I’m doing something unique in my marketing and messaging. It is primarily to sell to the cold market. Many of us are selling to the warm market. Whenever you say things like hot yoga or ashtanga yoga with Hargobind, we focus on what we are doing. There is a problem associated with selling to the warm market. It is tiny and people are acquainted with what you are offering. Since they know about Hot yoga, they can go searching for it in some other town or with other teachers.
Targeting cold market
People will not appreciate me for the amount of value as they are already getting those benefits. There are 8 billion people on the planet. If we rely on the warm market of people that know your product, we will have zero impact. The cold market is people that don’t know us. These are the people who have a problem but don’t know the solution. Yoga teachers help with depression, anxiety, blood pressure, self-esteem issues, confidence, and self-love. We use methodologies that create better lives.
If we limit ourselves to hot yoga or kundalini yoga, we fail to have the conversation that the cold market is in pain or looking for solutions. If we talk about our benefits through storytelling, the sky’s the limit.
Many people had joined my last treat. Some had read my book, some had listened to the podcast and some have been following me on social media. Some related to my publishing method to the cold market. People turned up for all kinds of reasons. This made me feel so fulfilled and happy. The hard market was responding to what I was doing.
The cold market cares about your present version. A significant shift in mindset is imperative. When you sell to the cold market, you get way more traction. This is because people don’t see you as they used to. They have a fresh perspective on you. The problem with the warm market is it judges you according to your past version. The cold market sees you for who you are today. Strangers will reject you faster and criticize you harder. They don’t care about you or have no bond with you and they can be mean to you. You must have enough self-esteem to let it go.
Making mindset shift
Even in the United States, around 350 million people are not even 5% of the population. Now, how do we make this mindset shift? How do we make concrete steps to blow up our business and speak to that cold market?
Firstly, it is important to identify the problems of people and offer your solutions to them. In a yoga class, yoga poses are a commodity. When you combine stories with yoga poses, it is not a commodity. It’s important that you give people benefits through your stories. If you don’t do it, you are participating in the rush to the bottom.
Secondly, you have to have a free offer, you have to do some type of publishing of your message. It could be podcasting, blogging, or YouTube. I prefer the creation of an asset that you can permanently own. That’s why I like podcasting so that someone can come into your world and you help them solve one problem. They can experience your service for 15 hours by reading or listening to your whole podcast. you have to write a book in a problem-solving way. If you’re teaching the way Bikram or Pattabhi taught you to teach yoga, you are not offering a story with benefits. You can teach within one of those paradigms but as soon as you tell your unique story, it’s going to take on a life of its own. You have to take responsibility that will let you grow.
Thirdly, I am talking to unknown people or those who are struggling to figure out why their yoga business is not growing and feel a lack of fulfillment. I don’t feel it because I started talking to the outcasts and people that didn’t fit into a yoga or yoga lineage. At the same time, the people deeply respected the yoga lineage, but they didn’t have their place. You can honor your ancestors and teachers and offer a unique and special yoga experience.
Selling to the cold market
My last idea is to learn every practice. The ultimate fighters of UFC Ultimate Fighting are trained in many martial art styles. They are learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu, wrestling, boxing, and many other fighting techniques. The top guys learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu but it’s all this mix of the mastery of these different fighting styles.
In yoga practice, nobody gets punched in the face if they don’t learn the techniques and skills. But if you do, you’re gonna have so many offers to the cold market. You are gonna have different tools in your toolkit when people show up with a handstand problem. They show up with a business problem, sole problem, Karma problem, and the back bending technique problem. They need a tune into their voice, learn mantras, chanting and their students sing and dance.
In my Last Retreat, we did the Hindu Mantra chanting and some people were not comfortable with that. I noticed one of the Muslim women and two of my orthodox Jewish clients didn’t want to come. So I was so happy that I united the Jews and Muslims, and did not come to the curtain with the Hindu chanting later hosted by the Sikh.
Trying different methodologies
All the different methods have their place. The greater student you become, the more problems you solve. You will become such a character if you become a phenomenal student. You learn the different methodologies- the Kundalini, the Bikram the Vinyasa, the Ashtanga, the Dharma, and the Wim Hof.
Pilates calisthenics hand, balancing Mongolian contortion, learn it all Yin, pop pilates. Become the student who has got so much to offer. You will be in a different world serving that cold market with all the different experiences that you’ve had and can have. You’ll be so fulfilled in what you’re doing.
Change your mindset, and what you’re doing, and honor where you’re from. Solve that karma, put that to bed quickly, love your parents, community, and love what you’ve been taught. Shift your verbiage, terminology, and what you offer so that an unknown person gets satisfied. The sky is the limit so you’ll not be trapped. You’ll always be expensive if you sell to the cold market.
My teacher Susie was my best friend and now she’s set up a yoga studio next door to me. We hate each other because that’s selling to the warm market than selling to the known people. You’ll never feel like your teachers are competing with you or there’s too much saturation of yoga. Everybody already knows what yoga is. That’s all people are selling to the warm market. So if you want to win at the highest level, you sell to the cold market. If people take your business or your business fails, it doesn’t even matter. There are 8 billion people on this planet who need self-healing. They may not call it yoga. But everyone needs to feel stronger, healthier, faster, and more compassionate. So when you sell to the cold market, you have more impact, love, joy, money, and fulfillment.
