The Truth About Being a Yoga Teacher They Don’t Tell You in YTT

Transcript

When I started teaching yoga, the dream was to share classes with as many people as possible and share my passion with the world. But I quickly realized how difficult that is if you want to make a sustainable career out of teaching. Because when I first started, I just wanted to take on as many classes as possible. Say yes to everything. But I realized that I was very quickly going to burn out doing that. I started teaching my first class. Then I took on a few more and I got up to five. Then I got up to a few more and it got up to 15. Then I ended up at one point teaching 20 classes a week. Not because I wanted to teach all of those classes, but because that was the only way I could make a sustainable living through teaching. And the sad reality is that most yoga teachers are in that position, too. Because even if you teach at a studio, it's likely that you're also hosting classes yourself where you are responsible for getting people through the door. And the thing that not many teachers realize is your YTT prepares you to teach a class, but it does not teach you how to actually get people to those classes, especially if you are the one running the class where you are responsible for the marketing, the promotion, you know, the whole business side of things. And this is why I created a business training for yoga teachers to help yoga teachers connect the dots between how to teach and how to actually get students to come to your classes, attend your online classes, or whatever offerings you have. I will be talking a little bit more about this later, but the link will be in the description down below. So, I want to walk you through what life was like in those early days. I used to drive from studio to studio with a stack of Tupperware on my passenger side seat so that I could snack in between classes because when you teach that many classes a day, you don't really want to be doing it on a full stomach. So having a full meal wasn't really an option back then. I just decided to graze through the day and that worked for me. But then when I got to about two years in of teaching, you know, I was in the swing of doing this. This had become my my schedule, I realized that I was really neglecting myself and I also wasn't really enjoying what I was doing. I wasn't doing my own practice. I wasn't eating properly. And the classes that I was teaching started to feel robotic. I felt like I was on autopilot and I was just going through the motions. And around about this time I went to do a teacher training in Bali. I thought that would infuse me and that would give me you know what I needed. At the end of this teacher training co happened. So I had to evacuate and leave and come home and we went into lockdown. And looking back, this was actually the best thing to happen for my career because it helped me to pause and I spent about 6 months in between various lockdowns just focusing on like what my options were. I knew that 20 classes a week was not the solution, right? I'd maxed myself out physically. So, I needed the time and the space to think about where I was going to do next. Uh what what I was going to do next. I needed to like pick myself up, right? Because when I was driving from studio to studio every day, it just felt a bit bleak. I felt stuck like this is my dream. This is what I really want to do, but it's just not quite working out the way I had planned or the way I had envvisaged it. So during co I started educating myself about what I could do online. I was looking to other teachers who I respected and looked up to and I was seeing that a lot of them were creating things online, you know, ebooks or courses or maybe they had online classes on YouTube or a subscription service. And I started to think to myself like why can't I do that? Like I don't know how to do that, but what's to say I can't just teach myself how to do that? So during those six months, I taught myself how to create an ebook and it had links to videos and it was a handstand program. It was very basic and um you know nothing to really shout about but it really got me started on this journey of creating programs creating experiences online. So at the end of lockdown, I launched that handstand program and the day I launched was the most exciting thing for me because for the first time ever, I was being paid for something that I created, but I wasn't there in person to facilitate it. That was mindblowing to me because I'd spent years only able to make a living if I was there like physically, you know, tiring myself up every day. And finally I had this thing where people were paying me to teach them something but I wasn't actually in the room teaching them. You know this was a real turning point for me. So after that this is like 2020 I think I then started focusing even more online. You know I started trying to get good at YouTube. At this point, I really didn't have much technical skill and I didn't really understand YouTube. But I knew that this was where I needed to focus on. But I didn't have a clue about, you know, how to build communities on social media, how to actually get people to know about the things that I was offering. You know, how to market it and, you know, share the value that I had to offer, how to even create offers that people wanted to buy. You know, there was just so many blanks that I needed to fill in. And I was constantly like winging through this opinion, that piece of advice, this tutorial, that tutorial, and there was so many conflicting opinions and pieces of advice. Some were great and others just didn't really align with me and, you know, who I am as a yoga teacher. So it was really difficult trying to educate myself how to do marketing in a way that feels honest and not sleazy. How to use social media whilst being an introverted person so that I could create a boundary there where on this side you know these are the things that I'm happy to share about and on the other side these are the things that I don't share about and I just keep for myself. You know, there was so many things that I had to learn and I spent five years from 2020 to where I am now to learn all of this, piecing together this like patchwork of information from different resources, you know, all over the internet. So, from 2020 to 2025, I now have five online programs. You know, I did an iteration of the handstand program to improve it. I've done two other inversion programs and I have my flexibility program and my yoga strong program. They were not all instant successes. You know, I've had to go away and refine them, get better at them, and you know, make some improvements. But through that process, I realized that actually I realized quite a few things. The first thing I realized is that if something isn't perfect first time, that's okay. You can reiterate, right? You can go back, you know, make a a new version even if you have to. And that's totally fine. And that is what every single person is doing out there. So if something is not perfect, don't let that hold you back from sharing it with the world. The second thing I realized is that through this process, I was building a a business, like an online business. And my yoga career had really started to turn into a career. When I was teaching 20 classes a week, it never really felt like a career. You know, I wasn't really taking it seriously. It didn't really feel like I had much of a business or much stability there. But when I started creating these programs, I was building something and it was mine. You know, the website was mine, the programs were mine. So, I really wanted to focus on that. And then as YouTube has now taken off over the last like few years, that then also became another side of the business. And I realized that I'm no longer relying on teaching those in-person classes. Now I have other things to fall back on. You know, I'm not just putting all of my eggs in one basket like many yoga teachers do. Like I always say to the teachers that I coach, diversify. You know, don't just pin all of your hopes on this one thing because anything could change. You know, I don't just focus on YouTube. I also focus on programs. I also coach teachers. You know, I'm also creating programs for teachers because I never want to just focus on one thing because I know how me how easy things can change. Through this five-year journey, I realized that I could have done this so much quicker. I could have done this straight out of my YTT if I had have just had the skills. If someone had have just sat me down and been like, "Right, here's the business side of things that you need to know." Because when I finished my first yoga teacher training, we had a half an hour chat and it was so basic, you know, a lot of the information was quite outdated at that time and it was just like post some flyers in your local area, you know, put up a poster in your local cafe and that's how you can build a community, you know, post in some Facebook groups. But it wasn't really detailed and at that time it was kind of outdated as I mentioned. So, I came out of that YTT feeling a little bit like, okay, I know how to teach, but I don't actually know how I'm going to get these teaching opportunities. Like, where do I go next? And this is why I realized there is a big need for a business training for yoga teachers. And this is why I've created a training for yoga teachers that teaches you the business side of things. It teaches you how to use social media to build a community. How to market yourself and share your value. How to create offers so that you're not just relying on any one thing at any one time. And how to manage your time so that you no longer feel stuck teaching 20 classes a week, but you can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that and create your own freedom. Because if you're doing something like teaching yoga where we do it because we have so much passion for it, you know, we would go and do something else if we weren't passionate. And it's so sad whenever I teach I speak to yoga teachers and they say, "I lost my joy for teaching." Not because they don't enjoy teaching, but because they haven't got this business set up to make it a sustainable career. So, if you're nodding along to this and you're thinking, "Yes, that is exactly where I see myself and my YCT did not prepare me for this." Then visit the link in the description. It will walk you through everything the training has to offer. And I can honestly say if I had not have learned the business side of teaching, I don't think I would still be teaching yoga. I think I probably would have gone to work in an office or done something else that was more stable. Right. The crazy thing is now I look at my situation and I think how did I get here from the girl who was teaching 20 classes a week who felt stuck who was losing her joy for the thing that she loved to do to now having the freedom to be able to teach when and wherever I want to travel you know if and when I want and to take my work with me and to feel like I actually have a future in teaching. So, if you're currently feeling stuck, know that one, you're not alone, and two, this is not the end of the road. You do have options. You can go it alone. You can start, you know, using the videos on this channel that might teach you about things or other resources on the internet and try to piece it together the same way I did. Or you could come and join me for the training and have it all laid out for you. I hope to see you