Reflections on our first year as Yogapreneurs

“Do everything with so much love in your heart that you would never want to do it any other way.” ― Yogi Desai

This time last year we were just launching our website and our first four courses – Yoga to Transform: Love, Sleep, Flexibility and Back Pain. We had no idea what we were doing, but we were doing it at pace, with passion and from a deeper purpose. There really could have been no other way to start our business than with the flurry of intensity, enthusiasm, excitement, and anticipation that all new beginnings hold.

12 months later and it’s been a whirlwind of intensity, enthusiasm, excitement, and action that hasn’t seemed to wear off or slow down. Given we are both doing what we love and offering something that we believe so passionately in, it is possible that the drive to offer our Yoga to Transform vision will never disappear.

“Do what you love, and you will never work a day again in your life”

– Marc Anthony

We’ve put countless hours into Yoga to Transform in the last 12 months. None of them have felt like work. It’s been simple, easy, and fun. Despite creating this business as a side hustle and having to build it in the spare hours we have outside of ‘real’ work (day jobs), family, and our own self-care needs. Neither of us would have done it any other way.

So how have we grown and what have we learnt in the past 12 months as Yogapreneurs?

Here are our top six reflections from our first year in business.

1. While you are offering something you love, you are building a business first

We love Yoga. We started this business because we wanted to share our love of Yoga and the positive impact it has had on our lives. We could spend hours teaching and learning more about Yoga. But when you start a business, you need to be more than just an enthusiastic Yogi. Business requires other skills like marketing, sales, finance, policy, websites and the like.

While we still invested in our Yoga studentship and teaching, we invested in our business skills more. And, we’ll continue to have to develop our business skills our business grows.

2.  Women run businesses differently

Women are essentially built to be receptive and allowing, men are active and hunters. The way we ran our business was soft and supportive, compared to our leadership experiences in the corporate world. Don’t get us wrong we still had goals, a plan and even went away for planning weekends. But our planning weekends were gentle and nourishing, we’d spend time catching up on life in general, doing yoga, meditations, tapping and any other supportive activity that met our needs at the time.

Yes, we reviewed our business metrics monthly and tracked our progress against goals - in a relaxed, receptive, celebratory, and allowing way.

3. You will have to invest money and time if you are serious

Newton’s first law of motion implies that things cannot start, stop, or change direction all by themselves, and it requires some force from the outside to cause such a change. Well, if you want to be an online Yogapreneur, you’re going to have to be willing to make an investment of time and money. Some weeks we worked seven days a week. Some days we worked till late. If you want to get the momentum moving, you need to apply some ‘force’ and prioritise the business over some of your friends, family, and other life activities.

4. Sales will be irregular

Of course, we thought people would just start buying our courses the moment they were launched. They didn’t. Some months we didn’t make any sales, some weeks we sold helps. The key is to not focus on the immediate results of your efforts, or the money that is not flowing into your bank account. The key is to stay focused on the reason you were willing to start a Yoga business in the first place – because if you are only after riches and those riches don’t come, there isn’t much else worth doing it for.

We learnt to trust that our business will grow, and we don’t have to be any further along than where we are right now. Our job is to focus on providing value and service to the people who our business best supports. Yoga to Transform is a brand-new business, a brand-new brand, we needed to focus on growing our brand and platform first.

5. People will support you if you are willing to collaborate

A whole lot of amazing women supported our business in its first year. We had wonderful collaborators work with us from all corners of business and the world. Women who believed in abundance and there being enough for everyone; these women connected with us and together we grew both our businesses. Invite other women into your business and work together, this is one of the many ways women do business differently to men. We want to acknowledge:

• Eleanor Collins, The House of Acupuncture
• Christina Davy, Relationship and Dating Coach
• Christine du Fresne, Experienced Certified Anusara Yoga Teacher
• Kirsty Widenka, Yoga Teacher
• Veronica King, The Yoga Nidra Project
• Kate McGregor, Out of Office NZ
• Dr Jane Hardcastle, Movewell Studio
• Andrea Alexandra, Institute of Body Psychotherapy
• Kate Griffiths, Kendons Accountants
• Jacqui Trumpet, Brand and graphic design
• Emma Shamy, ♡ 7 Figure Manifestation Mentor 

6.  Most of all, you are going to learn a lot about yourself

Yes, we learnt practical skills required to launch and grow a start-up business. But when you step into the arena and make yourself visible to the world, any self-limiting beliefs that are lurking below the surface will rise. We probably spent more time working on ourselves in this first year, than our business - if we are honest. Thank goodness we had each other as wonderful, loving supports to cheer ourselves on and remind each other how amazing we were, when the doubt of being good enough, or far enough along, or maybe never attracting clients or money started to wear us down. Thank goodness we both already had solid gratitude practices and had already spent years in the yoga practice to train our minds to focus on what is good, beautiful and working.

As our first year begins to draw to a close, we're pleased to have made it this far. It has truly been simple, easy and fun. And, just like last year we seem to be launching a new product, just in time to kick start our second year in business. Let us introduce to you, our online studio offering: https://www.yogatotransform.com/online-studio-membership

Fingers crossed next year we don't decide to launch another product over Christmas and New Year's.

With much love and gratitude to all of you who have supported our start-up business in the last 12 months. Without you, we would be two women with a hobby and not a business.