This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome. This is side hustle school. I'm Chris Guillebeau. Once again, here with you today to tell you a story about someone who is not necessarily an entrepreneur. They have a regular job, but because they want to have a side income, they recognize the value of that for all sorts of reasons.
They have an idea and then they take action on it. How do they get the idea? How do they do it? What happens as a result? That's what I try to do every day on the show.
Now today's story is about a mobile yoga studio, which is one of those brilliant concepts that as soon as you hear it, you pretty much know what it's about. I recently had this story about a 10 minute workout. And that's similar in the sense that once you hear that phrase, 10 minute workout, you know what it is, you see the benefit right away. So today's story, this Los Angeles designer who starts a mobile yoga studio is also catering to this need that people have to exercise more, or at least their desire to exercise more in the midst of a busy life. So if you're busy and you're working for a company, you don't have time to get in your car and drive to a gym, plan around someone else's schedule, et cetera, well, this person has provided a solution.
Their story in just a moment. [Music]
Today's story comes from McKenna Rowe from Los Angeles. She's a UX product designer. On the side, she does music production and she also runs Chakra Five, which is what we'll look at today. Chakra Five offers mobile yoga and meditation classes by appointment to schools, offices, and organizations.
It all started after McKenna had owned and operated a physical yoga studio in 2011. During that time, she was able to work with some of the best instructors in the city and observe how they worked with students of all levels and body types. This gave her a strong group of good teachers to tap into for this new unconventional endeavor. And it was McKenna's background and skill for her day job doing user experience and front end development that helped her with the steps to start the business side of things. Coming up with the brand name, getting the website domain, commissioning a logo and branding, starting a WordPress blog, and paying close attention to important terms for search engines.
Now on that point, while she was doing some research, McKenna discovered that mobile yoga in Los Angeles was a common search term for companies looking to have yoga at their offices. She also discovered terms like yoga at the office, corporate yoga, and kids yoga. She built her blog around these terms so that she could become an authority site and receive traffic when people search for those phrases. She also used MailChimp to collect emails on the website and focused on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for social media. When she first started, McKenna offered some free yoga classes, advertised through all those channels, the website, the email, social media, and some small local press that a friend who worked at a PR agency helped to require.
This allowed her to get experience and feedback from users, and she also connected with a company called Health Dimensions, which produces health fairs for various businesses. That company invited Chakra Five to present their services at those events, and that led to a lot of introductions. She brings the mobile yoga studio to startups and traditional companies, pays the teachers well, and then she keeps 20%. Aside from paying the teachers, her operating expenses are very low, and this year, Chakra Five is on track to earn between $40,000 and $50,000, which McKenna is rightly proud of, especially since she only puts in a few hours a week working on the hustle. That's great because her full-time job takes 50 hours a week, so she knew when she set this up, she would have to do it in a way that wouldn't require a lot of ongoing time from her.
That's why she works with those yoga teachers. She is essentially the coordinator and point of contact, and they are the ones actually going out on site and working with students. She actually does have some flexibility at her day job, so she's been able to take several unpaid absences because the side hustle is giving her extra income. For now, she wants to continue writing music and expand the mobile yoga studio into kids yoga, which she believes is another opportunity just waiting to be explored. [Music]
So as I said, when you hear mobile yoga studio, you know what it's about right away, and you could probably see why it's popular because yoga itself is very popular, especially in a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles.
There's a lot of people who would love to do it or do it more, and there's a lot of busy people who are working 40, 50, maybe 60 hours a week or more at stressful jobs. So for them, their company providing this as an option can be a real benefit. Now I was thinking about this because I have a food truck story coming up next week, so I don't think I've talked about before on the show, and between that and this feature, it reminded me that one time I was in San Francisco and I saw a haircut truck parked outside a startup, and I thought, what a great idea. Here you have all these people in this big building who are working all day. A lot of them don't have time to get their haircut, and they're tired at the end of the day, and maybe they can't make an appointment, but there you can walk outside, you see the haircut truck.
Once again, you know exactly what it is. It made me think, you know, when people are busy, but they still want to take care of themselves, they still want to exercise, they still want to get their haircut, what can you bring to them? How can you make their lives easier? And that's, of course, what we see in this story with a great result, more than $40,000 a year in net income, working only a few hours a week. It definitely doesn't always happen that way, but if you've been listening to the show, you also know it's not totally abnormal either.
So the whole thing to think about is what do these success stories have in common? They're not just exceptions, there are so many. What can you learn from them and how can you apply it to your life? As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. To learn more about McKenna and Chakra 5, today's episode notes are at sidehustleschool.com/118.
That's 1-1-8. I have something fun coming up for you tomorrow. It's about a Star Wars themed photographer. So lots of photographers do weddings and portraits, and that's fine, of course, but this guy has found a creative approach. I'll be right back with that tomorrow.
Hope to see you then. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Cytosol School. [Music]
