With a pivot to online teacher trainings, Child Light Education Company has found a broad pool of new clients, allowing the studio’s business to expand.
By Kelly Burch
Granite State News Collaborative
The Child Light Education Company team, pre-pandemic.
Child Light Education Company is the rare pandemic success story. Before coronavirus, the business ran about 80 in-person teacher trainings for yoga and mindfulness, both at its Dover studio and in partner studios around the country. Since April, Child Light has switched to all online trainings. Since the trainings are not limited by a physical space, people from around the world can attend and the average class size has doubled in some cases. That means for Child Light Education Company, business if better than ever.
“It’s been overwhelmingly successful,” said Megan Morris, who co-owns Child Light with Sally Delisle.
Morris and Delisle purchased the company in October, although both had worked for the business before then. At the time, Morris thought of Child Light as a local business with a national reach, since about 85% of revenue came from teacher trainings, many of which took place outside of Dover. Now, Morris thinks of Child Light as a national business, with an international flair. Since the pandemic, people from Asia and the Middle East have signed up for Child Light classes.
Broadening their pool of potential clients has opened the door for the business to expand. Child Light will conduct roughly the same amount of training this year as it did in 2019 — about 80 — but with the number of participants up and the price of training the same, Morris expects revenue from private trainings to be higher than it was last year.
Morris and Delisle had toyed with the idea of offering virtual teacher trainings before the pandemic, but they worried that some of the value of face-to-face interaction would be lost. In April, they looked at their calendar and realized that they needed to either cancel trainings, or switch to virtual.
“We never really took the leap to online until we had to,” Morris said. The trainers were able to adjust their curriculums and feedback was very positive. After that, Morris and Delisle were confident in their virtual trainings.
“Having the space to be creative and see what was possible for our future was a blessing,” Morris said. “It's what allowed us to see the big picture in a different way.”
Megan Morris and Sally Delisle, with Morris’ daughter Grace
Child Light offers certification through the Yoga Alliance, a trade organization that doesn’t allow for virtual trainings. The Yoga Alliance made an exception through September because of the pandemic, but in the future Child Light will likely return to some in-person classes, especially if that’s required by the Yoga Alliance. However, Morris believes online classes will be a bit part of the business during and after the pandemic.
“There’s still so much value in being together in person, but it will always be part of our curriculum that people have the option to learn online,” Morris said.
In addition to offering public trainings, Child Light also runs continuing education trainings for school teachers. That side of the business has decreased significantly, even though Child Light has offered some of those classes online. Because of that decrease. Morris expects overall revenue to be consistent with 2019.
“That’s what is keeping us around the same range,” she said. “We’re adding more public trainings, but the private trainings are much lower.”
Child Light’s participation in online yoga classes for kids has also decreased. Kids’ short attention spans, parents’ overwhelm with online obligations, and competition from free online yoga are all at play, Morris said.
Morris has some reservations celebrating her success when many other New Hampshire businesses are suffering.
“That's the part that's hard for me to reconcile,” she says. In turn, she’s tried to give back, supporting other local businesses and helping to promote causes like Yoga In Action, a New Hampshire non-profit.
At the same time, Morris is focused on continuing to grow Child Light Educational Company, taking advantage of a newly unlocked pool of potential customers.
“I know this has been earned,” she said. “This is hard work paying off.”
This story is part of the 50 Businesses, 50 Solutions series, shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative, that aims to highlight how business leaders across the state, from mom and pop shops, to large corporations have adapted to meet the challenges and disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus in the hopes others may be able to replicate these ideas and innovations. Tell us your story here. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.