Time flies by when running a business. Running a yoga studio is no exception. You plan classes, teach classes (or spend time hiring and monitoring teachers), administer your business, deal with space leasing, insurance, finances, and of course marketing.
Do you ever wonder what activities running your yoga studio you spend the most time on? I bet you would be surprised. If you’re curious (and knowing where you spend time is important), then the next question is how to track your time?
There’s no shortage of time-entry software. However, entering time is, in my view, a waste of time. Fortunately, there’s now software (online applications) out there that will track your time for you. A relative newcomer that you can use for free (there’s premium services of course) is RescueTime.
RescueTime tracks the applications you use on your computer and generates reports. It does so without you having to enter time. From these reports you can see what you actually spend time doing.
I’m not one to spend endless hours tracking and gathering information because that doesn’t add a lot of value – at some point too much information is not useful. However, if you feel you’re spinning your wheels getting little done, try a service like RescueTime and see how you spend your time.
The next important step is figuring out what to do with the information. Essentially, you need to think about which activities you do generate the most value for your students – and then plan to spend the most time on those activities. If, according to your time-tracking results, you spend time on non or low-value activities, you can adjust accordingly.
In my view, the most important activities are those that improve your students’ class/yoga experience. This means planning classes and customer service. Next important is attracting students – which is marketing. Marketing is critical to every business, but with limited resources you must choose your marketing activities, and then budget your marketing time to the marketing activities you choose.
Most likely the marketing activities you choose will be those that are most effective. Again, this is where time tracking can assist – it can show you whether you’re spending time on effective marketing activities or whether you’re getting side-tracked onto low-value marketing activities.
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