Episode 317: What the Last 8 Months After Selling My Studio Have Really Looked Like

What really happens after you sell your studio? In this candid episode of Female emPOWERed, I share the truth about the first 8 months post-exit from Pilates in the Grove—everything from the unexpected identity shift and grief, to the freedom, pride, and the systems that made a sellable, scalable business possible.

If you’re a Pilates, PT, yoga, or boutique fitness owner who wants to stop being the overworked operator and start leading from the front, this one’s for you. I break down the mindset, structure, and systems that let your business run without you, plus what I’m building next with Fit Biz Accelerator to help you do the same in 2026 and beyond.

In this video you’ll learn:

• What no one tells you about selling a business: the emotional hangover & identity shift
• Why spaciousness (time to think) is a business strategy—not a luxury
• How to design a profitable, predictable, sellable studio with the right systems
• The difference between being an operator vs. a CEO/leader
• How I’m helping women owners build businesses that don’t depend on them (Fit Biz Accelerator)

Chapters

00:00 Intro & why I’m sharing this now
 02:18 The morning after the sale: identity, grief, and “no one needs me”
 06:45 Seeing the rebrand: pride, letting go, and nervous system reset
 11:20 What made my studio sellable: systems, team, and predictable profit
 15:52 Choices the sale created (and why that matters more than a headline number)
 20:30 You can sell for high six to low seven figures—here’s the real path
24:10 Why spaciousness is strategy (you can’t scale with a 5-figure mindset)
28:05 Fit Biz Accelerator: structure → systems → strategy → sustainability
33:40 Who it’s for, how it works, and how to join
36:10 Final reminder: new results require new decisions

Work with me

👉 Fit Biz Accelerator (limited cohort): weekly coaching + live implementation + systems that make your studio run without you. Join the waitlist: christagurka.com/accelerator
👉 Community membership & resources: christagurka.com

Connect

IG: @ChristaGurka
Podcast: Female emPOWERed
Site: christagurka.com

Mentioned

• My sale of Pilates in the Grove (multi-seven-figure studio → sellable asset)
• Why most owners can sell for high 6–low 7 figures with the right prep
• The 4S Framework: Structure → Systems → Strategy → Sustainability

Keywords (SEO)

sell a pilates studio, sell a wellness business, boutique fitness business coach, women in business podcast, post-exit identity shift, how to build a sellable business, systems and processes for studios, fitness studio operations, how to stop being the bottleneck, studio owner coaching, pilates business mentor, private pay PT business tips, yoga studio growth, 2026 business planning

Hashtags

#FemaleEmPOWERed #BoutiqueFitness #PilatesBusiness #WomenInBusiness #StudioOwner #SellableBusiness #BusinessSystems #FitBizAccelerator #ChristaGurka

Transcript

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies: 0:54

Hey there everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Female Empowered Podcast. I'm your host Christa Gurka, and today's episode is what has transpired since I sold my studios, Pilates in the Grove eight months ago. So. Crazy enough, I can't believe so much time has passed. It's gone by so fast. But it's been eight months. Eight months since I sold my studios. And I wanted to share a little bit about the truth of what it's actually been like since the sale. So,'cause whether you want to sell one day, you wanna scale back eventually, or just stop being the bottleneck in your business. Stop being the overworked operator. The lessons that I've learned in the process leading up to selling my business and on the backend since I've sold, I think they matter no matter where you are in your business journey. So it's been a rollercoaster. It's been, I'm still eternally grateful and satisfied and super happy, but it's, there was also a lot of grief. There was a little bit of chaos. I've had all of the feelings, all of the motions, and I wanted to share that today. And also talk, talk to you a little bit about what's on the horizon for fitness strategies, which is my, mentoring and consulting program in 2026 and beyond. Really feels different than you actually expect it to feel. You imagine, or I can say, I imagine, but I, it's almost like the same way we imagine all the freedom we'll have when we start our own business and then we actually do it and we're like, wait, I'm working way more than I did before when I worked for someone else. So you imagine breathing room, you imagine this feeling of. just being able to do whatever you want. Sleeping in, going in the gym, kicking it up at the beach. But what you don't expect is this serious identity shift, right? The first morning, waking up the next day where it's like, they're not gonna call me. My phone is not gonna ring because of a work emergency. It is a. If I'm being honest and real, it's really about too, like nobody needs me anymore. Nobody is here. And a lot of us, owners, especially women, whether we believe it or not, we kinda lean into this identity of people need us. People depend on us. People rely on us. We are putting out fires and all this stuff, but some of us really. Thrive off of that, off of being needed, off of being the person driving the ship. And then when no one is looking to you for that guidance, for that support, it is sometimes a surprising feeling of discomfort. So when you go from 15, 16, 17, 20 years of. Being in a hyper vigilance operator mode, hyper responsibility, and then the next day is free time. That shift from being needed daily to not being needed is huge. It really takes a lot of time to settle into. there were definitely a lot of weird feelings, especially the first few times I went back into the studio. It just knowing that it's not. Mine anymore and it belonged to someone else. It was bizarre. I mean, the first staff meeting that I took part in where I sat in the back and I was not leaving the meeting, I was there as a transition to introduce the new team members. It was really bizarre. I gotta say. It was, it was bizarre. Since then, I'm really excited for the future of Pilates in the Grove. They've got some really exciting things going on. they did a, a full, rebranding, which was to be expected. It's, it was definitely a little. Tough in terms of, something that I designed with, with, and if any of you people know me, if you follow me for a while, every single thing I do is very intentional from the colors that I picked to the logo, to the graphics, to the mission statement. very intentional with a lot of thought that went in behind it. And so, seeing the rebrand, which looks beautiful by the way, and seeing the pictures. Removed from the walls of the studio and it's painted. It all looks incredible. It really does. It looks incredible and I'm very happy for them and the brand and the team and what's to come in the future. It definitely, I'm not gonna lie, there's a little bit of a, a little bit of a knee jerk reaction when it's something you built, I guess. Excuse me. I could maybe equate it to, if you built a house and you lived in it with your family most of your childhood, and you sold it, and then you came and somebody completely redid it, they, took, maybe they tore down that big, beautiful tree that used to swing from when you were little or. The whole front yard looks different. it's, it's a little bit like that, not, you were ready to let go of that home, but it's definitely different when you drive by and it looks completely different than when you owned it. So there is definitely a nervous system reset that has to happen a, a new normal. So to speak. So one of the things that I would, and I do recommend to, especially the women that I'm working with who are in the process of trying to sell their business in the next, 18 to 24 months, the biggest thing that I tell them is, you have to be ready for this sale. You don't have to wait either until you're ready to sell. you can start creating space now. In the present so that your business stops depending on you, and you start to get a little bit of that freedom, you start to pull away from that constant presence and dependence on you to drive the business forward. the other thing I will tell people is there is definitely a grieving process. It was a hundred percent the right decision for me. It was a thousand percent the right time to do it. I am very excited about everything that happened and at the same time. I did grieve it a little bit for sure. for eight, 15 years at Pilates in the Grove, and then 18 from when I started my business. That was my identity for every day through, 24 7, 365 days. And when it wasn't anymore, the day that the wire came through, when I did actually sell, and the wire came through and all the papers were signed, I was alone in my office. I was alone at home. Nobody was here, the team wasn't here. there was no. Popping bottles. There was no champagne. There was no, no one pouring Gatorade over my head. So it's definitely just a different, a unique feeling. And there was a little bit of grieving. I definitely cried a little bit. the emotional hangover after the deal closed was a. Real, and it was definitely no joke. There was a lot of missing my team, certainly missing my clients, missing the routines, missing the interactions, the day-to-day interactions. really, anytime you. Level up. Anytime you, you make a, a level up in your business or in a career, whether it's stepping back from teaching or hiring stepping into more leadership roles, raising prices, expanding, going, going smaller, right? You grieve the old version of you. It's part of your growth. It really is. So, grief is a normal. Process when you shed an identity that you've held for over a decade. and anyone that says, It's just a business. It's not, your baby has never really started their own business from the ground up and says they just haven't, they don't understand that it is like a baby. I've said this many times before that it felt like I was dropping another kid off at college and they were spreading their wings and no longer needed me no longer called, needed to call home all the time. So it's definitely a shedding of your identity and the business. Hopefully the business will continue to grow without me, and that's a good thing. Releasing control is the ultimate test of your systems, of your leadership, of your process, right? That to me is what is ultimately important, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to sell because I just didn't have it in me. Whether that was the motivation, the inspiration, and to be honest, the skillset to continue to drive the business forward and, and I wanted to. Leave a space, a legacy, and bring in a buyer that was gonna continue to allow upward trajectory for my team and continue to grow in a space that I just didn't have it in me to do anymore. Which is again, one of the reasons that I knew it was time for me to go and move on, and the people I sold it to are. Continuing, the original vision and mission and are going to make it even bigger and better, and which will allow Pilates in the grove to continue to have more impact on the clients. It helps and on the staff, and have more. hopefully career opportunities and more people that can come and teach there and, and live out the vision that is Pilates in the road. And so, when I look back on it, I look back on the fact I, I really built something that is built to last and. A business that is stable and profitable and predictable, whether I am physically present or not, and how getting all my systems and processes and structures in place allowed that to happen. The entire team is still there eight months later. they've hired a few more people, which is really great, and they're continuing on. To grow, which is something that, I, I just said, I didn't really have the desire or the skillset or the capacity to do anymore. And so when I see the next big chapter of Pilates in the Grove, and when I see talking about possibly opening new locations, it's a real sense of, pride to me that it continues to live on beyond me. the other thing I, I did recently talk about this in a previous, I think it was an episode that aired right around Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving holiday, where someone had sent me a podcast that a, PT business, a prominent, business coach in the pelvic health world had done on her podcast about not being able, don't expect to be able to sell your business. And one of the things that I said on that, on my podcast when I talked about it around Thanksgiving week was, I don't know, especially not the people that I mentor in my group, there's not a lot of women in business that are gonna sell for eight or nine figures, but you could certainly create a business that you could sell for six high, six low seven figures. And while I'm not going to. You know, go sit on the beach in San Tropez for the rest of my life and create generational wealth from this one sale. What I have created for myself is the opportunity to have choices in my life, the opportunity to. Have Christa 2.0 be able to choose who I wanna work with, when I wanna work, what I wanna charge, and where I wanna work from. So I've been able to take the proceeds from the sale and invest those proceeds. So now my money will be working for me in the background, which will hopefully create an opportunity for me to be able to retire. anytime in the next five, six years if I want to. And it's also given me a great opportunity to lead into this mentorship and consulting portion of my business, which I'm really loving. I really love it. I really love to share. What I've learned, what I used and knowledge that I've acquired to grow Pilates in the grove to, to what it was, which was a, a valuable sellable asset. And it's allowed me now the opportunity to build in some additional resources that I can offer to women in wellness that are looking to. Systematize grow their business so they are not the overworked operators for the next three or four years. And that maybe they want to have an exit at some point. And even if they don't think they wanna have an exit, if they really just wanna pull themselves out of the day-to-day operations and still collect six figure salary while not having to go into their business ever. Right. So. This is what has what I am doing on a daily basis now, which is really leaning into the coaching and the consulting portion of, I started when I was still at Pilates in the Grove and what has evolved over the last year or two, and now I really have all this time to completely. Dive into this next phase of what I want to do in my life and in my business. big growth in business, and I say this when, when you go from a infancy business, like a baby business to a, teenage business, a young adult business, and into a mature business, big growth like that requires the shedding of an old identity. Entirely. It, it, it, it was required of me. It was required of a lot of the women that I work with, and that is the. Biggest shift that has to happen for you to get to the next stage of business. You don't owe anyone the same version of yourself forever. Your priorities, your capacity, your ambition, and the values have shifted for me in the last, eight months. I always thought that when my kids went away to college, I would just work more in the business. I thought, oh, as soon as they go to college, I'll dive more in. And now I've just. Experienced a whole new version of myself and given myself the permission to evolve, which I do think is the key to long-term sustainable success. So I encourage you to evolve without guilt, whether that's hiring, reducing client load, raising prices, structuring your business for the life that you want in terms of. Where you see your future and where you wanna be in 20, 26 and beyond. So I, some of the big life lessons that I've learned from growing the business and then ultimately selling it was spaciousness and giving yourself the space to think, feel, evolve, and grow is. Entirely a business strategy. You can't see the next version of yourself or your business until we step out of the old version of ourselves. I say it all the time, you cannot grow a six or seven figure business with a five figure mindset. Okay? The other thing is, when led properly. Your team will lift you up and your team will surprise you. You are allowed to be a new and different person, and every big leap you take in your business or your life requires letting go of the old version of what you thought was going to happen. All of these things are great things, all of these things, now looking back on it, eight months from now, I still pinch myself when I say, wow, I can't believe I grew from a$2,400 investment to a seven figure exit. It's, it's, it's really mind boggling to me.'cause had you told me that even. Probably like three or four years ago, someone said, oh, do you think you can sell your business? And I was like, I, I mean maybe for$200,000, like, which is still a great amount of money, that's a fabulous amount of money. But I didn't even think that I could get, even three or four years ago did I think that I could get to where I am today. And that's, again, I, I really owe a lot of this to getting myself in the room where the conversations are different and in I was able to say, why not me? Why not this business? Asking the right questions, making the right choices, forcing myself to make different choices rather than sit and stagnate in the same overworked operator mode allowed me to get to this place in my career, and it's also allowed me the knowledge and the skillset to help other women do the same. And so before we wrap up this episode, what I really wanna talk about is what I'm doing now since selling in March, I have really the coaching and consulting, the FPAs strategies has skyrocketed. I am, I sold out my Inner Circle membership, mentorship in. July, we have now over 50 members in our community group. I think because now I, I don't have as many distractions and I can really lean into this extra knowledge that I have and also time and resources, it's allowed me to decide what, what do does this industry need and where can I be of service? To the women that own Pilates, yoga, physical therapy practices, and what can I do to transform this industry, one female business owner at the at a time. So for those of you that are feeling that kind of lu nudge in your business, that voice in your head saying like, something has to change. I cannot keep running my business the same way. What I want you to hear from this episode is, I know a lot of you probably, you already know what's not working. What you don't know is. What you have to do necessarily. What's the one or two things that you have to do to change that? What I can tell you is that if you keep doing the same things year after year, hoping for different results, that is not gonna happen. We all know that's the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. If you want different results, you have to make different choices. Whatever. You're not changing. You're choosing how many more cliche quotes can I go through, but whatever. You're not changing. You're choosing, so you're choosing to stay in overworked operator mode. And I say this with love because I was, once you. You cannot create a sustainable, profitable, scalable business in 2026. If you're still operating like it's 2020 or 2022. You cannot grow a six or seven figure business with a five figure mindset. You cannot get better results. You cannot get new results. You cannot get different results with the same habits, the same schedule, the same mindset, the same lack of systems, the same. I'll just figure it out later. It's easier for me to do it all by myself. Approach at at some point. You have to get in the driver's seat and say, it's time for me to make different decisions That dingle that decision to make different decisions and make different choices will become the catalyst for everything else that comes after that. So if you're listening to this and you're like, yes, I want this for 2026, I am gonna bet on myself for this year, for 2026, and I am committed to doing the work to create a different business that works for my life, not create my life around my business. So what I'd love to introduce you to is my tier, my. Main offers, which was the Fitbits community, which is an amazing entry point for any business. It's$99 a month. We do two group coaching calls every month. You get access to me in a Facebook group. I mean, listen, a private session, one private session is not even worth, is not even that. inexpensive. It's a no-brainer. Okay. And then my higher li ticket, my inner circle, which comes with group coaching as well as implementation. and one-on-one. I decided that there needed to be a little bit of a middle ground. There was a big jump between the community and the inner circle. And so what I've created is a program that's actually called Fit Biz, accelerate Fit Biz Accelerator. So. If you're tired of being an overworked operator, if you're tired of constantly putting out fires instead of leading from the front, if you feel like you just can't take time off, having team issues that never get fully resolved, and you have difficulty having those challenging conversations, you're carrying the mental load of every single decision, which is. A thousand percent exhausting, working harder, but not seeing the profit or the paycheck that you expect. I want you to consider not another year of trying harder and working harder, but I want you to consider that you need the structure, the systems, and the support to get your business where you want to go. Okay? So if you own a. Pilate Studio, a PT practice, a yoga studio, a personal training studio, another wellness studio. Generic business advice designed for marketing and online coaches isn't gonna get you to that next level. It's why I created this program called Fit BS Accelerator, where what we do is we take everything in my 12 module. Fit Biz Foundation's course, which is literally everything you need to know about how to set your core values, how to determine your core values, how to determine the PR proper pricing, how to establish pricing in your market, how to market your business, especially now that there's a new Pilates studio. Opening up on every corner, how to decide the structure of your business. How are you gonna pay people, how you transition people from independent contractors to employees, how you do performance reviews. You will get each and every month a built out curriculum where I will teach the topic live. Then we will actually do a creative lab where we will implement the topic together. So in other words, if I'm teaching about. How to do performance reviews for you and your team will teach you how to structure it when they should happen. And then in the next module, we're actually gonna learn do in real time how to create a rubric. So you make performance reviews objectionable. Objectionable the word no objective in nature, and it's very clear how everyone on your team gets from pay tier one to pay tier two. It's what I've used in my business for a long time and was very successful for us. There's, ad strategy. So we'll learn how to set your ad strategy, whether you're trying to get new clients or retarget old clients, and literally then build out your ad strategy, build out a Google ad in real time together, so it will be less never watching the video trainings. So for all the people that told me, I just, The community's not that great for me because I need more accountability and I won't watch those videos. This is exactly why I built this. I built it so that I'm teaching those videos live and in real time to you. We have coaching calls once a week. We. You're doing the work, you're submitting the work, and you also get access to me. Between coaching calls, we do Voxer support between calls, and so each month we focus on one key system, one key area inside the four S framework that I develop, which is structure first, then systems, then strategy, and then sustainability. So you'll get. Deep dive learning lesson, you'll get a creative lab implementation. We will review ad strategy and marketing. We'll have experts, so for example, in January we have two experts coming. We have a leadership coach coming to talk about how to block off CEO time for you, and then also how to really set yourself up and your team up for having challenging conversations in 2026. And then we also have a financial expert team coming to review how you set your goals and what metrics you should be tracking. For all of 2026, you'll get a my full built out resource library that has everything from my performance review rubrics, my. Onboarding processes, not only for the administrative team, but for the clinical team. You have payment agreements, you have contracts and handbooks. Everything that I've ever used in my business, you get access to so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. So if this is something that you have been dying, but you're like, I just don't wanna do a course,'cause I don't have it in me to implement in real time. This is. Why I created this program so that you can learn in real time from me, someone who has walked in your shoes, who has built a multiple seven figure business from the ground up, from literally a 300 square foot space so that you can learn how to hire better, how to onboard better, how to step out of. Patient client teaching. How to raise your prices properly objectively so you're not just picking a random$5 increase. How to become a better leader. How to improve your profit. How can we can make 1% changes every month in the business so that you can improve your profit at the end of the year if you want more. Freedom in your life. You need to create more structure in your business, and this is exactly what this program does. Imagine not starting every single month. At zero and starting over. Imagine having a team that knows what they're doing and comes to you with the solution, not just with the problem, right? A schedule that honors your CEO time systems that don't rely on you, remembering every single thing for them to function pro properly, and then profit and payroll for you. That finally reflects how hard you've been working in the business. So if you want 2026 to look different for your business, you cannot keep doing what you've been doing in 2024 and 2025. New results require new decisions. New outcomes require new actions. And the first decision you can make to prove to yourself that you're ready to do the work is this one. So I invite you to check out. Fit Biz Accelerator. I invite you to go to my website, my brand new website, which I'm super excited for, and check out www.christagurka.com/accelerator. You can also find it if you just go to the homepage, christagurka.com. Get yourself on the wait list. Enrollment is gonna open in January. Well, it'll open in December. We begin in January. And I'm limiting this first cohort to 10 women. So it is a group cohort, but for the first one, I'm limiting it. Limiting it to 10 women. So if you want to have more capacity in 2026, have more structure, have the right systems and clarity for a business that runs without you. You don't need to wait till you're ready to exit to have that happen. You can join and roll in the Fit Biz Accelerator and let me help you for 12 months of walking side by side with you so that at the this time next year, you will have an entirely different business and a lot more freedom in your life. So if you're ready to stop operating your business and start leading it from the front, if you want the system, the support, the accountability, and the strategic plan for 2026 and beyond, this, ladies, this my friends, this is the room you want to be in. So visit the website, www kris deka.com/accelerator, or shoot me a DM over on Instagram and I will message you all of the details. I think at the time this recording is gonna air, we might have three spots left. We already have six or seven women on the wait list, so get yourself on the wait list. I'll schedule a discovery call with you to chat more about the program. And until next time, my friends, bye for now.