Finding your yogis

In this episode we're looking at:

• Why you would even want to find your yogis in the first place.

• Why it benefits you and your yogis (once you've found them!).

• How to determine who your target market is.

• How to reach and connect with them.

• What to do if you've done all that and you're still struggling.

The importance of finding your yogis

Knowing who your audience is, can be the difference between thriving as a yoga teacher or not.

When you know the population(s) that you want to work with, everything simply falls into place. Where you should focus your learning energy, what classes you should take on, what classes you should drop, what extra studies you can aspire to do, where to focus your personal practice...

I have spoken many times to yoga teachers; both new and experienced, who are wanting to create a bit of direction in their career. When I've asked 'who do you want to work with', they've often said 'I want to teach everyone!’ I just want everyone to feel welcome at my classes’. Whilst this is lovely, trying to adjust and widen your offering so that you can reach everyone, will mean that you reach, and serve, no one.

Time, energy and mental bandwidth are all limited. One more time. Time, energy and mental bandwidth are all limited. For your mental sanity, never mind the success of your offering, it makes sense to focus and refine.

Ok so how do we do that?

The process of determining and refining your ideal yogis

First of all - in an ideal world - who would you work with, all the time? Think gender, age, background. But also; physical state. Have you been a runner and used your physical yoga practice to avoid injury and become faster? Or maybe for years you suffered lower back discomfort, and your yoga practice has changed that.

Then, think mental state; do you want to offer practical sessions for office workers who are stressed out? Or maybe you dream of being a shining light for people in a dark depression. So, when you can, i.e. not necessarily right now, take a few moments to close your eyes and day dream about who you'd ideally be working with day in, day out.

Now, as an aside, look at what in your background will help you work with these populations. For example, you might be drawn to stressed out office workers, because until recently, you were one. Or you might have grown up with your parents taking long runs every weekend, so you're drawn to runners. By background I mean growing up; how, when, where, etc. I also mean any education you've done, any jobs you've worked, courses you've taken, books you've read, experiences you've had... etc.  You'll need to share your personal experience; and personal learnings to validate why people can learn from you, so bring that to the forefront of your mind right here at this early point.

Lastly, - remember at this point we're determining our ideal yogis - so lastly think about how you want to make people feel. That might seem like a repetition of what we've talked about already, but it's a level deeper really. Back to our stressed out office workers example; if you want to work with this population, you might say - well I want them to feel less stressed out. Yes. But why. How do you want them to feel instead? Less pulled about by things out of their control like office politics or workload? Maybe you want them to be able to sleep better? Maybe you want them to feel more present in other parts of their lives, like when seeing family, or out for drinks with friends.

To recap: First of all, daydream, wonder, focus on and introspect about who you'd work with day in, day out, if you could. Then, what in your background will help you serve this population. Lastly, how do you want to make them feel.

These three things give you your population, your market, your audience. Whatever you want to call it. I'll be referring to it as your ideal yogis. To an extent, you want to think about refining your ideal yogis as much as you possibly can. If you're thinking about working with stressed out office workers, you might focus in on stressed out office workers who have young kids; so you're refining it a little more. Or rather than runners, you might think about working with first time marathon runners, etc. You can always broaden your focus later - for now, think about refining and zooming in, becoming more and more knowledgable and almost becoming a go-to person for that audience.

As part of our Yoga Hero Teachers Academy, we work through a list of questions and prompts to help you fully crystalize and understand your yogis. If you're interested in finding out more about the academy, just go to yogahero.co.uk/podcast5 - you'll see that there's a special offer for listeners of this podcast too.

Back to determining your ideal yogis…

Now, one thing that we haven't talked about is geography. Unless your knowledge on a subject is incredibly deep, and you're renowned for it, people will rarely travel more than half an hour for a yoga session. If you're really wanting to focus on teaching in person, you'll want to concentrate on your locality, and / or deepening your knowledge and / or making yourself known as a wealth of information on the subject. Let me set an example. If you were wanting to teach in person, focusing on stressed out office workers, you'd be looking at working with offices and office workers within about 30 minutes travel - hold that thought we'll be back here in a moment. And / or you'd be looking at deepening your knowledge, so learning more about how desk posture affects the systems of the body and mindset, learning more about the nervous system, etc. and lastly, you'd possibly think about the things you can do to position yourself as an expert, so maybe writing articles and posting them on LinkedIn and Twitter (because that's where lots of office workers hang out), or seeing if there's any conferences you can speak at... etc.

Just briefly back to that 30 minute travel guideline. This is completely arbitrary and just something that I have estimated over the years I've been teaching in-person yoga. If it's more than an hour's round trip, lots of people won't even consider it. And that's 30 minutes however they are transporting themselves. So if you're located in an urban city, you're going to consider 30 minutes on foot and by public transport, but if you're more suburban or rural, you're considering half an hour in the car. Of course some people will come to you on the way home from work, or while their daughter is at a ballet lesson, or on the way to the shops, so it's by no means cut and dry, but it's definitely a consideration.

That said, we are in the age of online teaching and online yoga. Online - to an extent - has the potential to greatly increase your reach. If you're promoting your offering in online spaces, a simple link to your classes can bring people straight to you. But, lots of people struggle with online - they might not have the space at home, or a good internet connection, or they might have too many distractions like kids, pets, other halves, housemates, house work!! etc.

So.

How on earth do you know what's best?

Research.

Finding your ideal yogis

Here we go! Here's the fun bit. Well, it is if you're a research geek!

I have personally been totally overwhelmed when thinking about how to reach an audience that I want to work with. I find it triggers a dose of ‘Imposter Syndrome’, it makes everything I ever knew about anything fall out of my head completely, plus it gives me butterflies thinking about talking to people when I feel uncomfortable about asking for their help PLUS it brings up every reservation and - i'm saying it - hatred that I have had about selling. I hate selling. I hate the idea of being greasy and sales-y and pushing something on to someone and taking their money. Ugh!

But. If you do this right, and from the heart as well as from the head, that is not what you're doing here. You are not going to sell even £1 worth of classes to someone who doesn't need it. Every penny you make will come from people who need what you're offering, people who will have a positive experience from interacting with you, from people that are so grateful that they found you.

So put that Imposter Syndrome, the reservations and the shyness to one side. You are going to help people who need you. Let me say that one more time because it's really important! You are going to help people who need you.

I've put this into a process to help you. Don't worry about taking notes; there's a worksheet listing the steps, which is available from yogahero.co.uk/podcast5

1. A pretty sensible place to start: if you have people in your existing audience that fit your ideal yogi group - talk to them. Where do they spend their time online and offline? That'll help you find more of your ideal yogis.

2. Go to the offline, physical places where you know your ideal yogis are; if you want to work with office workers, go to offices. If you want to work with runners, go to a running club. If you want to work with people who are experiencing depression, perhaps connect with a therapist. If you want to work with new mums, find a midwife or a labour ward or a doula.... etc. You want access to people who are, or might be, or are similar to your ideal yogis.

3. Go to the online places. Office workers - linked in / twitter. Runners; running groups on facebook, running forums, race events. Those experiencing depression might be interacting in managing depression groups on facebook etc...

4. Google. Google key phrases related to your ideal yogi group - e.g. stressed at work / running first marathon / dealing with depression, and see what comes up; are there any places where you can reach your ideal yogis there, for example any forums you can get involved with or blogs that you could offer a guest blog post to?

5. Activities. What do your ideal yogis do in their spare time - can you reach them through their online and offline hobbies and habits? I.e. if they listen to the local radio station, you could try to get on there to do a feature. If they read a certain newspaper or magazine, you could aim to get some editorial included in a future issue.

Make a list of all the places that your ideal yogis spend time and start spending time there too. If you're focusing on online classes; it make sense to focus your efforts online. But if you're focusing on in-person classes, it  still makes sense to focus your time and effort online, as - depending on your ideal yogis - it might be likely that they find you online, so do spend time there, but be aware of the geographical factor we talked about earlier on.

In the worksheet for this episode, there's some suggestions about logging and keeping your findings, so that you can revisit and update them after a certain amount of time, or if you expand your focus slightly in the future, and if you join our 'Finding your yogis' masterclass, you'll receive a tool kit including a comprehensive spreadsheet set up so that you can start populating it straight away.

Once you've determined, found and connected with your ideal yogis, you have a market you can share your yoga with - hopefully for a long time. If you've done these steps and your yogis aren't connecting with your offering, spend some time with them to find out why, is it the wrong price?Do they not to trust you? Is the language a bit off for them? Research. Ask ask ask. What's right for your yogi group? Ask them. Most people are happy to help.  

I really hope that's given you some inspiration as well as some practical tips to determining, finding and connecting with your ideal yogis, and don't forget that there's a recap available at yogahero.co.uk/podcast5   

In our next podcast episode, I'll break down different ways that you can share your yoga, so along with episode 5, the two will hopefully really help to consolidate your focus and output and ensure that you're not wasting your valuable time and energy on things that aren't quite right for you, your ideal yogis, or both.

Until then, take lots of care, and happy yogi finding!