05/20/2020

Help Your Members Stretch Their Business Model

When everything changes overnight, there isn’t time for surveys or focus groups

Yoga is an ancient practice, but there are no exceptions in a new normal that is no longer new—or normal. Even ancient practices need to adapt when the whole world suddenly changes. The Yoga Alliance has 100,000 members—comprising both yoga schools and teachers, representing 150 countries—who suddenly found themselves, like many people all over the world, having to come up with a plan to move their businesses online because of COVID-19.

Yoga Alliance’s Catherine Marquette, vice president of marketing and communications, said that until several weeks ago, yoga was primarily taught in person, but the global pandemic upended the entire industry. But, as Dean West, FASAE, author of a study on the economic impact of COVID-19, recently told Associations Now, “You can’t look at a crisis only as a threat. You have to consider it as an opportunity to create energy toward strategic change.”

The Yoga Alliance did just that. Marquette described the first days of responding to the repercussions caused by COVID-19 as “chaotic” but also “incredibly rewarding.” Within two weeks, the Yoga Alliance had transformed its business to support members as they transition to a virtual world of yoga teaching.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.