Keeping Yoga's Life-enhancing Power Alive

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in health and fitness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Jess Rose, Founder of Movement • Wisdom Yoga, located in Berlin, Germany.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Movement • Wisdom Yoga is a community of yoga students and teachers who are leaders in the yoga world and in their communities. We are a group of die-hard yogis looking to take yoga back from the huge yoga corporations who seem intent on watering down its most powerful aspects and creating cookie-cutter classes that are simply about stretching.

As the lead trainer of Movement • Wisdom, I run yoga retreats, online and offline yoga teacher training, classes, and workshops. My partner Viktor takes care of everything tech-wise. Our Movement • Wisdom Collective, a membership for yoga teachers looking to up their yoga teaching and business acumen, is launching in Q1 of 2023, which is super exciting.

Our customers are yoga practitioners and teachers looking for an "ivy league" yoga education. They want above-average knowledge in movement science, yoga philosophy and wisdom, and business. They don't want to settle for teaching at the local mass-scale yoga chain that makes them follow a script and teach in a certain way, usually going against or leaving out the true meaning of yoga. Instead, our customers/students are passionate about sharing the heart, soul, and wisdom of yoga with the world and doing it profitably.

Tell us about yourself

I first got started teaching yoga in 2012. I traveled to India and lived at an ashram where I learned much of the philosophical and mystical aspects of the tradition. I began teaching shortly thereafter and traveled all over the world for training program after training program to quench my thirst for all things yoga.

Eventually, I got scouted to teach on a membership website for yoga classes - DoYou.com (formerly DoYouYoga). All of a sudden, I had more than 1 million yoga students practicing with me all over the world. From there, my career got its proverbial wings, and I began leading retreats and yoga teacher training programs in places like Thailand, Mexico, Morocco, Italy, and Spain. I began filming yoga classes for another online yoga membership, YogiApproved (which has since become YouAligned.com), and tens of thousands more students practice with me now through that site.

I regularly travel to India to soak in the wisdom of the sages and truly experience what exactly is so powerful about yoga beyond the physical. When I moved back home to the US after being abroad for 15 years, I noticed that all the yoga studios around me were huge chains. The classes you can get at these chains are more about getting a yoga butt than anything else.

And yoga is an incredible way to get fit, but it's so much more than that. So I started Movement • Wisdom Yoga as a way to keep yoga's life-enhancing power alive in the US and all over the world. It is my way of pushing back against the business moguls who are forcing grassroots yoga teachers out of business and causing real yoga to go extinct in the process.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

When the pandemic hit, I took my in-person 200-hour yoga teacher training and moved it completely online - no easy task! It took us almost a year to film and edit everything and get it live on our learning platform, but it was worth every minute.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Doing taxes! I absolutely dread organizing receipts and making spreadsheets of "ins" and "outs." I tried to do it by myself for the first couple of years, but after enough mistakes, my partner finally decided to take over this aspect of the business, fortunately for me.

I've done my taxes in Germany for 15 years, but my German isn't great when it comes to financial jargon. One year I accidentally entered my tax ID in the space provided for my total income for the year. My tax ID is about a 15-digit number, so you can imagine how shocked I was to receive a letter from the German government asking me to pay over a million Euros in income tax! (Don't worry, we got it sorted out ;)) But now you see why taxes are a bit intimidating to me.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Pick a niche that you live and breathe so that you can be the best in your field.
Organize your business as if you're making 6-figures right from the start. Get your systems set up, your finances organized, and everything clear and repeatable for the long term, no matter how much you will (hopefully) grow.
Know that huge peaks and valleys are part of the process. Some days will be amazing, and some will be horrible. The vast majority will just be a grind. But getting over the dips - the biggest dips especially - will lead you to success.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://movementwisdomyoga.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessRoseYoga/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessroseyoga/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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