Yoga Instructor Salary - How to Make a Living Teaching?

Transcript

If you're a yoga teacher and you're trying 
to figure out a way to plan your career,   your finances, meaning how can you make a living, 
how can you make enough money to support a family,   maybe buy a home, have some financial 
security, I have some questions coming   in from readers and from students around the 
world. Hopefully my answers to their questions   will help you as you plan your career as a yoga 
teacher as well. And the first one that I have,   here is a common recurring question, and it says 
"Lucas, yoga teacher pay is so low, how have you   been able to teach for a couple of decades?". The 
first thing you need to understand is that yoga   teacher pay is not low. The average teacher salary 
is somewhere between $40,000 and $62,000 per year   and keep in mind those are teachers working 
part-time, like less than 20 hours per week.   So if you were to look at any statistics, that 
puts you in middle, or even upper middle class,   where depending on where you are in the world. 
Yoga teacher pay is not low. What happens is most   teachers aren't working very much. We can solve 
that a little bit later. OK, the next question,   "I don't have enough social media followers". I 
hear this from teachers around the world. "Lucas   you have 50,000 followers on Instagram, or 300,000 
followers on facebook." Here's the thing, I'm old,   I've been online for a long time. I don't know 
who most of those followers are and they don't   know who I am. In the yoga teaching business it's 
not about scope and scale, it's really about deep   connections. When you're thinking about building 
your community, never go chasing big numbers of   social media followers. I always think about 
the depth and the breadth of the connections   that you truly have. Next one I get a lot 
is people say "no one pays for yoga anymore   because there's all this free content on YouTube". 
There is a lot of free content on YouTube,   a lot of it's really good and it's getting better 
every day. What people don't understand is,   after two decades in the industry, what I've 
seen is every time there's more free content   it drives demand for more paid content. For every 
free class on YouTube, 10 people are paying for   classes online, offline, workshops, retreats, 
all of the above. More is more. The industry,   the paid industry, is growing by 10 percent plus 
per year, so don't worry. The next one I get a lot   is this impostor syndrome and it goes like this: 
"I'm not blank enough, I'm not flexible enough,   I'm not strong enough, I'm not thin enough." All 
of our self-doubt it's always based in a grain of   truth. For sure we could practice more, for sure 
we could get more skills. The important thing   to remember is that in this industry there are 
perfect people, people who are specimens of the   human body. They can do every pose, they can stand 
on their hands, they look great, but those are not   the most successful teachers from a financial 
perspective. They're also not the most impactful   teachers from actually helping students make 
change. What I've seen in the industry is the   teachers who are doing the best are the ones 
that get really, really focused on the journey,   not the destination. Your students are looking for 
a teacher who's just a couple of steps ahead of   them. You need to keep practicing, yes. You need 
to keep growing, yes. You need to keep building   your skill set. But don't let that keep you from 
getting started right now and don't for a minute   think that you're competing with that perfect body 
22-year-old doing a handstand on the beach. You're   not. Your audience is different, your community 
is different. The next one I get it a lot is:   "Lucas, I want to be successful, but I don't care 
about money." This is a really naive thing to say,   I don't care about money. When you say "I don't 
care about money" what it really means is someone   else cares about money for me. That might be your 
significant other, that might be your parents,   that might be a government, but somebody is 
looking after your finances if you're not,   and so part of finding a career path is really 
growing up and taking responsibility for your   finances. This is an important one that comes up a 
lot. People will tell me and ask me "Lucas, how do   I make it in the industry? It seems like the yoga 
studios and the big online platforms are the only   ones making money." This is not true. In fact, 
the opposite is true. Big studio groups they go   out of business every day. Most yoga studios never 
make any money. Most studio owners slash managers,   slash head teachers, make less than their most 
successful teacher. And the big online platforms,   there's a couple of them make a little bit of 
money, but for most of them it's a race to the   bottom and the teachers on their platforms 
are doing way better than the platforms   themselves. The yoga industry is very similar to 
the music industry. The people who are the most   successful do way better than the platforms and 
the publishers themselves. OK, the last one that   I'd like to address is this idea that you just 
can't make a good living with yoga. You know CNN   Money did a report recently talking about salaries 
and they estimated that the average yoga teacher   makes around $62,000 per year, and keep in mind 
that's for working part-time, 20 hours a week. So   there's really a tremendous amount of potential. 
It's a $37billion dollar industry all around the   world and it's growing about 10 percent per year. 
So if you want to set up a private yoga business,   if you want to teach workshops, retreats, whatever 
you'd like to do, it's really important to   remember that you've got to get your head right, 
your mindset right, to understand that this market   is not the problem, the problem right now is 
you're not seeing and you're not tapping into   the opportunities that are available. Hope that's 
helpful. My name is Lucas, you can learn more at   yogabody.com. Please post any questions below 
and I look forward to connecting with you soon.