We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Morgan Balavage a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Morgan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge to profitability in the yoga teaching and spiritual entrepreneurship industry is often the money mindset of individuals. Many yoga teachers and spiritual entrepreneurs struggle with developing a healthy relationship with money and embracing their own worth. This can lead to undercharging for services, undervaluing their expertise, and difficulty in setting appropriate prices for their offerings. Overcoming these money mindset challenges and recognizing the value of their services is crucial for sustainable profitability in this industry.
For example, a client of mine who is a massage therapist was very nervous about raising her rates. We talked for MONTHS about it before she was ready to send out an email announcing her new rates. She was afraid she would lose clients! But you know what? The exact opposite happened: none of her regular clients blinked an eye at her giving herself a raise, and her new clients never questioned her rates! She even used it as an excuse to promote a package and ended up making MORE sales than she had in any other month of her business!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hi! I’m Morgan Balavage, and I’m a business coach. I help yoga teachers and spiritual entrepreneurs build profitable businesses in alignment so that they can skip the overwhelm, heal from burnout, and still serve their souls’ work.
I worked in the corporate world for 20 years in banking, PR, and logistics, teaching yoga before and after work until a fortuitous layoff led me to creating a yoga business I could run from my phone from anywhere in the world. Eventually, other yoga teachers noticed what I was doing and asked me to help them create and grow their own yoga businesses. I’ve built an online yoga business enjoyed by universities and health professionals and have a global clientele of healers, doctors, and therapists doing their soul-driven work from a place of abundance and ease.
I help my clients through my 1:1 coaching contracts and group coaching programs, as well as self-led online courses. My media empire includes an audience of 85k+ per month between social media, my Manage Your Money Yogically podcast, and A Splendid Life YouTube channel.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
There have been a few times in my business I’ve called my mom crying about The State Of Things: 😫 I hadn’t signed a client in awhile and had no idea how to pay rent
😫 I had ended a relationship
😫 I needed to move but wasn’t sure where to go
My mom os SO relieved she gets to say again what she has said many times for the 8 years I’ve been in business:
“Well, honey, maybe it’s time to find a job.”
😡
Now, there is nothing wrong with having a job. I’ve had many, usually multiple jobs at one time!
But this comment triggered the noodles out of me because it felt like she had never believed in me, that she always expected me to fail.
So when I responded with my inner child’s confidence issues, she asked, “What do you need me to say?”
“Just tell me I can do it.”
She took a big sigh and lied to me: “You can do it.”
And you know what? I felt better, even though I knew she didn’t really believe it.
Here’s what happened next:
🎉 I signed over 10k worth of client contracts
🎉 I went on a few great dates
🎉 I found the perfect home 10 min away from my bestie
I share this with my audience because it is SO common for my clients to take the path less traveled and for your families to have some differing opinions about how you should be spending your life.
Your job is to stay in your lane and, when asking for support, be willing to be clear about what kind of support you need.
I didn’t need advice. I needed assurance.
And to my mommy’s great consternation, I don’t really need advice from her. My mum and I are very different people (we had to go to therapy to learn how not to expect ourselves out of each other). Her life decisions don’t work for me.
Most people start with advice about what THEY would do.
It’s completely irrelevant for what you need to do.
That’s why my clients hire me: I understand the path less traveled.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I’ve had to unlearn the idea that you have to work HARD to be successful.
After two decades in the corporate world, I’d indoctrinated hustle culture as Just The Way Things Are.
I went to bed exhausted and already worried about how much I had to do the next day, and woke up exhausted thinking about my impossible to-do list.
Then I learned that it’s possible to work easy and be MORE successful.
My first step in unlearning hard work was redefining success: rather than focusing on numbers, I focused on how many people I could impact. I deemed a project a success if it helped every one person.
The next steps were about aligning my schedule with meetings, events, tasks, and errands that I actually looked forward to doing – not the things I was dreading.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.splendid.yoga
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/splendid.yoga
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morgan.balavage/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganbalavage/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/MorganBalavage
- Other: https://insighttimer.com/splendid.yoga
Image Credits
Ingrid Bostrom