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Here’s What I’m currently doing to Manifest Wealth and Abundance through my Passions

February 22, 2013

Throughout the years and even today I work with and for a variety of different organizations from small businesses, large corporations, educational institutes, media companies and marketing agencies. Whether, I’m an employee or contractor, one thing has become crystal clear to me: In order for me to grow and succeed in my career  I must be passionate about it. My passion drives me to excel and inspires me to do my absolute best. My expertise and passion is marketing (for they don’t call me Marketing Melodie for nothing!). I discovered that I am allowed to have more than one passion though and my other passion is yoga. And thus began my quest to combine my 2 passions into my career.

I’ve made a significant amount of progress in the past year. I’ve become a more established Yoga Instructor and even launched my own yoga website, Tao of Yoga. I’m teaching at least 5 regular classes a week absolutely love it. While it definitely took me some time to iron out my teaching schedule so I could also work full time on my marketing business, I’m happy that I have the opportunity to do both. I work with many types of clients at Marketing Melodie and I’m happy to continue doing this but I really want to be a well known marketing resource for the Yoga and Fitness industries. What am I doing to ensure this happens? Here are my actionable steps. I am putting this out there into the world to open up doors. Perhaps someone reading this can help accelerate my progress in some way. Perhaps you have a need for my services or want to be a part of my venture. Whatever connection you might feel from reading this, I encourage you to act on it and reach out!

La Jolla Open Aire Market Yoga

1. Create a workshop on the “Business of Yoga” that will be standard for all Yoga Teacher Training programs- Currently all Yoga Teacher Training programs through Yoga Alliance must have a “Business of Yoga” section. Up to 5 hours (of the 200 hour training) can be allotted to business but most trainings only cover about 1-2 hours. The majority of Yoga Instructors I have talked to (no matter where they did their training) all agree that they would like to see more emphasis on the business portion and more specifically on how to actually start marketing and branding themselves as a new instructor. This is where I am confident I can be a resource and combine my marketing background with my experience for working in the fitness industry to help yoga and fitness professionals excel.

Where I’m at now–  The workshop is created! Of course since my “Business of Yoga” workshop has a strong emphasis on marketing and social media which is always changing, my presentation itself will constantly be updated before each time it’s presented to ensure it has the most up to date information. Not only has the workshop been created, but I have successfully presented this workshop a the first Digital Media Now for Yogis event take took place last July at La Jolla Yoga Center. The feedback I received was positively overwhelming which lead me to host my second Digital Media Now for Yogis event in November 2012 at the Chula Vista Yoga Center. Since I already have some momentum I would like to keep it going by scheduling more workshops this year as part of Yoga Teacher Training programs. My next scheduled Digital Media Now Workshop is going to be at Bird Rock Yoga on Saturday May 4th from 12:30pm-2:30pm.

NEXT ACTIONABLE STEP– Write a blog post on the importance of my workshop for Yoga Teacher Training programs and why it needs to be in every training. Then I will do my best to share this post with leaders who are in charge of training programs. I want to book at least 3 more workshops by the end of March.

Digital Media Now for Yogis Workshop

2. My workshop will be approved through  national personal training organizations to count as CECs (Continuing Education Credits) – While I’ve started my workshop off by presenting to mostly people who are Yoga Instructors and Yoga professionals, I know that my program is just as beneficial for personal trainers. Continuing Education Credits (CECs) serve to evaluate and validate the continued competency of a trainer’s current and applicable knowledge so it’s important that they are constantly keeping themselves educated . Continuing education is required of many business professionals, educators, and health and fitness instructors and many personal training organizations such as National Federation of Personal Trainers (NFPT), American Fitness Professionals & Associates (AFPA) and American Council on Exercise require the trainers to obtain CECs every year. I absolutely want my program to be approved for CECs which will encourage Personal Trainers to take my workshop. 

Where I’m at now- This is a goal that I just set for myself so I honestly don’t know the exact steps on proceeding.

NEXT ACTIONABLE STEP- I’m going to contact a few people I work with who I know have been involved in hosting workshops that count for CECs and see where that leads me. If anyone already has a program that’s approved for CECs or knows anything about the process of getting a workshop approved by a national personal training organization, I would love your advice.

3. I will be hired to speak at prestigious fitness conventions such as IDEA World, IHRSA and Yoga Journal Conference as a keynote speaker and/or workshop leader– I’m proud to have built up an impressive speaking background in the past few years. My desire to speak, teach and share with others my passion about marketing and social media has opened up many doors for me to present at prestigious events and host workshops around the world such as The Internet Society in  Hong Kong and Beirut, Lebanon and many places in my home town San Diego such as my most recent speaking engagement at the Social Media for Entrepreneurs workshop. I absolutely love public speaking and want to manifest opportunities to continue speaking and teaching those in the yoga and fitness industries about marketing and social media.

Where I’m at now- I attended the Yoga Journal Conference in San Diego back in July 2012. I did my research beforehand got connected with their Marketing Coordinator through email before the event. I explained to her what I did and my interest in presenting at their event. She got back to me and said “If you have any ideas for last minute marketing pushes in the SD and LA areas, I’d love to hear them”. After thoroughly evaluating the marketing effort for the Yoga Journal Conference (mind you this is usually something I charge clients for but I was happy to do it as a service since I wanted to build a good relationship with the organization) I took the initiative to claim their venue on Foursquare, and gave her 4 great suggestions for increasing visibility in San Diego and LA including a contest idea, a sales promotion, and referral program and a blogger outreach idea. I also noticed their online presence needed to be more consistent as their profiles and screen names for various networks were all different. They did not implement any of my ideas but I was happy for the opportunity to share and I was able to set up a meeting with both the Marketing Coordinator and the Conference Director during the Yoga Journal Conference. At the meeting, I explained to them my vision and on how I want to teach fitness professionals how to live their passion and make money doing it. I also explained to them the thought process behind the different promotions I recommended for them. I did a poor job of conveying my value because they did invite me to present at upcoming Yoga Journal Conference but told me that they didn’t have a budget to pay me and also let me know that I must cover my own transportation and lodging. So I was essentially invited to not only work for free, but to pay to work. At the time I was extremely busy so after that meeting, I put working with that organization on the back burner because they didn’t see the value in what I have to offer. It was a very frustrating experience. I got all the way to the top in meeting with the actual Conference Director but failed in my attempt to convey just how important and valuable I could be to the organization. I’m now even more determined to break into the fitness convention world as a valuable resource and  someone who they want to hire on their team.

NEXT ACTIONABLE STEP– I know a few people involved with IDEA World so I will reach out to them. I will reconnect with the Yoga Journal Conference and share with them my successes so far in presenting Digital Media Now for Yogis at Yoga Studios and see if  reconnecting leads to any opportunities. If anyone is involved in any fitness conventions, please each out to me. I would love to connect!

In the past year I’ve worked extremely hard to get to a place where my career is focused on my passions for marketing and yoga. I want so badly to help others succeed in their career focused on their passions.  I now need to step it up and create wealth and abundance for myself so that I can be an example for others and prove that it truly is possible to live a life and succeed by doing what inspires you. I honestly didn’t know where I was going when I started writing this post. In fact, I don’t even know if anyone is going to read through this whole thing, but I’m glad I put my intentions out there and I’m glad I’m holding the internet accountable for my next actionable steps. Wishing you all a happy, healthy and wealthy day!

~NAMASTE~

1 comment Leave a comment

  1. Pingback: Prepare your Mind and Body for Enlightenment at SXSW with @MyMelodie #SXSWYoga : Marketing Melodie

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