a snapshot of my class numbers right now
I do have part II for my last post (the recipe for becoming a full time yoga teacher) coming up, but I like to write what’s on my mind. A recent post I did on Instagram lately seemed to resonate with a lot of you, so I wanted to dive into that today as a little interlude….
As a teacher, we expect to see the growth of our business follow a path that looks a little like this…
Each week, if things go to plan we hope that our class numbers, revenue and general size of our business will look a little better than the last week.
To a certain extent, this is true.
Growth might be a little rockier, or slower at first as we figure shit out and really pin down who we are and what we offer as teachers, but on the whole we bank on steady improvements as time goes on.
This is why we start to freak out a little when a given week (or even month) hasn’t been better than the last - like when summer kicks in and everyone goes on holiday, or when we get an unexpected flurry of membership cancellations out of the blue because a disproportionate number of people have life stuff happening.
The flip side of those freak outs is when our business performs better than expected - usually when it’s the season for ‘trying new things’ (ie. January and September…) or there’s a flurry of new students gracing our classes.
When things are going well, we assume we’ve cracked it - that this is the big step in our business we’ve been working hard towards and things are finally looking up. When things take a dip, we shit our pants and wonder what the hell we did wrong.
In reality, the path isn’t a completely straight line. Yes, the trend should look like a steady progression upwards (on the whole, you’ll want to hope that the general state of your business is getting better) but, that’s overall.
Not week on week, or even season on season.
What you actually see when you zoom right into a section of that graph in detail, is a series of peaks and troughs. Highs and lows in no discernible order. A visual rollercoaster of some shit that works and plenty that doesn’t. Busy alongside quiet. Lots of ups…lots of downs.
For perspective and because I like evidence to backup my ramblings, this list is a snapshot of the last couple weeks of my class numbers:
Monday 26th June - 7
Friday 30th June - 3
Monday 3rd July - 7
Thursday 6th July - I cancelled a 4 week course due to start as I only had 1 sign up
Friday 7th July - 1
Friday 10th July - 10
Wednesday 12th July - 1 (an online monthly meditation that usually has 6-10 in)
Friday 14th July - 5 (tomorrow)
Monday 17th July - FULL (next week)
There is zero pattern. From a data perspective, it’s fucking carnage.
…but you know what? When I look at my actual revenue, the trend of this month isn’t a whole lot different to most others. The state of my business is maybe even a little better in some ways as I have a couple of new students lately and last week I signed up 2 new monthly members.
But week on week, those randomly busier Monday classes aren’t booming my bank balance and my quieter Fridays aren’t leaving me out of pocket.
Monday’s might drop off again. Fridays might pick up. Who knows.
It’s all waves.
And it’s hard to remember all this, right? Because teachers don’t share the lows.
They don’t talk about the quiet classes because they think it makes them look like a bad teacher. They only seem to post about the classes that are full, or waitlist only.
So here’s a realistic reminder from me to you (because I’m 7 years deep into this now, and the story is always still the same):
If you’re headed into summer and riding some big waves right now…take a breath…and then take a step back. It’s all just a snapshot, it’s not the big picture.
If this was what you needed to hear today, let me know…you can usually catch me wasting time over on Instagram and I always love the distraction from work