How a solo yoga teacher in Calgary stopped doing admin in a notebook and grew her business

Highlights

Problem

• A WordPress site that functioned more like an online brochure than a working business tool
• Hours of manual admin per class, including handwritten notebooks, spreadsheets, and a profile for every student
• A rigid registered-series model that limited flexibility for clients
• A failed attempt to switch to Squarespace, which couldn’t do what a yoga teacher actually needs

Solution

OfferingTree’s Studio Max Plan

Results

• Roughly two hours of admin per class taught reduced to zero
• Substantial year-over-year revenue growth, supported by recurring memberships and a frictionless first-class experience
• A shift from registered series only to drop-ins, packages, and memberships, giving clients real flexibility
• Enough confidence in the platform to design OfferingTree sites for two other wellness professionals

Overview

Sara is a yoga and movement teacher based in Calgary, Alberta. She teaches around three classes a day, with about 15 weekly offerings that range from prenatal and mom-and-baby classes to gentle beginner sessions and more advanced practices. Most of her teaching is in person now, but she also keeps a library of pre-recorded virtual classes and offers hybrid options when it fits.

She’s a solo operator with a few subs who teach occasional classes for her. She rents space across a couple of communities in Calgary and works with around 750 active students at any given point. This year, she’s focused on rebuilding the prenatal and postnatal side of her business, which was a major part of her work before the pandemic and is something she’s ready to grow again.

If that sounds like a lot of moving parts for one person, it is. The reason it works is that almost none of it touches her hands anymore.

The challenge

A website that wasn’t really a website

Sara’s previous platform was WordPress, built for her by a designer about a decade ago. At the time, that was just what people did. The site looked fine and served its purpose for a while, but it stopped keeping up with how she actually ran her business.

“It was not interactive, was not intuitive, was extremely hard to change. I would crash the site or I would make little add-ons that never looked the way that I wanted them to look. Everything was becoming mobile friendly and it wasn’t mobile friendly. It was almost more like an online brochure than an actual interactive usable website.”

Because the website couldn’t handle bookings or payments, Sara was managing the business side entirely by hand. She had a profile for every student. Every purchase got logged manually. She kept a physical notebook to double-check her own spreadsheets. The financial work, the scheduling, the follow-up: all of it ran through her, every week, on top of teaching.

That setup also forced her into a less flexible model for clients.

“I ran all my classes as registered series, which was good, except for that it doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility for the client.”

A near-miss with Squarespace

Before she found OfferingTree, Sara had been trying to make Squarespace work. She has some background in graphic design and knows her way around the web, so she expected the build to feel natural. It didn’t.

“Even with my understanding, I really couldn’t figure out what I needed it to do. So I hadn’t taken the leap. There was just something holding me back.”

Support was part of the problem. When she had questions, she’d get sent ten articles to read instead of a real answer. For someone juggling teaching, three kids, and a small business, that wasn’t going to work.

The solution

Built for yoga teachers, usable from her phone

Sara first heard about OfferingTree on the Connected Yoga Teacher podcast. She gave the trial a try and started building from her phone.

I was playing around with the free trial on my phone and I couldn’t believe the capabilities. This was really a long time ago, like 2020, 2021. So OfferingTree has come leaps and bounds since then. But even five years ago, I was able to do so much on my phone.

That mattered to her then, and it still matters now. Sara has three kids: a teenager, a near-teenager, and a five-year-old. A lot of her admin and website work happens in pockets of in-between time, including from the stands at her son’s hockey games.

The other thing that sold her was that the platform was actually built for the work she does.

Because it’s designed specifically for yoga teachers or for movement teachers, it did exactly what I needed it to do.

The results

Two hours of admin per class became zero

The most immediate change was time. Sara used to spend about an hour preparing for each class and another hour reconciling the numbers afterward. For every hour she taught, she put in two more behind the scenes. Now that work happens automatically, freeing up the equivalent of a part-time job’s worth of hours every week.

That shift carries into her bookkeeping, too.

It’s excellent for tax season. It’s so helpful. It’s great for looking at goals and where I’ve been and where I want to go and what I might need to supplement income during slower months like the summer.

More flexibility for clients, more revenue for Sara

With the back end handled, Sara was able to move away from registered series only. Now most of her classes are drop-in, with the option to buy a package or a monthly membership. That shift opened up her business to a broader range of students and made it easier for clients to bring friends.

My revenue has gone up substantially since I started using OfferingTree. I’m lucky to have yoga students that have purchased monthly memberships. I also have students that come a lot and bring friends. Using OfferingTree has made that a simple process.

She also runs a free first-class code that she promotes widely and encourages students to share. Because the sign-up process is low-friction, new students actually use it. “So that’s growing my business,” she says. It’s a pattern shared by other studios that scaled quickly on OfferingTree, where a frictionless first class is often the difference between a one-time visitor and a long-term member.

Confidence to try things

Some of the growth comes from a less obvious place: Sara is willing to experiment now. When setup is fast, the cost of trying something new drops. Pop-ups, four-week sessions, and one-off workshops all stopped feeling like big technical lifts.

I think I’ve been willing to take more risks with OfferingTree because the setup is so easy. I can easily put in a pop-up, I can easily put in a four-week session and not worry if it doesn’t work. I could put in a workshop and cancel it if it’s not going to work. So it’s really given me the courage and the support to just try things and see what will happen.

That courage extended in a direction she didn’t expect. Sara has now designed two more OfferingTree websites for friends, one for a yoga teacher and one for an acupuncturist.

“Even though I designed it and it’s on OfferingTree, I feel like I was able to help them design websites that really suit their brand and who they are and what they’re trying to do with their businesses, that look so different from other OfferingTree users.”

A solo teacher who doesn’t feel alone

Sara is a member of the OfferingTree Heroes program, which gives a small group of customers a direct line into product updates, webinars, and each other. She listens to every session, even when she has to catch the recording because she’s teaching at the same time.

Being a yoga teacher, especially somebody who works primarily alone, can feel a little bit lonely and a little bit like an island. So having OfferingTree as part of my business feels like I’m working with something greater. I feel like I’m part of a bigger team, and I have this huge entity behind me just as one person.

What’s next: rebuilding the prenatal side

With the day-to-day running on its own, Sara has space to think bigger. Her focus this year is bringing her perinatal work back to the center of her business. Before the pandemic, she ran a prenatal yoga teacher training and a full slate of prenatal, postnatal, and pelvic floor offerings. Most of that content still exists. She just hasn’t had time to use it.

“I can take some of my content from my prenatal teacher training and put it into some webinars, put it into some mini courses, have it as an offering in my store”

She’s also planning to write blog posts aimed at that audience and grow the prenatal classes themselves.

Her advice to anyone weighing whether to try OfferingTree is the same kind of advice she’d give a student on the fence about a first class:

I would say 100% do it and do it right away. It’s really fun. It’s really intuitive. Also know that it’s like learning anything. It takes a little bit of time, but you’ll get faster and faster with it. You can reach out and get support from anyone at any time. I just can’t recommend it enough.

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