How Much to Charge for Your Yoga Classes

Transcript - how much to charge for your yoga classes

Hello, and welcome to our for yoga teachers podcast.

This podcast has been created to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burn out and earn a fair living. You've worked so hard to get your teacher training certification, right? You've built up a following. You've got some experience, maybe even built a little bit of confidence, and now you are ready to start teaching your own yoga classes and you're really excited. You've bought some mats, maybe. You've found the perfect place to be able to teach classes from, and you really can't wait to get going. But. Oh, wait. People are asking how much your classes are going to be.

And. You just don't know where to start. Does that sound familiar? Well, if so, please, don't worry. By the end of this episode, you'll have a foolproof plan of how to set your prices for your yoga classes. In short, there are two ways that you [00:01:00] can approach the pricing of yoga classes:

1) is to research what those around you are charging and price accordingly.

2) is to charge what you need to in order to cover your costs.

Both have advantages and disadvantages.

So in this episode, we'll break each approach down and you can decide what will work best for you.

If you're on the move, don't worry at all. All the important information and your action steps are recapped in our worksheet. Just go to the information below to get yours.

What to charge for your yoga classes inline with other offerings in your area or in your field of knowledge?

I talked about this in our how to create your yoga brand masterclass. Conducting a competitor review.

And how it can be really, really, really, really, really helpful. Uh, but it could also be really, really, really risky in terms of your [00:02:00] focus, your time and in terms of triggering compare and despair. In the how to create your yoga brand masterclass. I mentioned that I don't specifically refer to this exercise as a competitor review because, and I know that this is really cheesy, but I believe as yoga teachers, we can work together more, and that your unique background, your passions -in yoga and in life -and your knowledge is a unique combination that no one else will have and therefore isn't competition.

To set about a competitor review.

And this is in a Holly way rather than in a kind of standard business school kind of way. Uh, there's a few different steps. Step one is to create a log sheet for your findings so that you can document your findings as you're doing the exercise.

There is an example of a log sheet in your worksheet, but in essence, you just want to be ready [00:03:00] to log your findings in a way that will make sense to future you so that you can hit the ground running.

Set a timer.

Setting a timer in theory, it stops you falling down the rabbit hole and spending too much of your valuable time on this. How long your timer is depends on how much time you have free, and how important this task is to you. If you're not sure, just start with 20 minutes.

Stay focused.

The point of this research task is to determine how much other yoga teachers, yoga studios, leisure centers, et cetera, charge for yoga classes. And that's it. And I'm saying this because as you start to look at different websites, Instagram accounts, newsletters, et cetera. You might see a title for a workshop that reminds you of a workshop that you wanted to run a little while ago, or you might notice that their imagery is really lovely, or something like this or that or the other. [00:04:00] My advice here would be if there's something that you know that you want to remember, write it down in a way that will quickly jog your memory or copy and paste a link into a notes document or something. And then just get back with the task in hand, which is researching pricing.

Tapas.

Be disciplined with yourself. This is really important. Yoga teacher, you are conducting research on pricing and nothing else. Tapas. Be disciplined, stay focused.

Review and conclude.

Once your timer goes off, that's it. Do a quick scan to ensure that your findings will make sense to future you and then stop the research. You can always come back to it at a future date. Now it's time to take a look over your findings. Remember that people will pay more for something that's longer, something that's in a really lovely setting or a unique space. Something that's taught by someone who has a depth of knowledge [00:05:00] in the field and they're known for that, or a combination of those things. So line up the prices from lowest to highest, for example, and pop some notes against each price, and then take a step back, review the prices against where you'll be teaching, how long your classes are and your depth of knowledge in the field, and use this to determine a price that fits nicely with the research that you did.

The advantages of this approach are that you'll be confident in your pricing without worrying that you're wildly overpricing or underpricing; because you've done your thorough research. The disadvantages, however, are that you haven't taken into consideration your costs, including things like hiring the space, purchasing equipment if needed, getting to the space; your travel, parking, the time taken to promote your classes, all the ongoing costs like [00:06:00] insurance trainings, music, software, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, never mind all of your personal living costs as well. Which brings us onto.

What to charge for your yoga classes to ensure you earn a living

It's a case of totting up your earnings and ensuring that the income from the earnings covers all of your outgoings.

To price your yoga classes, using this approach, you need a very, very clear picture of exactly how much you spend. If you have a full-time job or a part-time job, this might cover your living costs, and so that might not be a consideration here, but if you're a full time yoga teacher, your yoga teaching needs to cover all over your living costs. You're probably already thinking about things like rent or mortgage, council tax, food, utility bills, et cetera.

But what about a fund for if your boiler breaks? What about your car insurance, getting your haircut, a [00:07:00] pedicure, paying your TV license. If you don't earn the money to pay for these things through yoga, then you won't be able to pay for those things. We do have a very exciting spreadsheet ready for you to populate with all of your costs, those that you're aware of and those that you might not have thought about too. You can thank me later.

Once you have that very important figure, you can divide that by how many classes you teach and how many people usually, or you predict will attend and then set the price from that. The advantages of this approach are that, you know that you are earning a living and so the stress of whether you'll be able to pay the bills or not is removed. The disadvantages are that the price might be much higher or much lower than the offerings around you.

Combining these two approaches.

This is potentially a lot of work, but once it's done, it's just a case of revisiting the key points, maybe [00:08:00] once a year or more often, if you have the time to have, and to keep a pricing structure that you can stand by.

To combine these two powerful approaches, start with the research and find a price that feels right based on your findings. Then complete the spreadsheet of outgoings for the year and check that the price that you've set covers your costs. If it doesn't, you'll either need to teach more, or put up your price, or both.

Covering the deficit by teaching more.

Needless to say the considerations here are around your energy, your time and your wellbeing. Yoga teachers tend to put a low value on their time and take on teaching another class without duly considering the impact on their wellbeing, their time and their energy levels. Taking on another weekly class should always be seriously considered Rather than thinking, well, it's just one more [00:09:00] hour to teach a week. Factor in; you probably need to be there 15 minutes before. You probably need to stay for about 15 minutes afterwards. You need to get to the place that you teach in and get home afterwards. So that's an hour and a half plus travel time.

And if it's your own class, you'll need to factor in any extra admin for promoting and taking bookings for the class. If it's for a studio. I'm sure that they would appreciate your help promoting the class hint hint. And you'll have a bit of extra admin adding the class on to your invoice. So it's probably somewhere around two and a half, maybe three hours extra of your time a week, not just one hour.

But options for teaching more aren't just limited to another weekly class. You could look at hosting a semi-regular workshop, a course, or a retreat, et cetera, to generate this extra income.

Listen to episode six, ‘Sharing your yoga’ for more inspiration on this. [00:10:00] Once you're inspired and you have a bit of a plan, follow the steps listed earlier to research prices of similar offerings, and then cross-check that that pricing will cover the deficit and if so you have a plan. Go go, go.

Covering the deficit by increasing your prices.

If you've chosen your price based on your research of similar offerings, putting your price up, will most likely price you above that of the competition for want of a better word. This is not necessarily a bad thing. You just need to be on board with charging more.

So. What can you do to justify this extra investment? Some ideas here, including you being really knowledgeable in your area or having some related background or experience, for example, If you're teaching pregnancy yoga and you're a trained midwife, that would be something that pregnant people may well be willing to pay more for.

Or if you're teaching [00:11:00] yoga for runners and you've worked as a physio or a run coach, et cetera, et cetera. People generally also pay more for yoga in a unique location, or if there's something else on offer, like cake. Or networking or beer.

So all that to say, if you want, or you need to increase your prices above that, the competition, this is not a bad thing. Just make clear to people what they getting, whether that's extra knowledge, extra attention, an added service and so on.

So yoga teachers. That is your plan of action for setting your pricing. Let's recap on those steps.

First of all, do your research -what are the prices of offerings that are similar. Create your log sheet. Set a timer and start your research without getting distracted by anything other than the pricing information. Then complete your income and outgoing sheet. This is [00:12:00] maybe a little bit of a snooze fest. Sorry.

But it is really important. There is absolutely no way that you can be confident in your pricing until you are 100% sure, totally concrete on the fact that your earnings will cover all your outgoings. I can't stress this enough. I promise you yoga teacher, you need to do this.

And then take the information from your research, from your incoming, outgoing sheet and compare them. Will the price that you've set, set you up to pay your bills, feed yourself, and have some leftover. If so amazing.

You are done. If not, you need to teach more or put your price up. Or both.

Good luck, yoga teacher. And thank you for watching. If you'd share this with another yoga teacher, we'd be so incredibly grateful. It's important that we stick together. All right. Good luck. We'd love to know what you think and keep us posted with how you get on!