Vol 3: The Business of Teaching Yoga; Putting the Om into Capitalism
For a practice that promises good mental health and compassion, the business of teaching yoga is surprisingly murky. I didn’t give much thought to business when I trained to teach. With hindsight of course yoga teacher implies yoga business, you have to get feet on mats and earn a living. But in the beginning I was driven by fanciful notions of helping people. And about how amazing it would be to sit around on a cushion all day teaching people to meditate.
The Good Old Days
When I first started teaching, I had a part time job that paid the bills. These were the halcyon days when teaching yoga was fun. It didn’t matter if it made me money; I could experiment, turn down work, drop classes I didn’t enjoy.
Most of my old yoga teachers operated like that. They barely had websites, maybe just a page with a picture of a lotus and a phone number. In fairness most of them were retired or had married well. And we’re talking a while ago too before the industry became saturated. Yoga for them was a passion not a business. They didn’t have to advertise, people found them. There were no selfies or bikinis, yoga was still an inside job then, not a visual circus.
Reality bites
But times have changed. In 2016, I got made redundant & decided to teach yoga full time. To pay the bills I taught 5 to 6 times a day, 5 days a week. At the weekend I ran events. The pressure to make money was very real – I had hire costs to cover, plus my rent and bills. Suddenly it absolutely mattered if half the class decided they would prefer to stay home and watch the Bake Off final.
Teaching at this level wasn’t sustainable for me. I started to hate yoga & to burnout. Inevitably I began looking at what I was doing and wondering if I might be able to earn more and work less. Like many in this predicament I was a prime target for the wellness business “angels” that soon swooped in.
Downward dog eat downward dog
After the corporate world I thought the yoga industry would be a doddle. Nothing prepared me for the backstabbing, stealing of ideas & clients, and deceit. It was like entering a Lululemon clad cat fight. Yoga, like other professions, exists in the new world of job insecurity. Large swathes of the population consequently scrabble around to monetise everything whilst competing for an ever-decreasing pool of customers. When I first started teaching there were 5 of us in the area. Now there are over 20. Everyone wants novel ideas and clients; everyone needs to make money. Yoga is not particularly well paid, at least not when you start out, and it’s also an irregular income. Abundance mentality aside, people are desperate to survive and that breeds ruthlessness.
Against this backdrop of desperation and often business naivety, a whole Tony Robbins style industry has grown up. Dedicated business coaches or “angels” now specialise in coaching yoga teachers and therapists to market better, build a brand, side hustle and make more money. I’ve met more than my fair share and I’m not saying they’re all bad – the money some of them make is testament to what they’re preaching. But the ones I encountered were mostly unprofessional, not remotely qualified and frankly quite bonkers.
If It Moves, Monetise It
The first “business angel” I met turned up in one of my classes to network. She said she only worked with heart-centred female entrepreneurs. She was high energy and offered me free sessions in return for free yoga. I never worked out what the heart-centred bit was all about as her approach was pretty hard-nosed. Increase my charges, get wealthier clients, copy other teachers and post one video every day on social media. (Posting videos (or these days hosting podcasts) seems to be a particular favourite of these coaches. Hence the reason social media feeds all over the world are littered with therapists looking shifty as they go live on Facebook to talk about the menopause and ice baths). I parted company with this heart-centred angel when she started trying to advise me via numerology and astrology. This was a USP too far.
The next “angel” that crossed my path was a business energy coach. She believed success came from the vibe injected into a business. So we started with a vision board, progressed through various law of attraction style meditations, and I had to jump in and out of imaginary circles, I don’t quite remember why. In a nutshell, if it didn’t work, it was because I wasn’t positive enough. When I proved a bit resistant to this, she introduced EFT; tapping away my emotional hang-ups to success and wealth. In our final session together she became frustrated at my lack of progress and decided I must have childhood trauma. She had no training in psychology or counselling. I don’t have childhood trauma. It was, quite frankly, a load of bollocks and we went our separate ways.
I took a long break from these so-called experts after this. But last year my resolve weakened and I hooked up via Zoom with a wellness brand specialist. Now she wasn’t interested in free yoga; she wanted almost £1000 for 200 photographs, and a couple of PDF guides. You know the sort of photo, me leaning against an edgy urban brick wall. Or using a blender to mash up pineapple and turmeric whilst looking radiant. We didn’t get off to a good start when she implied my clothes didn’t suit my face (she was also a colour therapist). Then she called me bookish which is true, except the way she said it implied I had a deformity. She suggested ways we could manufacture a more dynamic me. Twenty minutes in, a half-naked man walked into her office and started shouting obscenities. Turned out she had forgotten to wake her husband who works nights. I politely declined to take it further.
For all their positive thinking and good vibes, the wellness angels offered only snake oil. They talk a good line and promise a lot but they miss the mark. For me the best business advice has come from entrepreneurs outside the wellness industry. Practical solutions like getting SEO right, making my website faster, streamlining processes, having the courage to get rid of difficult clients, have made the difference. And the best advice I was ever given was simply to be really good; to listen to my clients and exceed expectations.
Anti-social media
It’s taken me a long time to swim with any confidence in the murky waters of the yoga business. I don’t really look at what other teachers are doing any more and just focus on my business. It feels like I’ve flicked a switch on the cat fight, and I’m better for it. But one consequence is that I don’t venture on social media much anymore, just to advertise events on Facebook, maybe post the odd article. My honest experience of Facebook is that for every two likes I get a competitor steals an idea and I find it hard to accept that as a compliment. I recently went on holiday with an Instagram influencer and spent 5 soul destroying days sourcing WiFi codes and visiting only places that had the right vibe. Instagram’s not for me. My life isn’t very exciting and I can’t bring myself to try to manufacture one. Plus my bikini days are long gone!
In yoga we teach that every body is different and that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to the practice. I believe it’s the same with the business of yoga. There are different ways to skin this cat. I’m an introvert and a lot of other teachers are too; we struggle with self-promotion, after all we’re yoga teachers not salespeople. Yes, teachers that shout the loudest on social media very often do get more follows and perhaps even more income. But I like to think there is still a route to success through just being as good as you can be, knowing your shit and delivering it well. The teachers I respect post very little on social media but what they do has substance and is not just for the sake of it. Less is more. I suppose I’m old school, I like quality.
Last year provided some vindication. I asked some of my clients to fill out a questionnaire about their likes and dislikes. Turns out about 75% of my customers don’t engage with social media. And over half came to me through recommendations, not adverts. They’re almost all bookish! So maybe if we play to our strengths, stay consistent & authentic, we can build our own community without all the strategies, hocus pocus and daily videos.