As yoga becomes more mainstream, its instructors remain stuck in survival mode. We caught up with Impact founder Andy Zoltan to explore how yoga entrepreneurs can go from broke to booked
Yoga is everywhere: on gym schedules, TikTok feeds, retreat brochures and corporate wellness programs. But behind the curated image lies a disconnect, where many of the people teaching yoga are struggling to make ends meet. In fact, for most instructors, the hardest pose isn’t on the mat. It’s making a living.
Despite the practice powering a $13 billion industry in the U.S., the average yoga instructor earns less than $40,000 a year. That disparity led Andy Zoltan to launch Impact, a platform to help yoga and wellness professionals turn their passion into scalable, sustainable businesses. To date, instructors using the platform have generated more than $10 million in course and program sales, according to Zoltan.
With the global wellness economy projected to hit $8.9 trillion by 2032, Zoltan views independent instruction as one of the sector’s most overlooked opportunities.
“The truth is, the yoga industry is huge but the people teaching yoga are usually the ones earning the least,” Zoltan said.
He points to a broader commercial ecosystem of apparel, retreats, teacher trainings that profits from the aspirational image of yoga while leaving instructors without a clear path to financial stability.
“These trainings don’t prepare you to build a career,” he said. “They don’t teach business, or marketing or anything related to making a living.”
Interestingly, the cracks may be visible not just behind the scenes, but in the client experience itself. A global report from The Fit Guide, which reviewed more than 400 fitness studios worldwide, found yoga ranked lowest in service scores across all modalities. From front desk greetings to instructor feedback, even high-end yoga studios underperformed. It raises a question: If instructors are underpaid, undertrained in business, and burned out, is that showing up in the client experience too?
From pricing pitfalls to studio burnout, Zoltan broke down the most common mistakes and how yoga entrepreneurs can shift from survival to scale.
Passion Meets Ownership
Having worked with thousands of instructors, Zoltan says the ones who thrive take ownership early, shifting from employee to entrepreneur.
“The teachers we’ve seen grow the fastest are the ones who stop outsourcing responsibility for their success,” he said. “They stop waiting for the studio to give them more classes, or the algorithm to give them reach. They start thinking like business owners.”
That mindset shift requires getting laser focused. “They don’t try to be everything to everyone,” he pointed out. “They don’t copy the top yoga creators on YouTube and hope for the best. They go deep on one thing. They become known for something — whether that’s yoga for anxiety, or back pain or burnout.”
Why Yoga in Gyms Isn’t a Threat
Even as yoga becomes more mainstream in gyms, apps and wellness chains, Zoltan sees opportunity, not saturation.
“Gym yoga is where a lot of people start,” he said. “It’s accessible, it’s basic and it introduces people to the practice. But once they get a taste, many of them start looking for more personalized, deeper experiences.”
The key, he says, is differentiation. “You’re not competing with the gym — you’re offering something completely different,” he added. “The mistake is trying to offer the same thing, just smaller or cheaper.”
Zoltan believes online platforms are where instructors can truly scale. “You can still teach in person — most of our clients do — but when you go online, you can find people who are the right fit for what you do, no matter where they are,” he said.
Fame Doesn’t Pay, But Focus Does
One of the biggest traps instructors fall into is being too vague about what they offer or underpricing it.
“Just saying ‘I teach yoga’ used to work ten years ago,” Zoltan said. “Not anymore. There’s too much noise. Too much competition.”
A lack of clarity often leads to pricing that undercuts their value. “If you sound like everyone else, price is the only thing left to compete on,” he added. “But once you’re offering something specific, and it’s clear how you help people, you can charge based on value — not just minutes on the mat. That’s how we have teachers with 2,000 followers earning six figures. It’s not about fame — it’s about focus.”
The Studio Trap
While many instructors see opening a studio as the next logical step, Zoltan urges caution.
“Teaching yoga and running a studio are two different careers,” he explained. “One is about delivering transformation. The other is about overhead, staff, leases, marketing, scheduling, admin, customer service — it’s a full-blown operations business.”
In many cases, he says, instructors are chasing impact or income, not a commercial real estate venture. “We’ve seen a lot of amazing teachers burn out because they thought opening a studio was the next step,” Zoltan said. “But what they really wanted was more impact or more income — not to become a facility manager.”
Even successful first studios often falter when operators try to expand too soon. “The second one just doubles the problems,” he added. “It’s almost always better to double down on optimizing what’s already working than to multiply complexity.”
Yoga’s Next Evolution
With the global wellness economy projected to reach $8.9 trillion by 2032, yoga is poised for evolution and fragmentation.
“If you want to stay relevant as a yoga teacher, you can’t think of yoga as a one-size-fits-all category anymore,” Zoltan said. “The industry’s maturing. The audience is more educated. People don’t just want yoga; they want specific outcomes from their practice.”
He sees yoga becoming a container for modalities like mobility, somatics, nervous system regulation and breathwork. “People might still say yoga, but they’re looking for something deeper or more specific inside of it,” he explained.
That specificity is what will distinguish the next generation of instructors. “Whether that’s helping busy moms sleep better, helping ex-athletes restore their mobility, or helping stressed-out founders regulate their nervous system — it’s all yoga, but it’s yoga positioned for a specific person and a specific result,” Zoltan said.
Clarity, he says, will beat general appeal every time. “What we work on with our clients is helping them take all their knowledge, all their tools and build a positioning that cuts through,” he said. “So instead of just offering sessions, they’re offering transformations.”
