This is the conversation Rebecca wishes she could have had when she owned her studio. In Part 2 of this conversation with Jessica Patterson, they move from theory into the deeply personal territory of what it actually costs to own a yoga studio — and why the industry has made studio owners into villains when many of them started this work trying to build a sanctuary. Jessica and Rebecca talk about the shift in power dynamics that comes with ownership and the isolation it creates, the heartbreak of telling a community you've evolved when they've frozen you in a particular moment in time, and the difference between self-agency and self-determination in an economic climate that nobody chose. They also get into the latent shame that comes with business difficulty, why blaming individual owners for systemic problems is both unfair and counterproductive, and the simple but radical truth that you don't have to keep doing the things you're good at. One of Rebecca's favorite conversations on the podcast. It earns that.
Read MoreThere's a real and underexplored difference between the people who walk into a general yoga class and the people who seek out a certified yoga therapist — and if you're trying to fill your yoga therapy practice, that distinction matters enormously. Maile Wicklander, longtime yoga studio owner and recent yoga therapy graduate, joins Rebecca to work through what that difference actually looks like in practice. They get into referral strategy, including Maile's straightforward approach to getting the right clients through the door, the particular challenge of psychotherapist referrals, and why handouts and connections to adjacent fields are still some of the most underrated tools in a yoga therapist's toolkit. They also talk about what's missing in the yoga professional community space, why boundaries inside collective networking groups make them more useful rather than less, and what studio owners need that nobody's really providing. A practical, grounded conversation for yoga therapists building or expanding a practice.
Read MoreYoga teachers and studio owners are often frustrated with each other over money. Teachers feel underpaid. Owners feel squeezed. In this episode we put the studio owner's actual numbers on the table — rent, payroll, insurance, utilities, platform fees, marketing, and the razor-thin margins that result. This is not an episode that excuses poor pay. It is an episode that gives yoga professionals a complete picture of the economics on both sides so they can stop directing their frustration at each other and start directing it at the actual problem.
Read MoreEveryone assumes yoga teacher trainings are a cash grab. The actual math tells a very different story. In this episode we build the real financial picture of running a 200-hour yoga teacher training from the trainer's perspective — the 500 hours of labor behind 200 hours of delivery, the costs that eat into gross revenue, and the hourly rate that results. For most trainers, that number lands around $20 per hour before taxes. This episode is for everyone who has ever assumed the trainer got rich off their tuition — and for every trainer who has never actually sat down and calculated what their work is worth.
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