By Dorothy de Souza Guedes
For half his life, people have engaged James Miller to transform their physical, mental and spiritual selves through yoga or personal training. Over the past two years, Miller has learned that there is a big payoff, both professionally and personally, in hiring various experts to focus his business.
By using several business coaches and other experts, Miller has re-branded his yoga studio around a sense of community rather than having the focus on himself.
Miller is the founder and director of Tree House Yoga Studio in Iowa City. The 38-year-old business owner is also an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher, Licensed Massage Therapist and Certified Personal Trainer.
He became a personal trainer at age 19. When he left the U.S. Marines at 25, he opened his first personal training studio. His primary discipline has been yoga for the last 14 years.
“Yoga is about using movement as a way to transform your whole self and that includes the personality,” he said, adding that yoga is “life changing.”
Miller is a fitness expert who turned into a business owner. Yoga was his passion and he wanted to share that with others. He had a yoga studio on the Coralville strip that was affected by flooding in June 2008. He then relocated to 505 E. Washington in Iowa City and renamed the business J.R. Miller’s Freestyle Yoga Academy. He was focused on teaching, to certify others to teach yoga.
The teacher training program was going well as was his work with personal clients. But what was missing, Miller decided, was a sense of community.
J.R. Miller’s Freestyle Yoga Academy was branded around Miller himself. He gradually realized that he wanted to restructure and refocus the business so that it could function without him. In other words, the Iowa City site could be a yoga studio for as long as someone wanted it to be, with a name that would be transferable or sellable.
To figure out how to take his business in a new direction, Miller felt he had two choices: go back to school for a business degree, or hire experts that could talk to him about his own business. He figured he would spend the same amount of time and money either route, but that a degree would be more about business in general, whereas working with consultants would focus on his individual business.
So that’s what he decided to do and he has been working with consultants for about two years. He first sought out experts online. He interviewed more than one in areas he was interested in pursuing — from yoga-specific business coaching to Internet marketing. Sometimes one coach led him to another who could provide a service that Miller needed, such as Web site design. Each had different strengths and areas of expertise that helped Miller pull it all together.
The focus has been on re-branding, or putting a new face on his business.
There’s a lot of long-distance experts who can help his business from afar, but he also wanted someone local who could see his business and understands the local climate. So, he sought out Lisa Van Allen as his local scene expert.
That Miller had been working with several coaches indicated to Van Allen that he really valued getting expert help.
“He’s serious about yoga and is spiritually intense, but he is very much a businessman,” Van Allen said.
Re-branding is about capturing the business owner’s vision of where to go and what to accomplish long term, she said. “The rest of it just falls into place,” she said.
Business owners often go through re-branding after the first couple of years when owners are out of “survival mode.” Then they begin to notice trends, she said. Re-branding is often an effort to refocus the business in a strategic direction, she said.
Van Allen’s role has been to aid Miller in getting his local brand into the community. First, they worked on a business plan. J.R. Miller seemed like three businesses: yoga studio, teacher training and personal training. And, like many new small businesses, the business was dependent on the presence of the owner.
“Right now, he’s doing it all,” Allen said.
Miller decided to re-brand around the idea of community. Working with consultants and a graphic designer, they hit on a concept and a “look” for the re-branding and Tree House Yoga Studio was born: the location and yoga were the focus of the re-branding and the name.
Tree House fits because of the location. The studio is in the attic of a large older home on a shady street corner. And tree houses are fun, not work, “like a place to meet your friend,” Miller said.
By building a sense of community among the members, Miller eventually will be able to focus more on other passions, such as teacher training, speaking and writing about yoga. His short-term goal is to hire a studio manager.
He has begun to rely on a team of people for outsourcing what he doesn’t have to do himself, such as cleaning the studio or doing the accounting.
“I find that as an entrepreneur I have a team of people working for me. They just don’t work for me full time,” Miller said.
Tree House Yoga Studio offers “daily group yoga classes, regular yoga workshops, the area’s only Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher certification program, and private individual instruction” according to the new Web site. Miller hired an expert to create a site that reflects the re-branding.
“I think we’re just turning it around. Tree House Yoga is now heading in that direction,” Miller said.
And like yoga has transformed him physically and as a person, Miller said his business changed who he is as a person. His personality has transformed as his business has changed and grown.
“Working on my business has become a way of working on myself,” he said.
Investing in consultants and experts won’t be forever, Miller said, but, rather, just until he gets a handle on how to get to where he wants to be. He said hiring the right people has actually saved him money.
He will continue to work with consultants on ways to keep on to transforming his business.
And, he feels the same way about his business’s potential as he does about the practice of yoga.
“I could continue doing yoga for the rest of my life and never see its end. It’s limitless,” Miller said. “It’s more of a direction than a goal-oriented thing.”