YogaBugs' Debbie Hanson on life running her YogaBugs Business
18th August 2008 - YogaBugs
Debbie Hanson
Age 46
Married to Ian a careers advisor
Children: Eve aged 4
From Congleton, Cheshire
Life before YogaBugs!
Debbie graduated from University with a 2:1 honours degree in marketing and went on to spend 10 years working successfully within the IT industry. She worked in pre-sales support and was promoted to Regional Sales manager looking after Scotland and NE England. Because her job was quite sedentary, she started to work out at a gym.
“I enjoyed working out and loved the energy of the Gym. It was so different from being at a desk or in a car on the way to client accounts meetings and I decided to train to be an exercise to music instructor. Once qualified, I set up two evening classes to teach each week and came to the conclusion that I enjoyed this work far more than the IT role: one was highly rewarded and the other highly rewarding,” explains Debbie.
In 1993, Debbie left the world of IT and started promoting herself as a freelance fitness consultant. She also trained in aromatherapy and reflexology and found work as a further education lecturer in both complementary therapies and fitness.
Discovering YogaBugs
As part of her continuing professional development (CPD), Debbie attended regular fitness conventions: “The turning point in my new teaching career was at Loughborough in 1995 where I attended my first pilates workshops and yoga sessions. I felt this was the way I wanted to develop both my fitness and my practice. I trained over the next few years in Pilates, ultimately forming ‘Hanson Pilates’ to deliver instructor training courses on behalf of the Pilates Institute with Michael King.
“My yoga practice developed and I began to teach yoga as well as attending classes. One of the areas I worked in was the delivery of after-school classes for teachers and staff, and the subject of yoga for children kept cropping up. Investigations into appropriate courses were made, and before I knew it I was breezing back from a YogaBugs training course, unable to wait to put the teaching into practice!”
Since then, my confidence in teaching has grown, my enthusiasm for the work has not dwindled, and I have just invested the profits accrued from my adult class business together with securing a business loan into a YogaBugs franchise and am the proud leader of a team of fantastic instructors whose aim is to nurture lots of little YogaBugs in the region. Since starting in September, we teach 20 classes per week on a regular basis which equates to 400 children. The majority of the classes are in state schools within the West Lothian council and on top of this we teach at “special events” and hold one-off classes every now and then. This number is growing week by week. Currently I have recruited three teachers to work with me and we have two more already scheduled to be trained in Jan 2008.
My marketing degree is definitely helping me develop the business and having presented at board level to a number of large companies in my IT days, I am feeling confident that I can be successful when presenting the YogaBugs concept to senior personnel in the education field. I know this venture will be a success and if I can break even at the end of the first year, with my instructors working the hours they wish to, I will feel that my main goals have been achieved.
What is clear is that this is a fantastic opportunity to run and develop a business that I can enjoy and fit around school hours to enable me to be there with Eve. To make this practicable, I have a super office administrator, Elaine, who handles the franchise paperwork for me allowing me to keep my hand in at teaching. I have reduced my hours and I would not be doing my management function effectively if I was out all the time. But it is also important to keep taking a few classes as I can then remain confident and step in to cover for my instructors' holidays and emergencies without being over-committed.
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