Yoga Teacher Training
The shortcut: Most new RYT schools open with a glossy 200-hour syllabus and a studio lease, then run their first cohort half-empty. Lock the cohort first — sell 8 paid seats from your existing class regulars before you sign anything that requires a rent check.
Industry: Tutoring & Training | Investment level: Small — $3,000-$10,000 | Time to launch: 4-7 months (Yoga Alliance RYS application + the E-RYT-200 hour requirement gate the start, not the curriculum)
Best for: A practicing teacher with E-RYT-200 status, a regular weekly class roster of 30+ students, and a metro area where the only nearby RYT-200 option is a corporate-studio chain. What you'll likely make: $0 month 3, $4,000 month 6 (mid-cohort), $8,000-$12,000 month 12 after one full RYT-200 lands and a weekend immersion runs. Math is in Section 4.
Market Opportunity
Your client has the practice. Three years deep, three classes a week, the studio teachers know her by name. She has the savings — somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 in a separate account labeled "the thing I don't quite know yet." She has the question she's been asking on the drive home from class for six months: am I going to do this for another twenty years at the insurance company, or am I going to teach yoga.
What she doesn't have is a 200-hour Yoga Alliance program in her metro area that isn't either the CorePower production line at $2,800-$3,200 with 25 students per cohort, or a $1,400 online RYT-200 from Yoga International that local studios will quietly discount when she applies. She wants the small-cohort, senior-teacher, in-person program. Nobody local sells it to her.
The US yoga industry runs roughly $9 billion/year with about 36 million practitioners Yoga Journal Yoga in America Study, and most teacher-training buyers are not career-changers — they're practitioners who want to go deeper and might end up teaching. That distinction is the whole marketing strategy. You're not selling a career. You're selling a 200-hour transformation with a credential at the end.
The market is gated. Yoga Alliance — the US registry — requires the lead trainer of any RYS-200 (Registered Yoga School, 200-hour) program to hold E-RYT-200 status (Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher): 1,000 documented teaching hours post-RYT-200 and two years past initial registration Yoga Alliance E-RYT Requirements. That gate is also your moat. Most teachers who think about running a YTT don't qualify yet.
Start with this idea — free signup, no card required.
