As you’re starting a yoga business for seniors, knowing where to start is half the battle. If you’ve ever tried to maintain a difficult pose like the crow or a headstand, you’ll know that the most difficult things in life tend to start by making small moves to strengthen you to the point where you can tackle the harder stuff. Before you can open your yoga studio or yoga consulting business to the general public, you’ll need to set a solid foundation with a sound business plan and other building blocks to making a successful company.
If you’re starting a yoga business out of your home, you should look into local laws and ordinances to ensure that you’re following their standards. You can also consult with a business attorney to help you file all of the necessary paperwork it takes to make your business legitimate in the eyes of the law. For some folks, the first step to starting a yoga business for seniors will be getting certified in teaching yoga or practicing yoga on a professional level while others may already have those certifications so they might just need to focus on the business aspect of this endeavor.
How to Stand Out in Yoga for Senior Citizens
As you’re starting a yoga business for seniors, you should think about what makes your business stand out from others. Even businesses that might seem similar to each other usually have qualities or services that distinguish them from the crowd, so you shouldn’t let worries that your business has nothing unique to offer get in the way of tapping into what makes your business special. If you’re having a hard time coming up with things that make your business unique, you can go back to the drawing board and brainstorm a list of services or amenities that other yoga studios or businesses in your area fail to offer clients.
When you look at your business as a solution to a problem for your customers, it may be easier to come up with ways to differentiate your business from similar ones in your area. For example, if your customers constantly complain that other yoga studios in your region don’t offer early morning classes, you can solve their problem by listing early morning classes to meet that demand. If customers frequently compliment you on your gentle style of teaching, you can advertise your yoga teaching style to attract other customers who might like the same thing.
Beyond offering unique services, you can make your business stand out in the minds of potential customers by doing marketing campaigns that catch the attention of customers you’d like to serve. If your yoga practice has a spiritual component, you can use marketing strategies that incorporate that spiritual side and let customers know that this is a part of your brand identity. You can also pay to place advertisements in spaces where seniors might frequent like a local senior center or places where seniors in your area love to volunteer.
Care For Your Parking Lot
Since the parking lot is the first place that most customers will visit before they walk into your yoga business or studio, the way that it looks matters more than you might think. Something as simple as renting a parking lot line striper and touching up the lines in your parking lot can give customers an impression that you care about them and you invest in your business. When you work with seniors, maintaining your parking lot can decrease the risk of liability since a parking lot with many potholes might increase the potential for one of your clients to slip and fall from the uneven ground.
If you’re early in the process of starting a yoga business and you haven’t chosen a location for your business yet, you can take advantage of this stage of the business planning process by choosing a location with a good parking lot. If you can’t find a location with a parking lot, it’s a good idea to see what your local municipality expects business owners to do to maintain the sidewalk near their business and purchase essentials like salt to throw down during icy winter days. Even if you don’t have a parking lot, you can try to rent a lot near your business as your company expands so your customers always have dedicated parking when they use your services.
Repair Your Roof
If you purchase an old studio to fix it up, you should prioritize structural repairs like getting a roof replacement done if it’s been more than twenty or thirty years since the last time it was replaced. When you’re working with seniors, you don’t want them to catch a cold because your studio is drafty or slip on a wet area because of a leaking roof so it’s important to call your local roofing contractor to fix the roof as soon as you notice a problem with it. Repairing the roof can also allow you to make it look closer to what aligns with your brand if your current roof’s color or material doesn’t fit with your typical marketing style.
As you’re starting a yoga business, you’ll want to have many different contractors in your contacts so you don’t have to waste time looking up a potential contractor to get a job done in an emergency. If you own your business’s facility or studio, it’s your responsibility to maintain it and you should take this responsibility as seriously as maintaining your home. Even if you’re only renting a property for your business, it’s still smart to know several contractors you could call if you need to maintain the property or patch up a crack in the roof that makes it impossible for you to operate your business safely.
Find a Waste Management Solution
From old yoga mats to regular office waste, you may find that the trash for your business piles up quickly if you don’t have a solution for managing the waste effectively. If you don’t own a dumpster, you may be able to get away with relying on dumpster rentals to give you a place to dispose of unwanted items and garbage at the end of the day. When you want to rent a dumpster, you should consider what size would be best for your business today and within the rental period.
One of the perks of renting a dumpster as you’re starting a yoga business for seniors is that you can rent a larger size as your business expands. If the first dumpster you get seems too large for your needs, you can also trade it out for a smaller size once your rental period ends. Other options for waste management include minimizing the amount of waste your company produces, recycling where you can, and having your trash picked up directly from your business if those services are offered in your area.
Install Safety Features
According to state and federal laws, you’ll probably need to have certain safety items on hand for your business to avoid violating any codes that could put you out of business if you don’t follow them. To extinguish fires, you’ll always want to have fire extinguishers for businesses available and know how to use them if a fire starts. Taking fire safety classes and first aid classes can make your business feel like a safer place for clients to frequent while also making you more confident in your skills to handle anything that may come your way during a typical day at your yoga company.
If your business has recently suffered a break-in or you’ve had a change of hands with keys, you’ll want to know where to find a door lock replacement service that can change the locks on your doors. If you rent your yoga studio or other business space, you should consult with the building owner before you decide to change the locks since it may violate your lease if you don’t have the proper approval. For immediate safety concerns surrounding locks, it’s best to have secondary measures for keeping intruders and other unwanted parties from entering your business without blocking the exits of your building.
As you’re starting a yoga business, you can ask other local yoga studios how they keep their spaces safe and comfortable for clients. Some folks might have a system that allows those attending yoga classes and other events to buzz into the building through an intercom while others might prefer to keep their studio doors unlocked to encourage open practice. As you build your business, you get to decide what feels safe to you and what could feel unsafe to you.
Upgrade Your HVAC System
One of the parts of starting a yoga business that tends to be low on the priority list is updating an HVAC system when necessary. For those who have specialized classes like hot yoga, investing in a heating repair service can make the difference between following through on your promises to your clients and having to turn them away or offer alternative classes if the heat doesn’t work properly. When you’re working with seniors, the quality of your air and your ability to control the climate of your space matter for their health and well-being.
If you teach yoga classes in an area where temperatures tend to rise during certain seasons, you should schedule an inspection with an AC repair company before you start accepting clients to avoid clients passing out from the heat if the AC doesn’t work. While air conditioning can seem like a luxury or an unnecessary expense, it’s becoming more important to have it than ever with temperatures rising in many regions. A newer AC system may be able to handle the heat more efficiently than older units, so you should consider it an investment that forces you to spend money now so you’ll be able to save money down the road on utilities.
Invest in a New Door
Before you open the door to starting a yoga business for seniors, you may want to replace the current door on your yoga facilities. This can be a symbolic move that reminds you that you’re changing this space into a place that can support your dreams. If the door to your current space is old and damaged, it can also be a practical choice to spend money on a steel door that will not only look more professional but also perform better when you have customers coming into your studio all the time.
Remodel Your Space
Unless you inherit your dream commercial space, you’ll probably have to make some renovations before starting a yoga business in a new setting. If your business relies on you having a professional yoga studio, you may need to look into demolition and build it from the ground up if you can’t find anywhere that works for your needs. Your studio will need to have flooring that is safe and effective for practicing yoga as well as mirrors that can reflect your clients’ progress to them so you should make sure that you hire contractors who understand these needs.
If you need an office for your business, you may also find yourself remodeling a space so that it’s better suited to your vision. Whether this means making your office large enough for you to enjoy your yoga practice between meetings or it means making your office have key features that reflect your brand, every business owner’s idea of an ideal office is different. Working with an interior designer can help you make the most of your space for your business while following current interior design trends so that your business can be as modern and cutting-edge as possible.
In short, starting a yoga business for seniors won’t happen overnight but it will be worth the energy you pour into it. Even if you’ve been mulling over this dream for a while, it will still take more time and dedication to see it become a reality. Yoga can be enjoyable to practice so it’s a noble pursuit to try to make it more accessible to senior citizens and other populations in your community who could benefit from the many perks that yoga has to offer.
