Yoga Studio Success Secrets

How is your month going?

I get a LOT of different answers when I ask this question.

In this quick video, I'll talk about getting clarity on your goals in order to build a financially robust yoga studio.

This is one of the toughest parts of running a yoga studio because it can feel like a personal rejection. 

In this quick video, Jason Campbell highlights tips and tools to manage attrition in your studio.

Getting clarity on your vision for your studio is an essential step to making business decisions that further your goals. Spending some time with a notebook or journal to get crystal clear on what you want, how you want your studio to feel and what you would like the experience to be like for studio becomes the driving force to the choices you make as a yoga studio owner. 

Lara's vision for her studio is that the time her students spend in the studio should be the best time of their day. Lara and her staff are committed to furthering that vision. That clarity simplifies on-boarding when she hires new staff. 

She knows that in order to make her studio that refuge that she desires, she needs to go way beyond letting staff know a lot more than the how to operate the computer system, schedule classes and enroll members. Her staff needs to become stand-ins for her and offer everyone that same welcoming and open experience that she would. Everyone gets a warm welcome. She asks that staff l...

How do you determine how much time, money, and energy to invest in enrolling new members in your yoga studio to be sure to get a return on your investment?

When you're running a yoga studio, determining the amount of money, time and energy to spend on enrolling new students can be baffling. 

There are always opportunities for advertising, marketing, and getting the word out in your community, but, it's not easy to figure out how much it makes sense to spend. 

The first thing to know when making these important decisions is understanding your NCV - New Student Value. The New Student Value is equal to the average revenue a new client brings in over a lifetime. 

It's not difficult to calculate this number. Take your total annual gross revenue and divide by the number of members who are enrolled in your studio. For example, if you have 100 students and you have $100,000 gross revenue. Your NCV is $1000 per student.

It's essential to know this number.

You can increase your NCV by work...

When studio owners think about creating special programs in their studios they often focus on teacher training programs. But, looking beyond teacher training to specific transformation-focused programs can be very liberating. 

For a studio to grow and thrive you need additional levels.

This is true in your own cultivation as a teacher and a leader as well. 

In addition to being great for the bottom line of your studio, second-level training is also great for the development of your students as well as your own continued growth. A true master creates masters. Continuing to teach new material keeps you growing in your craft. It makes you go deep. And there is a lot of creativity and energy about this level of teaching.

To brainstorm ideas, you might want to begin by thinking about what you can teach that doesn't fit into the limitations of your current classes. What's a great next step or deeper dive for your students?

How can you help them reach the next level? This is a great chan...

As we move forward it's important in your yoga studio business to continue to check in on your goals and accomplishments and continue to make any necessary adjustments.

How do you want to close out the year so that you know the position you want to start out in for next year?

We like to say that you use three levels or tools to do this: binoculars, a magnifying glass, and a rear-view mirror.

We keep track of and refer to our metrics so that we have a better idea of the seasonal ebbs and flows of our business. Not all months are the same. The wisdom of that is that you know there will be some historically slower and you don’t need to bite your nails.

Binoculars: Look at your long term goals. These include from now until the end of the year and beyond. Consult your year over year results to measure growth. You may even want to leave notes for yourself and remember what happened and help define and recall action points for the month. 

A magnifying glass is what you use to look at wha...

Open Up Your Vision of Success

How do you define success and what does it mean successful? There is often a big difference between being successful and feeling successful.

Everything doesn’t have to be “more”. Lara worked with someone for a while where success was defined by having more. This could include more teachers, more students, more studio space and more classes. When she compared herself to this view of success, she felt like she was failing.

Linking success to having “more” can be detrimental to your bottom line, your studio and your own energy.

Often times when we begin the journey of studio owners we have a vision of what our studios (and success) will look like. But, as we evolve, the ways we define success will also evolve. Success is not only about filling mats.

As studio owners, we invest time, money, and energy into building infrastructure.

Many times, the infrastructure is the things that we can see and touch in our studios - the new floors, the paint, and the staff.

But, just as often, infrastructure incudes the invisible systems that we put in place to grow our business.

Systems are a repeatable and scalable process. This may be an enrollment process, a system for training new staff, or for hiring and firing, the process for greeting customers, a system for better communication, or anything that keeps your business running smoothly.

Without systems, it’s very difficult for your business to be scalable. Eventually, your well-established and considered systems can start to replace you as the owner. It allows your business to grow.  As you can only be in one place at a time and you can’t scale without systems.

In the beginning, it's especially important to put your time and heart into the studio. So much of a yoga studio is built on wil...