Your guide to finding flow in yoga studio management

As an owner or manager of a busy yoga studio, you do so much more than teach Vinyasa or Yin yoga classes. You also have to schedule instructors, post on social media, pay bills, organize cleaners, manage memberships… the list goes on.

In keeping up with all these tasks, it can feel hard to catch a breath. Yet the last thing you want to do is send stressful, negative vibes into your studio space.

Just like you’ve created a welcoming, soothing sanctuary for members to practice their yoga, you also need to create stress-free, simple processes for all the operational, behind-the-scenes tasks that keep your studio running smoothly. Let’s dive into how you can keep those positive vibes flowing.

Put your team of yoga instructors first

Your yoga instructors are the beating heart of your business. It’s important that they align with and support your studio’s vision, values, and purpose. But, equally, it’s important that they feel valued and respected as individuals.

Why? Recent research has found that 62% of fitness studio owners and managers find recruitment and retention of qualified staff to be a challenge; and 61% say that addressing staff issues and culture is also hard. To overcome these challenges, it’s critical to maintain a positive staff culture.

‍Yoga studio software like Hapana’s can help here. You can use it to supplement the rich relationships you build with your instructors by:

• Promoting their strengths and skills. Create engaging staff profiles that celebrate your instructors’ strengths. This also makes it easy for members to follow their favourite instructors.

• Simplifying how you set up rosters and class schedules. Via a central app, your instructors can easily check where they need to be and when.
• Communicating and collaborating. Foster an inclusive, collaborative environment that encourages instructors to share their experiences and wisdom. This can be transformative in helping with staff retention in this high-turnover industry.

Make every member feel special

If your yoga instructors are your studio’s beating heart, then your members are your lifeblood. Without them, you don’t have a business. And so you need to do everything you can to make them want to keep coming back to your classes.

So, beyond thinking about the experience they have in your actual classes, consider what you can do to improve all their other interactions with you. Is your registration process slow and clunky? Is it hard for members to book into classes or find out about changes to class times? How easy is it for members to actually pay for classes?

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Like other fitness modalities, leading yoga practices are creating beautifully branded apps to solve these issues and deliver extra value for members. With Hapana’s app, for example, your members can:

• Join your studio. New members can easily fill out any registration forms or onboarding materials that need to be completed before they join your studio.
• Keep up to date with classes. Once they’ve joined, they can check when their favourite instructors are teaching, book a spot in an upcoming class, and manage payments. They can also get alerts and notifications about any changes to your schedules.‍
• Access unique content. Strengthen relationships by offering virtual or on-demand classes so members can continue their yoga practice at home. Here, you could also offer yoga-related content like nutrition, wellness, or sleep tips.

Deliver on what your members really want

With your team of yoga instructors sorted and your members flowing through the doors, you can start refining your studio offering to truly lean into your instructors’ strengths and deliver on what your members want.

To start with, think about how you can customize your classes to cater for your members. Are your Vinyasa classes overflowing? Getting the sense that more members want slow flow than power yoga? Think it’s time to crank up the heat and offer Bikram? Using Hapana’s yoga studio software, it’s easy to keep an eye on how different classes are performing. You can also collect member feedback through simple surveys.

Then, if you have the capacity, explore how you can adapt your schedule and offering — for example, running concurrent classes in different rooms — to give your members what they want. Behind the scenes, it’s easy to set up class templates that you can re-use time and again, so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you introduce a new class.

With Hapana, it’s easy to customize your membership packages too, which, given the current cost-of-living crisis, could mean the difference between someone joining your studio or not. In fact, 46% of fitness studio owners are reporting that members want more membership options, such as pay-as-you-go, easy cancellations, and freeze or pause options. 

You could offer one-off classes, monthly or annual memberships, 10-class packages, and more. It’s all about giving members the flexibility to fit yoga into their lifestyles — and their budget. And, like the classes, you can monitor what types of membership packages are most popular, and pour your energy into promoting them.

Finally, think about how you could take your studio to the next level with unique offerings like workshops and retreats, or with beautiful merchandise that reflects your brand. Even small changes, like beginning your classes with a theme or an anecdote, can help build rapport with members and keep them coming back.

Keep your finances flowing in the right direction

Taking care of cash flow is another important aspect of managing a yoga studio. To avoid any unexpected surprises, you need clarity over money coming in, and bills to be paid. Again, Hapana yoga studio software can help here, with the easy ability to:

• Automate payroll. Simplify staff operations with easy tools for managing payroll.‍
• Manage inventory. Selling merch? Stocking up on new yoga mats? Easily track your inventory to ensure you’re always holding optimum stock and supplies for your classes, and keep track of what’s selling out the most
• ‍Integrate your systems. With over 40 integrations and easy API access, Hapana fits in with your existing payment systems like EzyPay and Stripe.
• ‍Automate member payments. Via Hapana’s branded app, members can easily manage their membership and make payments via credit card, PayPal, or direct debit. You can also automate payment processing and generate invoices and reminders, so you don't waste time manually handling payments.

Get ready to grow your yoga studio

You may have started out renting a small room for your yoga practice. But, as your reputation grows and more people want to join your classes, it’s time to think about growth.

As well as supporting all the elements of managing a yoga studio that we’ve outlined above, your software should also make it easy for you to expand your business — whether through franchising or opening more sites. Ideally, this software lets you manage multiple sites from one central location.

Then, as you grow, you’ll also want to nail your marketing strategy to ensure a steady flow of new members to your new sites. Take the time to research your members’ preferences and behaviours, and meet them in the spaces they’re more likely to spend time in (we’re looking at you, Instagram). And use marketing automation tools that take the load off your team — so you can focus on delivering the types of classes that will see your word-of-mouth recommendations skyrocket.

Final thoughts

Just like yoga itself is a beautiful balance between asanas, pranayama, and savasana, running a yoga studio should be a stress-free and intentional process. Make sure your yoga studio management software is built to support your intentions and goals, not hinder them. Get a demo of Hapana’s software to see how it can help you find flow.