Bringing stability to your business with a signature series

Are you a wellness teacher or studio who spends more time hustling than thriving? If so, you’re not alone. Imagine if instead of spending endless amounts of time hustling to get new clients into just one class every week, you spent a short dedicated amount of time to build a strong system that impacts more lives, brings in more income, and creates a stronger community with loyal students. Think of all you could do in your business with more time on your schedule and guaranteed stable income. 
Cue the signature course. The smarter way to run a fitness business is to create a course to solve the problems of your students. That offer becomes irresistible to them and an easy sell for you. The best part about creating a signature course is that once it’s built, you can run it again and again, as many times as you like, to bring in a reliable income annually. 

In my 13 years as a successful yoga studio owner, I offered a mixture of memberships alongside registered series such as Beginner 101 Yoga, Yoga for Men, and Yoga for Mental Health. The registered series brought in guaranteed income, built and strengthened the studio community, and brought stability to the studio and teachers’ schedules.  Now, I use the same unique system I used at the studio as a certified business consultant, to help yoga teachers and yoga studios create their own signature series to shift their businesses from hustling to thriving.
Here are five tips that can help you easily build, sell and market your very own signature course:
1.) Define your purpose
The first tip to creating a signature course is defining your purpose. This is why you do what you do and it takes reflection upon your own story. This tip is key. What you share with your students must be in alignment with who you are and what you offer or your course won’t sell. Key questions that can help you define your purpose include: Why are we doing this? Why are we in business? Why do we exist? What are we great at? And Why are we good at what we do?
2.) Identify your ideal client
Once you’ve identified your purpose, you can easily identify who you want to serve. To identify your perfect customer you have to do some research into the demographics of the area you are serving, identifying key aspects such as age range, family status, career profile, and lifestyle. Really do a deep dive to understand who your studio is serving. From here, you can create a client avatar, which is a hypothetical student who exemplifies your ideal client. Everything you do should help serve your avatar’s needs. Your ideal client is often a reflection of who you were before you started your yoga practice or fitness studio. You could have the greatest service, but if you're trying to sell it to the wrong person it will be very difficult to hit your goals.

3.) Pinpoint your ideal clients’ problems
This is a crucial step in creating your series. People will pay for a solution to their problems. Take a look at your client avatar and find out what they need. Are they looking for stress release? Efficient strength-building? Short and sweet classes or in-depth dives into topics? Use a tool like FitGrid’s Client Feedback feature to understand your community's pain points.  Once you determine your ideal clients’ problems, you can identify the skills you offer to solve their problems. Get crystal clear about how your offerings will solve your customers’ problems.
4.) Figure out where your ideal client hangs out
Now that you know who you want to serve, it’s time to identify where your ideal client hangs out. You want to be wherever their eyeballs are and in their direct line of sight. Which social media apps do they use? What websites do they visit? Are they reading local newspapers? Are they hanging out in coffee shops or health food stores? This is critical research needed to create a marketing plan.
5.) Create your simple custom marketing plan
Identifying your purpose, who you serve, your ideal clients’ problems, and where your ideal client hangs out gives you all of the data you need to map out the marketing plan for your signature series on a small budget. A simple example might be that you have created a program such as Yoga for Men that is running in a studio at a downtown location. You have also identified that the demographic of men are mostly on Facebook. With that information, you can run a simple Facebook ad campaign, targeted at men only within a certain radius of that studio location. This campaign is super targeted and ensures that you spend your advertising dollars getting in front of the eyeballs of people who are likely to convert.
Once you’ve followed these tips, you are ready to launch your signature series and shift from hustling solopreneur to thriving and living to your fullest potential.
Are you ready to join the next generation of yoga biz champs?
Find out more about Michael Jay, the Yoga Biz Camp Coaching Programs and Yoga Biz Camp Podcast at www.YogaBizCamp.com.  Join on Instagram at @yogabizchamp.

I was asked this week to show my home based virtual yoga streaming tech set-up.

My set-up shows how I go from consulting calls to living room class teaching.

Teaching virtual yoga from home is awesome, no commuting, no opening and closing a studio but it also has it's challenges.

For me one of the challenges is trying to balance work and home life... with professional lighting permanently in my living room! Also as a very private person with my personal life.. now I am inviting hundreds of people into my living room every week... and I have to keep my living room clean and tidy all the time!!! :-)

If you need any help or want me to assess your tech set-up or what streaming platforms to use book a free 30 min chat with me through my website www.MichaelJayOnline.com - 

Happy Streaming! 

#yogaclasses #virtualyoga #virtualbusiness #virtualclasses #zoomlife#yogabusiness #yogabizchamp #consulting #yogabiz #yogastudios

I like to do a mix of old school and new school digital when doing business planning.

This creative brain needs to put pen to paper before putting it into digital format.

My first initial call with the studio client I have to write things down, pen to paper. I have tried going digital for this, I have all the forms made, all the intake forms in place but I just prefer the scribble notes and thoughts for this part.

Then I do go digital. I collect a whole wack of data digging deep through the numbers. Revenue Reports, Recurring Revenue, Intro offer reports, Class Attendance, Staff Performance, Retention Reports, New Customer Reports, Conversion reports. It's a very detailed process…. But there’s some damn truth in that data that you can’t hide behind!

Then it’s creative time again. I stalk your marketing efforts, your reviews, your promotions, and go back to pen to paper on my favorite big ass note pad that covers my whole desk.! Then it is scribbling time looking at the strengths and weaknesses of a business. Classes, Staff, Marketing, Intro offer and Pricing, Sales Strategy, and Retention Strategies.

Then it is back to digital and I put it all together with all plans into presentation format with pretty charts and all :-)

That is what I do when I get hired for full business analysis. Its an in-depth look at the business but from that strategies and systems are put in place so a studio owner no longer has to panic over everything and are able to bring balance back into their lives. I am a big believer in putting systems and plans in place for an entire year.

I also work with my customers on a project basis and right now it is helping studios set new COVID budgets and how to go virtual! The tech set-ups, systems, payments, instructor training, instructor mentoring, and how to market and build virtual classes. 

Send me a DM if you wanna have a free 30 min chat and let's see if I can point you in the right direction (UP!). Namaste

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