24: From Non-Profit To Million-Dollar Online Yoga Business With Cate Stillman

December 4, 2019 By yaxyoga Comments are Off

Yoga Entrepreneur

What Is This Episode About…

In this episode, Chris and John will interview Cate Stillman, the author of Body Thrive, the founder of Yogahealer and the Worldwide Association of Yoga Health Coaching, and a mom, wife and avid paddleboard surfer, skier, and mountain biker. Cate has been teaching audiences how to create health and wellness through yoga and Ayurveda since 2001 and founded Yoga Health Coaching for wellness experts and yoga teachers to coach their clients into the habits of thrive via integrating Ayurveda with behavioral science and evolutionary group dynamics.

She also hosts the Yogahealer Real Thrive Show, a weekly podcast featuring dozens of experts in the field, and has organically grown Yogahealer.com since 2001 as a hub for a practical, planetary and evolutionary approach to Ayurveda. She comes on to share how she got started in Ayurveda and yoga, and her entire journey up to the point where she at now with her million-dollar online yoga business. She will also share a lot of great actionable advice for yogis who are either starting out in the business or already doing their own thing, on how they can grow and thrive in both their personal lives and their yoga businesses. Stay tuned for that and more.

Key Points Discussed:

Changing the individual and how they see themselves (01:04)
Self-studying Ayurveda and yoga and dedicating her life to them (03:16)
The path from doing yoga detoxes in yoga studios to being completely online (09:56)
Saying no to the old way to develop the next thing (13:30)
Becoming a yoga health coach and helping yoga coaches (17:37)
Aligning daily schedules with natural biorhythms (23:23)
The next level for Cate and her business (30:15)

Discuss Additional Resources:

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

Join The Facebook Group –> http://bit.ly/yogaentrepreneur

When Was It Released…

This episode was released December 04, 2019

Episode Transcript…

Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Cate: 00:00 You have to say no to the yoga students, you have to say no to all of the things that are the old way in order to free up time to develop the next thing. And I did that and it was hard. Some people came with me online, I’d say about 2%, maybe 3%, but as a result, I went from having a small self-employed business that was probably in around 150K a year to scaling over a million-dollar business that’s online and leverageable, and has this huge global impact, and all these yoga health coaches around the world and their communities.

Intro: 00:32 What’s up everyone? You are listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. I am Chris Yax, and I’m John Yax. We are part of a small group of yoga entrepreneurs who are committed to making a living, doing what we love, without feeling guilty about making money, or ashamed of being successful, because we know the real value of yoga and how the world needs it now more than ever. This podcast is here to teach the strategies and tactics so we can thrive financially as yoga entrepreneurs. We are the Yax brothers and welcome to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets.

Chris: 01:04 That makes a lot of sense because it’s the core of what yoga is doing is, changing the individual and how they see themselves, and when you change that, everything else changes. Your whole paradigm changes and then that’s the way like if you look at any big social movements, social changes that have happened in the past, it’s always in the grassroots individual level where it starts. So you felt like you can make more impact on that side of it.

Cate: 01:25 Yeah.

John: 01:26 Was there some pressure point Cate, that you felt was something like, major breaking point, like the last straw, was there like one thing that was like, “Alright, I’m done with this whole TC stuff. I need a…” Was there like one big… you were like, “Alright, I’m walking out on this part of my life.”

Cate: 01:43 It was… Yeah. There was this good… So, I had a… I was pretty divided going into it. Right? Like I knew enough about myself. I’m very driven. I knew I was an impact junkie from my teen years. I knew that my core of like, who I was and what I was here to do from a probably younger age than a lot of people do. And so, part of that though, I also wanted to really have a full life. I already knew that I couldn’t… I grew up on the east coast. I knew I was going to like be a ski bum at some point, in the rockies too, and like, really like, live a very… I’m very athletic and out… kind of adrenaline junky old school style, without like all the motorized stuff, but like, ski fast, bike fast, snowboard, you know, like all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 02:25 And so, it was more of that, of just looking like, if I’m not healthy and thriving in this environment then obviously like my ideas are only going to be so good. And simultaneously, I was also really studying… just self-studying. I’d been studying like diet for a small planet type stuff, and fit for life, and that whole movement of like, how a healthy individual and a healthy planet coincide. I had been self-studying that for over a decade before I went into yoga at all, and then learned Reiki and whatnot. So I think all of those things together, it was just like, I actually… it was cool. It was 1996. My nonprofit, which was a super-effective nonprofit I was working for in Washington D.C. So it wasn’t that frustrating in the bureaucracy side. We were actually getting amazing work done in all these developing countries. At the end of the day, I was like, “Can I just take my laptop? Telecommute?” And that’s what it was called in 1996. It was called telecommuting.

John: 03:16 Telecommuting. Right.

Cate: 03:16 It’s called telecommuting. Cause you were using a phone, like right? You like, plug the internet into a phone line. Yeah, those were the days. So I didn’t have to totally leave that while I started to really explore Ayurveda and yoga, and then ultimately devoted my life to Ayurveda and yoga.

Chris: 03:31 was it through yourself studies that you were like the first glimpse of I or Veda and did it capture you immediately? Kind of according theory

Cate: 03:40 it did, but it was tricky because like I had actually, I was studying energy policy in China and I had studied Chinese language quite a bit. And so like the move to go towards Chinese medicine versus Ayurveda as I had already put in some time, you know, I mean anyone who studied Chinese language knows that like it’s not an easy language for Americans to learn. So it was pretty tough like on this intellectual front. But on an intuitive front, I knew, I like are your Veda what the beauty of it is, is it’s, there’s not what in Chinese medicine has like a lot of, um, like white coat syndrome where you go to a traditional Chinese medicine doctor or acupuncturist in your, you know, like they know and then they treat. Um, and what I love about our, your Veda is it’s, it’s, you know, and we’re going to awaken your ability to know yourself and that, I mean, that really is, to me, it’s like the definition of are your Vedas know this life and part of this life is to know yourself.

Cate: 04:30 And so it basically puts all the empowerment back into the individual if it’s all the responsibility to heal back onto the individual. And if we look at that even in terms of our yards, like are we composting, are we planting plants in our, you know, and those who don’t have a yard. Like are you doing it on the kitchen counter, you’re patio balcony. Like are you creating an ecosystem in which you can thrive, which includes an ecosystem of plants. And this is part of know yourself and know your life. How it’s practiced in India currently today is following allopathy. So anyone who’s seen a more of a, an Indian or your Vedic doctor is going to see it’s practice like allopathy. But the core of the teachings and the philosophy of Ayurveda are very intrinsically around awakening someone to sell feeling.

Chris: 05:16 Yeah, that’s really fascinating. I think there’s a, there’s this natural tendency for humans to want to give their power to somebody else to tell them what is wrong with me. And I think it’s like an on a religious sense. It’s on a like a healthy sense. I mean, and I think people, like our mom, was always raised like you don’t know, find someone who knows and they will tell you how to be. And this is what yoga is really flipping on its head and I Aveda specifically who should know your body more than you, you shouldn’t have stored more than you. And understanding that I think is the key. So it’s like this, it’s the difference in not Carolyn Mesa’s book, the anatomy of spirits. She talks about like true healing versus curing. You can go to a doctor, they can cure you of something. But healing happens on an individual internal basis.

Cate: 05:57 Yeah.

Chris: 05:57 Yeah. So what was that experience like for you going, cause you went to India, you were there and you studied I Veda and you became, I don’t know how the certifying process works. Tell us about that and your experience.

Cate: 06:07 Yeah. Yeah. So I, I went to the California College of Ayurveda and I went to the Iyengar Yoga Institute at the same time. They were both two years of training programs. I anger yoga teacher training. And then are your Veda becoming a clinical or your Vedic specialist? And then I went to India to study with dr [inaudible] who’s like a great or your Vedic doctor in the United States. He has a curriculum program which is like he creates a Kula around Google. I have forgotten the guru, right? So you have the small community, that’s it. Kula means community. The heart guru is someone who’s waiting with light, right. And so he takes a small group to India every year and basically we watch him practice both in the city and in the country and learn and he lectures. It’s a very small group. And so I was in that and I also, I did a few other study with a few other Indian doctors over there and just kind of saw how it was practiced and came back and realized that in, it was really fascinating.

Cate: 07:00 I had started running a, because of my yoga are your Veda overlap? I was constantly going back and forth and I saw what the Iyengar yoga teachers didn’t know about are your Veda that they should know in terms of like the daily routines of a Yogi, which is what has become body fries. My, my first book and has become the core curriculum for the yoga health coaches who are teaching habits of yogis around the world. And behavioral science and like how you actually get someone to change their habits in a culture that’s going counterculture to those habits, but like that. Then what I discovered is I would create these little programs and one of them was the yoga detox and it’s still alive today. We’re actually just on a closing call. We run it every October and every April hundreds of people come together from around the world and go through basically an at-home retreat, but I started running these in a small yoga studio in 2002 and I ran them twice a year at least.

Cate: 07:46 Now we’re down to twice a year and what I realize is in my or your Vedic medicine practice, when I was seeing people one-on-one and going more through the like, here’s a diagnosis from an aggravated perspective or like, here’s the pathogenesis, here’s some herbs, those special formulas particular to you, here’s how it works with your digestion, here’s the yoga routines specific to you. Here’s all these therapies is very personalized specialized program that they would actually not progress towards their desired end results nearly as rapidly as just a group of people going through a yoga detox and that’s where I learned the power of groups and I think any yoga teacher knows this. Like there’s a difference to going to the studio live and practicing with a group than there is at home. Especially with the [inaudible], someone who’s a very good yoga teacher, there’s an experience, there’s a momentum really affects your consciousness and that was just one of the big take-homes coming back from India is like my yoga detoxes were cheap too and they still are. They’re like around two to 300 bucks depending on when someone signs up. That investment and the amount of transformation that can take place versus seeing a practitioner one-on-one and getting this really specialized program. The efficacy is just like sky-high with our group programs.

John: 08:55 Wild Kate, there’s such power in accountability is what I’m getting from that. Like when you move through a process with a group of people, the group holds a higher standard than the individual. And so we want to succeed in our goal with each other and we help each other in that process of succeeding towards that goal, way more than we do as an individual. Even if, like you said, even if what we’re getting is so specific to us and so even given to us by some profound teacher, a lot of times we’ll like I’ll do it a couple of days and I kind of lost my Gusto, but with a group of people, it just drives us to the end goals. That’s really cool. Really cool. They want to hear what you’re experiencing with that.

Chris: 09:35 and it’s how we’re wired biologically, that group connection, we want to belong and we hold each other accountable to each other more so. So in our last conversation, you said you’ve been online for 10 years now, completely online, your business. How did you go from, you’re doing the yoga detox is at a yoga studio to where you are now. Kind of tell us about that path. I think it’s really interesting.

Cate: 09:56 I mean if I look back, there’s so many different, I think this is true for so many yoga teachers and wellness pros is that like you have a number of different income streams and they all work. So like if I go back to 10 plus years ago, I owned a yoga studio. By then I had an herbal product line, I had my yoga detoxes, I was doing private retreats where I’d like fly in for wealthy, wealthy client or two and and do like the a deep [inaudible] detox program. I was a yoga teacher so I had public yoga classes, I was doing some workshops. Aside from all that, like I am naturally [inaudible] curriculum creator. I’ve been a curriculum creator since like started in this field, like the first like optimal weight, optimal energy, your 2000 habits of a Yogi like 2000 and you know like they like for 19 years now I’ve been, and I keep creating curriculum.

Cate: 10:48 I can’t seem to stop doing that. And now the curriculum becomes the books, which is really nice. Like there’s just this really easy. So I had all of these. I’m like, trying to think. I’m sure there were like five other and constraints I had and it was all, everything was working, everything was making money, and then I realized I wanted to be just part of that whole Tim Ferriss four hour work week. That movement. When I read that book it definitely changed it just like overnight. I’m like, okay, I’m going to give myself two years to pivot.

Cate: 11:16 No, so I had all this stuff. I was practicing in sun Valley, Jackson Hole and Teton Valley, Idaho. I mean I had a whole like racket set up and that was earning well way better than most yoga teachers and wellness pros even do now. I was running really well then and I just kinda, and I grew up in a techie household. My dad worked in the computer industry from when it was like mainframes. I mean he talks about like the whole pledge card thing. I mean it was amazing. My sister had her master’s in geographical information systems by the time she’s 23 and we were on email and 1993 1994 as a family. So there wasn’t a barrier entry in my dad put a lot of pressure on me. I was like, look how successful I am as a cause. He was like, what the heck are you doing with your life?

Cate: 12:00 Like you know, always on a track to be a doctor or a lawyer or a stockbroker, you know, and you’re, I am like, I’m going to go into saving the world dad and this is how I’m going to do it. So he just kept saying like, where’s the leverage in your business? That was kind of like super frustrated. Like, look how successful I am compared to all my friends who can’t make a living at this. Like I’m making a living at this. And he was really, my dad’s a tough guy. He’s a, he self evaluates as this tough Jew from Brooklyn. Like his parents were immigrants from Russia and Poland, you know, like just a tough life. And he just like from a business perspective, kept looking at what I was doing and say there’s no leverage anywhere. He couldn’t see any leverage anywhere where I could leverage my time to, you know, for impact or for income.

Cate: 12:46 And you know, when I go back to like was it to impress my dad or was it like just cause he was totally right and I was curious about business and I’ve always had a head for business. I just gave myself two years. I said in two years I will be a hundred percent online and there’ll be leverageable. So every decision I made and they were hard and I just want anyone listening, those of you who are driven, who are, who are ambitious, who have [inaudible] in the mind and you’re attuning that to what end yogas called Tejas or are your Vedas called Tejas this like discriminate power of the mind to say yes to something meaning saying no to, to everything else that’s not in line with that. Yes, it’s a fiery path and it’s not fun. Like just to be super direct. Like you have to say no to the clients that have supported you to get from there to here.

Cate: 13:30 They’re not happy. You’re not happy. You have to say no to the yoga students. You have to say no to all of the things that are the old way in order to free up time to develop the next thing. And I did that and it was hard and it was, I was as gracious and some people came with me online. I’d say about 2% maybe 3% but as a result, I went from having, you know, a small self-employed business that was probably in around a hundred K 150 K a year to scaling over a million dollar business that’s online and leverageable and has this huge global impact in all these yoga health coaches around the world and their communities. So trade-offs, right?

John: 14:11 Totally. Okay. But this is such a beautiful story because this is where yoga teachers, this is what they want right now. Like when people finish training, they’re like, is it possible? Do I have to open up a studio? Do I have to go through the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to open up a studio and do that path or, and then they look at the online pattern like, well, there’s so much competition? There are always excuses, right? If there’s so much competition, there’s so much stuff. Like I can’t, how am I actually going to do anything online? And then instead of like you said, you took two years to really study and learn how to shift this to make the pivot. They get crazy know they get these ideas of I just needed to go social every once in a while, go on and do some social stuff online and then they’ll build this huge following and be able to make $1 million in nine but be able to travel the world doing yoga. It’s a challenge because there’s so many, there’s so many reality checks for them as they start to move in that direction. But you hit the nail on the head when it, it takes a person with sex drive because of the whole path of entrepreneurs failure, it’s like I’m going to fail and then I’m gonna get back up and do it again and I’m going to fail. I’ll get back up and do it again. I’m gonna fail. And so it’s, it’s an intense process.

Cate: 15:24 Yeah. And I would just say that to that, like it true Yogi has an unfair advantage to all the other entrepreneurs out there because yoga is the path of fire. Yeah. Yoga is the path where you’re willing to look at your own ego and all definition of the self and drop it for freedom and really pursue who you could be instead of who you have been. And the other unfair advantage that us yogis have is that we understand self-care. I mean when I speak with other entrepreneurs in all different types of industries, I have such an unfair advantage cause I, my whole developmental practice with yoga and our your Aveda is rooted in, in building deep, deep resilience, deep self-accountability, deeper and deeper levels of self-healing and ability to cultivate a much deeper energy. What are your betas called? Oh, just like you guys, if we can’t do it, don’t expect anyone else.

Cate: 16:20 But I also want to say like what yoga teachers often want to is they want, we want to lucrative lifestyle like it. Usually, people come to yoga. What I noticed is that they have a deep level of care and they’re smart, right? Like it’s just, it’s not an [inaudible]. Yoga is not an easy, it’s not the easiest path. If we’re really going to go deep in yoga and what we want to lucrative lifestyle, like we understand the abundance and that’s where the lucrative comes in. And then on the lifestyle component, we get that. If we’re not in sync, then everything we do will be out of sync. W we understand that they like the energy that comes from source perpetuates and that we want to be in alignment with that. And so yoga, health coaching, what we’ve done is created like a very simple system, like a very simple business model for people to have a lucrative lifestyle.

Cate: 17:05 And I think what’s really important for a lot of people listening to realize, it’s like you don’t have to work with that many people and you don’t actually, like, you don’t even have to do, do social if you don’t want to. If you have a higher price point and you have deep care and you have a package where you can get people to their results and you do it in a group like you really only need to work with somewhere between 15 to 50 people a year. It’s just not that many. If you have the right business model.

Chris: 17:30 Yeah. When did you start helping yoga coaches and what’d you start like the yoga health coach?

Cate: 17:37 Yoga health coaching began in 2012 but I started the yoga healer business school somewhere around, I need to go back and look, but it was probably three years before that I started a yoga teacher mentoring program. And that evolved into the healer business course, which we then dissolved as we grew yoga, health coaching, which is really like a wellness pro Academy. So we’ve all different, we have all different types of wellness professionals. 50% are yoga teachers, um, are, are your Vedic medicine practitioners. And then the other 50% are like all over the board from like personal trainers, nurses, doctors, naturopathic bodyworkers. I mean just, you name it. So it’s a very dynamic, diverse community. Lots of mental health therapists come in and we teach them, we teach them this very simple business model in real-time. So they implement it in real-time with us. And it takes, it’s not short, it’s 27 months because there’s so much training that they need in order to have this lucrative lifestyle and in order to get people to results faster, which is we’re more or less after both is it’s not sustainable for you. Your work in the world isn’t going to be that great, but if you’re not getting people the results then like what the heck are you doing?

Chris: 18:45 Yeah, totally. What’s the, I’m really interested, so you have these people in the wellness community coming into your yoga health coaching program. What’s their biggest obstacle initially? Is it like, are they not practicing self-care? Is it a business, a lack of understanding? What do you find the main thing you actually have?

Cate: 19:04 Yeah, yeah, it’s great. Really good question. Cause they, I, we always tell people coming in like you’ll make an amazing yoga health coach like we are and we don’t really care what you’re calling yourself. That like you’ll get people to results way faster than you ever have and they’re so good at that. And that part of it. The like how to create a great coach. Like that’s the easiest part. You don’t, you know what I mean? Like and it’s the funniest part in some for them. Like the funniest part for me is definitely teaching them the business structure and the sales and a little bit of marketing. Cause you know, if you only need to make 15 to 50 sales a year, you’re, it really changes how you might, can even consider marketing and what marketing even becomes. So the real work is like just enough leads to make just enough sales to get just enough people to the desire to results. And once they have that down against traction, but it is, it’s definitely talking to people. Yeah. Having a conversation which really means listening.

Chris: 20:01 It’s just so hard for people these days. [inaudible] will also say I, there’s a lot of introverts in the yoga community where like it’s funny cause I can be on like we do teacher trainings where you know have 20 people and I don’t have a problem speaking, but when I’m one-on-one sometimes I’m like, Oh this is a little more challenging to navigate than speaking one to many. And I wonder if like there’s the people that you find in your community which is more introverted, less inclined to speak one-on-one to people.

Cate: 20:32 We’re super diverse. So I feel like we’ve got all types. That’s definitely a pattern. The person that’s like great on stage but like can do a one-on-one conversation. Yeah. But there’s more of it. What I find is helping them realize that what they know there has to be a process of, of like how someone can come into their knowledge and really gain from it in that it seems intuitive and it’s really not. It’s really not. And so going through a very step by step process for how they can really help people get to results. Like all of the work done in that. It’s a lot. And it, it takes them about a, like the first year they, they earn, most of them are in their tuition back for the whole 27 month course because we force it, we forced them to, like we forced learning in terms of what they have to do step by step so that it immediately highlights the stuff that they don’t want to do.

Cate: 21:30 And it’s different for the different people. Like some people like don’t want to just like reach out and tell people what they’re doing. Yeah. Other people, it’s like, don’t want to speak in front of the group. I want other people. You know what I mean? It’s like so diverse. Other people, like they have the perfect person, like who can, they can really help who really needs their help and that’s really understood and they just can’t actually, they can’t actually charge what they need to charge for the prison to have enough skin in the game to work the process with them. So I mean it’s, and then other people can do that, but then they can’t onboard the person. Like, they can’t deal with the, what happens next and next and next. So we try to help them build a very simple, reliable process around, yeah,

John: 22:11 it’s so great because you’re aligning your business with actually creating success for these people that are going out and changing minds. So it’s like, it’s such, it’s so powerful and so powerful. I mean, people that do teacher training do the same thing, but there’s a level of, once the teachers go out, so many of them, they’ll get into a studio and get and start making a little money that way, but then realize that, okay, I can’t make a sustainable living doing this, so I need to do something else. And that’s something else is when they hit their biggest roadblocks in. And at that point is a lot of times when they go back to they’re not in fight or go back to their other business and kind of give up, don’t have enough time to do yoga anymore, which is, so it’s one of the passions for Chris and I is to help shift that.

John: 22:54 And it sounds like that’s where you are just so, so beautiful. I want to ask part of your mastery, Kate is aligning daily schedules with natural biorhythms. You speak to that a little bit for cause entrepreneurs in general and yoga entrepreneurs where it’s like you described him beginning, you have 10 things going on and yet all these different income streams are, and then family on top of it, all on kids and everything you’re juggling. How do you talk to us about aligning your schedule with the natural buyer then? Little mix. I think that would be a huge takeaway.

Cate: 23:23 Yeah, and there’s images in this embody five.com there’s a workbook, there’s a free workbook and there’s images in there, so if anyone listening could just go there and like print the principle dosha clock and there’s a bunch of worksheets in there too that can really kind of help help people realign. So Dina Charia is the daily, this daily wheels, daily rhythm that is just a backbone of Ayurveda. It’s the backbone of yoga. You can hear, you can see BKS Iyengar writing in a light on yoga. A lot of people have that on their, on their shelves. And if you pay attention in the beginning where he talks about the Sadika, so Sadika refers to and are your Veda Sadika Pitta, which is the in it’s kind of the mind, heart connection of [inaudible] force of transformation in the body. So there is a mental element at each of the doses.

Cate: 24:13 There’s tarp haka, cava, which holds the memory. There’s print of by you, which many of them, which is the hope Pronto feels in the body. And this connection to like, Oh, it gets involves my brain and my heart. Well, the function of Pitta, which is the force of transformation is the Sadaqua and the Sada has to decipher like all the bullshit from the true path. And that’s the that’s the goal. So in that practice, over thousands of years, it became pretty evident that there’s a way to align with the rhythm of the planet for human beings. And it’s different. I’m always like, my cat is a feline is not a primate. Okay. He is a different schedule. He comes in at 4:00 AM and he’s like, I guess I can like go on a bed and I’ve been in bed since 9:00 PM right. So he’s on different paths for primates.

Cate: 24:58 With the yogis discovered is that we digest best when there’s the most [inaudible] file in our body. We digest fast when the sun’s highest in the sky. So we eat during daylight. Like we like my cat does not care about looking at his food. He just doesn’t care at all. Like he doesn’t even care what the food looks like. His food prep is like kill, eat skin. Well, I mean it’s disgusting. He’s really, he’s very vocal eater. It’s gross. We live in the country so he hunts all the time. Whereas like me and, and you like, we’d like to see our food. Yeah, we actually take enjoyment from seeing our food. We need to daylight free electricity. We need daylight to see, to ingest and to digest. So when we eat more of our calories in the daylight hours, what happens is we naturally get tired or earlier in the evening. Now we’re often in a cycle now.

Cate: 25:51 Like Netflix says their biggest competitors sleep. And that’s true, right? A lot of people are in a, they’re wired and tired, they’re staying up too late. But when you do that, you’re burning energy from the next day, which is basically you’re breaking down your immune system over time. If you have that habit, which means you’ll have allergies, you’ll see allergies and you’ll have some sort of like the autoimmune thing or cancer. Like that’s sort of the trajectory is a really great modern book on that written from an allopathic perspective called an elegant defense. Um, it’s all about immunology and the defense, our body is, and what’s going on. And he ends up with the same conclusion that are your betas reach, which is like stuff breaks down when stuff breaks down, you lose resilience. Cells lose their intelligence. So eating earlier, going to bed earlier, there’s a reason in any religious or existentialist tradition, there’s an awaking before the Dawn because there’s more access to, there’s more access to universal energy to the great unknown, to the big odd, right?

Cate: 26:49 That happens before the Dawn. And if you sleep through that, you’re going to have a mundane day. It’d be lessened touch with your own intuition. You’re going to be less in touch with your own body’s buyer or them. But if you wake earlier, there’s a natural impulse to wake up, splash cold water on your face, drink some water. There’s a natural impulse to eliminate [inaudible], which basically like having a complete bowel movement within an hour. These are just very natural functions that align your [inaudible], your whole being for the day and then with the yogis like to do and really is a natural impulse. You’ll see children doing. His move is we move before we eat, you actually open the [inaudible]. We opened the channels of prana in the body before we ingest anything. Right before we add something in, we first just take in oxygen and we actually clear out to music energy or that, that heavy dull energy.

Cate: 27:38 You’ll also see in any kind of yoga textbook where they talk about the three main Gunas. So these little things, you know, I mean, that’s what my first book body is all about. Um, it just breaks Dina chai into 10 really simple habits. It starts with today rather than tomorrow because we can all put off tomorrow and then tomorrow never comes. But we can all take action today just by eating a little lighter later in the day to day, going to bed a little earlier, not using technology after you know, when you’re done with work, like try to be done before six and be done. Like just you get to take a technological break tells till tomorrow. Don’t bring your cell phone to bed. Like, don’t wake up and check email. Like give your chance, your system a whole chance to [inaudible] be aligned. And then you’ll have the power of focus and the power focus.

Cate: 28:20 There’s great books on this. They’ve had a number of podcasts with, with really great people. And this last one was with a Brian Solis who’s an digital anthropologist, his book life scale where he really goes into the science of like what’s happening with humans and technology and how you want to use time, how you want to use technology to live an optimal life. I think there’s a million references to this stuff. You all know them who are listening. Give yourself a chance to really do your deepest most focused work by also not using, you know, technology at certain times of day, not using food at certain times a day and really observing that your body needs very, very depressed that has to happen before 10:00 PM like you’ve got to wind down before 10:00 PM to hit your deepest chance at REM, which is like your body’s biggest ability to rebuild and then you’ll start tomorrow. Right?

John: 29:05 Yeah. I’ve heard that between 10 and 12 are the golden hour is the golden. You want to be asleep at that time because it’s the way you get REM sleep and it’s so, so vital. So I want to just highlight for our listeners, well, Kate’s saying is that this like not only following these natural rhythms, does it give us the ability not to get sick and, and, but also to have focus, but to literally be more productive throughout our day, to be more focused and get better things done, be more intuitive, intuitive with ourselves and understanding. Yeah, you’re out of balance. But in being able put together our, our life literally designs our life. So we’re not rich, we’re not tired, we’re not using caffeine to get stimulated, to try to keep it going and eventually breakdown, but to really follow that natural rhythm of life, a natural rhythm of our bodies so that we are thriving, inductive and can literally build our dreams. So those of you who can’t teach, just drop the mic on that one.

Chris: 30:06 Before we end, I want to ask what’s next level for you? Where do you see your business going? Where do you see your life going? Like if you three years, five years out?

Cate: 30:15 Yeah, I mean it’s, I mean it’s such a cool place in my, in my business and with our global community and with the team and there’s a certain maturation. I started podcasting really back there around 2007 we didn’t have an official show til 2012 and just seeing like things gain momentum and relationships with different people I’ve hosted over the last decade gained momentum. And so we have a book release happening in March master view, which is Dharma. It’s a Dharma book for how to empower yourself with the five elements so that you are continually creating the next chapter of your life in alignment with your potential in alignment with your ambition while also experiencing greater levels of flow and more and more time. So that’s coming out. We’re going to do a big tour next year and the year after we’re going to do a really big event.

Cate: 31:06 So we’ll have a, we’ll have our first like really, you know, large scale event for the greater yoga healer community and some of our, you know from are like network partners and it’s exciting. And this next year what’s happening in yoga health coaching is it’s really started to grow rapidly. And, and I can just mention for anyone who wants to check out the business model, there’s a free [email protected] forward slash master class. And that masterclass kind of gives people an idea of like how the daily stuff, I just talked about how that fits in with the group and how that fits in with the business model. And I kinda just walked through it and then you can talk to someone on my team about it and see if it would work. But that’s getting really exciting to see how the global network of health coaches of our yoga health coaches is just, they’re collaborating and networking and growing in their own communities. And, and I’m excited just to have the, the bandwidth to support the growth of the structure of the organization.

John: 32:02 That’s awesome. Congratulations with all that. Yeah, that’s beautiful. So where else before we, uh, we have two more things before. Where else can they reach out to you if they’re interested in Morris that [inaudible]

Cate: 32:15 yeah, go to watch the masterclass. You guys like there’s a lot like it’s 40 minutes and it’s packed and it’s YogaHealthCoaching.com/MasterClass. And if you watch that, it’ll go right into a chance to schedule a 60-minute career session with one of our coaches. And we really like the way that we do every like we model everything we do for our yoga health coaches and our future yoga health. And part of that is like showing you the community that you’re going to enter before you enter it. So there’s a lot of conversations with people in the community already. And part of that is like, I mean I think we’ve all had that like yoga class where that person’s coming in that like really was in some way, shape or form, like not able to adjust the vibe. Right. And like, and sometimes it’s just not a fit.

Cate: 33:02 And so because this is such a, this is like a, like it’s a big deal to rewire your business model and, and to really look at doubling or tripling your revenue. So we like to get people really assimilative before they come into the [inaudible] before they become a member. And so people get to experience what that’s like. It’s actually interesting. Like I often go back to like if I was going to have a yoga studio again, one of the things that I would do is before a student would come into a class is I would sit down and find out like what, what are their goals? Why do they want to do yoga? Like what’s worked for them in the past? What isn’t working for them? When do they want to reach their goals by, are they like, what’s their ID cards is such a good Sanskrit word of studentship, rent. They mild, medium or hot just so that we can figure that out. And so that’s really where I recommend people start. In any yoga teacher or, or someone who’s thinking about you being a yoga teacher, a wellness pro, um, is going to YogaHealthCoaching.com/MasterClass and you get to have the actually inexperience of onboarding, which you might not come into our community at all. But I promise you’ll learn something for how you want to work with your, your members. Thanks for students or clients. Yeah.

John: 34:07 So we finished every interview with the speed round. So we’re going to do a speed round with you.

Cate: 34:11 I love speed speeding tickets cause I love.

Chris: 34:16 adrenaline junkies. Going back around.

John: 34:20 mountain bike, we serve we snowboard, Brazilian jujitsu, martial arts that we’re right up there with you, but it’s going to start off. We’ll go back and forth and throw a question so you just fill in the blank. Here we go. Ready? My favorite food is

Cate: 34:35 hot water.

John: 34:39 The book everyone must read is

Cate: 34:42 body thrive.

Chris: 34:43 Nice. Teed that one up for you. I feel most alive when.

Cate: 34:50 I go to bed early.

John: 34:53 Money is.

Cate: 34:55 everywhere.

Chris: 34:57 My number one passion in life is

Cate: 35:00 life.

John: 35:02 Freedom means source is

Cate: 35:09 always available.

Chris: 35:10 When people remember me, they’ll say

Cate: 35:13 she inspired me.

John: 35:16 Awesome. Well, Cate Stillman, thank you so much for joining us on our, on this episode is a blessing. It was a pleasure. We enjoyed it very much. Thanks for Mustang.

Cate: 35:27 Yeah, you bet. Dax brothers yaks yoga. I’m psyched and if you guys ever have other stuff that you want to, that I can be helpful to your yoga teachers and communities, don’t hesitate to reach.

John: 35:37 Awesome. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening everybody. We appreciate you being here. Remember, do the work, honor the struggle and make the world a better place. See, you guys do.

Outro: 35:50 Yes, thanks so much for listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. Do you have a question that you’d like us to answer raw and uncut on the podcast? If you want your questions answered, all you need to do is head over to Apple Podcasts, and do three simple things. One; rate and review telling us what you think of the podcast. Two; in that review, ask anything you want related to yoga, and three; if you want to shout out, leave your Instagram handle or name and that’s it. Then listen in to hear your question answered Live, raw and uncut. Join us next time on Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets Podcast. Thanks.