How Long Should I Wait to Open a Yoga Studio?

This video is brought to you by my new book, How I Made a Million Dollars Teaching Yoga. Grab your copy today, link in the description, or visit book.milliondollaryoga.com. Hey everybody, today we're going to be answering a viewer's question, which is super exciting. And her question was, how much experience should a yoga teacher have before opening their own studio? I'm super excited to answer that. Let's get to it. ¡Hola! Hi, I'm Angelica, and I've been teaching yoga for the last 15 years. I've actually owned 3 brick-and-mortar yoga studios, and I turned my little tiny yoga studio into the largest yoga studio in the state of Nevada with over 10,000 clients and 150 teachers on the payroll. So it's a lot of people. If you haven't yet, please take my masterclass. I would love to work with you in 2021 and dive really deep into your business, help you 10x your income as a yoga teacher. Because honestly, the more you make, the more people you can help. The more people you can reach, the more you make. It's all like in the same thing. But if you don't put energy into making more money as a yoga teacher and putting yourself out there more, then you can't help more people. People, and we can't change the world, and we want to do that, right? Because the world needs us right now. Okay, let's get into it. All right, so Kimberly Schofield submitted this question, and it's, how much experience should a yoga teacher have before opening their own studio? And this is a great question. And you know, I knew right away— if you've read my book, book.milliondollaryoga.com, if you've read my book, you know that I wanted to open a yoga studio, like, before I even took yoga teacher training. That was my, that was my plan. That was what I wanted to do. So I showed up first day of yoga teacher training, like, hi. They're like, hello, you know, you go around the circle, why is everybody here? And I was like, hi, my name is Angelica, and I want to open a yoga studio in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I want to call it Sin City Yoga. And that was like day 1 of yoga teacher training, 2005. Okay, well, I just knew right away what I wanted to do. And I felt really divinely called to open that studio. And I felt really divinely called to leave it. But that's, you know, like, I just knew I wanted to open one right away. But I did need time to develop as a teacher. I've had a lot of people contact me through Instagram, frustrated that they have graduated yoga teacher training, and they're not teaching yoga full time. And You know, you guys, I'm just gonna be really honest with you. Most people don't. They just don't. And there's two reasons for that. One, because it's not a regular job. Like, it's not— it doesn't come with benefits. It's also physically demanding. And, um, there are very— there's very few opportunities where you can get a job as a yoga teacher. I worked at a school. I taught yoga for, um, kids at a school instead of their PE. Uh, they took yoga and that was a full-time job with benefits and all that. But that's like super rare. I, I have another friend that did that as well, but I really only know a couple of people who have gotten gigs like that. And I know thousands and thousands of yoga teachers and I've worked with a lot of yoga teachers and I've helped yoga teachers. Most people develop their own thing, like that's the only way to do it, um, and you might be successful and you might not. Honestly, in my opinion, right now is an amazing time to get into this because first of all, more people are open to online than ever before. So if you want to teach online, now is the time to, to get in there before everybody starts flooding the market and it gets really competitive. I think that now is a great time to get in. Second of all, if you want to open a yoga studio, now is a great time to do it as well. Sadly, many studios— dance, yoga, Zumba, all kinds of things— have gone out of business, but they have the perfect— those spots have the perfect layout for yoga. So they have a great floor, they have a check-in area, whatever, they have a bathroom, you know, like a big open space. Um, and all you got to do is paint it and put up the curtains the color that you want. So you can get in and probably— you could probably negotiate a good price or even a few months free on your rent because the space is empty. So, um, you know, that's kind of what happens when we go into recession is that then things become open and that's how we get out of it. You know, it's just a cycle, it's an up and down. Kind of like 2008, which was also very tough for all of us, um, that were working during that time. And so, you know, within the next 6 to 12 months is going to be a great time to actually open a studio space. So if you want to do either or, like in person, or if you want to do it online, then now is a great time. I mean, if you're If you're in a friendlier state like Texas or Florida to businesses being open, you're going to have a lot more success. It would be hard in states like California and Nevada that have an incredible amount of restrictions to be, to be in live, like, have an open business right now because they're not letting people be open, and you have to be open to make money. So it just depends on where you're at for that. But to decide like whether or not you're ready to open, the main thing that I looked at is that there are multiple revenue streams when you have a yoga studio. So you have your workshops, you have your classes, you have your yoga teacher training, right? And so these are like your 3 main areas. And you might have a retail area, but For most studios, that's going to bring in so little revenue that it's not worth spending your time and focus on. You know, if you're passionate about it, whatever. I just don't feel like spending any of my time on anything that isn't going to push me forward because I don't have, you know, all the hours in the day, you know. But these are your 3 main revenue streams: workshops, workshops and continuing education, I would say. Classes and yoga teacher training. So you want to be able, as a yoga teacher, to teach all of those things. You want to be able to teach workshops, you want to be able to teach classes, you want to be able to teach a variety of classes, you want to be able to teach yoga teacher training. So if you haven't, and you want to be Yoga Alliance certified— and I don't think Yoga Alliance certification really actually means anything about the quality of your course, it just means that you pay $600 a year to Yoga Alliance, it might be more now But, but it doesn't, it doesn't like, that has no effect on whether or not somebody's course is actually a good course or not. Because Yoga Alliance doesn't do any follow-up with people, but you, you still need to be able to be certified as a Yoga Alliance school in order to attract a larger number of clients, because many people are looking for that because Yoga Alliance has done a good job at marketing that they're some kind of authority. So that takes at least 2 years after your yoga teacher training, and I think it's, um, I want to say 1,000 hours of teaching, but that might be for the 500. I'm not sure. You're gonna have to look on their website and, and look. I, I don't know because it's been a really long time for me, and I have like some like great, like over 10,000 hours of teaching experience now, so I don't even think about that. But, um, and they change it, you know, so you have to look it up yourself. But, um, I know that it's like a couple of years before you can get certified for that. And also, you, you got to have something to give. So I almost bought a yoga studio in Vegas as a second location, and the studio was going out of business. And I went and looked over the books with the owner, and I toured the studio, and there were a couple of different things that I was like, oh yeah. But one of the main reasons why they weren't making it is that the owner couldn't teach classes. She can teach any yoga at all. She just liked doing yoga. She couldn't teach it at all. And so that's huge. Like, you have to be able to pinch-hit. Now, I don't think that you— I don't think that you should teach a lot of classes when you own the studio. And I'm actually like, that's on my list of topics that I want to cover. Another topic I want to cover is, is how many classes should you teach? Because at some point that doesn't make sense anymore because you're your time becomes more valuable price-wise than paying someone else to teach the class. Like, I gotta do marketing, I gotta do emails, I gotta, you know, like, I have to remind people that the teacher training deadline is coming and they need to sign up by a certain date. And so that's going to bring me in a couple thousand in revenue. Or I could pay somebody, you know, I could teach that class, or I could pay somebody $25 to teach it so I can bring in a couple thousand more in revenue. So It doesn't always make sense for you to be the one teaching the classes. I think that's a terrible business model, um, but you have to be able to do it because when you own a studio, for sure somebody's gonna call in sick and they're gonna do it at the very last minute. I lived really close to my yoga studio. I actually lived within walking distance of it, so it was like less than a 5-minute drive for me to get there. And, and I more than once, more than once, I had to haul my ass there like super fast to teach a class because somebody no-showed. Um, I mean, it didn't happen very frequently because I had very structured rules around that, and I fired people that did that. Like, I just let them go. Like, that's a, that's a non-negotiable for me, especially if it's a 6 o'clock in the morning class. Like, I don't— no, I'm trusting you to teach, to treat my clients with the same respect that I would, and if you can't do that, you can't work for me. Like, I'm really tough about that because I think it's a gift. Like, it's a gift that someone is willing to work with you, that someone wants to work with you. I think it's an incredible gift that somebody wants to take your classes, that somebody wants to be with you, that someone finds your energy worth paying money for. And if somebody that works for me can't respect that, then I can't have them on my staff. Like, all the energy's gotta line up, you know? That's really important to me. So you gotta be able to get there at 6 AM and, and cover that class if somebody no-shows. You're on call all the time for the rest of your life. So are you willing to give up your life? That's really, you know, as long as that studio is open, you're on call, and that it takes that to be successful. It's, it's a job, you know, and you can't hire it out. No one is going to care about your business as much as you do. Nobody. And like, you have to be able to have those 3 revenue streams to, to keep the doors open. In my first studio, yoga teacher training by far was the biggest revenue stream. It was like 75 to 80% of what I made every year came from yoga teacher training. It was the reason why I kept the doors open. It was what paid for me to buy the next studio. At the second studio, I was in a much more populated area. So when I added on the third space next door, it was because my classes had gotten so big. So I added on the third studio, and my classes had gotten so big that I needed to have a class space and a yoga teacher training space separate. Because there was so many people coming to classes. So at that point, my membership and my yoga teacher training were about 50/50. And I was— right before I sold, I was really in the process of building up workshops and continuing education and getting that to a next level. So that was kind of like— because I worked with an organization called Trauma Recovery Yoga, they did all of their trainings at my studio. I was bringing in a decent amount of money from them too. And then they were— a lot of those people were then taking my yoga teacher training. So that was actually— it wasn't even so much what I was making off of them using my space, but off of having people come in to take the, you know, the yoga teacher training from them. Yeah, that was, you know, like, creating those partnerships with people are really important. And that's not something that happens right away. It happens over time. Um, it happens over working with a lot of different people. And the other thing is, is that I wanted to work for a lot of people. Now, I never really worked at other people's yoga studios because I find that to be not very ethical. Um, someone, one of my peers in Vegas, they worked for, for another yoga studio and they decided to open their own studio and they took all their students with them. And that studio actually ended up closing because of that. And I think that's super not right. Like, I don't like that. I think that's dirty. That's not yoga at all. So I never worked at other people's studios. I worked at gyms a lot. I did a lot of gym work. I had my own private sessions. I had spaces where I did my own private gigs. I worked at a law office. I did like a variety of different things. But the thing was, is that you're getting experience from all these different places and gaining all this information about how they run it. And every time I would travel, I would go to other— I would go to yoga studios in other cities, and I would see like, how did they set up their check-in process? How did they set up their studio? How do they I interact with students? What is their process after I leave? Like, what is their email process? Like, how are they following up with people after they leave? How are they keeping people in that loop and keeping them coming back? What is their introductory offer? And all of this stuff over these time periods helped me to figure out how I wanted to run my studio. So I think, you know, can you open a studio right after you get out of yoga teacher training? Sure, you can do whatever you want. Like, you can do whatever you want. But if you want to be successful and you want to make it in the long term, then you want to get that experience that you need and gain that information that you need and make those connections that you need. You know, I actually did a yoga teacher training before I even opened my studio because trainings make your teachers. You, you train people in your teacher trainings to be yoga teachers for you. And then you're going to teach them exactly the way you want your classes to be done, exactly the way you want people to be treated, exactly the way you want them to teach. And it's like this, like, 10 to 15 week long interview process. You really get to see, like, do people show up on time? How do they react under stress? Do you feel connected to them? Are they easy to work with? Can they be depended on? You know, in a, in an hour-long interview, you can't really know this stuff. But if you're with somebody for 10 to 15 weeks and in a yoga teacher training, you're going to know the darkest, baddest sides of them. And, you know, I would always just pick the people that it was easiest to get along with and did a great job, you know, because, and, and the people that were angry, I definitely wasn't going to hire them. Like, I don't know why they didn't get that. Like, I don't want problems. I want my yoga studio to run smoothly. There's already enough struggle owning a yoga studio. I don't need to be fighting with my staff. Like, I need my staff to all get along with each other and to all get along with me. Like, that's the most important thing. You, you just can't have dissension in the staff because you can't be of service. It's the whole point of the studio is to be of service to your community and to the people who come to your yoga studio. And so If you have issues within the ranks, you can't, it's like you can't help those people and that's what we're doing, right? We're here to help. We're here to be of service. That's the number one most important thing. Anyhow, Kimberly, this is like my longest video yet. I hope that all those answered your question. You can check out Kimberly on Instagram and I'll put her Instagram in the description so you can go follow her and thank you so much everybody. I appreciate you being here. I hope that you're subscribed to the channel. If you're not, hit the subscribe button. It really helps me out. Hit the like button. That helps me out too. If you can't help me by subscribing, at least help me by liking. If you want to, I would love to have you in my course. I have a free class, masterclass.milliondollaryoga.com, where you can, uh, get 3 tips that will help you 10x your yoga income in 2021 and get a little bit of an insight into the Millionaire Yogi Academy. And the things that we do there. I'd love to work with you. I would love to help you develop your online yoga teaching, your per— like, in-person yoga teaching, whatever. I've helped a lot of people grow their businesses and be very successful. I made over a million dollars myself. Anyhow, have a great day. Thank you again for watching. I'll see you tomorrow for the next video.