Have you ever taken a "staycation" with your family or friends where you don't travel but you still act like you're on vacation? I don't know about you but I adore these vacations! They take a little bit more mindfulness to truly 'get away' but to take out the hassle of actually traveling is pretty dang genius...plus, you get to explore your local area like a tourist. OR do like I've done and get a hotel room and never leave. Hello room-service!!! Well, my #bizbesties and I took this idea and made it a "business staycation" and it. is. fabulous! We did this 6 months ago and just did it again so it's official friend, I will be doing this twice a year. What's a Biz-Staycation? So glad you asked =) It's where you recruit a business-minded friend (a fellow yoga teacher who has started, like you, thinking of themselves as a business owner too!) and hold space for one another to get creative and get strategic with your business. If you want to take YOUR BUSINESS to the next level, this is how you get the plan together. For me this looked like a hotel the first time and an Airbnb the second time. Maybe one day this will look like a week at a resort but homegirl ain't there yet so this is the budget-friendly biz-staycation! Sounds good, Amanda, now what?! I feel ya, friend, and I've got you covered. I boiled it down to a 5 take-aways in order to plan your very own Biz-Staycation. 1. Get outta the house (or yoga studio) This is the critical part. I know it usually costs money but it doesn't have to. You can get really creative and go to a park or see if there are any free co-working space rentals you can have access to. If you have a little budget to work with, you can rent a space for a few hours or do like I do and split the cost of a hotel room or airbnb with a friend. No matter what you do, you cannot stay in the places you typically use for business work. No home. No yoga studio that you typically work in. No coffee shops. You need to stretch your comfort zone here, it's the way to get creative. Just trust me! You will thank me later. 2. Recruit a friend who is like-minded While it's possible to go at this alone, I do not encourage this. Think about how many times you've thought of an idea but the simple fact of sharing it with someone else took it to the next level. Or a time when you went down the negative-nancy trail and stayed there WAY too long. It's easy to do but if we have someone else there to catch us, we don't stay there and even better, we have help up. Bouncing ideas off each other, celebrating the good and working through the tough is what it's all about. Plus, that yoga teacher friend has tried other things than you so you can share ideas and brainstorm new ones together. Collaboration friend, this is where it's at! Plus...you share costs! 3. Set an agenda and goals before you go Even if you aren't a planner by nature, I need you to hear me on this one. It can be a loose agenda if it's just the two of you but the critical piece is setting goals. Ask yourself, "what do I want to walk away with after this staycation?" and then back into that with the agenda. What questions do you need to get answered in order to reach your goal? The best part is that you don't have to have the same goals as your biz-bestie. For example, setting revenue goals and identifying how much revenue would come from each revenue stream was top-priority for my besties but for me, it was all about getting to know YOU better. My yoga teacher students. How could I learn more about what you need in the next 6 months. So even though we had different main goals, we still worked together and I came out with much better information than if I had done this alone. 4. Build in time for fun Sounds silly but you have to do this, especially if you are like me and are a planner (to a fault sometimes). Yes, it's a business-focused time but the only way you can get really creative is if you have some fun too. For us this looked like going to Target before we checked into the airbnb and just wondering. We made all our meals to save budget so that time was fun time too, where we enjoyed wine and good conversation. We started our day with meditation and ended our day with cheesy Christmas movies. Do things that will help fill your vessel, remember your self-care in this too! 5. Plan ahead to be away from work This goes without saying...except I'm saying it. Plan to be away. Whether it's an afternoon, a full day, or an overnight stay, you need to plan for this. Specifically, I want to say plan financially for this. If you go away and the entire time you're worried about how much money you're missing out on for not teaching classes, you will not reap the benefits of this staycation. So plan accordingly so you can truly get away and enjoy the planning time. It's for you and your business and it's important. So do whatever you have to do to make it happen and you will be thrilled you did! I can promise you this will pay off. Once you take care of all of this, it's time to go and do the thing! Plan and enjoy and watch your business grow. I can't tell you enough how much this has helped my business and my mindset and I know it will do the same for you. So get it friend, get to planning your biz-staycation!!! Here are a few photos from my most recent biz-staycation! Enjoy! Until next time, If you still have questions about planning your biz-staycation, reach out to me at amanda@ammarketing.co. I've had some interest in this and I've thought about hosting an in-person or virtual event to help yoga teachers with this. If this truly interest you, let me know and I will think about it a little more seriously and get something on the calendar. #BusinessLessons #Education

This is the big dream of so many yoga teachers...we want companies to love us so much that they give us their products to use or even better, to wear. THIS, is when we’ve made it, amiright? While I think affiliate marketing is an incredible tool for many companies, I want to talk to you a little bit about the reality of this. Is it awesome? Yes. Do I hope companies send me yoga pants to try out one day. Ab-so-freaking-lutely! But, I have had many yoga teachers talk to me about this and set their sites on this alone. And let me tell you what happens. They work so dang hard on growing their Instagram followers that they aren’t true to themselves and end up with an audience that really isn’t where their passion is. Let me give you an example: Let’s say Mary is focused on prenatal yoga and she loves it. This is where her passion is and that is the big dream for her - to have her classes filled with pregnant women that she can help during that time in their lives. And the way she thinks this will happen is through affiliate marketing and so she sets her eyes on the 10,000 follower mark. She works tirelessly on connecting with new followers by engaging with all kinds of brands and locations and she has done a great job. Her following is growing and she is so happy. She hits the 10,000 mark and like clockwork, the companies start reaching out to her. She is thrilled! But then, after the companies start asking about who her followers are, she realizes that (1) she has been growing her following outside her local area but she is only teaching classes locally and (2) her following is mainly males or young females. What this means in affiliate marketing world: She has the followers to support affiliate marketing but based on her followers, she is likely not going to gain company support for her dream student - the pregnant woman. Instead she is going to have companies that want to reach a male or young female audience. While this is not a bad thing, it’s not the best scenario for Mary as she will continue to gain more followers but it will be helping other companies, not her own dream. The truth: You don’t need a big audience, you need an engaged one. Yes, companies will seek you out if you have a large audience. And yes, it’s easier to get affiliate marketing deals if you have a big audience (meaning over 10,000 followers). However, the truth actually is that you don’t need a big audience to get an affiliate deal, you need an engaged one. If your followers are engaging with your content on a regular basis, meaning that they like and more importantly, comment on your posts and stories, you are in good shape! Engagement matters more to the Instagram algorithm than numbers do. This is GREAT news for the small but mighty accounts!! Plus, it’s much easier to focus on engaging with your dream student on a small scale than it is to try and attract a whole bunch of new people every day. You just can’t please everyone. Affiliate marketing is not a cure-all marketing strategy. We are all guilty of wanting a magic strategy to get more of an audience in whatever form we desire. Whether it be more Instagram followers or more butts on mats in classes, we all want something to happen quickly. It’s our nature in today’s “microwave” society. But unfortunately, affiliate marketing isn’t a one-stop-shop for marketing so setting your sight only on this isn’t a great idea. Think of it as another tool in your marketing tool belt, just like you do with any other pose in a sequence. The more you know about how poses can work together to achieve a specific goal, the better your class will be and the more educated you are as a teacher. Same with marketing, you need to know affiliate marketing can work with other tools. And it definitely can! What to do when affiliate marketing comes your way? C-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-e good times, come on! Celebrate! That’s right girl, when you have played the slow and steady game of growing your followers and engaging with them so that companies want to work with you, you celebrate! You tell a friend who will be excited with you and you do the dang thing. Whether it’s a dance party or a cocktail, you do it! Then, you evaluate if the company who is reaching out to you is right for your audience. Remember, you worked hard to get every one of those followers or email addresses, so you need to protect them like you would your BFF’s. Ask yourself: ‘would I brag about this to my friends, even if the company didn’t ask me to?’ and then decide if it’s a right fit for you. If you haven’t tried the product yet, ask them to send one to you and let you try it before committing. And on that note - if the company reaches out to you and asks you to endorse anything of theirs and they don’t offer it for free, please know that this is a sales tactic and you should turn it down. You can definitely use their discount code if you want but just know it’s a sales tactic and they don’t actually care about your audience. Then, if you have tried the product and truly like it, then it’s easy to share the product with your audience because it’s genuine. No awkward sales at all. It’s simply sharing information with your friends just like you would recommend a restaurant. Real-life Example: HidrateSpark This topic is top-of-mind for me at the moment not only because I talk with yoga teachers about this often but because I was reached out to recently by a company. And at the time of this recording, when this happened I have just over 500 followers on Instagram. Super tiny audience! But what this company did was looked for small, targeted, niche audiences that are engaged and I happened to be one of them. It’s a new company and I hadn’t ever heard of them before so I was, admittedly, a little skeptical. But since they talked about my audience (aka: they had done their homework on me and my audience), they offered to give me the product for free to test it, and they had great customer service, I decided to give it a try. Enter the HidrateSpark Smart Water Bottle... And let me tell you girl, I’m impressed! The product is a smart water bottle and it’s a freakin’ genius I tell you. So cool! The water bottle actually measures how much you drink and it syncs with your phone so you can always know where you are in regards to water you’re drinking. PLUS, and this is the super cool part, it tells you when you need to drink more water. And not just by pushing a notification to your phone (although it does do that if you turn it on) but by blinking! Holy moly the thing lights up. It’s a visual reminder that you need to drink water. It’s amazing! I was sold after just one day of use and now I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and I’m hooked. It’s a GREAT quality product, you can put it in the dishwasher so it’s easy to clean and it looks awesome. I have the white option but they said the minute they get the pink one in order I can get that one too! Yay! I will admit that it’s not a cheap water bottle but to you who was like me and thought “that’s kind of a lot for a water bottle”, I will ask you this question: Would you pay $1 a week to ensure the fact that you still hydrated all year? What about for your husband? Or your kids? When I looked at it like that and thought about how much I actually use my water bottle (every day of the year), it was a much easier price to handle. **Update: the affiliate program for HidrateSpark has ended. Unfortunately I don't have a coupon code for you any longer but I still highly recommend this bottle and use it every day! You can even get them at Target now! ** Go get hydrated, friend! #TargetAudience #DigitalMarketing

I am sure you have heard it before “share your story”. But in reality, the idea of sharing your personal story with those outside of your close family and friends can be intimidating. As a yoga teacher, you are creating a brand and that can also feel foreign to you too. I get it. We yogi’s aren’t about self-promotion so it’s natural for us to not gravitate to this idea. I want to talk to you today about truly embracing your story but more importantly, how to share your story with others that is authentic but doesn’t make you step too far over the vulnerability line. For each person reading this, that line will be different and I want you to know that is okay. You don’t have to adhere to anyone else’s line. You set the boundaries that feel right to you and then share what you would like. Click on the video below to walk through this exercise with me. Don’t worry - it’s an easy one, I promise! Until next time, #BusinessLessons #Branding

A sponge is a tool made of soft, porous material. Sponges are especially good at absorbing. I have said for many years that “I am a sponge. Soaking up information as much as I can.” Well, I embrace this statement even more as a business owner and I am taking it even one step further in the next chapter of my life and business. By working with yoga teachers and yoga studio owners, they all have one thing in common...they went through yoga teacher training. Well, I could think of no better way to understand my clients than to go through the same training. So I am doing it. I am going through 200 YTT!!! Until next time, #Education #Branding #TargetAudience #BusinessLessons

The theme of ‘do what you want/what feels right’ is apparent in my life right now. It’s so easy to get caught up in what we think we "should" do. There is nothing wrong with us for thinking this as it’s actually human-nature to do so but if we can start to recognize it, we can be better at stopping that train of thought. I talk about some personal examples and the process to identify when you are doing this as well as questions to ask yourself in the situation in this video blog. Until next time, #Education #TargetAudience #BusinessLessons

Did you know it’s easier to create a new habit than it is to break and old one? You have likely heard that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. The roots of this information comes from a book that was released in the 1960’s, Psycho-Cybernatics and has been widely quoted ever since. But more recently, for me at least, is the revelation that it’s easier to start something new than to break and old habit. How refreshing is that?! I talk about this concept and outline a process in this week’s video blog. Click the image to watch. Until next time, #Wellness #Education #BusinessLessons

I’m reading the book “Yoga Beyond Belief” currently and I was struck by a sentence the other day. "Be nourished rather than bound by the past." I love this. I love this for life in general but this can also be true for marketing yourself or your yoga studio as well. Check out the video where I walk through an example of what I am talking about and a step-by-step process of how you can do this today! Until next time, #Wellness #Education #DigitalMarketing #BusinessLessons

When I describe my business I use a phrase that makes people call me crazy. I say that my goal is to empower my clients so that they don’t need me anymore. Check out this video blog explaining what I mean and how this was confirmed with a recent direct message from a past client. This is what success looks like to me! I just love this so much! Until next time, #Education #BusinessLaunch #Branding #BusinessLessons

Do you keep an eye on your social media and website analytics? If the answer is yes then you know the value it can provide to your marketing efforts. HUGE! But it takes time to keep up on this and it takes time to make the adjustments. While this is important and can help your business growth tremendously, there is another component that is equally as important and that is….your schedule and sanity. Watch the video to hear how I keep these in balance while taking them both into account and how I increased profile visits by 30%. Until next time, #Wellness #Education #DigitalMarketing #BusinessLessons

Work/life balance is tough, especially for those who are running a business they LOVE! I used to have a tough time with work/life balance because the corporate to-do list was never done. But now I have a tough time with work/life balance because I love working on my business. It’s a good problem to have so I am not complaining but it’s a real struggle. So I was listening to a crime-based podcast the other day and this led me to decided to incorporate a few specific to-do’s on my list every day that will help with this balance. Intrigued? You should be, it’s that good! Until next time,

Are you like me and you set intentions at the beginning of each year? Or do you set them more frequently than yearly? Either way, it’s so important to do periodic check in on your intentions. Watch the video below to walk through the process with me to check in. It will only take 6 minutes!! Let's do this! Love the video blog? Hate the video blog? Let me know by commenting below or DM'ing me on Instagram @am.mkting. I would love to know what you think! #Education #BusinessLessons