Donna Davidge, the owner of Sewall House Yoga Retreat shared her Entrepreneurial Accomplishment

    “If you really want to devote yourself to teaching yoga, and/or running a retreat, know that teaching yoga is physically and mentally demanding.” – Donna Davidge’s advice to the budding entrepreneurs.

    Donna Davidge is the owner of Sewall House Yoga Retreat, ranked 2nd on the Top 10 Transformative Yoga Retreats list by HGTV 2021. They have been offering individualized Yoga Retreats since 1997 & teaching yoga and meditation since 1985. Theodore Roosevelt also spent some healing time there.

    In this interview, Donna Davidge shares her thoughts on being a yoga retreat owner, useful marketing techniques, managing schedules, challenges, hurdles to be a yoga trainer, the lessons one can learn from the roadblocks, and important advice on becoming a successful owner with Business Upside. 

    Edited excerpts from the interview

    BusinessUpside[BU]: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

    Donna Davidge[DD]: My ancestral home had stood empty for eighteen months. The contents were to be auctioned off, and then it was to be placed on the market for sale. I stepped up and asked the relatives who had inherited it if I could purchase it from them. Someone who knew me well actually gave me the idea. They said, “You love northern Maine. You love your family history. You love yoga. Open a retreat”. It’s important to remember that in 1997 there was not the explosion of wellness and yoga retreats that there is now. This was a simple idea based on my passions.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: What was your mission at the outset? 

    My mission was to, 

    1. Save the family history. My great grandfather William Windgate Sewall was Theodore Roosevelt’s nature guide in Maine when Theodore Roosevelt was a Harvard student. But he became much more. They developed a lifelong friendship, and it was my great grandfather that Theodore Roosevelt reached out to at a tragic period in his life when his mother and wife (who died in childbirth) died on the same night at age twenty-five. He called on William Sewall to go out West to build his ranch and mentor him at a time of great personal suffering for Theodore Roosevelt. 
    2. To share the healing attributes of nature, which had healed TR from lifelong asthma, something that was not expected from his long treks and mountain climbing while at Sewall House and with my great grandfather. From my own living in cities versus travels to places like Guatemala, Machu Pichu, Nepal, and Alaska, I knew that I always felt healthier and happier when connected to nature and being near wildlife. 
    3. To share the health benefits of a yoga lifestyle when practiced in its authentic form. This includes not eating meat, not drinking alcohol or using recreational drugs, meditation, breathing, chanting, and finally, the yoga poses. All these things help the mind, body, and spirit or should be better integrated. They also help us deal with the stress of modern living. I created the logo “Simplicity in a Complex World” as soon as I purchased the house and started the adventure of seeing if I could make the retreat happen. It was both in reference to the times my ancestors lived in and using tools in our complicated digital age to try to keep some modicum of awareness and compassion in our lives.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: How do you market your business, and which method has been most successful?

    Donna Davidge[DD]: I have tried various ways to market the business. A Sewall House website was created in 1999. I was fortunate someone approached me about doing so as I was not privy to how important the internet would be to making this retreat a viable business. We were top ten in the world (internet search of Yoga Retreat or Yoga Vacation) from 2006 to 2011 when I think it was already a million listings. That was super helpful. In the beginning, the print press helped a lot as well. A few publications we were featured in were Instyle, Travel & Leisure, Yoga Journal, and Yankee, to name a few. In the past few years, we have had to work with third-party commission sites, which are larger corporatized organizations that have taken over the visibility of retreats on the internet. While we still get direct bookings when people search for Maine or other specific search words, changing our marketing model this way has become necessary. Last year we were chosen one of the Top Ten Transformational Yoga Retreats by HGTV. These types of online articles help a lot as well. We have found print ads to be less effective…and of course, repeats and word of mouth are best!

    BusinessUpside[BU]: How do you manage your work schedule while with your personal coaching, workshops, and developing business strategies? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: I spend six months of the year in New York City, where I have taught full-time since the mid-1980s.  Over the years, we have offered various winter retreats in Maine, from Teacher Training to Holiday Retreats. Recently, I have slowed my full-time teaching in NY City to a few online clients I teach/coach and much less in-person teaching except in the summer and fall at Sewall House. It’s a juggle of evolvement and prioritizing. I hear early risers are very effective people, and I am an early riser and super disciplined about sleep.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: What have been some of the most important lessons that have influenced the way you work? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: I have learned that you are responsible for every interaction when you run a business, so having a great staff helps immensely. That said, you also find out that no one cares about the caliber of your business in the end as much as you do. So it is a balance between knowing who you can trust with what and taking on the other things, even if it means wearing more hats than you might like to. I also believe very much in team spirit and that there is no hierarchy in a team, even though in the end, the owner, as one of my long-term staff says, “pays the bills.” Another thing that helps a lot is trusting your intuition.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: What are common traps for being a yoga teacher? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: I think one of the biggest traps for yoga teachers is burnout. People think it is such a great job (and it is!) because it helps people with their stress and offers tools that help us cope. Still, a yoga teacher may get so caught up in making enough money to pay their bills or spending time promoting themselves on social media (which has not been one of our better marketing tools though I am sure it helps) that they lose sight of their purpose. I think it’s incredibly important for a yoga teacher to have a regular yoga practice and keep studying yoga throughout their life because there is always more to know about this vast field. Some teachers do not make time for this. Another trap I think for teachers who teach too many hours a week can be keeping the class fresh and new. Teaching a yoga class the same each time, with the feeling that the teacher is there for a paycheck, does not uplift or transform people. It might give them a good workout, but yoga is more than that. Taking care of the students is easier if you take care of yourself. Keeping an eye on them helps avoid injuries and bad habits in students.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: If you really want to devote yourself to teaching yoga and/or running a retreat (many teachers do this traveling to various locations instead of owning one as I do), know that teaching yoga is physically and mentally demanding. It means being disciplined with your time, including your social time, as rest and taking care of yourself are immensely important to give your all as a yoga teacher. For many people, their lifestyle may evolve away from eating meat or drinking alcohol, though plenty of contemporary teachers does not give these things up. Also very important…a 200-hour Teacher Training is just the beginning.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: What were the biggest roadblocks or challenges you had when you first started in the profession, and how did you overcome them? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: For me, I did not leave a high-paying job to be a teacher. I see young people leaving corporate jobs to be yoga teachers. Some make it. Some do not. You often have to simplify your life to support being a yoga teacher. While a handful of teachers make very large amounts of money, it is not a profession to go into to make a lot of money. It usually means a lot of hours to make a decent living. When I first started in the profession in the mid-1980s, it was not even really thought of as a profession. I was fortunate as I took jobs at health clubs, learning centers, acting schools, whatever opportunity presented itself as I built my experience. In 2000 Yoga Alliance was created. As of 2017, there were 76000 yoga teachers in the United States, and I am sure the number is larger now. Millions of people study yoga, but some do it solely online (even pre-COVID), so that is another (saturated) yoga market now. In answer to how I overcame challenges, I think it’s important to know they will ALWAYS come, and with each one, you deal with it as best you can, whether it be an injury in your own body or a disgruntled student, or any other challenge that comes along, including financial ones. Most yoga teachers are freelancers, so the income can fluctuate as well. Proper planning can help teachers be financially sound.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: What has been your most satisfying moment in business? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: Any time someone tells me they have been transformed. I had a young woman come up to me at a Kundalini Yoga Center in NYC and told me I was the reason she went into recovery and that she was now in teacher training. She told me that she had been in my class years before at the acting school. Last summer, I had a woman at my retreat who tried to take her life a month before she came to the retreat. She recently took one of the teacher training I did with a colleague at a Buddhist center this winter. I was brought to tears when I saw how beautifully she taught, bringing in the healing she had learned from yoga and self-work. There is nothing more gratifying than knowing something you have taught, something you have shared, has helped someone grow and heal. Another woman who has been to the retreat several times overcame fears each year- one year kayaking, one year hiking, and another horseback riding. I love seeing people blossom!  From a business standpoint, knowing you are doing well enough to provide the kind of services you want to give people is important too.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: How did you plan to provide better results in a crisis? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: The results depend on the client. The retreat was open both summers that covid was happening. The degree to which people allow themselves to be honest, authentic, and vulnerable is the degree to which I can, with utmost personal respect and caring, offer them the tools that have helped me in my life (chronicled in my memoir, “Balancing with Bunions,” found in print and audiobook on Amazon). I have, however, delved further into trauma-informed yoga to better serve people with PTSD from the pandemic and other life situations.

    BusinessUpside[BU]: What is the next goal you wish to accomplish? 

    Donna Davidge[DD]: I hope to be able to live in northern Maine full-time by 2028, and that is my goal.  I would love to be in the nature of the north woods and continue to offer the small personalized retreats there that we have been offering since 1997.


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