Category Archives: Business of Yoga

Yoga News Alert: New Yoga Studio Coming Soon to Richmond Beach

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Yesterday evening, my mom and I went to Richmond Beach for a walk after dinner. As I closed my car door in the upper parking lot of the Saltwater Park, ready to take the wooden stairs down to the beach, I saw, sitting off to the side of the sidewalk, by a tall shrub, a guy sitting on a rock staring off into the Olympic Mountains.

Immediately, I was drawn to the composition of this image; all the elements are there: blood-orange sun setting, mystical-looking mountain peaks, glistening blue ocean, contemplating man. You get the idea. It was one of those pictures you might see on calendars at Barnes and Noble, or on inspirational posters corporate HR people hang up to compensate for the decidedly non-inspiring ubiquitous gray cubicles.

I approached the guy, blurting out, “Do you want a picture taken?” He turned around, studying my mom and me for a moment. “No thank you,” he said, and then followed up, “Do you live around here?” “Just up the hill,” said I.

As if it was the answer he wanted to hear, right on cue, he handed us a flyer, “I’m opening a yoga studio here. You should check it out.” I scanned the yellow flyer in my hand, and thought out loud, “This is really weird. I teach yoga.”

And that’s how I met Glenn Tousignant, who’s opening a new studio in Richmond Beach, a neighborhood in the city of Shoreline, aptly named Richmond Beach Yoga.

My mom taking a picture of the sunset at Richmond Beach Park

This morning I met up with Glenn at the Richmond Beach Park again. We threw a frisbee around and talked about things, mostly yoga and meditation things (shocking, I know). Then after Glenn had had enough of running after my left-handed, embarrassing excuses for frisbee throws, we headed about a mile up the hill, where he showed me the studio space.

I always get a kick out of seeing when things are being built. It’s some sort of egotistical satisfaction of having an insider look at something that’s still coming into existence–unknown to the world–like a reporter getting the first scoop.

I looked at the floor covered in butcher paper and blue painter’s tape, imagining the bamboo hardwood floor underneath. I looked at the ceiling with wires running across, thinking of the decorative light fixtures that will shine down.

Glenn’s business partner is Angeline Johnston, whom I’ve actually met at LakeView Yoga in Bothell, and am happy to find out that she’s currently going through the 500-hour teacher training at Pacific Yoga with Theresa Elliott and Kathryn Payne, where I graduated from.

I have a feeling that these two will put together a great schedule for the Shoreline, North Seattle, and Richmond Beach community. Glenn’s already talking about having daily sits, Restorative Yoga, and he did not kick me out when I mentioned Alignment, so hooray!

“You know what’s crazy, we haven’t even known each other for even 24 hours,” I said to Glenn after he told me about his journey to here, a quaint beach town suburb (he’s from the East Coast, a city boy, etc.). However, he said something that makes me feel confident that Richmond Beach is in good hands.

While we were running around on the buff of the Beach Park, throwing a circular piece of white plastic in the air, talking about yoga styles and all their idiosyncrasy (or syncrazy), Glenn said, “You do yoga to ultimately sit, right. So eventually you just do enough for maintenance [to sit]. Yoga as an addiction is valid.” To that I say, hallelujah, brother.

So, if you live, work, go to school in this part of town, or just passing by, do check out Richmond Beach Yoga when it opens at the end of this month. It’s on 8th NW & Richmond Beach Road, and buses 301, 304, and 348 stop right in front of the parking lot.

I live less than a mile away from the studio, and if Glenn is cool with me not talking about the “English Bulldog determination and Bengal Tiger strength”, but rather stuff like, “Drawing up the inner corner of the outer eyes of the armpit chest”, you might see me show up as a sub from time to time as well.

I’m reminded that just last week, Bizeebee founder Poornima Vijayashanker tweeted about this Wall Street Journal article: Study: Yoga and Pilates Studios Poised for More Growth

If you’re looking to stretch your entrepreneurial muscles, starting up a yoga or Pilates studio may still be a safe bet, despite a profusion of them around the country.

Revenue for this niche is expected to increase over the next five years in the U.S. by an average annual rate of 5.0% to $8.3 billion, according to a report released Tuesday from consumer-research firm IBISWorld.

With that, I wish Glenn, Angeline, and Richmond Beach Yoga lots of success.

Richmond Beach Yoga under construction

The Value of Yoga and What We Are Willing to Pay For

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The week before last week, something came through my inbox that made me cringe for about 10 seconds. It was a deal from LivingSocial, the wildly popular site where you can get one wickedly awesome deal daily. The deal was for 20 sessions of Bikram yoga for $20 at a Bikram Yoga studio in Shoreline, a couple blocks away from where I live.

The Value of (Almost) Free Yoga

Something about this made me feel uncomfortable. Though I don’t know all the reasons that the feelings and sensations came up that way, I do know that I’ve been struggling with the issue of the value, or the perception of value, of yoga for a while. In my 500-hour teacher training, we had a session on the Business of Yoga where we talked extensively about the pros and cons of offering free yoga classes. One thing I walked away with was, there are different types of “free” yoga, and before jumping in and offering any kind of discount, we as yoga teachers need to be clear on what we are giving and receiving.

I know that we all value things differently, and how people spend their money is none of my business. I admit, though, that I’ve always find it funny that someone would say they can’t afford to pay for yoga, and yet would be happy to spend money on a frappuccino in the morning, another in the afternoon, and then a cocktail or two after work. And then you’d hear about them spending loads of money on diet pills and detox powder. It’s funny how our minds work in relation to things we deem as worthy of our hard-earned money.

In any case, I let that uncomfortable feeling go. You just cannot investigate every single feeling of unease in the world indiscriminately, and I felt like this was one battle I didn’t need to pick and get worked up over.

The Value of Public Transportation

A few days later, I misplaced my Orca card, which is a public transportation pass for buses and trains around the Puget Sound. I was really bummed that I didn’t get to use it when I needed it, and even more bummed that I had to now pay extra for the bus. For the first few times, I would try to plead with the bus driver to let me ride for free, since technically I already paid with my card, I just didn’t have it with me.

Then, it occurred to me that I was a hypocrite.

If you live in this area, you *know* that the traffic we have is atrocious. I myself take the bus partly out of what I call the Green Guilt, and party to preserve my stress and blood pressure level. It is an understatement to say that we *all* hate traffic and would love to do away with it all. And yet, we are not always willing to walk the talk and help make it better.

As a region, we debate about money to death and some of us get very upset about paying more taxes to fund better public transportation options. As a proponent of public transportation I will readily admit that I choose to drive to certain places because our bus system simply does not meet my needs. You would think that I would be willing to pay more to change that. But no, I was haggling with bus drivers over the fact that I didn’t want to pay an extra two dollars and fifty cents, and then I would get off the bus and pay the same amount for a tea bag that’s been marked up a gazillion percent.

I thought about how silly I was, that on the one hand, I want people to see that value of yoga classes, that what you pay is what you get, and on the other hand, I was being so petty about putting more money in a system that I use everyday. This thought made me laugh at myself while sitting on the bus one afternoon.

The Value of Accessibility

This whole analogy may not be the best one out there. I may have drawn some parallels that may be more like crooked lines at best. I know there’s a whole complicated issue of government subsidy and taxes, etc. It doesn’t matter. My point here is, I’m starting to see that yoga, like everything else, has a perceived value in people’s mind, and I would not do myself, my students, and my colleagues, any service by doing things that would devalue it.

My friend David Tolmie (hi Dave!) said that public transportation should be accessible to all, as should yoga, and I tend to agree. So the question is, how do we make it so that something is accessible, and yet still valuable? There has to be an equal exchange of energy. I am willing to pay a lot of money, over and over again, for yoga training, and I know many other teachers do too. How do we turn around and charge $12, $15, $18 for a class of yoga when someone else is willing to charge $1? What do you think?

I should also mention that as soon as I came to my mini epiphany mentioned above, I was happy to pay for the bus, and even extra when I didn’t have exact change. This past weekend, I found my Orca card. :)

Cat money

Guns N’ Roses, Fame, Marketing, and Yoga

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I had always figured the band name Guns N’ Roses was an arbitrary choice, depicting a certain image of a certain lifestyle and all that. Then, last week, I found out how they really got their name: it was from the names of the band members Axl Rose and Tracii Guns (hey, thanks Cary!). I had heard of Axl Rose, but Tracii Guns? Never until now. You sure learn something new everyday.

“That’s great”, you might be saying, “but what does this have to do with… uh… yoga?”

Among other things: fame. Actually, rock ‘n roll impacts a whole host of other things (like, have you noticed how all companies are hiring “rock stars” now?) For this post, though, I’ll keep it to just yoga.

Yoga and Rock ‘n Roll

Some of us want to be rich, some of us want to be famous, and some of us want to be rich *and* famous. Some of us want to be rich *and* famous via yoga. Nothing inherently weird about that, of course. You gotta have ambition. You gotta be driven by something. You gotta pay the bills.

What’s not cool is when the desire for fame trumps other things, especially when those other things are the very things we preach. Since I got here, I’ve continued to witness and hear stories in the yoga world that completely baffle me. “Welcome to the biz,” my teacher said sympathetically to me when I confided in her about an event that affected me recently.

There was a time when I was more starry eyed about being on the yoga planet, when the thought of being around world famous jet-setting yoga teachers gave me a certain excitement. There was a time when I romanticized what it’d be like to “be a rap superstar / And live large / a big house, 5 cars /you’re in charge.” Thank God that time did not last very long. Thank God that time has passed. Let’s pray to God I won’t have a relapse (hey, it could happen.)

I’m not saying that the world famous yoga and meditation teachers out there are fame whores. Some of them got to be world famous because they are really good at what they do. They actually teach. They’ve got the goods, the important and substantial stuff. People go see them for what they have to say, not just for a photo opp or just so they can list their names on their yoga teacher bios. There are also some equally well qualified teachers who are less well know, who’ve chosen to stay out of the limelight, who have opted out of the yoga conferences and traveling gigs.

Yoga and Marketing

No matter who they are and how big their influence is, my guess is most, if not all, yoga teachers have to do some sort of PR & Marketing.

Some people think marketing is dirty, it’s evil and egotistical (and not, like, you know, “yogic”). Whatever you think it is, one thing I know for sure is that it’s an important and necessary part of running a business. As Paul Arden said in his book, which I like, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Become:

Yes, of course, I am selling. But so are all of you. You are hustling and selling or trying to make people buy something. Your services or your point of view. The way you dress when going for an interview or a party, or merely putting lipstick on. Aren’t you selling yourself? Your priest is selling. He is selling what he believes in. God. The point is we are all selling. It is part of life. – page 119.

I’m saying this because I want to make it clear that I am all for marketing, I’m all for selling. As Rick Ross said, “Every day I’m hustlin’”.

What I am not all for is certain flavors of marketing, and I’m wary of a certain urge in the yoga world to be rock stars, to be associated with rock stars – or the celebriyogis – as they’re called, while undermining other things, and people.

For instance, I know of one yoga teacher who was asked to put more “famous” names in her bio because she only credits a teacher whom she works with locally. Another teacher in the area does not bother to list the name of the teacher she studies with regularly because this teacher is not a “name brand”, and opts for instead other recognizable-and presumably marketable- names.

Personally, I’ve been approached to publish things by people who don’t really seem to have any desire to know who I am and what I’m all about, but because my blog has made it to some list somewhere and is presumably popular. I’ve heard that if you take a training with a certain teacher, you must list this person’s name as the *first* teacher’s name in your bio, before mentioning any other people who influence you.

Yoga and Keepin’ It Real

Okay, yoga community, let me ask you a serious question: what the fuck? (Excuse my French.)

How have we gotten here? Yes, we’re all trying to get more students, grow our business, and making a buck or two. And yes, as long as we are humans, we’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to do things we regret. We’re going to do things we’re not so proud of in hindsight. (Trust me, I know what that’s like, I’m a frequent shopper there.) Still, guys, that’s really no excuse to perpetuate this bullshit. (French is such a beautiful language, n’est-ce pas?)

I probably sound angry in this post. I’m not. I’m catching up on the latest podcast of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me as I write this. And if you anything about this show, you know that one can’t be angry for too long while listening to it. I do, however, feel the need to call out some of the things I’ve seen and heard.

We are all just hustlin’ and jugglin’ and makin’ a living, and all’s fair in love and war. But this is, you know, Yoga! We are supposed to do things like, find our true selves, and, be authentic and all that. As a start, with all the namasteing we say, wouldn’t it behoove us actually pay respect to someone we study with, even if they’re not the latest headliner for Wanderlust of Bhakti Fest or whatever making waves at the moment? How can we preach the message to “Find your truth” if we can’t even face up to our own?

As at odd as I may be with the current state of the industry, the practice of yoga works for me, and I want to keep at it until it no longer does (it could happen). It’s a privilege to pass on what I’ve learned to those who will benefit from it. So, whatever I learn on the business side becomes a personal lesson, and vice versa. I’ve gone and rambled about “other people” in this post. But really, writing in my blog and moan and whine to whomever will listen is pretty much all I can do.

I’m not going to change anybody much, if at all (tried that with a couple ex-boyfriends, did not work, learned my lesson). What it boils down now is for me to be vigilant in my own business conduct, and having the awareness that the seduction of fame is oh-so-potent, so much so that it’s even got some very learned and long time yoga practitioners sucked in in its engine. I’d write more, but I need to go work on my World Domination plan now. Please contact my agent for comments (er… you know, by clicking on the Comment link below ;) ).

Bonus: Here’s a fantastic crash course in PR using Social Media.

Have you seen my feather boa?

Have you seen my feather boa?

Support Your Local Yoga Teacher

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I’ve been giving this post a lot of munching, mulling, and milling. In other words, I’ve been procrastinating. It’s not because I don’t want to write about it, it’s because I keep convincing myself that I don’t have enough: not enough information, not enough well-thought out reasons, not enough cohesive call to action, etc. In fact, it has taken me two hours from the time I clicked “Add New” for a new blog post until the time I actually started writing this.

You know what I mean. You might have been there too.  It’s pretty safe to assume we’ve all been paralyzed by something: attention-deficit, over-analysis, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, anger, addiction, doubt, etc., to name a few things we’ve got to work with. Dr. Robert Svodoba said in a workshop I recently attended: “We are all possessed by something.”

I don’t know if *we* are all possessed. Maybe there’s someone out there who’s seen every Dr. Phil’s episode, read all the Stephen Covey books, attended all the Tony Robbins seminars and listened to all the Wayne Dyer’s CDs, and is now working a 4-hour work-week a la Tim Ferris sipping a tequila somewhere in the French Riviera. Good for them.

As for me, I’m slow and need more help than that. Yoga and meditation may not be appropriate or work for everybody. But it works for me. The yoga practice is ultimately my best hope in this battle at this point. Among other things, my practice is for grounding in stability when I need it, gaining strength and flexibility when those are called for, and feeding my inner demons when they’re hungry.

My guess is, if you’re reading this, yoga means something to you too, and so, hear me out, and help me out with what I’m drumming up for: Support Your Local Yoga Teacher.

They Help Us Grow a Consistent Practice

Yoga is a practice. It’s a day-in, day-out practice. There is nothing instant about it. Supposedly it takes 21 days to train a new habit. Some of us are lucky if we successfully get rid of an unwanted habit in under a month, especially if we have been strengthening that habit for years, or decades. Yoga teachers are there so we can keep coming back and keep at it.

Without yoga, we would fill our book shelves with self-help books and beautiful philosophies and research studies and findings telling us we should do this and that, and we would intellectually know what to do, but without a consistent practice and perseverance, we may not achieve any lasting results. Local yoga teachers also have a chance to get to know us on a regular basis, and are therefore better acquainted with our progress. They’re familiar with our bodies and their tendencies. They are aware of what we’ve done and are capable of. This allows them to help us to our appropriate level.

The skills to stick to something, to keep coming back to it, to surrender, to detach, to learn to fail and be humbled by our falling. Those are very real skills that can be brought into the real world.

They’re Committed to the Learning Process: Theirs and Ours

Dedicated yoga teachers are always learning. They continue to pour time and money into their education. They get second, third, fourth jobs to keep learning and teaching yoga. Local yoga teachers do not have marketing teams behind them. They do not have endorsements and deals. They teach, they do their own marketing, advertising, bookkeeping, making ends meet, the whole enchilada.

Authentic teachers are not preaching. They know that they, too, are in this human form, with all the maladies and fallacies of the human mind. They are doing the practice, too.

Seeing someone else working on the very same thing we are and getting support from them is the basis of a community. We need local yoga teachers to cultivate this community.

They Bring the Teachings to Life

The teachings of the Yoga texts are great, but face it, they can be esoteric and downright bizarre. It is one thing to just pick up a copy of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra or any copy of the Upanishads and toil away at trying to understand their meaning. It is another to have a teacher to explain these things to you and provide an environment where you can discuss them.

As awesome as the great teachers out there are, and as much as they have done to disseminate information, with them, we often learn in non-interactive, one-way street manner: reading something, watching something, listening to something. It is the local yoga teachers that break it down for us, put it together for us,and make the whole wide world of yoga less enigmatic to us.

Imagine if tomorrow, all the yoga classes in the neighborhood disappeared. Now, I know some of you would rejoice, thinking: yes! *some* of them *should* disappear. No no, I’m not talking about Cult Yoga, or Playboy Yoga, or… well, Whatever-Irks-You-Yoga. I’m talking about yoga beyond aerobics here. I’m talking about the local yoga class where people go to practice their Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, their Pratyahara, their meditation: Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi. (And yes, we need to start putting the foot down and not be ashamed of saying, “Why yes, I’m working on my Samadhi”, but that’s a different post.)

Imagine if tomorrow, no one’s left in town to tell us about Ayurveda, about Sanskrit, mantra, mudras, the cakras, our constitution; about Jyotish, the bandhas and the nadis, about samsara and kleshas, the seer and the vrtti and the gunas. Imagine if tomorrow, there’s no one to help us work with our breath, our prana, no one left to teach pre-natal and senior yoga, no one to explain why we just threw out our back trying to do Upward Dog, no one to explain esoteric concepts, no one to show us how to work on Warrior I.

I will also say this at the expense of ruffling some feathers: if yoga teachers disappeared tomorrow, the people who are only in it for the workout will have other options. They’ll move on to Crossfit or Bootcamp or whatever the new hot fitness thing is. But, for people who are it for more than sweatin’ and burnin’ calories, we’d be losing out on access to something that can help us become fully functional humans and members of society.

We get to know ourselves and the inner workings of our minds through many ways, one of which is from the yoga philosophy. I’m not saying it’s the *only* way. Far, far from it. I’m saying the teaching, the models, the concepts are useful starting points for self-introspection and self-awareness.

In Practical Terms

What does this all mean? I have a few ideas, but I’m inviting you to help me think of more.

I’m committed to:

  • Never stop learning.
  • Only teach what I know, and teach from my experience.
  • Exchange ideas and get feedback from fellow teachers.
  • Keep raising the bar on the quality of my teaching.
  • Help promote other teachers whose work I’m familiar with to people who will benefit from it.
  • Continue to work with my teachers locally, especially now that my 500-hour training is over, I’ve got to be even more proactive about keeping up with a consistent study program.

What other ways can we support local yoga teachers? I’d love to hear from you.

Falling is learning, kitteh!

Falling is learning, kitteh!

Why Yoga Classes Are Not Taxed in Washington State

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After having some conversations this past weekend, I realized that there is a general confusion out there on whether or not yoga classes are taxed in the state of Washington. As far as I know—as of this writing of April 2010—Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qi Gong classes are not taxed, according to Excise Tax Advisory 3003.2009 [PDF] of the Washington State Department of Revenue, issued February 2, 2009, which states:

The Department generally presumes that classes offering the traditional practices of Yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong do not constitute “physical fitness services” because physical fitness is a secondary or incidental benefit of these classes, but it is not typically the primary focus.

It has not always been this way. In November of 2008, yoga studios in the state were audited and told that not only do they need to start charging taxes, they also need to pay back taxes. Suzy Green-Cindrich, a yoga teacher who opened Three Trees Yoga after graduating from Pacific Yoga Teacher Training, pushed back at the State with other teachers and studios. Thanks to their effort, the state receded.

From the same Seattle Times article linked to above:

The backlash by the yoga studios made the agency reverse course. “We decided the yoga people had made a very good case that yoga, and similar kinds of things, are not really what most people think of as physical fitness,” Gowrylow [the spokesman for the Department of Revenue] said.

So, thank you Suzy and everyone who fought hard for this realization from our tax and legal system. And thanks to the Washington DoR for this acknowledgement.

Addendum: Jean Massimo of Village Green Yoga alerted me that yoga studios do in fact pay a service tax, but not a sales tax.

funny-pictures-cat-does-your-taxes

Yoga as a Service – A Case Study

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This is a case study in how a yoga program works, or doesn’t work, in a non traditional yoga setting.

A couple things first:

+ I realize that teaching is a service, any kind of teaching. I called this Yoga as a Service because in the tech world, there’s SaaS, or Software as a Service, where the benefits are touted as superior. (I won’t go into details here, or we’d be here all day.)

+ As I write this, it reminds me of a New York Times article, Rolling out the Yoga Mat, describing the current trend where yoga is becoming part of a service package, especially in hotels and resorts. “Yoga is becoming a must-have amenity,” on the order of Internet access, said Chekitan S. Dev, a professor of marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.

Background: The Story

I’ve been climbing for about 8 years, and the more that I do it, the more that I realize there’s a whole art and science to it, just like yoga. There’s the physical aspect, and then there’s the mental aspect, and there’s the dedication, the perseverance, and the patience with time. (Sounds like sutra 1.14, doesn’t it?)

Ever since I got my teaching certification, I have wanted to combine the similar aspects of yoga and climbing, and teach yoga specifically for climbers. I approached the manager at Gym A, a climbing gym in Seattle, last April, and was first told thanks but no thanks. Some time passed, and I was approached about six months later about teaching there. I don’t really know what happened, but my guess is that another gym in town, Gym B, started to offer free yoga, and that had something to do with it. In any case, I was ecstatic!

We decided to start in January of 2010, and at first it was offered for free for the gym members. Gym A has a work out room separate from the climbing area, and I decided it would be best to use that space since it would provide a firm surface. The space would hold 8 people, max, and we started a registration list. Soon the list grew so big that they had to be wait-listed, and we decided to have two classes. In exchange for my teaching, I would get a membership at the gym for free.

With the popularity of the yoga program, Gym A management decided to charge a fee for the class the following month. That’s where the number retracted considerably, understandably so, because, well, free is a great price. Gym A made it a requirement to be a member to take the class, and charged for a series of monthly 4 classes. Later, a drop-in fee of $12 would be added. As the classes are not free, I would be paid to teach them.

After two months of offering paid yoga, the popularity, or lack thereof, indicated that it wasn’t a profitable endeavor, and Gym A asked if I would go back to teaching for free in exchange for a membership. I thought things over, and proposed that I would, on the condition that I would teach twice a month instead of four times a month. Gym A then decided to scrap the program altogether, citing that the classes would only make sense if there were dedicated space.

I am bummed upon hearing this, because I greatly enjoy the marriage of yoga and climbing, and enjoyed teaching the classes and getting to know more fellow climbers. In retrospect, I think there are some things that I’ve learned from this, and I’m writing this post as a case study, so that perhaps you too, can learn something from my experience, and can perhaps offer your insight into this too.

Post-Mortem: What Didn’t Work

+ Space. The space availability was a factor in deciding how to structure the various ways we would run the yoga program. The constraint made it hard to account for drop-ins, which could vary widely, so a preregistration was enforced. Because of this, we first asked for a 4-week commitment, which probably turned some people away.

+ Time. The only time that I could teach was in the morning, from 7-8:30 a.m. Because the workout room sees more traffic in the evenings, Gym A management didn’t want to cut in that time to dedicate to yoga. This makes it hard for people who work early or have to commute a long distance to go to work to do yoga before work.

+ Location. This, I believe, is one of the shortcomings of my yoga class. The location of Gym A is in a part of town that’s not on the way to anything. It is a destination, and it takes dedicated time to go there. If you have to go to work, it would add a minimum of an hour just in transit.

+ Membership Constraint. I had a student who is currently not in class this month at Gym A, but instead going to my other yoga classes at another studio. This is because you had to be a member of the gym to take yoga, and she didn’t renew her monthly pass. I think if this was available to anyone who was willing to pay a drop-in fee, there would have been a larger group of people to appeal to.

+ Marketing & Communication. One morning as I walked through the gym with my skeleton, Bob, someone who was there climbing asked what that’s for. “For Yoga,” I said. “There’s yoga here?” she asked, astonished. I was equally astonished. You would have thought that with the poster up for two months in various places in the gym, that *everyone* would know about it. I think that’s where we made the mistake, of assuming that the flyers on the wall would do an adequate job of creating awareness.

Come and think about it, the gym does not send out newsletter, does not tweet, does not do any sort of mass communication. Unless I physically show up and read the announcements taped to the wall, I as a member would have no idea that there was a new workout room put in, or that there’s a competition coming up and certain parts of the gym will be closed, or that there’s yoga offered in the morning.

+ The Teacher (Me). There is also the possibility that people just did not enjoy my classes and style of teaching as well, and so they did not come back. If so, why did they come back during the month when the classes were free? Maybe free yoga is free yoga, even if you don’t like the teacher?

You might ask, “Well, how come the classes were busting at the seams before?” I don’t really know. Maybe it was January and there was more resolve for an early morning yoga practice. My guess is that the inconvenience of time and location may have been made up by the fact that the classes were free. If you’d be willing to drive out of your way to a gas station in another part of town to save a few pennies per gallon, you’d be more willing to rearrange your schedule for free yoga.

Where To Next?

As for me, I’m still convinced yoga and climbing go great together, and I’ll continue to explore ways to teach yoga for climbers. I also think that yoga is a great service that a climbing gym can offer, and it could even sway someone to become a member of one gym vs. another. Then again, I don’t run a climbing gym, so that’s just a speculation.

I wonder how the hotels and resorts are packaging, pricing, and advertising their yoga offerings? Do you know? What are your thoughts or insights about yoga as an added service?

Cat climbing on a door

Finders, Minders, and Grinders – More on Being a Yoga Teacher and Entrepreneur

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This morning in my Technorati twitter feed came this post: Three Personality Types that Help Drive Business.

I’m not  a big fan of the terms the author used. (Last I checked no one enjoyed “the daily grind.” Who wants to be considered a “grinder”?) But the post is so pertinent to what I wrote last night about being a yoga teacher and entrepreneur that I will write a bit more about it here.

The author, “with over 15 years of intensive marketing, public relations, business development and management experience”, identified three types of people for professional service business “when looking at how to operate and grow effectively.” (And make no mistake, as a yoga teacher, you are a professional, and you are providing a professional service.)

The three types are:

1) Finders: the people who lead the business development. They bring in new business, create new relationships and continue to sell to existing customer.

2) Minders: the ship captains. They make all operations run smoothly, manage stuff, ensuring things get done.

3) Grinders: the ones who get the job done. In our case, this means teaching, and continue to learn how to learn, learn how to teach, learn how to communicate. This is the part everyone sees.

I’ve paraphrased the types a bit, because I find some of the language a little distressing, (“These people are the cogs of a business” is just so cringe-inducing to me.)

Each role is absolutely critical to the success of a company and they all think that they are the most important. Without finders you would have no new business coming in the door, and no new projects for your team to work on. Without minders you would miss your deadlines and fail to monitor and achieve your profitability and success. And without grinders, nothing real would ever get delivered to your clients.

There is one rare type of professional to look out for in a services business however. They are they type that can carry all three roles and flip between them as required, with ease. If you find one of these, be sure value it for the quality jewel that it is.

This is the part where, if you never thought of yourself as one, now’s the time to consider yourself a quality jewel if you are about to start a business teaching yoga. Things will change down the road. You might find that you don’t particularly enjoy doing one type of work and get someone else to do it, for example. When you first start out, however, you’ve got to be aware of what you’re in for and what you’ll be called to do.

I would say that the author missed out several other really Important Roles: an Incubator, someone who sees far and thinks big, and an Advisor, or Mentor, someone who can guide you through the growing pain. Okay, another post is called for, eh?

Sunny spot, we all need one.

Sunny spot, we all need one.

Being a Yoga Teacher, Being an Entrepreneur

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This is another post in the series I call New Yoga Teacher to New Yoga Teacher. It’s written specifically for… well, new yoga teachers, but I think it applies equally to anyone new to owning and operating their yoga business.

I came to this realization a couple months into being a brand new yoga teacher, and every day, I’m reminded of how true this is. Today, my friend Lyndi Thompson tweeted about Young Entrepreneur Advice: 100 Things You Must Know!, and I thought it’d be a perfect time to write this blog post. Here it goes: If you want to be a successful yoga teacher, you must learn to be an entrepreneur.

Now, the topic of being an entrepreneur can fill multiple libraries, and so is the topic of being a yoga teacher. So, I will set some parameters around this post as followed.

Assumptions

1) You are an independent yoga teacher, that is, you teach primarily at places where you must do the heavy lifting of marketing yourself and your classes. This might rule out places like health clubs and “mega” yoga studios, where there’s already a steady group of students.

2) You do not teach “pre-packaged” yoga. What I mean by this is the style of yoga that you teach does not have built-in “brand recognition” in the community that you teach. This is *not* to say that if you do, you are any less of an entrepreneur, but I am putting down some assumptions to reign in the scope of this blog post. I could also easily argue that if you teach a “brand name” yoga, you have to work just as hard to differentiate yourself from other teachers. What I’m talking about here, however, is about marketing, educating, and generating recognition where none existed before.

3) Your success directly depends on your ability, as they say in the biz world, to “attract and retain”. That is, you are paid by how many students come to class and continue to come to class, not a flat rate. Again, I am in no way saying that if this is how you get paid *now*, that you’re not an entrepreneur. I’m just setting the assumption that if you are a teacher who’s renting a space and keeping the profit, and if you are paid according to the number of returning students, you might be more motivated to go out and promote yourself, streamline your processes, and so on.

Okay, with that out of the way, here are some things I think a new yoga teacher ought to know, and do. While there are many, many little things to do, here are three big ones that have stood out for me as how you must act like an entrepreneur. Along the way, I’ll insert some quotes from the Young Entrepreneur Advice article, and of course, a yoga sutra. :)

Truth One: “This is the United States of James Carter. I’m the president, I’m the emperor, I’m the king.”

As a yoga teacher, you’re the CEO, the CIO, CTO, COO, you’re all the C level executives there can be. You’re also the janitor. You *are* the Marketing Department. You *are* Operations and Admin. You *are* Finance, and Budgeting, and Accounting, and Legal, and Sales. *You* are the Chief Networking Officer, and Information Officer, and Knowledge Officer, and Creative, and Customer Service, and Business Development, and Social Media, etc. The list goes on.

The first thing to realize is that as an independent yoga teacher, you are now a walking, talking, *real* business. You may rent out your own space and fully own your business, or you may work at a studio as a contractor, in both cases you are responsible for getting your name out there, establishing your reputation, gain and retain students, create ways to generate revenue and profit, both on and off the mat, perhaps hire and fire staff, and continue to grow. That, my friends, is an entrepreneurial undertaking.

As an entrepreneur, you will do everything, and you’ve got to figure out how to do everything better and more efficiently every day.

21. I did not realize the level of sacrifice that would be required to become not only an entrepreneur, but a successful entrepreneur. Don’t get me wrong, it is worth every single second, but I had no idea that friends and family would not be able to relate. – Amber Schaub http://www.rufflebutts.com/

Truth Two: “Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell, and advertise.”

I don’t know about early to bed, but the work like hell and advertise bit was true when Ted Turner said that, and it will be true when you decide to be an independent yoga teacher. You’ve got to figure out a way to do marketing and promote yourself like crazy, and do it in a way that’s not sleazy and cheesy.

When you are virtually unknown, one yoga teacher among hundreds and thousands of others, you’ve got to start a marketing campaign, or several. If you don’t teach a kind of yoga that the general public has been exposed to, you will need to start from scratch to generate awareness for your business and educate people on what it is exactly that you offer. This is, as they say in the corporate world, business development.

This goes into a rabbit hole of figuring out your niche, (athletes, cubicle dwellers, gardeners, weekend warriors, etc.), figuring out your main clientele (do you teach children, senior, teens, or athletes?), and telling a compelling and concise story, (something like, “I focus on teaching for stress relief so I do a lot of calming stuff”). Pay a consultant an enormous amount, and they’ll tell you gotta build the pipeline.

Then you need to figure out where are you going to advertise, and where are you going to offer your service? Will you make flyers? Where will you post them? How will you know if one location is more effective than another? Aside from your “home base”, where else will you teach as a marketing tool? Perhaps in a park? At a retail store? In some circles, they like to talk about all those delivery channels.

Okay, you get the idea. Marketing matters. And if you don’t have a marketing department behind you, you’re it.

78. Relationship Marketing – I wish I had understood the importance of staying connected with past clients and nurturing relationships with current clients. Your personal life, your spiritual life and your professional life is all about the relationship. – Sandie Glass http://www.sandstormideas.com/

Truth Three: “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

No stranger to strategies, that Winston Churchill, eh? “Strategy? Don’t you just… show up and teach yoga?” Au contraire, ma cherie. Strategy is the foundation of a successful yoga business (and perhaps all other businesses). This involves thinking about questions such as,

  • Where are you going to teach?
  • What day and time of day?
  • What else is offered in the area, by whom?
  • Who will you align yourself with for potential partnership?
  • What communication tool(s) will you use?
  • How much money will you invest in a particular thing, like building a website or renting space?
  • Will you incorporate your business?
  • What other products and services can you offer?
  • Will you be working another full time job while launching your yoga business?
  • Do you want to travel and teach workshops or teach on-going classes in one location?

Answering questions like these will help you sort out the pros and cons of each. No matter what you do, there are always advantages and disadvantages. You won’t be able to avoid the disadvantages, but knowing what they are, evaluating them, and taking them with calculation will help you deal with setbacks.

100. I now know that businesses are extremely organic & have a way of taking on a life of their own – now I know that though things don’t always work out as planned, there is always another opportunity around the corner…understanding this from the beginning would’ve saved me a lot of stress! – Rina Jakubowicz http://www.rinayoga.com

Yoga teachers have somehow gotten the unfortunate perception that we are “flighty” and ethereal and that our head is somewhere out there over the rainbow. It’s really too bad, because having your head screwed on right over your shoulders, with the left brain and the right brain working, you know, in union, is really what yoga should be about.

I haven’t talked about bookkeeping, accounting, budgeting, operations, and administrations. It’s also extremely important to have mentors and an Advisory Council. Perhaps they’ll be the topic of another post, but they are an integral part of being an entrepreneur as well, for obvious reasons.

Are you an entrepreneur? Are you a yoga teacher? Perhaps both? What are your thoughts? What have your experiences been like?

Sutra 1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with devotion, without interruption, and over a long period of time / sah tu dirgha kala nairantaira satkara asevitah dridha bhumih

Did I mention a mentor is super important too?

Did I mention a mentor is super important too?

Blind Items Yoga

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In self reflection, I realized that I have developed a few traits over the years, like a certain sense of skepticism and snarkiness, all wrapped in a tongue in cheek live and let live perspective. I’d like to think that I can blame this on the years and years of reading websites like Gawker and Pajiba, but perhaps they’re just catalysts and convenient scapegoats.

One fun Gawker column is Blind Items, or #blinditems, where the author entices you with questions about lives of people you’d really like to care less about, such as, Which Famous Couple Is Splitting and Getting New Boyfriends? Resistance is often futile.

I think the lure of the Blind Items column is that it invokes our inner Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Clue, etc. It gives us a rush of excitement to try to figure out Who Dun It. Oh, and of course, it gives us gossip. So, in the spirit of Blind Items, I introduce to you Blind Items Yoga, an occasional reporting on things that the wind from the rumor mills brings me.

To start with, here’s one for all you in the Seattle area.

Which yoga studio is packing people in wall-to-wall, and telling earnest students that they should come an hour early to get their spot, and refusing to refund passes if the yoga student just isn’t *that* earnest?

Oh, and if the wind from the rumor mills ever asked you for direction, you’re more than welcome to whisper in its ears: “Blind Items Yoga”.

Is it elementary, Watson?

Is it elementary, Watson?

Seattle Yoga News – Studio Closing, Opening, and Name Changing

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The Yoga studio scene in Seattle is seeing some changes as we transition from February to March.

+ Om Yoga of Redmond is closing its doors after 2 years. Owner Karen Herold is an amazing woman for having a full time executive job, coaching her daughters’ sports teams, and of course, teaching and running a small business. Kudos to her for having realized her dream, and I wish her lots of happy and joyful “me” time. The last day for Om Yoga is March 6, 2010.

+ Hot Yoga of Issaquah is officially Terra Yoga. On Saturday, March 6, 2010, there will be an open-house celebration with food and music between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., and a dedication at 2:00 p.m. Owner Carina Ostebovik renamed the studio after her middle name, Terra. The old name also no longer reflects the diverse styles offered in the space.

+ West Side Yoga and Doga is a new studio that just opened this past week, with the opening night on February 20, 2010. Since Ashtanga Yoga School closed in 2007, there hasn’t been a pure traditional Ashtanga school in Seattle (that I know of). West Side Yoga Doga seems to be filling in that gap. The web site also says that they are the only Doga studio in the US. Here’s wishing them the best, and as Neil Young would say, “long may you run”!

Good bye, hello, and godspeed!

Good bye, hello, and godspeed!