Happy new year everyone! Super excited! Can you believe it’s actually 2022 already? Where did the year go? 2021 is over, it’s done, no looking back. Only forward.
Today I’m celebrating the first birthday of The Work IN and I want to thank each and every one of you for sticking with me this year and helping me grow this little infant of a podcast into the adorable baby it is today! It’s so cute, don't you just want to pinch those little cheeks!
I want to take this opportunity first to welcome you into this second season and then to share a few upcoming events to watch out for and share some of my favorite resources for working in the virtual wellness space. I will take a moment to say that some of these links are affiliate links which simply means that I get a little thanks from the company when you purchase using the link I share, it doesn’t affect what you pay at all. And along with that disclosure I want to assure you that I don’t share things like this unless I have used them personally and I love them enough to pass them on with a full recommendation.
As a part of my mission to bring a legacy of resilience through movement, each month you can join me for a hike on the bike trail followed by a free trauma informed vinyasa class back at the studio on Main Street. Go to savagegracecoaching.com to see the calendar and join my newsletter, Yoga Life on Main Street, to stay up to date on all the latest studio news, events and gossip. And now… on to this week’s episode.
It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business and so much more.
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get all the details.
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Happy new year everyone! Super excited! Can you believe it’s actually 2022 already? Where did the year go? 2021 is over, it’s done, no looking back. Only forward.
Today I’m celebrating the first birthday of The Work IN and I want to thank each and every one of you for sticking with me this year and helping me grow this little infant of a podcast into the adorable baby it is today! It’s so cute, don't you just want to pinch those little cheeks!
I want to take this opportunity first to welcome you into this second season and then to share a few upcoming events to watch out for and share some of my favorite resources for working in the virtual wellness space. I will take a moment to say that some of these links are affiliate links which simply means that I get a little thanks from the company when you purchase using the link I share, it doesn’t affect what you pay at all. And along with that disclosure I want to assure you that I don’t share things like this unless I have used them personally and I love them enough to pass them on with a full recommendation.
The last 2 years have been tough on fit pros, definitely on studios and gyms but also independent contractors and the ones that survive are the ones that can be creative and pivot quickly. Many of us are now experts in zoom classes and social media live’s. Which is great! As we all come out from behind our masks we may find that the hybrid in person/virtual business model is here to stay.
So I want to give you some options and share some of my favorite go to businesses and systems that I’m keeping this year.
Let’s start with the bigger platforms.
Marvelous software: Marvelous is an online course and membership platform that I use for my online studio. It began life as Namastream and was rebranded in 2021. It’s owned by Jenni Barcelos and Sandy Connory. I stumbled on them through their podcast And She Spoke (formerly Soulful MBA podcast). I had just left my corporate fitness gig and I wanted to make the leap into my own business. I had less than no idea how to do that. So I binged their podcast for 4 months before I took the plunge. One of the things I love about it is the option to work directly with them in the Inner circle, which is a pretty incredible combination of business mastermind and accelerator of online wellness entrepreneurs.
The Marvelous software platform lets you teach live and then classes are recorded and instantly available to your students in their membership or course or pre-record if you want. No need to mess around with video editing or other tech. (I did but found it wasn’t really necessary) They are constantly improving their software and in the 3 years I’ve been using it the platform has expanded exponentially to include not just video and audio but a full community platform as well. No need to have a separate Facebook group, or mighty network. It’s all in one. You can even use it to do live webinars and grow your list and all that fun stuff. It integrates with most other tools. Calendly & acuity, paypal and stripe, mailchimp and convertkit. And if you haven’t embraced your tech savvy side of yourself yet their support is fantastic.
This is one of the best business decisions I ever made.
If you’re a movement coach and you want to start teaching online check out heyMarvelous.com . And if you use this link and get 50$ off!
Website, do you really need one?:
Now if you go with Marvelous you don’t need a website. In fact if you aren’t interested in blogging or podcasting and you don’t have a brick & mortar studio you probably don’t need one. You can get away with a facebook page. But at some point you might want to present a more professional image than what social media can offer you. Squarespace is my website host.
I have built several websites for myself. I’ve used wordpress, wix and Squarespace. Squarespace by far is the simplest and most responsive. It integrates beautifully with Acuity scheduler and is easy to link to my shop page in Marvelous plus it’s automatically mobile responsive.
Now again, if you haven’t yet fully embraced your inner IT gal, you might be tempted to outsource your website. That’s OK but keep in mind they’re going to charge you every time you need to update or make a change. And most of the time they’re giving you more than you need. Fitness businesses basically need no more than a 4 page website. Home page, About page, services and a contact page. It’s basically a beautiful online resume for you and your business.
And when you set it up yourself you can make changes any time, hours, class schedules, special workshops. Quick and easy. I had no idea how much I love building websites until I tried it. But as with anything it’s time or money. So if you don’t have the time but think you could use a website, there is help out there. You can hire a Squarespace expert to do it for you. Or other virtual assistants. And this is something that I like to do as a side hustle and I’d love to talk you through it and help you get started with a simple virtual audit. Trust me if I can figure this out so can you! Go to elementalkinetics.com/inquiry and schedule a free 30 minute consultation.
https://Squarespace.com/
Email marketing provider:
There are lots of choices here - Mail chimp is popular because it has a very limited free option but it can be complicated. When I started I tried Mailchimp first and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Other people love it though. I went with Convertkit and I found it very intuitive and simple to navigate right out of the box. It’s so simple to set up a landing page for your newsletter or workshop and create an organized list of your people so you can keep in contact with them when you’re offering your next awesome thing! It’s also nice to be able to schedule emails to go out in advance. My latest time saver is to sit down and write all my emails for the month and schedule them out. Simple and it clears big blocks of time.
https://convertkit.com/
Speaking of scheduling:
Social media scheduling is a life saver. There are so many free options for this! Go for free first. Most of you probably know that you can schedule FB posts and cross post to instagram and vice versa. But when you get into more than that or you’re launching or creating content every day across multiple platforms you may want a little more muscle. I started with Tailwind. I liked it because I could make the text of my posts cute with emojis and I didn’t have to type it on my phone. I could also post to Pinterest. But this year I’m switching to Later.com because it let’s you also schedule on LinkedIn and that’s a platform that I think will be important for my business.
That’s a question you need to ask yourself. Where are your people? If none of them are on social media this isn’t going to be a priority for you. But as a business you should probably have a minimal presence because people look you up there. Just know that your following on social media doesn’t translate to clients so don’t get bogged down in it.
https://Later.com/
https://tailwind.com/
Content creation and branding
Canva is the way to go - And you can skip some of the angst with a social media scheduler because now you can create posts in canva and schedule straight from there! Cool huh? Canva is a really fun way to figure out your branding and is super simple to use. I recommend using or creating your own templates branded for you and removing some of the creative overwhelm.
https://www.canva.com/join/tlh-wvy-mwt
So that’s it for the party favors for today!
Whatever tools and systems you choose just know that you’re not stuck, you can change your mind anytime if these things aren’t actually helping you. That’s one of the great things about being an entrepreneur - you set the rules and you can break the rules.
This month we are going to be focusing on the fitness industry. Several aspects of it. So I have a couple of amazing guests lined up from different backgrounds. Rebecca Sebastian of Sunlight Yoga, Kim Basler, canfitpro fitness instructor of the year, Colleen Jorgensen is coming back to talk about how we communicate with clients and then we’ll be getting deep into the money monster side of the industry. I can’t wait! The Work IN has a phenomenal line up for you this year.
Thanks so much for listening today. If you like what you heard and you want to know more about how you can be unshakeable, body, mind and business this year, I’m here for you. You can follow me at any elementalkinetics social accounts or schedule a consultation at elementalkinetics.com/inquiry/ Can’t wait to meet you!