Someone two streets away has been meaning to start Pilates since spring. She searches, opens three studios, and closes yours first because the schedule on the listing might be from last year and nothing on it says which class a complete beginner should book.
That is the maddening part, because your studio is genuinely welcoming. Your teachers are patient, your intro class exists, your regulars would say so. None of that reaches the person deciding on their phone at 10pm — they are choosing on the evidence in front of them, and there is not much.
So you live on January. The New Year intake fills the mats, and by March half of them have gone quiet, and you are back to teaching a six-person class in a room that costs the same to heat as a twenty-person one.
Meanwhile the reformer studio that opened last year posts twice a week, answers every review inside a day, and quietly takes the beginners who were always closer to you.