Community Builders Speak Series: Quality vs Quantity for Community

This Community Builders Speak Series was inspired by the first article I wrote a couple of weeks back on The What, Why and How of Community Building. I have had the privilege to meet amazing people in the fitness and wellness space in the last two years and I wanted to highlight what these self-employed individuals understood as Community Building and how they were building Community in their respective businesses.

I am hoping that by speaking to these entrepreneurs/business owners and sharing their story, it can bring greater relevance to others, and will inspire and motivate others to understand the true meaning of Community Building, from a non-social services and non-sales angled approach.

Many are already building Community with their client and follower base, but they do not even know it! This series is for you to learn from different individuals in different stages of their entrepreneurial and Community building journey, and apply it to our own situations, and hopefully reap the benefits from it. 

Noor Haaziq Mutazah – Co-Founder, The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga

Today I speak to Noor Haaziq Mutazah, Co-founder of The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga.

Below is our conversation that has been transcribed and edited for you.

Tell me more about yourself and your business

I have practicing and teaching calisthenics for close to 7 years. This passion led me to start my first brand and business together with my partner Ashy. We both founded Start Station, straight out of graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2017.  

When we first started, Start Station was known for our cali classes in fitness corners all around Singapore. The interest and locations grew quickly as more and more people enjoyed the street-style nature of the workouts. As students grew stronger while having fun, their friends too wanted to join in on being a part of the training sessions.

When we joined Core Collective in 2018, it helped us reach an even wider audience and the followers for Start Station grew even more. 

I always knew that stretch and mobility were important compliments to strength work, and it was also at this point that I decided to explore Yoga. In 2019, I spent a couple of weeks in Bali to train as a yoga instructor and have been adding stretch work as well as elements of yoga practice into the way I view cali and conduct my classes.

In addition to teaching under Start Station, I was also doing classes at Yoga Collective. This really was a case of being at the right place at the right time because through this, we had the opportunity to buy over the Yoga Collective business in August 2019.

In March 2020, we rebranded the studio to call it The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga and have been running with a team of about 11 instructors since.

How do you define your Community? 

One of our challenges was to see where Start Station would fit in with the new business. Without the rebranding, the brand was a total disconnect with Yoga Collective. Start Station had a focus on cali, strength training, and learning new skills like gymnastic movements, whereas Yoga Collective was incorporating a very different emphasis on body movement. 

With the rebranding, we could see Start Station being a subset of The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga. The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga comprised of a larger group of individuals who had interest on functional movement and being active.

There is a clear alignment of vision and direction for all who come to The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga. We are always striving to be better and moving forward. We know that flexibility and strength have a symbiotic relationship and one cannot do without the other. And all this is accomplished in a very chill way. The “vibe” needs time to be developed.

As they say, birds of the same feather flock together, so since we started both brands, it has inevitably attracted likeminded individuals into the same space. 

How do you communicate the “vibe”?

We need to speak the language of the Community. This is done through captions and the way we communicate when on social media, especially Instagram. The idea is to attract people, to catch their attention, even before they step into the studio. But it does take time to build that vibe in the studio and also on socials and all other platforms, so the key is to be patient. 

At which point did you discover the “vibe”?

I think everything started to gel together when we started The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga. This was when we could identify the larger Community with the same wavelength. Some of our students call it “clique”, but it essentially means the same as Community.

Everyone is here to go through the same programme to achieve their goals. The growth has been organic in nature and it really took time to find itself.

How large do you think you can grow your Community?

To be honest, it is not about the quantity of the Community, but it is about the quality of the Community. The minute we start to see Community as a business, we will lose sight of why we started it in the first place.

The Community is kept alive and together by the energy that is shared, and everyone is aligned to this. If the Community is not formed through organic growth, and the forces of nature, it could also mean that is will be hard to be maintained with the right consistency and control.

What is your success metric for a good quality Community? 

This will have to be the longevity of the Community membership that we have. If I keep seeing new people because the turnover is high, it means that we have not been able to retain our customers. But if regulars who’ve been with us for a while, keep coming back, then we have established that longevity.

It is a long-term game and only time will tell how we’ve grown.

Can you share any other challenges you’ve had on building Community?

One of the challenges has been trying to find the right instructors that are aligned with our mission and vision. It has been a trial and error process to understand what we want and how we are able to identify that with the instructors that come by. Of course, we give them a shot to take classes first, and then we see how things go from there.

Having rebranded to The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga has definitely made it easier for us to define our vibe of street-style cali and yoga. It probably took us about 4 months from the time we rebranded, to work things out to attract the right instructors, and I think now we are on track and in a good space.

Do you have any success stories of your Community?

I have a few advanced classes that I run and the students from these classes have actually been following me for quite some time. There are those who have been with me since my days at Bedok fitness corner, through to Core Collective, to Yoga Collective and now to The Faculty of Calisthenics and Yoga, the place we call home. These is an example of the quality Community I was referring to earlier.

Another example is when I got my students to teach the class because I had personal matters to attend to and my other instructors were not available. These advanced class students happened to also be certified trainers and are also recognized by the Community as regulars who have progressed into seasoned cali-practicing individuals. There is trust and credibility in their ability to instruct because they have been with me since the early days.

How do you reward your loyal Community? 

Regulars are “rewarded” with friendship. The coach-client relationship extends towards being friends. I think that we cannot put a price tag on friendship, and this is something that also cannot be forced.

There is a monthly unlimited package that regulars can sign up for and they can come multiple times a day for our stretch, strength or meditation classes.

How do you ensure sustainability of your business?

I have thought about this many time before. On when I should take a backseat and how I should be planning towards being able to do that. There has always been that thought that my presence is so synonymous with the brand that I cannot take myself out of it. Furthermore, students follow instructors, so if I stop teaching, there might be a drop in attendance.

But now with 11 instructors on the team, I am beginning to see that it can eventually happen. With the right instructors that fit the culture and Community of what we’ve started, they are in sync with my mindset, how I think and where I want to be.

I am patient. The time will come and when it comes, I will know it.

I think the growth of the team has to come from within the Community and we will be able to assess the right fit from there as well. Someone within the Community to lead the Community adds to the stickiness. We solve many other issues if we grow from within to ensure longevity and sustainability and the ability to grow even more.

Do you have any tips for others on building Community?

I think many people start by rushing to get the numbers. There is too much outreach but no quality. 

It is important to believe in your direction and what you do, and to understand what value you can bring. Once you get the first 1 or 2 students who put trust in you, they will have the reach to their network. When they talk about their class or their instructor, they talk with passion, and this is an automatic and immediate sell for the work that you do. 

Keep the group size small but make sure you are giving the highest quality. Show and prove through your instructing that they can trust you. This will be the start of the organic reach for the Community to form. Word-of-mouth is the strongest way to achieve a successful Community. Focus on providing value, and you’re on the right track.

Any tips for trainers who want to come out on their own? 

Never give up. There will be moments where no one signs up for class, or there are cancellations just before class and you’re left with an empty class.

Know your value, and trust in your value.

Just keep going.

I’ve had so many of those moments of self-doubt and questioning of whether running my own business is the right thing to do. In fact, Ashy and I take turns to have those moments. But we know what we want, and we uplift each other to keep going.

Get your support structures in place. I have the fortune to be in business with my partner, so we take care of each other. It is important to find a Community who are facing the same challenges as you, so link up with new startups who might not be in the same industry, link up with other instructors who are starting their own small business, or speak to a Coach like Alex!

Parting Words

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About Alex Loh

I am a business and life coach, business owner, loving husband and doting father.

My compass is guided by the desire to help people. I coach individuals and business owners to find purpose. Together we unlock fruitful solutions, experience growth and achieve targeted success. Having successfully built and maintained communities over the years, my focus is to help businesses and organisations harness community as the vehicle to connect, and build credibility, trust and authentic relationships.

Come speak to me about Finding Purpose, Building Communities and/or in Optimising your Life!

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More at https://www.thefaculty.sg/.