Listen in to this episode with Chis and John Yax! We rap about their success in building brick and mortar yoga studios and what entrepreneurial skills are necessary for yoga teaching and studio ownership.

 

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How to weigh the pros and cons of becoming an employee vs independent contractor
• How passion and talent don’t equate to success in business
• Why yoga studios would be more successful if they niched down. How it’s hurting not only their success but the success of their students. 

 

Links Mentioned in Episode:

• Yax Yoga Concepts
• Yax Yoga Concepts - Facebook
• Have a conversation
• Free Master Class

 

Show Highlights:

• Discovering who you want to serve
• Why yoga studios often fail
• What yoga studio owners are missing by not creating high ticket items

 

Timestamps: 

• 10:00 Becoming an employee vs. an independent contractor 
• 14:50 The biggest mistake they made when opening their studios
•  23:15 The solution to the commodification of yoga through the high barrier to enter offers

 

Favorite Quotes:

• “It’s interesting, a lot of our teacher training graduates end up at studios teaching as employees initially to cut their teeth and get experience. But at some point a lot of them feel the entrepreneurial spirit; they want to become independent contractors and start to build their own thing. But just like anything, we have to study it. We have to understand what it means to be an entrepreneur.” - John Yax 
• “I strongly believe yoga is for everyone. But I can’t be for everyone, our studios are not for everybody, the way I teach yoga is not for everybody. It’s for a specific ‘who’. The challenge is to figure out who that ‘who’ is.” - John Yax
• “A lot of what I’ve seen in studios is that they don’t grow. They might hit a sustainable revenue that can kinda support a lifestyle business but not one that is growing, with an increased profit margin over time. For most entrepreneurs, you’re looking to grow with an increased profit margin over time, which usually entails strategy and innovation.” - Cate Stillman

 

Guest BIO:

John and Chris grew up in a small house with a big family. The level of love their Mom gave disguised the level of struggle and hardship of raising six kids on her own. This fueled them to spend decades forging deep practices in martial arts, yoga, and meditation while studying and applying business strategies to make a living doing what they love... And over that time they’ve built a million-dollar brick and mortar yoga business… eating, sleeping and breathing the entrepreneurial lifestyle…

Through decades of experience leading heart-based businesses, John and Chris have helped transform the lives of thousands of people through yoga lifestyle coaching, in studios and on stages around the world.