or Solid Core, you'll start to see, you know, they only have a certain number of performers and we're talking about Club Pilates as a franchise and Solid Core is, you know, a company just got a ton of funding and opening up a lot of studios and growth. You know, the...

the amount of money that you can make off of one class. It's easy to do the numbers, you know? But we're not, it's not like a hair salon where someone's going and walking in getting $3,000 worth of hair extensions in two hours. You have 20, what, cause I have a, best friend is a hairstylist and she, you know, I've watched the money that walks in and out of her studio. Hair extensions.

Alan Li (28:24)
Is that how much some hair salons make? Or hair extensions?

Wow.

Cassie (28:30)
Hair extensions are between two and five thousand dollars for about two to three hours worth of work and you're seeing that person and then you know and you're not they're not paying five thousand every time they come but but they're not paying a hundred dollars either they're not paying thirty dollars for a class so you know you have the we talked about business especially the business of fitness

why we'll only ever open up the one reformer studio but everything else is going to be the matte studio. When you open a reformer studio you to buy the reformers. You can't have and they take up space you know. They're huge and they're expensive and you can only have a limited even if I could have 20 of them. You know you've got all that and then with matte you know it's just a big room with a little bit of small equipment.

Alan Li (29:03)
Yeah, they're big.

Cassie (29:15)
But the other side of it is, boutique fitness, the cost of going to a boutique fitness studio is what it is. And it ranges at the high end $40. And I'm telling you, a lot of people are not paying $40 unless they're in New York. And it's a different beast there. $40, $45. And the low end, being that class pass visitor who is paying anywhere you're getting.

It could be as low as $10, depending upon what you're the business owner. And that's your window of opportunity. And studios that come in above that, we have a new studio, a new or former studio that opened here, and a walk-in class is $50. And we're in one of the highest.

Alan Li (29:44)
You mean the business owner.

Cassie (29:59)
demographic money-making zip codes in the state and in the country. And there's a very far and few between people that want to pay $50 class even if they can afford it because it's it's absurd. So.

Alan Li (30:11)
Yeah. $50 a lot, even

from New York.

Cassie (30:14)
Yeah, so you're working with this like small range and so you've got to be really efficient. You have to have a lot of classes. You have to pack in as many people and you know the club pilates respect you are buying yourself a job. It's a franchise. You're buying yourself a job. Are you going to retire off of money that you make a club pilates and?

If I have club pilates listening, they probably want to come after me right now. Is a one studio owner going to be able to retire and live an extraordinary lifestyle off of one studio? And the answer is no. But when you have multiples or you have a modality where you can fit, you can have multiple people in them, depending upon what your lifestyle goals are, will dictate how much money you can make in this business.

Alan Li (30:56)
are you able to share rough numbers of how much does it cost to open sort of a Matt Pallotti studio ⁓ and what can someone expect to make in certain areas?

Cassie (31:01)
No.

let's talk about matte studios because hot Pilates studios are so on trend right now.

So I just opened up a new studio in Manhattan Beach, California. It was a rectangle when I walked in, so it didn't have to be demoed or anything like that. I basically just had a...

put my floors in, build the heated room. We didn't put any showers or anything in. We put the heaters and get some equipment and sign and everything. And it was about $240,000 to get that studio open. And...

because I'm building a really great brand. We had built-in clients that were just waiting for us to open. So we're running there at about, we're one month in and we're running about 45 % capacity, which is amazing. Doesn't sound like a lot, but we have some classes that are completely sold out all the time. And then like today I taught and I had seven people in the class. But five weeks in, four weeks in, that's amazing because...

Alan Li (32:03)
Yeah, no,

it's great.

Cassie (32:04)
When you have classes already sold out, that bleeds out into the other ones. So we're already making, we're profitable from an operations standpoint in that studio one month in. But people look at this big, okay, well wait, but you invested $240,000. When are you gonna be able to pay that back or however you got that money or whatever you did? And when do you start making money?

Alan Li (32:14)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (32:29)
So I always tell people this, it doesn't matter if you're opening up a reformer studio or a motorcycle repair studio or whatever, you have to make sure that...

your lifestyle can sustain not making money for a while a little bit of money. So when I opened up the first studio, I had a really low cost of living. you know, I was in a situation, I wasn't married, my daughter was already grown up, I didn't own a, I'd just gotten divorced. I didn't have anything, I

you know, my apartment rent, my car payment, and my health insurance, period. And I'm a small girl, I don't need that much money. So was the perfect, I was that perfect point for, yeah, I can pull four or $5,000 out of my studio to pay for my rent, my home rent.

whatever when I get to that point I had a runway of money saved so that I didn't have to tap into studio money for a really long time and You know, but my runway wasn't didn't have to be so big because my cost of living was so down where I were You know married and house payment and kids in private school and whatever and then there was a we're gonna make your money back when you're gonna make your money back how you're gonna pay yourself how you know that

Alan Li (33:50)
super

stressful.

Cassie (33:51)
Super stressful. So one of the first things that I tell when people come to me. Well, how do I open my I said, well, what's your lifestyle like because you're

I don't want you to get so bummed and desperado when you're numbers, you know, when you have six people in a class because that's that desperation is going to come through everything you do. Your marketing, your training of instructors, your interactions with clients, the sales that you do. If you don't have that cushion, whether it's money that you've saved or someone that's helping you with

Alan Li (34:13)
Hmm.

Cassie (34:26)
your expenses or you've dropped your cost of living down, that anxiety is energy that's gonna flow through your business and you're gonna repel people away and there are people that are listening to this right now going, no I would never. I'm telling you right now that energy is driving people away and you don't even know it because you're so worried about

what's happening. So the first thing I say is get your cost of living expenses down, down, down, down, down. The second thing I say is you got to figure out how much it's going to cost you to operate on a day to month basis. And you've got to overestimate it by 30%. And you've got to figure it out quick and dirty before you sign that lease because don't go, don't go signing a lease in the fancy shopping center.

Alan Li (35:13)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (35:16)
because you think that's where you need to be and think you're gonna be able to pay it because you're not. And then you're gonna forget, oh my gosh, I was supposed to have liability insurance for all of these reformers or all of this inventory or whatever and you didn't negotiate that in. Or I've gotta pay credit card processing fees

some of these new fitness business owners are just going in with their eyes shut, just thinking it's gonna be cute and pink and Pilates princess times. And then they're like, shoot, I didn't think about all of this. So then the next one is, so you start making money back.

but depending upon what your setup is and what your goals are, maybe you don't even pay yourself yet. I knew, sometimes I look around at studios, they're doing so good. I'm like, my gosh, why don't they have more? Like why did they only stop at one? There's this one in New Jersey and I'm like, God, they would do so good. Like why did they only have one? Cause I'm like, I want 50 of them. ⁓

Alan Li (36:05)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Cassie (36:16)
Why do some people stop at one? Maybe they're married to someone that doesn't want to take the risk. Maybe they have five kids at home and they don't want to be traveling around to all the studios. Maybe it was just their goal to just have one and that's okay. Know where you are. Now if you want to have more, then you got to figure out what that cushion of life needs to be so that you don't have to pull money out of the business that you can keep it in so that you can open up the next studio. So...

my studio that I just opened in Manhattan Beach, California was paid for 100 % by the Newport Beach Studio.

But that's because I kept my cost of living expenses. I kept money in the business I got a little creative with a little bit of money which we can talk about getting creative with money But it was everything was solely funded by the money that was coming out of Newport so you can do the math Newport was open for a year

Alan Li (36:52)
Yeah.

Cassie (37:09)
just over a year before I opened up the Manhattan Beach Studio and I was able to pay $240,000 to Newport Beach, you can get an idea. But again, remember, my cost of living is low. don't, I buy Lycra, I buy cottage cheese.

Alan Li (37:15)
That's incredible.

I think what a lot of people also don't realize is how much the owner has to operate themselves versus if it's actually totally self-sufficient. So for your studios, how much time are you spending in the business versus on the business? And I know that changes, you know, month one, month two to where you are now. So where were you? Where are you now?

Cassie (37:50)
For me, I think is a unique situation that I am 56 years old and I'm in the fitness industry.

And my target client is between 28 and 48. And that 28 year old doesn't really want to take a hot, sweaty fitness class from a 56 year old who plays Donna Summer. She wants to take it from a 28 year old who plays little sexy or little red, whatever, sexy red, whatever she's called. Yochi, is that how you say it? don't know. ⁓ So I...

Alan Li (38:17)
Yeah, yeah, don't you?

Cassie (38:21)
made sure that this wasn't called the Cassie Studio, that it's called the full routine. And it was very important to me to bring on instructors who could do what I wanted them to do in the way that I wanted them to do it so that I didn't have to. Because I'm not gonna be able to teach for, physically I'm gonna be able to teach forever. But from a marketing standpoint, I'm a novelty act.

I love teaching reformer, so I teach a lot of reformer classes. Let me take that back. I teach four reformer classes a week and I teach four math classes a week. So eight hours a week I'm actually in the room in instructor mode. Outside of that,

Alan Li (39:02)
And is that

more from you, you sort of love it and you want to have a pulse on the business versus like, need to be doing it so that it's profitable. It's more of just, it's more the former.

Cassie (39:10)
I don't need to.

Yeah, it's because I teach reformer because it's my soulmate and I'm really good at it and it draws people to the reformer studio. But we have like nine, eight or nine classes a day and I only teach one or two, three times a week. So I'm not the main draw there, but my hand is on it because I program all the workouts. And it's important for me to have a presence there because it is my soul.

my soulmate workout is reformer plotties. For TFR Mat, I teach three times a week in Newport and one time a week at the South Bay Studio. As soon as I get more instructors, I'll come off the schedule in the South Bay or Manhattan Beach Studio. I'm just filling in for a body until we get more instructors because I've built the brand enough that I don't need to be there. And I'm a...

Alan Li (39:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's great.

Cassie (39:58)
I'm in the novelty. So it's like, the group, the one who created it, she's coming in, she's going to teach. So that's what I want to strive for. I spend the rest of my day, up until four months ago, I I did all the payroll. did pretty much everything. and you know,

Alan Li (40:03)
Yeah.

Cassie (40:15)
I have a partner, a boyfriend who is in a big business also and so I have a lot of free time that I can work until late at night or whatever because he's traveling I may not be in the studio working from eight to five but I'm up until 10 or 11. Just doing stuff.

Alan Li (40:21)
Mm-hmm.

or working on the studio, just not necessarily physically there.

Cassie (40:37)
But with the opening up of the third studio, I knew that I couldn't do it all. So I went on a limb and I hired an extraordinary woman, Sarah, who is my director of operations.

I just thought, I just need to like suck up the financial outlay until South Bay opens and once South Bay opens, it'll be great. And so, and we got through that and we need to hire more people. So we just brought on our instructor coordinator who was just doing some contract work. She just started full time this past week. And I'm in the market for a few other key HQ roles to help scale, open up new studios, get our operations.

Alan Li (41:12)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (41:13)
in line or take some of the pressure off Sarah so that Sarah can do more operationally because she's doing a lot of stuff too. We do a lot for ⁓ a team of three. have a social media manager who's a contract worker and we have, when we first opened we had four instructors and myself and we have 40 people that I employ now.

Alan Li (41:23)
Yeah, sure.

Cassie (41:35)
and that chokes me up in the best of ways and also is a little bit scary.

Alan Li (41:42)
Yeah.

it seems like you have very ambitious goals. It's not just three. Talk to me a little bit more about what you're hoping to accomplish.

Cassie (41:50)
Yeah.

So remember when I talked about grit cycle and going into, I'm going to give away all my secrets now. So don't let me forget to talk about confidence and competition. So we talked about grit going into finding studios that were...

Alan Li (41:57)
Hahaha.

Cassie (42:05)
not doing well and buying them right so those were indoor cycling seo so i know that if i can find a space that already has wood floors a room and mirrors i'm like three quarters of the way there so as of now now that

Studio 3 is open. I'm looking for yoga studios. Not bar studios, because bar studios have bar, ballet bars on their mirrors, so I'd have to replace all the mirrors. But I'm looking for yoga studios that have closed and or need to close because they have everything that I want and they're typically the same, the exact size that I need. So one slipped out of my fingers about three weeks ago that was in San Diego.

Alan Li (42:29)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (42:46)
got my eyes and ears open for I think that's the move for me.

I had these aspirations of having studios in sexy cities. So Manhattan Beach was sexy to me because we had this grocery store called Erawan out here. I found out they were opening in Erawan in Manhattan Beach. And so I went and I found a space on the same street.

Alan Li (42:59)
Yeah,

Cassie (43:07)
two blocks down from where Erawan is opening in.

Alan Li (43:10)
That's so smart.

That's so smart. They'll get the Haley Bieber smoothie right after ⁓ the floor routine.

Cassie (43:12)
And then.

Yeah, no, I already

visualize it. They like hold their phone. They're like, today we're going to the new Arowan in Manhattan Beach, but first we're gonna go work out at TFR. Come with me. And then they hold up in front of the little mirror from you guys, the mirror sign that says you're hot. I'm like, that is like my, like that is why I chose this space where we're at.

Alan Li (43:27)
Yeah.

I love it.

Cassie (43:37)
because what we do, we're first to market, because what we do is so different. And our studios, whether it's the mirror sign from you guys or the logo on the mirrors in the actual workout studio, it's a very social media content attention grabber, my studios are. And I'm very fortunate that our clients use our space to create content and it's driven our business.

in our studios here, but it's also put my brand on the eyes of a lot of people outside of our studio. And so I've had studios reach out to me saying, can you come and train us how to do this? And so I did that. I started doing that. And the first one I did was in a city called New Bedford, Massachusetts. And if you're not familiar with New Bedford, it's a teeny tiny town.

Alan Li (44:07)
Hmm.

Cassie (44:23)
an hour outside of Boston. It is known as the wailing capital of the world and it is not sexy at all. It's freezing cold and it's New Bedford and they are jamming. Their studio is packed. It's changed their business. It blows my mind and so I always say like if it can work in New Bedford, it can work anywhere and

Alan Li (44:45)
anywhere? Wait, is

this, this is another separate studio that reached out to you so that you teach them the full routine method and you're, and you're doing that like from a consulting basis or are they a part of the full routine now too? Or like, how does that work?

Cassie (44:53)
Mm-hmm.

So there's two different ways that studios can hire us. this is, God, there's so much to talk about. So I know I don't want to be a franchise model studio, and I'm not sure that I want to be a licensed studio. But what I do know is that working with other women entrepreneurs is really important to me. And...

Alan Li (45:05)
Yeah, no, it's great.

Cassie (45:20)
when other women reach out to me and say, I've got a room that's a yoga room and it's just not pulling at all, can we teach full routine there? So that's kind of what happened at the new Bedford Studio. So I said, well, you can do one of two things. You can either make it a TFR, branded, and it's gonna cost a little bit more, and you're kind of licensing the method from me, or you can pay me to come in and teach you guys with one of my founding trainers over the course of four days. You can call it whatever you want.

Alan Li (45:37)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (45:49)
to

pay me X number of dollars, which one do you want? And they said, we'll take the...

you know, come in and train us over four days. So I put together, I already had my training protocol, because we do that here, but put together a little different package for them. They paid us, we flew out there, we taught them how to do it over the course of four days. and we taught a bunch of classes while we were there to create buzz and hype. And because of social media, people already knew who we were and they were excited to have us there teaching and then to know that that was going to be awesome.

at that studio and they call it full sweat and they love it and so I have a few more studios that are inked for this year and one for next year that are doing that same kind of setup.

And I think that's it that I'm gonna do and from Here on out my boyfriend's trying like I told my boyfriend's in like big business and he's like We got a figure this out because I just can't sit back and watch you do this anymore

we are first to market with this and it's only a matter time before. Well all the other hot Pilati studios are open, they're still not doing what we're doing but it's just a matter of time you know. So we have that.

Alan Li (46:52)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (46:56)
Model which will probably end up doing some kind of licensing in other cities and states but it was so great to have that new Bedford experience because it just proves like you can go to new Bedford and be wildly successful So we do that we have on-demand platform where we film classes in the studio and we have a whole a whole on

Alan Li (47:07)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (47:17)
So people from all over and that's another marketing tool. It's profitable. It does not make or break us from a profitable profitability standpoint

Alan Li (47:23)
Yeah. Is that a part of the mobile

app or is that separate?

Cassie (47:28)
No,

It is a separate platform that's integrated with our booking system, but it's all on the web. It's on the app. So we have that. That's an awesome marketing tool. People can do Pilates all day long for free on YouTube.

Alan Li (47:34)
I see.

Cassie (47:41)
we get it pays for itself and then some it's profitable and but again it's just it's a way to get our name out into the world and with like no cost to us at this point. I want to talk about confidence and competition. So confidence is

know exactly what you're gonna do and be so incredibly passionate about it and so confident in your offering and then put your head down and don't look at what anybody else is doing.

because who cares? Be the best at who you are. You're not gonna be everything for everyone. It doesn't matter what she's doing down the street. I don't follow any other studios on any of my social media. I don't wanna see anybody else doing what we're doing. People send me stuff so I have a little bit of pulse and I just say please don't send, I don't wanna be swayed. I don't want to waste any energy worrying about competition.

Be so confident. Don't water down what your offering is. And I don't care if you sell pink t-shirts and you're so passionate about pink t-shirts and then everyone says, well the color is beige and you're like, okay, well I guess I should have beige now. Stay true to pink. Don't worry about the competition. There's enough to go around for everybody. Let go of the desperation, the scarcity mindset.

Alan Li (48:58)
Uh-huh.

Cassie (49:05)
Energy feeds it doesn't matter if the words are coming out of your mouth or not It's out of your body energy is so important and you've got to give off confident energy Don't look at the competition put your head up every once in a while Okay, and then put your head back down who cares? So I wanted to talk about that and then talk about creative financing I'm just all over the place just

Alan Li (49:29)
No, these

are all like amazing nuggets that I'm sure our listeners will love to hear.

Cassie (49:32)
Okay, good.

Okay, so people ask me all the time, how did you get $240,000 to open up this new studio? How did you get the money to open up your... My first one was 100 % solely funded from the small amount of money that I got from being married for 30 years.

And then studio 2 was the first dedicated mat studio was built from a little bit of the small amount of money that I had plus revenue coming in from the studio

and that one was not as expensive, but Manhattan Beach solely funded all from pure profit and then these creative things. So because I had an established business already, My booking software company is called Mariana Tech, and I started getting these emails from Mariana Tech after being open in the very first studio

from being open two months and I started getting this email and it would say you are you are approved for $2,000 in capital and I watched and I was just like I don't know what they're talking about. probably credit card and I just deleted it and and I watched and this all of a sudden these numbers just started the more the longer we were open the more business was growing the

bigger the number was on the thing of the email. And then it started getting up to like 25,000, 30,000. And I was like, what is this? And I clicked on it. so what the booking software for us, and I'm sure there's lots of companies that do things like this, but the booking software said all of your money that your people are paying to come to your studio rolls through our bank because all of our credit card processing, everything has to go through these booking systems.

All the money flows through them so as it flows through we're gonna take 15 % of your sales every single day to pay off this chunk of money that we're gonna give you for growth for capital. You're approved in 24 less than 24 hours

Alan Li (51:18)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (51:21)
and they're taking 15 % off of my sales every day and I don't even notice it and it gets paid off. It's already paid off because we're making so much money at all the studios it got paid down really quick.

Alan Li (51:34)
How much was that

loan that you took from the booking software?

Cassie (51:37)
⁓

It was either, I think it was 32,000. But you know, that's a lot of, that's a big chunk of money. And then I do all of my accounting through QuickBooks and I noticed on my QuickBooks dashboard, I got the same kind of note. you're approved for, I think that one, that one might've been 50,000.

Alan Li (51:44)
Yeah.

Cassie (51:56)
And I'm like, well, that could be cool. And so I reached out to them. Yes, it's expensive money, but it gets paid down really quick and it just gets taken out of your daily sales and it becomes much cheaper money when you're successful because the money comes out faster.

Alan Li (52:13)
Yeah, and you give up zero

equity and you keep the business to yourself. ⁓ Yeah, revenue-based financing.

Cassie (52:16)
zero equity. I kept it all to myself.

But a lot of fitness girlies don't know this, that this out there. Another

Way that I was going to do it and ended up not doing it I'm kind of glad the last minute was bringing on a construction partner. So I work with the same contractor I've been working with him since grit days and I was going to give him some equity in exchange for doing the construction and Because we had such a great relationship with one another and he's watched the studios grow so fast He was super confident in it and it just came down to the wire. I'm like

Alan Li (52:42)
Mm.

Cassie (52:54)
we got to pull the plug. So we got to go now, Brian. We got to plug it in. And we ended up doing it. I was just going to do it 100 % myself. But that was another creative way of, you know, if you can build relationships with people and you can get them to do the work in exchange for either equity or letting you have six months to pay the construction costs for a small amount of interest or, you know, whatever. There you have to get creative because

getting an SBA loan takes forever and they never give you enough. Putting it on a credit card is not smart. Because that's some very expensive money. It's more expensive. But being creative and building good relationships goes a really long way. And you know,

Alan Li (53:27)
Hmm.

even more expensive yeah.

Cassie (53:42)
Being that woman at 52 who decided to leave a marriage where she had been married for 30 years to a physician, so was a pretty cushy lifestyle, and being able to walk away with literally nothing, no alimony, just a little bit of money, I mean, mean a little, like a little.

Alan Li (54:02)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (54:02)
talk to

you. We're not talking a million is not is a million is a lot so it's far less than that far far far less in exchange for freedom and being able to just like quickly leave.

is this is all very much a part of my story and every employee, every instructor that works the full routine has all heard the story of a woman who completely walked away from a cushy lifestyle to open up her dream and we're all gonna work together and I'm gonna take really good care of everyone that works at the studio so that they in turn take really good care of our clients and this is either gonna work and we're all

from it or it's not gonna work and I'm gonna file BK and go to Paris and no one will ever hear from me again. But being this woman-owned business and doing it by myself and with these other all women right now, I would love to hire a guy but right now it's all women, we're all doing this together. It's very much part of my story and I've talked about my boyfriend a couple times like...

You know, I can take on investment from whether it's other people, from him, from wherever, and it's still very much part of my story that I want one studio to fund the next, but when I want to scale, that may not work for that much longer, and I will take on investors, and I want that to continue to be part of the story in that

just because I'm taking on an investment does not mean that I'm lucky or I caved or whatever. Actually, I knew exactly what I wanted and I took every step to get there and at some point you work so hard.

and you take all the, you put all the work into it, that things start to come to you a little easier. And you should take it so that you can continue to grow. You don't want to see a woman struggle forever.

want to see her work hard, get, and grow. And that's the next transition of the story is that we as a company have grown a really cool brand that people want from New Bedford to Newport Beach. And it takes finances to scale that. And it can get easy when you work hard and have good intentions behind it. And I want people

I want those women who sat on the floor with me, and this is where I always cry, I cry like everything I'm like thinking about. I want those women who sat on the floor with me in my very first class when I explained this to strangers of like who I was and some knew me and some didn't know me and they all rooted for me and they all came back and they all bought a class and then they bought another class and they brought friends who bought classes. I don't want them to look and go, well now she's, know, this, that or the other.

I'm this that or the other because I work so freaking hard. I took that giant step to leave and I think it's in my business I want the story.

to motivate people and inspire people to take the risk, take the leap, walk away from what's comfortable, to get to another really amazing spot, whether it's business or relationship or whatever success looks like to you. And very open with sharing those stepping stones. And as we become more successful, I want people to be inspired by

Alan Li (57:09)
Yeah.

Cassie (57:19)
a nice car or you know a cool trip or whatever and not resentful of like well you know she raised her prices and that's why.

Alan Li (57:27)
Yeah, well, mean, Cassie,

just based on our conversation today, I can tell the authenticity and give you kudos for being so transparent with your business and helping others. And I don't think anyone will listen to this and think, well, now she has 50 locations and she's the hot shot. She had it so easy. So I'm glad we're documenting this, which is awesome. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓

Cassie (57:46)
Yeah. Thank you. And it was not easy. It was fun.

Alan Li (57:53)
I know we're running up on time. And the final question that I

Cassie (57:54)
I know.

Alan Li (57:57)
had was, you you're into the journey a few years now and with your hindsight, is there anything that you would have done differently knowing what you know now?

Cassie (58:07)
I would have had a C Corp instead of an LLC. No, everything that I'm really, think because, and I know it's so woo woo to talk about the energy, the energy behind it was from a place of calm and confidence and that it's gonna work out. And I think that I moved with intention and speed.

Alan Li (58:10)
Really?

Cassie (58:30)
and confidence and they all kind of married together and I take really good care of the people that work with me. So they, you know, we have a lot of people have been there the whole time and I think that that makes for solid team and there's nothing I would have done different.

Alan Li (58:48)
So if people are interested in reaching out or following along, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Cassie (58:54)
On social media, Cassie TFR on both Instagram and TikTok. I'm pretty vocal and I try to answer back as many people as I can. And yeah, that's how they can find me.

Alan Li (59:05)
Awesome.

I noticed that you have 6,000 posts on Instagram or over 6,000 posts. That's a lot. ⁓ Yeah, that's so impressive.

Cassie (59:12)
Is that a lot? It is?

And you know what? I swore would never be on TikTok and now I'm like on TikTok a lot because my client is over there and I don't feel like I'm posting as much on Instagram as I was but...

My Instagram account was like dead in the water and with the new studio opening it's coming back to life a little bit but TikTok is I think, I found my home on TikTok for right now. We'll see.

Alan Li (59:41)
Nice. Awesome. Well, thanks

so much again for taking the time, Cassie. I know you're about to head out for a big, trip. So we'll pause it for now. And can't wait to see all the success. And keep in touch.

Cassie (59:52)
Thank you.

Alan Li (59:53)
Awesome.

Alan Li (59:54)
Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, feel free to visit openingsoonpodcast.com for all of our episodes online. If you run a retail store and need updated furniture or signage, please feel free to visit www.signsandmirrors.com. Lastly, if you have any feedback or would to be a guest on the show, email me at alan, A-L-A-N, at signsandmirrors.com. I promise I'll respond. Thanks for listening.