If you’ve been practicing and teaching yoga for a while, you might feel the urge to look into starting a yoga business of your own. If you get excited when you imagine telling people that you own a yoga business, that could be a nudge in the right direction. What’s more, if you’ve got a passion for business and a passion for yoga, you can combine the two to create what might be the perfect job for you. Although you’re probably itching to get started, you’ll want to do your research before you dive into the yoga business planning process. Getting all of your ducks in a row before you start a business will make the transition from being an employee to an employer and business owner much smoother.
If you already manage a yoga studio for someone else, you may find that you’ll have a little bit less of a learning curve than you would if you were going from being someone who casually practices yoga to a yoga studio owner. Additionally, you might not know how to run a business even if you love yoga so much that you could do it 24 hours a day every single day of the week and year. This will lead to potential gaps in knowledge and could even end up in liability or financial troubles down the road if you don’t hone your business skills as sharply as you’ve practiced honing your yoga skills.
Before you open up shop for your yoga business, you should think of what kind of yoga business you want to create. The most obvious kind of yoga business may be a yoga studio, but you can always think outside the box. Perhaps you’ll want to provide private instruction as a yoga teacher to a general audience or a specific population such as pregnant or disabled folks. Alternatively, you may want to start a school that is certified to certify budding yoga instructors with their credentials. For a more creative option, you might want to perform yoga as an art in public settings or venues. If you’re interested in writing, you may want to launch your career as an authority in the book space as an author of yoga books and instruction manuals. As you get into the nitty-gritty details of starting a private yoga business, you’ll find that there’s so much more to consider than you might have anticipated when the idea of starting a private yoga business was nothing more than a thought on the horizon of your mind.
Create a Comfortable Environment
Before you’re ready for the process of starting a private yoga business, you’ll want to scope out the right space to host your yoga business. Whether you have an office where you write your yoga books or a studio where you plan to host yoga classes, you’ll want to maintain a comfortable temperature for yourself and your clients to practice yoga. For this reason, we recommend reaching out to a commercial HVAC company that specializes in AC installations so you can get an air conditioning system up and running right away. Otherwise, your yoga clients may seek out other studios if they’re sweating through yoga sessions that aren’t even supposed to be hot yoga. An uncomfortable environment will lose clients whereas a comfortable environment will help you keep them.
Find a Waste Disposal Solution
Although yoga studios can be pretty low-waste if you practice a low-waste lifestyle, you’ll still want to think about how you’ll manage waste in your business as you’re starting a private yoga business. To help care for the environment, you should look into purchasing or renting commercial recycling containers and find an appropriately sized dumpster rental for all of your trash collection needs. Even if you aren’t selling products that add up to a lot of shipping boxes and packing waste, you’ll find that regular office supplies and everyday trash can accumulate quickly if you don’t have recycling bins and dumpsters to handle the load of refuse.
Invest in a New Floor
As you’re endeavoring to start a private yoga business, you’ll need to consider every detail of building your studio from the doors to the front desk to the floors. While you might like the aesthetics of hardwood flooring or the price of luxury vinyl planks, you’ll need to put practical aspects of the flooring over any aesthetic preferences you might have. For that reason, we recommend going with a flooring option that offers properties that make it slip-resistant, durable, and safe for use in a place where people will be doing a lot of physical activities such as materials for flooring that incorporate an industrial epoxy floor coating. When your flooring uses this kind of coating, it will not only last longer than other flooring materials might under the pressure of constant physical activity, but it will do a better job of ensuring that your yoga class attendants have a safe and comfortable time while they’re practicing yoga on those floors.
Some floors such as concrete may be prone to cracking and chipping. Cracking and chipping can be especially unsafe for those who are practicing yoga because it can create uneven flooring that could make some poses more difficult to hold.
What’s more, if you offer classes to students of all ages, a cracked, chipped, or otherwise damaged floor can lead to health issues if your tiniest students ingest the cracked or chipped flakes of flooring material. To avoid these problems, you’ll want to pick the right flooring from the get-go. When you don’t have the right flooring on the first try, you’ll end up wasting time and money by putting your business on pause in the future so you can repair or replace the floor. This delay will not only frustrate you as a yoga studio or yoga business owner, but it will also make customers hesitant to return if they’re not sure if they can rely on your business to provide regular services such as individual or group classes to them.
Repair Your Parking Lot
Unless your business only has street parking available, you’ll need to think about making the parking lot the ideal place for customers and patrons to park with an intact blacktop sealcoating as you’re starting a private yoga business. Although the parking lot might be the last place on your list that you would like to place your focus as a soon-to-be yoga business owner, it’s a pretty important place for you to consider. Without a maintained parking lot, customers may have a hard time coming to your business. If your parking lot’s condition of disrepair makes it hard to get their cars in and out of the lot, customers and potential clients might start to avoid coming to your yoga studio or leave early to stay away from rushes that limit parking availability.
Your parking lot also gives clients, business partners, customers, and community members an impression of your business like every aspect of your studio and marketing campaign would. If your parking lot seems like it needs attention and maintenance work, your customers and business partners may wonder if other areas of your business have also been neglected or left in a state of disrepair. Because people do judge your business based on every aspect of it that they can see with their eyes, you should keep your parking lot looking clean, safe, and sharp. After all, you’re going to be using your parking lot, too. You’ll want it to be a place that’s easy to park, leave, enter, exit, and enjoy for your use and the use of your customers.
Renovate Your Bathrooms
As you’re starting a private yoga business, you should think about every part of your studio. From the waiting area or reception area to the studio itself to the restroom, no part of your studio can be left untouched or unconsidered in the building and renovating process. To renovate your bathroom, you should call in a plumber who can offer a wealth of experience over someone new to the plumbing business. Newer or inexperienced plumbers may have a hard time identifying where your pipes lead which could cost you time, as well as more money, because of their lack of expertise.
As gregorybuiltbathroomrenovations.com.au shares, “When it comes to bathroom renovations, experience is very important. Plumbers with many years of experience will know the exact locations of your pipes after a quick check of your bathroom. As a result, they will work faster and complete the renovation on time, saving you a lot of stress and money in the long run.”
Install Safety Equipment
As they say, safety comes first, and for those who are starting a private yoga business, there are no exceptions. A major part of maintaining safety in your business is practicing a schedule that incorporates fire equipment maintenance. While you may think that you can let fire equipment maintenance go by the wayside if you get busy with your business, you’ll want to think again and prioritize maintaining your safety measures so that your business doesn’t end up on the receiving end of a lawsuit or worse. Although fire equipment maintenance can be a chore, it’s something that you sign up for when you decide to open up any type of business, including a private yoga business.
If you don’t know where to begin with maintaining the fire safety equipment in your business, you can follow this guidance from dorsetfireprotection.co.uk: “An example of an effective fire equipment maintenance schedule would be: A Daily Check of final exit doors and exit routes to make sure they are clear and unbolted at the beginning of each day, check the emergency lighting is on and visible as well as completing a visual check of the fire alarm panel.” As you start conducting checks, it will just become part of your routine as a business owner like paying the payroll, filing the necessary paperwork, and paying taxes.
Have Your Space Inspected
With starting a private yoga business, inspecting your space regularly matters. If you suspect mold due to symptoms that you experience or signs of mold, you should call some local mold protection services. An inspection of the studio will also help protect your business against liability and other key concerns.
Offer Classes for All Ages
In the process of starting a private yoga business, you should think about your potential clients. Unless you have a specific set of skills that make you a teacher who is in high demand for teaching yoga classes to a certain age group, you should offer classes for everyone. You can provide an array of class offerings for those who are in kindergarten to those who are reaching their golden years in retirement. Everyone can benefit from yoga, so why not maximize that truth as a yoga business owner and allow people of all ages and stages of life to come and experience your yoga classes for themselves?
While starting a private yoga business isn’t for the faint of heart, it’s worth pursuing if it’s been a lifelong dream of yours or simply something that makes the most sense for your career at this point. Although you may have some people in your life who are telling you that being a successful yoga business owner is impossible or too difficult for you to succeed, the truth is that people succeed at impossible things every day. As long as you make a proper plan and seek guidance when necessary, owning a yoga business isn’t any more challenging or less difficult than any other way that you could support your family.
If it makes you happy, the right people in your life will come around even if they’re hesitant at the start. Sometimes, people express concern when they worry that we might get hurt or disappointed. Starting a business of any kind has its fair share of ups and downs, which could lead to people in your life believing that it might take a toll on you even if you enjoy it for the most part. However, if owning a yoga business is what you love, you should go for it with this helpful guide of tips that we have provided above!
