What Should You Charge?

I wish someone had told me a long time ago that what you charge has nothing to do with how great a teacher you are, how long you’ve been teaching, how much training you’ve done, how many certifications you have, who you studied with, etc. No one cares about all that stuff. AT ALL. People will pay you money if they relate to you and find what you are offering to be valuable. That’s it. The rest of it doesn’t matter.
 
That means you can start charging whatever you want and need TODAY. The catch is, that you have to get people to find you and your story fascinating and valuable and you have to deliver those things with confidence.
 
Yup, it all comes back to marketing and branding. You have to start doing it. This is the basis or your entire teaching career. Okay, but you still don’t know what to charge?
 
Here’s a super easy way to think about it…how much do you need to live off this year? Have that number? Okay, great. Now subtract from it any other income you are making from anything else. That’s the number you have to make teaching yoga. Now divide that by the number of yoga classes you have the bandwidth to teach. So If you have the bandwidth to teach 10 yoga classes a week (x52 = 520 classes a year) and the amount you need to make teaching yoga is $60,000 a year, then you need to charge AT LEAST $115/class on average. If you want to be able to take a day off or get sick, then you need to charge more, make sense?
 
Of course you may be teaching one awesome group class that gives you more than $115/class. That’s great. I would still charge the $115 so you can, you know, save. Just my opinion but what you do is your business.