Yes You Can

Playlists don't lead to waitlists (and actually does)

• Hannah Pratt

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*INSTRUCTOR MAGIC IS NOW OPEN - USE code YESYOUCAN to get $50 off and enroll today!* 

This real-talk episode might just be the thing you need to:

  • Quit looking to SoundCloud for the *perfect* playlist 
  • Spending hours scouring through your daily mixes
  • Wondering what it will take to create a passionate community and raving following

    Basically... if you're ready to transform your fitness classes and take your coaching career to the next level, I share what ACTUALLY leads to consistently waitlisted classes.

     I'll debunk the myth that great playlists are the secret to success and reveal the true keys to creating compelling class experiences—authentic motivation, effective communication, and vibrant energy.

    Join me as I share personal insights from my journey and break down the five keys to fitness instructor mastery, offering a sneak peek into the course content packed with video lessons and motivational tools that will revolutionize the way you connect with and inspire your participants.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to enhance your skills, I'll guide you on how to shift your energy towards impactful strategies that drive real results and make a lasting difference in your clients' lives. 

Want to level up in 2025? My Black Friday sale is on now for ALL courses and programs with 25% off! Use code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the yes you Can podcast, a soft place to land for fit pros and aspiring entrepreneurs looking for a motivational cheerleader who's been through it all and believes your best life is about being brave and tapping into your magic.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Hannah Pratt, an online coach and vulnerability queen. I'm here ready to share my experiences through grief, life and finding my place on the podium to help you level up. So grab a latte and a notebook and get ready to be inspired through the yes you Can podcast. Hey, friends, welcome to another episode. I am so excited to have this episode play for you, I guess, be published because the doors to Instructor Magic are now open. So if you're new here, welcome.

Speaker 1:

I am the creator of Instructor Magic, which is a six-week online course and community for fit pros, coaches, instructors, studio owners and aspiring fit pros, all with the purpose of leveling up, filling classes and changing lives through group fitness. And we're in round 11, which starts next week on June 11. Well, a very appropriate I think. I just realized that those two numbers lined up, which is hilarious to me, and we are having our first Q&A call together then. So if you are curious, head to the link in the show notes. There is a special discount code for podcast listeners to join, and it is a transformative course that I'm so honored to have created three years ago and have had more than 350 instructors join. It is truly one of my favorite things to be able to mentor others, and we're going to talk about that today because professional development is something that I thought was missing from the group fitness coaching space. I saw a huge lack of development offered to instructors beyond some really great experiences offered by their own studios, but people who wanted to go deeper, beyond what they were learning in their own communities Maybe didn't have the means to travel and take classes abroad, and we're looking for more tactical, like literally, how do you do this, versus just observing and trying to copy. What does an actual step-by-step process look like to be able to create energy in classes? How does it like? How do you package presence and confidence and create energy in a way that's not really vague and, like you know, a theory-based thing, and so I'm proud that Instructor Magic has more than 81 video lessons, including, if you join using the special code in the podcast notes, you have the opportunity to get the Choreography Vault, which is also another 10 video add-on that shows you exactly how to deliver choreo it's me on the bike, actually showing, talking, delivering, and so it's really, really tactical. It's like, literally, let's put this in practice and level up immediately. And that's some of the things I'm the most proud of is seeing testimonials and screenshots from people who have taken this course and really used it to create consistently wait listed classes.

Speaker 1:

Now we're going to talk about wait list today in the context of what I see folks maybe spending too much time on thinking that it's going to lead to a wait list of class, and I've said it before, but if you're newish here, this is going to be new for you, and if you're not, this is going to be a reminder. Playlists do not lead to wait lists. Let's roll that back. Playlists do not lead to wait lists. Now you're like Hannah, you share playlists. That's how I got on your email list. That's how I started following you. Yes, absolutely. I share playlists and I share tracks and I share remixes and I share links, because I know that that's what people feel like they need for inspiration, and I'm the same. I love a new track to get me inspired, but when we're talking about consistently waitlisted classes, that a playlist or a song is a small small tactic with an entire toolbox that you have to create experiences. And this is speaking from experience, my own experience of being like, if like. Coming from a DJ background, I thought that I was going to get people in to my classes and signing up because of the songs I played. And, yeah, I'll go to see a certain instructor who maybe plays throwback hip hop or like hip hop as a genre. But, believe you me, if an instructor made me feel some of the things I'm going to talk about in today's episode and they played a genre of music that I was less excited about, I would still go to that instructor or that coach's classes way more than somebody who simply played the music I liked. So this whole concept of playlists don't lead to waitlists is based on my own experience of figuring out the recipe of what does lead to a waitlist. The five keys to fitness instructor mastery, which is the title of my webinar you can see the link to that episode in the show notes, where I have an audio recording of that free webinar is also the five pillars of what I teach inside.

Speaker 1:

Instructor Magic your words on fire and inspire motivate without manipulating people's emotions Connect super deeply with the people in the room through words that feel authentic to you and aren't just throwaway phrases or quotes that you've heard but maybe don't understand. Or maybe you've heard somebody else say something, or maybe you say things like anything you want you can have. Or maybe you've heard somebody else say something, or maybe you say things like anything you want you can have. You know the stuff that feels really surface level and doesn't hit deep, and you can't always recall exactly what an instructor said, maybe, or a coach, but you know the way they put these words together. Just connected to you. It's almost like they hit you in the chest in the middle of a track. So motivation is a huge module.

Speaker 1:

I give away 105 of my best motivational tracks in a playlist, all with correlating BPMs, choreography, themes and words I would use to describe these songs and how I would motivate through all of them. There's also, of course, the better part, where I literally lead you through in video lessons how to template motivation, when to start it, in the entire ride, not just in this one song, and so forth. I use different examples of how to create a speech, if you will, how to actually have something that happened in the class, inspire you in a way that you can reflect it back with something you were going into the class with as a particular theme or an idea, and then we move from motivation to musicality. So not just how to put a playlist together, but actually how to do something that I call energetic profiling. Now, energetic profiling is going beyond BPMs. You might have a particular playlist template you need to use for your studio and that's totally fine. I'm not trying to go like take that away and say you need to start with a 64 climb. It is using the energy of a track to create the energy you want and putting and stacking them together, compounding them, so you have this climactic moment that everybody knows is coming and can feel the energy building. So you're not going from zero to 100 and expecting people to match this beat drop when you haven't actually built the energy of the class.

Speaker 1:

This is where I bring in my DJ background, because I used to be responsible for filling dance floors and when you were the person who was opening for the headliner and you're starting at nine o'clock, I really had to learn super quickly how to create energy and build it slowly so I didn't lose people by dropping a banger at like 10 o'clock when they're not quite there yet. That's the equivalent of having track 10 or 12 be track 1 or 3 in your playlist. So stacking songs in a way that actually makes sense energetically. So musicality is beyond playlisting. It is the entire, what people walk into when they walk into your room. It is what they leave with. How do you send people home with a really effective stretch, all of those things. So so far, we have things that are going to give you a wait list stacked on top, which is motivation and musicality.

Speaker 1:

Now, coaching and cuing this is what will set people apart immediately. When I review videos and something I do inside Instructor Magic. When I review videos and I something I do inside instructor magic when I review videos of you teaching I can pretty much immediately tell who might be a little greener on the podium and who is at a more advanced level, based on coaching and queuing. I've done a ton of training groups with instructors. I've written training manuals, I've given feedback, I've taken people through 12 weeks of training on the bike and one thing I've noticed is there is a difference between cueing effectively and being able to deliver advanced choreography, and that comes from your ability to coach. Can you coach to a new rider, a brand new rider, first time rider and somebody who just celebrated 1200 rides? Can you make sure that the person who's celebrating 1200 rides feels like they are being challenged just as much as that person who was having a first time ride? How do you deliver choreography in a way that makes sense to people who learn differently? So somebody who learns by hearing a metaphor or visually seeing something, versus somebody who needs somebody to like something that they can tactically understand when you're delivering a different way of sharing how it should feel in your body or how it should, or like what it should feel like on the dial, versus 10% more, one more turn, but like actually going deeper with that, so they really understand at what capacity they should be riding to, beyond a tempo and resistance correlation.

Speaker 1:

I teach college classes, so I teach students. I'm not a professor, I'm an instructor at a college in a two-year program that is very rigorous and it is full-time, and so I teach learners. I have 75 students per year and I need to know how do people learn differently so that I can effectively teach a curriculum. It's the exact same thing in a fitness class, except I only have you for 45 minutes and you were working really hard and you were sweating and your mind might be like on the rest of your day and I'm asking you to focus, focus, focus on this. One task at a time, working to your capacity. Asking you to focus, focus, focus on this one task at a time, working to your capacity.

Speaker 1:

I need to know how to deliver choreography and coach to people who hear me differently, who have different levels of experience, and to be able to keep them together. So when you see the result of really effective coaching, everybody is together in one like in sync moment. It is beautiful and you'll see that with some of the guest masterclass coaches I have inside Instructor Magic, people like Christina Giroux, who was a guest masterclass instructor for us in 2021 and has been on my podcast, rowan Aida, who is the creator of elevate by Rowan we talk she's. Her masterclass is available at any time. So when you join instructor magic, you get access to all of this vault of masterclasses, of videos from previous coaches, which is such a bonus Like honestly, it's worth joining just for that alone because it's like this vault of like 15 different videos you can go and watch that are 60 minutes each and see how they talk about coaching room leadership, advanced choreography yeah, we had Felice Purpleheart, felice Paris, on Instagram do advanced choreography and she has this thing called the burger method, which is so good. She's the house co creator of House of Ride the burger method, which is so good. She's the house co-creator of house of ride. We had Harry French do a whole masterclass on resistance, which is amazing, and so if you are interested in any of these topics, you should definitely be joining. Um, but so coaching and queuing can you do that really effectively? So, musicality, motivation, coaching. Now moving on to advanced choreography, this is something you're going to need to have all of that, all of that amazing coaching ability to do for sure, and it's something that we discuss and a lot of people want to know more about.

Speaker 1:

And then we talk about mastering your domain. So the first module is actually mastering your domain, part one, and we mastering your domain part two is about energy, presence and really leadership of your entire space. But we move into things like talking about ascending into a lead instructor role. How do you become a leader within your studio? How do you navigate challenging relationships with others? Maybe your team feels competitive, maybe the studio owner doesn't see you, it doesn't recognize your strengths, maybe you want to create community and that's your biggest goal is creating this like passionate following. So mastering your domain is all about what's happening in the room and then also what's happening out of the room, and it's broken up into two different huge modules and it can be a little harder to explain, but it is everybody's favorite module. It's actually unbelievable when they're like, wow, the energy in my class has just exploded because of Mastering your Domain, part one. And then the final, final module and the final key is marketing. So when we think about playlists, only to waitlists, what does is people seeing and getting excited about your classes as if it's an event.

Speaker 1:

So we talk about how to market yourself, how to build a personal brand using social media, using different tactics. I have developed as a marketing instructor, as somebody who has three university degrees in marketing, who teaches marketing courses, quite literally, marketing data and analytics and public relations and advanced media strategy in college. So I bring all of these things along with having built my own following on social media at 17.8 thousand followers on Instagram or whatever, creating content. So it doesn't feel like you're just self-promotion, self-promotion, self-promotion, but actually delivering like a tidbit of what it feels like to be in your class. How do you feel authentic and funny and warm and creating connection with people on social media or through events or in the public Generally? How do you talk about yourself as an instructor to people who don't know what group fitness is? How do you promote with people who have no idea what it is? We go through literally how to create amazing reels that could go viral, should you want to go viral, we have ads, are all those types of questions? Better angles for filming, better camera settings for filming, when to film, how to repurpose content. All of the things are in marketing, because if nobody knows how amazing you are, you can't impact more lives. So these are all of the five keys of things I highly encourage you to focus on.

Speaker 1:

Whether you decide to join Start to Magic or not, whether you decide to join the community or not, or get the choreography vault or anything, these things are so much more important than simply finding new music, and I know there's people listening out there who are like I'm spending two hours on my playlist. I spend probably 10 minutes on my playlist and my classes are almost always full. You know there's a there's. There's a reason for that and I can tell you that while I share my playlists with my class, they're often not I have to know what song that was. They're often telling me other things like I know this is your job, but you just made me absolutely ball in this class because I needed this release so badly. They're not asking me hey, what was track six? They're saying I just want to let you know that this class is so important to me. It's what I look forward to all week. So if you want feedback like that, if you're curious about how to really drive your purpose and your passion and feel like you're making an impact on everybody in that room, send me a DM.

Speaker 1:

Head to the instructor magic page. You can see more about it. If it's right for you, it's right for anybody who wants to level up. It doesn't matter if you've been teaching for six months or 10 years. I've had instructors through literally every gamut. Within that, I've had many studio owners who have joined. So I am here for you in your development and I want to help you. But it starts with realizing that there are so many more tools than simply putting 10 songs together and finding new music and if you're spending two hours on your playlist and you're not seeing the result within people showing up, I want to help you figure out why and how we can adjust where you put your energy so that your skill develops, alongside that passion that you're already showing, that commitment that you're already showing.

Speaker 1:

I could tell you a million stories of instructors who have done this. Jeanette was in round one of Instructor Magic, had multiple rejections at different studios and we worked together and I said I don't know you might. I can't say if you're ready, ready for instructor magic, but I do want to know that I want to help you and be alongside you in this journey. Through that, she got an audition at cycle bar, secured a teaching spot. She's now a lead instructor and is aspiring to be on their virtual program. She's the lead instructor at her studio and this happened in two years.

Speaker 1:

Like that is so amazing to me. I have the hugest smile on my face and I remember the DM she sent me was because she wanted to learn how to motivate and she was telling me that she almost stopped her instructor journey after having this experience and I just was. So it's just so like my heart just went out to her so big and I wanted to to see her succeed. And I I have, um, and there's so many other studios like that, spencer from, or stories like that, spencer from Denver, who was also trying to figure out where to land studio wise, and now has this amazing, amazing presence on social media welcoming and like, creating the most inclusive space. Um, just like and has found a different studio after being at one that wasn't quite right and just finding his like, like his home is just so wonderful. Um. There's others, like we had nicole from soul cycle last year, who had started at soul cycle, taking a bit of a hiatus, come back and was really looking to develop confidence and marketing help. Or larie, who just started her own hot girl spin club and was already doing really well in filling classes but wanted help with creating this brand and and what's next for her. And so the level of people within the group totally range and there's hundreds and hundreds of them. So if this is at all resonating, I want to encourage you to join so that you can get in that Q&A and we can connect sooner. The link is in the show notes. That is it for today. I would so appreciate a rating and review. If you found this at all powerful or like holy shit, she's talking to me shoot me a DM on Instagram. I really want to hear from you and that's it, friends. I hope to see you inside.

Speaker 1:

Instructor Magic that's my focus right now. Of course, if you are an aspiring instructor, you can join Podium Prep, which is my intro course for newer instructors or people who want to become an instructor, and it's the entire training manual of the foundations, the Choreography Vault. You can grab it anytime as well, or you can package that and get the bundle, where the choreography vault is a small add-on to instruct magic and have a great weekend. I'm in arizona this weekend. I'm so, so excited for my friend julia's bachelorette. I hope to find uh, to get to a spin class or two out there as well. It's my second time in phoenix, so if you're hearing this and it's the weekend of June 7th and you're in Arizona, shoot me a DM. I'd love to run into you. Okay, thanks, friends. Have a great day and remember yes you can. Thanks for listening all the way to the end of the yes you Can podcast, no-transcript and motivation in their lives. Thanks so much, friends, and have a great day.