How to tap into the college market

The unique thing I offer you is the fact that I am still a college student and for 3 years in my undergraduate at the University of Central Florida I taught to groups of 80 and more college students at a time. Now even though I live in NY, I still travel to Orlando once a month and stay a week or a weekend and I teach a yoga teacher training. Always at least one-third to one-half of the attendees are college students!

College students are very, very easy to market to and appeal to. We want to be healthy and fit and we want to de-stress. If you can provide that, you are golden.

Here are my tips for you that I know you will find useful if you are serious about tapping into the college market.

1. Extra Curricular: Every college and university has a student activities fund. Most students pay about $20 when then pay their tuition because on their receipt for their tuition there is a section labelled, "Student Activities". 10,000 students x only a $20 activities fee = a potential $200,000 BUDGET!. You should go to the web site of the college that's nearest to you and contact the president of various clubs at the school.

2. Teach for Credit. Many schools now have yoga as a gym class and the class almost always fills up to maximum capacity which means the college may want to add or start a credited yoga class and maybe you can teach that class!

3. Impromptu- Put signs and flyers up all around the college that you will be teaching a FREE outdoor yoga class. Give all the info and just show up and you will find students will be there. You could bring a "love donation box". You may be surprised at how much you get in donations and you can give info out about your studio and collect emails.

4. College night: Host a college night at your studio on your deadest night of the week. Make all the yoga classes half off. Make sure you serve tea or have something a little novel to enhance the experience and to get your studio talked about at school.

5. Take a credited college class yourself! Take an easy, "Buddhism as a Religion" class or something similar and learn something new, meet college students and get the insider information.

7. Yoga Teacher Training: If you have a yoga teacher training, make sure you advertise this to college students you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that many of them want to become yoga teachers.

8. Make sure you are relaxing- My classes were always the most packed because I always left at least 15 minutes for savasana. Even though the class was only 55 minutes in length, I still left a whole 15 minutes for relaxation. Don’t just turn off the lights and be quiet, learn how to guide people into a deep, hypnotic trance where they can rejuvenate and restore. If you don’t know how to do this, get my book, “Guided Relaxations and Savasana Scripts for Yoga Teachers Volume 1.” I promise that you'll be making a big mistake if you cut savasana short!