Prioritizing Your Expenses

Cool. Let me just, uh, so I'm Jon Nasta and I'm a co founder of PyLadies. Anytime Kristy Cooper, Ted and myself founded the company about 10 years ago. Uh, that's, that's who I am. I'm a Brit, but I've lived in America since 1993 and as we said in the chat a few minutes ago, I was born in Devin and we have a few Devin people there, so shout out to them. It's nice to, nice for you to be here. I'm going to do a little introduction about Jared. Jared is a teacher, trainer, presenter, entrepreneur. And in 2010 he founded studio 26 in New York city and it's a kind of a home or a hub for fitness professionals, but I'm going to let him talk about what his is in a minute. He tells me he's a city boy but with a country heart.

And he attended Wesleyan university and it was a dance professional in San Francisco and New York. So maybe in the Q and a you can ask him to do a dance routine. No promises on that. So, uh, we don't claim to have the answers to what's going on here at the moment, but we are gonna share our discussion, our conversation, our thoughts on what we could do and to try and help you. We will be, as I said, recording this and we will share that and any kind of references or things that we talk about, we will try and have put in the chat and if they're not in the chat, then we'll put them on the webpage where we will host this recording. Hopefully it'll go up tomorrow, but it might be Thursday. And I don't know if JIA, if you're listening, I don't think if you could put into the chat a link to a Jarrod's studio because it's just so beautiful.

And I just wanted to share this, uh, my tee shirt for today. I hope you can see this, but that's kind of our philosophy on this. We're gonna we're going to survive this and we're gonna do more polarity. So shout out to Canada in the house there. Thank you, Jared. Tell me, tell me about where you are. What's it like being in New York right now? Uh, kind of unimaginable to be honest. And, uh, I'm a New York city boy, so officially in New York, not just city boy, but native to New York. So this is my home for most of my life. It has been. And uh, I would say New York city right now is surreal.

It is something that we never would have imagined that all the streets are closed down. You know, if you've never visited the image of New York as a hustle and bustle city that never sleeps. If you look out on the street right now, you might see three people for higher stretches of avenues. It is radical. Um, it's a ghost town. It is sort of oddly poetic and the most devastating of ways, um, and, and pretty unrecognizable from the city that we all know among, yeah. You showed me a little bit earlier. Can you show the view out of the window? Yeah. And caveat here, I have not my windows. Don't judge.

Here's my story. I'm in Chelsea on 15th street. So not a car going by. Usually there's a line of traffic. Uh, there's one person you can see across the street. There's not a single cab, not the usual bustle. And I have the Google headquarters a block away. So you usually have a lot of people going to and from work. There's literally zero. Wow. So pretty stark at the moment. Tell me about your studio.

What's happened over the last few weeks with your studio? Yeah, so the last couple of weeks, um, we were trying to be really, really diligent to protect all of our trainers and our clients and fitness professionals that use the space. And about two weeks ago as the news was coming out, that there were cases being found of the coronavirus in New York, we were every day updating best practices to include just infected sprays and cleaning. And eventually we kind of ramped up to having hospital-grade antiseptic wipes and the trial gloves. Anything that could help keep people safe as a health and wellness center. Um, and things were changing dramatically. I'm pretty rigorous about our systems and processes and we were kind of changing everything each day, which was its own, uh, exhausting feet.

And as you went through the week, things were fine up until about Thursday, about 10 days, two weeks ago, better on that Thursday, we started to realize that the sort of growing anxiety of what was coming to New York was starting to affect people. And it wasn't just about conversations there was that people started to actually get scared about how they would change their day to day routine. And we're starting to cancel sessions and all the trainers, we have roughly 70 to 80 fitness professionals in a given month that we see for one session or a 20 a week. And they were starting to tell me that some clients were canceling. And I was like, all right, it was only a couple here and there and you can see who was a little bit skiddish. And then we doubled down on our efforts to assure people, um, to make sure that they know they knew everything that we were doing to keep the studio as pristine and clean as possible. And that place is spotless.

I mean actually it's usually very clean. We do a good job, but it was next level of clean. And then 10 days ago on a Sunday, um, I had heard from a couple of trainers that they were gonna start to do remote sessions and sort of became more and more apparent that time was up and we had to make some more significant strides to look at what we were doing. I ran to BNH video, which for those of you who know photo and video, John does, I know a classic photo place in New York. I bought a bunch of tripods so we could provide remote sessions from the studio thinking that those clients that were 60 and over or had immune compromised systems, they should stay home, but everyone else could stay at normal. Uh, so we were set up for remote sessions. We'd change everything to provide that in the studio for those that couldn't or should not make it in. And we're set to go and then realize that again, things are moving too quickly. And on a Sunday night, I made the call that we should just shut down and figure it out. Um, the next day, New York city mandated that all restaurants, bars and gyms should shut.

So probably 12 hours before I had, you know, did a soul searching to realize that that was the call I had to make as a business owner to not endanger any of our people. So we shut down about 10 days ago, which are words I never thought that I would utter. Um, so yeah, we've been shut now for over a week and it's a new world for now. Temporarily. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about your studio. What do you do in it? What's the space like? Do you teach? Um, yeah, sure. So like you, I opened my business 10 years ago, a shout out to this decade of, of growth. So studio 26 in Chelsea, I opened as a home and a hub for fitness professionals. We have a plotty studio, we have a personal training studio and there are five treatment rooms for physical therapists, massage therapists and body work. Uh, it's pretty exclusively one on one that we do continuing education. Um, there actually been several bodies, anytime teachers who we've featured as movement educators for, uh, advanced seminars and we offer one on one sessions for clients in all those disciplines. Um, in a way our clients are really the fitness professionals and basically their clients in my space. Uh, I myself trained for over 15 years and uh, stopped seeing all of my clients two years ago so I could actually run my business as CEO and general manager. Um, so I'm no longer seeing clients one on one. I'm really helping support the fitness and wellness professionals that we serve to be as successful as they can be and love what they do for the long haul.

There are a couple of people in the chat, John, who also asked a little detail about New York. So currently in New York, uh, we are mandated to have all the central businesses shut down as mothers States and cities are starting to do. Um, unfortunately the reality now is that New York is really the epicenter of the virus currently in the United States. Um, we had, I think half the cases and the entire country are currently in New York city and New York state. So if you look out in the streets, people are mandated to stay in unless they have a central business to get groceries, walk their dog, go for uh, you know, a health appointment and the police are monitoring that. They're starting to go out fines if crowds gather. Um, so when you look out in the streets, people are really staying home. Wow. And those who can afford to have, if they have a second home, when they're able to go elsewhere, they have also a for when I've heard from lots of people I've talked with have done that out of New York city. I used to finding this food in the stores, everything like that. Yeah. There was a rebound with that after, you know, there've been a couple of waves of people, um, really go into the store and having slight moments of panic or rash and buying, um, the stories of replenish and you know, shout out to all of the stockers, the orderers inventory supply, doing an amazing job to actually get supplies back on the shelves. Um, I'm trying to not hit the stores too frequently so I can do things at once and try to go at times that don't need it and they've done a really good job of keeping them full.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing the same thing. I'm uh, trying to do a once a week shop. Um, I want to keep myself healthy, you know. Um, tell me what's happened with all the teachers. Um, I assume that they're not employees, they're contractors. Given your business model, what's happened with them? Yeah, so in New York our model is for independent contractors, so they are free to decide what they need to do. Um, and all of them are now working from home remotely.

So the bulk of them are doing a one on one sessions digitally via whatever platform they choose, whether that's zoom or Google hangout or FaceTime, Skype, et cetera. Um, the bulk of them are doing sessions with their current clients. Some have started to try to do things like online classes or, um, group sessions online in different formats. And what's happening with your team or your clients, you know, how are they getting on? Yeah. Um, I would say the bulk of them took about a week to catch their breath with new routines or learning how to social distance, how to self quarantine. These were things that none of us were thinking about amongst two months ago.

So it took about a week for most trying to figure out and settle into their new routines. And there were waves of mandates, whether it was their work, told them they couldn't travel or the city said, Hey, this is it. Um, once they settled, they really did start to reach out to their trainers. They're therapists, they're massage therapists, they're physical therapists to figure out how they could continue. Um, so most of them are doing something. I'm getting a second wave of requests now from people who are saying, Hey, do you have a trainer for me or do you have a suggestion about what I should buy to have at home that I can work out with? So people are starting to number one, get restless because like all of us at home, and no matter how amazing your home is, social contact as we all know, is super important as is fresh air and exercise. So the value that we provide in terms of fitness and wellness professionals is crucial. So I'm very happy that they're reaching out now. Fantastic.

Are you staying in touch with a newsletter or how are you using email? Uh, weird. Uh, so we've sent out a monthly newsletter that's usually just been to our trainers and professionals to keep them in the loop and there's about 80 of them. When we decided to shut down, uh, on that fateful Monday, about nine days ago, I actually opened that list up to all the clients that we had ever seen. Just so everyone was in the loop. And we're in an interesting point with media now where the news gets out in so many formats. So really wanted to reach out personally. So we sent out a newsletter to everybody. Um, separate from that.

It's really important for me that we actually stay in touch with our clients and that's both clients and trainers and coworkers and employees. Um, so we've actually instituted a very structured routine where once a week we do zoom calls with all of the trainers who want to join us so we can actually stay in touch. Um, we've, we've, you know, had this 10 year old physical space where people come together and there's, you know, intangible value to that in terms of being seen and the value of a session and connecting. So even though it's digital now, we're actually doing these sessions where we can just talk with people one on one and we're actually dividing up a list. We, we made a list of everybody today and I had, I have three employees and we're dividing up who's going to call who. So that once a week, maybe twice a week, we're actually going to stay in touch with people as a process to make sure no one falls through the graphics. Very cool. What was the reaction of your clients? How w how are you feeling? They are reacting to all of this? Um, I would say that unlike any moment that potentially I've ever experienced, maybe with the exception of nine 11 especially with New York, that we're all in this together and there's been no event that I can think of that has affected every single country, every single business, large and small. Um, every single supplier, every single, you know, whether you have a lot of money or a little of this is universal.

And there are some areas that obviously like New York had been a harder hit in terms of waves, obviously of China and Italy and other countries before us. And there are still more that are gonna happen. Um, but people's reactions are at this point, you can see the trend and trend of how they respond to the news and how close things, um, get to their location. And at first they're just trying to make sense of what does this mean for me. Um, and you know, unfortunately in some ways new Yorkers were a little bit slow to respond and then realize like, Oh shit, we got to do something about this. Um, and, you know, harnessing everything we possibly can to stay safe and everybody's reaching out to people that are the most at risk to make sure that they're taken care of first. And then also really trying to reorganize their daily routine to not produce more community spread.

Yeah. Uh, let's, let's move on and talk a little bit about, um, online classes here and let's hear from you how, how are you, how are you hearing that it's going on? How is your team doing this? Yeah. So I would say for context, again, because we are located in New York city and we have been hit so hard and so quickly by this, that, uh, 95% of the professionals, I know, not just in my studio, but at the sort of at-large, New York fitness community and wellness community are doing online sessions, um, just they have to preserve their income and try to get some money either continuing or coming in period. Um, so whether that's one on one sessions and people seeing their current clients that they've always seen twice, three times a week in the studio, transitioning those to, at home, um, and different populations doing different things. So depending on the home setup, if they people have equipment or not, if they're used to technology or not, there's a lot of education around how does this thing work and how do I do a session with it. So some people are used to it and can roll with it. There's definitely some aid gaps and some learning on all sides to figure out how it can go. Well, I'm sure we'll have some questions about that later. Um, and there still some people I will say as a cautionary tale, I'm sort of sad to say I've been in touch with a couple of trainers that actually admitted to me they were still doing some in homes and in New York city it's, I just would you know from the bottom of my heart, not advise it based on community spread based on saying safe keeping clients safe. So there's a fraction of people but I have heard it so I just want to sort of acknowledge that that is also happening and it's almost like there'll be this black market of people that are trying to still stay in physical space or people that are going out to the park and trying to keep social distance from 10 feet away but still have that in person connection. The bulk of everybody else, which really is 98% of people are doing one on one sessions by a whatever platform they use and teaching their current clients and private sessions.

People that have done current mat classes are actually now taking those remotely and they've kept their same class structure. So people that taught a 9:00 AM Monday, Wednesday, Friday said, Hey, we're doing our 9:00 AM class, I'll see you there. And there's something really needed and necessary about that familiarity so that people stay with their routines and have that sense of normalcy imbued through their week when so much has changed. Having that little thing to ground you and keep with structure, keep with accountability with people that you know is so important. Yeah. What, which platforms, uh, folks using? Yeah, so zoom obviously has become hugely popular.

I think Madeline black on the other day on Facebook, they mentioned if only people had bought zoom stock two months ago, you would've gone through the roof as the rest of the market. It's a, so Zuma obviously is very popular. Me and my team actually really enjoyed Google hangout and there was no money coming in from Google though they're a block away. It's just a useful tool similar to zoom. So the technology is very good. Um, Facebook live is also useful. I think someone just commented on that. Um, I would say one of the things I've advised, and this is partially because in my family, my mom had to sell quarantine cause she is supremely at risk but she sees a trainer twice a week. Uh, she uses FaceTime because she's already used FaceTime with her grandkids, so it's familiar. So FaceTime with her, she had to change anything. She knows how to use it. There's no frustration in getting up to speed and normalizing it.

She just has to show up at her time and then have her trainer guide her through her session. Um, other people are using Instagram, Instagram live for group sessions or to broadcast their work and then be able to record them. Um, others are also using their recording videos to put on either Vimeo or YouTube, things like that so that people can actually take them at their own time and not worry about meeting at a certain time in place. Yeah. Not place, but you know what I mean. Yup. I do know what you mean. Um, one of the things we chatted about last night was that, um, you know, some of these things like Facebook live and Instagram live are great ways of sharing your content with a really big audience, but there's no revenue associated with them. Can you talk about the revenue generating models you've used or you've seen yourself? Yeah. Um, one of the things that we've seen a lot in the past week, especially the first week when New York was shut down and those sort of seven or eight days following was a lot of people in our community. We are caregivers kind of to our core and people wanted to offer free services and there was this rush to give free everything away, a free session or free, um, you know, content, whatever it was.

And everyone were very confused and say, well, how long can free last? So I'm glad to say that I've seen people kind of take a breath and say, okay, donation-based work is, as Kara said yesterday actually is a beautiful offering and extremely generous and is a great thing to put out there. Especially as a lot of people will be at some point unemployed or have jobs, instability based on what's happening. Um, others, their expertise, their time is their time and they have not changed a thing. They're spending an hour with someone who they know well, who knows their style and their queuing and their expertise and how to move and there's no reason for them to change their price. And one of the things that we've actually coached and advised our trainers on is to say, look, you've spent thousands of hours, thousands of dollars building your skillset. That doesn't go away.

I think I mentioned to you last night, you, if you think of other industries, a lawyer writing a contract for you on the beach or writing it at their desk, they're not going to change the pricing for their skillset. They just have a different modality. And we tend to, especially I believe in the potties world, even relative to personal trainers, we tend to at times and based on location, undersell our skills. And I just would encourage everybody to really claim yourself worth, especially now the value of what we do to help keep people accountable and moving and breathing and grounded is more important. So to discount your services out of self generosity is a beautiful thing, but we need to make money and we need to keep our businesses afloat so that when things pass over, which they will at some point we can actually have businesses that people can come back to and reconnect and get back into physical space, not just digital space. Do you have any hints on how to totally agree, you know, don't undervalue your talents and they are needed right now. Um, do you have any advice on, we chatted last night about event bright and using that to charge for your classes. You know, the, the whole billing system part of this.

Yeah. Um, what I've coached the trainers and fitness professionals that I've been in touch with is first to do what works and that you know, well cause don't change too much if you have a system already where you're accepting Venmo or chase quick pay or Zelle or whatever the format is, do what is already working. That said, uh, for my studio studio 26, we decided to offer community classes to feature some of the trainers that we know and love and the practitioners. And the easiest thing for me was actually to go into Facebook, create an event. And because Facebook is integrated with Eventbrite, it was extremely quick for me to get on and my business brain loved the metrics that provides. And I could quickly see who came from where and I'm sure you do this as well. Um, and to understand where people were finding us, what they paid, whether there was a free option that they took advantage of because they needed it or they wanted to give a donation and event Brite was super easy via Facebook. Um, I don't know, honestly if it integrates as well with other platforms.

I imagine those integrations are set up, but there are so many options and I just found that Facebook and Eventbrite work really well together. Um, I know square has other integrations that they can do through Google. Um, there's several, I would just look to what is the easiest, the quickest for you to set up if it's new to you? Um, we use mind body for our software and I'm sure there are easy ways that we could harness mind, body to connect to our digital platform now that we're doing it. Yeah. Yeah. When we were talking with Cara yesterday, she was talking about how essentially it's using mind body online for people to book the classes and then manually sending out the links to zoom so that she knew only the people who had paid got the, the zoom links. Yeah. I saw one of the trainers that I know who has a very big following and has done online classes in a very long time. That's actually been the bulk of her practice. Um, and she teaches lots of people as a huge Instagram following.

She sent out an integration through Calendly and it had payments set up through that. So you only through entering a code could you have access to her class. It wasn't given for free to everybody. If you knew and loved her already or you were curious, she had nominal fees if you wanted to try it. And there were intro options if you've never trained with her before. But it was a really beautiful and simple way that she set it up that you could direct people to the actual offering and then go from there. Cool.

And we will put in the um, yeah, if anybody needs anything, JIA can you put in the chat here like things like calendar and event pride and all of these things. And when we do the, uh, the blog article about this afterwards, we will try and put in as many of these links as we can remember to do. Um, and if you have questions, you know, we've always got support at [inaudible] anytime.com send it there. We're not experts in these things, but we'll share what we're hearing and the best information that we have. And quick shout out by the way too, please. Anytime for putting this off. It's so important and I think really necessary. Thank you, Jared. No, it's, if we can help the community, um, we're all in this together. Uh, we'd just talk a little bit about the toughness of being a studio owner in New York right now. Um, well, what's going on for you? I, I'm, I feel, yeah, thank you. Um, you know, us new Yorkers think that we're tough anyway. Uh, this is testing, uh, um, the finance, the financial burden of running a business in New York is challenging day to day. Um, real estate is expensive in New York city and I wish I was in a small town.

Right. Um, the financial burden is huge and honestly that is the biggest challenge. Maybe second to figuring out ways to stay connected and to stay in touch in a meaningful way. And I think that is starting to happen, but the finances are critical and the reality is that businesses will close because of this restaurant's who knows who's going to come back online. Small studios like mine, who knows? Who is able to bridge the gap. We don't even know when we can open again. So from going from whatever our burn rate was to $0 million coming in the next day is super intense. And I mean, I would be remiss to say that I have it figured out or processed.

It's a lot and I've had to really pace myself to understand I can do one thing at a time and not try to race to be fully inaction on all things. Um, so the reality for New York and I'm sure for many other places is number one as a studio owner, so you're gonna be out what you can do to make a financial bridge and whether that's conversations with landlords, anyone that you pay your bills to, um, to figure out where is their leniency that will give you a momentary break as things play out and where are there things that you absolutely have to keep going, whether it's about technology and spendings so that you have access to things or keeping people on payroll. Um, I was honestly very surprised to see some huge, um, restaurant companies and others immediately lay off all of their employees. I get it as an expense, but there will be other expenses that come later. Um, and it's going to be a reckoning for each individual studio owner to understand where can you cut, where can you save and where can you ask for forgiveness or get alone or get other funds to help keep you sustained through this time. Yeah. Have you talked to your landlord? I have. Um, so we have a space on 26th street. It's really large for New York standards.

I guess it's about 4,000 square feet for New York city. That's pretty big for others. I'm sure that's small, but, um, it ain't cheap. And I realize as soon as I made the call to shut down that my first conversation had the view, the biggest expense, which is our rent. So, uh, I'm lucky that the landlord works across the hall from us. I actually saw him in person and we said on Monday before the governor announced that we had to shut down. So we were actually ahead of it. Um, we said, Hey, we don't know what's happening, but, uh, we just had a Frank and open and honest conversation. I said, look, we'll stay in touch. Uh, and he asked me directly, he said, look, I've been there for 10 years, so he knows I'm reliable and consistent and a good tenant so to speak. Um, and he said, look, pay what you can and we'll catch up eventually.

So that allowed my nervous system to calm down a bit. I still had a lot that I have to figure out, but at least I know that he's willing to work with me on it. And if I can keep that relationship in good standing, we have a chance of getting through this and I can't predict the future. I don't know if things will change over time. I'm sure. I know that he actually has a landlord has many other buildings in New York. Um, as he gets pressure from other buildings shutting down or having other businesses not be able to pay, he's going to have pressure for his mortgage and for all of his buildings.

So there's a domino effect that's going to play out from both sides. And the same is true if he gets a commercial, um, you know, grant from a bank to use off on his mortgage. Will that ripple effect come down to the small business owners? It's unsure. And what happens with the federal grants that are coming out and the bail outs that are going to happen. Um, industry support, all of those financial resources will be critical in the coming days and weeks and months. Yeah. Yeah. We, we talked with Carrie yesterday about this.

I think you are listening and really encourage everybody to talk to their landlord and you know, Jared had a really good model we talked about yesterday. Do you want to talk about your model of looking at your biggest expense and then your next one and then your next one. I love that we can't help but be physical. Thank you. Um, yeah, the, the thing that I suggested was to run a report or have your accountant or bookkeeper run it for you and just do metalwoods all of last year and look at all of your expenses and sort them in order from largest to smallest. You want to take care of the big fish first. So for me, that's my landlord. If it's your payroll, then great.

Look at the expenses that you need to pay out on a monthly basis and really look at the prioritization of them to understand what needs to continue. Where can you have conversations that might lessen them? And I think someone just mentioned increase that rent was cut 40%. Amazing, right? Um, there are laws that will be based on city, state, and County that will affect this. So you need to really stay in touch with your local area. But if you can look at a prioritization of your expenses from biggest to smallest, if you're spending all of your time worrying about the lowest expense, you're not going to get as much done.

So really going in order from the top down will help you stay sane. And we'll also just ease the burden of what you have to shell out each month and hopefully that makes a dense. Um, have you thought about borrowing money? That was the first thing I thought about. I'll share this. I actually had a client who I used to train who's now seeing someone else and the Monday morning before we shut down, it was actually that day. Uh, I saw them leaving as I was coming in and they grabbed me, they're in finance and they said, Hey, let me, let me talk with you. And took me out into the hallway and said, liquid is the name of the game. Liquidity is the name of the game.

And his counsel very quickly was whatever you can do as a business owner to stay liquid or get liquid as fast as possible is basically the only key that will keep you alive as a small business right now. And I took that advice to heart. I had, I talked to as many people as I could who I trust for finances, financial expertise, and I made a list of the resources that I think that I have knowing that a lot of it is still unknown, right? So all the federal grants, the small business loans that are going to come online, even things like Facebook announced that they're doing some grants. Um, my favorite this morning I think I mentioned earlier, was Bumble of all things. So I'm single for my future husband that's out there and we'll talk later. But Bumble actually announced that they're doing small business grants, which is amazing. So they're doing up to $5,000 by application. So there's a lot of money that will be available.

But the reality is it's going to take time and whatever you can do for getting family and friend loans for getting a bank loan, if you own your apartment, to refinance your mortgage, because rates are really good right now, do anything you can to horde cash to make sure that you have enough to get through the next period. We don't know how long it's going to last. We don't know when we can reopen. So to have money on hand is so, so important. Whatever means you can get access to it. Arrows advice as well for those that weren't here yesterday. Thank you so much Jared. I'm going to, why don't we switch over to the Q and a and see if we can answer some of these questions.

Great. So the first one is what is our liability online? Great question. Carrie did a really good job of answering this the other day. Um, those laws are also changing. Um, I know that in California for the physical therapists and those who have to comply with HIPAA laws, that things have shifted and they basically said, anyone who's doing tele-health for PTs or if they're doing a remote session, they're used to doing manual work, that that basically counts. So what you would do in clinic applies to what you're doing at home. Um, from what I've understood so far, for those of us who are doing a personal training and [inaudible] and movement-based sessions where we're not touching in the same way that therapists do, um, the same basically applies that there are starting to be rounds of restrictions that are being waived because we're in such extraordinary circumstances. And I know there was a conversation yesterday about online waivers, there will still be a need for protection. You know, if someone's working out at home, you have to be really considerate about the environment you're setting up so that someone's head is not near, God forbid, a coffee table, right?

So we're used to controlling our environments. We go with [inaudible], right? We all know that setting up our studios a certain way and making sure we're very well trained in them. It's a different environment. So being extremely mindful and conscientious about how you're setting up your clients in home session if that's what you're doing is very important. But that's just kind of my, uh, very simple best practices in terms of liability. Um, look to what's happening in your current state and try to talk to people to understand if there's any emotion by either the state laws, local city laws to loosen some of those so that you're able to do online work regardless considering doing an, uh, some sort of online waiver. You know, most of us have our waivers that clients have to sign in for physical space. Yeah. Just having a simple version for online is really, really useful.

Yeah. Yesterday we shared that the Pleiades method Alliance had shared a sample online waiver agreement and uh, I don't know if we can put that in the chat or a link to it. I think it was sent out by email, but we will try and put it somewhere. And then a sort of similar, John, if I can jump in as asking you about, I'm trying to teach has not yet taught is because there's a lot of hands on work and any advice on that? Um, a couple of my trainers that I talked with, you know, for a lot of us who use two, eight, two direction touch and all that, um, and are using tactile cuing to really impact our clients sessions and movement. Um, getting creative and thinking about the power of words is really key.

And I know a lot of trainers, I'm super hands on myself and trainers I know are um, being very disciplined about the words you use to help someone through something that you might've used your hands in a certain way before. But using the power of language now is really different. And I'll say also that client's ability to focus in their session. It's a very different thing without equipment and doing a mat session or in-home session with equipment to interact in this way, words matter differently. You hear things differently and the cadence has changed.

So just the main thing is really to use your words in ways that you might not have in a session because they're going to translate to a movement experience in a very different way. [inaudible] um, we talked yesterday a little bit about, uh, whether or not to actually move with your client or just to be focused on the screen so you can see. Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, my take on this, and I don't remember Kara's answer, but, um, I would really say that clients are coming to us for attention and focus and some of them learn visually so that to see shapes and move with us. Um, that was not my dance routine by the way. Um, to move with us. It's useful for them to physically embody the work. Um, but really they're coming for us to guide and to lead them through a movement experience. So for me, what I've talked with the people that I work with to actually pay attention and visually see what's happening with your client and think through what experience you want them to have is really the most important. And for people that do need physical demonstration, there are ways that they can get that.

They might be that you prep them with homework. A lot of our clients already know us and they're used to a certain sequence or routine, um, that way you have, they have access to it and it might be geared as guiding, kind of like driving a car. You're just figuring out how to drive the wheel, you know, to think about turning the hand signal and putting the brakes on. You just kind of do it and what you're really doing is responding to the road. So for people that are familiar with your work, keeping things as common and normal as possible and as routine as possible will help. If it's new people thinking about what the best type of learning method, uh, we'll probably get the most bang for your buck. Thank you. Hope that helped. And, and uh, your follow up with us if you have more questions, uh, the Kaitlin Galvin, you don't have an online payment method like mind body in place. You can, what would you recommend a Venmo?

Can you talk to how to implement this appropriately with clients? Yeah, I would say it depends on if you're a studio owner or a solo practitioner. Um, look, main thing is get money coming in and do it as yesterday. Do it as fast as possible. So if you have been most set up, share your Venmo account and teach your clients how to use it. It's pretty quick once you set it up.

The thing is we're all in this big learning curve, so any new technology takes a couple of minutes and the more we can do to get ahead of that and be proactive and lead our clients to say, Hey, here are the three things you have to do. Take a picture and screenshot it and show them. I had a hysterical time last night with my family on a zoom call with my entire families. There was like 12 of us in different places. My mom could not figure out, sorry mom, if you're watching this, I'm totally reading her, but she couldn't figure out how to get, you know, the audio versus the screen and it was funny for the rest of us and we kind of made light of it. But also reality is it's frustrated, right? We're used to a certain thing we want to get going.

So taking a moment to ground yourself, lead your clients and say, Hey, here's the process that works. A Venmo is really simple as Dell is really simple. If you already have it, use what you have and help people access it. So it's simple for them as well. And if people can add to the chat, I'm not sure is, I think a Zale is just a U S Venmo I think is more global. Um, but if there's that similar payment systems elsewhere in the world, just please add it to the chat and um, you know, w we'll make sure we kind of share it with everybody. But the most, the simplest way is if you're doing a private Caitlin, um, just say, you know, I'd love to do this private, can you Venmo me my normal rate of whatever it is in your current, in your region and just do the class that way. That's like the one on one payment. Um, Eventbrite is, they charge a little fee. It's like three or 4% of the financial transaction, but like a credit card processor. But again, you can set up an event, an event bright for a group of, um, so let's say you have 10 people doing a map class with you.

I think that's a good solution. Um, we believe that mind body online is looking for a way to integrate all this together. Um, but we don't believe that that's been released yet. But Katie Santos as a consultant for mind body online and they're going to hear more about that on Thursday. Yeah. And there's some good chat recommendations coming into, which we don't have to go through each one, but take a look at the chat for some more suggestions. Um, do you want to talk about the next one? This one's from Lee. Do you suggest need EarPods for teaching math classes online?

Uh, I'm showing off my, my EarPods right now. Um, you want people to be able to hear you, right? There's nothing more frustrating than trying to wrestle with the screen or lighting or sound. So test it, right? The easiest way to do it with clients that you're gonna see on a recurring basis is to take five minutes, say, Hey, we're going to spend the first five minutes testing out headphones, AirPods whatever the things are, just to make sure that it's enough that they can hear you. Uh, for example, I closed my window before us that this audio was okay. Made sure my dog had enough to take care of himself so he wasn't crashing about. So really looking at the environment you're setting up, that's light, that sound, uh, that's distraction.

So if you have kids or if you have a loved one or a roommate at home, really creating a space for your clients and for yourself, that focus can really be the priority. And there's so many options for sound. Um, if you have a space where you can control it, just put your speaker on. And that's probably enough. We have phones are so good with Mike these days, if that Bruce, and not be enough plugging into either anything that's Bluetooth enabled to be able to allow you to move if you need to or if you need to plug in with an extended record, whatever works. And it's simple so that people can actually hear you. Yes, I totally agree with uh, you know, the best thing we kind of feel is, you know, this might look very gawky, but yeah, very good.

Sound really good Mike. Um, you know, the air, you know, the Bluetooth wireless, um, you know, headphones with a mic in it are really good. The challenge, if you have a cable like this, you know, like the one that comes standard with most cell phones has the microphone about here and it can bang on your shirt and that can be really irritating. So I kind of suggest I'm just not going that route unless you've got to, and if you can hold it out like this so that it's not banging on your shirt, you know, just lifted out, that's much, much better. But they're hearing that bang, bang, bang. And that rub, rub, rub is not appealing for that client. I was the first part, John set up, by the way, she's making Christy really jealous about this little Janet Jackson moment. So kudos to you for that. Uh, the second part of Lee's question, how'd you set up the webinar meeting so that the attendees don't need to fiddle with camera and audio? This would be good for group classes.

So the attendees typically going to watch this on their laptops, maybe their computer screens, but those things, and there's various configurations into where you can disable the people who are joining. You can disable their audio so that they don't, you know, when they talk, they don't talk over you. So you can do a mutal. And there were various plans with zoom, you know, there's a free one, which has the limitation of only going for 40 minutes. And then, you know, that's the longest you can have. And typically a, you know, Polonius class is, you know, 55 hour, that kind of thing. So we, we, I would recommend spending the, I think it's 1495 in the U S U S dollars to have a zoom account and have that professional level that allows you to have more controls. Um, yeah, one, one caveat with Zhou if I could interject, uh, that I've seen is, uh, if you're doing larger group classes and you have lots of participants taking your potties class, um, be careful and clear about who you allow to either share or even just telling your clients to shut their microphone officer's not ambient noise, just another screen off. And also allowing, um, you could do view only where people can only see you and not see other screens so that they're not distracted by other views. Um, that's going to be helpful so that people can stay focused on you, not about what other people are doing behind the scenes. Yeah. You know, as a business, we've used zoom for a couple of years, so we're kind of zoom integrated, if that makes sense. I don't know as much about other platforms. Um, but you know, there was some really good zoom webinars and I don't know if zoom can, um, put something into something, put something in the account to the zoom tutorials which told answer a lot of the questions, how to do it as say in the chat that Katie has just said that zooms up their thing from 40 minutes to an hour for the free account. So see what you can do with the free account and save that $15 a month and keep that for something else. Hope that helped. Lee. Uh, Leann, I'm looking for some kind of Mike but don't want to spend a lot. Any, any clues, um, or the little bit of a question here is, I'm assuming this is so that you can teach and if you're moving or if you're stationary, it's kind of a little bit differently different. Um, but we kind of recommended the Apple AirPods if that's within your budget.

They're expensive. They're like, what are they now 300 bucks or something. Um, this gamer microphone, this gamer headset that I have here is about $40 on Amazon and some of the other ones that we've done, uh, even less expensive, like 25, something like that. But it's nice to have good sound and also to get this and you know, when you're playing around with this, you don't want it so that you know this, this has a guard on it so you don't hear me spitting and puffing and all those things. So it's kind of good. Um, maybe Jerry you can add into the chat, uh, some of the links to some of the things that we use and for our business. Uh, Krissy asked the question about therapists. I think that's a tough, tough business to be in. It's a great question and it's probably pretty devastating.

I would say the answer is most of them are just simply out of work. As much as we all need their work right now, it's near impossible. And those that are doing in homes are really putting themselves and their clientele at risk, which is devastating. But that is simply the reality and we have to deal with reality right now. Right? It's like we're, we're not saying that we need to ignore it, but looking at safe and healthy ways to really deal with what's happening. Um, I know some chiropractors that are extremely manual in New Jersey, uh, they're actually allowed to stay open. So chiropractic clinics are still open.

They're just taking extreme measures to keep everybody safe. So there's distancing in terms of how many people come into the clinic at a time. Um, I imagine in some locations that might be the same for massage though, depending on the type of massage you're giving, it will be categorized as essential or nonessential and that may come down to city or state governance. So just to be aware of what's happening there. Um, like many in New York restaurants and studios and fitness centers were the hardest hit, uh, along with hospitality and airlines because it was so rampant. Um, so really massage is probably the most directly of a bulls-eye in terms of touch and manual care, along with physical therapists. Acupunctures are included in that as well. So any kind of therapy or a person who is practicing direct touch in that way and was so close the New York times, actually for those who want to look at it, did a really brilliant infographic that showed the proximity and risk exposure of various jobs. And not surprisingly, and unfortunately health practitioners of all kinds, nurses, doctors who we are obviously right now is so grateful for, um, physical therapists, massage therapists, and even things like hairstylists.

So anyone who's enclosed contact, uh, was at much higher risk both themselves and also for transmission. Uh, so I dunno if we can find the link or I can share it with you later, but really well organized New York times info graphic that showed every type of job you can actually search your jobs and find yourself on this chart. And it was an eye opener, right? To just look at who it has to do work that is really close to their people, which has so many benefits and so many risks right now. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see if we can find that as a PI's to all the links. Uh, what we're gonna try and do is collect them all up and we will put them into the description that we do for the video when we post it tomorrow. And hopefully those resources are hopefully helpful to folks.

Uh, this is a question from Tatiana. Uh, so many of my clients are financially not able to pay our normal rates, juicer, losing their jobs. Do you recommend reducing prices or donation classes? Um, okay. There's a new and we're trying to stay in business. Fingers crossed for you tat and Tatanya I hope that you're successful. What's your thoughts, Jared? Yeah, so top down, it's a great question. Um, and hi from New York as well.

Can you talk later? Bye. I got someone in New York. Um, being able to survive this storm is key and understanding of who your clients are is really important piece of that. And I would say for people that if you have, let's say you have 20 clients you're seeing as a private practitioner or a hundred if you're doing group classes in a normal week, trying to do a quick survey to understand who has income that is salaried, stable, who has tons of money, that they are not at risk, keep them the same. There's no reason. In some ways, one of my trainers put it this way, they said, uh, or to that I'm affiliated with, I said, look for people that have money who are not going to be impacted by this. One of the best things that they can do is contribute and continue to pay for all the services that they normally pay. Whether that's a dog Walker, their hairstylist, their trainer, their plot, his teacher, whoever it is, right for them to continue to use the local businesses. The small businesses is a huge gift to society at large right now.

So there a separate category for people that are job unstable, who've already been laid off because of what's happening. I'm giving them access to your class is also a huge gap and it's something that we can do to provide support. That said, if we're not charging for our services, we won't be able to provide support. We can't pour water from an empty well, right. So all the cliches we could apply to it, but we'd have to be able to keep our businesses open to be able to give anything to people that need it. And that means we have to preserve our income. We have to find ways to keep income coming in or create new sources of income and get creative.

The first thing is to shore up what already is working well and get your clients back into remote sessions, whether that's in person or sorry, uh, one-on-one or group. Keep them coming to you. Keep reaching out to them. Even if they said no at first cause things are shifting, reach out again. They need you. You are as valuable to them as they are to you. For people that are not able to do that because things are uncertain or they're trying to preserve their income makes total sense. And we can offer things like a reduced rate or a donation-based rate or a free session on a limited capacity to really allow people the gift of our services without taking ourselves down and out in the process.

Yeah, I agree. You know, one of the things we talked about with event pride is that allows you to price your tickets at different tiers. So if somebody can afford to pay, say $100 for a mat class, give them the opportunity to do it or make a donation. So, um, certainly with Eventbrite you can tier the pricing within your event at different levels. Um, yeah, I really want to support the restaurants that I like here in Los Angeles and they're all closed right now and you know, I'm really want to be there for them. So I think there's a lot of people that want to help however we can in this, in this era. And I hope that was useful. Um, and happy to, you know, talk after if you have specific questions on price points. Um, I would also say things like square to you. I know you can do very simple ways of using pricing that are set up by tiers or access only and you can set how many are allowed of that. So just to be clear instruction with what we're providing so that we can continue to provide it.

I saw a question in the, in the uh, chat here. Um, I'm sorry, I was just scrolling back here. I think it was along the lines of what are we using to do this? So if you look at charity's picture and you look at mine, Jared clearly has a better camera than me. And so he is doing this on his iPhone. So this is an iPhone 11, I believe, and just held up in a tripod. And that's how, how he's doing this. I'm doing this off my iMac is a 27 inch iMac with just the built in camera.

And you can see it's a lower resolution camera. The iPhone has a spectacular and a lot of the, you know, the Android firms have just as good, I'm not pushing the Apple side of things. So the setup, I believe, I haven't been to charities room, but I believe, do you want to describe your setup? You can do it better than I can. Literally there's, my iPhone is set up on a simple tripod at landscape mode. I set it up as high as I could, so I'm six two, this tripod doesn't go all the way up, otherwise that'd be hold it lower down and I just wanted it so it was stable and simple and out of the way. So I could actually talk to you all.

And I actually set it up close to the windows for good light. Um, I hope the light is useful for you. Um, I actually shut off my other lights cause it's a New York apartment and the lights were kind of glaring and the wrong color. Um, so we kept it as simple as possible and steady and lucky that my phone, I think Android cameras are great. The iPhone camera right now is great. So it was enough that over this interface works really well and I don't believe you need to have the latest iPhone or any of those things. But you know, the iPhone 11 had an astonishing camera in it, but you know, just some of the more recent F, you know, phones, cellular phones, they are gray and there's all kinds of ways of jury rigging. If you don't have a tripod and you don't have that little stand, there's lots and lots of ways to do it. But again, um, what we will do is we'll put in the chat a couple of links to a couple of the things that we recommend. Um, yeah, I used to use, um, you know, gorilla pod, they're the little mini things that you can clean to almost any show for a surface or crag. And I'm using, um, just one more detail. I'm using a Joby attachment on top of the tripod.

And so Joby makes little kind of cradles for cameras or phones. So anything just to help stabilize the, the phone, you don't want your phone to drop or fall off. So make sure it's stable. And then they usually a standard attachment that will hook up to any tribe monitors standard Mount. So just figure out your amount system. There are options from $15 all the way up to short thousands. Just go with what's easy and works.

Cool. Yeah, we put it in the chat, the Joby Joby one. Yeah, there's, there's lots of cool stuff. Um, we've got two questions left and see if we can finish them. Stacy, are you offering physiotherapy virtually as I am not a physical therapist, but I have physio therapists that work in my facility and they are doing tele-health and they're doing it successfully. So shout out to F squared, physical therapy and some of the other independent physical therapists that I know, um, tele-health full, uh, just a way to remotely offer the best of their skills, even though they can't do manual work in person right now. Um, but there's a lot of skill sets that people have, which in a normal session they might not actually be able to offer because there's only so much time in an hour session. So anything you can do to continue to support people. If you're a physical therapist that hasn't movement background, you can offer movement sessions by August format. So yeah, a lot of physio therapists and physical therapists are using tele-health to keep their practices going. Um, it's, it's an amazing thing to be able to offer. And insurance will cover telehealth. Those restrictions have been loosened is that they actually, if you're recovered with through insurance as a physiotherapist, you should be able to get paid out for that.

There will be a lot of details to sort through in terms of are you insured, uh, in, uh, in network or out of network? Are you cash or insurance? But as you navigate those tele-health, Natalie is starting to be the way to go for now. Cool. So our last question here is, has anyone used mammo stream? I have not heard of Nanostream. I don't know if you have, I have not heard of. Now my stream sounds interesting. Uh, there's so many options out there and all are worth checking out. I would caution everybody to not go crazy with researching. Again, we're in such flux. Start with what's simple.

Start with what you know works well for you and will work for your clients. You might love zoom, but if your clients are all 75 and can't figure it out, um, not to, you know, piss on 75 year olds. I know lots of 75 year olds who are great with it, but knowing who's tech savvy, keep it simple. Your clients want their time with you. They don't want to have to struggle through a half hour of new stuff and help them out. You know your clients really well. You all do, you know who they are, you know how they operate. Just ask them what they're used to using and lead them right?

Don't wait for them to say, Oh, let's try this thing. You have to take the reins. You have to lead as a service providers. Say, Hey, here's how we're doing things and I want to use this format and it's really simple. I'll show you how to get it set up and take the rings. Cool. Uh, I promise folks that we'd finish on time. So I'm going to try and do that. There's a few comments in damage stream and that they're not accepting new clients. Um, so maybe that'll help. Um, and uh, somebody else in the questions, how are we doing this again? Yes, we're going to do it on Thursday.

I'm doing it with Katie Santos and Katie's been great and that she's answered some of the questions in the chat. Um, so Katie Santos is also another teacher that's featured on [inaudible] anytime. I'm looking forward to, to doing that with her. Uh, and we're going to do some more next week. Uh, we haven't booked anybody yet, but we're in the process of doing that. I feel a real need to do something with one of our teachers who's based in Australia and a, I want to have a shout out to our Aussie friends and we'll do it in a time zone, which means you don't have to get up in the middle of the night. Maybe it means I have to get up in the middle of the night, but we'll definitely do it. Um, and uh, it's going to be fun. I promise that we would have a guest appearance at the end here.

So I'm going to delete us if we can do that. Jared, can you, uh, is that possible? You give it away. All right. Excuse the four here. Ready meet chip everybody. This is my buddy. He's as old as the studio if you guys can see him. Yeah, he's my guy. He's wondering why I've been chatting to nobody in the party. It doesn't smell anything. I also wanted to say for um, next week we can talk about it, but um, the talk, the talk conversations we've had through plies anytime on Instagram. This is a really important one. We'd done them the first Tuesday of each month.

So the first Tuesday in April, we have some time. We definitely will take some of the content. Things are changing very fast. So as they continue to change, I'm going to keep watching these with everyone you bring on, let's say in conversation. So what's useful for that first Tuesday talking talk. We can definitely focus in on what's happening and useful for everyone. We're going to do this, we're going to do more stuff. So yes, we will be here broadcasting. We have some ideas around helping people, really best practices on how to teach online.

And we're going to be showing that we're going to share some stuff, more stuff around the camera setups and what our research has shown. We don't have the perfect answer, but just tell you what we're thinking about. But, uh, we will edit this video. It should be up tomorrow, maybe the day after. And uh, thank you everybody for joining us and a love to you or appreciation. Thank you for coming, Jarrett. None of you are alone out there, so keep connecting, keep staying in touch with each other and we are here for you and John please, anytime. Crew, thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. And I wish we could have answered all the questions, but we'll be back on Thursday. We'll answer more and we'll see you all soon. Thank you so much everybody. Bye for now. See soon, see Thursday bye. Hi. Bye. Thanks.