Opening a Yoga Studio

Many aspiring yoga studio owners are teachers who have practiced yoga devotedly for many years, benefitted from the practice and wish to share those benefits with others.

The best yoga studio owners, however, are not usually those who want to primarily focus on teaching, but rather those who have a solid business background. This is because running a studio involves a lot more than yoga; it involves financial projections, marketing, sales, strategic planning, budgeting, hiring yoga teachers, facility maintenance, bookkeeping, sub-contractors and much more.

Even if you are not a natural in all these areas, being motivated to learn them can be a great asset in trying to build a yoga studio. Understanding all the details of what is involved in creating a studio is vital to your success in doing so.

Motivation

The first important consideration for those wishing to start a yoga studio is whether you are willing to work hard and long hours in the beginning. Every small business owner works late nights and weekends in the beginning to create a business from scratch.

Finances

The second consideration is how comfortable you are with budgeting, finances and bookkeeping. You should have a moderate handle on the financial aspects of starting and running a yoga studio. This will involve knowing how much money you make every month, how much you owe, spend and how much is owed to you.

It also is a matter of knowing how much you will need to make every month to pay for your operating expenses (like electricity, utilities, rent, etc.), payroll (how much you provide your employees) and how much you will pay yourself. You will need to be able to project your expenses for the upcoming year and figure out how your studio can earn this amount of money (by how many students and private sessions you will have to have).

Attitude

The third consideration is how willing you are to accept that running a yoga studio will never be a completely smooth process. It is important to view the journey as just that: an adventure full of opportunities for learning and growth.

Available Resources

The fourth consideration is whether you have at least 50% more money available to you than you think you will need to get started. This is because many small businesses underestimate expenses while overestimating profits for the first several years. There are many miscellaneous expenses that add up quickly.

Marketing

Marketing is the fifth consideration and is a matter of informing people whose lives could benefit from yoga that you have something that might be able to help them. How will you attract students to your yoga studio? If you do not know about marketing or are not willing to learn, make sure you have a professional marketer to work with.

Comfort with Money

Finances are the sixth important consideration in starting a yoga studio. Many yoga teachers love yoga for the freedom it brings you from worrying about things like money. While you do not need to worship it, money is essential for your yoga studio to sustain itself and continue serving people in your community. As such, it is important that you feel comfortable dealing with having money be involved with yoga.

Passion

The seventh consideration is how passionate you are not just about practicing yoga, but about sharing it with others. Running a yoga studio involves dealing with many beginner as well as advanced students.

Willingness to Make Mistakes

Those interested in starting a yoga studio must be willing to make mistakes and learn from them. Success, to a great degree, involves making mistakes along the way. This eighth consideration is important as you might have to try something, fail at it, learn and then take what you have learned to do it again better the next time when running your yoga studio.

Personal Life

The ninth consideration is whether you will be able to try and fail at starting a yoga studio without destroying your personal life. While no one expects their business to fail, this is a possibility that must be carefully considered before you move forward to start your studio.

Business Plan

The last consideration is whether you are willing to create a thorough business plan for your yoga studio. You must be ready to outline the way your studio will function, the types of people who will attend your classes and private sessions and estimate the number of students you will need every month to pay your bills.