In this solo YouTube presentation, Angelica – a 15‑year yoga teacher, former owner of Nevada’s largest yoga studio, and high‑level business coach – examines whether a yoga teacher can earn a full‑time living. She shares her personal earnings timeline: $55‑60k a year teaching in Miami, a drastic drop to $88‑200 a week after moving to Las Vegas, supplemented by poker winnings and a severance settlement, then rapid growth after opening her first studio (gross $50k in year one) and eventually scaling to multiple studios generating $250k+ annually. Angelica outlines the concrete steps she took to build her business: collecting email addresses early, running pre‑sale memberships ($90 for 90‑day access), converting to recurring memberships, teaching at gyms for experience, and later expanding into online retreats, summits, and virtual classes. She discusses the current market landscape – studio closures creating cheap rental opportunities – and urges aspiring teachers to hustle, avoid perfectionism, and start building an email list now. Throughout, she promotes her book “How I Made a Million Dollars Teaching Yoga” and her coaching services, positioning herself as a realistic yet motivational guide for those willing to work hard and persist.
Chapters
This video is brought to you by my new book, How I Made a Million Dollars Teaching Yoga. Grab your copy today, link in the description, or visit book.milliondollaryoga.com. Can you live full-time on a yoga teacher's income? That's what we're going to be talking about today. Hi, I'm Angelica. I've been teaching yoga for 15 years. The last 10 years I've been teaching yoga teachers. I used to own the largest yoga studio in the state of Nevada, and now I do high-level coaching for people who want to 10x their yoga business. If you are interested in connecting with me, you can find links in the description. Also, you can get a copy of my book, How I Made a Million Dollars Teaching Yoga. Let's get started. Today we're going to be talking about can you make a full-time income teaching yoga. Well, maybe some of you can for sure. Most of you can't. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. Yoga— I once read an article that said that yoga was like the one of the top careers. And I've been doing this for 15 years. For most of that 15 years, I've been living off of what I make. And it's hard. Like, I don't know how people who have families do it. Like, a lot of people will say to me, "Well, I have a family and I can't afford to not do this, make this much money." And I'm like, "Well, you know, I'm sorry. If you can't afford to not make $90,000, then you can't take the risks that are associated with building up a following." Like, it needs your full-time attention. Whenever you switch— like, when I moved, when I moved from Miami to Vegas, I was making like $55,000, $60,000 a year teaching yoga in Miami. Um, and I, I had to start all over in Vegas. So I'm making, you know, like $60,000 a year in Miami. I moved to Vegas and now I'm making $88 a week teaching yoga at 24 Hour Fitness. And that's because I just went up to the front desk in 24 Hour Fitness, was like, hey, can I teach here? And then I would just take up— I would take every gig I could get. And so I was kind of to the point where I was making about maybe $150 to $200 a week teaching yoga right before I opened my yoga studio to supplement my income when I was in Vegas. When I first started in Miami, I was still living off of money that I had made from from the, um, I'd gotten laid off from my job at L'Occitane and I was still living off of my settlement, whatever they call that, like when you, when you get laid off from a job and they give you money. They gave us like 3 months pay or something, um, but I just think I made that stretch out and, um, that's what I used to pay my bills, not very successfully. I did end up losing everything. But that's the story, it's in my book. You can go download it, read about all that. Um, that's not a story for today. Then I moved to Vegas and I supplemented my income, um, playing poker, which again is also in my book that you can read. It's a pretty funny story, um, and actually a pretty magical story. Um, and so I'm making about $150 a week to $200 a week depending teaching yoga and then supplementing with poker money, which I wasn't like the best poker player ever, but I made enough to make it by and lived in a really, really shitty apartment with a couple of strippers because it was Vegas. And, you know, we liked it because it had a pool, so we didn't care. It was like this house actually with 3 bedrooms, like in downtown, a terrible neighborhood. Um, our place was broken into while we were in it. Uh, but you know, I only paid $260 a month in rent there, so it was worth it. Then I opened my studio, and right away my studio started doing well, but that's because I had done the work. So when I was teaching, I always got email addresses, I got people to like my Facebook page because this was like the beginning of Facebook. Instagram hadn't happened yet, and, um, I should have done a YouTube channel. Like, I kick myself every day for not having started a YouTube channel back then because— and I just was like, I was focused on perfection. Like, I thought I had to do everything perfect, and that's just— just do it. Like, if I could give you one piece of advice about anything you do in life, if you want to do it, just do it. Like, don't let not being perfect hold you back. That was a huge mistake I made. Anyhow, um, So then once the studio opened, I'd done my due diligence. I made sales before the studio opened, got people signed up for a 90-day for $90. So I had money coming in right away to help me pay bills. And then I converted a lot of those people to memberships, gave them super sweet deals. And, um, because you want the monthly revenue coming in. So my first year with the yoga studio, I made $50,000. Um, and that's gross, like without any expenses. So obviously I had to pay rent and I had to pay my teachers. In the beginning, I taught a lot. At the end, I wasn't teaching a class on the schedule at all. Probably 12, 13, 14, 15— 3 years in, I didn't teach classes anymore. When I opened my second yoga studio, I stopped teaching classes on the schedule altogether because it was a much larger studio and I was way busier and had a lot more on my plate. And I had— I just did not have the time. And I found that I wasn't being as nice to people as I could because I couldn't move from one one thing to the other. Like, it was really hard to move from working in the office on the website to then, you know, teaching people. So I, I was better off not teaching. But, um, then when we opened the new space, you know, now I'm making like $250,000 a year, uh, or more. So it took me a really long time to get there though, and I think there are other routes, and I know friends who have done other things that, um, and now it's like there's so much more, you know, like people are more open than ever to online stuff. So you can do online retreats, online summits, online yoga classes, online yoga studio, um, but I'm telling you, for the savvy, for those of you who have saved up a little bit of money Now, there has been a lot of studios closing, and that's sad. That's really, that's really sad, and I'm really sad that that's happened to a number of people, and I don't wish that on anybody. But within the next year to 2 years, there will be a lot of empty spaces that you can pick up rents on the cheap. And when this thing starts to simmer down— I don't think it's ever going to really blow over. I think we have to just like wake up to the idea that This is how it is now, and we have to teach to that, which is why I'm here today, right? Like, it's why I totally decided to start being online. I mean, I wasn't online. I preferred to be with people, but I'm a realist, and I know that this is the way of the future. So that's why I'm here with you today. Anyhow, save your dollars now, because if you want to open a yoga studio, if that was your dream, or you want to open a space to teach yoga to your students, um, it— there's about to be a lot of places that are already pre-built and ready for you just to move on in and open your own space. Start collecting your names now though. Start building an email list. Start getting people interested in what you have to sell because it takes a couple of years to do that and to build up that following. And in that time, you're going to be having a wonderful journey and learning so many things. I'll tell you, working at the gym made me a good teacher. Maybe they only paid me $22 to $25 a class, but it made me a good teacher because I had to work with so many different students. I have classes with like 65 people in there, and I'd have to figure out how to do that. Um, it made me a great teacher. So get as much experience as you can. I highly, I highly suggest working at the gym. Um, do I think you can make a full-time income? Yes, but it takes some time, and it's not for the faint of heart. It's for the people who want to work and hustle really hard. It's for the people who never give up. Do you never give up? I never give up. Never. So if you don't give up, I would like to have you on my team, and I would like to work with you for sure. So click the link in the description below, download my book, um, and, uh, I'd love to know more about you. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for watching. Please subscribe. I'll see you tomorrow.
