How to create a meditation studio business plan
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Want to know how to write a meditation studio business plan? Well, you’re in luck, because that’s exactly what we’re going to discuss in this article. Additionally, we’ll cover the best meditation teacher trainings, meditation studio business software, and other specific considerations when starting a meditation studio.
Whether you are seeking financial assistance from investors to get your studio off the ground or you simply want clarity on exactly what you plan to achieve with this business venture, writing a business plan is an excellent decision.
Fortunately, I was the Director of Operations for a boutique fitness company which I helped grow from 1 to 4 locations around the country before I decided to move on, and I witnessed the growth & operations of one of the most successful meditation studios in Los Angeles, Unplug Meditation – so, I have relevant experiential knowledge that I’ll be able to pass on through this article.
So, let’s not waste any more time & get right down to it…
Before You Open a Meditation Studio – 2 Major Considerations
Before you think about opening a meditation studio, there are two major things you need to have figured out. The first & most important consideration is the location, and the second is how you are going to hire & train your meditation teachers & facilitators.
These elements are vital to know prior to writing your business plan, because they will account for the majority of your startup cost, operational cost, and the quality of the products & services your meditation studio will provide.
1. Picking the Right Location
Trust me when I say this, location is everything when starting a brick & mortar business. This is especially true for a meditation, exercise or yoga studio. The location you choose could make or break your business long-term, so please consider these factors when selecting your studio space:
What is the rent?
Rent is likely going to be your biggest fixed cost. It’s going to determine how much you need to charge for classes & workshops, and thus, will play a major role in the profit margins of your meditation studio. So, don’t allow yourself to justify an absurd rental cost just because the location is “perfect”.
Is the geographical location optimal?
Choosing the correct geographical location is a balancing act between convenience & visibility. Your business model will depend upon people’s willingness to return again & again, so parking needs to be cheap, plentiful & close. Additionally, visibility is a key factor. If your location isn’t visible or in a high-traffic area, then you’ll need to spend more on marketing to get the business off the ground. But, if you choose a location with too much local traffic, you may have to mitigate the downside of high-visibility – noise.
How loud is the location?
Considering you are starting a meditation studio & not another Soul-Cycle, having a quiet studio space is essential to the quality of your meditation classes or workshops. If you are next to a busy street, you likely will have to spend money on soundproofing the walls & installing double-pane windows, which will significantly increase your startup costs (and probably not work well anyways).
How much remodeling is necessary?
Ideally, you will be able to find a location that was previously a yoga or fitness studio. That way, you won’t need to do very much at all in the way of remodeling the space. In either case, you’ll need a lobby, a bathroom accessible to both employees & customers, storage space for extra meditation chairs & cleaning supplies, and at least one completely separate meditation room that’s large enough to accommodate class sizes that will enable your business to be profitable.
What is the legal max capacity of the room(s)?
The max capacity of the meditation room(s) is a make or break factor when selecting your location, as this will put a cap on the profit/class your meditation studio can achieve. If the room is too small, your profit margins per class will suffer & your business will fail. You’ll want to consider all your fixed costs, the price you’ll charge per class or subscription, and determine what the bare minimum number of students (or members) you’ll need in a class for each class to stay profitable. This metric will be an excellent indicator of the financial health of your meditation studio as you begin to operate.
2. Hiring or Training Excellent Meditation Teachers/Facilitators
Simply put, the experience your meditation teachers or facilitators provide is the product of your meditation studio. The product or service you provide is always, without fail, the most important factor in the long-term success of any business. You’ll want to make sure that your teachers know how to teach a meditation class, how to lead group guided meditations, and how to create workshops that produce incredible experiences for your participants every single time.
Therefore, it’s vital that you get your facilitators the best meditation facilitator training available. Luckily, you’re currently on the website of the best meditation training on the market, The Guided Meditation Framework. I highly recommend you have every single one of your meditation instructors complete our certification process prior to working at your studio if you want to provide the best meditation experiences in town.
However, as a meditation studio, you’ll want to provide a wide range of services meditation methodologies, including but not limited to guided meditations, sound baths & breathwork. So, check out my blog on the 7 Best Meditation Teacher Trainings to find the best professional trainings in each discipline.
Meditation Studio Business Plan Structure & Content
Once you’ve selected a location & the trainings that will enable your teachers to provide the best service in town, you have enough information to write a realistic business plan for a meditation studio. So, let’s go through the basic elements of a business plan, and infuse each section with some industry-specific considerations you’ll want to include to ensure you’re ready to approach investors.
1. Cover Page & Table of Contents
This is kind of obvious, but this article wouldn’t be thorough enough for my preferences without mentioning that your business plan should begin with a cover page & a table of contents. The cover page should have the name of your business, your contact information & your logo. The table of contents is exactly what it sounds like, but should enable any busy investor to quickly flip to the section they are interested in.
2. Executive Summary
The executive summary is a brief & formal explanation of what your business is, the vision for the company, and why your meditation studio will succeed. This is a concise one-page section that should include a mission statement, a description of the meditation studio industry, the demand/opportunity in the market, and a clear explanation of the unique competitive advantage your studio has in the marketplace. Additionally, it should make clear the financial potential, the potential risks, the key stakeholders or team, and the stage of development the business is in. Lastly, the capital you are requesting & for what purpose it will be used should be clearly & efficiently stated.
3. Company Description
The company description should be an overview of your meditation studio. Specifically, it should make clear to any investors the concept of the business, and its value proposition. When writing your value proposition, you’ll want to make clear to the investor why this is a good investment for them, so don’t get too bogged down in the altruism of bringing meditation to the masses.
4. Industry & Competitive Analysis
For the industry & competitive analysis, you’ll want to provide past, current & projected data about the meditation industry as a whole as well as available metrics for competitors in the meditation studio industry, preferably in your area. If there are no meditation studios in your region, you may use similar businesses like Yoga studios to draw comparisons or meditation studios in other cities with comparable demographics.
This section can include things like the overall growth rate of the meditation industry, growth of competitors in both the brick & mortar and online meditation studio/app space, and any information that can elucidate the viability of your meditation studio’s competitive advantage.
5. Market Analysis
In the market analysis section, you want to focus on clarifying who your target customers are, how many potential customers exist in your immediate area, and other demographic information like age, income, etc. The goal is to make clear the reality of the opportunity for your meditation studio in the local market.
You may also use search engine data from Google Trends to gain specific insights into the local demand for your services for searches like “meditation studio”, “meditation classes near me” and the like.
Be sure to format this data & the industry background with graphs & tables that make the information quick & easy to absorb.
6. Management Summary
Here you want to describe who the core members of the team are, what their roles & responsibilities will be, and why they are qualified or capable of excelling in those roles. The importance of this section cannot be understated. Most intelligent investors invest in people first and the business idea second. If there is an inkling of doubt, uncertainty or risk in a savvy investor’s assessment of any of the core team member’s capability, character or relationship to other team members, they will pass on the opportunity.
7. Operations Plan
The operations plan is where you will outline how the business will function on a daily basis. This should include how classes or workshops will be facilitated, any supporting players & activities associated with changing over between classes, how frequently the studio will be cleaned, the maximum number of classes that can realistically be offered in a day, the minimum number of classes and/or the number of students/memberships you’ll need to sell to break even each day/month, etc.
Additionally, you’ll want to mention any of the operational equipment & software you’ll need to operate. This will likely include a desktop computer, 1 or 2 tablets (depending on the capacity of the room) to assist with checking in customers and signing waivers, meditation chairs, and MindBody or some other meditation studio software for processing payments/memberships/class signups.
You don’t need to bore them or yourself to death with every single minute detail, but the operations plan should clearly demonstrate that you’ve thought through everything and understand exactly how you’re going to provide an excellent experience for each customer & keep the studio in tip-top shape over the long-term.
8. Sales & Marketing Plan
Your marketing plan should outline the strategy you will utilize to promote your business & sell your class packages or memberships. This should include an overview of any social media marketing, brand building, gorilla marketing, or email marketing strategies you plan to utilize, as well as a description of the products & services you will provide, incentive structures & sales tactics that will be utilized to turn first-time customers into repeat buyers.
In-store sales are critical to the success of a meditation studio business. Investors will want to see that you understand the importance of training front desk employees on sales techniques & customer service. Monthly-recurring revenue (MRR) & lifetime value of each customer (LTV) are also vital, so be sure your pricing, packages & incentive structures are designed to drive customers into monthly memberships.
Additionally, on the marketing side of things, make sure you include a strategy to claim the position 1 spot in Google Search for when people search for meditation studios in their area. This can be achieved through properly setting up a Google Business Profile for your company. Be thorough in your setup, provide great experiences for your customers, and collect honest feedback & reviews on your Google Business Profile from happy customers, and this will propel your business to the forefront of local searches for meditation studios and enable you to get in front of potential customers for free!
9. Financial Plan
Your financial plan should outline the current and/or future projections for the financial performance of your meditation studio. There are 2 basic elements that should be included:
Financial projections:
If you are already in operation, you can use an existing income statement as a basis point from which to project into the future. If you’re not in operation yet, you can use metrics from the industry & competitive analysis – adjusted where necessary to align with your local market size & demographics – along with your planned pricing, products & services to create a projection.
When creating a financial projection, it’s best to represent 3 scenarios: the best case, the likely case, and the worst case. It’s important that you represent yourself well by backing your assumptions & projections with real data & analysis, either from your own business or the industry, and display your arguments in well-structured tables & graphs that project out for the next 3 to 5 years.
Additionally, it’s not enough to just create a graph representing the future growth of your meditation studio’s bottom line. Growth of your studio’s customer base, customer lifetime value (LTV), monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and other metrics need to be backed by specific strategies previously outlined in your meditation studio business plan.
Lastly, investors will need to see that you understand the key performance indicators for this type of business. These include things like your MRR, LTV, and the break-even points & profit margins for each class, day & year based on your operating expenses.
Capital Requirements:
Your financial plan should also clearly outline how much capital you have already raised from investors, if any, how much capital is you still require, and a detailed description of why you need the capital, how you are going to allocate it, and how your use of the capital will directly impact the current & future growth of the business.
Investors do not allocate capital to businesses unless the risk is worth the reward. They need to believe that your business, and more importantly, YOU, are a dependable asset & they need to know what they will get in return. How you choose to structure the deal is up to you, but consider the following. With a meditation studio, your profit margins will be thin – it’s just the nature of this business – so, definitely do not share profits in exchange for investment capital.
Well, I guess that wraps up this article on how to write a meditation studio business plan. I hope that it was in some way enlightening. I also want to extend my sincere wishes & desire that you build a thriving meditation business and achieve the levels of success that you envision for yourself & your company.
And if you are looking to have the absolute best meditation facilitators at your studio, we would love to train them here at The Guided Meditation Framework! Trust me, graduates of our program are the best guided meditation teachers you will find, and your teacher’s abilities will be the most important factor in the short & long-term success of your meditation studio business. Definitely, check out our demo if you’re interested, we would love to talk with you.
And thanks for reading/scrolling all the way down here! Have a spirited day 🙂