Hey there wellness entrepreneur! Welcome back.
Today we’re talking about a common question many wellness entrepreneurs have to ask themselves at some point, especially if they’re trying to grow a consistent five figure months online using online programs. And the question is, should I take on this additional yoga or fitness class?
Maybe you get asked finally for a peak time and now you have to ask yourself, “Should I take this on?” And you might be thinking, “Well, if I want to scale online, why would I add another in-person class?”
Let’s dive into all the strategic and mindset breakdown. We’re going to actually go over some numbers to whether it works with your time, your schedule, your finances, and if your ultimate goal is to accelerate your online growth, help more people online.
Is In-Person Class A Waste Of Your Time Or Is It A Strategic Move?
Now, you know, my personal story, possibly how I taught a lot of in-person classes, workshops and trainings, and I was also growing my online business. And there was a time when I chose to pivot away from those classes. And prior to doing that, I was also very grateful for all those classes.
So how did I know it was time to pivot away? We’re going to go over all of that here.
The Struggles I see With Wellness Entrepreneurs When Trying to Grow Six-Figure Online Wellness Program
So some struggles I see wellness entrepreneurs facing when they’re trying to grow a six-figure online wellness program or hit consistent five-figure months online is that they’re struggling to build a large enough audience to make their launches successful, meaning that they fill a program or whether it be on-demand, a membership, getting enough people in there so the revenue is worthwhile.
They’re also having trouble consistently creating content for social media and marketing like on Instagram or TikTok. They’re missing opportunities to get clients to get the confidence that this program will work, that they can charge a high ticket or mid-range price and get people through their program and generate specific health results.
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So because of that, they’re lacking confidence. So they’re really not getting out there as much as they could. They’re having trouble building credibility and trust with an online audience. And because of all of this, they’re not creating consistent income while building that online program.
And that’s a frustrating place to be, especially if you feel like you’re working a lot and putting in a lot of effort, but money’s trickling in here or there, a few hundred dollars here or there, not the thousands of dollars each month that you’re really hoping for.
Now, there is a time in your business when you can strategically use in-person classes to help solve for some of those problems. And that could be you’re getting a lot of in real time content creation benefits, whether it’s just you showing up to a group of people and having moments in your class where you can actually create some B-roll type content footage from your live classes.
But also, when you’re in front of that group of people, you’re going to be hearing about your students’ health and wellness struggles. So it’s an opportunity to crowdsource from your ideal clients, hopefully, if you pick the right class, and we’ll go over that in a bit.
But ideally, your class is positioning you in front of your ideal audience that you want for your online program. So you can literally hear from them what they’re struggling with, which helps with other content topics, messaging being specific, registration pages for future online workshops, webinars, copy for your sales pages and e-mails. All of that is gold.
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When you’re teaching in-person classes and you’re really feeling confident as a teacher, then you’re going to get more student transformations in their health and wellness journeys and various ways that you can share and build your audience online and gain that credibility and trust. And talking and engaging with these students is going to keep you fresh and motivated and inspired. So you’ll always be thinking of new pieces of content to share, whether it’s on your YouTube channel or through your Instagram page and e-mails.
Then there’s online business development benefits. Like, for example, if you want to have a group program or lead group calls, meaning you show up to a call online and you’re going to guide a group of people through getting a specific transformation on that call or leading them to a bigger transformation at the end of the program, whether it’s six weeks, three months, six months, the more you teach, the more confident you will get guiding a group of people and learning how to speak about what you do and educate about what you do on certain techniques, whether it’s in-person or online, so you’re gaining flexibility of working with a diverse group of people. You also have opportunities to build your audience beyond just you doing all the work.
If you’re partnering with studios, a studio wants your yoga class or workshop to be filled. So often they’ll help promote you and your class as well. So if they’re tagging you in Instagram posts, you have opportunity to grow your audience there. If they’re including you in e-mails or you’re able to get e-mails of students in your class, you’re going to be growing your e-mail list because you’re consistently put in front of a group of people each week. You have the opportunity to network and get to know those students.
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And if you are looking to create your first online health and wellness program, you can use those students as a focus group to offer it at for free or a very low cost and test your online offerings and get confidence there from a group of people that know you and already trust you. And it makes the whole process a bit more comfortable.
And then from those focus groups or if you test certain techniques and modalities in your classes, you’ll get immediate feedback from those students on how to improve them or whether they’re a flop or whether they’re a win and they love it. And you can also develop your teaching frameworks that can translate online and feel confident because you’ve run people through it before.
There’s also a financial growth strategy to teaching in-person classes to grow your online business because you do have the ability to possibly, depending on how many classes you’re teaching, create an additional one to two thousand a month that’s reoccurring baseline income. And that can be enough to pay for some basic business expenses for online programs and some of or maybe all of your personal expenses depending on where you live. Again, if you’re teaching the right classes, then hopefully you’re positioned in front of your ideal client avatar for your online program so you have the ability to convert some of those in-person students to your online program.
Again, you can create more case studies from some of those conversions to market your online program and create some social proof, whether it’s your students tagging you or sharing that with their friend and referring your class so you can build your audience or just mentioning and commenting on your posts or contributing to those testimonials.
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The Cons Of Adding an In-Person Class In Growing Your Online Program
Okay, now let’s talk of the cons of adding an in-person class to grow your online program.
For a moment, I want to speak to adding the downsides of adding a virtual class for your online program. And I want to highlight the difference between having a class that’s your own virtually versus a class that you’re collaborating with a studio or another person with.
Okay, so if you’re going to have your own class, then you lose out on that collaborative effort of building your audience and filling the class itself. So you’re not going to have another studio tagging you. A lot of times, studios, yoga studios, Pilates studios, they have massive online audiences and e-mail lists. So if they’re tagging you and mentioning you in e-mails and helping to fill your class and or workshops, it’s a really strong and great benefit. So don’t underestimate that, which is really needed.
If you’re just starting out in the online space, I really highly recommending collaborating before you do your own virtual class. Of course, doing your own virtual class, the benefits are, easily students already work with you online. So it is easier sometimes to convert to an online program. Not always, because again, if your program is set up well, you can see the past episodes, then you’re selling a specific result that they want.
So, often, they really don’t care if it’s online or in-person. In fact, online sometimes has a lot of benefits because they can do it from their home. But what they really care about is, “Does that program get the results?” So it doesn’t always make it an easy conversion, but sometimes it does. If they’re already working with you online, then they might say, “Oh, okay, well, she has this online program for this specific result. I want to do that too.” Obviously, virtually, if you’re teaching a class virtually, you can reach people all over the world, not just your local community.
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And if it’s your class only and you are reaching people all over the world, there’s possibilities for infinite income. You can have large groups of people and don’t have to split the profit or get paid $50 from a yoga studio. You can have the opportunity to make a lot more money in one class.
Okay, now let’s get into the dark side of adding the classes. So since I just mentioned the virtual, we’ll go right into the negatives of having your own virtual is you don’t have that collaborative effort. It’s sometimes hard to stand out in the online wellness market space and just market another class. You really have to position yourself as why someone found you on Instagram, why they would take your class versus someone else’s class on the same day or time or even different day and time. So you really have to understand the benefits and your ideal client and what they’re really looking for.
It doesn’t mean that you have to niche, but in this case, sometimes having a specific topic or focus of in the health and wellness realm, like you’re targeting new postpartum moms specifically, they just had a baby within a month or two, or maybe you’re targeting menopausal woman, you have a very specific purpose, then sometimes, that really helps to leverage certain positioning and helps you to stand out in the online marketplace, which leads to marketing.
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It really does take a lot of time and energy to fill your own classes, especially if you’re starting out and don’t have a large audience. Then, of course, you need all the tech background and know with all. For example, are you going to teach on Zoom? How are you going to accept payment? How are they going to get the Zoom link to show up to class? Are you going to send reminders, all that sort of stuff, you have to be in charge of on your own for your virtual class?
But again, it can be a great way, a virtual class, especially if you’re offering it free or a low ticket price for new people to come into your world, get to know you, get to know your work, and then a certain percentage of those people will convert, hopefully, to your next offer, whether it’s one-to-one or a high ticket online wellness offer.
Okay, let’s talk about the cons of adding an in-person class, especially if you want to grow online. The time and energy drain is huge. Each class might only be an hour, but if it’s in-person, you have to drive. In San Diego on average, it’s like a half-hour commute for most classes. Then you also have to have your planning time. So one-hour classes can easily turn into two, three, maybe even four hours outside of that class. Then that’s three to four hours you’re not spending in your own business, marketing your own business, whether it be your one-to-one services, your private sessions, your online wellness program that you do want to generate those five-figure months from.
So it’s not just the three to four hours of teaching that one class, it’s the energy after the class. So I’m an introvert, and I remembered every class that I taught, I would have a big energy drop after that class. I really needed to go into hermit mode and do restorative for 20 to 30 minutes or go grab lunch and just decompress for an hour. So there was time after the class for me as well that I couldn’t work on my own business, even though I could go back to my brick and mortar and try to work on my online program because I didn’t have a private session or an in-person patient, but I couldn’t do it because I was just mentally exhausted from the energy output of teaching my class.
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So you really have to consider if you’re going to pick up an in-person class, the audience that you are teaching for, is it the audience that you want to grow? So if you want to create an online wellness program, for example, that specializes in menopausal women, you don’t want to pick up a prenatal yoga class. It’s just not the same audience. It’s not a right fit. They might be ready for you in 10 or 15 years, but probably not right then.
Another con of taking an in-person class is the audience. If it’s not a match of the audience that you want to grow online or create that online wellness program for, then that should be a no.
Also, you have to be aware of audience stagnation in your in-person classes because your in-person classes will often fill with regulars and they might get used to you and some of them, yes, might convert to your online wellness program and become loyal clients of yours and your business for years after years, but sometimes you can really saturate or back out your regulars who are in your class in terms of working with you beyond just the class.
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If only one or two new people are coming to a class every so often, there is a difference. If that class that you’re teaching has consistent new people always coming in and it’s a larger size class, then that’s a different situation. But I’ve taught specialty classes like Healthy Back or Hatha or Slow Flow where there tended to be a core group of regulars and there would only be a new student. One new student, maybe two every class and sometimes that new student coming in wasn’t a good fit to work with me at all outside of the class. It was a pleasure to meet them, but I knew that’s kind of where the road ended for us, which is fine.
But in terms of growing an online audience and an online business and creating those five figure months, I had to take that into consideration and realize like, “Oh, I love these students and the new ones that do come in. But they’re never really going to do more than just work with me in-person in the class because they’re just not a good fit for my program or the next steps.”
And so if there’s less new faces and really just the same faces, that means your network expansion and audience growth is really limited. Plus, with in-person classes, the obvious thing is you’re restricted by the local community there.
Let’s also talk about the financial reality check of in-person classes. The average yoga class get paid for maybe 35 to 75 dollars for a 60 to 90-minute class. That doesn’t count in your travel and preparation time, so that really slows your pay per hour to sometimes below 20 dollars per hour for teaching one class. Again, that’s time that you’re not writing e-mails for your own program and business or creating social media content on your own Instagram page or engaging with your audience on your own Instagram page.
Or if you’re teaching a lot of classes then or even just a few classes, again, after the classes, you just might not have the mental energy to create content afterwards or engage on social media after your classes because you felt like you already did a lot of engaging and talking with people.
And so for overall, it’s just less time for developing marketing and launching your online programs and growing your online audience, your own online audience.
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Some Reasons Why You Might Say No To Adding Classes
1. If the time slot conflicts with your peak online audience engagement hours and you really are growing an audience engaging with your and you are consistent engaging with your online audience.
2. When the pay just doesn’t justify the travel, the preparation time, the energy output, and it’s not in front of your ideal online audience.
3. If you have started an online program launch and then you get asked to pick up another class, that might not be the best time to say yes, right? If you really want to make that online program launch successful, you want to prioritize that.
4. And if the audience that the class is targeted for or the class format doesn’t align with your online wellness program or offering, then that’s probably not a good fit either.
5. If you can’t market at all or the student isn’t able to or wants to collaborate with you at all, or you can’t use anything from the class for content creation or audience growth.
6. If it’s a no, no, no on all those, then probably not a great fit either.
7. And if your online business and your audience growth is already gaining significant momentum or the yoga studio or fitness studio that you want to partner with has a smaller audience than you, then it might not be a great fit either.
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Strategies If You Say Yes To A Class
So if you are going to say yes to a class, here are some implementation strategies for that.
· You want to choose a time slot that allows for your own content creation and energy restoration. If you’re an introvert like me, you want to select venues with good lighting and filming potential. Most studios are pretty beautiful though.
· You want to make sure that traffic isn’t going to drive you nuts and that it is an audience that will fit your online program.
· You want to negotiate your ability to market how you’re going to collaboratively market the class to fill it. And are they going to mention you and promote you and your ability to create content from the class? What is the rules and regulations around that?
· If you’re going to set up a class, you want to make sure you’re generating systems regards to your own content creation. So if you’re setting up themes for your classes for the week, can those themes overlap and also be used for your social media content and e-mails?
· You want to set up efficient class filming processes. Of course, ask your class permission and make sure that all that is set up. You want to create a content repurposing workflow. So you’re not always to record every class like often you can reuse b-roll footage.
· You want to develop systems for collecting those student testimonials or putting together focus groups or just listening to the students’ struggles and pain points and what they’re really desiring to help with your messaging.
· You want to make sure you have a system if you are going to be marketing your class that it works with the studio or whoever you’re collaborating with.
So it’s a systematic process and fair. You want to have systems for appropriately talking to those people that are appropriate for your next step and online programs. What is the next step they will take with you? Is it a phone call? Is it an official consultation in person or online? How will you upsell that next step from your classes? Can you also develop lead magnets for your classes so then you have a way to get e-mails from your classes and those people are getting some type of value for giving for giving you their e-mail.
So if you’re thinking that this class could distract you from your online business, it could. So remembering your time, your energy and what you’re choosing to prioritize and your finances could you really use that stable income.
But if you’re going to say yes, just remember to integrate that class into your content online strategy. Use those classes for the market research. Keep your online program the priority in your mind and again have a system for converting those in-person students into your online programs.
If you’re feeling really pressured to have enough time to create content, then just make sure that your classes are part of your content creation system. Do batch filming, again, you don’t have to film every class. You can reuse a lot of b-roll footage and then just change the topics or the themes or especially if you’re filming large portions of your class and you’re doing 10 second 20 second reels that is a lot of film that you can reuse.
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Let’s Break Down Some Numbers
If we’re talking about the traditional class income, average class pay, we’ll just do a round number $50, a little on the higher end really. Travel times, 30 minutes each way. Set up, cleanup time, 30 minutes maybe, talking with the students after class or before class is included in that actual class time, 60 minutes.
Your total time investment: two and a half hours which the real hourly rate then breaks down to $20 per hour, so monthly income from that one class could be $200.
Now, let’s examine if that time was free for building your online business. Then with those two and a half hours, if you were to say no, now it’s saying no knowing that you have the potential to do this, it’s not saying no so you can go to Trader Joe’s or do other things in your personal life. We’re talking about unless that’s what you really need, you need more free time to rest and replenish and do things in your personal life, then of course!
But for here for sake of this blog, we’re going to talk about just a trend what those hours would look like if you were working in your business so you could create a couple strong pieces of your pillar content for e-mail, maybe a couple e-mails, five to seven social media posts, at least two e-mail newsletters, potential reach if you have Instagram and an e-mail list of a couple hundred each or five hundred each then it could be a thousand or more ideal clients if you convert and get clicks on that.
Maybe people book a consult and say yes from any of those pieces of content, you get one to two new people into your high ticket program and let’s say you have a three-month program, you’re working one to one with people, it’s $1,200 and you get two sales, two people say yes from those emails or social media content, Instagram stories, then you know that’s $2,400 right there from those two and a half hours.
Now it is a little bit different because sometimes you send out one e-mail and you do get a consult right away and sometimes it takes multiple e-mails or multiple pieces of content but it gives you the ability to stay consistent and the more consistent you are, the better you get in your messaging so that every time you do send an email, then you do have the potential for a consultation and a yes.
That’s a big cost difference. Two hundred dollars versus twenty-four hundred dollars for that same time investment so you really need to look at every single class you’re teaching and kind of take them through this.
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Decision-Making Matrix To Decide On Whether You Should Keep That Class Or Not
Is it really worth your time?
So for me, for a while teaching classes really was where I gained a lot of experience. There was a time where I taught 10 to 15 classes a week and then I realized it was too much. When I started to get busier in my brick and mortar and then especially when I was leading teacher a lot of teacher trainings, I was getting a lot more virtual requests to work with me one-to-one online so my schedule was really getting maxed out so I reduced to two classes a week and that helped tremendously.
But even then, I got so busy and my online business was growing rapidly where I even had to look at those two classes and when I was really examining those two classes that’s when the pandemic hit and for a while I taught one class online during the pandemic for a full year and I’m really glad I did that for again all those reasons that I mentioned, just getting confidence and experience teaching online, getting used to the tech, I was still building my audience online, getting confidence, getting people results online, growing my following, all of that and plus, I really really loved it and I loved the students I was teaching so I was in no rush to leave it.
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But then I did get to a point where that two-and-a-half-hour time investment where I could be doing other things it started to really impact me and I had to let that class go which I ended up filling that time with a lot of the things that I mentioned which really allowed my business to really grow and scale when I’m working with my clients. We really evaluate whether to say yes to a new class or letting go of certain existing class. I really take them through all of this based upon their numbers where their audience size is the potential of what a collaborative partnership may offer them and we do this for trainings, we do it for workshops, we do it for weekly classes, but it’s how my students are able to grow within their ideal schedule because anytime that they teach they make sure that it is a right fit for their business goals and it fits in their time.
They’re not just saying yes to say yes to any opportunity. It’s very strategic and I have some clients that don’t teach any classes at all. They just teach an occasional workshop or teacher training or do community events and then I have some clients that do have their own virtual classes. I have some clients that have their own in-person classes. I have some clients that have both.
Conclusion
So that’s the beauty of having a wellness business and really the beauty of being a wellness entrepreneur. I used to say this all the time is that we get paid, we have an opportunity to get paid, to market where you can really grow your business and you’re not forced to shell out thousands of dollars into Facebook or Instagram ads when you just don’t have the revenue for that you can pick up a class or a bunch of classes and have the potential to have that baseline income of a 1K-2K while you grow your business.
It is a special perk of being in the health and wellness and fitness industry if you’re a health coach or I have a client that she’s a chef, she uses a lot of these same protocols and strategic decision making for some of her cooking classes out in the community so you can really use this for any style of class in the health and wellness industry.
So adding another class isn’t just to say yes. You want to be strategic and make sure it is worth your time and your energy. It’s about creating a system that will help to fuel your online audience growth and your online revenue growth and when used correctly that extra class can really provide content, testimonials, confidence for you case studies. All that you really need to hit those consistent five-figure months online.
If you want to know how I grew to my first six figures online using in-person classes, you can use the link in the show notes or DM me or go to the website wellunbound.com/. There is the 100k blueprint. Just go download that blueprint. I really walk you through the steps.
Of course if you want to work one-to-one with me with this process for you and your business, leveraging what you’re doing, making sure your time is invested wisely, then just book your consult!
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