PART TWO: BABY STEPS

If you have not yet gone through the exercise for Step One —go back and let’s get clear on your Vision!

Hopefully you have taken the time to dream up where you want to be with your yoga career 10 years from now…

Remember this is not set in stone, it is all a process, and we constantly make adjustments based on new information as experience unfolds!

I want you to hold the 3 most compelling, inspiring aspects of your vision in your mind now as a motivation to begin the next phase of this accelerator process.

See it in your mind, feel how much it matters to you, imagine what your life will be like when these things are real.

Take 5 long slow breaths with your eyes closed to really feel it in your body and heart, and see it in your mind’s eye.

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Now let’s get right into today’s exercise:

We’re going to take baby steps, and I will divide the group into three. As we go along, it will be clear to you which instructions you can skip over.

• Group ONE: Teaching less than a year.

Here are your assignments:

a) You need a Facebook page if you don’t have one yet. For the moment, I actually recommend that you stay with a standard “timeline” page rather than a “public figure” business type page.

If you don’t have one yet, that’s your baby step for today —create one and start inviting your network of friends and colleagues to be your FB friends. Do it now.

b) You need a simple, 2-page website, and decent quality photos —one of you either in a yoga pose, or teaching someone else who is in a yoga pose, and one nice headshot/candid shot that is warm and friendly.

Several baby steps there if you haven’t taken them yet!

If you need photos, or help setting up your website, ask around your friends and colleagues and find someone who can get you started!

You may have to invest some money, but there is no business in the world that can be started up with out some investment.

Start!

c) Once you have your website set up, I want you to start posting at least once a day on your Facebook page about your classes….

Tell the story, thank people for coming, talk about what you’re excited to share in your next class —and always provide a link to your website.

If you enjoy writing, you might even start creating blog posts on your website that either tell your story, or share your thoughts, experiences and philosophy, or that feature articles and videos by people who are important influencers of how you teach.

Stay open and creative, and think of all of this as a way to reach people who might not otherwise know about you,  with your authentic message and sincere offering!
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• Group TWO: Teaching between one and two years.

a) Today you start taking a little clipboard, pen and paper to every single class you ever teach. Ever.

Go buy these supplies ASAP.

On your way practice your one to two sentence invitation, like:

“Thanks so much for coming today, I wold love to stay in touch with you —so please join my email list if you’re not on it already. I am putting it right here on this yoga block.”

Think about how much your email list will grow even if you add just one or two addresses a week…. That’s roughly 50 to 100 people a year from now.

Baby steps —big results…

b) If you already have a website, you need to look into two things:

i) Having what is called an “email capture widget” on every page of the site.

Think about what kind of free gift you can give people as an incentive to join your list (remember how/why you are on my list?!) 🙂

ii) Get yourself set up with an email newsletter service. I use NamasteInteractive.com but you can use other services like Constant Contact or Mailchimp.

You probably need to find someone who can set it up so your email capture widget feeds directly into your email list on the email newsletter service.

Find someone who can help you get this set up today!

c) Start thinking about what your first workshop or workshop series is going to be about.

Spend some time journaling, thinking about what you want to share in a 2 or 3 hour experience with your students, what they will find interesting, how you want to create and describe the experience, what you might call it…
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• Group THREE: Teaching for more than two years

a) I want to encourage you to not only be teaching your workshop series (2 to 4 workshops that have a cohesive structure and offer something specific to your interests and expertise)  at your own primary studio —but nowalso at a secondary studio…

Start researching where you might be able to offer your workshops, and get yourself on a schedule of offering a workshop every one to three months at two (or more)  studios.

Take your email list everywhere and keep adding people to it.

b) If you haven’t yet, you should be planning your first retreat.

I suggest a Friday night through Sunday afternoon two-night stay, not too far away (say less than 3 hours drive) at a reasonably priced retreat center that has a maximum capacity of around 20 people…

You can grow from there into a more luxurious and larger center later.

Plan to start promoting the retreat at least 6 months in advance.

c) By now you should be sending out at least one email newsletter to your slowly growing group every month.

Make it personal, friendly, worthwhile for them to open (I send out playlists, meditation videos, blog articles and poems, for example..) and mention your workshops and retreats in plenty of time with functioning links and easy ways to find out more information and sign up.
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Ok, those are your baby steps… Let’s do this!

Pease don’t hesitate to share your progress, any questions you may have, or just say Hi by commenting below!