IAM049 – Entrepreneur Creates a Platform Offering Yoga-On-the-Go

Elnura is a founder of yoganect – an interest-based platform that offers your yoga-on-the-go. yoganect makes is easier to connect with like-minded people and book your favorite yoga class or event in real time. Elnura brings yoga and business together and fully dedicated to launch and grow yoganect.

• CEO Hack: Meditation
• CEO Nugget: Sell before you build and resilience and persistence
• CEO Defined: Something that you learn. Courage and passion. Good Communication. Flexible and open to changes.

Website: https://www.yoganect.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yoganect/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yoganect/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/yoganect

Elnura's Website: http://elnura-ashimova.com/
Elnura's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elnura_ashimova/
Elnura's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elnura-esen/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. Have Elnura of Yoganect.

Elnura, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Elnura 0:37

Hi, Gresh. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

Awesome. Well, what I want to do, is read a little bit more about Elnura so you can learn about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Elnura is a founder of Yoganect, an interest-based platform that offers your yoga on the go. Yoganect makes it easier to connect with like-minded people and book your favorite yoga classes or event in real-time. Elnura brings yoga and business together and is fully dedicated to launching and growing Yoganect.

Elnura, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Elnura 0:40

Yes, I'm ready.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Awesome. Well, the first question I have is just if you can drill a little bit deeper into how exactly you founded your business and what exactly your CEO story is.

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Elnura 1:19

Yes, sure. I have a passion for yoga, and curiosity, and optimizing business models. I've always had this desire to combine these two, I used to work in a corporate environment for big German companies and dealt with deadlines, competition, and was stressed and just abandoning my own well-being. It all changed when I discovered yoga. I practiced it for a few years, which completely changed my perception of my body, the food that I eat, the people I connect with, and the whole environment.

So it was that good that I decided to become a yoga teacher as many people do. I wanted to share the benefits of yoga and travel the world, so I quit my job and packed my luggage. I went to LA for two months of teacher training. After my training, I spent two years traveling, which is a story for another podcast, I guess. Anyways, during my travels, I met with a lot of yoga professionals, and teachers, I taught yoga as well, of course, and attending festivals, and yoga events. I saw different ways that could help improve the experience for yogis, for example, or with all the technology, amazing technology around us, and why is it still so hard to find the perfect yoga retreat, was the question I had that time.

What you usually do is you go to Google, and you search for your retreat, and what you get is millions of listings, you get overwhelmed, and you have to spend a lot of time searching to find the perfect one that fits you. Another problem or example is the research process that is involved for a newcomer. So there are over 300 million Yogi's around the world. Every fifth person in the US wants to try yoga for the first time, right, and they don't know where to start because there are over 100 Yoga styles. You first have to find out which style is perfect for you according to your physical health, your lifestyle, and your preferences, right?

You are pretty much left alone, trying to find what yoga style fits you what studio you should try out, or what retreat you should attend. So at Yoganect, we decided to bring those people together connecting like-minded health enthusiasts, in this case, yogis to share their experiences and knowledge and making it easy to find and book their favorite yoga class or event. And all of this in one simple platform. We call it a digital hangout for yogis, this is pretty much the story of how my personal experience led me to start this business.

Gresham Harkless 3:54

Awesome. No, I love that. I love how you've been able to kind of, I guess bring together all those kinds of searches that people were kind of looking for exactly what it is that they're looking for. But there it's kind of spread out everywhere and not in a consistent platform.

So it's awesome that you've been able to kind of create and help people that are looking for those yoga services. I wanted to drill down a little bit and hear a little bit more about you knowing exactly what Yoganect does and how it actually works. And also like the kind of like what makes what you feel makes it unique.

Elnura 4:22

So officially when there isn't an official sentence that describes Yoganect. It is an online community marketplace that makes it easy for yogis to stay connected and book, yoga classes, and events online. It's pretty much what we do. So you can imagine it as an online space where Yogi gets access to all things yoga, they can find like-minded peers and connect with them. They can search for events and classes and yoga knowledge. And if you're a yoga business, for example, a teacher a studio owner, or a plant or yoga brand, you can create your present and your organization using business pages.

You can host and manage your classes and events with our event manager we call it and most importantly, you can approach and engage, a well-targeted yoga audience because our platform will be populated with health enthusiasts who are interested in a healthy lifestyle and sharing the knowledge attending events together, just to connect with each other. So that's the Yeah, that's the main purpose of Yoganect. And I think on the social responsibility side, we want to make yoga, access to yoga easier.

Gresham Harkless 5:34

Yeah, that makes sense. By making it, you know, readily available for somebody to find, as you mentioned, you know, events in the real-time book, your favorite classes, and also connect with people that makes it a lot easier to be able to become a yogi to participate in classes or whatever it is, someone's interest might be.

Elnura 5:50

Yeah, because a lot of Yogis are, how do you say social media savvy, so they do like social media, and they channel hub. And a lot of people would like to try yoga, but there are stereotypes, you know, like yoga is so for women, or what else that only women that practice yoga in their yoga pants. And we want to just disrupt those stereotypes and bring people together because the yoga world is changing. There are so many men practicing yoga, and people are starting really to realize and see the real benefits of yoga because they're practicing it and they're seeing it in their health.

Gresham Harkless 6:29

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. What do you feel is your I guess secret sauce? Or what do you feel kind of distinguishes you from maybe other platforms out there?

Elnura 6:37

Our secret sauce is your personalized yoga, yoga on the go, as we call it at the beginning, our solution is actually our USP, as I said earlier, you don't have to channel hub to be on different platforms to find like-minded people or to find the yoga that fits, you spent too much time searching for your personalized yoga. It means if you let us know the goals you need for your physical health, for example, your interests and what kind of events you like. And we make sure that you receive the offer in the yoga class, or yoga studio that suits you. And we're designing our platform right now. And we're designing the whole platform with the yogi in mind, it's more about It's simple.

It's convenient, it's like yoga in your pocket, you can wrap it anytime and get access to yoga knowledge, you can browse events around the world or near you, and you read genuine reviews, which helps you know, pick your select your retreat, right, you can see who else is going who else is attending the age you want to be, you know, if you're an older person, maybe you want to be with your peers, where you can chat with the house with your friends, and most importantly, directly book your yoga class or event online.

Gresham Harkless 7:51

Awesome. Yeah, I love all that. I love the idea of yoga in your pocket where you can just pull it out and be getting ready for whatever it is that you want to do. So I think that's phenomenal.

What I wanted to do was switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be a book or an app or just something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Elnura 8:09

It has been meditation, too, I call it just to give a break to your mind over to your brain, it does help to gain digital sanity, you know, in our world, over all of these notifications, I think that attention has become the most valuable commodity. And you really can get very overwhelmed. And I do start meditating two years ago, and I try to meditate daily because I think that's the secret. And it really helps. And I would recommend it to anyone I know, the important thing to keep in mind is no judgment, that it was too short that maybe you skipped a day or two, or that you had too weird thoughts, too many thoughts, and no judgment. And just do it attitude, you know, even if it's just for five or 10 minutes, just sit and try it and repeat it every day.

So yeah, it has been a very good tool for me to reset, to shut down, not to get distracted, and sometimes even to tap into my creative self, which is very difficult when you have so many things going on. And keep focus. Yeah. And it does help to get things done. Which is great.

Gresham Harkless 9:22

Yeah, that makes sense. Like when you sometimes when take the time to disconnect in order, it makes you more effective and efficient. Like when you come back to the work that you have to do. But having that time because there are so many things kind of pulling for our attention. You dedicate some time, whether it be a minute, or like you said, you know, no kind of resentment or anything as far as like the amount of time that you're doing it. But the fact that you're dedicating that time sometimes can make you more efficient and effective. So I love that CEO hack.

Elnura 9:47

Absolutely, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 9:48

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget and this might be a word of wisdom or piece of advice that you might have for other entrepreneurs and business owners.

Elnura 9:56

I would love to share some experiences that we had. I love when people tell me about their experiences. What was important for us is the sell-before-you-build approach, I would say on one hand, and resilience and persistence on the other. Sell before you build it, it means I can, I can maybe confirm it on facts we have, we built our brand, we already are working with over 300, mindful yoga business partners, and we have good traction with 110k social followers. And we have global press coverage.

So all of that happened before we launched our product. So we can say that we applied, this concept, which means we did our homework, we did marketing, and we got traction. And most importantly, we found our first customers, the partners before spending the money on building your product, right? Because I think one of the most painful experiences as an entrepreneur is when you invest your heart, your soul into the product, and or service. And when you finally bring it to the market one cares about it.

So I think that is important. And the resilience and persistence we pitched in Luxembourg, we pitched in Berlin, and even Silicon Valley, it was a great opportunity, we now have a business angel from Berlin, and recently got our first US investor from Boston. And all of this would not come would not happen without a proper portion of resilience and persistence. And I think you would also agree with me as an entrepreneur, that it takes time, effort takes patience, to create and develop your pitch deck, for example, you go and you know, talk to your customers, and you want to be ahead of your competition, go out there and talk to investors get the funding to develop your solution, bring it to the market, so a lot of things to do. And when we email a potential partner or investor and hear nothing back, we follow up, and then we follow up. And then we follow up again until we hear back.

So that's a persistent side of things. Because those people are super busy and get so many emails, we have seen that they will remember those who are persistent and those who show how important the business their business is to them. And here, I think it's also important to recognize the fine line between persistence and stubbornness. Though, when, you know, sticking with a product or business model that is not gaining traction would be just a waste of resources. And persistence comes with the ability to adapt or pivot quickly when there is a lack of product-market fit, which we already have done several times. In fact, our pitch deck became a living document, which we optimize and which we have been optimizing and developing. Every time we hear feedback which is very valuable, those things are important.

Gresham Harkless 12:58

Awesome yeah, I love those, and especially that aspect about you know, finding, making sure that you have market validation before you start to build it out is huge. And definitely obviously having that same perspective that is kind of like a process. And kind of I don't want to say long-term necessarily, because that could be relative, but definitely, it takes time in order to get to where you want to be, and make sure that you continue to ask my team to be persistent. And that stubbornness, as you said is phenomenal, as well, too.

Elnura 13:27

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 13:27

Now I wanted to ask you what my favorite question is, is kind of like the definition. How would you define being a CEO and what that means to you?

Elnura 13:35

CEO, I think it's something that you learn. And there is a new wave of young CEOs, right, with fresh ideas for setting up companies, which I think it's really great. It does take courage to start a business, but it takes more courage to stick to it and keep it going with the same passion in the flame for your business like you have it at the beginning. And I really value professionals in such leading positions as CEOs you asked who have good, who are good communicators, their ability to listen and share information, they're flexible, and open to chain two changes and to pivot quickly if it's necessary for their business or even a concept that the whole idea and who are great decision makers, and I think these things I try to cultivate in my daily business and personal life as well because this is something that they are very connected. And those things define you as a person and individual.

Gresham Harkless 14:37

Exactly, exactly. I love that definition in that kind of perspective. So Elnura, I appreciate you so much for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was kind of pass you the mic so to speak. So you could tell us anything additional. You want to let our readers and our listeners know how best people can get a hold of you.

Elnura 14:52

Of course. First of all, thank you for this opportunity to share our idea to spread the word we are as I said, we're developing our product and it will launch soon this year, the beta version, and everyone can get a glimpse of Yoganect at yoganect.com. And as I said, it's yoga in your pockets, and try it. It's your yoga on the go.

Gresham Harkless 15:19

Awesome. Well, thank you so much Elnura, I will have the links in the show notes just in case anybody wants to click through and follow you on social media or also see the site as it goes live. But I appreciate you so much again, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Elnura 15:32

Thank you very much. Have a great day as well.

Outro 15:36

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Thank you for listening

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