Diary of a yoga teacher faced with Covid 19; Phase 2: Choosing your strategy: Am I ready to go online? A checklist for any aspiring online yoga teacher during Covid 19.

A Checklist For Choosing The Right Yoga Teacher Training Course

In my previous blog or podcast I explained why it’s my belief that taking your yoga teaching online is NOT the panacea for all yoga teachers in this time of Covid 19 crisis!

If you’ve not yet seen it:

Listen here to the podcast.

See the article.

There are some things you simply MUST have in place if you want to earn sustainable income from teaching yoga online, and even then, it may be a slow burn in terms of generating hard cash in the bank for you.

So this is a really simple but effective checklist to help you decide whether online is where you should focus your energy and your time right now.

A simple checklist to help you honestly appraise whether teaching yoga online is where you need to focus FIRST during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Be honest with yourself as you go down this list. Tick what is already in place. Place a cross where there are gaps and a question mark if you’re not sure how you’d go about that!

  • I have an existing community of students of at least around 75 to 100 people who know like and trust me.
  • I can contact these students easily and quickly – I have their contact details to e-mail them and they are used to hearing from me.
  • I fully understand the needs and wants of my community.
  • I can easily outline the BENEFITS students gain from working online with me.
  • I could easily devise at least a couple of programmes or courses I feel sure my students would enjoy.
  •  I have already filmed myself teaching yoga and feel reasonably comfortable doing it.
  • I know what platforms and software I can use to help support online classes or could easily suss that out and have it in place quite quickly.
  • I have and am familiar with a good e-mail system such as ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Aweber or Infusionsoft.
  • I have a clear pricing strategy for my offerings that works for the students and supports my own income goals.
  • I have ideas about how to encourage students to continue online with me whilst the pandemic means face to face classes are impossible.
  • I have a payment system already in place or am confident I can set that up easily and quickly.
  • I have written the copy for these new online offerings and have this ready on my website if I have one, and/or in a series of e-mails letting people know about the classes.
  • The copy for my promotion of these online classes CLEARLY states the BENEFITS of coming to my classes - and speaks to them in simple language they would use. NO jargon!
  • I have decided on a simple system for capturing the contact details of all enquiries.

So, are there any gaps?

If you ticked everything then you should be teaching already pretty successfully on line! If you’re not, why the heck aren’t you because you’re SERIOUSLY missing a trick!

And if you realise there are a number of gaps – then this helps you realise what you need to have in place if you’re going to make this work – it might even explain why, if you’ve been struggling, why that is.

And by far the thing on that list which will hold you up the most from bringing hard cash into the bank is number 1.

Without an existing community who  know like and trust you already – trust me – you’re either going to have to pay for advertising (PLEASE don’t do that unless you have money to burn and you’re absolutely clear who your target market is) or you’re going to have to understand that you’re competing against the likes of Yoga with Adrienne, Yoga U online and the thousands of free videos people can get on YouTube.

Seriously – if you thought you had competition OFFLINE when you were teaching – you ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to online competition.

Don’t let this dishearten you. 

Instead, realise right now you have an opportunity to start putting some of these things in place: to reduce the gaps and ensure you’re in the best place possible to thrive as a yoga teacher in future.

Are you in our Facebook community?
If you want to join a community of like-minded yoga teachers, determined NOT to let the Covid-19 define or destroy them, make sure you’re part of the 
Yoginiors Facebook group, where, over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing what works and what doesn’t at a time like this.

Namaste,

Shona

Actions you can take


Join our FB group; and tell us your story of how you’ve coped with the Covid -19 crisis. Whether you’ve successfully transitioned online or struggled, I’d love to hear your stories. They will help others either realise they are not alone or help inspire them to take some positive action to move them forward. And it will help me understand how to design training that will support you better – so you learn, grow and thrive.

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