5 Steps to Becoming a Successful Yoga Teacher

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beYogi is joined by Amanda Kingsmith, founder of Mastering the Business of Yoga. Amanda discusses how to become a successful yoga teacher by explaining how you can run a thriving yoga business and how to get started with turning your yoga teaching from surviving to thriving. 

As a yoga teacher, you likely feel tired, overworked, like you are always running from class to class, and like you’re not making enough money. 

What if I told you it didn’t have to be like that? What if I told you there was a way to create a thriving business that would allow to make a sustainable income, even in the current global climate.

Here are the 5 steps to becoming a thriving and successful yoga teacher:

Step 1: Think of Yourself as an Entrepreneur

Mindset is everything! Instead of thinking of yourself as just a yoga teacher, think about yourself as an entrepreneur. As a yoga teacher you are a yoga business owner, and the key to running a thriving yoga business is to identify yourself as one.

When you begin to identify as a yoga entrepreneur, the people around you begin to see you as a yoga entrepreneur too, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible.

Step 2: Determine Who You Want to Teach

Get clear on who your ideal student is! This is the student that loves to come to your classes, that you love to have in class, that is ready to purchase anything you offer, and that you love to chat with before and after class. This is the client you will serve in your business! You want to get so clear on your target market that you could pick them out at a grocery store. 

Step 3: Offer Them a Product or Service They’ll Love

Once you know exactly who your ideal student is, you can figure out what they want to learn from you! Start by talking to your students to find out what they want to learn and then create a great product or service that they will love and will be ready to buy. 

This will becoming your signature offering or signature program! A signature program is a speciality class that focuses on something specific you want to teach, a digital course, a live group course, or a 1-on-1 offering. It is something that your student loves that you can offer again and again. 

Step 4: Create Your Virtual Storefront

This is where your business lives online (and your signature offering sales page!) and where your students go to buy from you. Ideally, this is a website supported by a social media presence. This is where you find more of your ideal students and start to engage with them.

You want your virtual storefront to be something that is simple, streamlined, and easy to use. This is your digital home for everything you create, so it should be aligned with your target market.

Step 5: Market! Market! Market!

Now that you’ve put all this hard work into creating a great product, it’s time to sell it! You have to tell people about your offering! You must market through your current students via email or in person, and I would recommend sharing on social media. The more people you can tell, the better! This is how you start to get sold out programs.

Step 6: Put it all together!

• Use the mantra “I am a badass business owner” every day until it feels real
• Journal about who your ideal student is (you probably already know them, but just haven’t identified them yet)
• Talk to your people about what types of offerings they would like to purchase from you!
• Build your website, build your social media, create an email list and start getting your offerings into the world!

For more help with this, download the free workbook here: https://ybbmodule0.lpages.co/5-steps-to-becoming-a-successful-yoga-teacher/

Questions

Can you talk more about how you turned around your first offering? How did you quiet the crickets?

Amanda used social media a lot to help with this, specifically Facebook Ads. Other ways to quiet the crickets would be to create a Facebook Page specifically for you and start creating an email list.  Even a Facebook list of 100 people can be really great. Ask questions and build it off that. 

What were the softwares Amanda mentioned?

For Websites: Offering Tree, SquareSpace, Wix

Email: Mailchimp

Is there a marketing platform/forum that you find particularly effective?

Amanda McKinney- Marketing Yoga with Confidence. She has a podcast & website. She also has a great Facebook group. 

What do you suggest for new teachers (no real following) to connect with a target audience?

When you are starting out. Just keep teaching. Teaching is what you need to do to get out in front of as many people as possible. And as you teach classed and try new things put these ideas into  “yes”and “no” piles. Really begin to dive into the yes pile more and think about ways you get more of these classes and people into your life. Also, begin thinking about what your “why” is and why you want to serve people. Create a social media can be a great value to you for connecting with new people and sharing your mission. This takes time but you want to have all these platforms right away: website, social media, and email. 

Just a reminder, you don’t have to have a massive list to determine who your target audience is. 

Who is going to choose me over one million others? and why?

This can be a scary question but you need to answer this on your own. The biggest thing is you have to figure out who you are as a yoga teacher and what makes your teaching style, offering, or service unique. Meditate and journal to help narrow down some of your thoughts.

When I think of creating a website, I freeze because I know nothing about websites. any suggestions?

Offering Tree is her go to. https://offeringtree.com/

Do you recommend having a business name and Social Media name that does or does not include or equal my name? So do I need a separate Social Media profile for myself and for my business? 

There is no one-way with this. It is as simple as just taking one of those names and going with it. If you have one name that really resonates with you, use that. It is really all about what name will serve you. For social media, make sure you are using business accounts partly because you can get more analytics but it is also the mindset. 

Do you do group or personal coaching for this stuff?

Yes, Amanda does personal coaching. Click here for more information https://www.mbomyoga.com/consulting/

Any online tools (other than Zoom) you suggest for virtual classes?

Zoom is her go to. Other options include, Namastream, Vimeo, Facebook live into groups. 

Any tips for effective FB Ads?

The number one thing you don’t want to do is begin Facebook ads without really knowing how to properly set them up. So to help with that, there are a lot of free educational options. Get on Youtube and watch Facebook tutorials. Other options include finding a simple and short Facebook Ads course on Skillshare, Udemi, or YouShare which are affordable courses about Facebook ads. 

Amanda actually hired an outside Facebook strategist who showed her all the important information on how to properly set up ads and analyze them. Education is key in this department. 

It is vital to niche down to just one ideal student or group or could you have multiple niches? For example, yoga for women 50+, yoga for stressed out executives and yoga for beginners.

Yes, you can have more than one niche but you need to be clear where you place these offerings. If you have a website it is important to break it down to where people need to go. People sign up and purchase things when they clearly understand it is for them. So in this example, you would have a tab, section, or button with the title “New to Yoga”, “Yoga for Women 50+” , and “Are you stressed with your full time job?”. 

I want to promote my chair yoga certification online always beyond my own social media and groups and e-letter etc. Do you recommend using services that send it to large letters or is that a waste/spam?

Don’t buy lists. They tend to have extremely low open rates and they can be sent to spam or the trash automatically. There are other ways to get your content and value in front of other audiences on different platforms. First, joining Facebook groups and other group platforms where you can find like minded target audiences can be a great starting point. Partner with other companies that your content could be valuable to cross promote. Create an affiliate link on your website to make it easy for others to contact you about collaborating. A tip when approaching a company or brand, don’t just say that you would be a great addition to the Podcast or their audience would really like your content. Really think about what kind of value you could bring to their audience and explain the reasons. 

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