by Amanda Kingsmith | Nov 21, 2016 | Advanced Yoga Teacher, Niching, Show Notes
Are you interested in leading a yoga retreat, but don’t really know where to start?
WeTravel is a platform for retreat leaders that will help you from start to finish to create a great retreat. On this episode of the podcast, Jen Corley from WeTravel is joining me to talk about how to lead a great retreat.
Jen shares her background as a yoga teacher and how she came to be working at WeTravel helping yoga teachers create great retreats. We discuss choosing a retreat location, pricing, best practices for retreat leaders, marketing, and much more.
Enjoy!
Business Lessons
- It’s valuable to get help with the things that don’t come easily to you
- Think about what your unique opportunity can be – what else are you interested in other than yoga?
- Give your retreat a name!
- Have great images
- Create an itinerary that gives some information (but not too much!)
- Give yourself some down time each day so that you have time to recharge
- You are still the retreat leader, even during the less structured parts of the day (like meal time!)
- People appreciate quiet, unstructured time – many people will be on vacation during your retreat
- When choosing a location for your retreat, you can use a retreat center, or find a villa / hotel
- Have a clear vision of what you want your offering to be
- Visit the location if you can!
- If you can’t get first hand experience with a location, see if you can talk to someone who has been there
- Marketing for a retreat is very similar to the marketing that you would do for any other offering
- get clear on what you are offering
- create a poster / design
- market online + on social media
- Give people about 6 months to a year – the longer the better, especially if a plane ticket needs to be booked
- Give yourself more time to market than you think you need 🙂
- Go in with a game plan for photography – you will probably be busier than you think!
- Give yourself time after the retreat to relax / decompress before getting back to full-time teaching / work
- Make sure that you collect a deposit – how much and how far in advance
- Collect enough so that your downside is protected
- Have firm cancellation policies in place
- Collect payments online – a service like WeTravel can be very helpful for this
- And much more… Here’s the episode!
Connect with WeTravel!
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Nov 14, 2016 | Personal Development, Show Notes
On the first solo episode of this season, we’re talking about yoga + self esteem. The inspiration for this episode of the show came from an episode that my boyfriend, Ryan, and I did for our travel podcast on how travel improves self esteem. The entire time we were recording, I kept thinking to myself “there are so many parallels with yoga! So, I decided to do an episode on yoga + self esteem.
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Nov 9, 2016 | Blog, Lifestyle
Nearly 5 weeks ago, I left Canada to come travel + work in SE Asia. There are so many benefits to living + traveling abroad, but practicing yoga is NOT one of them.
I will admit that I have struggled with my own self practice the entire time I’ve been teaching. I love group classes because they are scheduled, I am accountable to someone other than myself, and I gain a huge amount of inspiration from other teachers. I knew that leaving my hometown studio in Canmore, Alberta (which I love) would mean that I wasn’t going to have the comfort of choosing a daily class to attend. I knew that I would have to practice on my own.
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Nov 7, 2016 | Niching, Show Notes
Sytera Field found yoga after an accident, and after having a profound healing experience, she decided that she wanted to teach. On this episode, Sytera shares her journey as a yoga teacher – briefly running a yoga studio out of her home, teaching as many classes a week as she could, and how she ultimately become a teacher of private yoga.
Sytera shares her advice to becoming a private yoga teacher, how she has been successful + tips and tricks for new yoga teachers. She also shares about her other endeavors, including running retreats, teacher trainings + creating videos online.
Enjoy!
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Oct 31, 2016 | Niching, Show Notes
Kaeleigh Doherty is a kick ass yoga teacher + the founder of the Banff Yoga Festival. On this episode of the podcast, Kaeleigh shares her inspiration for creating the Banff Yoga Festival, what it was like to create a festival from scratch, the challenges of creating the festival + what she learned along the way.
Kaeleigh hoped for 50 people to show up to the Banff Yoga Festival, and approximately 550 came! The festival was targeted at the Banff community, but people came from all over to join in on the festivities. It is amazing to see + hear how successful the festival was, and to hear what is to come for Kaeleigh + the Banff Yoga Festival this year + the years to come.
On this episode, Kaeleigh shares the process for launching the BYF, the research that went into it, how she found the teachers, the marketing process, what it was actually like the day of, plus what she learned last year that she’s doing different / the same this year.
If you are interested in learning the back end process to putting on a yoga festival, make sure that you don’t miss this episode!
Enjoy!
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