Learning Yoga with Morgan Balavage and Why You Should Create a Mindful Business

Jeremy Deighan
Hey, everyone. Thank you for checking out the podcast today, we have Morgan Balavage from Splendid Yoga. And she's going to tell us all about her journey into online courses and her online business and how she got into this world.

And I'm excited to maybe dive into other aspects, too. Sometimes we don't always talk about just online courses. But we talk about all things including health and nutrition and mindset and things like that.

And I think this would be a great little talk. So, how are you doing today?

Morgan Balavage
I'm doing wonderfully. I'm so excited to talk to you, Jeremy. I'm so excited to talk to your audience and like, tell them all the mistakes that I've made so that they don't have to make the same mistakes.

Jeremy Deighan
Perfect. Well, that is the exact reason why we have this podcast because we want to help everyone out there listening who is thinking about creating an online course or maybe they have an online course and they're struggling.

And so yeah, that'll be really awesome. So, why don't you just take a minute and just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you were doing before you got into online courses in online business.

Morgan Balavage
So, I've been teaching yoga now for almost 15 years. And of course, most of that I've been doing in the real world. But alongside that, that was kind of like my after school job I had I had my big girl job as well.

I had my real job, working in the corporate world working in logistics, helping with revenue management, just figuring out where the company I was working for was losing money, and then helping them fix it helping them make more money. And yoga was what I did as like my reprieve from that lifestyle.

So when I got blessedly laid off from that job, I decided I didn't want to work for anybody else. I knew there was potential in making some passive income of online courses. And I thought, "Well, I've been teaching yoga for a while, I bet I can teach people yoga online."

But my trick was, I had to figure out a way to do it in a way that felt really good. And of course, this was all pre-pandemic, when it wasn't normal to go on Zoom for like eight hours of your life every single day.

So I made the mistake that everybody who makes a course makes. I built it, just assuming that I would find people to buy it after I had built an online yoga program, I built a 30 day yoga course.

It required like an hour and a half of your time each day, it was such a huge commitment, it was so much work to make and one person bought it.

I was able to repurpose that content and resell it many times over the years, including to the University of California Santa Barbara. When they had to go online, they were thrilled to buy the course. But it was so devastating to fail so miserably. And I made the mistake that everyone makes.

And the advice I give to all of my business coaching clients now is to sell it before you build it. You have to build these courses in the context of the customers that you're trying to help. Otherwise, you'll do what I did. I made a course that I needed. And it wasn't the course that my clients needed.

So, it turns out well, but I did enjoy the process of making the course I knew there was potential, I knew it was going to be a lot of trial and error. I work that into my budget in terms of giving myself other income streams as I was figuring out how I wanted to make this passive income stream happen.

And I just got addicted to launching and learning more and more about how to build online courses. All with the foundation of course I need to make money I'm running a business. But more about how can I reach the people I'm trying to reach to help ease their suffering? Because that's what yoga is all about is easing suffering.

And what I found was a lot of the yoga teachers in my network, they were doing okay with their yoga practice, what they really needed was ways to make money. So the all the stuff that I was learning about building courses, they didn't need me to teach them yoga, they needed me to teach them how to market themselves.

So, I started building courses about how to market yourself online, aleast of which just how to have the confidence to do it. Because that's a big thing that's missing when people first get started. You get stuck with this imposter syndrome of like, "Well, who am I to do this work when it's already a saturated industry?"

Especially with the social media algorithms being what they are, as soon as you have a mere thought about something. All of a sudden your social media feeds are flooded with it. It seems like everyone in the world is having that exact same thought. And that's just not the reality of how most people are interacting in this world.

There's so much of an audience for everything. individual person. The trick is not to have the ego, of wanting everyone to buy your course, you really don't need that many people in your network to be buying your course to make it a marketable income stream.

So I after I built and failed at my online yoga course, and then resurrected it many times over the years, and then gotten into teaching people how to market themselves online, still addicted to launching courses.

But I needed to be a little bit more strategic in terms of it not requiring so much time because the launches I was doing, they were live launches, they were all through like Facebook, Instagram, I started to get into Tik Tok, I incorporated LinkedIn and YouTube.

And I was getting clients from all these places, it was just a ton of work. And I wanted it to be way more passive. So I started getting more into email marketing funnels, and really concentrating on what's working really well, not just in that industry and on the macro level, but for the people that I needed to talk to.

What was going to work best with them in an extremely niche market of healers and yoga teachers. And that's when I got into the mindfulness side of learning how to run a business and market yourself.

Of learning what we call in the yogic world that this body siaya element, the self study of learning how to observe what was working on me, and then translate that to what would work on my clients in terms of what are the emails that I'm opening every single day, even if the subject line isn't directly related to something that is relevant to my life?

Is it because of the relationship I have to this person? Is it because of the previous content? And I started to study and piece together, what was working really well marketing wise on me. What was actually getting me to the point of spending money.

And then I just mimicked it, I didn't plagiarize it, of course, because you can't copy and paste these things one to one, you have to give them your own flavor. But I would use the same format in terms of, okay, on the third email, we need to talk about testimonials on the fifth email, we need to drop a coupon.

And then once you build out that initial email sequence, you start studying it over the course of and this is another thing that I have to convince my clients of, it takes a long time to build these courses, it needs to take months, if you're going to do it really well.

And it kind of never ends. It's kind of like building a house where it's you're just have this never ending list of to dues, you just kind of prioritize whatever you need to in that moment in that day. So you have to have patience with yourself. Even these completely passive income streams that people are touting.

I bet that they are still checking in with those email sequences year over year to check in with how those metrics are doing and tweaking what needs to be tweaked. So you need to have a positive relationship to that whole process. But it also needs to be really intuitive.

It needs to come from a place of embodied pleasure and focus. Otherwise, it's just work and work. Isn't that fun. That's why you're trying to build up a passive income stream in the first place so that you don't have to work as much.

So once I started manufacturing the evergreen courses, I started a course called the Money Manifestation Academy, I had a three day challenge that led into it through my Facebook group. I loved it, it worked very well time over time with feeding that group.

But it made me nervous to have it exclusively on Facebook, I wanted to have more of a web of access to my entire audience. So I started tying in all of my social media feeds together to create this kind of massive web of a funnel to get people into my primary courses.

And now the course that I offer, the only one that I offer live Insight Timer secrets where I teach others how to make passive income on that meditation App, Insight Timer. That one, I figured out the way that works best for me.

In terms of how I launch it, when I launch it and how I run the program as both the combination of passive income a self LED module, as well as interacting with the clients one on one during a monthly meeting.

But it took me a full year of working, researching one on one with clients to discover exactly what they would need, offering my services for extremely reduced or trade compensation, then finally doing a full launch and selling it out.

Five years after totally bombing my first launch. I feel like I finally figured it out for me. Where I see a lot of problems in the course field is that people are trying to do it exactly the way that somebody else has done it right changing just like the title of the course and the email sequence trying to mimic exactly the click funnel that someone created.

And it's just not going to work because it's not going to resonate with your audience. And so that's where market research has become such a crucial part of my course building repertoire and why I recommend it to all my clients and why I kind of bring it down to that pithy saying of, "You must sell it before you build it."

If you don't take the time to do that market research. You're not going to sell out it's just not possible. You cannot build a course in a vacuum. That's the nutshell story. What are your questions?

Jeremy Deighan
Nice, I think that you gave us a lot to unpack here. And we'll try to go through and hit some of these main points you had. You talked about selling it before you build it, that'll be a big one that we'll start with.

You also talked about, you know, the confidence of getting out there and putting yourself out there and making sure that you're creating something that your market is interested in, but also having that confidence to go and create that thing. Because like you said, a lot of people have a skill or an expertise.

And they are afraid, you know, this competitors, there's other courses on the market. And so that's a pretty interesting one, you talked about, you know, turning it from live launches, into evergreen funnels, which I think is something that this audience would love to hear about.

You know, a lot of people get into this, because they don't want to be stuck doing these live launches constantly over and over again. So I see that a lot people wanting to learn how to do these evergreen funnels.

And then I feel like the mindfulness is such a cool topic too, because I know for myself that I've just grown a lot as a person and as an entrepreneur, because when you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know. And you don't know everything. So you're just kind of learning and reading and testing.

And as time goes on, you start realizing what works for you. And you just start evaluating what you're interested in and your likes and your needs. And I think that's really a neat topic.

But let's start with a sell it before you build it concept. This is one that a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their brains around. Because if you've never done that before, it can be kind of intimidating, like how am I going to sell something that there's no actual product already created?

Why would someone wants to buy that from me? So let's start there. If someone comes up to you, and you say, "Look, I made the mistake of spending all this time creating a product someone doesn't want you need to sell it first, and then build it." What does that look like from your perspective?

Morgan Balavage
So what I was starting to build my last course, I started it as a one on one mentorship, very clear what my intentions were that I wanted to build this out into an evergreen small group coaching course, I needed the market research.

And so I was offering this one on one mentorship for a period of time I said it was going to be six months with a monthly call. And we would use that time to work them through to the result I wanted them to have. So the first thing I really needed to know was what's the result I want them to have?

Which is I want them to be able to make money doing work that they love, and how am I going to get them there? And all they care about is the result, right? They don't care about the process.

So as I was reaching out to people in my network, I was asking, who needs help making more money as a healer? The people who would respond, I would invite them to have a conversation with me. And I gave them a bare bottom price of what it was going to cost to have my time and knowing they were going to get some value from it.

And from there after about three months, I had cycled through 10 people and I had really good clarity on exactly the process everyone needed. And I had a ton of great feedback of just questions people would send me and a ton of great footage of recording our meetings together to understand from step one to the end result exactly what needed to happen.

So after three months, I started recording some videos and putting them up on I use Kajabi to house all my courses. I love it. There are many other wonderful options. Kajabi is just the one that I fell into and felt comfortable with.

So from there, I started putting up these modules on Kajabi. I would record videos once I outlined all the steps that needed to happen, explaining how it needed to happen editing the videos together from my meetings in order to explain things that needed to be explained, to show the screenshots of what needed to happen in terms of like recording meditations, exactly how to edit those meditations on different audio editing platforms.

And just whenever someone came to me with a question and needed a resource, I would assume everyone who was enrolled in the course I had 10 people in that beta phase would have that same question. And so I threw it into the module. And it just started to take shape from there.

After about six months, I knew I had something that I could really sell. So I started to sell the one on one mentorships as you get the course and you get to work one on one with me. As I was continuing to build the testimonials and the marketing language behind exactly how I was going to sell this thing once I was ready to live launch it.

So this is all very active income. But really, it wasn't more than an hour or two a week. It wasn't much time every single week. It was just a long length of time to allow space for it to grow and evolve.

So once I had the actual modules built out based exclusively on the one on one work I was doing with my ideal clients. I did a live launch where I invited I wanted a very small launch so I only allowed four people in I marketed as a small group coaching course and that I only needed four people and I sold out within a few days.

Most of which from my referral network people who I pay an affiliate compensation fee to, so I was paying out immediately 20% of my income, but I also wasn't having to spend that much time doing any selling.

I wasn't having to come up with this really complicated email marketing scheme, I wasn't having to, you know, throw my freebie out that every Facebook group in the land.

I was able just to send a few emails to my closest friends and my clients and say, "Hey, I've got a few spaces open for this, do you know anyone who's interested?" And that was easily worth a 20% commission just to, you know, spend those five minutes sending out those emails. From there, I'm now moving into the next stage of this course, where I'm launching it as a purely passive income.

I'll still host the monthly meetings. But I'm just planning on expanding it from here. So rather than just having four people in those monthly meetings, we'll have you know, 20 to 40 people every month just answering questions and sharing feedback about our experiences moving through this course.

So the nature of the course that I built, it's an ever changing app, the tool that I use to help my clients succeed, so I need to stay on top of it and stay relevant. And in order to sell it as an evergreen course, I know, I'm going to need to keep a toe in that water of understanding what other people's experiences are.

So it's still a semi passive income stream, I don't know if I'll ever be able to move it into a fully passive income stream. And honestly, anything to do with social media shouldn't be fully passive, because it becomes irrelevant so quickly. Like if I bought a course a year ago, teaching me how to succeed on Instagram, it would be so irrelevant to the Instagram of today.

So anyone trying to build a course on social media, it is unlikely that you will do it successfully in an evergreen capacity, you will always need to stay on top of the latest stuff with social media. But that's not to say there aren't millions of topics that you can sell an online course for that can be completely passive.

Anyone learning how to cook, that's a very easy sell. And you know, the technology there doesn't change too quickly. Anyone learning how to get back in shape and go for a run the technology there doesn't change too much in the human body. But if you're trying to get into the tech space and teach anything about digital marketing, definitely skip the idea that you can do it purely passively.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I think that having one foot in the business that is active, and you are doing some type of like you said maybe like a group coaching or monthly meeting or something like that, you know.

You're constantly staying engaged with your audience, which will always come they'll always provide you with new ideas, you know, new questions, new things that you can answer for your course.

And so I feel like that's important too, because this method of selling it before you create it is really about the audience, it's really finding out what they're interested in first.

I would say that that's kind of the main motivator to want to do this is yeah, you can get some money up front, which is nice, you know, you might be able to make a little bit of money and then go build the thing. That's kind of the selling point.

But the real fact of the matter is that you're creating something built around the results or the transformation that your audience is trying to get to. And you're not going to know that information, like you said in the beginning of this interview, until you go and you start having these conversations with them. Would you agree with that?

Morgan Balavage
Absolutely. That's 100% correct. And it's not just having the input from from the audience. But it's also the language that they use.

Because I might say that I want to find a way to make money, my audience might say they want financial freedom. And those are two very different ways to describe the same basic concept, but the one they're going to pay for is the one that's in their language.

So it's in having those one on one interviews, recording them, and then rewatching them and listening for those key phrases of the transformation that they want. That really leads to the effortless marketing.

Jeremy Deighan
So let's move into the confidence aspect, which was the next thing that you had had mentioned in the beginning was, you know, people, they hear that an online course is a nice business model, they hear that you can make some passive money, they hear that it has its steps and processes.

But as far as, you know, opening a brick and mortar business, it's a little easier I would say to do, but a lot of people get stuck, they get hung up that you know, there's already competitors out there. There's already someone teaching this.

And it goes back to that confidence. So can you talk a little more about those clients that you've had in the past that have struggled with confidence? And how you've helped them through that?

Morgan Balavage
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as a yoga teacher, who does yoga teacher trainings, it just seems like there's a flood of new yoga teachers every single year. And the students who actually want to become teachers who aren't just there for the knowledge will run into that problem towards the end of their training as well, it just seems like there's already so many, like where how is there room for me in this space?

And the interesting thing about specifically the yoga industry, but certainly many other industries is that it's such a transitive industry, where people come and go all the time. And if you're consistent, you're already ahead of the game.

And I think that's really true for social media marketing, digital marketing, and courses, as well as if you're consistent and talking about what you're selling, and working with the people that you love to work with, you're going to succeed more so than most people, because most people won't even get started even less than that will continue.

So that the trick is not to be the best. The trick is, it's to be okay with just being one in the crowd. But it's removing the ego message that like, "Well, I need to be the best, I need to be the most popular in order to be successful." It's totally redefining the definition of success.

So that it's, well, if this helps one person, then it was worth it. If it helps one other person, it was successful. If it makes me some money, if it helps a million people, yatse! All the better. But if your definition of success is that it can help one person, it makes it way easier to quiet those voices that are like, "You're not good enough. You don't deserve to do this. There are better people who can do this."

The reality is, yeah, and there are always going to be. There are always going to be people who are better than you, especially when it comes to teaching. But for the individual who needs to hear your message the way that you're going to teach it. There's no one better, and who are you to withhold that?

Jeremy Deighan
Definitely. And I feel like you know, we're all different people, and we're going to attract different people. I come from a beach town, and I talk about surfing and I talk about my family and I talk about I use words like "cool" and "awesome" and "right on", you know, like, but you know, someone else could be teaching what I'm teaching in the online course space that comes from a different background.

And I feel like you're going to attract people who like you who like who you are and the style that you have. And so one yoga teacher isn't going to teach the same way as another yoga teacher.

Yeah, the the poses might be the same and some of the things that you do are the same. But the way that you present that information, and the person that you are comes off differently. And I feel like you're going to attract your audience, and you're going to repel the people that isn't your audience. And that's a good thing.

Morgan Balavage
Absolutely. And I've been taught exactly as you said, the same yoga pose by probably 1000s of different teachers at this time. And I've learned something different from every single one. Even students that I was teaching, I've learned stuff about different poses from.

There's no like massive amount of knowledge that you have to reach in order to become like the most qualified teacher, you just have to offer what you know, and recognize that so often your your first clients, especially for anything that you're selling, are going to be right behind you on the path.

And the person who's way up at the top of the mountain, they may not remember what it's like stepping through this particular part of the path, but you just went through it. So you're going to know exactly how to help those people who are right behind you in a way that the master they just can't access that anymore. Unless they're a true master. And they've stayed in that beginner's mind their whole time.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's such a great analogy. And I think this is one of the biggest things that I do hear also is I'm not an expert. I haven't been doing this for 20 years, who am I to speak on this subject? And it's just like you said, you know, the person who's been doing it 20 years, they tend to forget some of the beginning things that people struggle with.

I'm even experiencing this myself as I begin teaching people online courses. I've been doing it for eight years, and things that are so second nature to me and so obvious, isn't obvious to someone who has just learned about this business. And so I think you make a really good point, you know that you need to be okay with just being slightly ahead of the person that you're helping.

I like to use the analogy because I did martial arts for a while. And our instructors would have us teach the lower belts. As you progress into a new belt rank, you start helping the belts behind you, you might not be the master of the studio, but you are skilled enough to have gone through the the beginning belts and have learned that, and now you can turn around and help them out too.

So that's really cool. I'm glad you said that. Something else too, that I think kind of goes hand in hand with this is, you know, we're talking about confidence. But then you also mentioned mindfulness of the business and of yourself.

And I think this is really cool. This isn't something I hear people talk about too often. But sitting back and thinking about who I become through this business, and really paying attention to what has worked for me, and how I can apply that and how I can help others.

I mean, how many times do we hear the same thing repeated over and over again in life, and we don't do it. And then one day, someone says it the right way, and it just clicks.

And you're like, "Ah, that makes so much sense." And I feel like, as you gain that confidence as you help people and you teach people and you grow that mindfulness, and you start to become self aware of what you're doing, you can then relay that to others, and it might help someone else out in there.

So just take a moment and tell us a little bit more about your your journey through having that mindfulness and that self awareness in your business.

Morgan Balavage
So for me, as a yoga teacher, as a meditation teacher, I basically wanted to do everything exactly the opposite that it happened in my corporate world, but I still wanted to save money. So my motto, my first couple years, and still to this day of running my business was, "The less I do, the more money I make."

So I really I have ADHD, I have a million thoughts a minute, I have a million projects at any given time. And entrepreneurship, if nothing else is just delving deep into the psyche, of who you are, and constantly relearning who that is. And so by learning how to step into that observers role, and taking most of my morning to practice being an observer.

Like most of my morning stuff, where I used to spend that time answering emails, and you know, setting up meetings and trying to, you know, make productivity happen, I now spend that time sitting and stillness and silence, meditating, learning just how to watch my thoughts and feel my body and breathe into my yoga, practice.

I go through my chanting, I do my journaling. And once all of my ego energy is cleared out of the way, I'm able to delve into the very simple things that actually need to be done today to propel my business forward.

And if I'm being honest with myself, it's usually no more than a couple of hours of work to keep my business going. And part of that is because I just like to do so many other things with my day that I can't really focus on anything for more than a couple of hours at a time.

But part of it is also like, you have to plant the seeds, and then let them grow and trust yourself and the process that they're going to grow exactly how they're supposed to. And just like when you're planting a garden, not every seed is going to germinate. So you get to plan a lot of seeds.

But if you're really operating from a highest self place, if you're not struggling to meet, you know your egos expectations, society's expectations, but you're just trying to do an honest day's work and the day feeling fulfilled and blissful.

If you start from a place of, "What's the one thing that I have to accomplish today to make this one goal go forward?" It's usually as simple as you know, a five minute email or setting that one appointment instead of spending three hours answering emails. So giving yourself permission not to do everything.

The secret to having it all is not doing it all. It's changing your perspective on what having it all means, and really simplifying your life so that you're giving your body, your mind and your spirit what they truly need instead of what you know, your programming your societal patriarchal programming has told you you need.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's really cool. I like this. It's really hard because like you said, as as entrepreneurs, I believe it's just in our blood to want to do like a million things because we have all these ideas on the same way.

I have a notebook of ideas that I've written down throughout the years. I mean, just you know, tons and tons of different things that I want to do and accomplish. And I think, like you said, a lot of people get busy just because they feel like they have to be busy.

And a lot of times you're doing things that aren't really moving the business forward. This is something that I've become more aware of recently in the past year or two is like what things are actually moving the business forward and what things am I doing that is just busy work?

And it seems like I'm working, but it's not really helping out. You had another statement there about, you know, planting the seeds and watching them grow. And I also feel like people don't wait long enough, I feel like in this world of, you know, instant access to everything, we want success just the same way we want success immediately.

And we don't give it enough time, like you said earlier, you know, it's going to take time to create courses. So it's going to take time to, you know, talk to your audience and build out your program. And so many people just give up so soon, you know, I heard a analogy, one time relating to your seed analogy, it's like planting a lime tree.

And then once it becomes a sapling, cutting it down and say, "This isn't bearing fruit enough, now I'm gonna go plant an apple tree." And if you're always doing that, you're never getting the fruit of that tree, because you're not waiting long enough for like you said, to germinate, grow and give you that fruit.

So I feel like that's really impactful that, you know, you need to simplify, you need to wait. What are your thoughts on that?

Morgan Balavage
Well, yeah, that's a perfect extension of that anatomy. And I'm going to steal that. I think the mindfulness side of it comes from just changing the definition of success, where we are programmed to think of success as directly related to productivity.

You know, however many emails you can send it a day, however much money you can make in a day. But if you look at success, both in terms of impact, can I help one person with this project?

Most likely, anything that we do in a given day can help at least one person, not least of which yourself. But also internally. Does it feel good doing this? Am I looking forward to doing this? Or am I just kind of going through the motions, that embodiment practice of knowing what true pleasure feels like of knowing what it's like to wake up in the morning,

Like this morning, I woke up at 4am, no alarms, so easy. Because I was so excited for everything I was going to do today, atleast of which this podcast, I was so excited to talk about my experience creating courses. If I have anything on my calendar during the day that I wake up, and like, I'll feel it from the moment I wake up, like, I'll have to drag myself out of bed, I know I have to cancel that part of my life.

I have to get that part of my life out whatever it is. Whether it's a yoga class that I signed up for that the timing just isn't quite right. Or whether it's, you know, the job that I signed up for, that I'm realizing doesn't fulfill any of my passions, or make me enough money.

But to give yourself the time and the space to really learn that about yourself as an entrepreneur, you do have to plant a lot of seeds. Because even if you do allow the space for the wine tree and the apple tree to grow, they're gonna have you know, fruit at different times.

So it's why that that ADHD brain, that squirrel printer brain can be such a strength because we have that capacity to switch from project to project and to feel fulfilled by so many things.

But to cultivate that patience, to have time to entertain things as well to the seasons of your life, of the natural life, of societal life. That's where the true mastery comes in when you're trying to build an online business.

Jeremy Deighan
The second one you mentioned is can be difficult, because I know for myself, there are things that I do that I believe are helping the business, but I just don't like to do them. And you have that decision to make like do you stick with this thing? Because you feel like it's going to help out even though you might not enjoy it, but you know, it's going to move you forward?

Or do you just let it go and find the things that you truly love and are passionate about? So how would you respond to that if there was something and in someone's business, it's like, you know, I know that if I keep up with this, it is going to help out. But it's just something I dread and don't like doing. What would you say to someone like that?

Morgan Balavage
There are three options. You either don't do it anymore. Things like paying taxes, you're gonna have to do that eventually. You can hire somebody else to do it. That's a great way for something that you know is making money in your business for something that's working, but you don't enjoy that much.

You can hire somebody else to do it. Or most of the things these days, we can train robots to do them for us, you can automate it. And then the third option, so you either skip it or you have someone else do it, you shift your perspective on it. You find a way to enjoy it. So me like I don't love doing the bookkeeping stuff.

Once a month, I can find the energy to do some bookkeeping stuff for like an hour. I take myself out to lunch, I bring my hotspot. I have a glass of wine and I go through my expenses for the previous month. I'm always so excited to see the p&l and see how everything sorts itself out to see how much money I made the previous month.

But I make it a celebration where in the past I would check in like every day with QuickBooks Online. It was something I feel like I had to do. I hated it. I think didn't look forward to it.

It was just one of those tasks that was part of my rote nature that when I realized that, like I was dreading it, I was like, "Wait, do I have to do this every day? I wonder, what if I just did it once every six months? Alright, well, that wasn't enough. I did need a monthly report."

So I figured out, "Okay, if I do this once a month, I can enjoy it." And that's how I, how I teach myself to trick myself into bringing joy to the things that maybe like, I know, they need to be done. It's not my favorite part of the business.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. Great answer. Thank you. I'm so just thinking about your business now. And this could be around, you know, mindset. Or it could be around technology, or it could be around entrepreneurship.

But what are you seeing that's working today in your business, something that someone listening to this podcast could take away, and might help them out that you found that is really, really helping your business move forward, right now?

Morgan Balavage
Being willing to evolve and pivot has made my business so easy to run through the pandemic. Every time there's a perceived challenge, I'm immediately like, where's the opportunity? So as soon as I saw the world shutting down, I was like, "Everyone's gonna be doing yoga online, I got to start promoting Splendid Yoga online."

And then I sold it to the University of California, Santa Barbara. And I had no idea it was gonna happen that direction. But I saw this societal challenge coming in, I saw my own personal challenge coming in. And I realized, like, "Oh, I already have a solution to this, I just need to market it."

Because I had followed my instincts up to that point, right? Like I had hired the right people, I had filmed the right footage. And if you could say it was luck. But I like to bring it down to mindfulness as I was just ready, because I had been somewhat blindly following these intuitive, this intuitive guidance that was like, "You need to build this course, even though it didn't work that well, the first time around."

It was something that paid for itself in dividends over the years. So changing that perspective to how can I be of service, I think is is really big, and kind of the online digital marketing world. But focusing on how to bring more mindfulness into anything that you're doing.

I mean, that just sells across the board, like industry wise people are so into mindfulness right now, people I think, are using mindfulness to replace the word wellness in terms of marketing. So it you know, by the time this airs, maybe it will be out of the Zeitgeist.

But just as a concept, whatever word you're using, if you can bring yourself before you do anything in your life, to meditate in some capacity, you're going to see nothing but huge improvements in every aspect of your life.

Jeremy Deighan
Nice, awesome, that's great. For the beginner out there who's listening who's struggling, they haven't created their first course. Or maybe they they're just starting on their journey into online business, what would be one of your biggest tips or takeaways for them?

Morgan Balavage
So, in terms of picking an idea, be sure to pick an idea that you yourself would pay for. And you might even go find someone who's created a course similar to what you'd want to create and pay for it.

That energy can help inspire your own energy, because now you have your foot in the game, you want to make that money back in some capacity, right? You've invested in yourself. But also, you'll see what you like, and what you want to replicate, not plagiarizing the material, but just in terms of how the material is presented.

Like for me personally, when I first started building my course, I didn't realize this at the time. But it was really important to me when I took courses, that you could speed up the videos. So you could watch them at 2x speed.

And when I picked my initial platform to house, my courses, they didn't have that option. And I didn't know that was important to me until I took somebody else's course. And they had that option. And I was like, "Oh, I gotta change this whole thing."

So if you if you I mean, if you want to teach online courses, I'm assuming you've already purchased some sort of course. But you'd want to purchase one specific to the niche that you want to teach. And if you don't know your niche yet, make a list of 10 things you love to do.

And I guarantee you, there's at least one of those things someone will pay you to teach them how to do it. But it has to be something you love to do, because you're going to be talking about it a lot.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, definitely. And I love that idea. Pick a niche and take a course in that niche and kind of get some ideas of how they're presenting the information. And then I also like to tell people to pick in watch a course in a completely opposite niche.

Because you might find things that other people are doing that you can implement into your own online course I think is another really cool tip. So, that's awesome. Yeah, this has been really great today.

I appreciate you coming on the podcast and just giving us your time. And if people wanted to find out more about you and everything that you have going on out there, where can they do that?

Morgan Balavage
Yes, you can find my YouTube channel. My brand is SplendidYoga. So if you Google splendid yoga, all my stuff will come up. You can find me on Instagram, I'm @splendid.yoga. I'm on Tik Tok as well.

You can join my Facebook group, it's called Personal Finance for Healers. We talk all about how to make these passive income streams happen while you're building your healing empire.

And you can always shoot me an email. hi@splendid.yoga. It's my website, splendid.yoga. I'd love to hear from you. Do you have any questions, any feedback, something hit your heart, I'd love to hear about it.

Jeremy Deighan
Perfect. Well, we'll make sure we link up everything in the show notes for everyone. And this has been great. I think that hopefully a lot of people got a lot of value out of this podcast. I know I personally have.

You've given some really good knowledge today. And I just appreciate you taking your time out of your day to come on here and share that with us. So, thank you so much.

Morgan Balavage
My pleasure. Thank you.