Three Ways to Get Your Wellness Business off the Ground

Do you have a new wellness business that your ready to get off the ground? Maybe you’ve recently finished the Lifestyle Wellness Coaching program at Sinclair College or yoga teacher training at Ignite Yoga and you’re ready to nurture your entrepreneurial spirit by offering your services to others. Sometimes it’s hard to think of ways and nuances to build a new small business, but today you’ll learn how to fuel your sprouting idea to generate personal income and create a job you love.

Starting a small business is thrilling and scary at the same time. Now more than ever, yoga and wellness businesses are needed services to bring peace and healing to the hearts of individuals. Typically, if you’re drawn to a holistic line of work, your passion lies within helping others, which can make the business-side of business feel daunting and nearly impossible. But have no fear, with a little legwork and research, your wellness business could be a huge success! There are many options and ways to be successful, and today we cover three of our top suggestions.

Before we dive in, for anyone that wants to grow their small business with little risk, you must be willing to have humble beginnings. What that may look like is:

• you schedule a yoga class. You tell all your friends. You tell them to tell all their friends. No one shows up.
• you finally have a solid workshop put together and you know it’s good. You expect 20 people to register. You post it over and over on your social media accounts. Two people register.
• you spend hours putting together an e-book as incentive to build your email list. You build your list to 100 people but every week you watch people unsubscribe. You feel like your business is shattering each time someone leaves your email list.

So if you’re up for the challenge of pushing through to make your small business a success, we have the top three ways to get your wellness business off the ground.

1) Take your wellness business into the Dayton, Ohio community. Dayton, Ohio is a local. loving. community. Immersing your new business among the people that love this city so much can generate results for your small business that you would never expect. Everyone in Dayton wants to see people and small businesses succeed. So while your hope in this endeavor may be to snag a yoga student or acquire a health workshop attendee, be open to other possibilities arising. Our advice when diving into the community is to become more curious about the community members themselves rather than hoping to get something from them. Wherever you set-up your small business, focus on making connection and your future clients will naturally gravitate your way.

Here are ways to dive into the Dayton, Ohio community:

• Collaborate with like-minded small businesses in your community. There are a multitude of ways to collaborate with other small businesses. The level of collaboration will depend on each business’s unique offerings, level of reputation and brand recognition, and what each business hopes to get out of the partnership. New entrepreneurs have the most luck and ease partnering with other new entrepreneurs. For instance, you may find a new photographer that would be happy to snap a few promotional photos for you as long as you give them recognition each time you use the photo. This is a win-win—you have branding and they have promotion. If you would like to partner with a more reputable business, consider ways you genuinely can help their business.
  
  
• Use the park systems. The Dayton area has several park systems that allow rental of their pavilions to accommodate the group or individual you’re serving. Especially in warmer months, the park pavilions are great to teach classes, workshops, or one-on-one coaching sessions—often at no cost!
  
  Here are some of Dayton’s park systems. You can click to find out what their rental policies are.

• Five Rivers Metroparks
• Centerville Parks District
• Kettering Parks District
• Springboro Parks District

• Use your local library. Dayton Metro Library offers rooms, perfect for a classroom, yoga, or workshop space. Usually, these rentals are offered free of charge. In addition, the visibility you get from other patrons of the library when they see your offerings posted on the community event boards. Added bonus is that libraries are quiet and peaceful places for focus and learning.
  
  
• Hang posters or flyers. With easy-to-use software like Canva, you can create posters or flyers to have printed at a FedEx or UPS Store with high-quality, digital printing. This is how the owner of Ignite Yoga, Justina Sanford, found her first private yoga client. She hung posters in the former Caribou Coffee Shop with pull-away tabs. Within a month, she received a phone call inquiring about her yoga services.
  
  While this option may seem old school, it puts your brand in highly visible areas. Individuals that are looking at these boards are specifically looking for services or something to do. So hang your posters in coffee shops, libraries, and grocery stores. In fact, grocery stores, like Dorothy Lane Market, often have a community board that highlights upcoming events in the Dayton area—a perfect place for your poster.
  
  In your poster, be sure to share what you offer and who you’re trying to reach. Offer information like your social media accounts and email so you can easily be reached for questions and booking.

2) Take your wellness business virtual. What does going virtual mean? There are three primary ways to go virtual—on-demand videos, live-streaming, or a hybrid of both. The most challenging component of going virtual is building your audience. When you go into the community (as in suggestion 1), you are taking your business to a (potentially) already existing group of consumers. When you take your business virtual, you are hoping that an audience will come to you. The trouble with being a new small business owner is that you first have to build an audience, which takes time. The key to building your audience is to show up consistently on your platforms so that your clients know when to expect you. Begin with free resources such as Facebook or Instagram live, Zoom, or YouTube.  Once you’ve built an audience, make your virtual wellness business more professional by utilizing one of these popular virtual platforms:

Going virtual is not easier than a brick and mortar business, your efforts are simply dispersed into different areas of your business. But if you’re willing to put in the time and have your face shine over the inter webs, going virtual does have many benefits.

1. Teach, coach, or meet with your clients from the comfort of your own home or rented space.
2. Save time and money by eliminating your commute
3. The income for online business is increasing. With the flexibility of making your own pricing and schedule, you could increase your monthly income.
4. Build your own global wellness community
5. Make your own schedule
6. Be your own boss
7. Have the freedom to choose your style of classes and offerings

2) Rent a space for your business: Going virtual may seem like a queasy option for those that are shy to the camera. It’s a current misunderstanding that the only way to grow your wellness business is with your face shining on your social media platforms. That’s simply not the case. Nothing beats being in-person with a wellness service provider. After all, most holistic practitioners are working with individuals in their most vulnerable states. So while clients may initially feel more comfortable with a screen between you, you’ll find face-to-face interactions will produce more rapid results for those your working with. However, the aesthetic of where you provide your services does matter. So our top suggestion to grow your in-person wellness business without breaking the bank is to rent space that isn’t being used.

Many fitness and yoga studios offer their yoga and fitness classes during peak times, which are typically morning and evening outside of work hours. This leaves their space wide open and unused for a good portion of the day. In addition, they often have extra rooms that go unused. This option is perfect for your new wellness business because you get the benefits of:

• No Long Term Rent
• No Startup Costs
• No Build-out Costs
• No Long-term Contracts
• No Maintenance Costs
• No Utility Costs
• No Building Insurance
• No Commitments
• No Overhead
• No Worries

Added bonuses to renting fitness studios is you often gain access to amenities such as drinking fountains, restrooms, and showers. Think big when it comes to the opportunity to rent a room from a fitness studio for such things as:

• private sessions
• virtual recording or live-streaming space
• wellness coaching
• workshops
• yoga classes
• talks
• clubs
• group meetings
• quiet workspace
• photography session

Ignite Yoga is a great example of a fitness studio that does month-to-month rental contracts, giving you the freedom and flexibility to deliver your services at an affordable price. You pay a recurring monthly fee and receive an allotted number of hours to use the small yoga studio. The small studio rental is shared with Ignite Yoga and other service providers. All rentals are managed by each individual via our appointment booking system and can be scheduled online at any time!

This is a great opportunity to book the room for delivering live-stream or recorded virtual wellness offerings like those mentioned above! The rental space at Ignite Yoga is clean, stylish, and minimally furnished to keep the variety of business rentals aesthetically open.

Starting a small wellness business is daunting but your excitement will outweigh the obstacles that lie between you and getting your business off the ground. The information above provides resources to help you along in your journey and ease some of the burden to starting your own business. Being a small-business entrepreneur is no small task, but  there is a network of community with numerous possibilitites out there to lift you up and get you started. And of course, as much as you would like to run a successful small business, it is imperative to support other small businesses around town to get your name out there. Places like Ordinarie Fare in Oakwood, Rinse Cycle spinning studio in Dayton, Power Plant Juice Bar, and Ghostlight coffee are great places to witness and support successful local leadership. All of these business began with humble beginnings and have grown to be icons in the Dayton, Ohio community. We wish you ease and success in whatever endeavors you tackle in your small business journey.