There’s enough out there for all of us.
Whether it’s students for your yoga class or private clients - there’s enough out there for all of us. That's why I collaborate with as many other teachers, business coaches and mentors as I can.
Today I’m talking about collaboration over competition with Amanda Kingsmith, host of Mastering The Business of Yoga Podcast. We discuss why we both believe in collaboration over competition, AND share ideas that you can take and implement today!
Competition - we work alone, win-lose mindset
Competition breeds the opposite feelings of what we actually want; it leads to a feeling of lack, instead of a feeling of abundance. It’s a mindset explained very simply; a belief there isn’t enough to go around. If someone is winning, it means that someone has to lose.
If you're a yoga teacher, you may connect with other yoga teachers and get to know one another. You hope that you can help each other in business, yet something stops you when it comes to working together for your mutual benefit. You may hear a voice in your head say something like:
‘But that's my competition’
‘Oh, well, I can't do that, we're offering the same thing’
‘If I reach out, they’ll steal my ideas’
These thoughts are coming from fear of scarcity. The scarcity mindset says ‘There's only space for me or you. There's not space for you and me both.’
If we feel we need to compete with other yoga teachers, it reinforces the fear that someone will go hungry. But this isn’t true, and it also doesn’t create good feelings. We really have to get out of that mindset!
Collaboration - we work together, win-win-win mindset
What if collaboration can lead to joined up, amazing results for you both?
Amanda McKinney quotes from the episode:
1. You can create something bigger and better
“Maybe with two of you you can create something even better than just you would.”
2. You can learn from other’s experience
“If you have the idea that you want to offer something, and you recognize that someone else is doing something similar and you reach out to them, there's so much that you can learn from that person. Maybe they've tried to offer it in the way that you were thinking about offering it, but found that it didn't work in your community… they learned from the mistake and then you can learn from their experiences.”
“It's so amazing what we can learn from someone else walking a path before us, even if they're, like one step ahead of us.”
3. Working together feels good!
“I like to believe that the majority of people in this world I want to help each other. So this idea of collaboration can be so rewarding.”
4. The possibilities are big and exciting
“There's tons of ways in which yoga teachers can collaborate in either their local area or online with other yoga teachers or other businesses.”
“The other way that I have seen collaborations work in a huge way is when yoga teachers collaborate with another business in their local area. So I hone in and really, really encourage everyone to have a niche.”
“You can then see what other businesses have that same audience, and from there you can really have some pretty cool collaborations.”
How to move from competition to collaboration
Beliefs are just thoughts, repeated. So that means we can replace any feelings of lack and scarcity with thoughts of abundance. To collaborate without fear, use the following list to challenge competition based thinking, and create a mindset shift.
Quotes from Amanda Kingsmith:
1. Be good at what you do
“Number one, is if you have it down as a yoga teacher, it takes away a lot of that competition, that feeling of competition.”
2. There is enough for everyone
“There's still so many yoga teachers and so much space for other people, the reality is that one of us can't do it all.”
“There's seven billion people on the planet. Seven billion people are not practicing yoga right now, so until every single person's practicing and every single person has a teacher that they go to, then maybe we'll be in a position of saturated market in terms of yoga.”
“When I shared the story (of collaboration), people are like, Weren't you nervous? And I'm like, No, no, because I guess in my mind, without even thinking about it, I had that abundant mindset of ‘There's enough out there’”
3. There is new territory to explore
“There's lots of uncovered territory, so I think that we need to shift our mindset to that, and remember that every single one of us has something to offer.”
“In general, as yoga teachers, there's lots of people who kind of struggle with this from the money side of things… There's only so many studios, and there's only so many classes to be taught. It's easy to do the math in your head and very quickly find out that if you don't get some of those coveted positions, you don't make enough money. But I think we need to remember that there are lots of opportunities outside of just teaching a studio class. There's lots of things that we can offer. There's lots of people we can teach.”
4. We all have something unique to offer
“All of our voices are different, whether or not you've been teaching for twenty years, or one day, or two months, or somewhere in between, there's just a ton of opportunity.”
Your next step:
Tell a local yoga teacher that you think something they’re doing is awesome.
Whether it’s an offering of theirs or how they share info on social media, the way they present themselves, or that their website is amazing. Whatever you think they are doing that’s amazing, tell them.
Reach out to them today and start the conversation. You might not even know where you want the conversation to go initially, and that’s OK. Use this resource as a way to keep the conversation going, and challenge the thinking that is holding you back from reaching towards them.
Then see where it goes. Let’s shift our mindset and remember there’s enough for us all. Until next time, give yourself permission to collaborate and grace along the way.
About Amanda Kingsmith
Amanda Kingsmith is a 500-hour RYT, a podcast host, a business coach and a world traveler. Amanda came to yoga from a marketing & business background, and has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary. She combined her love of business with her love of yoga by creating Mastering the Business of Yoga. This podcast and online business helps yoga teachers create businesses that they love. Amanda works with yoga teachers across the globe to help them build authentic businesses that are both sustainable long-term, and financially abundant!
Amanda has taught students in Canada, the US, Mexico and across the world, both in person and online. Amanda teaches alignment-based vinyasa flow classes with a focus on breath. She aims to forge a sense of ease for her students, and values the deep connections that yoga can bring us both on and off the mat.
Where to find Amanda Kingsmith:
Website: Mastering the Business of Yoga
Facebook group (request to join): Yoga Business Badasses
Instagram: @masteringthebusinessofyoga
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