Seven Essential Questions That Will Rock Your Teaching and Your Business

This project first began as a way of drawing out the richness of our message as teachers. Currently we are working on this in my mentoring group at the studio in order to develop an “elevator pitches” or 30-second commercial and it’s been an invaluable tool.

I hope you enjoy working with these questions and that you can craft your answers into something juicy.

Please feel free to send me your thoughts and answers…I would LOVE to hear from you!

Seven Questions That Will Rock

Your Teaching and Your Business

Follow the instructions below and work on the Inquiry Questions over the next 2-3 weeks. I would encourage you to put these into writing and then consider sharing them with a trusted colleague or friend. Consider what answers you feel more or less comfortable sharing. What stories, believes, self-judgments might be influencing your comfort level?

After spending some time reflecting and refining your answers you will have the foundation to turn them into a well-crafted, authentic “elevator pitch” as well as answering questions around pricing, marketing, student/teacher relationships and acquiring students.

• Working on your Core Commitments list will also be helpful here. Watch a video clip on this topic from last year’s retreat HERE:

Inquiry Questions

These seven questions will help you build the foundation of your teaching and your business and create the ground from which all other questions about your teaching and business can be answered…Like MAGIC! 🙂

1. Why do you show up to teach/What drives your desire to teach and keeps you coming back?

2. Do you believe Pilates can change your body, your life, the world? Why? BE SPECIFIC!

3. What is your strongest skill and greatest talent?

4. What is your greatest weakness and non-talent?

5. What do you believe your time is worth? *See additional instructions below.

6. Part 1: How do you make decisions about spending money? Part 2: What is your greatest hesitation about asking people to pay you?

7. Word association: Make a list for each of these words — Teacher and Student. *Please write down first responses, don’t over think your answers!!*

Notes on #5

Come up with two values – one solely based on what you believe your time is worth in general and one that is considerate of acceptable industry standards, your geographic location and your current skill level:

• $20/student teacher;
• $65/hour certified teacher with less than 5 years;
• $45/hour apprentice teachers — 100 hours of teaching and all training complete;
• $75/hour more than 5 years
• *$85/hour and up for more than 10 years
• $125/hour and up for specialty sessions, niche, and expertise

Food For Thought:

At each skill level, however you define it, what would it be like to charge as much as possible, as much as the industry would support? In other words as much as someone is willing to pay for your talents and skills? Can/Do you believe in yourself as much as someone else believes in you and can you charge appropriately?
If you are afraid of alienating students or making your service cost prohibitive consider the fact that you are projecting your perceived value in yourself when you set your prices, that you may want to target a specific student-base based on income (that means keeping prices low or setting them high), and the fact that you can always create more affordable/lower-priced services to cater to a variety of students.
This exercise may be difficult for some of you and bring up lots of feelings, however think of it as an opportunity to look more closely at your relationship to your own self-worth and money. These things are often sticky and unpleasant, but can lead to wonderful revelations and breakthroughs.
The questions and thoughts are meant only to stir things up and are not instructions as to what you should necessarily do.