How Arketa Empowers Studio Owners With Rachael Lea Fishman

Rachel Lea's journey from being a really passionate yoga instructor to becoming a tech innovator is really really inspiring , and in this episode , she's going to be sharing with us a little bit more about how Archeta can streamline your operations , enhance your client experience and , ultimately , drive studio growth .

So , wherever you're at when it comes to your studio management software right now , this conversation really is packed with insights and tips that will make a real difference for your studio business . Well , hi there , I'm Saren Glanfield . I'm a business and marketing strategist . Just for boutique fitness studio owners like you .

If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact , you're in the right place . All you need are a few key strategies , the right mindset and some support along the way . Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio . This is the Pilates Business Podcast . Studio . This is the Pilates Business Podcast .

Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast . I'm Saren Glanfield . I'm so , so glad that you are joining me today for this conversation , because it has been wonderful to get to know this person over the past few weeks and chat some more about what's happening in our industry .

My guest today is Rachel Lear , who is the founder of Arquetta , and Arquetta is a studio management software that many of you have been asking me about over quite recently . Over the last few months , I've been getting more and more people saying to me hey , sarah , what do you think , what does this look like ?

And I've been diving into the platform and really enjoying it and it's , I have to say , it's been so refreshing to um , to see , um , different ways of of different , uh , different platforms come on online , but also , when you get into these platforms , seeing what's really , really possible for all of you guys as studio owners .

So I want to welcome Rachel Lear to the podcast . I'm so glad you're here , thanks for having me . So , and I have to say , when we first met , it was so nice to hear about your background and about how you got into the software space , because your background is not from the tech side of things .

You came into this with a love of movement and a background of teaching . Why don't you share a little bit about how Archetta came to be and how you kind of ended up where you are today ?

And when I came to undergrad at UCLA I was trying a lot of things in the health and wellness space as a consumer for my own healing journey . Ended up loving it so much that I found a studio and was like hey , I want to join . Mom and dad looked at the price tag of a $200 membership and laughed and said the gym is that way .

Sorry , not supporting this beautiful dream to find yourself . And so I found if I cleaned at the studio and I did a trade program , I could get involved as a consumer . Ended up loving it so much I did my 200-hour RIT , all my group fitness certs , immediately started teaching , and this was actually the summer before my senior year .

So senior year , you're supposed to decide what am I going to do with my life . I had initially mapped out this whole corporate job . Being from the East Coast , everyone's a lawyer , doctor , banker so let's do one of those . And I went through my yoga teacher training and I was like , wait , I want to do this . And so , again , call mom and dad .

First comes the training , then comes that I think I want to do this more often . And so they were very kind , amazing parents , and they said , hey , you'll find yourself , you'll figure it out . So graduation comes and I realized after teaching that it's really hard to make a living teaching , as a lot of us know .

And so I started applying for jobs and was lucky enough that someone wanted to take a bet on me in the tech space . They saw my background , they thought they'd be a great fit for the role and it's actually funny I don't think I've ever told this story . I got the offer for my tech job within 24 hours of getting my offer for my teaching job .

My teaching job was a 10 am class , and if you work a 9 to 5 , a 10 am class isn't going to work very well . So I remember getting the offer for the yoga job . I was so excited . I mean I was like it made my life . It was Memorial Day weekend before graduation . I was with my friends .

I just remember this feeling of being so excited , so excited , so much so that I called the tech company who gave me an offer and said I'm actually sorry I can't take this job . And they're like , wait what ? I'm like ? I'm sorry , I have another opportunity . Like what opportunity ?

You told us you weren't interviewing anywhere else , and I wasn't , I was graduating . And I told them well , actually I have this yoga teaching job and I really need to take it and I need to follow my heart . This is what I want to do . And I was just so lucky and blessed at the time that they came back to me and they said you know what , rachelia ?

We want to work with you , so bad that you can actually go teach your yoga and you can come into the office afterwards .

And so , post UCLA , I started working at a tech company , still teaching , after a few months of rolling into the office at 1 pm while everyone else had worked really hard a half day , we kind of had that conversation and realized that it didn't quite make sense if I wanted to continue my career in tech .

But I was also lucky enough that the yoga studio and I had built an awesome connection , so I got to teach nights and weekends and kind of make both work , and so that was kind of my journey into tech Ended up working in marketing operations , product , and what I realized working in tech is wow . Tech is amazing , it's beautiful , it's moving so fast .

People are brilliant . Why are these people not working on my people ? I was a little selfish . I'm working behind the desk , I'm hanging out with the managers and the owners and we're doing desk shifts and I'm like why is our software so bad ? And we're like clicking around on page . The whole thing is like crashing .

I'm asking owners why they're not opening 100 million locations because startups scale by fast growth . And what I realized is we live in a world where tech is innovating so fast , yet the people that are innovating people's lives don't have that premium access to it , and so that's really how Orchetta began Started working on everything six months before the pandemic .

I was a product manager , so I did have a background in what does it look like to build tech . My co-founder was a software engineer and a big fitness enthusiast , and the rest is history .

It was all about optimizing classes . The problems to solve were slightly different , and so both my co-founder and I had full-time jobs , so we were tinkering around on things . And then it wasn't until about three or four months before the pandemic hit . We said we have to go in full-time . There can't be a world where we do things half-assed .

Let's just give this all . And so we spent about three to four months building what would have been the MVP , I'd say pen to paper . There's like this ideation , dreaming phase , and then there's like this ideation , dreaming phase and then there's this actual building phase , probably three , four months of building .

And then , of course , the pandemic hit and we've been building this thing . It was for in-person , it was going to be fantastic . I was taking photos of all my friends . They were going to all be involved in it , and so my friends were like Richelia , you're a tech girl , you're building something for the wellness scene .

Can you solve the fact that it's COVID and I'm struggling and I didn't know any better ? So I was like , sure , what do you need ? And very quickly . The first iteration of the product was actually we had an app that was going to be used for something else , and we started to use that to take payments for Instagram live classes .

I don't know if you remember the days everyone was taking donations and we said let's just see , do people want to take payments through an app that they've never seen or heard before ? So we started taking payments for what would have been free .

Instagram Lives Very quickly evolved to Zoom because , of course , those donations run out after the first few classes and the rest is history . So , yeah , it took about three months and biggest thing I learned from that moment is build and ship and launch as fast as you can .

So I know that one of the most sort of foundational pieces that you were focused on initially was online giving people , allowing teachers to be able to teach online , and now you're a full service , or all of the above and more . So why don't you talk us through a little bit of sort of the core features of what Arquetta has to offer to its studio owners ?

You don't need to look anywhere else . Think like what Square is doing for coffee shops and Toast does for restaurants , we do

for you . And , yeah , we started online because there were no studios . Covid hit . Nothing was open , so there was no way to support an owner with filling butts in seats . It was filling butts on couches or outside of couches , and I think what is so funny is my background and practice was actually in person .

It was teaching yoga , it was turning off the lights , it was giving people adjustments in downward dog and reminding them to drop their shoulders or , when the beat dropped , doing a pulsing motion , and to me , there was nothing more powerful than that community aspect , and so we always knew our KEDA was going to move in person as soon as in-person was open .

That was never a doubt in our mind . But something that's really important , and still is a pillar of what we do today , is talking to customers when is the customer and what do they need today ? And for about the first year of the pandemic , what they needed today was a way to survive in their living room while they were figuring out rent .

So the amazing piece is , we built an incredible suite of digital offerings , many of which are still used for owners today . But I say that we support in-person and digitally equally on the platform . If you don't do both , that's fine . You can do one or the other , because we built both to really last in scale .

It's just sort of now , with that huge pendulum swing that happened in the movement and wellness and fitness world , it's almost as though there was just such an opening of people who are willing to work online and , although it might not be the first choice of many people , if they have the option , I think as a studio offering that as an option is kind of a

no-brainer .

Is you have a revenue target that you are trying to achieve and digital is just one of those tools in your toolbox that you can use to scale . It doesn't mean it's right for you , doesn't mean it has to be for you , but how could you use digital to grow and scale faster ?

And even if that's not a video library , we see owners doing digital tours at the studio , stretching , pull down like Instagram reels . I mean there's so many ways that digital can be utilized beyond just . Oh no , I need to record a hundred million classes for a video library .

I think you know and you know we , I think you know that the studio management software or the wellness business software that you're using is such a fundamental piece of how your business can scale . You know , without the right tools it's really really hard to make that , you know , to really really see growth .

And often I , every now and every now and again , you know I do get people pushing back and saying , yeah , but it's much cheaper if I just do this tool over here and then that's tool over there , and if I do this and it's like , yeah , but all of those have a ceiling to the scale .

You know , but when you are willing to bring in a tool that does a lot of things and it gives you more tools to grow , then you know there's only more for you in the future . You know it's sort of an abundance mindset . I like to say is what it's all about , right .

You need to take payments on schedule , so you can't I mean , you could use a pen and paper we have people that do but I think we're in an era now of most people wanting to have online booking , so we've kind of passed that mark in terms of things . And so what is an extra 30 , 40 bucks a month ?

The biggest cost to a studio are actually overhead and staffing , and so when you look at the unit economics of a business , um , the place to cut normally isn't technology . It's actually one of the last places you're going to cut because it's actually such a small subset .

When you look at your P&L and I think a lot of owners miss that mark because it is the biggest cost that they know that they can control very quickly it's very hard to control just cutting your staff's salary half or getting new rent . The other thing I heard that I thought was amazing was this idea of I kind of like how you said abundance mindset .

I was like , instead of thinking about how to cut , cut and cut , what if I thought about how to grow , grow and grow ? Because the more you cut , the worse things get .

It's like the less you start spending on marketing and sales and where your revenue goes down , and then you have to cut and then you have to cut , and so businesses actually do more poorly in revenues .

If you're cutting , cutting , cutting , as opposed to actually let me invest for that next piece of revenue and if I grow , I'm actually going to have more money which is going to offset all those costs than if I was cutting everything , and then my business is naturally going to zero .

You come across very often thinking about okay , looking at all of these expenses , which of these are driving growth in my business and in which are not , or which are nice to have Right ?

And you know , like you said , it's it's about what , when you can , can identify the tools and assets you have in your business that actually are going to lead to your growth . Those are the ones you want to double down on and really take the time to invest in , right .

So , on that note , you know , one of the things that I think is so important and I know this is kind of at the heart of Archetta which is the usability of the platform and making sure that it is supportive for studio owners and I , having been inside the platform and played around with it and I've been looking at your new reports and all of the great stuff

that you're rolling out and I've been looking at your new reports and all of the great stuff that you're rolling out .

One's the consumer facing side , so how our consumer is booking , buying , purchasing , interacting and then one is what's helping you as an owner and I always do make the argument like a customer comes first and so it's actually more important . I love your cutted ass word .

We'll get into that but actually what's more important than your experience is your customer's experience , because they're your customer at the end of the day . What they say is right , and if they have challenges booking classes , getting on your website , downloading an app the whole thing is crashing .

They're never going to A , get into class and B return and have the level of experience that matches the dollar amount you want to charge for class right Before they get into the field premium , and that starts the second they land on your website

. And so I think Arquetta has spent so much time looking at every single consumer facing , experiencing and thinking how do we break barriers , how do we do things nobody else has done before ? A really good example of this is our branded apps . Why is it 10 million clicks to get into an app ? Why is every single app just a template of another app ?

Shouldn't your app be different in you ? What if you had promo cards on your app ? So when you first download it , there's something to engage them to make their first booking . Apple Pay , google Pay everything is touch payments , duh . These are things we've learned from other industries .

Again , wellness is a little bit behind , and that's okay , but your consumer experience has to be easy Less clicks to book , totally branded your way , because fitness and wellness , if it feels expensive , needs to be non-negotiables .

But a lot of people say , oh , it's okay , I'll pay for the free software or the software that's built for restaurants and use that for fitness , and then your customers get lost and one last customer isn't worth it , in my opinion , fitness . And then your customers get lost and one last customer isn't worth it . In my opinion .

From the business owner standpoint , the things that I find are important to a business owner is quickly being able to find the things you need to find and do the things that you need to do . I often hear owners say well , somebody told me I need to do this in my dashboard , or I need to do something this way because I've done it this many years .

This in my dashboard , or I need to do something this way because I've done it this many years . And what we really optimize for is how do we make the things that you do all the time really easy ? Because those are the things that are going to help you scale as an owner , not the one random promotion that you're going to do once a month .

That has 20 million different workarounds . Let's focus on the daily tasks , things that we've done in our cut-out . To make those easy is we have really easy search and navigation . Checking someone in is a breeze and then looking at and managing accounts and marketing , managing your leads , looking at everybody in every single stage . These are things you do a lot .

So those are the things we make really easy , not the thing that you probably do once a year .

You want to be able to make sure that you're seeing a lot of the trends in your business , that you're able to really access the right data and then also be able to see and it's visually it's kind of appealing and easy to navigate , because you , you want to be able to kind of find that data and that information really really quickly .

And that's , you know we're all busy , everyone's wearing a thousand different hats . There's a you kind of want to just go figure out like where's that client gone , or what was the last time they came in again , or who hasn't paid again , or all of that . And this is you know , you want to be able to get into into all that information really quickly .

So , yeah , it's a critical and I think you know it's so funny because I have , you know , I've been in this industry for since 2013 , supporting studio owners and in the software , since I mean long time before that and , and you know now you know I being familiar with lots of different types of software that's out there , you know there is , it is .

staff check people in to watching how he navigated the dashboard and without people even telling you what they need , you start to watch the things they're doing all the time . You start to watch the things that they're interested in .

You start to watch the things that they're interested in and , yeah , and I grossly just love making the interfaces clean and beautiful and watching the magic moment when they're like wait , that thing does that and the light on their face is I love it . But yes , it is much more complicated than meets the eye , so maybe I don't envy myself .

How do you stay connected to your clients and have that balance of being in their world without being too much , and the trends and the needs is evolving , and I think in this space it's really accelerated in the last couple of years

. Is that what you are finding also ?

I spent eight to 10 hours plus of my day in this industry , not only because it's my job but because I'm just obsessed with this industry . And so what that looks like is I'm taking four or five days a week at different studios . Most boutique studio owners might only take it their competition or they might only take studio owner down the road .

I'm taking it everyone from the big box franchise to a personal trainer , to a gym , to working out on seeing what Peloton is innovating on , and so that kind of gives me one lens of perspective me as a consumer . So when I'm booking , when I'm in the facility , how are they managing the sales process ? Did they complicate ?

They compliment my t-shirt , what marketing drip did I get after that ? I'm kind of learning those nuances as I go through my own journey as a consumer . And then the second piece is I spend again all my days talking to owners and that's on phone calls like this , that is , showing them the software , seeing where their eyes light up .

That's doing support , and success calls figuring out where they're getting lost . But most importantly is I'm on text threads with owners . These people are my friends .

The things that these people are asking for , these things that people are telling me , are things that I can now share with the industry , and I think the most important lens that I'm able to have is I see the things people are struggling with . Oftentimes people don't want to share their challenges . What's going wrong .

Instagram is just such a highlight reel , and I think that I've been able to build a relationship with owners in the sense of telling them that my life's not perfect as a founder . It's totally not . It's a different mess every day .

And so we're able to relate on that owner-to-owner relationship , where then I can actually hear those struggles and not only share them with other owners to help them all out . Hear those struggles and not only share them with other owners to help them all out , but actually think about solving them . And so I'm just like , so involved in this industry 25-7 .

It helps me say , hey , I'm hearing this over here from our owners , I'm actually seeing this in industry . What if we spent a little bit more time going after the thing where I think the industry is going .

I might be wrong , but I'm starting to get a pulse that this is the case , and I don't expect other owners to do that because they don't have time for that . Actually they should be . So my customer is a studio owner . Right , I need to think about everything before they think of it .

I was watching a TV show about an executive assistant and she was like best executive assistant , they anticipate . They know their boss needs the cup of coffee before they need it . My job is to anticipate a studio owner . Studio owner's job isn't to anticipate themselves .

Their job is to anticipate their client , and so I don't expect a new nerd to at all have the same ones as I do .

So like hey , here's what we're thinking about right now and like just I'm just going to plant the seed and then here's , understand , I can really see where you're coming from . So where do you say , like , what are you most focused on at Arcata ?

You know , I would say , you know , for Q4 and in terms of being able to , you know , build out focus , like , where do you see , perhaps , opportunities for studio owners to really continue to grow in their businesses with your software ?

If I had this feature , if I did this thing , if I looked like an owner to the right of me , then my studio would be successful .

And how do you rewire the brain to say hey , instead of what somebody else is telling me to the left and someone else is telling me to the right , how do I actually use all the information in the world around me to make my own decision ? And that's really , really hard . I mean , that is the hardest thing

to do . I was in Y Combinator , which is essentially like a startup bootcamp , very similar to what I know a lot of your studio owners do . They get in roundtables , they talk about things and they say comparison is the thief of joy and it's just so true .

I would be sitting there with some of these startup owners and they'd be telling me about this growth and that customer and this marketing thing . I'd be sitting there taking notes , being like I'm literally 20 chapters behind , but then I'd forget , like wait , I don't have that overhead . My business and economics are different .

I started a different number of years ago and so actually , instead of doing what the studio to the right is doing , I need to be doing what I'm doing . But owners can't do that unless they start monitoring their baseline , and so I hear every single owner say my number one goal for 2024 , 2025 is to grow membership . But why ?

What if your number one goal was to increase profits ? What if your number one goal was to have more nights of sleep so that you can spend time with your kids ? But again , I think there's this thing everyone hears I need to do X , y , z . So what we're thinking about in the software a lot is maybe your KPI .

We do a really good job of showing memberships leads . Every software should do that but how do you actually optimize for what your unique KPI is for you ?

And you're starting to see little blends of that in our product , like customizing your own reports , building your own charts , looking at what your cogs are as a studio , and so what I'm most excited for in the next quarter is , again how do you cater to an owner's KPIs that are different than some other owner's KPIs , because not everybody's optimizing for net new

members who would have thought it ? You heard it here first , I know Well , yes .

It's sort of like I feel bad that I should want to take time off because I feel like I just should be focused on just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger .

And I've had feedback for a number of years of like people who are like someone's come to me and they say to me like I don't want to grow an empire , I don't want 17 different locations , I want to make my business serve my clients , I want to be and have an impact . I want to teach my clients , I love them and I want this to be my life .

I want this to be a way of life for me that it's going to bring me a really lovely income but it's also not going to take me away from my kids and the vacations I want to take with my kids and that I'm going to miss picking them up from school and I'm not going to miss giving them breakfast in the morning because I'm teaching , right , that I have

flexibility in my life . And for so many of the studio owners that I work with , when we go to put together their KPIs and their goals each quarter and each year , it's not just about the revenue number . In fact , I give like a huge part of our planning process involves thinking about okay , what is it that you want for your life ?

Because your business is a big part of that and you can't put it in a vacuum because it does impact whatever else you have going on . And so it's such , it's so true , like it's not . You know , there are definitely , you know , a lot of people who are very , very focused on growth , and growth is important , and I I support all of my studio owners .

I take it as for granted that that's what they're looking for , but that might not be the number one priority at all times , because life is a series of seasons and not every season is designed for growth right .

It is called brick and mortar , and so , yeah , unless you're starting to do a digital library or retreats or think about scaling beyond the four walls , you will come to a place where your business revenue will plateau , and the only way to scale that is to start reinvesting in the business . And so I think the biggest misconception is I want to save .

I hear this all the time they go I want to save money and grow . The two are counterintuitive . We can either boss to your business and make it more efficient , or we can go into scaling mode , and that does mean hiring , spending , growing , and that is fine . But doing both doesn't work .

You can't cut all your costs of a business and hope that the numbers will go up . And I love this KPI of spending time with family . I think people forget that time is money and we only have time in our lives , and so being able to give an owner back a few hours a month for us is a win , and it's such a big win that's overlooked .

The last thing I think we haven't talked about is what is an owner's long-term vision , would they ? And there's a few different exit paths , and I know owners don't like to talk about exiting because that's scary I mean leaving this business you've built , but truly , do you want to sell ?

Do you want to scale multiple locations or the third , which I think is most of us ? I just want to enjoy my work , and enjoying my work means that I've built a sustainable business where I'm not up at all hours in the night talking to customers and manually sending emails .

Each of those three paths is equally beautiful , but the KPIs you optimize for is significantly different depending on which path you go for .

Just like KPIs , I love to track my metrics and make sure that I'm sleeping enough every night and I just notice I'm a better human and I'm more productive when I sleep . And then the other thing I do , which I hope everyone else is doing this podcast is I just love to move .

I got into this business because there's nothing more incredible than moving my body .

I took yesterday one of someone I taught with just opened her first studio in LA and it was like the most life-changing experience to watch someone that I used to take all the time with and we worked together and now opened her own facility and they were doing some somatic work with yoga . And have you done some somatic work before ? It's like gosh it is .

I'll have to send you some stuff offline about it and it was one of my first times doing and I've done it a few times . It is just oftentimes we think workout means like move , move , move oh like the soma training . Like I know , guys , guys , I have done yes , yes , and it was just beautiful .

And so , 45 minutes to an hour , every single day I'm moving and I don't discriminate . I love cardio , I love strength training , I love Pilates . I like to say I'm in my Pilates girl era because I just there's just so much that I have to learn in it . So that's , that's my new modality .

Um , and then my last little like hot tip that I've done that has totally changed my game is , before I go to bed , I open up my Gmail , I open up a new email and I email myself my to-do list , and it could be anything I have to do tomorrow . It could be like catch up with a friend .

It could be having an extra glass of water I have to call the DMV this week . Who would have thought that's gonna be a mess ? A glass of water I have to call the DMV this week . Who would have thought that's going to be a mess ? But like , here are all the things I might think about before I go to bed .

Wow , it has changed my ability to go to sleep , because oftentimes before I go to bed , I'm thinking about what I have to do tomorrow , or I'm problem solving , and if it's on a notepad , then those problems can wait until tomorrow , and so that's been like my biggest hack I've discovered in the past few weeks .

Hop in , play around , see which plans you'd like . We actually offer twice a week webinars that you can learn about the software and set it up with someone .

If you are looking for a guided tour or you own a brick and mortar studio or multiple locations , you'll go to the book a tour button on our website that will put you on a call with someone just like me . Fun fact , everyone on the team that is offering these tours comes from the industry .

So you're actually talking to owners , managers , instructors , sharing about the product . We'll hop on , see what your goals are . And then I always like to say hopping on a calls for us is like matchmaking . Our goal is to listen to what you need and find a product that serves you the best .

It's been really a great conversation , so thank you .

business . If you really loved what you heard today , I would absolutely love it if you could take a quick minute , go to wherever you're listening to this and rate and review this podcast .

It would mean so much to me and would help to get it out into our community so that more teachers and studio owners , just like you , can feel encouraged and supported on their journey in our industry . Did you love this episode and want more ? Head to spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business .

And before you go , one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do , only your way . So whatever it is that you want to do , create or offer , you've got this . Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day .