For Yoga Teachers

66. Six things to check when you start working at a studio

• Episode 66

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In today’s episode, we’re looking six important things to check when you start working at a yoga studio:

✅ What is the policy if someone comes to your class with an injury

✅ What is the policy if someone comes to your class when pregnant

✅ The invoicing and payment terms

✅ How to get cover for your classes

✅ How to get consent for physical adjustments

✅ What’s the policy on promoting your own yoga offerings?

At the risk of stating the obvious, this doesn’t include things like checking when your classes are, if there’s a notice period etc etc. Those things are for a contract, which is a legal document and not really fit for a podcast. 

However, I do believe that the six things on this list are really important to check to help you in your quest for stress free teaching, and they are often overlooked. 

Oh and guess what, you lucky thing, we’ve created a free checklist so you don’t have to keep all of this in your head! You’re welcome! Get yours here. 

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Useful resources

See the shownotes here

Episode 22 - Adjustments: some useful considerations - listen here


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 Hello and welcome to For Yoga Teachers. This podcast has been created to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burnout and earn a fair living. In today's episode, we're looking at six things to check when you start working at a yoga studio. For now, we're not covering how to get work at yoga studios, although interestingly this did come up more than once in our daft questions Q& A, so we will explore this as a topic soon.

So back to today's episode, which is designed to get your cogs turning to make sure that you've got all the information you need when working at a studio. So that your time there can be as fabulous as possible. We'll be looking at six main things.

These are all included in the list because teachers from all over the world have come to me time and time again to say something wasn't clear or they hadn't thought about something in advance and now they're in trouble or they've overstepped the line or they've understepped the line and they don't know what to do.

Okay, so the six things are 

What is the policy if somebody comes to your class with an injury? 

What is the policy if someone comes to your class while they're pregnant? 

Invoicing and payment terms. 

How to get cover. 

How to get consent for physical adjustments. 

And what is the policy on promoting your own yoga offerings?

It's not an overwhelmingly comprehensive list, like it doesn't include, like, checking when your classes are, whether there's a notice period, if you can work other places. Those things are for a contract. Which is a legal document. And it's so far, so, so far away from my area of expertise.

However, I do believe that these six things on this list are so important to check and they are often overlooked. 

So let's have a look one by one. 

 What is the policy if someone comes to your class with an injury? So, if someone comes to your class that has an injury that you're not an expert in, and side note, how could you be an expert in their injury?

It's in their body. From experience, there's two options here. One, You include the person in the class. You are mildly to completely anxious throughout the entire class that their injury will get worse, and this ripples out to the rest of the class who wonder why you're anxious, why your voice is quivering, and why you're so distracted.

Or two, something else. So what's the something else? What's the studio's policy here? Can you ask that person to go back to reception to get a refund and return to yoga when their injury is signed off by, like, a physio or someone? Do they need to sign an additional disclaimer that they've come to yoga and that they will listen to their body and their injury?

I don't think there's one right thing or one wrong thing here. What I think, as an advocate for yoga teachers, is that you need to know upfront what to do. So that you don't cause yourself more stress and potentially risk your class being substandard if and when this eventually happens.

 What is the policy if someone comes to your class when they're pregnant? This is really, really similar to the previous point but potentially with more complexity. Maybe, maybe not. In essence, if including a pregnant person in your class of non pregnant people will have you worrying the whole time that something that you teach might affect the pregnancy, that will affect the quality of your class.

If you're confident including pregnant people, that's different, and if you've never done it before, that's a consideration. Either way, find out what the studio will prefer, or if they have a documented policy in place. Oh, and perhaps check with your insurance policy here, too.

 Invoicing and payment terms. Oh my goodness. This has surely got to be the biggest source of disputes between studios and teachers, right? So, yeah, I'm a passionate advocate for yoga teachers. I think Yoga teachers give themselves too hard of a time, I think they, you, are working extremely hard to deliver yoga to people who need it and you should be treated right.

I'm also a studio owner and I know that invoices coming in willy nilly with wrong amounts or incorrect information is a great source of admin and confusion So, from Day. findout, A, how much to invoice for your classes? Is it a set rate? Does it change based on the length of time you've been teaching or the number of people that attend the class or perhaps something else? And B, how and when should you invoice for your classes? Do you have to send your invoicing by a certain date?

Is the invoice paid 28 days after it is submitted, or is it paid on a particular date each month? Is there a certain email address that you need to send the invoice to, or a form that you need to complete, or a special dance that you need to do? I remember one of my first classes in a gym in Leeds had a very particular and complex invoicing system.

After each class, yes that's right, after every single individual class, you had to go to a certain room and pull out a certain file and complete a certain form with the exact number of people that were in your class. You had to put the form back in the file and the file back in the room, um, and the files were collected at a random date, like no Rhyme or reason to it at all and then the invoices were paid get this 90 yes, that's right 990 days later If the file was taken on a day where you had taught a class and you hadn't completed the form, that was it, you'd missed your chance and you wouldn't get paid for that class, there was no option to complete it next time you went.

Needless to say, I ditched that class as soon as I could. Anyway, it's a really, really roundabout way of saying You really need to know exactly how much and how and when to invoice because worst case scenario if you get this wrong You might have missed the boat and make sure that you keep this in mind as you start to get more classes Make sure that each of your classes really is worth your while. 

 How to get cover Hopefully, yoga teacher, you've got some holidays booked in, or some time off booked in, and we all know that there's times of the year where we can be really struggling with bugs, or maybe you're particularly tired.

Anyway, whatever the case is, you definitely, definitely, need to know how to get cover when you start working at the studio. Is there a WhatsApp group that you can put a message on? Is there an email list that you need to email? Do you need to let the studio know that you can't teach the class and they organise cover?

Or is it all something that can be done within the booking system? But yoga teacher, hear me loud and clear. Find this out when you start working at the studio. Not digging around, trying to find the cover policy on that one day that you're full of cold and you're wondering what on earth you're going to do about your new lunch class.

How to get consent for physical adjustments. 

This harks back to episode number 22, adjustments, some important considerations. Where we talked about getting consent for physical adjustments in a way that still means that your yogis can change their mind and they can withdraw the consent at any time. In that episode I talked about how at Yoga Hero we have cards that say I'd like to be adjusted and if someone changes their mind they just hide the card under their mat or wherever.

So where you're working do they have cards? Maybe they have like a yes no type thing where you flip the card over, yes do come and adjust me, flip it over, no don't come and adjust me. Or maybe there's no policy in place, in which case, are they okay with you not giving any physical adjustments?

Promoting your own yoga offerings. And last, but certainly not least, is finding out the policy on promoting your own yoga offerings. So, okay, how many times does this happen? You've taught a class. You were pretty pleased with the class actually, and at the end of the class someone comes up to you to say, "Wow, I really enjoyed that, where else do you teach?" and so we're back to our two options again. And this time the options are one, you clam up and you say, I don't teach anywhere at all. And you lose out on potential income, but also the yogi that has approached you loses out on doing yoga that they really enjoyed with you.

The second option is that you can confidently tell them where and when you teach within the guidelines that the studio provided for you. As a studio owner, it does get pretty frustrating if at the end of a class the teacher just announces unasked something that they've got going on like down the road, which is direct competition for the studio.

However, if a yogi approached the teacher to ask, where do you teach? I would want the teacher to be truthful, I wouldn't want them to lie. It may well be that the studio that you work at has very strict rules, or it might be that they're just not bothered at all. But hopefully your yogis will ask where else you work, and so you need to know how to respond.

 And Yoga Teacher there's a really obvious and important point here, which is that you probably work in more than one studio. And so you need these six important things ironed out for each place that you work in. And you need to be making sure that when you know them, that you are working within the policies set by that place that you're teaching in at that moment.

So, how are you going to document this? Maybe you can hold it in your memory.

Or it might be that you have a little project on your phone or on your laptop or you physically print out the policies per studio.

At the risk of stating the blind and obvious, there's no point finding out the information to then go ahead and forget it or get it wrong. 

So here's your process. 

You're going to accept the class that you've been given at the studio and you're going to celebrate because well done. 

You're going to get your free checklist.

Yes, that's right. We've provided you with a beautiful free checklist to take with you when you're checking what you need to know from each studio. 

You're going to put the information somewhere safe to make sure that you're acting within the policies at the place that you're teaching. 

And then you're going to celebrate again because your classes are going to be great. They're going to be stress free and you are going to be getting paid on time. That's right. 

Yoga teacher, if you enjoyed this episode, please do share it with another yoga teacher, especially one who's looking for work in studios. And please do do all of that amazing, amazing things, which we're so grateful for and really help the podcast be found by people who need it.

You know, like rating and reviewing and subscribing and sharing. Honestly, we're so grateful. Thank you so much for listening. And above all. Happy teaching.