How to Iterate Your Way to Awesome as a Yoga Teacher…

a good mantra for growing your yoga business?

A mentor I’m currently working with has a phrase I love, which she uses regularly to help us deal with the challenges we face as we try to develop and grow our business.

It’s been a really helpful mind-set mantra for me, so I’d like to share it with you here.

Iterating your way to awesome as a yoga teacher means you accept building your yoga business is a journey not a destination.

It reminds you this is a process, where you will make mistakes; where there will be set-backs and where things don’t always go to plan, but which is ESSENTIAL in order for you to get the results you want and the success you deserve.

I’ve written many articles in the mind-set category of my blog on the whole issue of dealing with the gremlins that arise when we try something and it flops!

It hurts!

It saps our confidence.

It can sometimes take days or weeks to gingerly dip our toes in the water and try again.

But when you realise you are iterating your way to awesome, it makes it easier to take the knocks! Because you realise you’re one step closer to awesomeness!!

Let’s look at this in a more visual way, to help you understand what is happening as we try to grow our yoga business, or indeed try anything new. 

First, remember, behind every success are a whole boat load of failures you usually don’t see or hear about. Whether it’s actors like Jim Carey, inventors like James Dyson or Edison or sports people or businesses that have become hugely successful, these now highly successful people all have one thing in common: they have failed, sometimes spectacularly, many, many times before they got to awesome!

So, you tried an offer to get more students to your classes and it didn’t work out? 

You got a lot of interest initially, but now the numbers seem to be tailing off?

You spent a lot of money on a website and it’s not doing anything to generate enquiries?

You need to know all this is just feedback: and the ONLY way to get feedback on your ideas for your business is to follow this “ITERATE YOUR WAY TO AWESOME” process:

4 steps to iterating your way to awesome as a yoga teacher!

STEP 1: THE IDEA

Your yoga business starts with an idea! An idea of how it might look for you. An idea of what you’d like to teach and who would be your ideal student. An idea of how best to attract students and fill your classes, or what to write in your advertising copy….the list goes on!

All of those ideas are just ideas! Unless you put them into action! On the way to iterating your way to awesome you are going to have lots of ideas – some which will work, some which won’t. What matters is not that some of your ideas didn’t work – what matters is you test those ideas out by moving to step 2...

STEP 2: TAKE ACTION!

Know that the ONLY way to get feedback on whether the ideas you have for your yoga business will work is to take action and test those ideas! It’s only through trying things out and seeing if it will work that you can see what’s working and what’s not.

Take me for example. When I first began my business I decided to try 3 local areas close to where I live which I thought had a lot of my target demographic living there, and so where I thought I’d get a good response. Two of the areas showed promise early on – and one failed miserably! Despite using the same advertising methods to attract students, not a single enquiry came through and no-one turned up for my first class where I’d booked the hall for a month! I ditched that area and focused on where my advertising was working! And I was surprised at the area which worked the best for me – I hadn’t expected it to be that location! I’d gained clarity – I’d learned, and I could move on!

Instead of spending weeks of anxsting about where to set up, I just gave it a go and waited to let the market actually tell me the real truth about where to focus my energy, time and precious resources.

I’ve tried courses at different times – some work – some don’t. The ones that don’t I ditch! 

So… what taking action gave me was…

STEP 3: CLARITY

And it’s that clarity which helps steer you better; which gives you the opportunity to redefine your idea; or to refine it or even to pivot altogether to a completely different approach/idea – and if that works you start to…

STEP 4: BUILD MOMENTUM

And as you build momentum, you feel more confident! You take even more action and you think of new ideas and ways to grow your business, which you take action on, test, get clarity on and so it goes. 

It’s NOT a failure when something you try doesn’t work: it’s an opportunity to learn. 

Sometimes it’s not just the market we learn about – we learn about ourselves too. It’s natural to feel bad when things don’t work out, but sometimes we let that disappointment overwhelm us to the possibility of what we can still accomplish. Maybe we let ourselves get stuck? Maybe we fell into perfectionism and just took too long to get into action? Maybe we started to second guess and doubt ourselves? 

(And maybe those patterns show up elsewhere in our lives as well as in our business?)

What matters if you want to grow your yoga business is you tell yourself you are iterating your way to awesome, and this is a journey.

Then, when things don’t quite work out as you’d hoped, you don’t compare yourself to anyone else; you know this is your journey, and you are one step closer to awesome!!

Now go out there and take your yoga to the world!!

Good luck! 

Namaste,

Shona

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