Seven Things I’ve Learned Starting a Meditation Studio
by WITHIN Cofounder Hannah Knapp
Three years ago, Megan and I held WITHIN Meditation’s first studio class. Since then, we’ve held 2,300 meditation classes, reaching 1,600 students (many of whom come back again and again), and we’ve brought meditation to many more at the 125 companies where we’ve held workshops and meditation sessions.
But it wasn’t at all clear from the get-go that WITHIN was destined to succeed. We had a lot to learn about how money and purpose can come together, or be at odds with each other, when you’re launching a wellness business. And frankly, we’re still learning.
If there’s one thing that goes without question when you’re running a company that teaches meditation, it’s that the journey is the destination. So at the three-year mark, I’m pausing to reflect on the pleasant surprises and tough lessons that have shaped our path thus far. Here are seven pieces of advice I’d give to someone else about to begin such a journey.
#1: Create relationships that make everyone’s business better.
There were a lot of assumptions Megan and I had when we first started holding meditation classes. One of them was that we would sublet the space we needed to hold two classes every morning, several mornings per week. So, we worked out an agreement to do that with Moksha Life Center, a chiropractor at the edge of San Francisco’s Financial District.
The terms were theoretically perfectly reasonable, by San Francisco standards. The trouble was, we had absolutely no idea how many people were actually going to show up and pay for classes – no historical data to project from, only assumptions and guesses. We were just getting started.
We ended up on the hook for so much rent, that within six months of starting the studio, we had more debt than we could possibly pay back unless we immediately stopped paying rent. The classes were gaining traction, but not fast enough to keep up with and exceed what we were paying per month. We decided not to renew our sublet for another six months, and instead see if we could find a way to get space for free.
That’s when we met Andrea Stern from Satori Yoga, a beautiful studio three blocks away. Megan had reached out to her a few months prior about holding midday classes there. At the moment when we had no idea how we were going to keep holding classes, Andrea appeared, proposing a revenue share rather than a flat rate for rent.
She believed her yoga students would benefit from having meditation available to them, and that we could provide it – despite the fact that we only had three teachers (myself included) and six months of classes under our belts. I’m forever grateful that she was willing to take a chance on us.
Over the following two years, we grew and thrived at Satori, expanding our class schedule over time. And then two more collaboration opportunities appeared: with Octave, and with Boombox Studio. In both cases, the founders were looking for a way to bring meditation to their clients, as a complement to their other services. Based on our experience at Satori, we suggested similar arrangements, where our clients paid us and their clients paid them.
This spirit of collaboration and experimentation has made those business relationships easeful and straightforward – and saved a lot of overhead costs that would have put us out of business.
#2: Understand the money mentality of your clients.
One of the big dilemmas we faced from the start was how to ask people to pay for what we were offering them. Meditation groups operate more like religious non-profits than like commercial ventures: you’re asked to donate rather than pay a registration fee. But we weren’t a meditation group; we were offering classes, more like what you would expect in a yoga studio setting than at the San Francisco Zen Center.
Our sense was that our clients were people who were much more comfortable paying for a service, than figuring out what to donate for an experience.
So, we began with drop-in rates, and added unlimited memberships once we had enough classes on the schedule to make such a thing seem worth it. Figuring out how to price those was tricky, as people don’t necessarily assume they should pay as much for meditation as they would for a fitness or yoga class. But, with some trial and error, we came to figures that seemed to walk the line of being affordable, and demonstrating the value of the class.
Fast-forward two years, and we were faced with a new question: would people pay to meditate with us online? With COVID-19 pausing in-person classes, we had to go virtual and see what happened. Many yoga studios and teachers were offering online classes by donation, but from the start we chose to stick with our existing model: pay a reasonable price for each class, or buy a reasonably-priced membership and have unlimited access to every class on the schedule.
It took a few weeks to figure out what “reasonable” meant in this new all-virtual environment, but again, with some trial and error, we settled on pricing that would allow us to pay the teachers and serve the students well. And when it turned out that everyone being home all the time wasn’t just a temporary thing, we were in a much better position to keep offering virtual classes, than we might have been had we gone the donation route.
#3: Recognize when to let someone else do the work – and when to do it yourself.
Early on, Megan and I did everything. That’s how startups work – the founders wear many hats as the endeavor gets off the ground. I had never planned to teach the classes in our studio, but for the first three months, I taught all of them! We quickly realized that it would be well worth finding the money to bring on other teachers. Once we did, we could expand the number of classes we offered, and appeal to more students.
Over time, we’ve added more teachers to our roster, some of whom have stayed with us for a few months and then moved on to other cities and lives, and some of whom are still with us to this day.
Some students loved (and still love) the way I teach – but others find other teachers’ styles much more to their liking. With several of us teaching every week, they can choose which what class they take based on which teacher speaks their language (so to speak).
Things fell out a bit differently with the meditation classes and workshops we lead inside of companies. I was much more cautious about hiring another teacher to step into those circumstances. In our public studio classes, students are in control of which teacher they sit with, and they often come multiple times, so they can try out different styles and then settle on one or two teachers that work best for them. In that situation, having a variety of styles is a real benefit.
But when we offer meditation at a company, we often only have one opportunity to prove ourselves – to the people who hired us, and to the employees who attend the session or workshop. The person who delivers that meditation session or workshop has to have a style that fits the culture of the company and that speaks to people who aren’t necessarily self-selecting for meditation in the first place – and they need to understand what it’s like to work in an office environment (especially a tech environment).
For the first year, I led every meditation session and workshop we held in the workplace myself. I learned a lot about what worked, what didn’t, and how the way I presented myself mattered.
And then, we began to have so many requests coming in from different companies that I literally couldn’t do it all myself. That was the point when I realized I needed to start engaging and trusting other teachers to lead. I selected a few teachers from the studio who had backgrounds in tech and understood what it was like to work inside of a company, and began bringing them into companies. It was really hard at first to let anyone else do it! But I realized that they were capable of doing just a good a job as I was – and often even better.
In the year since, I’ve gradually shifted almost entirely out of leading sessions and workshops for companies. Instead, I focus on cultivating relationships with our clients so that, as a team, our teachers and I can give them an experience that meets and exceeds their expectations.
#4: Pay people well to do what they love.
They only people we’ve ever paid to do anything for WITHIN are teachers, and a fantastic marketing consultant who helped us early on, Ivellisse Morales. All of the other work it takes to run the studio – the “back office” – I handle myself. While this started as an extension of “the founders do everything,” it became deliberate as we began hiring teachers. I love running the business side of the business; I truly enjoy every aspect of it, even when it’s hard or time-consuming.
With each teacher we’ve hired at WITHIN, I’ve been struck by their passion. Each of them cares so much about helping other human beings learn to meditate and deepen their practice. They truly see teaching with us as an opportunity to reach more human beings who need access to these ideas and techniques.
Because teachers are so passionate about what they teach, it’s also often difficult for them to advocate for being paid a living wage. That, combined with historical practices by gyms and studios of undercompensating their employees, leads to frustration, burnout, and abandoning teaching. We really, really didn’t want that to happen to our teachers.
Early on, we realized that the rate that students were willing to pay for classes couldn’t possibly cover what we wanted to pay the teachers, as long as our class sizes remained small. We had to either pay the teachers less, or we had to find a way to make up the difference. Because we were super clear on how important it was to pay our teachers well, it was obvious that we needed to find another source of income.
As more and more companies began reaching out asking for meditation classes and workshops, we realized that, if we could hold enough of those, we could become our own not-for-profit, reinvesting all profits from the private sessions into paying the teachers for the studio classes. To this day, that’s how we keep the studio open.
#5: Get curious about what you’re resisting.
At the start, I was very resistant to offering meditation sessions in the workplace. Megan and I both came from the tech startup world, where we had worked in operations. I had a background in HR, and was adamant that I didn’t want meditation to be just another perk that was offered to employees.
Then Megan talked me into doing an introductory meditation class at Dropbox, where she had previously been employed and still had lots of contacts. The class was to be part of their wellness week, and the organizers seemed genuinely excited about offering meditation for its own sake and not just because “mindfulness” was a buzz word.
When I got up there in front of a room full of curious people, I realized that we really could be helpful by offering information and guidance about meditation inside of a corporate environment. The people who were drawn to it would show up, and we could offer them tools and inspiration to develop their own personal meditation practice – exactly as we do in our public classes at the studio.
After that, I dropped all of my resistance and committed to providing workshops and guided meditation sessions to any company that was looking for them. Over time, we’ve built our client list and expanded into offering stress reduction workshops as well as introductions to mindfulness and meditation. With the advent of COVID-19, we’ve gone 100% virtual and are reaching people all over the world as global companies engage us to help their employees during these challenging times.
Whenever I look back at how firmly opposed I was to bringing meditation into companies, I chuckle. It’s a humbling reminder to get curious about what might happen if I drop my resistance.
#6: Don’t quit your day job.
Because of how much time I’ve spent around tech start-up founders, I was convinced that the only way to start WITHIN Meditation was to give it my full attention. I believed the only way for WITHIN to take off the way I intended was to quit my day job and spend every waking moment on creating this new venture.
On the one hand, there was some truth to that.
Giving myself nothing but WITHIN to focus on for months was a great way to shake off old stories about who I was, what I was capable of, and the roles I needed to play. However, it was also a great way to get into serious debt.
Since we weren’t operating with the venture capital model that I was so familiar with from tech, there literally was no money except what people paid us for the services we were providing. Not only were we new to the market, we were essentially making a market: we were the only meditation studio in San Francisco at first, and the only one downtown to date. No one knew yet that meditation studios were a thing, and that they should want to come to class with us.
It took 18 months for me to come to terms with the fact that the studio I adored was just not going to be able to support me and my family anytime soon. During that time, I tried all kinds of things to bring in additional income for myself, from consulting to network marketing, but they just couldn’t make up the gap, especially with the load of debt I had incurred during the months before I was willing to admit I even needed a side gig.
When I finally came to terms with what everyone close to me already knew – that I needed a solid part-time job with benefits – it was a relief to discover that WITHIN could do just fine with my part-time attention.
I definitely had to let go of some things that were time-consuming and not absolutely essential to running the business – such as the studio having a substantial social media presence, and putting on events – and I had to teach fewer classes and private client workshops than I had been. But the studio didn’t fall apart when I down-shifted my participation.
We have a wonderful group of teachers, who teach just as well whether I’m posting on Instagram, or not. We have students and clients who love what we do, and aren’t going to walk away if we don’t hold a new course or event every month. The business may be growing more slowly than it would if I could let it consume me, but I’m so much healthier for having a day job. It has allowed me to allow WITHIN to evolve at its own pace, rather than trying to push it to make more money before it was ready.
#7: Be willing to give up your big, expensive idea.
When we first started, we had grand ideas about creating a studio space that would be a beautiful oasis for our students and teachers – a sanctuary in the middle of the busy city. Frankly, I still love this idea. But we quickly realized that creating that would require more money than we could ever supply without venture capital backing – and, we hadn’t proved that what we were doing had a broad enough appeal to justify the absolutely insane rent and build-out costs it would take to create it.
So we shelved that idea and focused on what people did seem to be willing to pay us for: 30-minute classes before, during, and after work.
People were looking for a way to start their day, reset their day, and end their day – and while I’m sure they wouldn’t have objected to the gorgeous sanctuary we envisioned, they really just needed a place that was convenient and a class price that was reasonable.
Thanks to Andrea, we had a space that was perfectly located for anyone working downtown, and we could keep the prices reasonable.
Now that so many people are staying home and unable to go to that beautiful sanctuary we envisioned, I’m all the more grateful that we chose to invest our time, energy and resources into simply teaching meditation and mindfulness. That’s the heart of what we set out to do in the first place, and staying true to that has helped us know how best to serve our students whenever we’re considering a new idea.
Hannah held her first class in that first space on June 27, 2017. Come see for yourself how the WITHIN community has grown since then, and learn from our many teachers. Try a class this week!