Manish Pole on how a single yoga session led to his own global yoga practice, Total Yoga.

April 8, 2020

About This Episode

At Forward Thinking People Podcast with Namita Ramani, Manish talks about how he stumbled upon yoga when he was struggling to meet deadlines during his job as copywriter in an ad agency. Today, Manish runs Total Yoga in Pune, California, Dubai, Derby, and Auckland. Together with his partner, they’ve also launched the Yomaste Yoga retreats where they take yogis on a yoga-inspired adventure. Manish’s aim is to strive and create a yoga style that caters to mindfulness training.

Things we discuss:

  • How yoga called him on this path at a very young age
  • The difference in teaching yoga VS yoga as a business
  • His experience with Bharat Thakur Artistic Yoga in Dubai and working as a Yoga teacher and CEO for him
  • Deciding to move to Bangalore India with his ex-wife and co-founding Total Yoga in Pune
  • Discussing the initial challenges with launching Total Yoga and avoiding competition with his Guru
  • Struggling to keep up with the pace of expansion in Total Yoga. They now have centers in India, Singapore, USA, UK, UAE, and New Zealand
  • Introducing Yomaste Yoga Retreats to Himalayan Destinations like Rishikesh, Ladakh, Nepal, Varanasi and more
  • Staying authentic to your own beliefs and treating profitability as a secondary notion
  • Discussing the unique business model they use to expand worldwide

Notable Moments:

(01:02) – You have to find out what you’re comfortable with and then your own business based on those principles.

(01:07) – Essentially, your work speaks for itself. It doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters apart from conviction.

(01:10) – Business cannot be differentiated from life. If you’re a weirdo in life, you’re going to run a weird business. You cannot change a person’s business principles without talking about life principles. The way you run your business will reflect how you are. If you’re a messed up business it simply means you’re a messed up person.

(35:45) – I realized very early that my work, as an entrepreneur, is not dependent on anybody else’s work or time. That’s the beauty of yoga. That I can go and teach by myself anywhere in the world. And I’m not dependent on anybody else. So that’s the way I run my business.

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