Marketing and insurance for yoga teachers.

Transcript

hey guys this is Courtney and I'm losing my waist a little bit which is unfortunate because I have to teach for the next I think 15 days straight but I do want to go over some things I had asked some of my students and first of all to clarify I'm medical yoga therapist I own a vocational school actually own two schools and I do presentations and so because I own two vocational schools and I have for ten years now I have trained 225 students to date and I have a huge business section in my book and I'm gonna go ahead and tell you three books that you can read on business my book has a huge business section in a workbook to go along with it that identifies your needs specifically so it has the workbook will ask you questions and help you identify your your needs because your needs as a yoga teacher may not be the same as someone else's needs now there's also two other books I recommend there are not a lot of business books that I'm familiar with or know that are good Larry pain PA yne PhD he is one of my teachers you need to just google it I think it is on Amazon but if you can buy directly from the author they do make a little bit more money and as a published author I can tell you they really appreciate it for me I bought from the publisher it definitely helps a couple of small businesses now and the other book is called stretched by Karen Fabian and I'll go on Amazon and it is a very good business book for those of you watching this before teacher training is coming up I'm going to be covering this in detail in our 200 our teacher training I want to say it's our February weekend I need to look it may be March I will post it but I would highly recommend you come so you can get more of this in detail so this is going to be a two-part video simply because I do not have the space to do any more than that on my phone and I have to use my phone computer so first of all let's just start at the top and that question the first question is do I need liability insurance well I would say yes you do and the reason you do is because it's extra coverage now the first and it always depends first of all I am a professional I've done this work for years but I'm not an accountant and I'm not a lawyer so these are simply my opinions if you are an employer and I was for many years with the hot springs and well I'm not going to detail who I worked for but for a couple of big nonprofits and a couple of different people that are work for big businesses academia and I was an employee and they took out taxes as long as I did work like that I did not have liability insurance I did have a few private clients on the side I wasn't worried about being sued with those people but it is generally a really good idea to have liability insurance I kind of grew organically and as I went out and did more on my own I've always had insurance since that time so for the past like 15 years I've had a policy what I recommend doing is checking with yoga lines or the International Association of yoga therapist if you are a member of either one of those then the rights are much better if you go through that site and do that they're all pretty much underwritten by Philadelphia and you can also go to Philadelphia Yoga Alliance yoga journal I Watty those are the best if your yoga therapist or you do work with people who are special populations I would recommend getting with iyt because the regular yoga insurance won't cover you the odd thing about that is the insurance through yoga there the iyt you know the therapists website is actually cheaper than when I was just doing you know private yoga lessons and public classes so I think it's a good bargain I think it's worth the peace of mind the other thing is if you're going to start a business on your own I would recommend looking into getting a LLC as a limited liability corporation to protect your so as well from any kind of lawsuit I've never had a problem in almost two decades but it's definitely worth looking into and again for more information on this I would highly recommend you read my book and so I think that covered the question of do I need insurance and when you're gonna spend a hundred to two hundred dollars on insurance a year average is about a hundred and fifty I think I spent one hundred and thirty last year now these are a lot of marketing questions do I need a website do I need social media do I need face Bo do I need Instagram and for those of you who are part of our teacher training Reno's about to have a weekend of workshops on there's a whole section on social media and my book covers social media in-depth but you need something you need a landing page where people can find you and you have your classes and you have you all of your information where it's easy to find it's not complicated that could be a blog that could be a website or that could be a Facebook page so you want to constantly be linking those together so if you're using social media say Facebook and you just want to have a Facebook page a lot of people do this for ease I don't particularly like it I have all of the above but I have been in business for a really long time and then they you need to be putting your if you have a website you need to be putting that on your Facebook page on a regular basis like tagging your website if you're promoting an event you need to put your Facebook page on there hey check out our website for our classes this Tuesday lengthe page there I use Instagram Facebook and I have a website I use Weebly a lot of people don't seem to care for a lot of people are more WordPress people it just depends how big you are I mean and what you're trying to do and how much you want to grow I mean you need a website if you want to grow substantially yes I think you do my husband is not tech savvy I do his website it's just a landing page with you know at first it was just our information a picture of us a picture of a house because we own a roofing company and then our information about how to contact us in what we do and it said you know we were contractors licensed insured contractors I'm sorry my dogs once again are being disruptive so you know that's gonna completely depend on you and you can look at mine it's Cortney Robinson yoga it's very dense because I've had it for oh my gosh 15 to 20 years now but okay sorry alright but I would definitely recommend a website if you're going to if you're wanting to grow your business just keep it simple if they're not website you know savvy to do something like that and you might just consider doing something simple like your Facebook page and you want consistency is key with social media and social media is just constantly changing so that's also an issue is you just have to keep up with all the trends I just started using Instagram about a year ago and I love it but I'm not really trying to grow my business I am trying to scale back so I would really recommend reading my book I would recommend taking reena's Reina rim specializes in that empowered yoga teacher Rena Ren calm for more information on social media should I advertise in a magazine I really don't think so um when I had a yoga school there was a local magazine called natural awakenings and I could run an ad for one hundred and fifty dollars and get a what they call I'm trying to think what those are called it's like a little write-up about you I did get some business off of that but I was at a bigger price point so if one person came to school off that ad then it made it worth it for me you know it cost me a little bit but it was worth it for me again it depends if you can get a really good deal but for the most part magazines are expensive for the turn that you're going to get I didn't add in yoga journal one time and I saw no return off of it at all it was like ooh cool you're in yoga Journal well yeah you can't you too could pay a thousand dollars in being Yoga Journal I mean I can't imagine what it is now because that was over ten years ago let's see business cards what should they say and do I need them keep them brief yes you do need them and I will use vistaprint it's super easy and cheap and they need to have your name you have your contact information and what you do and I wouldn't give your home address or anything like that unless that's with the location of your classes I wouldn't I would make sure your websites on there or your Facebook page and or find us on Facebook at whatever whatever whatever so yes I get asked for my business cards all the time and I carry them with me do I need flyers and do it should I pay someone to do them you know if you don't my again my book has all of this extensively but if you are starting out you have no money then I do we do what we call guerilla marketing and that means marketing with no budget social media Flyers business cards are cheap you know little like under $100 you have to spend on accounting yes go put the flier up at the local health food store you're going to be in what's called the low-cost market lifestyles of health and sustainability Subaru drivers health health food stores you guys you know what you like if you're a yoga teacher what do you like put them there you know so that's where you need to put them if they'll allow you to coffee shops um but yes fliers are good you know you can pay someone to do one on a computer or eat I've seen some really cool hand-drawn ones I am really one of those people that is kind of like an outlier I like it when people are unique and do something super cool if your artistic make your own dang flower and go make copies of it shoot I mean do it for free and it's really cool so those are kind of the money questions and I'm going to do a part two on the other one there are some those are the marketing questions but yeah stay tuned for March for part two so this is mainly marketing and insurance thank you have a great day bye