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18: How to Like Teaching Private Sessions
272 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Episode 18 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss teaching privates, why we didn’t use to like teaching privates, and why we like it now. This episode is full of awkward, funny, and frustrating stories from our past as private yoga teachers. We end with helpful tips that will help you enjoy teaching privates more.
- Where to meet with one-on-one clients/patients
- Charging differently based on how much commuting is involved
- The big reason we didn’t like teaching privates: no clear understanding of the goal.
- Students who talk too much and aren’t focused on the movement
- Students who have expectations but you don’t like teaching that way.
- Students with persistent pain and questioning your scope of practice.
- The game changer for Laurel: training strength clients with clear, trackable goals.
- The benefits of talking less and observing more.
- Admin is a bummer. How we avoid back-and-forth emailing and tracking clients down.
- Our top 6 pet peeves about teaching privates, and tips we share to avoid these and love teaching privates!
Reference links:
Work one-on-one with Doctor Sarah Court, DPT
Work one-on-one with Laurel Beversdorf, E-RYT 500
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaverstorff and physical therapist Dr. Sarah Court.
Podcast's Mission and Approach
00:00:14
Speaker
With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Topic Introduction: Teaching Private Clients
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to episode 18 of the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Laurel Beiberstorff and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Sarah Court. Today we're talking about teaching private clients and how to like it. Yes, you heard that correctly, how to like it. Now, maybe you are a private teacher of some kind and you already love teaching privates and you're like, what's not to like? In which case,
00:01:02
Speaker
You have nothing to learn from this episode and you can go ahead and turn it off right now and find something else to do with your day.
Challenges and Joys of Private Teaching
00:01:09
Speaker
But if you are like, yeah, I teach privates or I did it one time and I find it or I found it mildly too extremely difficult, annoying, boring, or just plain awkward for some reason or another, you may want to listen to this episode because Sarah and I have been there.
00:01:27
Speaker
And we've lived to tell the tale.
Hosts' Professional Backgrounds
00:01:31
Speaker
And we would love to share with you that we're both currently teaching private clients slash patients and we're really jiving on it. So we wanted to share with you what has changed.
00:01:43
Speaker
Now, as you know, by now, Sarah and I are coming at this from different perspectives.
Podcast as a Platform for Insight Sharing
00:01:48
Speaker
Sarah's a PT and I am a strength coach and yoga teacher. And we want you to know, too, that while we did both decide on this topic for our conversation, we've not actually had this conversation before because, you know, we this would be the kind of thing we would talk about over the phone. But because we're so busy making this podcast, we haven't had time to have those conversations.
Defining Private Clients vs. Group Classes
00:02:09
Speaker
So we figured we would just record
00:02:11
Speaker
This conversation that we would have over the phone together anyway and share with you because why not and so We're gonna start it off though in typical movement logic podcast fashion by defining terms Okay, so private clients. What do we actually mean?
00:02:29
Speaker
So by private clients, Sarah and I mean students we meet with one-on-one for a period of time, maybe it's 45 minutes to an hour for various reasons. So Sarah for PT, me for strength or movement of some kind, and we'll contrast this with the other ways I teach, which I teach group classes, and we'll contrast this with how Sarah sees some of her outpatient
00:02:54
Speaker
PT clients in the clinic that she works at that someone else owns and operates, right, Sarah?
Different Roles: Patients vs. Clients
00:03:02
Speaker
This is not what we're talking about with Sarah. We're talking about the clients or the patients that Sarah sees outside of the clinic on her own, her own gig.
00:03:14
Speaker
Um, obviously Sarah is meeting with patients one-on-one, um, and I am meeting with students or clients. Uh, although I would add that in my opinion, all patients are students, but not all students are patients. And they're certainly not when they're in front of me because I'm not a clinician. Um, which means that when I refer to privates, I'm referring to private, you know, movement clients. So, um, Sarah's talking about patients. I'm talking about movement clients. So we've defined
Conducting Private Sessions in Various Settings
00:03:38
Speaker
terms. So this brings me to my first question, which is Sarah, when you teach privates,
00:03:44
Speaker
Where do you do it? Do you do it on Zoom? Is it in your home? Is it some, your client's home? Is it some other location? Where's this happening? All of the above. Oh, wow. Certainly during the pandemic, it was all on Zoom.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I know I'm just saying that as if the pandemic is over. I know. So very not. But certainly in the time when I wasn't going into other people's houses, let's say, or I wasn't going somewhere to teach something, it was all over Zoom. I do also have people. I still have some people that I see over Zoom, but most of them at the moment are in person.
Importance of Professional Space
00:04:24
Speaker
I know it looks super glamorous. Where I am right now is I'm recording. But where I am, in fact, is in a corner of a cupboard that is full of, it's in my office. So I also have an office, a dedicated office at home. And which, but this is, I mean, this is like, this is the first time I've ever had this. You know, previously it would be, if they came to me, we would work in my living room. I would push the coffee table back, that kind of thing. What's really nice about having this dedicated space is
00:04:56
Speaker
I mean, I get to have a room that basically has no furniture in it. And then this closet, which if I turn the camera around, you would see is just full of yoga props, weights, PT props, like it's it's everything that I've ever amassed over the years or that anyone's given me.
00:05:12
Speaker
And the nice thing about having the dedicated space as well is that I like to retain a certain amount of professional privacy, I guess. And so when someone's not coming into my living room, this space here, it's decorated, but it's like,
00:05:34
Speaker
it's not like, oh, there's half of a burrito that I ate yesterday or oh, here's, I mean, no, I wouldn't leave that out, but it feels like it's a space that I get to call professional and doesn't have that kind of, I'm not overlapping and bringing a patient into my house, like my house house. And then I also do what I, I call them house calls just because that's an easy way to refer to it, but I do go to people's homes and work with them there as well.
00:06:03
Speaker
Can I ask a question?
Pricing Strategies for Private Sessions
00:06:05
Speaker
Sure. Do you charge a different rate based on whether they come to you or you go to them? Oh, wow. I do.
00:06:13
Speaker
Just because yeah, you don't have to make sense. It's like, you know for me, you know, like after we record this podcast, for example, I have a Client who is coming here. I have to do almost nothing Mm-hmm before to prepare for that because everything is here. Everything I need is here. I don't have to drive I don't have to think about traffic and how long is it gonna take I don't have to like pile things into LA
00:06:37
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So so it's more expensive for me to come to you because it's more effort for me to come to you. That's basically my thinking. But Zoom and you coming to me is the same price. That's basically how I set it up, because it just allows me to literally be like two minutes before texting a friend. And then here you are. You know, and how long do you meet with people for an hour, an hour. And how are you liking it? I really like it.
00:07:05
Speaker
I really do and I like it much more now than I did when I was doing it as a yoga teacher because before I was a PT, I was a yoga teacher and I was doing that thing where you teach two group classes and then you zoom off to somebody's house and then you like all of that kind of thing. Were you always teaching other people's houses as a yoga teacher? Mostly, but that was also because I was in New York and my apartment was tiny. Yeah. Also, I think in New York in particular,
00:07:35
Speaker
the appeal of a private is somebody's coming to your house. Yeah, because it's a pain in the ass. Yeah. To go anywhere. Yeah. But I was trying to think about why I like it more now than I did then. And I realized sort of why. And I don't know if that's something we want to talk about now or if you've got something. Yes, I do. That's my next question. So my next question was like,
Experiences in Private Yoga Teaching
00:07:54
Speaker
did you teach private? Did you teach private as a yoga teacher? And what was that like for you? Did you like it? Yeah.
00:08:00
Speaker
Did you like it? Yeah, I think the short answer would be sometimes. And it had a lot to do, I realize now, it had a lot to do with how well I understood what the point of me being there was. And there could be plenty of reasons for me to be there.
00:08:19
Speaker
um and the times that I didn't enjoy it were the times when I didn't totally understand and and now I realize like that's that's a little bit on me as the person to to help define with my student or my patient yeah but I didn't understand why I was there so for example
00:08:39
Speaker
I'm like, yes.
Humorous Anecdotes in Private Sessions
00:08:42
Speaker
I used to work with this couple, and it was honestly one of the most hilarious scenarios I ever... It was the funniest hour of my... Tell me more.
00:08:56
Speaker
They were, let me paint you a picture. They lived in a very, very fancy part of town. And to the point where, and this is especially meaningful, I think, if you live in New York, but I think you could probably recognize it, the level of wealth, even without the building. So not only were they in a doorman building, of course, but the elevator opened to their apartment. Oh, yeah, I had one like that. Yeah.
00:09:24
Speaker
So there was no like, the elevator opens and then you go down the hall and there's five, no, the entire floor was their apartment to begin with. And then there were also in the, what's it called? Foyer? I don't know. The room where nobody spent any time were original, incredibly expensive pieces of art by very famous artists. And I was like, wow, this is what they decorate their hallway with.
00:09:54
Speaker
That'd be how I pay for my college tuition. So, and they were both perfectly nice people. They were nice to me. They were never rude to me. Nothing negative ever happened. But what I found hysterical, and at first I was like, well, so what they would do is they would talk to each other the entire time.
00:10:18
Speaker
about like, hey, did you call whose you had her back? Or like, hey, what time is that dinner on Thursday? They would just be like, and I would have to jump in and be like, okay, down dog. Like in between when they were talking, you know, I would have to kind of like try to make something happen. And at first I was very frustrated. And I didn't, as I was like, I can do way more than just yell things out and kind of stretch, but like, I could really teach these people how to feel better physically or what they need to be working on. Like, I was like, this is, this is a waste of my time.
00:10:49
Speaker
And then I was like, you know what? Or you could look at it a different way, which is, this is their hour. They have hired you for this hour.
00:11:02
Speaker
They've made it super clear through their behavior that they're not looking to you to teach them anything in particular. They want to do some yoga. They're busy people. This is also probably the first time today that they've actually been with each other. Probably. Right? Because they've had their busy workday. Yep.
00:11:22
Speaker
hairs what you're doing. And then when I got to that sort of... You had to get over yourself a little bit? Yeah, I had to get over myself a lot. I spent a lot of time getting over myself. That's a daily activity for me. But I had to get over myself a huge amount. And then once I did, I actually enjoyed it more because it just was
Adapting to Client Expectations
00:11:40
Speaker
funny. And then things would happen where we would
00:11:45
Speaker
it would be like, oh, like the doorman would come up with a package, they'd be like, oh, could you grab that for? Oh, yeah, then no. And I was like, first of all, the yoga teacher, I don't grab your packet. And then I was like, who cares? Yeah, I'll grab the package, whatever. Yeah. And then one time we had to stop everything that we were doing, because one of their children was having singing class, PS, we could hear singing class, it was terrible. Stop and listen.
00:12:07
Speaker
to the child singing something right oh great and then go back to you know the yoga so it was that's a really kind of extreme example but but it was it was a very good one though what i where i had to i really did have to get over myself and i had to be like you know what it's not a huge hassle for you to get to this location right it's not like i had to do like an hour commute each way um it is
00:12:31
Speaker
one of the higher income hours that I have in my week, which is what we talked about during the burnout episode, having periods of work that have more value. Nobody's getting hurt, except maybe my ego. So who cares? That was an extreme example. I remember also- How long did you work with them?
00:12:58
Speaker
How long did you work with them? I worked with them right up until I moved to LA. It was at least a year and I kept going except I was leaving. That's the only reason. The trade-off was worth it.
00:13:13
Speaker
Right. Because you were getting compensated well. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't, you know, they were fine. I didn't hate them. I wasn't. Right. Exactly. They weren't rude to me. They weren't obnoxious. There were no deal breakers. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Do you have some crazy private teaching stories? Well, yeah. So I wanted to say that I can completely relate to everything you're saying about teaching
00:13:36
Speaker
private yoga sessions because I did teach a lot of them actually in the beginning and it was one of the ways that I learned how to teach yoga actually is a really important way that I learned how to teach and I
00:13:52
Speaker
In the beginning, it felt like a really fun challenge, but then the trade-offs of having to wake up at four to be at the investment banker's place at five so that he could get to work by six, those started to pile up. I do have stories that are different than yours where, again, this feeling of not really knowing why I'm there.
00:14:14
Speaker
And the cognitive dissonance of like, should I be doing this? Is this my place? And this largely had to do with like, maybe scope of practice. Because, let's see, I met with a guy whose elevator opened his entire floor in Soho. And he was a really nice guy, actually, investment banker.
00:14:39
Speaker
And he wanted me to do these really strong adjustments in twists. And it was just twists. And I didn't get the sense that there was anything weird about it. He just really liked the feeling of being rotated, his spine rotated. And I was starting to feel a little bit like a chiropractor. And I was like, I don't know. But that's what he wanted. That was sort of what we did. Every single session was like, I want to do deep twists.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I was like in my mind at that point for starting out probably my first or second year of teaching had no frame of reference for like how I should feel about that. On one hand I was like twists are good, on the other hand I was like I was not trained to do really strong hands-on adjustments and I did not believe in them as beneficial at that stage. I know some 200-hour, 300-hour trainees are brought up
00:15:34
Speaker
doing those right off the bat and really relying heavily on that as a teaching tool. I did not. I rarely touched my students. And if I did, it was more like awareness, just light touch, not manual adjustments.
00:15:50
Speaker
But I got really good at doing them on him. Like I was like, oh, yeah, I'm like, you know, I feel like I'm a what is it? What was the style of yoga you did for a while? Jiva Mukti. Jiva Mukti. I was like, I'm like Jiva Mukti level rotating. This guy's fine right now. And so that I don't know what happened and why we stopped meeting. It was something that it kind of fizzled out. A lot of my private clients just sort of fizzled out. I have to say, I'm lucky I never had like weird, mean, disrespectful clients.
00:16:21
Speaker
I had another client. He was an Argentinian doctor working out of some hospital in New York, and his English was sometimes a challenge to communicate with him. And so that was a part of what was difficult. But then the other thing that was a little bit difficult was he had back pain, and so he wanted help
00:16:44
Speaker
With that, and we were doing yoga, but there was such a limited repertoire of poses that I was capable of helping him with. And then at the same time, he's a doctor. I can't remember what kind of doctor he was. I think he might have been an orthopedic doctor. But don't quote me on that. I'm not sure. He might have also been a neurologist.
00:17:02
Speaker
So, who knows? I can't remember, but he, you know, was looking to me as a yoga teacher, as a doctor, looking to me to help him with his back pain, which is so interesting. And some days, like what I would help him be able to do would help him. And some other days he would say, yeah, last session was too much and I was in pain yesterday. And it's like, I was just like, oh my God, I don't even know what should I be doing right now? And
00:17:25
Speaker
Um, and, and of course, like, you know, I wanted the experience and I wanted the money. And so I probably should have, uh, you know, I don't know what I should have done, honestly, like it's hard to say in the moment and it's hard to remember exactly everything that, um, was exchanged and everything that was happening, but it did seem like he was not too concerned about it. That's the thing is like, he was just sort of like, yeah, this is the way it always is. Like I just have back pain and,
00:17:49
Speaker
Um, sometimes it, you know, it has nothing to do with your session. And then other times, like, it seems like it does have something to do with your session. And, and then, you know, he, he seemed to think overall that the sessions were helping. So who knows? But I kind of had to really feel uncertain a lot of the time working with him of like, not wanting to mess up and not wanting to hurt him.
00:18:10
Speaker
And I had very few tools to be able to work with him
Doctors and Movement Awareness
00:18:14
Speaker
with. I will say, having had a few doctors as patients, certainly as a PT, I don't have that moment of feeling like, oh, I'm not qualified, or this is outside of my scope of practice. But I will say, a lot of them are so unembodied, is mind-blowing, and also
00:18:35
Speaker
the understanding that movement might help is there's a cognitive dissonance for a lot of medical professionals around them. And so... In what way? Like, do you mean they don't believe it will or they do believe it will? Or they're not trained to think that it will. Right. That's not the hammer they hold. That's not the tool in their toolbox. It's a surgical intervention, you know, things like that. It's changing. It's definitely improving. I don't want to like...
00:19:04
Speaker
you know, paint every single orthopedic surgeon with the same paintbrush. A lot of them also will do their thing and then they'll be like, now you need to go to physical therapy. Right. You know, but I've also had the experience with my own orthopedic surgery where they were like, you don't need physical therapy. And I was like, I'm pretty sure I do. It's one of those things when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
Um, and, and, you know, as a yoga teacher for a long time, I thought that everything could be solved with stretching because I was a hammer and everything. Yeah. Yoga yoga was the panacea. Yeah. I bought into, I bought into that idea that yoga could pretty much fix anything, um, as well. And.
00:19:42
Speaker
So yeah, I didn't really know I was there and I dreaded teaching privates a lot of the times too. Like I kind of dreaded going and then when I was there, I was constantly checking the clock and then on my way out, I was kind of a little bit like, oh, I'm so glad that's over. And I do attribute it now looking back.
00:20:00
Speaker
add to this kind of cognitive dissonance of why am I here? On one hand, I'm here to make money. On another hand, I'm here to get experience. On another hand, I'm here because you're an easy person to be around. You're a decent person to be around. You're a bad person to be around. And then also, I don't really know what I'm doing, where we're going with this, day to day, what we're even going to work on. I'm not sure how you're going to feel when I arrive and what this is going to
00:20:30
Speaker
require of me and then all of the inexperience of then feeling anxious as to whether or not I'll be capable. Like I didn't have a strong sense of self-efficacy in the moment. I wasn't sure that I would specifically be capable of handling the moment, whatever it was that arose. Now, I'm sitting here with you today as someone who still meets with clients one-on-one, but now
Strength Coaching vs. Yoga Teaching
00:20:56
Speaker
I'm meeting with strength clients, people who are working with me on their strength. I don't consider myself really a personal trainer. I'm a strength coach. I like that title better. What's different for me now is because of the nature of the work that I'm doing with my one-on-one clients, there is a much more defined goal, which is strength.
00:21:25
Speaker
And that feels more defined than what I thought or wondered about what I was doing when I was meeting with my yoga clients. Not to say that you can't have a defined goal with yoga. It's just that I didn't, because I wasn't, I wasn't. Well, and I think, I think it can be more nebulous. Like training strength, there's really obvious things where you can be like, oh look, you know, two weeks ago you were doing that with 10 pounds. Now you're doing 15 pounds or something like that. There's very clear markers. Strength is very trackable.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And it's not to say that yoga is not trackable, like, like, you can have people who are like, I really want to work on arm balances, or I really want to work on, you know, something within their asana practice, or sometimes it's like, I need someone to help me with meditation and breathing and relaxing there. Those are all tangible goals.
00:22:14
Speaker
But I think a lot of the time, you know, and this is where you can run into frustration, that sense of like, what am I here for? What am I doing? When that hasn't been discussed or set up. And I, you know, certainly as a yoga teacher, I didn't know to do that. So people, I mean, I have a few people in mind.
00:22:34
Speaker
where I remember just being like, showing up and being like, I guess I'm sort of teaching like a private vinyasa class. I guess that's what I'm sort of doing. Yeah, like I'm kind of, yeah, I'm leading a group class with a group of two or one. Yes, a group of one. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I felt with the guy who liked the back adjustments. Yeah. The deep twists. It can feel that way. And the thing is, that might be what they want as well. It was what he wanted.
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, it may be that there isn't a goal in terms of something tangible to work towards. It's more of a, you know, I want to take, I want to practice physical yoga asana. I want to do it in my home with a teacher watching me and be like, you know, period, full stop, like that's it. And that's also fine. And I think part of it then as the yoga teacher,
00:23:28
Speaker
is that, or whatever kind of movement modality, recognizing that there may not be trackable goals with that necessarily, but that may not be the point. I say this, and I say it with absolute, the clients that I have that are this, I am very much endeared to. And so I say this as sort of a joke, but sometimes you're just there to be the cheerleader, because if you're not there, it's not happening.
00:23:54
Speaker
Right. So it's less about, it's about accountability. Yeah, it's less about I'm trying to like achieve something. And the achievement is really, I just, I want to be doing this. And unless you're here, somehow, I'm not going to like, I don't, I don't set aside the time, I don't have the discipline, or I maybe I don't have, you know, it's a lot to know until you're a yoga teacher. It's a lot to know how to, you know, structure us, you know, a session of yoga for yourself, you know, so you need that professional guidance.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes that's what's happening. And there's nothing wrong with that. No, not at all. And that's what you're doing too as a group class teacher as well. You're creating some form of accountability for students because otherwise everyone would just practice alone in their apartment or house because they didn't need that external accountability. But actually the vast majority, I think, of people actually do need that external accountability. And that is a very important role that we play.
00:24:48
Speaker
in students' lives, in your patients' life. So, but I have to say now that I'm facilitating these privates that revolve around building strength, I love it. I love it and I love it because, and this is just based on like the content of what I'm teaching, but I love it for other reasons too, which I'll get into, which are more actually business related.
Benefits of Being Present in Coaching
00:25:08
Speaker
But what I love about teaching strength is that
00:25:12
Speaker
When you're working on strength, you're actually repeating a lot of the same things time after time after time to progressively overload them. So I'm not doing a whole new repertoire of movements. I have in my Google spreadsheet the movements that they did last week, and there might be slight changes to those exercises, but I know exactly what they did, and I know exactly how much they did, how much they lifted, how many reps they did. I know exactly how hard they felt they were working after each set.
00:25:41
Speaker
Um, and so I, I open that up and I open up zoom and I, you know, looking at that and then they come on like five minutes later and I, and I'm like, okay, I know we're going to be working on today. And then I, and then I'm able to be like completely 100% present with what it is that they are doing and adjust from there because I don't have in my head, like what's coming next, which.
00:26:03
Speaker
I was a type of yoga teacher which would come to class with a rough idea of what I was going to teach and with privates, part of the benefit of any private strength, yoga, Pilates, whatever it is that you are going to often have to adjust your plan based on what the student needs and that's what they're paying for. They're paying for you to be able to respond to them and them only.
00:26:22
Speaker
in the moment, day by day, according to what they need. But with strength, because I don't have to be thinking about what's coming next, like I would when I was teaching group classes and one-on-ones of like, okay, this person, generally this is what we work on, but how am I going to structure the session and how can I make it a little bit different and a little bit more whatever that they need? With strength, it's like all written out for me.
00:26:46
Speaker
and then i feel like i just have more space to relate and more space to be present and pay attention than i and i'm also not talking the whole time okay because when you're leading someone through you're not necessarily talking the whole time but pose by pose by pose there is kind of a
00:27:04
Speaker
walking them into the pose and having them be in the pose and bringing them out of the pose and taking them into the next pose and these like before the pose, in the pose, after the pose requires words, but with something like strength where it's largely reps and set space, you teach the exercise, you reinforce some of the main cues, you maybe give a little feedback, but otherwise they're working and you might count for them a little bit, you might remind them of tempo or breath, but there's more space to not be talking and more space to be watching.
00:27:31
Speaker
Then there's the rest periods where you can have a conversation with them, like you need to rest for a minute before we do the next set, so you're looking forward to your vacation. Your doggy's here rooting you on or things about their life, or also just filling in some of the gaps maybe in their understanding about why they're doing what they're doing, talking a little bit about last session and what you're seeing now and progress.
00:27:56
Speaker
Relaying back to them reflecting back to them what you're seeing and and and reinforcing those positive changes that are occurring like there's more space for all of that. And that is what feels to me that interpersonal connection that I'm able to make there's more space for that is what feels and makes it so much more rewarding to me.
00:28:16
Speaker
And so I look forward to the sessions and I enjoy teaching them. I feel good before, during, and after. So it's kind of cool what I've been able to learn and kind of reflecting back on when I was teaching yoga. Now, if I were to go back to teaching yoga privately, which I don't actually currently
00:28:33
Speaker
I'm not taking on private yoga students. I'm only taking on private strength strength students. That's a decision I made. I was like, this is kind of just what I want to do right now, one on one. But if I were to go back to teach yoga, how would I do it differently is something that I'm thinking about. I was like, yeah, I would probably take a completely different approach to, you know,
00:28:52
Speaker
to this. I'm not sure what it would look like, but having this plan and knowing that we're kind of together going in a particular direction is very fulfilling to me. Absolutely. And what you're describing, the nonness is not the content necessarily, but the format of the hour is honestly kind of identical to what I'm doing
00:29:13
Speaker
in the clinic, for sure, but also with my private physical therapy students, because we also have a goal. And the goal is, sometimes the goal is getting stronger, but sometimes it's, you know, or it's a sort of like general concept, like I want to have better balance. But sometimes it is, I have ankle pain, I have knee pain. And the goal is about getting them out of pain and getting them back to whatever the activity is. And so it's that same thing where it's like,
00:29:40
Speaker
there'll be periods of time where I'm having them show me an exercise or demonstrate their homework. And I'm not talking much during it because a lot of time I want to just see them do it without me telling them what to do so I know where we need to adjust, right? So it is nice to have those periods of time where you're, it's not that you're not working, but you're not outputting anything. You're allowed to just have some time to observe. You know, the sort of time when I get to talk to them,
00:30:07
Speaker
would either be in a rest period. That typically happens more in the clinic or I do a fair amount of manual therapy. And so, as I'm doing manual therapy on someone, generally speaking, they don't have to do anything.
00:30:22
Speaker
I might be commenting on what we're sort of finding in their body, but that's a time when I can be like, oh, so would you do this last weekend? Or do you have any plans coming up? Tell me about the concert you went to or things like that. And you get to have that relationship built in those moments. Yeah. And the other thing about string training is that it's unlike yoga if you're lying down on your back and stretching your hamstrings or kind of just doing a more passive stretch that there is.
00:30:49
Speaker
space in the student's, you know, oftentimes there is if they've been, if they're not brand new to yoga to like want to chat you up a little bit, but with strength training, they're not chatting me up while they're doing their reps and sets. They're focusing on lifting the weight because it's actually pretty effortful.
00:31:04
Speaker
And so there's this clear delineation between we're working and now we're talking because we're resting. This is the space for rest. And I'm keeping my eye on the clock and I'm chatting them up and I'm like, okay, let's pick up the weight again. Let's do another set. And so it just makes it very easy because I know we talked a little bit about how your couple were real talkers and I definitely had the talkers as well where
00:31:27
Speaker
I would get together with them and I knew that they needed to talk. They were maybe alone all day or they were anxious about something and I was the person that was there to listen and so I would let them talk but I would often feel conflicted about how much talking we were doing and how little yoga we were doing, asana really.
00:31:48
Speaker
Now, I think I would be a little bit more relaxed about that and be like, this is what this person needs right now, and so this is what I'm going to make space for. But before, I felt a little bit conflicted about it. With the strength training clients, it's built in the talking, the relating. We can do that while you rest because you actually need to rest your body. So let's chat. Or not, let's not chat. Why don't you get a drink of water and go to the bathroom.
00:32:13
Speaker
I still, even with private patients that I work with or patients in the clinic,
00:32:19
Speaker
Um, there'll be times they'll be all recognize like, okay, this is, this person's a talker. And part of the conflict that happens for me in that scenario is, uh, if they are expecting some amount of results, if we're trying to change something, but they're spending so much time talking that we don't actually get to do very much. And then they're like, well, why am I not getting better? So, so there, you know, I have learned, um, and I remember, I remember, um,
00:32:48
Speaker
because I did a lot of shadowing and stuff before becoming a PT. I remember watching this other PT just straight up interrupt her client the entire session. And I was like, oh, that's so rude. And then I started realizing, sometimes you actually absolutely have to. And people are talking just because they're talking. And literally, it's like the moment they take a breath, you're like, OK, let's lie down on your back. You're going to do, da, da, da, da. And you have to just change what's happening.
00:33:15
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:34:09
Speaker
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00:34:34
Speaker
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00:34:58
Speaker
And so I became much more willing to do that and not be concerned that they're gonna be like mad at me because he wanted to tell me this story or something. But some of it is, and I think again, that comes with experience and time, but.
00:35:13
Speaker
Some of it is recognizing, you know, if you're teaching a session as a yoga teacher privately, is this, if this person doesn't have massive goals, it may not be such a big deal to let them talk. If you're trying to achieve something, then you might have to say something like, okay, so let's take this next chunk of time and really just focus on, you know, your, whatever, practicing this pose or something. And I'm going to give you some cues and kind of like,
00:35:39
Speaker
take the reins back a little bit. Yeah, because if this is truly a goal, we only have so much time to work toward it. And I don't want you to then get mad at me that the goal's not happening when it's not happening because you're spending half of the session talking. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about all the work that goes into private sessions, private clients that doesn't really have to do with the in-session work, but scheduling and, you know,
Admin Improvements Enhance Teaching
00:36:06
Speaker
maybe when you first start working with a client like the lead up that goes into kind of figuring out what they want, their goals, their needs, their interests, their dislikes, their injuries, things like that.
00:36:17
Speaker
And what did that look like? And now what does it look like? Is there a difference between the way that you conduct the admin, for lack of a better word, you manage your schedule and work with that? There's a huge difference. OK. Part of the difference. Does it have anything to do with why you now like teaching privates and why you maybe didn't?
00:36:41
Speaker
It partly does because one of the things, one of the differences now is a lot of the admin is automated. So it's much easier for me in that sense. You know, when I was teaching privates, it was, you know,
00:36:57
Speaker
2006, seven, eight, somewhere in there where the software did not exist that I use now. So I didn't have the opportunity. So a lot of the admin of it was, okay, well, am I selling like class packs for private? And if so, collecting the money for that ahead of time. And in what format is that money coming? And
00:37:25
Speaker
Am I asking for the money to come in a format that maybe I don't have to announce all of on my taxes? What? And scheduling. Am I tracking their schedule for them? Do they have a set time and day? If they don't, because they travel all the time, do I have to be sending them emails to be like, hey, did you want to do something this week? All of that kind of stuff. So the baseline of it was much more work.
00:37:54
Speaker
just sort of like chasing up kind of work. And the big difference now is that I use an online scheduler that allows me to, when somebody, usually I get emails from people through my website being like, hey, I want to do a private session, how do I do it? And I have a pre-written email response. Yep. Written. Copy, paste. Written. Yeah, sure. So copy, paste with like a few word changes.
00:38:21
Speaker
and it has a link to my scheduler. All you have to do with your online scheduler, if somebody is not using one and wondering about it, is you go in and they're pretty user-friendly and you set up a calendar and then you get to block off times that you don't want to be available.
00:38:39
Speaker
And so sometimes it takes a little bit of tracking of that, like if things change or whatever. And I've certainly had some bloopers where somebody's booked something and I'm like, oh, I am not available. But for the most part, it's pretty straightforward. But especially the thing that I like about it is you can set up, you know, for me, it's a clinical intake form.
00:38:58
Speaker
um and you know liability and all that kind of stuff but you could set up just like information that you wanted to know about the person like if you were if you were teaching yoga like for me there's questions like medical questions that i put on there but it doesn't have to be that and the other part that i love about it is they cannot book a session without paying for it in advance yeah
00:39:17
Speaker
And so then I'm not chasing people for money. Yeah, it's they've paid already. I'm very clear about what my cancellation policy is very clear. I also the other thing that I love is you can't you can you can say.
00:39:31
Speaker
how like, like, for example, right now, for me, it's nine o'clock in the morning, there is no opportunity for someone to try and book a session with me at seven o'clock tomorrow morning. Because I say like, it can't be less than, you know, 24 hours or 48 hours or something. Yeah, these like surprise attack.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, you can create buffers. You can't book with me within the same week. It will always be the following week, and no more than two months out, three months out. I used to have a client that would text me at 10 o'clock at night and be like, 6 AM tomorrow, and I'd be like, yeah, I guess I'll leave the bar right now.
00:40:06
Speaker
or whatever. So it automates a lot of those things. And I rely on it pretty much exclusively. And so that's a huge game changer. And it just makes everything much, much easier. I'm not chasing people for money. I'm not chasing them to try to schedule them.
00:40:27
Speaker
I'm paid in advance. I have already decided, and there's times when I just block off entire weeks where I'm like, you know what, I'm working on some other project, I'm not available. So it's a much easier way to create boundaries and then not have to have entire conversations with people where it's like, well, are you free here? Here are my windows, what are your windows? It's just like, here, put yourself in wherever you want.
00:40:54
Speaker
Yep. I have this superpower that I've developed between then and now that has made it very easy for me to book and schedule my clients and keep them on a regular schedule.
Role of Virtual Assistants in Efficiency
00:41:09
Speaker
And her name is Kristy Ann.
00:41:12
Speaker
Her name is Kristy Ann, so I have a virtual assistant and she is fantastic and she is not me and she is not me. So there are two not me's I'm referring to that make her incredible at booking
00:41:34
Speaker
private clients so first of all people reach out to me in all the same avenues they probably reach out to you online via the various social media networks and email and website and things like that and then
00:41:45
Speaker
I confirm with them a time. I do have an online scheduler sometimes because if they seem like their inquiry is a little bit like, I might want to try private, then I just link them to the private page on my website where they can read the instructions for signing up for privates, which involves using my online scheduler. But a lot of times people, when they reach out to me, have a very specific
00:42:08
Speaker
idea of what they want and they seem committed and so we all just discuss a time that would work for us both and then I hand that person over to Christiane. So Christiane does the invoice, she does the needs analysis if it's a new client so they get this Google document or this Google form that they they fill out with a bunch of questions that I need that I can benefit from knowing and then
00:42:33
Speaker
Their time is set and then every Friday Christianne reaches out to all the private clients and is in confirms the session sends the invoice unless they've paid for a package and And I and I don't charge a different amount for a single or a ten pack. It's just you want to pay for ten up front great. That's easiest Let's do that or one at a time. That's fine. Christianne takes care of all of it and This is
00:42:59
Speaker
great because it's not me and it's not me in two ways when it's not me so that means that the client it's like when you book a flight okay when you're like i'm gonna take a vacation or i'm gonna go see somebody and i'm gonna book a flight and i'm gonna go on delta's website and i'm gonna book my flight you don't go on the website not sure about when you want to leave
00:43:16
Speaker
and then you don't book the flight and then go oh i want to change it because oh that's not going to work for me anymore like you go in very certain that now i am committing to being on an airplane on this day at this time and being in this state during these days and then flying back on this day and there's no like changing your mind and if there is it's a big hassle right well that's kind of christian is like the airline now
00:43:40
Speaker
not really you know she's very she's very good at what she does because she's very direct and pleasant and clear and organized but people kind of know like now i'm dealing with this third party and it's not as easy to change my mind because i gotta go through christianne right so that's awesome it's not me and it's not me
00:43:59
Speaker
because she's organized and clear and direct and she's not attached to the business. She's detached. She's just working for me and she's just doing her job. And she has very good boundaries and she's very clear. And so it's wonderful. It's wonderful. And here's the thing.
00:44:19
Speaker
I was always hesitant. My parents were public school teachers. They were not business people. The idea of paying someone to work for me and do my work is a very unfamiliar thing in my family. They were public servants, right? You don't have employees when you're a public servant unless you're working for a company and there are people under you, but you don't pay them directly.
00:44:39
Speaker
I have people now that I pay directly and I'm learning to become more comfortable with it, but in my mind, the story I would tell myself is that I can just do this myself. It's so easy. It's admin, whatever, it's an email.
00:44:55
Speaker
And I would try to do it myself and it would end up being the death of joy as you often, there's a wonderful phrase, the death of joy because that is not how I want to be spending my time. And because she's so efficient,
00:45:10
Speaker
The amount of money I'm paying her to do this part of what I'm asking her to do because she runs my Pinterest account. She does a lot of other things for me that I pay her a lot more money for because it takes her more time. This hardly takes her any time because she's so good at it. And the clients I'm working with are wonderful and they're respectful of our time and our boundaries.
00:45:29
Speaker
but i think that part of why i can have this running so smoothly is because they're going through christian she's she's really not spending very much time at all on this week by week i don't have to worry about it right and i'm hardly paying her really anything for i'm paying her her hourly rate
00:45:47
Speaker
which is what I pay her for all of the time she spends doing all of the things for me, but the amount of time she's spending on this is very, very little, and it's 120 million percent worth having her do it. It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me. Christian, if you're listening.
00:46:06
Speaker
I definitely run into that thing of like, especially when it's something I know that I am capable of doing myself, that thing of giving it to somebody else to do, yeah, hard, you know, but, but it's usually, you know, again, it goes back to this idea that we were talking about with the private sessions of like, how much is your hour worth and how much and what are you getting out of it instead, right?
00:46:32
Speaker
you know, if someone is listening to this, who's not feels like maybe they're not in the at the point where they need someone to help them or whatever, I will plug again, the online scheduler only because it does a lot of those things. And it's a robot. Yeah, so I said it's the same kind of thing. Yeah. Christian is not a robot. Let me just be clear. We I work with an online scheduler and Christian. That's the thing, right? And and I don't know that just could that combination works.
00:46:58
Speaker
However it works for you. Something that I like about it as well is it sends out a reminder to them and to me two days before or whatever. I think it just depends on what works best for you as a teacher, but I definitely think getting some sort of assistance, whatever that looks like, with the admin side of it makes it much less stressful.
00:47:21
Speaker
because I also remember having to be like, okay, well, today was number five of your package and you're sort of, it's like a slightly awkward moment where you have to ask the person for more money, hope that they're gonna say, oh yes, I wanna do five more of these, like within their rights to be like, okay, well, I'm done or I'm leaving for three months or something. So there's always that kind of moment. Yeah, I don't have to worry about that.
00:47:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's really nice not to not to. And I think there's something about I just can show up and do my job. I love it. You know, if it's automated, or if there's a third party that somebody's working with, I do think it puts people on notice a little bit. I think that makes them kind of sit up a little bit and like, oh, this is very professional.
00:48:04
Speaker
That too. A random person in Birkenstocks asking for some cash. Right, no offense to random people in Birkenstocks. I wear Birkenstocks every single day. Yoga teachers do have a reputation of being a little bit... Flaky.
00:48:20
Speaker
Flaky and also easily, I don't know, taken advantage of, honestly. The 10 p.m. text person, I finally had to say, you have to book before 6 p.m. the day before. And part of it was that he wouldn't know his schedule. But I was like, it cannot be happening. But he knows his schedule and we need books of flight, though, doesn't he? Right, exactly. There you go.
00:48:48
Speaker
Suddenly, he knows his schedule. Right, exactly. Everyone knows their schedule when it matters. When they're dealing with Delta. Also, I want to say Delta is not one of our sponsors, but if they would like to be. Delta, if you're listening, and I've got a lot of travel coming up and I would love to do it with you. I heard a friend of mine just from Delta, Australia said it was fantastic. Delta, if you're listening.
00:49:15
Speaker
Apparently, your transcontinental flights are just to die for. It is my favorite major airline, if that helps at all, Delta. Delta, we love you. Yeah. This podcast brought to you by Delta. We're just going to be sponsors. I'm going to write the ad copy and just do some free advertising for Delta.
00:49:35
Speaker
I think we have to get to a lot more listeners than we probably have right now at episode, whatever this is, 18? Oh, I hope so. I hope so. We're going to break a million listeners. Well, but with Movement Logic as our sponsor, I'm not sure we really even need Delta. You know? Sorry, Delta, never mind. I was like some miles. We can't even, you can't afford us. Okay, now we've talked about a lot of
00:50:05
Speaker
stuff, all anecdotal. Of course, this is all just us spitballing and sharing our personal experiences. But I'm wondering if we could summarize, list and summarize some of our top pet peeves slash reasons. We weren't big fans of teaching privates before. And then maybe we'll talk about, you know, reiterate what's changed. And then based on that, perhaps there are some more universally applicable
00:50:30
Speaker
tidbits of advice that could be beneficial to our audience. I don't know, I don't want to give you a number, but if you do like numbers like three to five to your seven pet peeves of teaching privates when you were first starting out, what were they? I'll jump in and just, yeah, okay, mine too, mine too, mine too, and we'll go back and forth here. A lot of them I've brought up, one of them was done.
00:50:52
Speaker
having to chase people. Chase people. For money, for when is the appointment happening, or am I seeing you next week, are you going, you know, all of that kind of thing. So having to do so much of the admin part that is, that was tracking people down. Yeah, that wasn't, it wasn't just sort of, you know, automatic. I didn't like
00:51:14
Speaker
And I would say now that the onus is on me to create this, but I didn't like it when I didn't know why I was there. And, you know, I would sometimes figure out a reason why I thought I was there and just be like, I guess this is why I'm here today. Tomorrow will be different or whatever. It wasn't always because of something that they had communicated directly with me. It was me sort of like looking at the situation like the couple where I would show up and I was like, all right, well, my time here is to just sort of babysit them.
00:51:42
Speaker
while they talk to each other and occasionally yell out some yoga poses. That's all they want. They don't want anything different. So not knowing why I was there. Me too, by the way. Those two are mine as well. Any more? When it was exclusively in person before Zoom was a thing, because a lot of my work as a yoga teacher was pre lots of this stuff, the effort of traipsing all over town.
00:52:08
Speaker
to go uptown for one person. This was when I was in New York, and then in Tribeca for another person, and then maybe over to Brooklyn. There was a lot of physical travel that I had to do between different people sometimes, and that would be exhausting. The nice thing, living in Los Angeles, I still travel, but I drive, which physically, to me at least, quite a bit easier. Yeah, it is, I guess. I mean, I don't get all worked up in traffic jams. No.
00:52:33
Speaker
like my husband sometimes. Well, it's to me in LA, especially because you do drive a lot and often it's not even that geographically long of a distance, but it's just takes it long to get there. The subway, the subway is a real bummer sometimes. Yeah. So it's like you've got your little air condition, space, music or a podcast, or if I need to call somebody, that's when I'll call them. Yeah. So it's sort of like, yeah, you can talk on the phone. You know, downtime ish. Yeah.
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah, I enjoy driving and I consider it to be me time, because I get to do all these other fun things. I usually don't talk on the phone, but listening to podcasts. So yeah, that kind of like, you know, chasing all over the place kind of feeling. Working with, you know, what I had to learn how to do was actually fire people. And before I learned how to do that, I kept working with people that either I didn't really like them, or they didn't seem like they really liked me. Yeah, about it was I would just always go in with some sort of dread, not because
00:53:30
Speaker
I don't know why I'm here, but it was because I don't really like this person. It's not a match. I learned how to fire people. There's a really good phrase that I learned. You learned your no, right? I learned how to say no. Maybe those four are my top key. I share all of them. I will add that I know what I'm not there to do.
00:54:00
Speaker
So much better, which is I'm not there to travel to you and you're not going to travel to me. We're going to do this on Zoom, at least that's where I am right now. I have like people in my neighborhood here like kind of asking me what I do and then they're like, oh, maybe I should, we should, and in my head I'm like,
00:54:17
Speaker
No. Not yet. I'm not ready. I like my Zoom one-on-ones. And I'm not there then, of course, I'm not there to do. If I did start teaching in person, I wouldn't probably be there to do strong hands-on adjustments, right?
00:54:33
Speaker
because that's not what I'm there to do. And I'm also, I'm not there to teach anything other than strength right now. Anything that doesn't involve picking up something heavy for the purpose of getting stronger. And so, yes, you know, I do actually teach yoga sessions to my strength clients when they've, you know, they're tired and they don't want to do strength.
00:54:53
Speaker
Not to say that I refuse to teach mobility or yoga. It's just that the larger arc of why we're meeting is to work on strength. And that feels really good to me. So those five things are the pet peeves that we've addressed and that we've shifted and we've come to like teaching privates. I guess what we could say to teachers as you are meeting with your private clients to just have
00:55:22
Speaker
have in mind that the client needs you just like you need them and that you have a say and you have a lot of control over what your work looks like and what it doesn't look like and you can learn your no's, right? You learn your yeses and you learn your no's and there's a lot to be said for figuring out how to make that admin
00:55:50
Speaker
virtually disappear because it does not have to be a huge time suck and if it is turning into a huge time suck that's actually a red flag that the boundaries are not clearly not clear enough you may need to fire somebody you may need to hire somebody you may need to reevaluate your own boundaries because that really should not be
00:56:12
Speaker
a thing that you have to worry about too frequently. So yeah, cool. I would agree.
Automating Admin for Less Stress
00:56:18
Speaker
The admin really should be automated either with something like a website or with a person. At this point, we have the technology so that you can set yourself up like that.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I actually want to add two more things. One is that when someone approaches me for privates, I'm listening for whether or not I want to work with them, probably as much as they're listening for whether or not they want to work with me. And so I'm paying attention to, right, if I write a really thoughtful, long, lengthy response to one of their questions and then I don't hear from them for five days, that says a lot to me about their level of commitment and interest. And so I'm just not going to give them a lot of my attention and energy, potentially, you know,
00:57:03
Speaker
And that feels really good. It's like, okay, this is one less thing I actually now have to worry about because they've kind of shown me their level of interest and their intentions here to a certain extent. It's not like I've completely written them off, but that means that that communicates something to me.
00:57:21
Speaker
The other thing is that, oh, shoot, I lost my train of thought. So it's I'm listening for whether I want to work with them. Oh, the setup for beginning to work with someone is such an important time. And I am
00:57:38
Speaker
very happy now that that includes sharing with them this Google form that asks them a ton of questions and invites them to go into a lot of detail, for example, about their history with exercise and like, what did you like doing? What did you not like doing?
00:57:59
Speaker
Do you have any injuries that you are concerned about working with? Any pain, aches and pains, things like that. And what's the equipment you have? List all of it. Tell me everything you have. Where are we going to be meeting? And all of these things up front to get all of that information up front and to then very thoughtfully start to project out. What am I going to be doing with this person?
00:58:25
Speaker
And how should we begin and how can we progress within their means? It's just been a game changer. So that's another little thing that I kind of was just stepping in flying blind in the beginning, teaching privates. And now I can't even imagine doing that.
00:58:41
Speaker
No way. And it saves everybody a ton of time for them to fill out that form, me to read it, and then we're not beginning, either one of us at the very beginning, like now I already know quite a bit about you and have a really good idea of how to start well, how to begin well. And beginning well is, I think, really important.
00:59:00
Speaker
So I recently had a new private patient that I started working with. And sometimes with people, and this is strictly because sometimes their medical conditions are more complicated. They may want to talk on the phone with me beforehand, things like that. And I'm happy to do that.
00:59:17
Speaker
um and this person in particular uh their concern was about whether because they had they have a chronic condition and so their question was whether I could do anything to help them um and so you know as we spoke on the phone we discussed you know I discussed my history of working with people with that similar condition and what I've been able to do and things like that and
00:59:38
Speaker
This person came to their first session with me. And I will sort of break into my one thought and have a sub thought about it, which is absolutely yes to the getting the information ahead of time. But then also what I typically do in that first session is say this session is for
00:59:56
Speaker
learning what you need, starting to make the plan. So we may be doing more information gathering this first session and follow-up sessions. We're just going to jump right into the work because I already know where we need to go or have a sense of where we need to go.
01:00:12
Speaker
It's amazing what the second session can be after the first session. But I think especially if you set up the expectations for that first session, the person is not like, well, why didn't I do more? Why didn't we lift more weights or something like that? So you make it clear. You create a boundary on what that session is going to be. But so what was interesting to me during that first session is that at the end of it, the person was like, oh, so you think you can help me?
01:00:34
Speaker
and i was like in my head i mean i didn't say this but in my head i was like you wouldn't be here if i didn't think i could help you you know right for me there's a there's an editing that happens ahead of me like like i remember this one person reached out you know i wouldn't you wouldn't be in my office if i thought i don't know but let me let me let them pay for this which is not cheap
01:00:55
Speaker
and come here and then maybe I'll see if I can so so I did say to that person I was like you know you I already know I can I can help you but they they needed to see me sort of in action as it were to get a sense of whether they thought I could and rightfully so right absolutely absolutely but I remember this one person reached out one time and
01:01:12
Speaker
Um, they, they sent an email and they were like, you know, you were recommended by blah, blah, blah. And I've had this problem for, you know, 20 years. And I have this other problem, this other problem. And I see an acupuncturist and I go to my chiropractor and I have another PT and I get a massage every week. And I did it. Uh, do you think you could help me? And I responded.
01:01:33
Speaker
And I said no, not because I probably couldn't help that person, but I did not believe that that person actually wanted anything to change. And so I said no, but I didn't say like, just no, you know, I said it like, well, I'm not sure that because my honest feeling was, if you are going to all of these other people,
01:01:56
Speaker
I'm never going to know if what I'm doing is helping you. And also, if you're already going to all of these other people and none of it is helping you, then we're barking up the wrong tree. Your situation is something, at this point, I don't know what it is, but all of these other people with physical interventions cannot help you.
01:02:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I kind of got the feeling because sometimes people do this, that they were just collecting. Consuming. Yeah, they were collecting practitioners. They wanted to have an acupuncturist. They wanted to have a chiropractor and a physical therapist and a massage therapist and whatever. The staff.
01:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, and they, you know, when I said my initial sort of no email, they responded with like, you know, don't, I don't want you to be afraid of like, you know, all of this stuff that I have. And, you know, I responded with, I'm not afraid. I just don't want to be, you know, I put it much more politely than this, but in my head, I was like, I just, I have no interest in being another person that does nothing for you. So that's part of the learning to say no. And sometimes for me now, I'm much better at saying no,
01:03:03
Speaker
before we even meet. If I have a feeling similarly, like if somebody takes a long time to get back to me, I have a feeling like they're not taking this seriously. It's not a hard no, but I'm not like being like, great, see you soon. I'm just sort of like, here's my scheduler. Goodbye forever.
01:03:22
Speaker
It reminds me of how I will often address people who approach me with very specific injuries slash diagnoses, who want to work with me privately, and what I need to get out of the way right away is that the things we're going to be doing will not at all be me treating this condition. It will be me helping you get moving with the condition. Right.
01:03:51
Speaker
A lot of times, I don't think that that's what they want me to solve the problem. It ain't me, babe.
01:03:59
Speaker
And the other, the other phrase that I learned as a, as a way to say no, as a way to fire clients was when I was still exclusively teaching yoga. And I, um, this couple had been referred to me from, I think a physical therapist and I went to their house and from the, from the get-go, I was like, something's off here. Something's really weird. And I didn't know what, but I just got like very weird energy.
01:04:23
Speaker
And what I realized was she wanted to be doing this and he super did. And he had sort of been roped into it by her. And basically what he was giving off was very like, I don't like you and I don't want to be here for like an hour.
01:04:40
Speaker
And I think I must have felt them. Excellent. That felt great. I think I had like two sessions with them. And then I finally I reached out to her and I said the phrase that I learned from someone, which is, I don't think I am the right fit for you. So you fire them by firing yourself.
01:05:03
Speaker
because that way it's not, you're not saying that there's, I don't like you people or something like that. You're just being like, we're not, this is not a good fit for your needs. And you know, it's not you, it's me. Exactly. It's exactly, it's not you, it's me, but that's a very polite way to get out of it. So, so, you know, that's a, that's a good phrase to be able to use. Sweet. This I feel has been
01:05:28
Speaker
Hopefully, very helpful conversation. I know it was helpful for me for our listeners who stayed on to listen to this episode because they have at one point in time felt like they don't like teaching private clients.
Improving Skills Through One-on-One Teaching
01:05:40
Speaker
And because it is such a, I think there's just so much to gain from teaching one on one. The obvious one, maybe being like financially, we are actually compensated well in a one on one scenario compared to group class teaching.
01:05:55
Speaker
And I think there's just an enormous amount to learn from teaching privates about how to teach and how to be with people, which is probably 80 percent of teaching is just learning to be a human with another human. And so I think teaching one on ones can make us much better teachers, much better people. And there's a lot to be learned about business and boundaries and taking your work
01:06:22
Speaker
seriously and protecting your own time and establishing healthy boundaries that could potentially teach you about how to do that and other relationships in your life as well. So I hope that what we've shared in this episode has been helpful to you, teacher, if you
01:06:38
Speaker
are listening and going, yes, yes, yes, I want to improve this arm of my business and get better at it. Because I feel like Sarah and I, I'm not perfect at it. I'm still learning. I'm always still learning. But I do feel like I have improved my ability to teach private clients on multiple levels.
Closing and Call to Action
01:06:54
Speaker
So this has been really interesting conversation. Thank you.
01:06:57
Speaker
Sarah for being here with me and sharing your stories. A note to you listeners that you can check out our show notes for links to references that we mentioned in this podcast. And you can also visit the Movement Logic website where you can get on our mailing list and be in the know about sales on our tutorials and other nerdy tidbits of information we share. Join us again next week for more Movement Logic and more of our strong opinions loosely held. Until next time.
01:07:26
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode and you want to support us, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to watch, head on over to our website at movementmagictutorials.com forward slash podcast, where you can watch the video version. We'll be back in your ears next week to nerd out about movement without taking ourselves too seriously in the process.