The Business of Yoga

Is yoga also a business

Yes, tell everybody they need yoga, but you may want to keep your day job. Acting on faith has tremendous creative power, but make a plan before you invest your inheritance, risk your retirement savings, spend the kids’ college fund or take a second mortgage on the house.

You can always keep your job and perform Seva, selfless service.

By donating your time, you can find out if a change is right for you.

Making your passion for yoga pay your bills

To be in the business of yoga, you want to find a way to make your passion for yoga pay your bills. Your values must align with your actions.

Can you teach? Sell? Manage? Heal? Draw? Organize? Sing? Clean? All of these skills and more can be put to good use in the service of yoga.

Should you work for someone or be your own boss? Should you search for your niche or carve out a new market share for yourself? These decisions depend on how much risk you like to take.

Exploring career options in the yoga industry

Here are some stories, encouraging yet cautionary, from people working within the many growing fields in the business of yoga.

Creating a business plan

“You should have your own business plan, especially if you are a sole practitioner business. How else can you manage your money and grow?” asks Art Tiddens, Ph.D., who facilitates a practical two-day intensive course called The Business of Yoga: How to Start and Grow Your Own Business, offered through the Forrest Yoga Circle.

He travels to major cities across the country and gives concrete guidance in comprehensive workshops where you write your own small business plan for yoga.

Lex Gillan, Director of the Yoga Institute and Bookstore in Houston, is committed to the importance of one-on-one communication with students.

He says, “Once you open a studio, it becomes 85% business and 15% teaching.” His Business of Yoga course covers many often-overlooked elements of running a yoga business.

A Business Asana course is also taught by Boston Yoga, a company providing yoga in corporate settings in Massachusetts.

Course highlights include marketing and promotions, initiating corporate yoga programs, developing negotiation skills, creating business opportunities, accounting strategies, and web page development.

Learning from nonprofit resources

In Los Angeles, SCORE Chapter 9 is a nonprofit organization of volunteer retired businesspeople who provide free counseling and low-cost workshops. SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, a resource partner with the U.S.

Small Business Administration, offers classes to help you start your own business. SCORE’s core values are exactly those most yoga businesses need: Client Focus, Delivering Quality, Ethical Conduct, Professionalism, and Contributing to the Community.

If yoga and business can be done in line with these values, then the business of yoga will benefit everyone.

Innovating with yoga business tools

Stuart Hanna remembers witnessing how some studios did business and thinking, there’s got to be an easier way. “Because I had been thinking along those lines,

asked me to develop a software which would work more intuitively.”

StudioWorks software was commissioned from the Sacred Movement Center for Yoga and Healing (now “Exhale”) in Venice and is now used in 40 other yoga studios.

Lessons from experience

Mara Trafficante is Stuart’s wife and partner. They own Mission Street Yoga in Pasadena, California, open for over six years. Stuart says, “We’ve been through the trenches, we’ve been through the ringer dealing with the real demands of launching and running a studio and not just postulating about what a studio owner might need.

Most people out there who open yoga studios are like my wife and me, who opened our yoga studio without having been business owners.” Stuart uses his experience to improve StudioWorks, “It’s sort of like the racecar driver being able to design and build his race car.”

Justin White, a former Microsoft software developer, founded Wellness Business Systems to provide the industry with business management software to improve business and free up time.

Marketing director John Meyer says, “One of the things the Wellworks team did when we were at the LA Yoga Expo was hold two informal meetings on running a yoga studio. It was very interesting the number of women who love yoga and decided to open a yoga studio.”

Balancing practice and business

A problem many face is that once the business is running they end up spending more time running the business than focusing on their true passion, teaching yoga.

Giving back with donation-based studios

Stefan Storage hasn’t lost his passion, “I hope that people find this wonderful practice of yoga. I think it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

The co-owner of the Garden of Yoga studio in Woodland Hills says, “When you start a studio, it’s definitely slow in the beginning, but it builds through advertising and word of mouth.”

He and his partner Diana Vega run classes strictly on a donation basis to give complete pricing flexibility to students. “If it wasn’t for Bryan Kest’s donation yoga, we would not have been able to continue a serious, ongoing, committed practice.

So, we thought, we needed to take the same concept that worked for us and bring it to Garden of Yoga. We don’t want money to stop people from doing yoga.”

Conscious commerce in the yoga world

People don’t mind paying for yoga, though. We buy books, clothing, mats, instructional videos, and classes, all with cash, check, or credit card. Where is the line between enough and too much?

What about aparigraha?

Doesn’t money make people greedy for more? Or are companies operating with an intention of integrity?

The Gaiam, Inc. website says their corporation understands, “that the opportunity to affect people’s lives with information and products is both a privilege and a responsibility.”

Gaiam believes in the concept of “Conscious Commerce,” making purchasing decisions based on personal values and beliefs, taking into consideration all aspects of our lives and the impact we have upon the planet.

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Smaller businesses leading the way

“Conscious Commerce” should define the business of yoga, and Frank Angiuli of Natural High Lifestyle is its champion. “We hope to be the thread that merges fashion, conscious living, and the health of our planet.”

Frank believes smaller businesses can be models for larger manufacturers, and his company demonstrates principles of sustainable economic and environmental business practice. He is just as passionate about his yoga practice.

Exploring private teaching opportunities

You, too, love your yoga practice, but by now you may be saying, “Show me the money!” If you are a teacher, you may be able to pay the rent by privately teaching people who are too busy to attend classes or people with special injuries or needs.

Laura Morgan of Topanga, a private yoga teacher for eight years, says, “I teach between seven and fourteen private sessions a week.” Her students come from referral and advertising; they schedule and pay at the beginning of each month. It’s not always easy, though. Laura says, “People get busy or sick or have emergencies.”

Dale Nieli, a personal trainer and private yoga teacher for 20 years, has a variety of clients, “Either I do a pro bodybuilder or someone with Parkinson’s disease.”

What is her technique? “The biggest thing is humor.”

When she teaches publicly, she says, “I prefer to teach at gyms and hotels. For a lot of people, it’s their introduction. I also love the marriage of weight training and yoga.”

Finding opportunities in studio management

A company may hire you if you write software and do yoga, especially if you can do them simultaneously. You may already work in an office. Why not a yoga studio office? Lamar Rutherford, C.P.A., M.B.A., was Director of Marketing at Yoga Works (closed).

Her single-owner studio, Yoga Time in Beverly Hills, became part of the seven locations of Yoga Works before closing. As yoga’s popularity grows, mergers become a part of the business of yoga landscape.

Staying true to your values

Meditate on what your core values are.

Truth? Peace? Community? Equality? Sustainability?

The business world needs these! What would you spend money for in the yoga world? Remember, if you work in another field, even as a yoga student, when you spend your money, you contribute to the business of yoga.

Make your living from your heart and, as Frank Angiuli says, “Spend your money in line with your values”.