Dear Yoga Studios, It Takes More Than Good Teachers For a Comeback

I wish I could tell you that the effects of the pandemic are completely behind us, but I cannot. A dismal business climate is lingering in the yoga and wellness world, and may be with us for some time.

Yoga studios everywhere are still struggling. Events are not filling and classes could be more robust. Even the national yoga behemoth Corepower is advertising for workers, teachers and students. My inbox is filled with discounted offers to return to studios.

What used to be easy-ish several years ago, will now be hard. And what was once hard, will now be arduous. Students are reluctant to return.

Therefore, it’s time that we implement some basic best practices to get ourselves back on track. It takes more than good teachers for the wellness industry to thrive again. Studios have to get on board too. There are countless studios owned by well-meaning people who do not understand the yoga business and bought in because they love the practice. Now it’s time to learn the trade.

The teachers cannot do it by themselves.

How to Fill a Workshop

Once you’ve fine-tuned your schedule and tweaked your offerings for maximum benefit, it’s time to go to the next level. Let’s start with the workshop because this is the single most effective way to boost studentship.

The workshop is a relatively low-cost, small investment of time and money for the student to go deeper into their practice. If it goes well, students might continue to invest in their practice and their overall wellness by taking more classes and trainings.

1. Choose Wisely

Choose a guest teacher wisely. If your studio is struggling, then investing $5,000 or more into a traveling teacher may not be the best choice. On the other hand, inviting a famous outside teacher may be the exact best choice. I am lucky that I don’t have to make these decisions. Ask your students to see what they may be interested in supporting, and then remind them this is what they wanted when the time comes.

Also consider that if you get a huge turnout for a visiting teacher, the object is to convert those students to regulars. If students only come for one and done, then you’ve spent a tremendous amount of money and energy, and got no further in supporting your studio.

On the other hand, if you support your existing teachers and give one of them a workshop and it goes well, then it is highly likely that students will come back to have more of that experience.

2. Focus on Skills

What motivates a student? Progress. Students like to get closer to their potential. For example, when we are working toward a goal and we make a little progress, we are jazzed. Think of the golfer who lives to shave a stroke off his round.

If a student wants to “get better” at yoga (I know this is a triggering concept, but hang with me) then offer workshops that focus on skills. Some ideas could be meditation, backbends, inversions and fundamentals. Progress is often reflected as joy, and joy is contagious.

3. Advertise

Once you create a workshop then the work begins. For example, if your community says they’ve never heard of the teacher and didn’t know about the workshop, whose fault is that? The studio’s! The work to advertise and fill a class is not only on the teacher’s back; it must be shared.

A studio must advertise and that is more than a few Instagram posts. Not everyone is on social media. You must create flyers, post them all over the studio, the building, the surroundings, community centers and complementary businesses such as massage and wellness. You are trying to grow your membership, and growth happens both from within and without.

4. Set up the Proper Registration

When you have a guest teacher, under no circumstances do you set them up as a “sub” to a regular class. This is lazy management. To most students, a sub will appear to be a sub. Shocking, I know.

Set the workshop up as a separate event. This may seem obvious, but I wouldn’t mention it if I haven’t seen it (and suffered from it).

5. Implement Affiliate Marketing

Lately studios have been using affiliate marketing very successfully. That is if an outside teacher or studio recommends your workshop, the student who signs up uses a code to receive a discount. That triggers a monetary kickback to the recommending party.

Will you make as much money? No. But, you will fill your rooms, grow visibility on social media, and you’ll work with other studios to create excitement about yoga – all wins in a drought.

6. Understand Your Wins

There’s more than one objective when you create a workshop. Here are a few:

1. Fill the room on that particular workshop and make some money.

2. Have something interesting to create buzz on social media.

3. Educate surrounding businesses on your offerings.

4. Educate your students on that “something more” in yoga.

5. Creating a community event – and community keeps a studio alive.

6. Creating a more engaged studentship outside of weekly classes.

Even if one particular workshop doesn’t fill, it will contribute to the overall buzz of a studio.

7. Grow From Your losses

Lastly, if you offer a workshop and it’s a complete dud, this is a huge learning opportunity. What did you do wrong? What could you do better? It could be that you scheduled a guest teacher to come into a very dead time zone and not even Sam Heughan in a yoga diaper would have filled the room.

And if you don’t know who he is, then you don’t know your market as well as you should.

Michelle Marchildon is the Yogi Muse. She is an award-winning journalist and former business writer for the national news. You can find her at www.yogimuse.com