The key to building a business while living a life you love? Conscious Choices.

My friend Racheal {of RachealCook.com and TheYogiprenuer.com fame} asked me to talk to her community about how I have built/am building a business while living a life I love.When she invited me to join her Business That Loves You Back Blog Tour and give you an honest look at what is happening in my life right now, I jumped at the chance to share with you all.  I’m honored to be here, smack in between the lovely Val Geisler and the awesome Megan Flatt.What has worked so well for me in building both a business and life that I love has been incredibly simple:I have made conscious, intentional choices about what I want to do with my yoga teaching without obsessive goal setting or intensive big picture planning.My business {and life} have come into being from a deep inner knowing of who I am and what I want to do in the world, not what I thought was the best money-making business idea.I am a teacher first and an entrepreneur and business owner second.My daily and active yoga teaching {and practice of course!} is the cornerstone of my life and business.

The path of growth in my business has been guided by staying curious about, and open to, what feels most true to me. {Tweet me!}

I always ask myself these questions:What feels most important to me about teaching yoga right now?What am I most excited to teach and why?What can I do to offer my teachings in a skillful, meaningful,  and wide-reaching way?The answers to these questions have guided the next 6 to 12 months in my business every time. {And that is usually as far ahead as I can plan! Do you actually know what your life is going to be like in five years?? Because I have NO CLUE. :-) }On to the nitty gritty! If you are new here, you are going to want to catch up. In the last four months I have done some really scary things, scary things that led to huge changes in my life, and put me smack in the middle of the giant transition I am in right now.The short version: I have been living in New York City and teaching private yoga clients {25 a week!} since 2005. Just last month I left NYC to live in Washington, DC and I am now in the process of rebuilding my teaching practice.It has been really fun! Since 2012 I have taught more than 100 teachers how to create and grow a thriving private yoga teaching practice, and now I am getting to put all those skills into action again as I rebuild.In the hopes that you can learn from me, I have been super transparent about my decision to leave NYC and I plan to share my struggles and triumphs as I rebuild my teaching practice. To kick us off, this week I would like to tell you about the clients and classes I have on my schedule so far, so we can see what is working.I already have six regular private sessions and two regular group classes each week in my Washington, DC teaching schedule. This is a great start, but it is not enough work to support myself for the long term. I am hoping to have 14-16 weekly classes and clients by September 1st.Tuesday 10am client...she googled Washington, DC private yoga teacher many months ago and found me. I almost never take clients that find me online without a referral, but I did with her and I am so glad! She is a JOY to teach. There is a pretty simple screening process here. In our email exchanges I asked her many questions about her practice, body and goals, and she answered all of them in depth. I also spoke with her on the phone and had a wonderful feeling about her. My intuition told me it would be fine, and it was!Wednesday and Friday 7am clients...Their daughter had heard about me through a friend and wanted to buy a gift certificate for them as a Christmas present. She was very sweet, but we were emailing back and forth on Christmas Eve. I had my own parents to worry about getting a Christmas present for, and didn’t even have my computer that had PDFs of gift certificates saved on it. The daughter also made it really clear that her parents were very busy and would only have time to practice on the weekend. {More on this in a later: but I have a firm boundary against teaching on the weekends at this point in my life.} Because of the timing, and my doubts that this one session would turn into a regular gig, it would have been a really easy email to blow off. I’m so glad I didn’t. I found an old email that had the gift certificates attached and forwarded that along from my phone. I emailed both with the daughter and then with her parents to set up the appointment. I made a concession to see them on a Saturday, and to be honest, was dreading the appointment for weeks leading up to it. It was a husband and wife team; the wife is pretty experienced with yoga, and the husband was brand new. There were going to be so many things that were tough about this Saturday session....I thought. I could not have been more wrong. They were an absolute dream to teach! They were focused, but they were as excited as puppy dogs. “THIS is yoga??”the husband kept exclaiming. “This is awesome!” At the end of the session they looked at each other, and then at me, and then said, “We need this. We have to do this! We will work around your schedule. When can you see us?” We settled on the early mornings {my favorite time to teach.}. And guess what?? They live just a seven minute drive from my house! I absolutely LOVE starting my day teaching them. :-) They also have a large network of friends and colleagues, and have already introduced me to several people they think would benefit from my work!Thursday 11am client...She googled private yoga teachers in DC. My website didn’t come up, but a friend’s of mine did. My client was in touch with the other teacher about starting private lessons, but they couldn’t work the schedule out. My friend knew I specialized in teaching highly personalized private sessions, and thought highly of my teaching so she generously passed this potential private client on to me. Her finances allow for her to meet me every other week. For our off weeks I email her a 15 minute practice for her to do 3 times before she sees me again. It is different every week based on what we were working on in our most recent session. We are having a great time working together and she is seeing some really meaningful changes in the way she feels in her body.Thursday 3pm client...In early March I taught my teacher training {The Science of the Private Lesson} at my home studio, Willow Street Yoga Center. There was a participant in the training who lives in NYC and was staying with a friend in Ashton, MD so she didn’t have to stay in a hotel. When she went back to her friend's house at the end of the day the teacher told her friend all about what she was learning with me, and how much fun she was having. {It was such an honor for me to have this teacher as a student in my teacher training. She has been teaching for more than 25 years, and is a deeply studied and experienced teacher and healer.} The friend had never tried yoga before, but she was willing to let my TT student practice the highly intuitive and personal style of teaching she was learning from me on her.  She loved the experience of yoga she was having and contacted me immediately about private lessons. She is now is a super committed student, and is already feeling better in her body.Friday 10am and 12pm group classes...I have been teaching these classes regularly for a year. It is the first time I have had group classes on my regular schedule in many years, and I am having SO MUCH FUN. The students at Willow Street Yoga Center are a luxury to teach. They are smart and focused and really interested in learning. I just had a participant in my online teacher training comment, “I didn’t know you taught group classes regularly. Is that part of your business building strategy?” The short answer was, “No. That wasn’t part of my ‘business building strategy’ because my brain doesn’t work like that.” This is how I ended up teaching there: I randomly showed up to Natalie Miller’s {studio owner} class one Sunday. I loved it and began practicing at Willow Street more regularly. It was lovely to be in a community of teachers where there is mutual respect, and a high priority on good quality teaching and learning. I hadn’t felt that since OM Yoga Center {in NYC} closed the year before. When Natalie asked me to teach there I first had to say no. My schedule was already packed. She kept asking, and I continued to feel valued and appreciated in that community, so eventually I had to say yes. I was excited to bring my style of teaching to a new community and when I asked myself the questions about what I was most excited to teach and how I could offer my teachings in a skillful, meaningful,  and wide-reaching way, the answer was easy. I had to put some group classes back on the schedule at my new found home yoga studio. It was a no-brainer.Now, all that said...it has turned out to be a fantastic place to connect with potential private clients. I try to teach all my classes in a super personal way {even with 22 new people in class, I know everyone’s name!} and that has led many students to ask me about taking private lessons with me. For example...Friday 2:30pm client...is a student at my home studio. She practices there several times a week and took my Friday 10am class one week that she didn’t have school {she is a teacher.} She loved my class, but can’t take it regularly so she decided to treat herself to private yoga sessions with me. It has been really fun to work with an experienced yogi, and we have been able to really dig deep together.There are also three other students I met at the studio that I am in talks about setting up private sessions with. Next time on the blog I will tell you about all the potential clients I am in talks with {there are six in total as of publishing time}, and I will let you know how I am working to support them and myself.Business strategy for strategy's sake has never resonated with me. What has supported me in having both a business and a life I love is staying a yoga teacher first, and being a business owner second. I am rebuilding my business and having an amazing life with lots of time for my own spiritual practice and health, and investing energy into my most important relationships. Having a life and business I love has been possible because I have made conscious, intentional choices about what I want to do with my yoga teaching without obsessive goal setting or intensive big picture planning.Tell me loves...what has made it possible for you to have both a business and a life you love?