Laura Kåmark
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves podcast, a show bringing you inspiring stories of women who are growing and scaling their business. I’m your host, Laura Kamark, a website and tech integration specialist who works with online business owners who love their work and not their website. Join me as we have incredible conversations about business mindset, productivity, and, of course, the website and tech behind the business. Let’s go ahead and dive in to this week’s episode. Hello, and welcome to today’s show. For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Laura Kåmark. I’m a website and tech integration specialist for women who love their work, but not their website. I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today. Naomi Gottlieb Miller. Naomi is a mover a maker and a mom of three Wild, Wonderful kids. Naomi has been teaching yoga and movement since 2005. She’s known for classes that are creative, playful and strong. Her classes and programs are built with hashtag mom life in mind, which I love that you do that. Naomi specializes in teaching short classes that pack a punch. Make sure you can easily squeeze your daily movement into whatever pockets in your day you happen to have. Naomi, thank you so much for being here on the show today. Can you share a little more with our audience about you and what you do?

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
Yeah, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. That is the first thing. I am a yoga teacher first and foremost. But I call myself a movement teacher now because after teaching for the better part of two decades, I’ve realized that I’ve pulled a little bit away from what might be more traditional yoga, more familiar yoga into more than movement space. And so I’m teaching things that are more strength based, you know, I’ve been teaching more with weights, I’ve been, you know, adding different practices to my own movement practice that, you know, I have found enormous ly beneficial, particularly as a age that I know will benefit my students who are women generally close to my age, but also older. And so that’s, you know, I always offer that as a little bit of a caveat, I trained as a yoga teacher, but over the years, having studied anatomy, and different types of movement, I’m settling a little bit more into this, I’m a movement teacher, sort of a space, which can sound really vague, like people say, You’re what does that mean, you know, movement teacher, but that, but that’s, that’s what I do. I teach people how to move in their bodies in ways that feel good. And in particular, I really love working with moms. I love working with moms, you know, whether their kids are infants, they’re brand new, or whether their kids are grown, I love working with with moms in that space, because moms need more movement. They need more movement, they need more time to themselves to move, or even the ability to move in those pockets of their days. Because, you know, as a mom, you know that sometimes you have five minutes, sometimes you have 30 minutes, sometimes you think you have 30 minutes, and then it turns into five minutes or so, you know, like, it feels really important to me to say, you don’t need 30 minutes. People think that they need 30 minutes, or 60 minutes or some incredibly long amount of time. But what we really need is just to move. You know, so a lot of my job a lot of my work is teaching moms and women and people who’ve liked how I teach, regardless of where they land on the spectrum of gender, that movement doesn’t have to be a big deal. It is something that you do because you love it because it makes you feel good. Because it helps sustain you. And that that movement can be five minutes and sometimes that’s really enough. So that’s, that’s me that’s, that’s why I do what I do.

Laura Kåmark
Yeah, I love that so much because that was something that I know I really struggled with when I was suddenly a mom and home a lot and not doing anything movement or really for myself. And I would try to be like let’s do a yoga class and it’s 60 minutes long. It’s, you know, a yoga CD or something, but I didn’t have 60 minutes. And honestly, my attention span doesn’t go for that long. I’ve, I’m all about like, let’s get stuff done. Let’s be efficient. And do it in small pockets of time. And that was something that really has always attracted me to your style of teaching and how you do your classes. And the fact that it is so mom friendly. I find that you have a lot of guests that come into your space. Would you Like, can you touch on that a little bit tell our audience about?

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
They do. Yeah, well, so I have three kids. And I will say, to sort of back it up, that I can identify with what you’re saying, even as a yoga teacher, even as you know, somebody who exists in the movement space, and who had been doing movement and teaching for a really long time, before I had kids, I, my first child was born in 2013. And by that point, I’d been teaching for almost a decade, I’d been teaching for about eight years or so, almost nine years. And after she was born, I could not for the life of me figure out how to move. I mean, I knew how to move, but I couldn’t figure out how to go back to those 60 minute practices that I always did, because I did. You know, before, even when I was pregnant, I was still doing these long, intense 60 minute practices up until like, right before I gave birth. And then she was born and my whole body was, you know, like disaster, like a horror movie, from the waist down, for the most part, you know, like, I had a relatively, you know, easy pregnancy and a relatively easy birth. But, you know, still like, it was my first labor and delivery was my first child. And so, you know, my body was like, I have no idea what’s going on here. And healing was slow. And long recovery, even though I was in pretty good health and pretty good physical fitness, you know, it was still a process. And so learning how to move my body again, was really difficult, you know, like, feeling my new body was a challenge. And then I was trying to figure out, like, how do I move? How do I get my practices in, and I experimented with all kinds of things, which landed me at one point, doing like, 60 minute practices at 10 o’clock at night, like the person, like, I was just out of my mind, like, at 10 o’clock at night going well, she’s asleep now. So I’m going to I’m going to move, you know, and you know, my very sweet husband was like, Sure, I’ll do it with you, which was a terrible idea for both of us. And eventually, eventually, I realized, and it took, I mean, it really took me a year, almost two years to say, I don’t need to do these crazy long practices anymore. Like I have maybe 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And that’s actually fantastic. And then maybe I can do 10 or 15 minutes later, but it took me a long time.

Laura Kåmark
Was there anything that specifically like happen, that made it all of a sudden, like, click that you’re like, what if I only do it in a 10 minute?

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
You know, part of that comes from the work and training that I do around habit science, is that I had been teaching. Around the time that my my oldest was born, I had started teaching these sort of habit programs that I no longer really teach in the same way, like they teach them in different form. But I was teaching these, you know, full spectrum, kind of, how do we take on habits in a simple, more effective way? And how do we integrate them into our lives? And so a lot of it was for me studying habit, science. And a lot of what I was teaching was, you go for the lowest hanging fruit, you go for the easiest thing? Like what is the absolute easiest thing that it is almost impossible to say no to. So in the context of meditation, for example, which is, I think, in some ways, a little bit of an easier pill to swallow. For some people. Most of us think like, oh, for meditation to be successful, it’s got to be 30 minutes or 15 minutes. And I’ve got to be like sitting still eyes closed, very serious focus meditation. But what if it was just one minute with your eyes closed? Not even focusing on a specific thing? Like, what if it was just a minute. And I realized that that was what I was teaching to people who wanted to learn how to integrate meditation into their lives, but I was still holding myself to this like, ridiculous standard for movement and meditation also. And so I said, you know, self, like, maybe, maybe

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
it would be easier. If you just moved for the time that you had.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
And you didn’t always feel like it had to be a big production. Sometimes it will be sometimes you’ll have more time. But what if you just set a timer for five minutes and got in five minutes of movement and just see what happens? Which is what I was also teaching, you know, it’s like I was teaching that to other people for movement to I was teaching that in regards to, you know, all kinds of different habits that people wanted to integrate into their lives. And that really started trickling down in It’s my own life in my own practice. And that was right about the time when, you know, we had moved my husband join the military late in life. So my husband did not join the military in his early 20s, like many people do, he joined the Peace Corps. And he was a teacher, and then he worked, you know, in other ways and was unhappy, and so decided to, you know, as a, this is my last shot, decided to join the military. And, and he did, and so that, and that required us then to move a lot more. And so I had to stop teaching in local studios. Okay, I could, I knew that as soon as we started moving, it would be a lot harder for me to get studio jobs, meaning like, I couldn’t just go to any studio in a random place where I just moved and say, Hey, I’m very qualified teacher, you should hire me, because that works every time. So instead, I said, you know, what if? What if I took my business online instead? What if I started teaching online classes, and at this point, I had been teaching yoga. I mean, this was 2017. Okay. So I’ve been teaching yoga at that point for about 12 years, had been teaching for over a decade. And I said, since I no longer have the capacity to teach in the way that I have been teaching, I’m gonna bring it online. So I started experimenting with that, you know, like, I was trying to figure out, you know, the tech and all of the different things, you know, Zoom was what I chose. And at that point, it was a very small company. You know, not many people, other people were using like GoToMeeting, and you know, other things that, you know, were didn’t feel as functional for me in the way that I wanted it to be, because I wanted to be able to see my students and zoom had that option, you know, and some of the other ones a little clunkier. And so I was on Zoom, and figuring that out. And I didn’t even have a mic. When I first started teaching, I was just like yelling at the screen, like very, like very kind of shoestring by the seat of my pants. Let’s see what happens. And I actually did start teaching 60 minute classes I was doing, I just tried to transfer because initially, yoga used to be like in a 90 minute format, right, like when yoga first started in studios. And then as it gained in popularity, and in cities, in particular, bigger cities where they wanted to get more classes crammed into the schedule, they started shortening the classes to became 75 minute, 60 minute, you know, like, tighter and tighter. And so I sort of shortened what I was used to teaching from 90 and 75 to 60. And I had some success with that. But even for me, at that point, I was like, wow, these 60 minute classes at home feel hard. It feels like a lot. Teaching at home is really different than teaching in the studio. Because you have distractions. You have, you know, especially if you’ve kids like I do you have kids, like at the time when I was teaching, you know, in, in my first online classes, I had two kids. And one of them was in preschool, but the other one wasn’t he was under a year old because he had just turned here. Hang on just a sec. Can you go ask daddy?

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
You want me to make it rainbow again? Okay. So, you know, I had I was trying to teach classes, sort of when my son naps, but his naps were kind of irregular, because he was getting a little bit older. I hired somebody to watch him during my classes, but like, just for an hour, you know, and I wasn’t making a ton of money. So like, hire exhibits just like a whole thing. Right? Yeah. And so I said, you know, what, what if I taught shorter classes, you know, what I realized, ultimately, is that I had these very short blocks of time that were teachable blocks of time, particularly with, okay, if I have to get my son down for a nap, I have maybe 30 minutes before he’s going to wake up. Or if I have been playing with toys over here, or my daughter is watching something on TV, because if I was teaching at night, and you know, because my husband’s the military, he was sometimes on TDY, as you know, which means he’s temporarily elsewhere for a week or four weeks, or six weeks or three months. You know, it’s like he’d be gone like, well, it’s just me and my kids and their little. So if I turn the TV on, and they can watch TV for 30 minutes, that’s like their attention span, like you talk about attention span for you and for adults, like you know, kids, it’s even smaller, right? And for most of them, and so it’s like, well, if I can set him with some toys over here, or my daughter on the TV over here, I’ve got this block of time. And so I started experimenting with the idea of what would a 30 minute class look like? How can I short In a class that I used to teaching in 60 minutes, how do I make it half that time? And then take it a step further. In my own practice, I was really only getting like 15 minutes sometimes. So how do I condense a class into 15 minutes. And that became a really interesting creative challenge. And I love creative challenges. Like that’s, that’s motivates me and inspires me. So I thought, Okay, let’s try this out and see what happens. And I got really good at it. Like, then I like, at first, it was a little bit tricky, like, at first, I would run over a lot, right? You know, I plan on my class, like, very meticulously, like, almost not specifically to the minute but like, in five minute blocks, like, I know what I was doing here, here and here. And then I started, you know, loosening up a little bit and saying, maybe we don’t need quite as much warm up, as I always thought we did. Like, maybe actually, it would be better just to get to it. You know, like, do a really quick warm up, and then just get to it. That’s my bed falls out. Um, you know, and it then became this thing where it was like, Oh, 30 minute classes, like, I can do this. This is easy. And this feels good. And I got that feedback, too. I was a little bit worried about it. But it felt so right to me in my body. As a mom with young kids. I was like, it can’t just be me. Yeah. And so when I decided to start my membership in late 2017, when I started my YouTube channel in late 2017. And that’s when I really started playing with shorter classes, right, because I, you know, it was like, that was the testing ground. And then I started my membership, my online studio in 2018, in January of 2018. And I was like, Okay, this is how we’re gonna go. And I was like, we’ll see what happens. And I got a lot of positive feedback or, and it wasn’t just moms, it was people who are working at home and saying, like, yeah, my attention span at home, my distractions at home, all the stuff at home, keeps me from either going to a studio class that works for me, or for doing my own practice, and 30 minutes is kind of the sweet spot. I don’t really have time for more of that, where it doesn’t feel like I have time for more of that. But this 30 minutes, like, that’s kinda kind of works really well. And it just took off, you know, so and now. Now, I offer eight minute flows in my online studio, like the shorter classes that I have are condensed versions of some of my longer 30 minute classes. So longer 30 minute classes, like their epic adventures, you know. But if I have a flow that feels really good from one of those classes, I’ll just put the eight minute flow in, like, I’ll record it separately. And I’ll say in the intro, this is low on instruction, it’s high on movement, we are trying to maximize the time. So if you need more instruction, you can find it in the 30 minute class. But here, we’re gonna work quickly. I love that. And the eight minute flow is like, people love like, they love them, because they’re like, I’m on and off my mat so fast. But I feel like I got a workout like this 30 minute workout in.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
I mean, I even teach, I have a program called the daily five. And it’s all five minute classes. You know, and that’s not in my online studio. That’s a separate program that I run, but feedback from, not when it’s fantastic to, and it’s also not all moms. It’s people who are like, I just want to get back into movement and 30 minutes feels intimidating.

Laura Kåmark
It’s a lot. I mean, I feel like in today’s world, like, we have a lot going on. We all do. It’s you know, Hey, have you been I’m talking for busy, we’re all busy. We’re so busy. And you know, we always have these phones everyday and just finding the time to stop and either be still, or to just like get present in our body and do some movement for us. 30 minutes feels like a lot.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
Yeah, and I think it’s it’s so interesting to think that because it almost sounds ridiculous. You know, it almost sounds like 30 minutes, like that’s easy. But it’s it’s not when you’re out of practice, you know, when you’re out of practice. 30 minutes can feel like a mountain and you’re wearing flip flops. You know what it’s like? Oh, yeah. And that’s what people will say to me, especially when they’re trying to figure out how to get back on their mats. The expectation is, I have to do something really big. But the reality is, I don’t know what to do in 30 minutes. Yeah. So if you say to somebody, like what if you just set a timer for five minutes? Or what if you just did one pose? I mean, like, that’s sort of the principle of like, how far can you scale it back? What if you only did one pose? Like, what if you did down dog? And that’s it. You know, what if you did like 10 squats and called it good? What if you took a walk around your block came back home and started working again. You know, like, I think so much of it comes from this feeling like, go bigger go home. You know, no pain, no gain some of these slogans that, you know, are intended to inspire people, but really ultimately shame them out of actually taking action. Yep. Like for some people, sure it’ll work. But for other people, it’s like, well, if I can’t you know, if I can’t go bigger go home. Yeah, or if I can’t go big, I might as well go home. I

Laura Kåmark
might as well go home. Yeah, I was. I was feeling really bad for a long time about not meditating. Because everyone was talking about having morning practices and like trying to meditate in the morning and like, I got little kids, I get up like, I gotta get the dog walked I get back, I gotta get them like it is Go go go. I don’t hang I don’t journal in the morning. I don’t feel like I have a minute to spare. I wake up already, like an hour before the kids just to like, get everyone the animals fed and get the dog walked. And then someone pointed out to me, but you’re out walking the dog. So you’re moving. And you’re walking on the beach every morning. So that’s kind of meditation right there. I was like, oh, so I’m good to like, Yeah, you’re good. You’re doing the things. I was like, Oh, thank you for the permission to like, not do it the way everyone’s telling me, I need to be doing it. But I’m still checking those boxes. So I can stop feeling bad, that I’m not making time in my already busy morning to actually intentionally like sit and meditate. I’m gonna meditate while I move. And just like us enjoy the morning in the fresh air in the ocean.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
I love that you gave that example, because, okay, I have three practices that I try to do every morning. Okay, three practices, movement, meditation, and writing. Because writing is, you know, one of my just sole practices. And ever since we adopted a dog almost a year ago, but nine months ago, ever since we adopted a dog, in order to walk the dog before the kids go to school, I have to wake up pretty early. And I’m, as of yet, as of right now unwilling to wake up even 10 minutes earlier than that, in order to sit. And so, you know, I realized most of the time, like, and I had this realization, too, because I was also feeling bad about it. I was like, you know, I’ve replaced my meditation with walking the dog. It’s like, one of the one of my core values is getting outside every day. And I hadn’t been and the whole reason that I wanted to get a dog was well, not the whole reason. But like, part of it was companionship. And the other part was like, a good excuse to be outside every day, no matter what, no matter what. And the dog gave that to me. And so often, when I’m out walking my dog, like, I’ll cycle through things in my head, I’ll talk into my phone, like, you know, talk through things. So it is very much a meditation. And so I love that you said that, because I also think that it’s a really important reframe. For a lot of people, you know, that we often have in our heads, what movement or meditation or even writing is supposed to look like. And because we have those ideas in our head, again, it gets in the way of us actually doing the thing, you know, or making us feel bad about not doing a thing or you know, whatever it is when, really, if what you’re doing is serving its purpose, you should keep doing it. The moment that it stops serving its purpose, you should stop doing it or just look into it and say, Okay, what’s going on? Right, but it’s not an opportunity. You know, it’s like, I do miss more traditional meditation sometimes. And I do it when I miss it, you know? But and I tell the story, often when I was trying to get back into meditation after the birth of my third child, the only way that I could do it was to do it in the bathroom. Right after I woke up. So I would go into the bathroom, I pee I do whatever I do in the bathroom, I’d scrape my tongue, I do all of my morning stuff that I did in the bathroom. And then I would stay in the bathroom, wrap myself in a towel and sit for like three minutes with my eyes closed. And you know what the truth is, is that if I really wanted to do that, now I could do that. Like I could add that back in and even saying it out loud. I’m like, I could probably do that tomorrow. I could sit in the bathroom with my you know, it’s like, because again, it just comes back to like, what is the easiest thing for you to do? Yeah, like what is the simplest? Like we have a tendency to try to make things harder and more complex. But when you make things simple, just Start, you can build in complexity, right? Let’s start with something that’s hard. Not only is it then hard to continue, right? So your your potential for failure, my air quotes, your potential for failure is greater. Okay. But it’s also so much more difficult to then reduce the complexity down to something simple. Exactly. Because you’ve already started so hard that if you scale it back, it feels like, Oh, I’m not doing as much. I’m not doing enough. Yeah.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, my gosh. And I mean, I can relate that so much even to like what I do with building websites where it doesn’t need to be complicated. And so many times I’ll have clients who come to me and they have this, like, complicated beast that was created, I’m like, Let’s strip this down. This is overly complicated, and it doesn’t need to be. Because then it gets overwhelming. Let’s find a way to make it less overwhelming, simplify the back end, and just make it easier. Can we talk a little bit about the tech side of your business? I? Yes. You kind of went online early. Was there anyone else really, in the yoga space in the movement space? That was online at that point? Yes.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
I mean, Yoga has been online yoga and movement has been online for a while. When YouTube started, there were a couple of teachers who went online very quickly, like Yoga with Adriene is one of the biggest examples. Everybody knows and loves Yoga with Adriene. Sadie Nardini was another big name to go on YouTube early and quickly. And so because of that, they are incredibly famous, very, very popular, very, very well known. They’re not the only ones. But they’re sort of two of the big names that have been around. Pretty much since since YouTube started moving beyond like, it’s early, you know, incarnation as like, music videos, and how to kind of stuff. So there are people in the online space. And I got into YouTube, later than some because for a lot later than when I say later than some I got into it later, mostly because I really sort of thought that online yoga was not as good. What it was, it was actually a very snobby reaction to it. Because that’s what I was taught, I was taught that the best instruction was in person that you could not teach effectively, online, because you couldn’t give assists, you couldn’t see everyone as clearly you couldn’t micromanage your students. See where I’m going with a little bit. There was a sense that if you were not in direct contact with your students that, you know, it could potentially lead to injury or problems or miscommunication, all kinds of things. The more I thought about that, once I did go online, the more I thought about that, the more I realized, like a that’s, that is a very micromanaging approach to teaching that I have been subscribing to for a long time that’s unhealthy for me and for my students. But it’s also not true. You know, and it’s really the opportunity to get better with my language as a teacher to get better with my ability to explain things to communicate, which is also something that I’m pretty good at and was very good at in person. I also don’t think that relying on physical touch in classes is beneficial for everyone. Not everybody likes to be touched. And I wasn’t much of a physical assist sort of a teacher anyway. But taking that out of the equation was actually kind of liberating. Like, oh, I don’t have to adjust anybody, I don’t have to put my hands on them. Cool. I can just use my words better. You know, and if somebody has a question they can ask, yeah, right. Um, in terms of like yoga memberships. There were memberships before mine. And there were certainly online studio platforms like yoga glow, which is now known as glow. There were a few others that existed. But they were incredibly high tech, they tended to be like multi teacher platforms. So they operated as like an online studio versus an in person studio. So with that same sense of like, you could study from this teacher and this teacher and this teacher, instead of being like a singular, it’s just me. So I think there was a little bit less of that when I started in 2017 2018. It did exist. It just wasn’t as optimal. You know, and the idea of learning yoga in an or movement in any capacity in the online space was really considered to be not optimal, it was considered to be problematic, it was considered to be potentially dangerous, which again, I think, you know, it’s, it’s not giving enough credit to students. And it’s also not giving enough credit to teachers to teach well without like, being hands on all over, like touching and like demoing, like the whole thing, like, just get better at your words, just get better at your language, just get better at sequencing become more intelligent in your sequencing get more clear, be it, like become a better teacher. And teaching online is not that hard. I really live in a state that sounds a little bit snarky, and I don’t mean it that way. But I also think that teaching in the offline space you can get away with maybe not being good at certain things. Big because you didn’t have to be like you could fill it in with other things. In other places, if you were really good at assists, people would come to you for assists.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
Right, they would know that your class was the one where you would get a really nice neck and shoulder massage. And in shavasana, or, you know, something like that, like, you know, people got known for certain things. And I think people still are known for those things. But instead of being able to fall back on like that one skill online, you actually have to be good at a lot of things. So, no, I think that actually teaching online helped make me a better teacher, and broadened my ability as well as like trusting in my students a little more, instead of just assuming that they were going to screw up everything all the time, because they needed more explicit, you know, like eyes on sort of a deal. So yeah. Oh, I love all of that.

Laura Kåmark
I really do, I think and then it’s so interesting, too, because again, as we all know, like 2020 happened and the world went online. I would love to hear like, what happened, what did you find in your membership? What changed when

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
with that? So to be honest, not a lot happened in my membership, I got a little bit of a boost of people joining. What I found really interesting, in some way, that was like, kind of annoying, and in other ways. It was like, Okay, well, of course now. But there were people who, you know, took themselves off my newsletter, for example, like when I left the DC area, because they said, Oh, well, you’re no longer teaching in this area. Even though I’d said I’m gonna be going online, even though I said, I’m gonna be back, they were like, well, you’re no longer teaching at the studio nearby. So I don’t, I don’t need to be in touch with you anymore. Because I’m not really into online yoga. Like, that was sort of their thing. And then two years later, they’re like, Oh, my favorite teacher is online now. So I’m taking classes with them. And it’s like, cool, you know, with that sort of, you know, feeling a little deflated, you know, in some ways. But also, you know, I think, in my particular business, it made me a little bit of an expert for people who did not have that background. And so I was able to help mentor some people a little bit, which was great. And then it also gave me a little bit of, you know, I’ve been doing this for a while, so you’re not going to like my early, like I was saying earlier, my early online videos were terrible. You know, they were zoom recordings only, and I didn’t have a mic. And so they were fuzzy and not well lit, and you know, like all kinds of things. And as I taught longer and longer, I invested in better tech. And then I realized, Oh, pretty quickly, I realized I can record on my phone, which has a better resolution, recorded on my phone, better quality for the replay, and just have my Zoom is backup, like backup video and audio, which I’ve had to use a handful of times. There are times that like my iPhone, something weird happened, and my recording didn’t work or my mic didn’t work. And, you know, so I had to use the audio from zoom, which was fine, or I had to use the whole video from zoom, which is fine. You know, but it it sort of gave me the opportunity to say like, Hey, I’ve actually screwed up in a lot of ways already. I’ve been online for longer than a lot of these teachers who are going on now who are just doing zoom recordings, and are not using microphones and who are not accustomed to teach thing to a camera and are doing their own practice without really paying attention to their students or you know, whatever it is. And so it gave me a little bit of like an edge up so that people who had been thinking about joining my membership in the past. Now they were like, Oh, I would rather do yours then do all these other people. We’re coming on line because you know what you’re doing? Yeah, because you’ve been here doing this for a while. So that was sort of my experience. And most of the people who joined at the beginning of the pandemic have stuck around a handful of people haven’t a handful of people said, oh, I can go back to classes now in person. So I’m good. This was fun, but I’m good. But for the most part, a lot of those people that joined during the pandemic stayed. And I continue to get more people joining, because I think that a lot of what has shifted is the perception within the yoga and movement worlds that online yoga is bad. You know, like, what people have realized is actually like, good teachers offline tends to be good teachers online, if not better. Yeah. Not always the case. But often it is. And so, you know, the people who have realized, you know, going to classes is inconvenient, or I don’t like my local teachers, or, I don’t really have time for a 90 minute class, but 30 minutes on my lunch break at home. Sure, I can do that, like those people keep coming back to me or to other teachers, you know, who, who stuck around a lot of people who went online, struggled with it, and didn’t make much of a profit and did not and had a lot of trouble retaining students or even getting students because they didn’t start with the foundation that I had. Because even before I went online, I had been in business for myself, for years, I had an email list, I had a good website with a fantastic, you know, you know, you later but with somebody who helped me set up my membership,

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
you know, and you who now helps me, like, fix all of the things that I can’t get. I’m not, that’s not my skill set, you know, so I did, I had people helping me before, and then helped me manage it. So, you know, I mean, I had the foundation laid before I went online, and then continued to deliver a good product. What happened with a lot of teachers was when they went online is they didn’t have an email list. They didn’t have ways to get in touch with their students, they thought if I just put it out on Facebook and tell people that I’m teaching classes, they’ll come to my classes. And that doesn’t work even for me. Yeah. And it works for like, really big time teachers, because they have a much bigger pool, like they have a much bigger radius of influence. But if you are coming directly from in person classes at a studio, you’re not, you’re not going to have that same with. And so a lot of people who went online, didn’t, they couldn’t stick with it. And and it Petered out for them, they got really, really frustrated, because the tech elements are hard, because, you know, they found that they weren’t making a lot of money online, you know, all of those things. So as much as I love it, it’s still hard. I think that it’s still it is a challenging business to be in. But I do love it. And that’s why that’s why I’m still here.

Laura Kåmark
I love that you touched on the importance of that email list for communication. I think that’s something I know, even just for me, I took it. I just started growing my email list in the last like year, two years, I think, because before I just wasn’t quite at that place yet. And I wish if I could go back, I would start building that list a lot earlier. Yeah.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
Yeah, it is, it is gold. That’s the advice that I tend to give teachers when I was leading teacher trainings, like the first, you know, when we got to the business of yoga piece, I would say, the first thing that you need to do is start building a list. And the way that you build that list is after your classes, say, hey, if anybody wants to keep in touch with me and know when I’m teaching at other places, or what’s coming up, where if I’m teaching retreats, or if you can’t come to class for a while, or whatever it is, get on my email list, just put your name on this sheet of paper, and I’ll add you like it can be that simple. And that’s what I did, you know, and I started that actually, in 2006 or 2007 2007. When I really first started sending emails from my Gmail account, like mass emails, yep. BCC. Yep. From my Gmail, you know, like, and then eventually it evolved into, you know, other things, right. But it if I hadn’t done that, you know, I mean, social media is great, but social media could disappear tomorrow and, or your account could be hacked or any number of things could happen. So, you know, if you’re not constantly trying to make sure that your people have a way to be in touch with you, if you leave the area, whatever it is, then you are. You’re not a business. Yeah, really. Hi, puppy.

Laura Kåmark
Naomi, this has been so amazing. We are almost out of time. I do have another question that I asked everyone who comes on the show. I would love to know what It is a piece of advice that you would give to someone who’s first starting out in their business that would help them be bolder, be louder, and make waves in their business.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
I love this question. And the squeaks that my dog is making. Finally, she’s like, now it’s time to play with me, always the most inopportune times. So, you know, I think that there are two things, the first thing is really to be true to yourself. In that, you know, people are always gonna give different bits of advice about business. And a lot of it is standardized, a lot of it is do this, do that, you know, and it, it’s very, it’s very, for lack of a better word, it’s just standardized. You know, it’s, it’s the same advice that you give to somebody who’s a web designer, you know, a lot of business coaches give the same advice to a web designer, they give to a yoga teacher. And those are two very different businesses. Right, and so they function differently. And you cannot, you know, it’s like, you can’t say to somebody who has just tried to reach this for my dog, because she’ll just keep being loud. You can’t say to a designer, your business model is going to be the same as a yoga teachers business model. Right? You know, like, it’s just not. So I think that, you know, the big thing is like, you know, be true to yourself, but also like, really listen to your gut. You know, like, if something doesn’t feel right for you don’t do it. If something feels very right, try it, it might not work. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try it. I think that, that choosing to be true to yourself, and listening to your gut is going to be better than any business advice, any business, teacher, coach, whoever can give you. I also think that building community is essential. Yes, building community is like, the most important thing. And whether it’s through an email list, you know, like, you know, I was saying, like, build your list, start early. Like, it doesn’t matter how small it is, when you start, like, get those people into some kind of community, your community can be anywhere. You know, but it’s like, the people who are in your community, often the longest, are the people who are going to, like, really cheer for you, right? So they’re going to be the ones who are going to have your back, like, when you really, like when you’re going off and trying something new, you know, when you are asking for support, like, hey, I want you to help me promote this thing. Or I, I want encouragement that this or I need help or support, or I need advice, or I really need you to get the word out for me, like those people are gonna be the first in line to like, make it happen for you. biggest cheerleaders never. Yeah, even if they’ve never bought a single thing from you. Mm hmm. And it can come from anywhere. And if you don’t mind, I will share a really quick story about that. Because I think that it’s really, it’s so it’s a powerful relationship to me. And it’s somebody I’ve never met. And when my husband joined the military, it was a huge life change for me, massive life change. And I mean, big for us as a family, but just huge in general for me, because, you know, I didn’t grow up in a military family. I grew up with parents who protested the Vietnam War and went to jail for I mean, my dad, my dad served, he was drafted into Vietnam in the army. But, you know, he also then later protested, you know, so like, I grew up in a much more hippie kind of household. And so the military was like, the furthest thing from my experience. And so when he joined the military, I sort of tried to engage with other spouses. I tried to find a way to integrate into those communities. And one of the first ones that I joined was for it when my husband was an officer training, there was an officer training Facebook group for the different cohorts. And toward the end of my time in there, we were supposed to stay in for one or two cycles after our spouse graduated. And I did, and I met this woman in this group, and her husband was just starting as mine was leaving. And we hit it off because we were two incredibly progressive outspoken women in a sea of often more conservative women in general. There’s nothing wrong with that inherently, but like, you know, it can be tough to find your people in those circles, and I found a person and I was so sad because like, when she when I was moving to San Antonio, her husband was just starting when I was leaving San Antonio, she was just moving to San Antonio. And then her husband was transferred to a different sort of path. And so we’re likely never going to be in the same place.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
And she even you know, has some autoimmune stuff. She has some some issues that like really prevent her from doing my classes frequently. But she has subscribed to my YouTube channel. And she has done you know, some of the some of the shorter programs that I’ve done. And, you know, she’s in my groups, and she’s not in my online studio. She hasn’t like done any like big paid stuff that I’ve done. She is my biggest friggin cheerleader. And every couple of weeks, she’ll say, like, Hey, have you been to Naomi’s YouTube channel, you should, here’s why she’s a military spouse, and like, she’s a military groups too, and she will promote the heck out of me. And we’ve never met. And, you know, and she’s like, we’ll send each other, you know, DMS constantly on Facebook, just like checking in like things that only we find funny. And I’ve never met her. And so I share this to say like your you can find community in all kinds of places. And the way that you build community and the way that you create connections with people will determine the success of your business. And it can look like all kinds of different things. But if you are skillful at doing that, like your business will thrive in the way that you want it to thrive. That might not mean like a million dollars or anything ridiculous like that. It just might mean that you have people who are going to support you, and like fist bump you like through the magic of the internet, you know, like, just because they care about you and your success. And I think that’s a really cool thing.

Laura Kåmark
I love that so much. Thank you for sharing that story that that brings tears to my eyes. I just I love that so much. And I agree completely with the importance of community and growing relationships and all of those things. Naomi, please tell the audience where they can go find you where they can follow you or they can come hang out with you online. Yeah, so

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
my website and most of my social media is conscious healthy mama. So my website conscious healthy mama.com Facebook is backslash conscious, healthy mama Instagram. It’s at conscious healthy mama. My YouTube channel, however, is my name. It’s Naomi got big Miller. It’s just one of those. It’s one of those things that I was like, well, I might as well have one off thing, but those are those are the places where I am most often. So come hang out with me. They’re

Laura Kåmark
wonderful. I will link all those up in the show notes. Thank you again, Naomi for being on the show today. This was so much fun.

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller
Thank you for having me, Laura and lovely.

Laura Kåmark
Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at Laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you’re ready to grow and scale your business, and your current website is outdated and doesn’t reflect the magic you bring and the results you get for your clients. Go to Laurakamark.com To find out how I can help bring your vision to life. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. Bye now!