We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful SonJoria Sydnor . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with SonJoria below.
SonJoria , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
I began practicing yoga for my personal mental health after struggling with postpartum depression. My kids would often imitate me and want to join in. Since I had no idea how to teach yoga, we started looking for videos and books for help. We found a few but hardly any that reflected our family or my kids so we decided to write our own book and document our journey in videos. Years later we are continously adding ways to expand representation and increase visibility for Black kids and families in wellness products and resources. Whenever I visit a school to read Our Family’s Doing Yoga and share our yoga cards, there’s always at least one kid that mentions in some manner that they either relate to me or a character represented in our book and cards. This is the mission! For Black kids and families to see themselves in the practice of well-being through mindfulness and yoga.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a wife and mother of 3 children. In addition to being an author and yoga instructor I am also an early childhood educator. Initially I sought my yoga teacher certification for personal growth. I wanted to learn more about yoga because it was helping me so much. During this time I continued to practice with my children and as we shared our journey, I received more and more requests to teach others and their children. The more request I received, the more I realized how great the lack of mirrors for Black kids in the yoga and wellness industry was. I began teaching donation based family yoga in a neighborhood park while going through the process of writing and self publishing our book. This was my start in helping to fill the gap. Along with the book, we now offer yoga pose cards, yoga activity cards, a YouTube channel and a Black Kids Do Yoga Club. The goal is to create as many books and products related to wellness as we can to create change.
I am most proud of the impact my work is making not just by increasing representation in yoga but also in small businesses led by Black women.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Many are aware of the statistics for small business owners but starting a minority owned business especially as a Black woman (double minority) makes retaining capital to start a business even more difficult. When I self-published my goal was to create a high quality book in the least stressful manner. When I completed my manuscript I did not have the money nor knowledge to complete the self publishing process without help so I had to set my passion project aside a year until we saved enough money to invest in my book. Eventually we completed the process through another small business called DG Self Publishing and though it was a huge financial sacrifice for our family, I have no regrets. Our next product was funded through a grant from a nonprofit called Buy From A Black Woman and we are slowly building capital to increase.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
I use a combination of platforms to run my business. As an author I utilize Amazon as well as my own website. Amazon is one of few options for Indie authors to mainstream their books. It is efficient because they host your book on their platform and ship it. Those are the pros and I originally thought that would be my only route until I realized how much of a loss I was taking by exclusively selling through Amazon. I no longer exclusively sell through Amazon. Our book is now available on multiple platforms including Amazon, small businesses, online with large retailers and my own website. I order my books to print though KDP and Ingrams Spark. I print my yoga cards through a small business called She Prints It and I sell them directly from my website.
I use Square to manage most of my day to day business activities like taking payments for classes, workshops and products.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ourfamilysdoingyoga.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/blackkidsdoyoga?igshid=108b7otoad0ws
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackKidsDoYoga/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AYogaMama?t=BG2z9vqSZ6eixDzDVuRD8Q&s=09
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/OurFamilysDoingYoga
- Other: Podcast https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1896816.rss