In this live presentation, an experienced yoga teacher (20 years full‑time) explains why teaching at traditional yoga studios is often the least effective path for new instructors and outlines alternative venues that provide better experience, income potential, and professional growth. She argues that studios pigeonhole teachers into a single style, limit client ownership, and offer low, unstable pay. Gyms are recommended as the first job because they expose teachers to a large, diverse clientele, larger class sizes, and a low‑pressure environment that builds confidence and teaching skill. The speaker also discusses the precarious nature of full‑time yoga work—irregular income, reliance on contracts, and the need to hustle like an independent contractor. She then expands the scope to unconventional teaching locations such as apartment complexes, casinos, coffee shops, and museums, providing concrete pay ranges (e.g., $50–$150 per class at apartments, $35 per head at casinos) and negotiation tips. Throughout, she shares personal anecdotes about building loyal student bases, especially from gym attendees, and highlights the importance of diversifying income streams. The talk concludes with promotional information about her "Ultimate Guide to Yoga Teacher Training," a Facebook group, a low‑cost mastermind program, and upcoming live sessions on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms, encouraging viewers to join for ongoing support.
Chapters
if it's working, but I'm gonna find out right now. A destination could not be started. Click here for the details. Okay, it says it's streaming. Oh, it could not stream on my Instagram. Of course not. There's always something. Anyhow, we'll just go with this. We'll try to figure that out later. Welcome everyone. I'm really glad that you're here today. I'm going to be talking about what are some of the best places to teach yoga, why those are some of the best places to teach yoga, and why I don't recommend teaching at a yoga studio. We'll start with why I don't recommend teaching at a yoga studio. That's always everyone's default, is I want to teach at a yoga studio. I have been hosting yoga teacher trainings for a really long time, and I noticed that the first thing that people say to me is, I want to get a job teaching at a yoga studio. And to be really honest, that is the least effective way to teach yoga, uh, is to teach at a yoga studio, because yoga studios have a very distinct, uh, way in which they want you to teach there. They have a very distinct style that they want you to teach at the yoga studio. So when you are teaching at a yoga studio, what's going to happen is that you're going to be pigeonholed into this one type of style. You're also going to work with students at a yoga studio who have a little bit more of a developed practice, which might be fun for doing more difficult postures, but it will not push you to be a better teacher. Better teachers come from being challenged. That's true with anything in life. Anywhere that you want to grow, the challenge is actually going to push you further, right? So if you want to improve your yoga practice, and you're bending your knees all the time in your forward fold, well, you're never going to get any kind of hamstring length in order to actually be able to touch your toes with straight legs. It's like that with everything in life. Whatever it is we want to do, we've got to make it a little bit more difficult for ourselves. That's why I highly recommend one of your first jobs be teaching at a gym. Oh no. There's a big dog hair in my water. Okay, I think I got it. Oh my gosh, no, you guys, if you've ever had a golden retriever, you know what's happening right now. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna keep drinking it. I'm going on. Okay, so anyhow, um, I recommend working in a gym. The reason why is because you're gonna get a really vast diversity of people when you work at a gym. Gyms require you to be really challenged, and your gym classes are going to tend to be much larger than the classes at a yoga studio. Um, both places don't pay super well. Yoga studios don't pay well because they have a lot of overhead and they really can't afford you to, to pay you well. The second thing is that gyms typically don't pay you well because that's just how gyms work. They have a lot of Group X group fitness instructors. And so for them, it's just not profitable to pay people a lot more. But you know, when you think about it, you're doing an hour-long class, they're paying you $25. That's $25 an hour. So from their perspective, it's a lot of money. For you, you're like, oh, I'm just going in, I'm only making $25. But when you work at a gym, the money that you get back is not actual physical paycheck. It is the learning that you get from working with such a diverse group of people and so many different kinds of people and so many different body types and so many different levels of student. When you are teaching yoga in a, um, environment where the people are just so varied, it's going to challenge you and it's going to make you a better teacher. And ultimately, that's what will build you up to being able to do this full-time. If you want to be a full-time yoga teacher— and not everybody does want to be a full-time yoga teacher. Some people want to just teach temporary, which is fine. That's actually probably better because it's a lot of work and it's a lot of hustle being a full-time teacher. I know I've been teaching full-time for 20 years now I can barely believe that. That is so long. I can't even believe that's real, but it, it is. That's crazy. That's so long. Um, and it's— oh, every month is a gamble. You have no idea how much money you're gonna make. There is no stability whatsoever in this, in this, um, chosen field. I mean, I think I had a little bit more stability when I owned the studio because I had memberships and I knew like, okay, these memberships are coming in. But you know, things happen that you weren't expecting, like when the government went and shut everybody's businesses down. Well, now you're like, not like— they took away your income source like immediately. So you really don't know what's gonna happen. There is no guarantees. Of course there's no guarantees in life, right? That's actually why I started teaching yoga, because I got laid off from my job. And I had wanted to teach yoga, and I had my yoga certification, but I was too afraid to go out and teach because I was afraid I wasn't going to make enough money teaching. Um, and at first I didn't. It took a long time. Um, it took a few years before I was making enough money to really support myself. And it's kind of like that, you know, you have to really hustle. It's an independent contractor job, so it's just like you know, cutting hair, right? When you cut hair, you don't have an instant clientele built in as a stylist. You have to build that clientele up. And that's what teaching yoga is a lot like, which is why I do not recommend teaching at a studio. When you teach at a studio, you are not able to ask any of those clients to come to your classes anywhere else. That would be highly unethical to do so. If you're teaching yoga and you're doing that, that's incredibly unethical. I know for me, I was spending 25% of my income at the studio on marketing, so those clients really belong to the studio. They don't belong to you. So it's really important that you don't ask them to follow you on social media or come to your other classes. Um, studios, for the most unless we're talking about these mega studios that do things beyond just teaching yoga, and which are really just in my mind glorified gyms with like a lot of Group X classes. Most studios are small, independently owned, individual small studios where they're just struggling to get by. So when you work at a studio, it's more about working there as a community environment and wanting to really help the mission of that particular place. Place. So the first place I would recommend teaching if you're a new teacher is a gym. By far, gyms are the best place to teach because you're going to get the most experience as a yoga teacher, and you're going to build yourself up. You're going to get a lot of people in your classes. Sometimes I would have 60, 70, 80 people in my yoga class at 24 Hour Fitness, and that builds up a lot of confidence when you're teaching in front of that many people, that really builds up your confidence and makes you feel like, okay, I can get in front of all these people and teach. And I know that's something else that people say to me when they sign up for yoga teacher training is like, oh, I don't have the confidence to get up in front of a lot of people. That's not something that I ever suffered with. I love getting up in front of people. I don't— that doesn't bother me at all. But you know, I know a lot of people do struggle with that. So if you're teaching in a gym you're going to have the experience of getting up in front of a lot of people. And you know, the thing is, like, gym people, they're not expecting you to be cream of the crop teacher. They're not— they're like, whatever you do is going to feel really good to them. So you don't have to have like a really high skill set. You can be a brand new teacher and come into teaching at a gym and still be really successful because they don't have The, you know, at studios they're looking for a much higher caliber of teacher, and when you teach at a gym, you are just teaching people who are not as serious about their practice as they are serious about calming themselves, relieving stress, not feeling, um, upset anymore, reducing anxiety, just getting away from their kids for an hour. You You know, like, people at the gym are just so much easier to teach, and they're really like— I love them. My gym people, even now, 20 years later, people will say, I remember when I took your class at 24 Hour Fitness on Tropicana, like way back when. So your gym people are going to be your most loyal students of all time. That's why I highly recommend working in a gym. Now I want you to think outside of the box. Where are some places you might not have thought at to teach yoga. Um, one of the places that a lot of people don't think of that actually have a pretty decent budget for teaching is apartment complexes. Apartment complexes can sometimes teach you between— pay you between like $50 and $150 a class because they have budget for that. Um, I taught yoga to a group of secretaries for attorneys every Tuesday at noon. I would go and teach them a class. These secretaries loved me. It was their lunch class. I would come in for 45 minutes. I got paid $50 to do that every Tuesday. I would teach these, um, secretaries how to do yoga, and it was a really chill class. And I would always give them nice adjustments and head rubs, and they were into it. Like, they loved it. Um, so, you know, there's avenues that you never even thought of. Casinos. Here in Las Vegas, casinos pay $35 a head. $35 a head. So if you have 5 people in your class, you could be making $175. If you have 10 people in your class, that's $350. And they'll pay you if nobody shows up. They'll pay you a flat rate. So casinos are incredible places to teach. If you have one around you, and a lot of people have casinos around them, go to businesses and just start up a thing. So go to, you know, if you're at, uh, you have a coffee shop near you, like a local coffee shop, go there and be like, hey, I teach yoga and I was wondering if you want to do Saturday morning a yoga class where everybody gets a coffee and yoga with their, their class. They get coffee and they yoga with their— of course they get yoga with their class. They get coffee and yoga and they pay a flat rate, right? So you say like, we're going to charge everybody $25 and you split that. Okay, well now if 10 people come, that's $120 for you. $125, you know, $12.50. $25 divided by 2 is $12.50 times 10 is $125. So These are ways that you can generate a lot more income for yourself. Museums are incredible places to teach because you can get together with a museum and you can do like museum entry and a yoga class, and people love that stuff. They love that. It's like how calming and peaceful it is. I go to classes myself down at the Area 51, the Meow Wolf, that's by us. They do like projections on the screen, and, um, it's a really great immersive experience for everyone. I don't know what they pay her, but you know, you negotiate that individually with the place. And if you come with the idea, you can also negotiate how much they're going to pay you. That's highly worth it. So thinking outside of the box when you're determining and finding places to teach is really the best way to go. Just try to find places to teach that you would have never even thought of. I have in my profile a guide called The Ultimate Guide to Yoga Teacher Training. I talk a little bit about this in there. And then I am live on TikTok right now, but I'm also— I have a Facebook group, and if you join my Facebook group, then I go live in there and I will answer your questions and talk about different things that, um, will help you along your journey. I have a mastermind group that's very affordable. Your first 30 days are free, and then it's $47 a month after that. We meet 4 times a month. We're meeting tomorrow morning. I'm going to have a speaker. She's talking about— she owns the largest Pilates studio in Portland, Oregon. She owns the largest Pilates studio in all of Oregon, and she's going to be talking about how she bought that studio and what she is doing to make it the largest studio. So you can definitely sign up for that and get into my mastermind. Like I said, the first 30 days are free. You can try it out, and then after that it's only $47. It's really affordable. Listen, I know yoga teachers aren't like making a ton of money, so I wanted to make everything that I do really affordable and awesome for you all. I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for coming to this little live today. This will be recorded in my Facebook group, so if you're watching on TikTok and you want to see the whole recording, you can join my Facebook group and it will be in there. I try to go live every day, even if it's just for a little bit. I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for joining me today, and if you have any questions, definitely post them in the Facebook group. Um, and if you're on TikTok, you can find that in the link in my profile. I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. Have a really great day. I'm going to be live on Instagram in just a few hours at 2 PM Pacific time, uh, talking about the Ultimate Raw Vegan and Fitness Bundle that I'm in. So I'll see you then. Okay, we're gonna
