Ep 12: Why you need a website

Whether you teach full-time, part-time, in-studio, or just on occasion a website can help you in a whole host of ways. So if you're thinking, "Who am I to have a website?" or "I don't need a website, I just teach in-person at studios" then listen up because you absolutely DO need a website and it won't cost you a ton of money. 

In this episode, I'll help you realize all the benefits of having a website and how it can be a vital part of your career!

Transcript

0:01

I just read an article about companies deciding to get rid of work from home options, and I actually have a member in my online studio who's going back and forth with their company about work from home, even though they signed a work from home contract when they got hired. Why am I sharing this with you? We're supposed to be talking about websites, right? It's because I am going to push you to set yourself up to be self sufficient, to not rely on a studio or an employer for your livelihood. Instead, I want for you to be able to pivot whenever you need to or whenever you want to. Welcome to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers podcast with me. I'm Monica Bright, and I've been teaching yoga and running my yoga business for over a decade. This is the podcast for you if you're a yoga teacher, you're looking for support, you love to be in conversation, and you're a lifelong student. In this podcast, I'll share with you my life as a yoga teacher. The lessons I've learned, all the stuff that wasn't taught in teacher training, my process for building my business, and helpful ideas, tools, strategies, and systems I use and you can use so that your business thrives. We'll cover a diverse range of topics that will help you whether you're just starting out or you've got years under your belt. And you want to dive deep and set yourself up for success. I'm so glad you're here. Listen, I don't take myself too seriously. So expect to hear some laughs along the way. Now let's do this together. All right, before we get started today, I want to share a few little bits of feedback that I've gotten from people. And I love it when you all respond back to me. It just warms my heart, and it just keeps me motivated for the next episode. Um, because I know that you guys are getting lots of value from what I'm sharing with you. So, the first is from a teacher in New York. Her name is Annette. And she says she looks forward to every episode because, number one, she loves my voice. Even this nasally voice, you still like it? And two, she always leaves with something to think about. And so, Annette, I'm so happy to hear from you and I'm so glad that you're getting value from what I'm sharing in each and every episode. The second piece of feedback, um, I got from a friend of mine. We're online friends. We've actually never met in person, but we've been connected. Online for some time, his name is Mark and he sent me a message and said, I've been playing motivational podcasts all morning. Then all of a sudden, a very gentle voice came on. I looked up and guess who slash what I saw and the, what was my podcast? And so that was really nice. I may share that like in my Instagram stories, just because it's a nice reminder that My message is getting out there and even for people who listen to like other podcasts, if it's like in the same kind of category, then chances are that mine will come up as well. Mark, thank you so much for sending me that message. It also warmed my heart and Mark has been a supporter of me starting a podcast since I first announced. Last year that I was just thinking about it and he was like, hand up. Yes, I'll listen. And the last is from Lisa. Lisa is a teacher on my email list. And she replied to a prompt that I asked everyone about how they're committing to keeping themselves healthy. And she responded to that question. With the ways that she's committing to keeping herself healthy. And then she responded, love the podcast in all caps, the end of the email. It was so sweet. And again, I just really enjoyed reading this. So thank you all for responding and letting me know how you're feeling about the podcast. I was like, I wouldn't know unless you tell me so. I appreciate it and if you want to leave me some feedback, if you want to email me or just respond in the Q and A section, I know on some platforms they have that, podcast platforms they have that, you can most certainly please do that, I would love to hear what you have to say, again, thank you, and I give you a little shout out on the podcast, maybe you can hear your name in an upcoming podcast. The next thing that I wanted to touch on was, remember that community health expo that I was a part of a couple of weeks ago, and I just want to reiterate how good that was for my soul. And I think that when I share these stories with you about how good it was for me, it's like, these are the kinds of feelings that I want you to experience. while you're building your own yoga career. I want you to fall in love with it. I want you to get those like good tingly feelings inside. I want you to randomly smile because you feel like, yeah, this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. So I loved the event because it was great for networking, socializing, and collaborating. And I've been pushing myself to collaborate a bit more lately. And I think I've done a pretty good job with it. I'm the type of person where it's like, you know what, I'll just get it done. I'll just do it myself. I kind of hated group projects in school because I could just do it myself, but you know, no man is an island or should be in an island and we should be working with each other. Collaborating has been a wonderful experience. The key is to collaborate. with the right kinds of people. So I wanted to share one, um, take away from the Q and A session on that panel that I was on, on fitness and pain management. And everybody who was on that panel reiterated like in their own way that there's so much that you can still do while navigating pain and injuries. And I think that's so important. Because we're helping to change minds and give people options, right? So it's not about like, Oh, I have an injury. Let me just go sit on the couch for six weeks. No, it's like, there are things that you can be doing around that injury. There are some things that you can be doing to regress to a point where you can still use that body part just in a safe manner and. And a movement that feels really good for your body. So whether it's different modalities like physical therapy, acupuncture, self massage, yoga, Pilates. It could be walking, running, chair exercises, like there's so much and I could tell that the attendees felt empowered by the session and empowered by our discussion. So that's just one additional takeaway that I wanted to share with you and maybe help you like spread the word about either being injured or in pain with your student. Okay, we're just gonna talk about it right. I'm sure you can hear it. I still have a nasally voice. I'm just gonna go ahead and acknowledge it because it's better than just pretending like it's not there. We're gonna go again with a little sexy voice this week on the podcast. I'm almost better, but I just have like this nagging like nasally tone and a little, I guess, congestion. It's not a lie, but anyway. I still got it. We're going to try to do the best that we can and, and work through it. And I'm going to talk and be as clear as I possibly can so that you can hear what I have to say with no problem. So the question that I pose for this podcast episode is, do you need a website? Right? And so I'm going to talk to you a little bit. about the reasons why I believe that you do, in fact, need a website. So I want you to just take a moment to, you don't even have to write down the answers to these questions. I just want you to, to ponder them, like, in your head. Just let your thoughts around these answers ruminate a little bit. So the first question is, how do you show up? How are you showing up? Do you, do you have a website right now? Do you have the start of one? Are you thinking about it? Are you just teaching in person for yourself or at a studio or maybe somewhere special like a senior home or the Y? Are Y's still open? The YMCA? I don't know. Such a good question. The next question is, how do people perceive you? Do you know? Next, how do people perceive your business? So this is a little bit different question than how do they perceive you as a yoga teacher versus how do they perceive your business, right? Do you want to be taken seriously? I would hope your answer to that question is yes. Where do people learn more about you? Where do they binge you? Where do they begin to feel comfortable and safe with you? And we're talking about, like, outside of the yoga studio. This next question, side by side, who would you trust more? Somebody who was, like, a teacher who just taught, or a teacher who taught, but then also had a website that included a bunch more information about them. And we'll get a little bit into that. information in a bit. Which teacher would you trust more? And finally, do you currently behave like a business owner? It's okay if you say no, because maybe you're at this point in your career where you don't necessarily think of yourself as a business owner. You're just starting out, right? So it's okay to say no, but you want to behave like a business owner. All right. Whether you teach full time, part time, in studio, or even just on occasion, I want you to know that a website can help you in a whole host of ways. So if you think, like, who am I to have a website? Or, I don't need a website, I just teach in person at studios. Then I want you to perk up your ears, listen up, because you absolutely do. Need a website. And it's not going to cost you a whole ton of money. So let me just get this one point out of the way. If you have someone telling you not to focus on a website or it's not necessary, throw them in the trash. That's, oh my God, that's so mean. I don't really mean it, literally. Don't listen to that advice. Not if you want to be building a business, right? I want you to be strategic. We just talked about strategy in the last episode. Check it out if you haven't listened yet. But I want you to think deeper than surface level. I want you to think deeper than just yes, no, or this, or that. I want you to be thinking about how a website is going to be a component of your business and help you build your business too. So I just read an article about companies deciding to get rid of work from home options. I actually have a member in my online studio who's going back and forth with their company about work from home, even though they signed a work from home contract when they got hired. You may be asking why I'm sharing this with you because we're supposed to be talking about websites. But it's because I'm going to push you every step of the way to set yourself up to be self sufficient, to not rely on a studio or employer for your livelihood. Instead, I want for you to be able to pivot whenever you need to Or whenever you want to. I've so many stories of teachers, including my own stories, being client on studios, even though they, we, I wasn't being fulfilled, but we stay because I mean, we felt like what was the other option I'll probably share some of those stories on a future podcast episode in the meantime. Let's get to why you want to have a website and maybe you already have one, like I said before, or you're just thinking about it, but hopefully after this episode, you're going to know exactly why it's important. And these are no particular order. I'm just going to start to hand out these reasons why to you. So the first reason why is because you want to be able to keep in touch with your students, right? Once you leave class, how do you stay connected with your students? Are you just waiting until the next class, the following week, whenever you guys meet again, how are you going to keep in touch with your students? A website provides them with more information like your class schedules, maybe you've got some updates. You can provide them with more education and other important information. So think of your website as a place where students can go to stay in touch with you and a place where Or a platform where you can have the information that you want stored so people can come to get it on their own time. The next why is because you can reach a wider audience. Your website is going to allow you to reach a wider audience because anyone with internet access can find your classes. Maybe if you've got some services online, all they need is access to the internet and they can find you. And this is especially beneficial for reaching potential students who live in areas where it's difficult to find in person classes. I talked about this on a previous episode. I'm going to find it and I'll link it in the show notes below. But we talked about the benefits. Of having online offerings and one of those benefits of having online offerings is so that you reach people that don't live in your area. They can't make it to the studios that you're teaching at or the venues that you're teaching at just because of location. But they can connect with you online and they can consume your offerings no matter where you and they in the world. So think about that. The next Y is to promote your classes and services. So yeah, if you're working at a studio is fine. Of course, they're going to promote what's coming up at the studio. But when you have your own website, you can start to promote your offerings that are coming up. So one of the things I want you to think about is how to promote what you've got going on in an organized manner. Right? Your website can serve as an online brochure for your classes. and your upcoming offerings. So say you've got your whole class schedule and instead of having to email or text or somehow kind of type out your whole schedule for a student who's interested in taking your classes. You can just give them your website. You can just give them the link to where you have your class schedule, um, posted. And then they'll always have that link, right? So they can always refer to it. But, say you have three workshops lined up. You can have all three of those workshops on one page on your website. So people could look through it and say, Yes, I'm interested in that one. I'm not interested in the second one. And yes, I'm interested in The third one, it helps a lot with organization and so being able to have a place to put your offerings and say you've got a retreat that's coming up, you can put all the information about your retreat on your website. So if somebody asks about it, I mean, again, you just send them the link. I mean, I would also suggest capturing their information as well. But just think about how organized you can be with your stuff if you have a place to put it. And when someone asks you about your services, you can send them somewhere to take it all in. Remember, your website can provide potential students, even current students, with all the information they need to know about your schedule, maybe even your prices, your location, if you teach at different locations. You can even have sign up forms and links for them to sign up for these classes ahead of time. That's always fantastic because then you get an idea of like how many people are going to show up. For a said offering, we always like to have some idea beforehand. All right. I want you to think about building your brand and why having a website is so helpful with this, your website is going to help you build your brand as a yoga teacher, and it can serve again, as a platform for you to share, maybe it's your philosophy, your approach. your experience as a teacher, which can help to attract the right kinds of students for you. Now, here's a little disclaimer. I do not advise spending a lot of time on colors, fonts, and logos at the beginning. That kind of stuff is going to evolve over time. But you can begin to shape what your brand is all about. The feel you want visitors to embody when they come to your site. So, initially, I've had a website since around 2014, I believe. And, initially, my website was hosted on Wix. Easy to start, easy to manage. But this is back when I was teaching solely in person and Wix is, is super simple. It's like copy, paste, drag, drop, you know, I mean, you can design pages really easily. But when I decided to shift to build, um, my business, I decided that I wanted to hire a website designer because I wanted my website to be professional. A lot of people's first impression of me is going to my website. And so it's important that if that is their, um, first introduction to me, that it's professional. Do I advise that for you, that you get a website designer for your first website? No, don't go out there hiring a designer and spending thousands of dollars. Start with a do it yourself site. And like at this point today, I would suggest Squarespace. I've just heard like really wonderful things about Squarespace and that it has more to offer than Wix does. So let me just backtrack for a quick second. When I initially created my website on Wix, I didn't do it by myself because. Listen, especially back in 2014, tech and I were not friends, technology and I were not friends, to be clear, okay? So I had no idea of how to go about even designing a simple site on Wix. So I did hire someone to create my initial Wix website. She created a few pages that I needed and I was a little antsy about like getting it from her and learning how to, how to edit it myself. I think partially it was because I would ask her to do something, and then she would do it, and then we'd have to go back and forth. It's like, no, that's not the vision that I had. Could you scoot this over just a little bit? And so it was just way too time consuming to be going back and forth with someone, and I just want you. To, if you go that route, get somebody to initially design it and then take over it right away and learn how to use it. That's what I did. So I could, I could update my website whenever I needed to. I didn't have to go back and forth with her. She didn't cost much. I think she cost maybe 400, which was an investment I was willing to pay at that point to, to get it started. As opposed to me trying to figure out, like, technology and back end stuff that domains and all of that did not know anything about. It was just a lot easier to have her do it. All right, so the next why that I want you to think about when it comes to websites is that I want you to think about creating an online presence. And why is this important? An online presence helps to separate you from the pa This is your career and an online presence helps you to establish yourself as a reputable and professional yoga teacher. Students are going to take you more seriously if you have a website. They just are. And you'll be able to attract more students. Now, when it comes to like your online offerings, classes, events, workshops, courses, whatever it is that you want to create, you've got to have a place to host them. So in all transparency, I use Kajabi right now. In my business, and I love it, and I'm at the point where, like, I know how to use Kajabi pretty well, and I'm sure that there's always stuff to learn, right? So I know it pretty well, but it's where I host my website, and my courses, and mentorships, and special classes, and workshops, all of that is hosted on Kajabi. So, I dare bring up passive income because passive income is not passive like at all. I think I want to go a little deeper into this topic on a future episode, but when you think about like having online offerings, they're Typically referred to as passive income because you put it somewhere and then people go there to buy it, but it's not passive at all. If you remember anything, remember that. But again, like you're going to have the, the platform, you're going to have your website in order to host these offerings and these online classes and events. Can be accessible by anyone with internet access. We talked about that, um, a little bit before. So it's important to have the online presence on be present in the online space so that you can reach more people. And have online offerings. Okay. Not passive, but just online offerings. And finally, the thing that I said that I'm always going to talk to you about, which is increasing your income, teaching weekly classes is it's not sustainable. It just isn't. So we got to start thinking a little bit more strategically about how we're going to create this wonderful business. Of yours. So when you have a website, you can add, um, to your streams of income by offering online classes or some kind of event, or maybe you want to sell products. Like I know someone who sells not all the time, but they sell merch, which is pretty cool. And they only do it like a couple of times a year, but that's all done online. People buy from them from all over the country, I'm sure all over the world, but she has a place to house that information and those offerings if people want to buy her merch. If you're thinking about an ebook or some kind of yoga gear or yoga like card decks or Anything. The thing is like you could do whatever you want and that's what I love about the time that we're in now is like the world is your oyster, right? You can do anything and you can be creative and come up with stuff, but a uh, website, having an online presence will help to increase your income just because it's another stream. It's just a different stream, and that doesn't mean you have to stop what you're doing in person. It doesn't mean you have to stop doing other things, it's just another piece to the puzzle. All right, I mentioned before that I've had a website since 2014, and I want you to know that I have gone through many iterations of it. I've studied the ins and outs of website design, psycholinguistics, which is how your visitor's brains understand the structure and underlying meaning of what they read on your website, and I've studied how to create a user experience with trackable analytics and goals in place. I know these tips and tools and strategies to help you build a great website from the start which is why I'm so adamant on the fact that yes, you do need a website and we didn't get this information and Yoga teacher training, so I'm here to help you get it. Now, if you want to learn a step by step process on how to get started with a website, or learn best practices for website design, or if you want to save time and energy from searching from one resource to another, And another, and another, on the internet trying to figure it all out. The business of Yoga 2. 0, my four month coaching program for yoga teachers, opens for enrollment every April. And it's the big workshop, the big coaching program that we never got on how to actually make yoga your career. Every year I work with a small group of teachers, and to make sure we're a perfect fit, there's an application process. So that I know for sure that you and I can make a difference in your career. We're specifically going to work on websites and website design. So if this episode intrigued you, I would suggest that you keep on paying attention. I'm going to continue to send you more information about. My coaching program, if you're not on my mailing list yet, then I'll link the waiting list in the show notes below. So hop on it and we can stay in touch and you can learn more about the coaching program and you can learn more about when applications open. I don't want to leave anybody out, including you. So just to wrap things up. and tie them into a nice little bow for you. I just want to reiterate that your website is going to have the biggest impact on three things. How you're perceived by students and your peers and other businesses too. The ease at which you can offer services outside of the studio or wherever you're working. And three, how you promote yourself and your brand in an easily digestible manner. I want for you to be clear about your career or at least be getting clearer on it every day. It's so important to have this conversation about why websites are necessary, so that you remember that the opportunities are endless for you in the teaching world. You know that my goal is for you to love the yoga teaching life and allow it to be fulfilling and rewarding, as always, because I say it all the time, it takes some work to get there. If you love this episode, let me know and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. I love the feedback that I've heard so far. So keep it up. Let me hear it. Let me hear it all. Please subscribe to the podcast so you know when a new episode drop and share it with another yoga teacher who you think would love to be in on these conversations. Because teachers have asked for more business related episodes, I'm excited to continue to bring you more. Thank you for helping to spread the word about this podcast, and finally, again, if you're not already on my newsletter, get on it. It's just for yoga teachers. I'll put the link in the show notes below, and I would love it if you joined so we can always be connected. All right. That's it for now. Bye.