The Yogiprenueurs Guide to Launching an Online Course

beYogi partnered with Kelly McHugh, founder of Digital Yoga Academy, for our second episode in the beYogi Webinar Series! Watch the full recorded webinar or read the summary below about the ultimate crash course on what it really takes to create and launch an profitable online yoga course.

If you're a yoga teacher with an entrepreneurial spirit, and are struggling with the overwhelm of growing your business successfully, Kelly knows exactly what you need to do to take your yoga business to the next level. 

First, Go You, Yoga Teacher!

We've been really impressed by the action yoga teachers have taken online through this pandemic, and not holding back. At Digital Yoga Academy, we've heard from teachers who've been wanting to teach online for a long time but have previously been held back by the fears and overwhelm of getting there. The pandemic has really pushed many yoga teachers into action, and turned those fears into courage, which is really great to see, and just shows there is really no better way to share your message but to share it online.

The Benefits of Creating & Launching an Online Yoga Course

The world is online! In fact, the world is going crazy for online learning - proven by an online education industry turning over $400m per day. Plus that industry is expected to triple in the next 5 years. An online course is a different and sustainable business model to add to your current yoga offering. It is a digital asset for your business. It may take a little time investment, however it brings a lot of benefits in terms of:

• Reaching more ideal students around the world
• Help more students with your incredible teachings
• Lifting the income ceiling in your business
• Creating more freedom and flexibility
• No longer having to trade your precious "time for money" with live classes
• Reducing costs and increasing profitability by running less in-person events

What Does Success in Your Yoga Business Feel Like?

Amazing right? Well, that's what we're teaching today - how to create more success in your yoga business by creating and launching a valuable digital asset.

What Does it Really Take?

Creating an online yoga course and teaching on Zoom are TWO different things. They are two completely different offerings with different price points. Creating an online course requires you as a yoga business owner (which is what you all are!) to have a different mindset. 

• Start thinking like a business owner
• Understand that sometimes we have to take risks in order to grow
• The importance of investing to grow
• It's time to stop playing small
• It's not passive income - it takes effort and showing up as the expert to make it profitable

Strategy & Mindset

Let's talk about some of the ways you can move your student community from an online zoom class (for say $10) to an online yoga course (which could be $300, $400 or even more). You need to:

• Carefully craft and sell the transformation you are offering
• Step into your power and become 100% sold on your own offering
• Do the work to understand what your audience really needs from you and validate it, so you can launch it with confidence
• Recognize it's time to level up, make big shifts and move outside your comfort zone - without excuses or distractions!
• Move beyond the self-doubts, get the confidence to try and learn to put those fears aside

Take Imperfect Action

When running any business, things don't always go to plan. In fact, failing is part of the success process! The trap to avoid is only seeing mistakes and missed goals as failures -  that is when you will begin to get stuck. Instead, start to see your business as a laboratory. When you can see those mistakes as learnings and opportunities, then we can start to really move forward and make progress in our business. It doesn't have to be perfect... it just needs to keep moving forward and continue to learn.

There's Value in How You Present Your Content

This isn't about throwing together your pre-recorded classes, hosting them online and hoping someone will buy them. This is about you presenting your valuable teachings in a step by step framework that leads and guides your students to the transformation that they desire. This does take specific steps, time, clarity and confidence - which is exactly what we teach our yoga teacher community at Digital Yoga Academy.

What Content Should I Create?

Lots of teachers do struggle at the creation stage of knowing exactly what to offer. When this happens, it can result in creating offerings that students do not end up buying. When this happens, yoga teachers tend to rely back on the studio/in person model and can end up feeling exhausted. Instead focus on these areas first:

• Truly understand and define who your ideal audience is
• What are your audience's pain points, struggles and challenges they would like to solve

The 3 Mistakes Teachers Make When Creating & Launching an Online Course

1. Not attracting, growing and nurturing an audience and jumping straight into creating all the content for an online course
2. Not researching or validating the course idea with your audience before fully creating it
3. Not approaching your yoga business with consistency, persistence, purpose and good business habits

If you would like to learn the exact framework to build a sustainable and profitable online yoga business, and learn how to craft a desirable offering without the fears and doubts, Digital Yoga Academy is teaching exactly this in a transformational six month group coaching program. "The Profitable Yoga Teacher" teaches you the proven strategies to grow your community and create and launch a profitable online yoga course.

Questions

I'm not exactly sure what is meant by online yoga "course"?

Online yoga courses and online yoga classes through Zoom or another platform are two very different things and at two very different price points. Building an online yoga course is like building a business- filled with strategy and choosing the right mindset. When it comes to the strategies you must understand who you are selling to and what the transformation is that you are selling. When it comes to mindset it is all about you stepping into your power and being confident about your offerings.

What are the ways we can generate passive income?

The income you will be creating through your courses will not really be passive. You will be working very hard to generate this income. You have to keep showing up and when you begin the process of creating your course it is important to launch it live. Meaning there is an active enrollment period for people to sign up and when it fills up you "close the doors" and begin your course where every participant starts on the same day and you run through the course together. Whether you have prerecorded content or not. it is important to practice launching many times over before getting you course into evergreen status.

What does evergreen mean?

Evergreen means that the course is not requiring you to do any live work. People can enroll and take it on their own time as a home course. You only put your courses into evergreen status when you have gone through the launch process multiple times and even then, you will have to plan exposure campaigns and launch phases to drive traffic to the evergreen course you have added into your website.

Could you give examples of how to make a "Live" course that is fully designed to be evergreen?

As an example, have a live contest and at the end of that period you open your course up for enrollment. You have an open enrollment period and soon after you close enrollment at your max number. You can certainly use pre-recorded content but to make it engaging and worth people's time and money, what you need to do is make certain aspects of the course live. Such as offering weekly Q&A's in a Facebook group or community.

In addition, when you have a live program in congruency to your pre-recorded content there are heightened senses of accountability and community. The live aspect of the course will allow you to increase the price because of the direct access to you.

Different Platform suggestions?

Kelly suggests Instabook. Use code DYA for 20% off.

Step #2 (in webinar) explained.

Consistency & Persistence.

It is not enough to just have a goal. You need to create habits- things you are chipping away at everyday. It truly all adds up and gives you the best final result. Remember before you get to steps 2 and 3... make sure you focus on the first step which is to build your community.