I found yoga during a time where I needed to get moving, out of pain, and do something outside of my house. It worked! Now I do it at home for free as part of a workout routine. I can’t say enough about how it can get you motivated to exercise. That’s not what this is about though, it’s about the dark side of Yoga that has been trampled by mindless idiots who ironically preach mindfulness.
I’d been working for some time to help a few Yoga studios in my area with technology needs like website, and marketing. One of my clients was a younger woman who had a background in accounting. She was starting a studio on the side while working full-time trying to build a brand with the blessing of the current employer. The problem with this person is they had zero ability to follow advice, retain information, or follow-up on things. That’s annoying!
Annoying things they’d do:
Forget to pay me every month. After sending an apology email, they’d forget again, then finally pay 3-4 months of service at a time. I’d have to resend all of the bills because they could remember that they owed me just now how much and from when. It was always a rush to pay a few hundred bucks for all the work I’d done over a period of weeks, or months.
Be unable to hire the right talent but also do a crap job at supplementing it. For example, I told them I’d set up some basic Google ads. They’d constantly ask me: “Wouldn’t somebody who did this know that?” to which I’d reply, yes! That’s the type of person I told you to hire years ago. I’m not a marketing expert; it’s just a hobby that I picked up in the lobby. You’re running the business. If you can’t do it yourself or find it from within your existing talent pool, then it’s your job to fill that gap.
They’d have their husband walking around asking redundant questions. For example, I’d told the owner “You should work on the flow of how people wait, get dressed, and head to class. It seems like there is a huge line that cuts through where people change, place their stuff in cubbies, and walk to the class. It was a simple observation made by somebody who had visited a few dozen studios around the country. The husband immediately jumps in “Yeah, uh, but isn’t that like just obvious, right? Anybody could think of that?” I’m like “Yeah, uh, I’m just making an observation as a visitor to the studio. The difference between crappy studios and good ones is that owners are constantly thinking about, and refining the basics about how the business operates”.
They wouldn’t follow any advice about the website if they couldn’t understand it. For example, the website images weren’t scaled properly. I told the owner that the total site was 10MB and took 12 seconds to load. If they could simply put image types as 300×300, and 1280×1024 using a website to scale them, it would resolve the problem. If I check this site 2 years later it’s still the same size, rated as an F for page speed. We had that conversation 15 times based on my email threads going over the 2-step process of taking your photographer’s images, scaling them, then uploading to WordPress like they did today.
Yogi’s: Practice what you preach! Don’t be annoying by claiming to be “mindful” and then demonstrating that you’re constantly without brains. You can’t run a business by meditating on it. You’ve got to get out of your pose and keep your clients happy. If you run one of those Bikyam Yoga shops I used to frequent years ago, don’t use a rug! That’s just nasty…
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