Every Client Since 2021: What the Studio's Own Records Show

If you are considering this studio, you can read the Google reviews. They are real, and I am grateful for every one of them. But reviews have a structural limitation that no honest reader should ignore: they are written only by the people for whom the work worked. They tell you that long, satisfied client relationships exist here. They cannot tell you how many people started and did not stay, or when they left, or why. Reviews have no denominator.

This post is the denominator.

Since the studio opened in July 2021, I have kept a record of every client — when they began, how they attended, when they stopped if they stopped, and what reason accompanied the stopping. What follows is that complete record, in aggregate, as it stands in June 2026: twenty-seven clients across five years. This is not a statistical study. The numbers are far too small for statistics, and I am not claiming any. It is a census — every client counted, nothing sampled, nothing selected. Including the parts that do not flatter the studio.

One honest qualification before the numbers. The studio's earliest period was less formally organised than it is now — package structures varied, the systems for tracking enrollment and attendance were still taking shape, and I was finding my way without anyone guiding me. The figures for the first year or so are therefore a careful reconstruction from the records I kept, rather than the clean contemporaneous ledger the later years produced. I have counted conservatively where memory and record had to be reconciled. The shape that follows is solid; the earliest individual figures carry a little more reconstruction than the recent ones.

The Whole Population

Twenty-seven people have enrolled at this studio since July 2021. One enrollment ended within its first weeks for personal reasons entirely unconnected to the work or the studio; I exclude it from the analysis that follows because it tells you nothing about either.

Of the remaining twenty-six, twelve are practicing with me today. That is a little under half of everyone who has ever walked through the door — not half of recent enrollments, not half of the people who completed an introductory period. Close to half of everyone, ever, measured from the studio's first day to June 2026, when this was written. Twelve active clients, most training around twice a week, fills the studio: that is roughly twenty-four sessions a week against the thirty or so I have available, and once breaks, travel, and the gaps between sessions are accounted for, there is room for perhaps one more person and no more. The studio is, in practical terms, full — which the booking record confirms independently.

Ten people left. They are the more informative half of the record.

When People Leave

Eleven of the fourteen departures happened within the first one or two packages — roughly the first six months of practice. Beyond that point, the record changes character entirely. Fifteen clients continued past their second package. Twelve of those fifteen are still here, with current tenures running from one year to five. The other three left after longer relationships — one after approximately four years, having shifted gradually from regular practice to an availability-based arrangement and then to silence; one after two stints totalling five packages across two years; one after three packages across roughly six months, ended by work demands.

So the honest shape of the data is this: the first six months are the real trial, for both sides. A client who is going to leave almost always leaves within their first two packages. A client who crosses that line stays for years. There is very little in between — no slow fade at month ten, no gradual disengagement in year two. The clearest exception to the binary is a different kind of client altogether: a sportsperson who came for two single packages a full year apart, each in the off-season, used the work for a specific and bounded purpose, and then stopped — neither an early departure nor a long-term practitioner, but a deliberate, purpose-limited return. The three long-tenure or purpose-limited exceptions are the only ones in five years that do not fit the early-or-forever pattern, and I include them because a pattern with stated exceptions is a record; a pattern without them is marketing.

For someone considering the studio, this is the most useful thing the record contains. The commitment looks intimidating from outside — the package, the price, the consistency the work asks for. What the data says is that the risk is front-loaded and bounded. The first package is where both of us find out whether this is the right arrangement. If it is not, that becomes clear quickly and the relationship ends early, as it should. If it is, the relationship runs for years.

Why People Leave

The reasons fall into fewer categories than you might expect.

Five departures were completions or purpose-limited engagements rather than losses. One client came with specific targets, met them across two packages, and stopped — which is the work succeeding, not failing. Two were young clients who came for a defined, time-bound posture goal, completed it within a single package each, and finished. One came with a specific physical issue, worked through two packages addressing it, and stopped once it was resolved. And one was the sportsperson described above, who used two single packages a year apart for off-season work and did not continue beyond his purpose. I count these honestly as departures because they are, but a studio that never produced a completed engagement would be making a different kind of claim about itself.

Two departures were about money. One client had begun online at a discounted rate while the studio was being set up; when I discontinued discounting, the full rate did not make sense for them. One was a student for whom the cost was genuinely not sustainable beyond two packages. Both of these happened in the studio's first months, and I will return to why that timing matters.

Since money appears twice in the exit reasons, the studio's full pricing history is worth stating, and it is short. Apart from that one early online arrangement — which ended in October 2021, when the studio became fully operational on its own equipment — I have never offered a discount. Not at enrollment, not at renewal, not for anyone, whoever they are or whoever referred them. Every client pays the same price, because a price that varies by negotiation makes the relationship begin with a transaction someone won and someone lost. The only adjustment I have ever made went the other direction: from 2023, once the studio was standing securely on its own, I added two complimentary sessions to the twenty-session package — as gratitude to the clients who had carried the studio through its first years — and the same terms have applied to every enrollment since, old or new. That is the entire history. One uniform price, no discounts, and one permanent addition in the client's favour.

Relocation accounts for two — one client who moved cities after two packages, and one who left after a single early package when work took them elsewhere. Two stopped within their first two packages without a reason I can state with confidence, and I will not invent one. And three were the longer departures described above: two where work or life gradually eroded a once-regular practice until it ended — in one case without a closing conversation from either side, which I have written about elsewhere as a file I consider honestly closed — and one client who trained consistently across three packages over six months before work demands ended it cleanly.

None of these departures happened for lack of attention. After every session I update a digital record of what was done, what went well, what did not, and what is planned for the next session — and when a client's rhythm changes, I follow up. The records meant I usually saw a departure forming before it arrived. They did not mean I could prevent it. Tracking tells you what is happening in a practice; it gives you no authority over another person's circumstances, finances, or priorities. Attrition is possible under the most attentive system a solo studio can run. The record above is what it looks like under one.

What February 2022 Changed

There is an inflection point in this record, and it is mine, not the clients'.

When the studio opened, I enrolled people essentially on their word. Someone expressed interest, the schedule had room, we began. By February 2022, three of my first five enrollments were gone — and when I looked at why, the reasons had been visible at enrollment. A discounted arrangement that could not survive contact with the real rate. A cost that was a stretch from the first conversation. Circumstances that made continuity unlikely regardless of how the sessions went. None of these people failed the work. My intake failed to surface what was already true about their situations before either of us invested twenty sessions in finding out.

From that point I changed how enrollment works. The questions became more direct — about why this studio specifically, about whether the cost is sustainable rather than merely payable, about what in the person's life supports or threatens a regular practice. The consultation became what the website now describes it as: a mutual assessment, not a booking.

I want to be precise about what that change did and did not do, because the records keep me honest here. It did not eliminate early departures — people have still stopped within their first packages since, for relocation, for reasons of their own, and in the completed-goal cases by design. What it eliminated is a specific category: in the four years since the enrollment process changed, not one client has left because the cost turned out to be unsustainable or because the arrangement depended on someone else's money. That category of departure existed only in the studio's first months, under the old process. The filter does not manufacture commitment. It detects, before enrollment, the fragilities that used to surface at package two.

The Clients Who Come and Go — and Stay

The record contains a third group that neither "active" nor "departed" describes well: clients whose practice is interrupted and resumed. Two clients paused for pregnancy and returned — one after more than a year away. Several established clients practice in an availability-based rhythm around heavy travel or work, with gaps of weeks or months between blocks of sessions. One client moved out of the country and continues online.

What these arrangements have in common is sequence. Every one of these clients first built a sustained period of consistent practice — typically a year or more — before life required the flexibility. The consistency came first; the flexibility was built on top of it. I have written elsewhere about why this works in the body: the nervous system retains what consistent practice built, and return is always faster than arrival. The records confirm it from the other direction — clients who built the foundation come back after long interruptions and continue, and the relationship holds across the gaps.

For a prospective client worried that a demanding job or frequent travel disqualifies them: the record says it does not, provided the first phase is consistent. The standard here is strict at entry and flexible once it has been earned. Nobody starts on-off. Established clients can become on-off without the relationship ending. That order cannot be reversed, and the one long-tenure departure that began as eroding regularity is the cautionary half of the same pattern.

What This Record Is and Is Not

Twenty-seven people is not a dataset. I am not claiming retention rates that generalise to Pilates, to private instruction, or to anyone else's studio. What I am publishing is the complete operating history of one small practice, with its failures included: the enrollment process that needed correcting, the clients who left over money in the months before I corrected it, the longer relationships that ended anyway, the departures I cannot explain. A record with only the good parts would be a longer version of the reviews. This is meant to be the thing the reviews structurally cannot be.

One more honesty about the document itself. These numbers are a snapshot, fixed at June 2026. If you are reading this later, the counts will have drifted — clients will have joined, some will have left, the totals will be different. I do not intend to revise this post each time they do; a record that is silently edited stops being a record. What I expect to remain stable is not the counts but the shape: the early trial, the six-month watershed, the multi-year tenures beyond it. If that shape ever breaks, that would be worth a new post — not a quiet correction to this one.

There is one more thing the number twenty-seven says, and it is worth saying plainly. This is the entire client population that has sustained the studio as a business for five years — past breakeven, debt-free, with the finances I have written about openly elsewhere. There is no commercial location behind it, no atmosphere, nothing on offer except the apparatus and the instruction. What the record demonstrates is that this is enough: a small number of people who value the work, returning year after year, is a viable practice. Pilates taught properly does not need to be large to be sustainable. It needs to be right — and right, repeated over years, turns out to be sufficient.

If you are considering this studio, the record reduces to three sentences. About half of everyone who has ever enrolled here is still practicing, years later. Almost everyone who leaves, leaves within the first two packages — the trial is real, mutual, and bounded. And the people who stay past that point stay for years, through job changes, pregnancies, relocations, and travel, because the work earns its place in a full life rather than demanding the life rearrange around it.

Reviews tell you the work succeeded for the people who wrote them. A complete record tells you how often, for whom, and when it did not. Of the two, only one can be published by the studio itself — and publishing it is the same commitment the rest of this site makes: to be exactly what it says it is.