Not very yogic... when it comes to money

I just discovered that Google allows patrons to post reviews of businesses and services. I “googled” the yoga studio I teach at and found a handful of reviews. Mostly positive. Some complaints of it being too hot or too incense smelling, ironically.

Then there were a few who used the phrase “not very yogic” to describe the managements business ethics regarding payments or as one said “when it comes to money.”

We have strict but clearly presented policies about not refunding for package purchases, adhering to expiration dates on packages, and insisting that every student pay before taking class. This, apparently, is “not very yogic.”

Do these same students go into their health club and ask for their money back on that year long contract they bought in January when, come April, they’ve only gone four times? Maybe. But does the health club comply? Highly improbable.

Do we ask for our money back if our doctor fails to heal that nagging ache in our lower back? Never.

So why do these individuals expect yoga studios to be “above” these standards?

Before we had a front desk staff, I was responsible for checking in students and handling payments. Admittedly, I would allow students who forgot their wallet to return and pay later. They rarely did. I allowed latecomers to enter class, and pay after class. They rarely did. Not very yogic of them.

I calculated that, on average, I was losing about $3 per class on these students. Big deal. A latte. But it adds. In fact, it adds up to over $1,000 per year. That is a non-deductible donation I was making every year to the greater yoga community. Over the five years I was lax on these rules, I lost $5,000. My IRA could certainly use that boost!

Now we have a front desk staff. More than ever I love teaching at this studio because I am completely removed from the business of charging for yoga. This studio allows me to simply arrive and teach.

Students have a separate set of business standards for a yoga studio, than for their health club. And in some domains, they should. But not when it comes to paying your bills. I teach solely for this studio mostly because of the “not very yogic” management. A number of previous employers were regularly late with wages, and often paid me the wrong amount. My mortgage company doesn’t understand that working for a yoga studio may mean being “yogic” about waiting for pay day.

Yoga Bling

Last month, the New York Times featured a yoga teacher answering questions in a series called “Ask a Yoga Instructor.” On the very first day, the following question was offered by a reader.

“You majored in economics and business, so tell me why yoga classes are so [expletive] expensive. In terms of physical assets, instructors provide only the empty studio, some mood music, and maybe some extra for the heating bill, if you’re into hot/power yoga. What’s your margin? How much of each person’s membership fees do you get to keep at the end of the day? I’m not saying that there isn’t a value added that you bring to the classroom as an instructor, even beyond what an instructor of any other activity (aerobics, spin, kickboxing, etc.) may bring. But I want to know how much of it is because of the elitist aura that yoga practitioners want to maintain.”

How much of the price of yoga is because of the “elitist aura” is what this reader wants to know. This reader exemplifies the other roadblock to yoga teachers making money. The first, I explored, is the pervasive sense that yoga teachers are missionaries, offering their services as karma not in need of worldly payments. The second, exemplified here, is that students feel they are paying so much for yoga, their teachers must be rolling in the dough! How else could we afford $80 pants just to sit around cross legged?

This reader’s comment shows the tug of war between the price of yoga, the expense of maintaining a studio, and the challenge of making a living as a yoga teacher.

It is true that classes in a yoga studio carry a price tag that is often a deterrent to participation for lower income individuals. But, on the flip side, teachers are struggling to be able to piece together a schedule that supports a healthy lifestyle and pays the bills. How about a government sponsored yoga subsidy? We’ll get to that right after health care is worked out.

What keeps them coming back for more?

Many of my students are participating in a 40 Day Challenge offered by the studio. Early in, as muscles were acclimating, a young woman asked me to suggest a class to take the day after a challenging class with me. She noted that her wrists were bothered by the vinyasa. I told her to skip my class tomorrow, and suggested a restorative and a Forrest class for her as more therapeutic options. Home we went at 7:30 pm that night. At 9:30 am the next morning, there she appeared, sheepishly, on her mat before me, disregarding my recommendation.

So I proceed with some wisdom but mostly educated guesses about how to improve and grow. This year I intend to incorporate the following into my yoga teaching:

Preparing to Teach:

1. Take one “out of my ordinary schedule” class every month.

2. Take 3 new workshops this year.

3. Explore a modality to borrow from (self defense, dance, capoeira, etc).

4. Construct and commit to completing a yoga reading list.

5. Agree only to substitute teach classes that are complementary in style and challenge level and that may draw new students.

Teaching Class:

1. Be on time!

2. Have one yoga philosophy, anatomy or alignment element to teach in every class.

3. 12 music mixes

4. 12 skeletal flows for Wed and Sunday; 6 for Saturdays; alternate through 4 for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

5. Maintain a high intensity and a moderate level of challenge in every class.

6. Hire an assistant for Sundays.

7. Design a checklist for the front desk for pre-class preparations.

8. Give a suggestion/assist/mini lesson to at least one student after every class.

9. Consciously Exit: Sage, lights, seal practice.

10. Drop classes that consistently average less than 10 students.

And Beyond…

1. Internet private yoga sessions

2. Offer classes for teachers only

3. Intensives that allow students to deepen study without a teacher training

4. 3 hour master class

5. Yoga on the roof

Think Globally, Act Locally

This week I attempted to set aside time to define action steps. What I learned is that it is equally important to highlight the challenges that I face as well. The science of psychology believes that finding no significant difference is just as important as finding a significant difference. No experiment is a failure. There is information to be gleamed from both outcomes.

In asking the world to respect yoga as a profession, I’ve forgotten that some of the greatest challenges I face are with the competing priorities within my own life. This week I had to cancel a private lesson because of a sleepless night with my daughter, and I was late for two classes because I was waiting for child care relief before I could leave. Understandably, my career takes a back seat to my child and to my wife’s career, which makes more money and is of higher social status.

I did come to the following indicators, culled largely from Break from the Pack, from which I will define action steps:

1. Challenge students to do something they think they can’t. Challenge what they are sure is their edge and scaffold them to find a way beyond it; even if it pisses them off.

2. Challenge students to think of yoga as something they think it isn’t. Coalesce with pop culture, other forms of movement, religion and politics.

3. Challenge students to want something they think they shouldn’t want in yoga.

4. Only venture into new territory where you are ready to set the agenda.

5. Grow
1. Improve only the competencies that help you succeed.
2. Outsource whatever you aren’t passionate about, not good at in order to liberate value-creating resources.

6. Reinvent yourself: The Madonna Effect
1. Don’t cling to skills that are becoming common place.
2. Sell what you have to others and stall their own creativity to invent.
3. Be working on the next big thing.
4. Risk losing some of your students in the process.
5. Replace successful products or services with fundamentally new ones.

7. Individualize the experience for students.

8. Be innovative, not just creative.

Don't quit your day job. Too late.

In 2006, I set the “audacious” goal to grow my average class size by 5 students. I began tracking my attendance. Literally. For four years I’ve maintained data for every class I teach and plot my class attendance and trends.

Success. In fact, in 2007 I averaged 6 more students per class, not just meeting but surpassing my goal that first year. I’ve continued to set a new goal every year since, and every year I have not just met, but crushed it.

I do this because I’m not a “build it and they will come” kind of girl. Sweat lodges and affirmations aren’t my thing. I believe intention is necessary, but not sufficient to attract prosperity. I believe in planning and accountability, identifying indicators that predict outcomes, accounting for mediators and knowing your moderators and importantly, objectively measuring results.

I began setting these goals partly because I saw myself teaching better to bigger groups. Something about the energy in the room nourished me. Something about the silent dialogue that ensues between a teacher and a mass was energizing. Maybe something about the ego boost fed my confidence. I don’t know, but I was definitely having more fun, and so it seemed, were my students.

This year, I up the ante. I turned down a consulting offer in “my other career” that would have set me back on track after my baby making hiatus. Instead, I launch 2010 with the intention of making a living as a full time yoga teacher. I set the goal of increasing my class size to an average of 30 students per class. It’s going to be tough.

I’ve added three more classes to my teaching schedule. I now teach once every day. All classes are at the same yoga studio. Keeping just the four classes I was teaching, I could only expect incremental growth in my income; $10 to $25 per class. The only way to grow significantly is to add more classes. But this is a risky wager.

By adding classes I become my own competition. For example, students can now choose either Saturday or Sunday. I run the risk of diluting my current large classes by spreading the same students across more days, rather than adding students or having students come more often than they do now. Importantly, new classes take time to build, and low attendance in the beginning of the year will reduce my annual mean class size, even if my long standing classes are doing as well as or better than last year.

How does it look so far? In January I averaged 29 students, and January typically has a “New Year Resolution Bump.” So this is not promising. January usually makes up for the summer dip.

What will take me from where I am now to meeting my 2010 intention of making a living teaching yoga, and meeting my goal of 30 students per class? Not one to leave it up to the universe, I will spend this coming week identifying my priorities and defining action steps. Stay tuned.

If I were a boy...

Yoga is a female dominated profession. Our yoga studio has no male teachers. There are two other highly respected yoga studios in our state; only 8% and 16% of teachers are male. Laughing Lotus in New York City is 8% male; their San Francisco studio is 15% male.

In contrast, the 2010 Yoga Journal San Francisco teaching staff is 47.5% male. The 2010 Yoga Journal Boston teaching staff is 39.5% male.

This leaves me unsure whether it’s so challenging to become rich and famous teaching yoga, or if most women don’t hold that intention, either because they don’t want it or they don’t think they should want it.

It isn’t unusual for men, in a women dominated occupation, to make more money and hold higher status positions. According to an analysis of data in over 300 job classifications provided by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, women earn less in every occupation. Women currently make approximately 80 cents for every dollar that men earn.

In fact, the more women fill an occupation, the less it pays. Child care workers – of whom 98% are women -- are the fourth lowest earners, making just $265 a week. They are paid less than amusement park attendants, stock handlers, vehicle washers, workers in pest control, and almost every other category. Put your money where your values are, America.

Women dominated occupations, like teaching yoga, are characterized as vocations, as I discussed in a previous post. They are services provided to keep society humming: child care, nursing, home health aids. If you want to get rich in one of these careers, you are opportunistic. But if you want to make money as an investment banker, mortgage broker, or politician, you are ambitious.

A friend did a 200 hour teacher training with a male teacher who told his flock of fledgling teachers there was no reason they could not make $1,000 per week teaching yoga. He wasn't just blowing smoke, he believes it.

Why don’t I? I’m approaching that horizon, and declaring that it can be done. Then, why don’t I believe they can make that much money? Why would I never dare tell them they can?

Partly, it’s because I have no idea what has brought me from $50 per class to $150 per class. I don’t know what it is about my class that is filling the seats, or better now than before or finally gotten right that has doubled my class sizes. And even more frustrating, I don’t know what to do next to maintain the momentum. Thus, this exploration is partly to discover what it is I am doing that works.

The "Yoga Ministry" Myth

I am resisting the need to explain away my desire to be a lucrative yoga teacher by explaining that it is stoked simply by the need to afford a good preschool; to allow my partner more time at home with our daughter; to live in modern society in 2010.

But this would be cowering to the pressure that I should not intend to make money teaching yoga, like any other person intends from their job. That teaching yoga is a vocation, and that I should commit to my ministry at any cost.

In the previous post, I mentioned the Sadie Nardini backlash on Yoga Dork’s Blog.

Ms. Nardini carefully responds, “I would like to pay my bills, yes, but I don’t give a damn about recognition, or becoming rich. This is our dharma…and our careers. To think negatively of this is to widely miss the point.”

What if she did want to become rich while manifesting her dharma?

My 500-hour Yoga Alliance Experienced Yoga Teacher application did not, to my recollection, include vows of poverty, abstinence and cloister. As a teacher, I do my best to commit to the simple humanitarian vows of the yamas and niyamas. I know my dharma viscerally, but I want to manifest it without compromising to my family’s fiscal well being.

Even ministers get that. In 2000, ministers in the United States made, on average, anywhere between $22,000 and $85,000, depending on the size of their congregation.

Turns out ministers are paid commensurate with their ability to fill seats, too.

A minister on Desperate Preacher writes, “The salary the pastor receives *frees* her or him to do ministry. Instead of a part-time pastor who must earn a salary on the side, a full-time pastor is freed from monetary concerns to *do* ministry for and with the church. Thinking along these lines, the church needs to pay the pastor enough to not have to worry -- about food on the table, about a medical crisis, about planning for retirement -- so that we can be in ministry.”

I hear you brother/sister.