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Thanks for joining me, Julie. I know it's late in the evening and uh, you know, thanks for staying up like nine o'clock. The night is young, John. All right, well we've, we have a dance party. Um, it's kinda late for the UK time, but we're having a dance party on Friday this week, so 6:00 PM Pacific daylight time, which I think is two in the morning UK time. I think. Uh, we're doing a live dance party and we're going to stream that over the web using zoom. And so for the all the British folks, if you want to join us and you can't sleep, come and join us. We're going to be a streaming live for three hours and we're going to see how it goes and if it's popular, we're going to see if we can do it more frequently. So just a few guidelines here before we start. Um, we're going to talk for 60 minutes. The first 30 minutes is going to be Julie and I are having a little discussion about things. Then we'll do 30 minutes of questions and answers and we'll try and answer your questions. Um, Judy and I are not the experts.
We cannot interpret the law for you. We don't know about the government stimulus packages and those things, but hopefully we can point you in the direction of the right kind of assets to help you do those things. Introduce myself here. I'm John Marston. I'm the cofounder of plot is anytime with Kristy Cooper and Ted Johnson. We founded the business 10 years ago. Julie, the guest today, Judy and I have known each other for, we were talking about it just before we came on for longer than we expected. We first met six years ago when Judy won.
The next plot is anytime instructor competition and she came to Los Angeles and we met and she went up to the studio near Santa Barbara and filmed, um, she's a [inaudible] teacher, obviously. She's a horse whisperer. She's based in Highgate in North London and she has a studio in her own home and Jewy uh, you are, you can see Julie's studio there. Um, it's in the basement of her home. She's been teaching for these for 20 years and she specializes in working with questions. So is that a good enough introduction to you? Is that fair? I think that's pretty cool. So we've been doing a few shout outs here, but I'm curious where our audience is today. So I'm going to launch a little poll and just ask you the question of where in the world are you.
So he's going to launch the poll and if you could just give us some feedback. Hopefully that poll is working, uh, where folks are today and uh, you know, this is, I think I've been doing this for a couple of weeks and we've had people from all over the world. It's so much fun. And today I just going to end the poll there. Um, I'm going to show the results, hopefully that's coming up. Uh, so about a third of the folks from the U S 10% from Canada. I'm amazed. What time is it in Australia? It's tomorrow morning, isn't it? So a few people from there and about half the folks are from the UK.
And thank you so much for coming and I guess that one, that 2% is from Argentina. Um, so thank you so much for joining us. And I have another quick question for folks here is I just want to know what people are doing here today. So I just launched a poll here asking if you're a teacher practitioner, studio owner, um, what is it that you're, you do showing about two thirds plus teachers today and about a third studio owners. So, uh, that really helps us. So thank you everybody for filling that in. So Julie, my first question for you, tell me about what's happening with the Corona virus. They are North London.
Well, London has about a third of all cases in the U K so we're about two weeks ahead of the rest of the UK. Um, we've been on shutdown now for, we're two weeks into it, on lockdown and um, it's amazing the, the roads are so quiet. We're allowed at once a day to exercise and then for medication or for shopping. And that's pretty much it. So when you go out, when you do go out for a walk today, I thought of woodpecker. And that's extraordinary to be able to walk on a London street in hair woodpecker because normally you're having trucks and cars. So, and there's a piece now, you know, the, I could, um, I walk past a tree and I could hear the bees in it. So this nature is really coming back in London.
That's amazing. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, you know, you think of Los Angeles as this city of freeways and there's nobody on the freeways. I've been watching the, you know, watching some of the TV about that. It's nature is coming back and we have the cleanest skies I think I've seen in LA ever and I've lived here for nearly 30 years. So it's kind of sad that it's kind of like there are some upsides to this. Yeah. Do you personally know anybody who's, uh, has or had, has the coronavirus or had it? I do. I do. I'm somebody my husband works with, um, she has an underlying condition and she was terrified of getting Corona virus.
So it was constantly washing her hands and satisficing and then she went home for family visit to South Africa to Durban and while she was the South Africa lockdown down and made everybody have a test and she tested positive. So she was completely asymptomatic and was full of Corona Nevara so Paula didn't have it. So it was amazing that this person who had these underlying issues was so frightened to get it actually then found out she had it and was totally okay. Somebody else, my husband works with us, just founder. He has it too. And last week I was teaching a class, an online class and uh, when I did my usual, hi, how's everybody? Anybody get eggs, pagans, um, and Joe Kinney went for system costs and one of the ladies went, well actually I have, my husband and I both got coronavirus.
So the wonderful thing was if we'd been teaching it in a normal studio, she wouldn't have been able to attend. But because she, we would teaching it online, she was able to do the class. She did pretty much the whole full return to life sequence and she was great. So yeah, I do know a few people with it, but so far, look, fingers cross nobody who is really struggling with symptoms. That's good. Do you feel like London is still, you know, the peak hasn't happened yet, is it still, we were two weeks off it, which is the scabby thing, which is why they're being so hard now on people moving around when they really shouldn't be. There was a lady who was in the news today. There was a lady who was caught on a station in your coaches in the North of England, and she wouldn't give the police her name or tell them why, where she was going or why she was there. So we found a 660 pounds.
So they're really starting to calm down on people, bring to the rules. So do you think the national health service is ready for this? Or is it somebody who can never be ready for, I don't know how anybody could have ever prepared for this. Um, I know lots of people who work in the NHS. My brother was a radiographer and a very dear friend of mine is um, ICU anesthetist. So they're right on the front line. They're right on the sharp end of this.
And two weeks ago they said that it was, it was bad and it's obviously progressing week by week, day by day. Our numbers are getting bigger day by day now. Scary big a diaper. Yeah. I know we mentioned before we went live here that you live in North London in Highgate. Can you tell me a little bit about your studio and your community? So my studio is in the basement of my house and I have um, two reforms.
House. I have one class, global contemporary cause I like to mix it up a little bit and I have a lot of barrel, which was gifted to me by almond and Herman. So it has a lot of history and atmospheric, precious to me and just lots of other little bits and pieces as well. And um, I have a great philosophy community around me. I feel very lucky to be surrounded by amazing teachers and we have a thriving Palacios community here. Cool. When did you stop letting people into your, into your studio? I stopped a week before our lockdown. Thank you. I need to know.
She was just saying I've got a five studio. Thank you. Um, uh, because I, I have asthma, my son has asthma and I w no longer felt comfortable having my elder declines here for this. I come to mind as well. So I'd already, Oh, about a week before I chose to lock down, I'd already sent out to less aside, you know, these are the new coronavirus protocols and this is what I'm going to be bringing into my studio. And then, um, it was actually Friday the 13th, I was due to go down to a big question yard and work with some part of them pick riders and there yard shot on the other. It just made me think if a big yard is shutting then maybe I should think about closing my doors. So I did, I sent out an email [inaudible] so it was a week before the rest of the UK. All right, I'm just going to do another quick survey here and see if everybody else is open or closed here. I just want to launch a poll. Uh, we, we ran this survey a few days ago and, uh, the only place in the world where there appear to be studios that are open was Japan, which I thought was kind of interesting. They've approached this slightly differently and today we have one person who said that they are not closed. I'd love to know where you are in the world. Um, that's extraordinary. I'm going, nobody take, do not know cause that would be slightly worrying.
Ah, thank you. Tessa. You believe it's Sweden? That's interesting, huh? Uh, it's different everywhere. Uh, how are you staying in touch with your, um, with your clients now that you've closed? Um, I actually, this is really lovely. I actually had a phone call today. I have a lovely client who's 77, and she phoned me up today just for a chat, which was fantastic. So I had a lovely 15 minute chat with him, which was totally unexpected. Um, but apart from that, what I'm doing is I have a group of teachers that I work with that we have a little messenger group that we speak to each other daily. And then I have other teachers that I am still teaching.
But how I generally keep in touch with them as I haven't used lesser, which I, I've done two this week, which is unusual for me. But normally I do want to use lecture week. Just keeping in touch by doing is just sending out a little class for everybody as well. That's cool. When we were chatting before, you mentioned that you've already, you're already been in the, uh, the online video teaching thing. Can you tell me about what did you use to do, you know, before virus?
I don't know if there's such a thing as BV, but you know what I mean. Let me say before Corona. Um, yeah, I used to use Skype, which, um, I was really, really happy with. I had no problem with it. And as you now know, I'm not the most technologically minded person and it works for me. It was very easy. Whereas I've now probably like most of the world maybe moved over to zoom, which I don't find is as easy to use.
But it does allow me to teach more people at once. For classes though I don't do many group classes. So that's the only change is that I've moved over to zoom. Yeah. So I'm just going to do the question here for folks. Are you teaching online and if there's a lot of interest in this and there has generally been on this poll, we will certainly talk about it a lot more.
Three quarters of folks are teaching online. 20% not yet. And 10% no. And uh, wow. I don't manage to call Judy out here, but if Judy can do it, everybody can do it just to mean for work. I'm sorry Julie, that you told me you weren't tech savvy. I know we've mentioned the six years, but that's tough. I know. I was meeting me.
So Julie and I blushing. I'm sorry. I feel bad. I made that joke. So, um, tell me about your setup. Tell me how you do it. Terrible. I did that. I'm like, Oh, [inaudible] I know you don't have a tripod, which I'm using tonight, but sometimes I'm aye, depending on if I'm using my reformer to teach or if I'm using my chair, I will move it around. Um, because obviously because they have my operators at home on police, quite easy for me to teach online and see, like today I taught somebody and they wanted chair lessons, so I simply moved my tripod so that if I needed to I could hop on my chair and go, no, this is why me. Can you see? So sometimes my computer, like my computer at the moment, my phone is on the tripod, my computer's on a step ladder. I use what I've got around my house. Cool. Yeah. So a typical teaching experience would be you'd have your phone on the tripod and you just move it around as you need it. Yeah. Cool. Um, how do you charge your clients for that? Exactly.
And how did you do it in the past? Um, how do they pay me? Um, I have PayPal account. I also use Stripe through my, um, website. And I also, some people have my bank details as well. If they want to pay larger sums like for a block of five or 10, then they tend to pay directly into my bank account.
Cool. So you're using the same mechanisms really to to earn money. It's I'm John not, not really very much has changed. Hey it works, you know that you are working from home. That you know, it's not like you have a big fancy studio with 20 pieces of equipment and 10 teachers. So you know, it's what's the appropriate solution for that particular ticket? A place. Yeah. Um, I know the answer to this, but you were telling me the trials and tribulations of also being a elementary school teacher at the moment. How is that impacting your ability to teach? That's your answer. Pretty much. It's, um, do you know what is inhibiting my ability to do pretty much anything because um, I have these two legal people trailing around all the time, you know with the mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum.
One thing that I've worked out, well I knew my math was bad but I now know that my math is worse than an eight year olds, which is really your issue. I have to actually Google the word yesterday cause I wasn't quite sure what it meant sort of. You guys just stay there and let's do that color again and I'm just going to Google what that means. So I tend to do the English, I do the English and the French and the recorded lesson. Yeah we just record a lesson. I watch John, we jam out with our recorders and for, I know that crew loves baby shock.
I might even send her a video of me and my children playing baby shark on recording cause that is a joy. One of the things that's definitely come out of me for this is the ability to take, you know, I did a teacher that I'd been going to for quite a few years here in Los Angeles. I did an online class with her yesterday. And for me the experience was great. I really appreciated her focus on me, her corrections, all the things like that. Um, so maybe what Juliet should do, who is, I should try and get on your schedule here and have a private with you. That'd be fun. You, you years ago said to me, I'm going to be coming to London more often and I'm going to book a session with you. You never have. So maybe now's the time.
I did take you for lunch once you did. That was lovely. That was a lot of fun. Okay, so what, what I, you know, you've talked, I'm going to ask you the question again, but you're charging the same for your online classes as you do for your in person. I am. Yeah. And yeah, your logic behind that is, you know, my bills are the same. I have the same talents and yeah, this is the time I think, um, I've spoken a lot to teachers about this since, um, the outbreak of the virus and what's happened and people begin to teach online and I'm a great believer that our skillset is exactly the same or education is exactly the same. If anything teaching online it, it lifts on our teaching because we have to, we can't use tactile cuing so it lifts all verbal cuing.
It lifts maybe using imagery. We aren't any less of a teacher because we are on teaching online. And I think if you say to your client, I'm going to charge you less, you are sending out a message to them that you aren't as good when you teach online and that is plain wrong. Thank you Julie. I really support there in what you're saying there. Uh, have you had to be really creative in terms of things like props or uh, what do your clients have? Um, I'm used to being creative because when I go to riding stables I used to have to use all kinds of crazy stuff. So, yeah, I mean this is a typical thing like you know, tins of beans for arm weights and pair of tights for stretch band or tie for husband's tie. Not that people tend to wear ties very much now, but yeah, there's plenty of things people can find around the homes that are useful to use props.
Do you have any clients that have a reformers or equipment? I do. I do. I ha I taught a lady today who has her studio in her own home. So she has a reformer, she has a chair, she has a barrel and it's a privately owned home studio, which is fantastic. So I'm very lucky that I have consciously. It is, it is nice to be able to still teach people on upper racists during this time. Yeah. I'm going to ask a poll here about, um, actually before we finish with the online classes, you know, the, the discussions that we've had in the last week and a half, it, a lot of people are using zoom. Um, but there's other people that have found that that older client that they're working with is so familiar with say FaceTime because that's how they talk to their grandchildren.
So I kind of think that it's a matter of for us all to be adaptable and use the technology that that client is going to be comfortable with. Um, when it's come to video quality, you know, for my own business [inaudible] anytime we've, we've stuck with zoom because we find that gives us the most consistently good video quality. Um, you know, we've compared with Google Hangouts, the other things and that's why we kind of like the, the zoom crowd as it were kind of works for us. But I think for that older client, FaceTime can be just great. I don't, do you have any thoughts about other tools? You said you switched from Skype. Um, the only thing that some, somebody asked me today about, they were teaching online live in a closed secret Facebook page and they have problems with that because Facebook content that contacted them about their content. So I would be really hesitant about teaching live on a Facebook page for that reason. And I'm not sure, I don't know the ins and outs of it or the legal side of it, but for me, I wouldn't use Facebook to teach my iPhone for that reason. Now that I've seen that, that has been an issue.
Cool. I'm just going to ask, uh, another polling question here about, um, income. Yeah. So the poll question, he has a little bit more complicated. If before virus, before Corona virus, you might be making $100, um, per week or whatever. What percentage of that are you making today? And so, um, we all kind of know the revenue's gone down, but just kind of getting a sense of how much that has dropped. So we have a few people that are just down between, you know, three quarters of what they made before, but the vast majority of people are making less than 25% of what they were. That 60% are making less than that. It's tough. It is so tough, you know. Um, what do you think has happened to your own revenue? Is it down?
Yeah. But you've also got the convenience having children at home and being a school teacher here. Yeah. I wish. I, gosh, I, I um, it's probably, it's down. It's probably about 75% but I'd rather it be down 75% and it'd be down a hundred percent. You know, I'm actually, no, I mean I'm teaching a 75% down twin. I told you I was no good at math. It's done twice. You fight the same.
You see why I can't teach my children less. Yeah, that's pretty good news. Just down 25%. So if you were doing a hundred pounds before you're doing 75 pounds and you know, the vast majority of people who just did the survey that down somewhere between 25 to 0% of what were making before. So I would encourage you to kind of think about how to, he is doing this, everybody in that she's able to continue to do her private. She's kept her price the same.
And I guess the biggest challenge is you just have less time because you're parenting to be earning money. Is that fair summer? It is, but I'm, I'm very lucky that I have my husband clearly we're all stuck at home now and what I can do is when I have a zoom class, I can say, I can make sure he's around to shut with the children and make sure they don't kick each of the spaces and you know, put a window through and um, and I can do my job and then I can also, we're kind of taking it into ends being really about teachers. Yeah. Yeah. My children are grown up and left home a long time ago, so, um, some of the issues I'm struggling with is just being at home on my own all the time. Uh, we talked a little bit about, um, how to look after ourselves at this time. Do you have any advice on how we can look after our mind and body?
Um, for me, one of the biggest things is not taking in too much news. Um, so I restrict my time to what to look at headlines. I have it first thing in the morning before I get it, before I get into bed and see my children. So I've got time to absorb it and then I can be happy mommy. And then I, after they've gone to bed at night, I watch it then because otherwise what I found was, um, before I closed my studio, I went, I was in a very, very downward spiral because I was overwhelmed by everything I was taking in. As I said before, I have friends in the correspondence, if you will, medics.
So I was hearing the sharp end of it and it was, it was too much. So that for me is very, very important. I make sure we're at the moment, we're still allowed out once a day. So I make sure in the morning I leave my house by course tonight and I go for a nice long walk I can. So what I'm kind of still want to, and keeping in touch with my family and friends, I think that's very important as well. So a little bit of Headspace every day on just, and just make sure you do look after yourself and also the physical side of it. Things like take vitamins, eat well.
Yeah, it's hard that media can be addicting. I just have a quick, quick look at it. But yeah, I've had to do the same thing of just rationing myself off the news. Yeah. We're lucky enough that we get that same walk a day and uh, it's the high point of my day. I love it. I love being outside. I love moving. Yeah. Um, we talked yesterday about um, the kind of the worst case scenario, making sure you had your will in place and things like that. Did you, do you want to talk about that? That's too personal. I'm sorry.
Like what are the reasons I went into this downward spiral is we had lunch with some friends. He's an [inaudible], she's a GP. So clearly were really seeing terrible things. I mean, went round for lunch and I said to my friend, is it as bad as we're seeing on the news? And they said, yes, it's very bad. She used to swag. We wish I weren't used. And, and I said, well how bad? And she just turned to me and said, have you made a will? Which clearly was quite yes, I have. But it really, it was, it could, it really shocked me.
It's focus for me, but I've got, um, underlying health conditions. I'm an asthmatic. It's no secret. There was my son and site to have somebody who is the seeing every day say to meet, make sure you made a well. It's, yeah. So yes, we have is up to date. So you're getting our children. I hope you're okay with that. I'm hoping that my own children have grandchildren have children soon, so I can be a grandpa then. That would be fabulous. I, I love kids.
So when I come over for the private, I will look after the kids. I babysit them and you could, uh, you know, go out with your hubby for the night. So awesome. You're off pretty good here. Alrighty. Let's switch over to the Q and. A. So if you have a question, please add it to the questions. You know that there's a, for me anyway, it's about here underneath me a says Q and a and we'll work our way through them. So I'll read them out, Julie and uh, we'll do our best to answer though. We good? Okay. So Christy Cooper, Krista, you're my business partner here so I hope it's not a hard question.
What would you say to people who teach online for free? Is it desperation necessarily wrong? Oh gosh. I think there were two reasons to teach. The free online is doing it out of um, altruism.
So you want to give classes to people for free because you can and you want to and you want to help people who at this time can't afford to do classes. And then there is, I've discussed this with quite a few teachers again is there is that it almost feels like it's a sense of fear that they need to do something because I don't want to use the word desperate, but it does when you see all these free classes when you, it really scares me for people that they are underselling undervaluing their business because they think they don't have any choice. And um, it was a big rush when the lockdown came in the UK for everybody to suddenly go online, online, online. And I don't think people have actually sat back and considered what is best for their business. I don't think there's any point being online giving away lots and lots of free classes cause you're doing your business harm.
They'd be better off sitting back, working out, being in such with all their clients and putting into place a proper plan. So I, it just worries me for people when I see it and it's like a community class for NHS workers of health workers. I think that's great, but not if it's your favorite and ongoing business plan. Because come June when we come out of lockdown, hopefully in the UK, they're not going to have a business. If you're giving the classes away for free, how do you suddenly get people to stop paying again? Yup. Yeah, I agree. And you know, somebody put it in the chat, it depends on the person. Yeah. Some people cannot file to pay their normal rate. Um, and you know, people who've lost their jobs. I kind of understand that. Um, yeah, I am very happy to continue to, I'm lucky enough to be able to pay the same [inaudible] teacher the same as I paid when I went to her studio and had a private there. So I, I'm, I believe that there are a lot of people who can't afford to pay same price.
And so I think there's a little bit of case by case if somebody is really struggling financially and I think that's appropriate to give that class to that person for free, if that feels appropriate to you. Yeah. Well, what I've done is, um, so my way of giving back to my clients rather than giving free classes, what I do is in my newsletter, we've touched on this earlier, is I record like a 30 minute class. So anybody who's in my newsletter once a week, they are getting something like that. Just something. So rather than it being free online for everybody, it's an on I give out to my clients as well, just a small little class just to keep them going. And that, that's my way of giving back to the community. And the other thing that I do is, um, we talked about this last night, my school, um, my children's school, we support food bank, which clean now the school is shot, is quite um, struggling. The, all the food banks in the U K are already down on, on things that they've been given. So what I, I'm doing next week is I'm doing a class for all the parents and kids at school, which is a donation based class. So I'm giving my time for free for that. It'd be raising money, but my time is for free to raise money for the food banks.
And that's kind of my way of doing stuff for free. So it's not for free, but my times for free. Yeah, I think it's totally, totally appropriate. So yeah, I would just say to everybody that's on this call, you know, please you, your skills are amazing and uh, charges charge your going rate. If you clients can't afford that, then it's a case by case thing of what you can do. The next question here is this from Julie. Do you think the internet providers will help us as the biggest problem I have?
Is the connection dropping when I'm teaching at the moment? Oh boy. I hope so. We have the same, I have the same problem at home. I have a call into my internet provider. Um, I don't know about you, Julie. What you think? I want more bandwidth. I need more bandwidth in my head. Um, I was given a tip today.
One of my clients, um, she has a husband who works in that industry and what he has said is that every day to close your route to down and we'd beat it at least once or twice a day. And they found that doing that helps because there's five of them who are all on internet iPads. So, um, and we tried that and it did help. So I don't know if that's okay. W w w or if it does, but we tried it and it does seem to work. So every morning just shut your rooster off in this reboot and see cleans it up a little. So if you're gonna upgrade your service, you know, it depends where you are in the world. Depends what's available. Um, yeah, we've kind of all dependent on bandwidth, right? Uh, Amber asked the question, are most teachers charging less for their online mat classes? If so, how much less? Um, and I can run, I can run a poll to try and help you on that one. I'm gonna use the poll that I used before and just ask the question, um, at a relaunch. This, this is the poll. I asked about income a minute ago.
And so this time I'm going to ask it, you know, what are you charging for an hour of your work? Is it the same as before or is it less than before? And perhaps people can answer that. So this isn't the income in process. It's how you charging like 10% less or 50% less or so on. And we'll see what we can kind of get from this.
But it looks like most people are charging pretty much the same as they were before. They were in that 75 to 100%. Um, so hopefully that answered your question there, Amber. So this is from Lori McNeil. Uh, are most teachers online using a phone or laptop? Entirely new to the online world? They fearful of the learning curve. Thank you. Uh, Judy, you're using both. Am I right? Yeah. Um, you know, the, a very simple thing to do if you face simple little tripod, which certainly here in California, still available for Amazon, it's not very expensive.
I'm going to have to say what the prices in the U S dollars, like 20, $30. You can get a really simple little tripod and put your phone in it and you can put it there. Um, if the lighting where you are isn't particularly good, then you can get a little lighting attachment. It looks like a white, um, sort of disc cylinder thing that goes round and it's flattering and makes you more attractive and all of those things, you know, cheaper than makeup. Um, things like that would be, uh, so yeah, I think I either use your phone and quite often your phone has an even better camera in it than your laptop does. But both of them work a ring light. That's, thank you Denise. That's what it, that's what I was trying to describe. Thanks for putting that in the chat. And I think Jay is just put into the chat there a link to something on Amazon. It's Amazon us, but presumably it stopped all over the world.
My tripod is hammer H a M a and it's great. And again, I think it was about 35 pounds. I'm not sure what it is in dollars. And Lori, I might, my kind of thought on for people that aren't tech savvy on this, I think you know, do your first class with, I dunno your husband or your mom or somebody who's a friend. I would may, I don't know. And just learn that the tech and that there is some, it's slightly different isn't it Judy? So I don't know if you have any tips about cuing and how to do it and how to, how to run that one hour class. I think that the thing you need to work out is where you want them to have their maps. If they're all, if they're map based, the best thing to do is to have the maps running left to right. So you, you don't even get the angle, but you will see more than you expect to see. So yeah, Kristy is saying film yourself. That's a great idea.
Sets up your camera and film yourself and you can see, just go through your own, workout yourself and watch it back and be amazed at how much you see. She says, close your eyes. I think it's one of those things that, um, just just try stuff and you discover what works and what doesn't work and the today's world that we're in, people aren't expecting it to be perfect. They know you're in your spare bedroom doing it from somewhere and I hope you can't hear this, but the house next door, they just started cutting the grass. I'm sorry if it's interfering with the sand here because design is so loud in here. Um, but yeah, that's the sort of things that happen when we're doing this. Um, for some clients that are really resistant, I would in that case I think about offering, you know, I'll do a 15 minute tutorial for free with you just to get them up that kind of learning curve to see that, Oh, this is worth doing. Um, I don't know if you've had to do tech support with your, some of your clients.
All my clients are far more accomplished at tech than I am job that's teaching me. I do have one client who's a teacher and she did that. She gave, she did a half an hour free trial with a client just to see how the client liked the technology and like the work and the client signed up to doing two to one, two ones a week, which is fantastic. Cool. So it's worth doing that. Uh, so one of the questions that's in the chat is do you demonstrate the exercises or you've just queuing when you're teaching a class online? It depends on the client. Um, if so if it's a one to one, it would depend very much on the client. Most of my clients I can just talk them through and cue them and correct them.
When I'm teaching a class, um, I tend to do a little bit of both. I get them up and running and then once they're moving I'll then go to my computer and have a little look through. And so I was telling John last night, I was teaching him, this is really funny, I was teaching you tests last week and I, I'd set them off during the, the app series, a series of five. And I went to my computer just to see how they were doing and there were four in the gallery and I swiped across to the other four and one of the ladies was sitting on a matching hand cup of tea. She clearly though I wasn't watching, I was just like, Oh, this user doesn't work out or out. Check on your clients, make sure they're really doing it, be strict with them. Um, there's some great things in the chatty, I'm not going to be able to get to them.
Or one of the things that I have found, um, just talking about the social connection of coming to class, if a lot of people is, it's helping with the loneliness of, you know, before virus here, you know, deals with the loneliness of just our regular lives now and they're coming to class was a lot to about the social interactions. Um, so for my, it's hard to do it if you're teaching on the hour and you're doing a 50 minute, but that little bit of chat that you can have at the beginning or the end I think can really help that person feel more connected, help them with their mental health things. Yeah, absolutely. As I hope, Lori that answered your question. That was a long answer for your question that Lori. So hopefully you got a sense of how to do this. Um, you know, if you're doing like bigger classes, you know, in Judy's case people can pay individually by sending her a payment with PayPal or whichever mechanism. If you're doing much more complicated things than, you know, mind body online, there's has some integrations and geo, if you could put that into the chat, I forgot what it is. It's, it fits something that they are kind of integrating there. Um, but that helps with dealing with the booking class and doing things like that. Um, Loretta Robertson, any ideas on teaching private online mat classes to individuals who only use equipment? I'm not sure where to begin.
Uh, I think the best thing to do is to find out what exactly they do have. So if they, all they have is a mat. Um, what you can do is if you think of the reformer, um, repertoire, you could actually re reproduce quite a lot of the reform of repertoire simply on a mat. You can do your footwork, they can do it with the hands behind the head, curled up, they can do all the foot work. Would they just stuff face in the air. You can still do 100. Um, you can, um, there are things that you can still do. They can still do the rowing sequence. They could tell like you said, two cans of beans. So instead of the, um, the handles that you can still go through the whole growing sequence, um, you can still do quite a lot of the reformer repertoire on the mat. In fact, um, I'm pretty certain the placentas, so I know that I did, um, a class, those parties, I practice on the maps and I think there's more than one as well.
So go and have a look and have a look at some of the ideas of how we integrated the operators onto the map with, with and without equipment. Because like we said, if you use a band, they can put the band around their feet and hold bands that can do a short spine. Um, if they haven't got a band that can use prayer tights. Actually it depends where you walk. You're in California, it's going to be too hot to wear tights. You'll have to use press stretcher counsels. There were ways, there were ways you just got to use your imagination and try it out yourself before you get them to do it in case it doesn't work.
Yeah. Yeah. This is a time for creativity. I'm one of the teachers I've been talking to, she said it's really encouraged her creativity. It's challenged her to be a better teacher. And she was kind of enjoying the challenge. Like, okay, how am I going to be able to do this? And, um, she didn't say as much, but in some ways she becomes stale and doing much the same things and suddenly she's got to really push herself. So, uh, it can be a bit scary at times, but as Julie saying, it's a challenge and it's an opportunity. Yeah.
Mmm. So this is for may of when I have not been able to convert our studio class to zoom mat classes. None of them have equipment at home. Any tips in case we weren't able to head back to the studio for longer than we currently expect? I think. Well what do you think Julie? Mmm, I think maybe like we were saying, offer them a taste, a session to encourage them to try an online class so they can see that there is a value to doing an online session. It doesn't have to be alone.
What could even just be 20 minutes? Just, just so you can have an interaction with them as John was saying. Um, um, and just see how much they can get done I think. I think once people try it. And also the thing is, the further away we get from them having been in the studio, the closer the, the deeper we get into lockdown, the more people need it, the more people will really appreciate, even if it's just 20 minutes. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I think, you know, the, the bit we talked about earlier of just, you just ring them up, talk to them and say, Hey, what do you have? Do you have an iPad? Okay, let's just do it on the iPad. I'll show you how to do it. Talking through, um, you know, it's going to be a learning curve. It's like we're kind of marketing to these existing relationships we have and how can we, how can we do it? Okay.
Yeah. The, the lady was saying, um, what's the name may was saying about this. Too many distractions. I think I totally understand that having my eight year old twins at home, it is hard. But if they can maybe do it at a time of day when even if they're getting up an hour earlier than the rest of the household. So that there's a quiet house or a night. So, um, there was a way, the best thing to do is just talk to them.
[inaudible] have a fracking operation. Okay, cool. Hopefully that answers the how. There's a question around insurance here from Laura Turner. Do you know if there are any issues with insurance, um, and how it affects the U K specifically? Uh, I, I can't, I'm not an expert on this. I don't know if you feel Julie. No, I think, I think you have to go to individual insurers. Um, I, I know that I'm okay for what I'm doing. Um, but I think if you are in any kind of doubt, you need to go back to your own insurer and ask them and even see if you can get it in writing from so that you know that you are covered.
Yeah, I think so. Some of the things we've talked about before, we talked to Joanne in Sydney yesterday, two days ago, and she was using a form to send the signature. If Jay, if you can remember what the software was. I don't know if it was just aimed at Australia, but, um, she was basically getting a waiver. She'd email it to the person, they'd sign the waiver and then it would come back to her ultimately like a kind of DocuSign or Adobe signature. There's various products there. Um, um, so you know that there are ways of getting that online waiver done before and I think it's a matter of talking to Everett does your insurance at the moment and seeing how you can extend it. Um, as a comment for Maven, the chat that Bailyn's in the UK covers online classes and it is different if you're selling a video that people is prerecorded and people are gonna watch. I'm doing a live class. It says different risks or talk to your people. Um, if you go to these anytime and you look at our terms and conditions, you can see the waiver that you signed there basically just to use our website. And that's um, FitPro came up in their waiver King and FitPro. Um, when we, when we edit this and we publish on the side, we'll try and remember to put all of these links in the description so that people can see them afterwards. Hopefully that helped you, Laura there, uh, Wendy there when they reached out to me on LinkedIn yesterday. So thank you Wendy. It was lovely to chat with you there. Um, Amber, I've already dropped my Mac class price by two pounds.
50 reason why was because I was teaching more clients online class. I do now. I wish I hadn't dropped it solo, but like I say, I can't go back there. Mmm. Why not bump it up and see what happens. I'm a [inaudible]. I, you know, you still have the same bills that you had before. I don't know what you think Julie.
Maybe um, I don't know when you dropped him, but maybe give them a period of grace. Maybe something like four, four weeks. And so right now you've seen it, you've enjoyed it. Your trial period was over. Let's see. Logan just say, now we're going back up to the regular price. Give them find out as to say that, you know, and however many weeks times when your next block or however the clients pay, the price will be going back to normal. Cool. Thank you. Uh, it was good. Thank you Leslie. Leslie, I really appreciate your being here. I hope you can hear me. Um, I can by the way, I just got to do a shout out to Leslie. Leslie is both on.
Lizzie Vogan is on the plays anytime website and I occasionally get private from her, which I always look forward to. So thank you Leslie. And this one is from Lisa. When teaching online, I can't really see anyone as I have to be far away. Is this the same for everyone? And Amber responded on this one. I've plugged my laptop into the TV. It works really well. Yeah, I've tried plugging my laptop into the TV. Um, that's not a bad idea because obviously you'll have more space to see people so that that could work. But it is, it goes. Um, I think what I tend to do is if you're saying that you're far away is maybe set them up with an exercise, tell them how many, how many repetitions they're doing, and then go to your computer.
And this is what I often do is I then, like I was saying earlier, I go in and I look and I just check and I called, you know, because I know them well, I know their names. I can say, you know, Hey, not going to name names, but Hey your, I can see that you're sitting there drinking a cup of tea, get on your mat. And I'd be shocked them. So, you know, just, just do that. Take your time, time to go and do that. Oh yeah. For me, uh, this is how I plug my laptop into the TV. This is an HTMI on this, which is the cable that goes into my TV and this is, uh, um, the other end of the plug. And for me anyway, in California, Amazon delivered that within two days of me ordering it. So, I don't know if that's the same everywhere else, but really, really makes a difference. And I've got it on the big TV and I can see, um, hopefully that helped. Lisa, should we be using a password to access, because my link is always the same. Uh, if you're using zoom, you can create a different link for every time you set up a meeting.
I don't know if you're using a different platform to that, but I would encourage you to do that. And one of the teachers, our employees anytime continue to, I'm not going to say who it is, Julie, you don't need to, Julie knows who this was, but they go out to zoom bombed and that somebody realized that they're using the same link all the time and they came on, they took over the screenshare and suddenly they were projecting things which were highly inappropriate. Um, so yeah, I strongly encourage you to use a different linkage each meeting though. I should, it happens, you know. [inaudible] um, so, uh, if Lisa, if you're using, um, zoom, then that's what I would recommend to a different thing each time. Uh, this is asking the question to how does she do that? So when you set up a meeting in zoom, um, you have a choice. One of the settings is to either use the same one, your personal meeting ID or to create a new one each time. So it's in the zone controls. Hopefully that helps Lisa.
Okay. Um, and if you want to message me afterwards, Lisa, I'm at John at [inaudible] anytime.com J O H N and I'm happy to try and help you with that. [inaudible] this is from AMBA and our teachers putting a limit on the number of clients that they teach in an online class. Julie? Um, I think it's personal choice. I, I'm keeping mine to sort of eight and nine because I think that's a nice number and I think if you're getting into the rounds of big a numbers and that, um, then yes, you can't see what everybody's doing.
I want to keep my numbers low, but that's just a personal choice. [inaudible]. Yeah, there was a, Tracy mallet did a live stream the other day on Instagram and she had 30,000 people on it. Absolutely crazy. Wow. Um, uh, Theresa, some clients have said that my online recorded classes are to Kai, can you, can you use a Mike clearly lead, I'm not tech savvy.
Uh, do you want me to try that one shooting? Yes, please. So, um, sound is more important than whether they can see you in my opinion. They've got to be able to hear what you're saying. So again, there is all kinds of mikes that you can buy. And geo, if you could just, maybe there's a couple of things that you could put in the chat here. Um, but you know, like the kind of classic Mike that you see in a recording studio that kind of sits on the table that's kind of, um, at shape, you can buy one of those, they're not that expensive. Um, if you really want to get fancy, you know, like when we're filming in the studio, we have a mic pack, which is wirelessly connected and you have a Latvia mic that you clip on here or you can have a headset like this or there's various solutions or all kinds of different prices. Uh, but I think sound is really important, particularly when people start cutting the grass next to you. Um, so I would kind of, I would look on Amazon and if Jay can help with a couple of links, um, we, we're not personally recommending these particular products, but they were examples of other things. So you can have a Madonna, Mike, if you know what I mean. Like it comes around like this doesn't have to be quite as geeky as my a gaming headset here. Hopefully that helps to ISA. Uh, Sharon asked, how many group classes should we offer per week?
A personal choice. I think I had to a message from somebody today who, um, went straight into a full on teaching online. They didn't change anything because they wanted to keep her working with the same and then navigate posted. Um, and that we really, really regretting it. So I think you need to work out how, because it is different and it is, I find it more tiring. Um, so it's personal choice. It's how many do you, if you can fill as many classes as you need to keep your income the same as it was the state, then clearly do as many as you need. But you need to think about yourself.
There's no point you teaching to keep your income going if in three weeks time you burnt out. Cause that, that doesn't, that that's false economy. You need to do what works for you and your family as well. Yeah. It depends on your market. If you can fill them all then and you've got the energy to do it. Yeah. A couple of people have commented that it's exhausting. It is. Yeah.
It is a totally different work life. You know, the time that I, I spend a lot of time on zoom every day talking to the team and I find I'm more tired than this, than being in the office doing it. Yeah. Yeah. You know what it is? It's like being on stage. It's more like being teaching and posts and is, yeah, it's a kind of performance. But your, when you're teaching online, it's, it's like you have to elevate everything. You have to, um, you have to lift your voice. Um, if you're not wearing a headset that you have to lift your presence, you have to, everything has to be bigger. So if you're not used to doing that, if you're used to, especially if you're used to teaching one to ones in a studio setting, to suddenly have to be all jazz hands. And hi, here I am teaching. It's, it's exhausting. [inaudible] I need to ask you a question here today.
Do you have insurance which allows you to teach new students that you've never met before in the physical world? I'm not taking any new students now. At the moment, I'm not taking any new students the day before. Um, I shut my studio down. I had three miles from people wanting classes and I just wrote to them and said, look, I'm really sorry. Um, especially as one of them had quite a few underlying conditions and I just didn't think it was appropriate. Um, because you call it the, I think you need to see somebody for the first time. So no, this is from Anita Cole. When you use a phone to fill, when you teach, do you also use a laptop to see the clients? Mmm.
So do you need ideally to have both? This is the first time of have used both at the same time. Mmm. Normally I use one or the other. Why choose one? I don't use both, but right now for the purposes of this webinar, I have them both. I usually pick whichever one is easiest depending on where I am in my studio.
Thank you. Yeah. My, my sort of feeling on that is the camera often and on your, on your phone is going to be of a higher quality and it is on, on your laptop, but your laptop as a much bigger screen. So you can kind of see a lot more that's going on. So the pros and cons of both, but you're doubling the complexity of the technology you're using. And is the peak, is the photo, you know, is the video that bad on your laptop? Probably not. So if I could only have one thing, I would have my computer be able to use the phone as well as kind of like a bonus. Um, we have some great questions that I may just, you guys are right in the questions quicker than the way we're answering them. We're to get fired. Hit Judy. Okay. I'll stop waffling. No, no, no, no, no.
Judy whales, I find I got a, this, this a followup question to the one we have. I find interferes. I have my phone and laptop at the same time. Do you find this? Um, it depends on the bandwidth. Sometimes they can interfere with each other. Um, Amanda, you have, uh, you, you, if you use a phone or laptop you can log in twice, you know, so at the moment Julie is logged in to their Sioux meeting, uh, with her phone.
And with her laptop. So she has like two sessions going at the same time so it doesn't, um, you can have them both on the same zoom account and it's kinda fun sometimes you can have, you know, this one taking a picture of you from the side and this one from the front, I just coffee that helped Amanda [inaudible] uh, Amy asked the question, if you were teaching a one-on-one, took a private onto a client in the studio using operators, would you charge the same amount for an online lesson or now at home without apparatus? Yes, that was an easy one. I took three. So says, can you record and then edit a class on zoom before sending it out or is it used for life classes only? Um, do you want to answer that or shall I try that one? I don't know. I don't, I actually, unless you transfer it to Vimeo and then I did it somewhere else first. I don't know if you kind of do it on zoom. So my, what we do with this one for instance, is we're recording this live as we speak. We get a file sent to us, FOMO, zoom immediately afterwards.
So you can either record it on the cloud using zoom service or they can, um, you can record it onto your computer and then it's just like a video roll video file. And then you can import that into which editing software you want. So yes. Um, and they do zoom offers the ability to record the video, you get the file afterwards and you can edit it. So you can use zoom for kind of both things. But you know, you could also, if you're just gonna look into record it rather than broadcast, so you can just record it on the phone. You can just press record and do it on your phone. Hopefully that answered.
Okay. Alisa asked right earlier we touched on this. So many classes are now offered for free. How can we deal with this? Um, after your own business, stay in your own line, look after your own business. Have I agree? You know, you have those wonderful personal relationships with the clients that have been in your studio for months or years. Um, market to them. They want to see you and, uh, you know, treat that customer in that one on one relationship that you had. Um, there's always been a lot of free content on the web. You know, there's so much stuff on YouTube is free, but people don't want to fiddle through it, look for the good stuff because most of it's not very good. Uh, hopefully that harms at Lisa [inaudible].
So Lisa, you asked the question, I wanted to sort of say hello before class, but then somebody's, not everybody mutes themselves again, which causes sound interference on my iPad. Can I do this myself on zoom? You can do a mute or there is a button to do that and it's really good. So hopefully that helps you at least to there. Um, so I have three unanswered questions from Christy, but I wanted to focus on all the other folks answering their questions. Um, and I promised that we'd finish it to here. So we're getting pretty close to two o'clock my time and it's almost bedtime. Yours. Um, do you have anything when you wrap up with here? Juvie?
I just want to say to everybody, just look after your own business. Look after yourselves. Look after your family. Look at your policies, community. Look to the people who inspire you, whether the next door, two streets away, or another country. Stay in touch with all your policies. Friends, reach out to us. Um, I get messages daily and I do my best to answer them. I'm more than happy to help. If anybody has a question, please just reach out. You're not on your own and, um, keep teaching.
But please do charge what you're worth, please, please do. Absolutely. And one last thing I'm going to do here. I'm going to plug Friday night, California time. We have a dance party, 6:00 PM Pacific daylight time. Uh, it's free to everybody in our [inaudible] world. We're going to have a great DJ. Uh, we're going to dress up, we're going to be at home, so it's going to be kind of different. But we're going to do an online Dobbs party. If you want to join us, please, please do. And you just drop in and have a few dances with us and they'd leave.
But we're going to have some fun and, uh, make the most of it. This is a different time. We're here to support you. I'm here to make you smile, hopefully cheer up your day. Um, thank you so much, Julie. Thank you everybody that joined us and, uh, you guys are the best. And as my tee shirt says here, let me just say, keep calm and do [inaudible]. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Julie. Bye.
Bye. Okay.
