10 things I wish I had known before I bought a yoga studio
Three weeks ago, I set out as an aspiring student in search of a yoga studio.
Today, I bought it.
The journey from Point A to Point B was every bit as crackpot as it must sound, plus some.
The short story version begins with the move to New Orleans. First things first: find a new dentist, chiropractor, doctor for the kids, hair salon. Get the kids settled in school and into their new routine. Learn my way around and the quirks of traffic. Meet my neighbors.
After those details of life (that we tend to take for granted until suddenly they are no longer routine) are once again familiar, I begin Phase II: figuring out where I fit into it all.
And when there’s figuring out to do, I do what I’ve been doing since junior high: I go running.
And while running clarifies, simplifies, strengthens and empowers just about everything for me, it doesn’t offer much in the way of flexibility. This is especially true when I stop. Stretching my reach toward my feet to untie my laces after a long run reminds me of my mere mortalness (to say nothing of my age.)
Yoga. I need a yoga class. For years, I’ve been chasing the perfect yoga class. In the Mixing Bowl, the Northern Virginia/D.C. area where we used to live, class times either conflicted with morning carpool or coincided perfectly with commuter traffic. New Orleans, on the other hand, serves up yoga classes easily and conveniently. I was thrilled to find a studio in my neighborhood.
And then I learned, talking with my instructor after class, that the owner was closing the studio in December. Crushed by the news, I lingered in the doorway and took in my little snapshot of this community I’d just discovered. Something in me shifted — that’s the best I can describe it.
I drove straight home and asked my husband how he felt about buying a yoga studio.
Fast-forward through three crazed weeks of talking with investors, bankers, accountants, attorneys, friends, family, neighbors and just about anyone who will listen to last night, when we met with the owners.
We made a formal offer, and they accepted. Looking back, that moment when the guys shook hands and the girls embraced encapsulates all that is this yoga studio we are buying: a business — one welcomed by and entwined with community. Our community. Our new home.
“Bloom where you’re planted,” wrote my graduate school advisor when I announced the move to New Orleans. “You always do.”
A lotus blossom, perhaps?
Here’s the top 10 things I wish I had known before I made my decision:
10.Mindbody. A studio’s website most visited page is the schedule of classes. Mindbody is to yoga what Microsoft is to corporate America. This cloud-based software system is a beast to set up with a completely counter-intuitive back-end interface, but Mindbody Tech Support provides free training and assistance and the initial investment of time is worth the payoff on the other end. Instructors are familiar with the layout and use and can help studio owners manage the class check-in process as well as basic client service.
Most clients already have Mindbody accounts from other studios they’ve visited, and, chances are, already have the app on their smartphone and a successful experience of making an online purchase via Mindbody. Mindbody has since purchased HealCode, creating a seamless plugin to display the studio’s schedule, including instructor profiles and class pass purchases, on any website. Bonus: payroll integration.
9.Copyright. Most people, and most especially yoga studio owners and the instructors they employ, are unaware that playing music in a place of business without express written consent from the recording artist is a violation of copyright laws. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law. Yoga studios that allow instructors to play music in the background of a class must first obtain licensing permission from the label(s).
Additionally, though it’s hard to believe that this does not go without saying after all the warning messages users are flashed as they update their yoga studio Facebook page, the same copyright protections extend to photographers, writers, and other creatives whose photos, text, and graphics all too commonly show up as stolen on yoga studio websites. Stealing makes people sad, is probably bad yoga karma, and can result in hefty federal copyright violations that might bankrupt even the most well-intentioned providers of peace, love, and namasté.
8.Location, location, location. Students searching for yoga begin their search by looking for the studio most conveniently located to their home or work. Studios must provide students with a location convenient enough to ensure they will arrive, yet isolated enough to promise a peaceful experience of mindfulness and restoration that is yoga practice. Arguably, location could easily move to the number one slot on this list, as an inconveniently located studio will struggle to find students to serve.
The ideal studio is located on a main commuter thoroughfare but is also tucked away from traffic, noise, and distraction — this is the great oxymoron that plagues urban yoga studios.
The answer, of course, is soundproofing. Insulating the asana room from the sounds of car horns and passers-by from the street outside, as well as the friendly, chatty voices of instructors and students arriving early for the next scheduled class ensures that the client experience is as rewarding as promised.
7.Breathe. Yoga studio owners are not immune to the challenges of small businesses — yes, gulp, don’t let the cute Lululemon costume fool you. A yoga studio is in fact a small business and the owner is both yogi and businessperson. As a small business owner, yoga studio owners wear many hats, including customer service, advertising, bookkeeping, scheduling, maintenance, IT … the list goes on and on. Decisions need to be made, and those decisions must focus on what is best for the studio.
Just because the industry practices yoga doesn’t mean that everyone in the local yoga community will always respond with zen-like calm and focused clarity. Interestingly enough, yoga clients and certified yoga instructors are not immune to the sometimes passive-aggressive, other times downright hostile behavior that all small business owners must train themselves to deal with. Just breathe.
6.Don’t reinvent the wheel. If there’s already an established yoga studio in the neighborhood, approach the owner to see if they are interested in selling. It’s not a bad idea to enlist the help of a business broker as the extra money invested might very well be worth the peace of mind in knowing the entire transaction was above board and a professional is looking out for buyer and seller. Like anything else, buying a turnkey yoga studio has advantages and disadvantages. However, many of the disadvantages can easily be transformed into advantages with a little bit of creativity and good karma (this is yoga, after all!)
5.Write it down. Spend time writing a mission statement, business plan, policies, procedures, and a general contract for instructors.
Putting ideas into writing is very powerful stuff: try hanging a sticky note with one goal for the week on the fridge or computer screen or mirror and see how quickly that goal materializes into the actions of daily life. Running a small business is a series of short-term and long-term goals all lovingly linked together with sweat equity, time, commitment, and financial investment.
4.1099s. This isn’t an effort for small businesses to sidestep employee payroll taxes (even though the reality is, most yoga studios couldn’t afford to pay employee payroll taxes for instructors the first few years in business, let alone the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act on small business owners — but that’s another story.) No, the best and most successful yoga studios are the studios that bring the best instructors in the area to their little community niche to share their knowledge and expertise.
Yoga is unique to other small business service industries in that it’s an extremely portable business. A sought-after instructor may not be able to sell out all 5 classes in a single studio location on an given day, but could easily sell out 5 classes in various yoga studios across the city in a given single day.
Traveling and/or visiting instructors offer some of the most innovative and unique classes in the business, significantly increasing a studio’s diversity. Contracting instructors leaves the schedule ripe for such unique, diverse offerings and works best not just for the studio and its instructors, but also for the students whom they serve.
3.CYT = CYA. Yoga Teacher Training is a topic that divides yogis. The entity that is the closest thing to regulating yoga in the U.S. is Yoga Alliance. Yoga Alliance “grandfathered in” many longtime instructors with credentials that other instructors only earned after investing considerable time, money and study toward a 200-hour or 500-hour certification. Many uncertified yoga instructors maintain that any governing body or regulatory entity isn’t going to change the way they instruct and the investment is completely unnecessary.
The reality for yoga studio owners is that we no longer live in the free love sharing of psychedelic yoga experience from the ’60s and ’70s; we live in an increasingly litigious society. Studio owners would be wise to protect themselves and their investment from any claims that might arise, and contracting 200- or 500-hour Certified Yoga Teachers (CYT) raises the bar of excellence and professionalism in the studio.
2.Liability. Studios need liability insurance, of course. However, studios should require those individual instructors (see 1099s above) also carry their own personal liability insurance, setting the bar high to protect the industry as a whole. The instructor is the professional in the class with the expertise that the client is responding directly to. Liability insurance for instructors is a surprisingly low amount. Instructors who already carry personal liability insurance are the qualified candidates studios are looking for. In unique circumstances where the instructor doesn’t already have a policy, the studio may consider offering to purchase it for them (often, this can be easily added to the studio’s existing liability policy) and negotiate repayment of the loan from classes taught over time.
1.The exorbitant price of free. Yoga is expensive. Yoga instructors spend considerable time, money, and effort to earn their 500-hour CYT. Yoga studios pay first and last month’s rent, utility bills, insurance, and county, state, and federal taxes and licensing fees.
There is no worse day in yoga class than the day after the studio launches a Groupon campaign or similar offering of free or reduced yoga. Regular clients are punished with an influx of newbies who, by definition, demand that the regular pace of the class be slowed or shortened and greedily consume the instructor’s attention. Many clients make a living from taking advantage of free or reduced classes, and rarely become the kind of client the studio is hoping to attract with promotions as they disappear as soon as the value item expires.
Years later, I spent a whole day packing up my yoga studio and moving it from my second commercial location to my garage.
It was a strange task, a surreal mix of past, present and future. Instructors and students stopped by, called, sent emails, lit up my iPhone screen with texts … most of them had encouraging and kind words to say. A handful of others had, meh, not so much nice to say.
I wasn’t sure what to do with all that I was processing, and when there’s figuring out to do, I do what I do naturally — I run.
Of course, packing up an entire studio takes time, and by late afternoon, as is typical in the South, it was dumping rain.
I ran anyway. I left my iPhone at home and ran through the rain without Nine Inch Nails blowing thoughts from my brain. I was the only soul for miles along Lake Pontchartrain during this stretch. Several times, I turned around and ran backward just to verify my surroundings.
During that run, I considered the many things that yoga has taught me:
- It takes an interesting balance of chutzpah and fear to just up and buy a yoga studio.
- It’s crucial to listen to my body, especially if it’s telling me the costs outweigh the benefits.
- I admired how delicately the light from a sunbreak reflects off wet asphalt.
- I appreciated the wind in my ears, similar to the sound I used to hear as a kid careening fearlessly on my bike.
- I inhaled. And exhaled. Inhale, exhale, moving meditation to a steady pace.
As the miles clicked away, I thought less and less about the rain and less and less about anything at all. I just took it all in, listening to the rush of air, my own breathing, and I ran.
Christine Gacharná no longer owns a yoga studio, but she’s a loyal supporter of her local studios and sometimes serves as a business consultant to some studios that struggle. She recently moved back to Northern Virginia.