Starting the yoga business of your dreams can be daunting. Our field of experts will share vital methods to ensure your success in many areas including legal issues, social media and marketing, and finances.

Thursday, January 12 — 9:00am - 9:30am
Growth of Yoga
A look at the growth of the yoga market in America.

Bill Harper has been the publisher of Yoga Journal and Vegetarian Times since 2006. He started in the publishing business at Esquire magazine. In 1980 he moved to Los Angeles as the head of the West Coast office of Wenner Media, the parent company of Rolling Stone. There, he helped launch another Wenner publication, Men's Journal, and worked on the transition of Us magazine to a successful weekly celebrity publication. In 1999 he formed Bill Harper Associates.

Thursday, January 12 — 9:45am - 11:00am
Opening a Yoga Studio: Studio 101
Working in the health and wellness field is extremely rewarding, but like any other small business, it requires hard work, business savvy, good organizational skills, and good intuition to be successful. Come listen to one studio owner's experience on how to start, operate, and grow a yoga and wellness center. Learn key elements to building a successful business, including the basics of marketing, finance, staffing, scheduling and programming, merchandising, and community building.

Kimberly Leo is the director and owner of Namaste Yoga & Wellness in Oakland, CA. Following her own "Eat Pray Love" experience and a burnout marketing exec job in high tech, Leo opened Namaste as way to fully integrate yoga into her life as well as provide a vital service for Oakland, of which she is a native. Her business background is in financial marketing and communications. She is not a yoga teacher, but rather sees her role in service to all the teachers and the Namaste community. Namaste, which began in 2003, serves the greater San Francisco East Bay with two locations, a wellness center, and yoga-inspired boutiques.

Thursday, January 12 — 11:15am - 12:30pm
Creating a Viable Studio
Learn how to use high-level strategic planning to create an annual budget and identify simple metrics to gauge the health of your business. Come discover how to analyze your operating expenses, incentivize your teachers, and easily evaluate your efforts from month to month.

Meg McCall joined MINDBODY's San Luis Obispo office in 2009 as the Director of Marketing. In her year at MINDBODY, she has helped grow the organization 60 percent, in part, by managing a $2.5 million marketing budget. Meg holds BA in Behavioral Science & Law and a Masters of Business Administration from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She served as both Director of Marketing & Communications and Vice President for Marketing and Campaign for the Madison United Way and was the Marketing Manager for UW-Madison's Division of Information Technology, where she spearheaded a campus-wide IT strategic planning process and helped motivate and train the campus's 41,000 students and 15,000 faculty to use enterprise systems and adopt the latest learning technologies.

Thursday, January 12 — 12:30pm - 1:00pm
Lunchtime Demo
How to use MINDBODY Business Management Software (optional)

Thursday, January 12 — 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Common Legal Issues with Starting a Yoga Studio
Learn how to choose the proper entity (LLC, corporation, proprietorship); enter into contracts with employees, teachers, students, landlords and others; and obtain financing and insurance.

Andy Dudnick is a San Francisco-based business-law attorney with the law firm of Dudnick, Detwiler, Rivin, and Stikker, LLP. Andy's practice focuses on helping small and medium-size businesses with their various legal and business issues, helping individual executives of public and private companies with their employment and equity arrangements, and assisting wealthy individuals with their investments and family office matters. Andy earned his bachelor's degree in 1977 from the University of Michigan and his law degree in 1981 from Harvard Law School. He has been practicing law since 1981 in San Francisco.

Thursday, January 12 — 3:30pm - 4:45pm
Utilizing Social Networking
Word of mouth (WOM) is a passive form of marketing that is coveted by all businesses and understood by few. Social media is taking the 20th-century WOM and launching it into the present, where more text messages are sent each day than there are people on earth. People are already talking about your teaching and business online: Do you want to participate and contribute to this vital conversation? It only takes a bit of creativity and very little money to share your vision with this growing community. Learn how to leverage Facebook, Twitter, TripAdviser, Yelp, and Groupon to build your community and business exponentially faster.

Eric Kipp is the founder and director of Hiking Yoga, which is based in San Francisco and has multiple locations around the country. Eric, who holds degrees and certifications in history, yoga, and small-business coaching, helps yoga teachers and studios guide their students in expanding their practices beyond the brick-and-mortar studios. He created this unique yogic exploration, integrating the cardio of hiking with the power of yoga while connecting with the outdoors. Critical to the rapid ascent of this new offering has been leveraging social media and other low-cost, massive-return marketing techniques.

Chelsea Richardson is the Director of Business Development for Hiking Yoga. She graduated from The University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in Communications. During her college career, she down right fell in love with yoga and joining various outdoor adventures. Her desire to be a part of a team that blends a total mind/body connection naturally brought her to Hiking Yoga. She values how this unique workout nurtures a deep sense of harmony and connection within the self. The company, teachers and clients inspire her to promote a higher level of health, knowledge and awareness through her work with Hiking Yoga.

Friday, January 13 — 9:00am - 10:15am
Building Community and a Loyal Clientele
Hear from Yoga Tree owners Tim and Tara Dale about building community between teachers, staff, and students. Learn how to spread your passion for yoga, and how to listen to the community's ever-changing needs to help guide you to create unique offerings for them.

Tara Dale is the cofounder of Yoga Tree studios, the several locations of which house San Francisco's premier yoga studios and teacher training center. Tara has instructed hatha yoga since 1995 and has been teaching at Yoga Tree since its inception. She teaches Tantric-based hatha and is inspired by John Friend, Shiva Rea, and Judith Lasater.

Tim Dale is the cofounder of Yoga Tree studios, the several locations of which house San Francisco's premier yoga studios and teacher training center. Tim's vision for creating community through Yoga Tree is indelibly imprinted on every aspect of the business. Whether it's creating new and compelling workshops or incorporating music and art into programs, Tim always finds a way to bring something new and fresh to the yoga kula. Prior to opening Yoga Tree, he owned and operated many of San Francisco's most popular restaurants and nightclubs.

Friday, January 13 — 10:30am - 11:45am
Online Marketing
Online marketing offers the most powerful and inexpensive techniques you can use to market and grow your business. We'll discuss how to use email marketing services, as well as the latest techniques for producing compelling newsletters and "e-blasts" designed to keep your clients connected to your business. Learn general web-design practices to help your business website give your clients a clear and compelling message. Finally, learn how online advertising works, and how you can use it to make your business stand out from the rest.

Nicole Chetaud is an experienced events professional and dedicated yoga instructor. In 2010, Nicole joined MINDBODY, Inc., where she oversees the marketing, sales, and planning of MINDBODY University (MBU), a highly successful business intensive hosted around the world. In her role as sales manager, Nicole also presents on technology and business at MBU events. Nicole has also been teaching Bikram Yoga since 2005, and has recently completed her 200-hour certification with YogaWorks.

Friday, January 13 — 11:45am - 12:15pm
Lunchtime Demo
How to use MINDBODY Business Management Software (optional)

Friday, January 13 — 1:15pm - 2:30pm
Money Matters
Apply yoga philosophy and the best practices of some of the country's most successful teachers and studios to the way you manage your career and your money. Gain an understanding of your relationship with money, as well as how your business compares with others in the industry; set up salaries and retirement accounts to secure your future; and learn to implement tried-and-true small-business strategies.

Brent Kessel is a yogi by dawn and financial planner by day, having dedicated himself to yoga since 1989 and progressed to the fifth series of Ashtanga under Chuck Miller and Pattabhi Jois. As the cofounder of Abacus Wealth Partners, a financial-planning firm specializing in sustainable investing for individual clients in 35 states, Brent has been named multiple times as one of the top financial advisors in the United States by Worth magazine. An advanced practitioner in both finance and yoga, Brent is the country's foremost authority on bridging these two disparate worlds for personal transformation. He has appeared on the CBS Early Show and ABC News, has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times, and is the coauthor of The Money & Spirit Workshop.

Friday, January 13 — 2:45pm - 4:00pm
Alternative Revenue Streams
A thriving yoga studio is built around a hub of drop-in classes. But to keep your students' commitment to their practice growing and to make your business really hum, things like retail, workshops, events, retreats, and trainings must orbit that dynamic center. Learn the why's and how's of adding ancillary revenue streams to your studio's core business.

Kaitlin Yount is the General Manager of Teacher Training at YogaWorks. She spent the bulk of her career working for a private equity fund in Southeast Asia and has experience in both the Healthcare and Clean Energy industries in India. She subsequently followed her passion for yoga out to Los Angeles where she joined YogaWorks, first as a strategy consultant and then as manager of the Teacher Training department. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from UC Santa Barbara and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Friday, January 13 — 4:15pm - 5:30pm
Yoga Business Ethics: Passion to Profits
As yogis, we learn to find the balance between effort and grace. As yogipreneurs, we need to find the balance between our passions and our profits. Learn how to develop programming across all aspects of the business that fulfills your heart's desire, meets the needs of the community, and grows your company's financial bottom line in a way that enhances your passion and results in increased profits.

Kathleen Holm has been involved in yoga business management for more than a decade, serving as operations manager at Jivamukti Yoga School in NYC and as general manager of the five Yoga Tree studios in San Francisco. Additionally, Kathleen is a certified Jivamukti Yoga instructor and is deeply grateful for the teachings she has received from Sharon Gannon and David Life. Currently, she is involved in yoga business development for teachers and studio owners and is the creator of myyogaminute.com, a production company and online resource for yoga-related iPhone apps.

Friday, January 13 — 5:30pm - 7:00pm
Networking Reception
The YogaWorks networking reception is designed as a chance for you to exchange ideas, best practices, and cards with your fellow business conference participants. We'll have wine, snacks, a brief structured exercise to facilitate conversation and connections, and plenty of time to mingle.