If you run a yoga business or you want to, read on for the top 5 tools you need to run an efficient yoga business as a yoga teacher. These gems will save you tons of time and greatly reduce both your workload and your stress levels!
No matter where you are in the process of starting your yoga business or running it, you need systems in place to run your business as efficiently as possible. Not only is time truly money, but less stress and anxiety is VITAL for yoga teachers; as is the need to be ultra organized and manage our time well.
If you’re like me, then you want to spend as little time on the management side of your business as possible, and more of your time working with your clients!
To do that and do it well, you MUST start with backend tools that will simplify your life, help you better manage your business and help you be as efficient as possible with all the moving parts of your yoga business.
Top 5 Tools to Run an Efficient Yoga Business
Number #1 on our top 5 list is your website!
Some people might tell you that you don’t need a dedicated website if you are starting small, but I urge you to make one! You don’t have to break the bank and spend thousands on a customized website, ever, but especially not when you are starting out. I encourage you to go with something like weebly with great templates that are plug and play for people like you and me that don’t build websites all day.
In the beginning KISS – keep it super simple! Create an about page, contact page, class descriptions page, class schedule page, events page if you host events/workshops/trainings; a pricing page, location page, and testimonials if you have some. You can certainly add more pages/content as time goes on, but don’t get overwhelmed with the site in the beginning. Just like everything else, it will always be a work in progress.
It may seem like a no brainer to have a website, but there are still tons of teachers and some studios I know of that do not have one and just use their Facebook page or only use their studio management software as their website. In my opinion, there are two primary reasons to build a website for your yoga business: 1) SEO: You need a site to start ranking on search engines so new students can find you! 2) You also want to have some kind of presence on the web to begin building authority as a top level yoga teacher in your area. Creating credibility will make people feel confident in choosing your studio/classes over all the competition.
I still use weebly for my yoga studio website and I love it. It’s inexpensive and easy to use. Click here to check out the weebly platform.
Number #2 on our top 5 list is your yoga studio management software!
When it comes to online booking, do not overcomplicate this. You need A software that allows you to book your client, AND charge your client. ALL IN ONE platform.
I think because we are yoga teachers and not technology gurus, at least not many of us, we often don’t pay attention to what technology we actually need to be able to transact in our yoga business. Your website, especially if you use Weebly or Squarespace for example, has an option for an online store. So you could effectively sell your classes, class packages, memberships, workshops, etc through your website.
BUT, you would have no way of allowing those clients to register for classes that way. So it’s not ideal for us to sell our services. And that’s where studio management software comes in. So again, payment transactions and class registrations should be synced up in the same platform for maximum efficiency.
On that note, do not invest in a merchant processor and then a booking software separately. This is not efficient as you’ll be looking for your clients in two places. And it’s definitely not cost effective as having to afford both merchant processing fees and booking software monthly fees.
One additional benefit of having your clients records all in one place is being able to see who your most valuable clients are so you can nurture those connections.
Yottled Yoga Studio Management Software:
I use an amazing booking software called Yottled. Over my twenty year Yoga career, I’ve used several online booking platforms and nothing has been as simple and easy-to-use easy as Yottled. I love how it keeps me organized and my clients love it.
If you are running a yoga studio, providing 1:1 personal coaching or any fitness business, you should check out Yottled. It is a no brainer when you compare it to other options on the market for small size yoga studios, one person yoga business, fitness studio, nail salons and the like. It has 30+ features like online booking, memberships, payment integration, CRM, and more.
Yottled Features:
It allows you to transact with your client and it includes ALL of the features you want from a booking software….FREE TO YOU. You heard me, FREE TO YOU! Yottled also passes the cost of the credit card fee onto your customer.
I easily set up my Yottled account and redirect pages on my site to yottled pages so clients can quickly and easily register for a class or private session or workshop, buy a membership, class package or drop in class. So Yottled not only takes my client payments, but handles registrations as well.
BUT, another super efficient feature I love with Yottled is appointment reminders.I don’t care how frequently you see your clients, they will never stop being human and they will need your appointment reminders to keep on track for the day, just like you and I would. If your booking software can also send out your appointment reminders, you will never again have to manually confirm with your client!
That’s something I really value, especially with my private clients. I can tell you from my experience, not confirming an appointment with clients is a certain way to occasionally end up with a no show. Don’t run that risk in your business. It is very expensive to you to have a no show.
At the end of the day, make your online booking software efficient by ultimately using ONE software that has all the features YOU NEED.
To Re-cap:
- Yottled allows Unlimited Text and email notifications
- Reminders
- Forms
- Staff members’ calendars
- There is No client registration is needed
- You Eliminate payment processing fees
- And It’s so simple and easy to use
Tap here to learn more about Yottled.
Number #3 on our top 5 list is your social media scheduling platform!
First, let’s talk about social media in general for a moment. Some people may not even want to deal with social media for their business. My 2 cents is that you cannot run a successful yoga business without having a presence on social media.
Just like having a website, having a social media presence helps your service offerings to be found, and it helps you build authority in your niche. It is a place for you to offer bit size pieces of the services you offer, how you teach, what you teach, your personality, your space etc.
Now, because you are a business and its not a personal account that you can post on every now and then when you get the urge, you need to have a plan, purpose and schedule for your social media. This is an important part of my yoga business and I believe it should be for yours too. To help you create your social media strategy, plan and schedule, stay consistent and stay organized, it is really ideal to utilize a social media scheduling platform to achieve this goal, which will certainly maximize efficiency of your time!
So the big question here is which once do you use? It’s not like 2008 when the only option on the market was hoot suite. There are SO many social media schedulers on the market nowadays to choose from. In my humble opinion, planoly and sensible are the best to use right now. I’ll break down each one a little bit more.
Planoly Social Media Scheduling Platform:
Planoly is IDEAL if you have 1-2 social sets. What I mean by that is 1-2 brands you are managing. If you are just starting out you likely just have one yoga studio. Plainly allows you to Collect ideas, save notes and get creative with their curated weekly trends.
Planoly also allows you to plan and schedule your content; create drafts of captions, link trending sounds, add hashtags, collaborate with team members. But my FAVORITE feature, you can visually plan your content. My second favorite feature of Plaonly is how it quickly allows you to repurpose your content and share to other social channels with the click of a button. You can even schedule your posts to auto post to Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and TikTok. And it now offers you the ability to pre-plan, schedule and auto post reels as well.
I have quite a few accounts to keep track of, plan, schedule and post content on so I use planoly for my main instagram account kristashirleyyoga and repurpose that content on my kristashirleyyoga Facebook, twitter and Pinterest. That particular Instagram account has always been one I’ve worked hard to make ascetically pleasing to the eye, and with Planoly’s grid feature, I get to see what my grid will look like as I plan out my posts. It’s brilliant! And they offer a seven day free trial to peruse the software and see if it will be a good fit for your needs.
Sendible Social Media Scheduling Platform:
BUT, for me, I do have to utilize an additional social media scheduler for my yoga studios Instagram and Facebook, my product line’s Instagram and Facebook, my private Facebook group page and my LinkedIn page. I do wish that Plaonly offered more than two social sets but that is where sensible comes in for me. Sensible allows you to plan and schedule up to 105 different social media accounts. They can be of the same brand or many. Just like Planoly, Sendible allows you to schedule your content, add hashtags, photos and it will auto post for you. But unlike Planoly, sensible doesn’t have a fancy grid for your Instagram posts, which isn’t a big deal, especially if Instagram is just one of your social media channels. Like Planoly, Sendible offers a free trial for you to try their software before you buy.
Ultimately, if you just have one social set, let’s say your business is called Ashtanga Yoga Charleston – and you have an Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Pinterest account for Ashtanga Yoga Charleston, Planoly is truly your best option, in my opinion. It’s a one stop scheduler for those platforms for your yoga business. But if you are like me and you have quite a few accounts as part of your bigger yoga business, consider Sendible, or perhaps using both. I choose to do both because I have more than six accounts to manage and I love Planoly. So I was able to get the best of both for my social media scheduling needs.
Number #4 on our top 5 list is your Graphics software!
For years, I paid a graphic designer to do all of our graphic work for flyers for classes, workshops, teacher training, courses, etc etc etc and it was really costly for me. With the super simple and super inexpensive graphics software options on the market today, it’s just not necessary for you to spend a lot of money on professional graphics for your business.
I find that Adobe isn’t ideal for small yoga studios starting out, unless you already pay for and use adobe products. Photoshop is a great graphic software but it’s not super intuitive or easy to use for the average person, and it’s pretty costly too. I do utilize adobe suite for premier pro for my YouTube videos and since photoshop comes with my monthly subscription I use it from time to time.
Canva Graphic Design Software:
BUT, my all time favorite graphics software is Canva. They even have a totally free version of Canva but I happily pay the small $12.95 monthly fee for this super easy to use graphics software that integrates seamlessly with some many apps and platforms like sendible! It’s drag and drop easy! You can create your own portfolio of your business logo, colors, fonts; you can upload tons of photos or use their integrated suite of stock photos, graphics, icons and more for your projects.
With canva, you can create content way faster, build your brand, plan and schedule, manage assets, increase overall design productivity, manage your brand, manage your content. And as I said canva integrates with so many platforms nowadays for even greater time efficiency. For the newbie to graphic design, Canva has tons of tutorials and in general their site is set up so well you can click to make a logo, flyer, banner, business card, social media post with the click of one button. You can also further customize which platform, what size, etc so you are guaranteed to create the right product for your current design needs. It’s just so brilliant, I can’t say enough about Canva!
Number #5 on our top 5 list is your Newsletter Marketing software!
Target Bay, is, in my opinion, the best email marketing solution on the market right now. And I say that having used Constant contact and mail chimp for years in the past. Target Bay offers drag and drop editing, custom built in e-commerce, pop-ups, code-free personalization, dynamic content, free migration assistance worth up to $3450; an affordable and uncomplicated pricing plan, a dedicated customer success manager and unlimited chat and phone support, even in their free plan. Except for drag and drop editing and limited pop-ups, mail chimp offers none of these features.
Target Bay offers over 380 email templates to choose from, compared to mail chimps mere 15. And unlike Mailchimp, you simply pay for active subscribers, not the number of contacts you have! Targetbay offers over 15 forms and signup templates compared to mail chimps 4, and my favorite part – target bay offers unlimited phone and chat support even with their free plan, something not offered by any of the plans in mail chimp. But the best part of this platform for my business is that TargetBay is specially built for e-commerce whereas the previous email solutions I used were are not e-commerce specific.
Ultimately target bay has the best email deliverability, hundreds of email templates, advanced segmentation and powerful automation. There are no contracts, you can even try them out for free on their 14 day free trial!
Number #6 on our top 6 list is Photo Editing Made Simple!
There are so many photo editing option out there today and it’s hard to determine which one is best for your needs. I personally love Colorcinch Photo Editing Software that helps me instantly create, edit and turn your photos into beautiful art. This software stands out to me not just because its super easy to use, but because it allows me to turn my photos into artwork, remove background, create collages, apply artistic masks, stylize, add scenes and overlays, and so much more! If you are like me, you want to be able to re-use some of your images many times but you want to be able to make them a little different. Colorcinch gives you so many options to turn one photo into a watercolor, a drawing, a collage and more! Check out Colorcinch here.
Re-Cap ofTop 5 Tools to Run an Efficient Yoga Business:
Alright friends, let’s re-cap those top five business tools you need to run an efficient Yoga Business as a Yoga teacher.
1: A website
2: A simplified software booking solution
3: A simplified software for social media scheduling
4: An easy to use graphics software to create flyers, social posts and more.
5: And an affordable and easy to use Newsletter software
6: An easy to use Photo Editing Software
Let me know which one of these efficiency tools you plan to use in your yoga business this year.
Mentorship:
If you’d like more assistance from me, I do mentor yoga studios around the world, and I’d be delighted to help you bring your dream of becoming a yoga studio owner to fruition. Click here if you’d like to set up a complimentary consultation.
It is a lot of work to run your own business, but there is simply nothing more rewarding than being your own boss doing something that you love! I wish you the absolute best of luck.
Good luck!
About the Author:
Krista Shirley is the founder and owner of The Yoga Shala in Winter Park, Florida. She is also the owner and founder of Olotita and Nysa by Olotita in Orlando, Florida. Krista took her first yoga class at a local gym during her freshman year at Rollins College. completed her 200-hour teacher training at Centered Yoga in Ko Samui, Thailand before beginning her yearly pilgrimages to Mysore, India to study at the Ashtanga Yoga Institute (now Sharath Yoga Centre). Ms. Shirley received her level II authorization in 2009 and returned from India to open The Yoga Shala. Krista teaches traditional Ashtanga yoga in the Mysore method with a focus on body mechanics and proper breathing. She emphasizes mindfulness, presence and intention.
