By Cheryl MacDonald BA (Hons) CYT E-RPYT, founder of Yoga Bellies®

If you undertake yoga teacher training, you get what it says on the tin: you gain the skills you need to teach yoga. At the end of the training you are generally left to do what you will with these newly gained skills with little or limited on-going support.

Many people undertake YTT for personal development and the majority do not go on to teach or manage to make a career of teaching. Even though they will have gained the skills to teach yoga, in today’s multimedia society, we also need ethical business and marketing know-how to promote our classes.

A Yoga Franchise will provide world-wide accredited yoga teacher training (just the same as when attending a YTT course) but you will be purchasing a complete and ready-made yoga business. Your training will include marketing planning, setting up your yoga business and/or studio and most importantly, on-going support and advice from expert yoga teachers and holistic marketing gurus to help build your yoga business after you complete your training.

First and foremost, you will have the support of a recognised and established yoga brand or system. It takes a lot of time and effort to build up a credible reputation in the yoga community, but an established and ethical brand shows that you have been trained in this yoga system and provide a recognised standard of yoga teaching and customer service. That means that you will have yoga clients the minute you open your doors and you will immediately start to receive enquiries from their central website. Yes you must prove yourself as a teacher to be worthy of the brand’s reputation but a strong established brand does give you a head start.

You will benefit from national advertising, brand exposure and recognised yoga events that help boost interest in attending your classes.

A Yoga Franchise will provide ready-made class plans for you to build upon and develop into your own unique style. You will receive pre-made handout’s or even packs, to give to your students on relevant topics and around common ailments.

You will be part of a common community of yoga teachers who want to make teaching yoga their life and support each other in doing so, usually with an active online teacher forum and regular CPD meet ups.

You will be given access to the most up to date on-line customer booking systems, custom email addresses and ready-made webpages already designed for you: no more fumbling about with half made websites!

You will be able to accept online payments from your clients and keep track your client’s health questionnaires from any computer.
You will be given accounting support to help you manage your accounts so that you don’t have the tax man chasing you at the end of the year (doesn’t the tax man just LOVE cash based businesses such as teaching yoga?)

You will have access to ready-made marketing materials – great looking flyers and posters that you can customize with your personal details. There will probably be merchandising opportunities also if you wish to earn extra income such as sale of CD’s, DVDs and t-shirts.

The main difference is learning how to teach yoga and learning how to teach yoga AND make a career of it with all the boring business bits done for you. This means more time for you to focus on your yoga practice J

Cheryl MacDonald is the founder of YogaBellie®s franchise which specializes in yoga for women and yoga for children through the key life stages. She has trained hundreds of YogaBellies® teachers across the world and has been working with birthing women for 12 years. Cheryl was a marketing manager and business analyst in a past life and believes that marketing can be ethical and coaches her yoga teaches in holistic business management. Find out more about YogaBellies, our UK franchises and international licences visit [http;//www.yogabellies.co.uk]

Contact us today for a yoga teacher training online classes.

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