Welcome to the Lucas Rockwood show. I'm a yoga teacher, a trainer, a serial entrepreneur. I'm the father of three international kids, but first and foremost, I am a student. I like to learn things.

So I go into the world and I try to find medical doctors, health practitioners, yoga teachers, researchers, anybody who's doing interesting work and I try to bring their best work here to you on the show.

So hopefully we can all learn and grow.

This week is a departure from my usual show format. I have a number of questions that have come in in 2021 around the end or the near end of the pandemic for many people.

Now it depends on where you live. I'm here in Barcelona. We're still very deep into a third wave and seems very likely there will be a fourth wave in the fall.

So who knows, yet these questions I think are pretty top of mind for many of you, whatever stage of the pandemic you're in. And I thought it might be an interesting time to just do a solo show. So if you'll indulge, I will do Q&As that I have selectively picked on the theme of what happens next, meaning what happens next in this post-COVID interim COVID new COVID world.

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I have some ideas and let's chat.

So first question is Lucas, I'm a yoga teacher in the Midwest. I didn't specify the state. My studio is open, but we're still burning money. What should I do?

I opened my first yoga studio in 2006 in Thailand. We used to charge $150 a month for a membership that was the equivalent in Thai bot, of course, but $150 a month.

And that was in Thailand where the cost of living is very low. In almost every city now in the world, a one month membership costs less than $150. And this is 15 years later.

I'm sharing that with you because the cost of operating studios in that 15 years has gone up by 40 or 50% and the cost of your average membership has gone down by as much as 50%.

Long story short, it's not a sustainable business model anymore. I don't think it's going to last. I think there is going to be mass closures.

Most of the yoga studios that are still hanging around like yours are living off of fumes and PPE loans and other relief efforts and 401Ks. I think they're all going to disappear.

This has been a struggling business model for the past five years. My three studios in Barcelona, while they were profitable, they were just barely profitable.

And I'm quite a sophisticated studio owner because I've been doing it for quite a long time. And I have a team behind me and we knew what we were doing for your average local yoga studio.

I think we need to think beyond bricks and mortar. And this really has to do with every educational model and really think about what you have to offer.

If you're a science teacher, does it really matter if you're in a multi-million dollar complex at UC Berkeley or Cal State Northridge or some Kings College in London? Not really.

Does it really matter if you're sitting around a table at a coffee shop or if you're online in a Zoom class? There are differences, of course.

But at the end of the day, the service you're providing is education. And as a yoga teacher in the Midwest, the service you're providing is education.

And the bricks and the mortar and the studio and the hardwood floors and the essential oil and all that stuff's nice. I like that stuff too. I'm sitting in my empty yoga studio right now. I'm pretty fond of it.

But it doesn't really, the intrinsic value is not there. The values in the service you provide. And so I think for anyone listening who is a teacher, I think what happens next is a total revamp and a paradigm shift.

In terms of where and how things happen. I would really encourage you to think about expanding digitally and just reframing your idea.

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