Today we’d like to introduce you to Natasha Ahmed.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Before I was teaching yoga, I had been in the corporate world for about 8 years. From high stress agency environments, managing a marketing team to working for Google and traveling every other week to see clients. I was on my way to burnout and felt in my heart that I was not fulfilling a deeper purpose that I knew I was meant for.
I think this is a familiar story among my generation. We were taught that working hard and making lots of money in the eyes of society was the ultimate measure of worthiness. When I had reached a place of “success” in the eyes of everyone else, I felt as if I’d climbed a mountain that wasn’t mine, that I was not meant to at the top of. All I wanted to do was jump off.
I found solace in an almost daily yoga practice at my all-time favorite studio in Boston, MA, Back Bay Yoga (Now, YogaWorks Back Bay). I joke that doing this made my itch and dissatisfaction (worse), it made my feelings less possible to ignore. The beautiful thing about yoga is really connects you to your heart’s true desires. Nobody completely understands why this happens, but people who practice consistently for years know this phenomenon personally.
I was afraid to jump, but knew I had to make some sort of change. I left Google in San Francisco for a startup in San Diego. I had always wanted to do “my own thing”, and somehow, I knew that going to a less stable environment, like a startup, would potentially open up the door to more autonomy and entrepreneurship. Plus, San Diego is an incredible place!
I moved to SD, started making friends, and finally signed up for a yoga teacher training, something I had been meaning to do for years prior.
6 months later, I was laid off. In a mind-blowing display of synchronicity, the yoga teacher training I had signed up for began the next day. When one door closes, another opens. I experienced this first-hand.
When I started the training, I didn’t have the clear intention of teaching. For some reason, I had the belief that I didn’t have that “it” factor that my incredible yoga teachers have had. (Shout out to Erica Bornstein, Goldie Graham, and Caitlyn Graham Visconte for their amazingness!). As the training progressed, I discovered, with practice, that I was actually pretty good at teaching. At the time I was good in a basic way, but I had the heart for it to be unique and creative as a teacher. I started envisioning myself teaching a similar format to the classes my favorite classes in Boston. I had loved Hip Hop Yoga (vinyasa flow with a hip hop playlist) because it really got me out of my head and into my body after a stressful day of work. It facilitated play, humor, and lightness. Things I desperately craved. I wanted to create this experience for people in San Diego and I wanted give it a unique format. I had heard about yoga teachers working for studios in San Diego being overworked and severely underpaid. I knew there had to be a better way to thrive as a yoga teacher.
Before my training was officially complete, I had taught my first weekly donation based Hip Hop Yoga class on the big hill overlooking the bay in Crown Point Park, Pacific Beach. Using my marketing background, I had created a brand name and a logo for this new yoga organization. I wanted it to be a tribe, a community. Flow Republic Yoga was born.
That first year, I put some funds into marketing on Facebook and had a decent turnout most weeks. I noticed that when I stopped marketing, I wasn’t getting as many yogi’s attending. But by the end of the year, the tribe began to grow organically. People were making friends on that big hill, and I was seeing more familiar faces every week. It was truly blossoming into a community. I was holding pop up classes at breweries and boutiques. I really enjoyed setting these events up and marketing them to my tribe.
I had the idea to become truly mobile “pop up” yoga company. I reached out to companies in the area to see if they wanted to do a trial yoga class for their employees. My first corporate client was an agency downtown that had originally reached out to me about interviewing for a full-time marketing role. I’ve been teaching there ever since.
While I was building this tribe, I had started freelance marketing for clients I met online. I was also doing websites for yoga teachers and yoga companies, I had a good balance of online work with teaching.
Although my current work balance is more leaned towards marketing work than teaching, I will continue to hold weekly hip hop yoga classes on the bay and weekly corporate classes. I’m thrilled to continue to see the tribe grow, season after season, and “pop up” at some unique venues in the future!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The struggle really came when I tried to turn Flow Republic into a full-time income source that matched my old life financially. The explosion of attendees and enthusiasm led me to be overzealous about how sustainable this was to live off of. All I wanted to do was teach yoga and market my brand, while making a good living.
When I expanded classes to 3 times a week, the enthusiasm dwindled. Attendance seemed to start spreading out, and it wasn’t as high as I had expected. One week, during a low attendance class I started to notice I was really disappointed at the lack of funds flowing in from that class. The enthusiasm I had in the beginning had turned into expectation and disappointment. I realized at that point that I did not want teaching yoga to be a main income source for me. I wanted to do it because I loved to share and use my voice in a way that is healing for others. I wanted to help others experience that play, lightness, and connection to their hearts.
I amped up my freelancing and was getting more online marketing clients after a few good reviews and testimonials came in. I had used my marketing background and sales skills to create a solid full-time income from freelance marketing. I was enjoying teaching again, no matter how many yogi’s showed up. The funny thing was, attendance began to grow even more after this mindset shift. Although I was running low on time with freelance work and some days and making it to class with time to set up and hold the class felt daunting, every time I finished and left the class, I felt renewed and grateful for the opportunity to teach.
Please tell us about Flow Republic Yoga.
Flow Republic is a pop-up yoga company in San Diego, CA known for its unique venues, outdoor classes, and lively playlists (hip hop, classic rock, and more!).
Corporate classes are also offered on-site in office buildings. What sets Flow Republic’s classes apart from studios in the area is that it presents yoga in a way that is more lighthearted, even fun. The hip hop playlists can include everything from Drake, to Fetty Wap, and of course plenty of old school 200’s hip hop (can’t forget Biggie!) I think that a lot of beginners get turned off from yoga when they walk into a class and are feel like they are immediately expected to look and feel like the buddha in meditation. Or maybe the teacher seems too “out there”, and the beginners feel out of place, or that they are just not cut out to be “yogis”. The beauty of yoga is that it’s an entirely personal journey, and it looks different for everyone. I call hip hop yoga “gateway yoga” because it is the way that a lot of beginners discover that they can do yoga too. It may be physical and fun at first, but the yoga doesn’t escape us – it’s inevitable that we begin to feel that connection to our hearts, greater stillness of our minds, and the other gifts of yoga.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My dad is from Pakistan and we went to visit family there one year, there were big markets in the streets and vendors would cram birds into a small cage for sale, to the point that none of them could move. My dad wasn’t very well off at the time financially, but when he saw that cage and how sad I was for those birds, he went to the vendor and bought every single bird. We watched as, one by one, the vendor set about 30 birds to fly free into the air. It was an incredible and cathartic experience. My dad is an inspiring example of compassion and ambition.
Pricing:
- Hip Hop Yoga – $5-$10 suggested
Contact Info:
- Address: San Diego, CA
- Website: www.flowrepublicyoga.com
- Phone: 978-771-9917
- Email: natasha@flowrepublicyoga.com
- Instagram: @flowrepublicyoga
- Facebook: facebook.com/flowrepublicyoga
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