Entrepreneurship

I was chatting with a friend of mine this week who's in the midst of considering a career change out of astronomy. For him it's the long-term job prospects and lack of opportunities that is turning him away. He's got a small kid so he really needs to think of how he can best position himself to provide for his family. Even if he did get a permanent position in a university (which I'm sure he'd easily get), then he's concerned about the prospects for further growth. There's really only one more promotion to get (professorship), and the experience of others more senior shows that you slowly and inevitably sink under the weight of admin and teaching! That's a problem if research is really your passion.

The other thing is he's quite an entrepreneur, coming up with ideas that outside the standard research box - citizen science, webapps, python widgets, etc. He's been finding his current institute very restrictive on what they'll support and what they're ok with him doing, so he's considering a move into industry.

And this got me thinking about entrepreneurship in yoga. To be a successful yoga teacher you really need to be an entrepreneur, getting out there and finding the work and the opportunities for yourself. The closest thing to a standard career path in yoga is to become a resident teacher in a big studio, but unless you own the studio it would be very hard to make a full-time income like this. What most teachers do is build up a portfolio of gym and studio classes to make up enough of an income, but even in this there's a great deal of 'getting out there' and finding those places to teach. Everyone I've spoken to about this has their own ideas of how best to do this!

Then beyond the standard gym and studio class format, there's workshops, retreats, holidays, and longer courses, and there's also kids yoga, yoga for the elderly, pre-natal/pregnancy yoga, yoga therapy for treating specific illnesses, yoga in prisons, spontaneous classes in the park, corporate yoga, professional development days in business or universities, etc, etc.

I've just been reading some excellent advice from Valerie Falkner, an American business coach for "soulful entrepreneurs" and "spirit-rich business owners". This article in particular is great "6 Traits of Successful Yoga Entrepreneurs". She starts by saying that studios and training courses are churning out yoga teachers left and right, but not all of them are a good fit to the business of teaching. Expensive marketing will overcome poor teaching for a short period of time, but to get people to come back, you must first focus on being the best at what you do. This is spot on. But this doesn't just mean having a strong yoga practice. It means developing those skills that make you a good teacher, and meeting the students' needs. Make a connection, show you care, inspire and motivate...

Only after that, she says, will the marketing efforts really pay off, and probably you'll need to do less marketing anyway (word of mouth really is the best tool in yoga).

Interestingly a google search for "yoga entrepreneur" brings up loads of blogs, consulting companies and resources based in the US, but adding "UK" to the end of the search gives a much, much sparser list. Marketing and entrepreneurship is something the Americans excel at - there's clearly a hole in the market here in the UK...!