u/Dangerous-Wafer-6694

I’m a yoga teacher, and I paid $9,000 to an online coach whose niche is helping yoga teachers build online businesses.

I had followed her content for months. Her message resonated because she spoke directly to a problem many yoga teachers know well: teaching $20 classes at multiple studios, driving all over town and exhausting your body just to scrape together a living.

I’ve taught yoga for 20 years. Early on, I did exactly that. I took every class I could get until I was burned out, injured and in constant pain. Today, I teach only one or two classes a week and support myself with a full-time job in another field.

Her proposed solution was simple: take your yoga business online and reach more people. She frequently referenced making $358,000 in her first year online, creating the impression that her system could help other yoga teachers achieve substantial success.

I didn’t book a call immediately because the price was not disclosed, and I assumed it would be expensive. Instead, I consumed everything she published: YouTube videos, podcast episodes and Instagram reels. I began applying her content advice and developing a niche.

As a gay man in recovery, I wanted to use yoga to help LGBTQ people struggling with addiction, shame and emotional pain. Yoga had played a major role in my own recovery, and I believed an online business could make that work sustainable.

Eventually, I saw an ad for a “free training” on her framework. It was essentially a video sales presentation designed to lead viewers toward booking a call. Shortly after watching it, I received a flood of emails and texts. She followed me on Instagram and began messaging me, praising my content and telling me she knew how to help me take it to the next level.

I booked the call.

The call included heavy sales pressure. She praised what I had already created while also telling me she could see the gaps and knew how to fix them. She referenced earning more than $300,000 in her first year online, “making sales in her sleep” and gaining freedom from a traditional job.

Then she quoted the price: $9,000.

I hesitated. She responded with spiritual language about abundance, telling me she believed I had found her for a reason and suggesting that sometimes you need to free up money for abundance to flow back to you. She also emphasized that spaces were limited and that few people were accepted because her time was so valuable.

Eventually, I handed over my credit card.

Almost immediately, the experience stopped resembling what I believed I had purchased.

I thought I was paying for hands-on, individualized help from her to refine my offer, build my course, review my sales funnel and develop my marketing. Her personal expertise and limited availability had been central to the sales pitch.

But during the entire 90-day program, I never had a single private coaching call with her.

The program included six one-on-one calls. Every one was conducted by members of her team, and most lasted no more than about 15 minutes. They were generally check-ins on assignments from prerecorded lessons: create a link in bio, define a customer avatar, outline a course, write sales pages and so on.

I built two complete sales pages. She never reviewed either one.

That remains one of the most shocking parts of the experience. The sales page is where the offer is explained and where a customer decides whether to buy. Yet the person I had paid $9,000 to help me build and sell an online yoga program never looked at either of mine.

My direct contact with her consisted mostly of Instagram DMs telling me my content was amazing or that she was excited about what I was creating. It felt encouraging, but it was not substantive business guidance. Before I paid, she said she could see exactly what was missing. After I paid, I received little concrete feedback from her.

There were group calls, but much of what I remember was listening to her discuss her success, lifestyle and freedom. The dream was constantly reinforced. The close practical oversight I thought I was buying was largely absent.

The core strategy taught in the prerecorded material was to create an inexpensive digital product and sell it to consumers through social media and advertising. Mine was initially priced at $47 and later discounted to $27.

Over time, I noticed a major contradiction.

Her extraordinary income was repeatedly used as proof that her method worked. But her own financial success appeared to come primarily from selling expensive business coaching to yoga teachers, not from selling low-cost yoga programs to consumers.

Those are very different business models.

I was being taught to sell a $47 yoga product while she was charging aspiring yoga entrepreneurs thousands of dollars. The income claims that established her credibility did not appear to come from the same model I had paid her to teach.

The most obvious way to replicate her success, therefore, would not be to teach yoga online. It would be to sell high-ticket business coaching to other yoga teachers.

A few weeks after I paid her, she posted a reel saying: “POV: You learned how easy it is to teach yoga online, so you went to Bali spontaneously.”

That reel crystallized the entire experience for me.

There was nothing easy about what I was trying to build. I was creating content, developing a course, learning funnels, writing copy, running ads and trying to earn an audience’s trust while working full time. I had paid her more than the combined cost of my two main yoga certifications, and she had not even looked at my sales pages.

During the Bali trip, she also sent me voice messages about the retreat, including highly personal details about cult-like dynamics, its sexual nature and other attendees making her uncomfortable. I found it strange and inappropriate that I, a paying coaching client rather than a personal friend, was receiving this information.

The Bali reel made the underlying dynamic impossible for me to ignore: the fantasy of effortless online yoga income was funding a very real and lucrative coaching business, while the yoga teachers buying into that fantasy assumed the financial risk.

I want to be fair about what I received. There were prerecorded materials. I had access to her team. I attended calls and completed the assignments. She did not simply take my payment and disappear.

But access to videos and brief calls with assistants was not what persuaded me to spend $9,000. I purchased because of her personal brand, income claims, the implication of individualized attention and the belief that her success demonstrated what was possible through the model she promoted.

In my opinion, what I received did not justify the price or the expectations created during the sales process. I later found other yoga business consultants offering comparable foundational material at dramatically lower prices.

The use of yoga philosophy makes this especially disturbing to me. As someone who tries to live by ahimsa, non-harming, and asteya, non-stealing, I struggle with seeing spiritual language used to pressure underpaid yoga teachers into costly financial decisions.

I also take responsibility for ignoring the warning signs.

I should have questioned the undisclosed price. I should have recognized the “free training” as a sales presentation. I should have slowed down when the texts, emails and Instagram messages began. I should have been more skeptical when abundance, destiny and “no accidents” were introduced into a high-pressure financial decision.

But those tactics worked because they were wrapped around a genuine pain.

Yoga teachers are routinely underpaid. Many teach because they believe deeply in the practice but struggle to survive financially. They drive between studios, teach exhausting schedules and watch others profit from an industry built on their labor. The promise of finally earning a living without destroying your body is extremely powerful.

I was also motivated by a purpose that mattered to me. I wanted to help LGBTQ people dealing with addiction, shame and emotional pain. I was not simply chasing passive income or a trip to Bali. I believed I was investing in a way to make meaningful work sustainable.

That hope made me vulnerable.

I’m embarrassed that I trusted her and angry that I allowed myself to be pressured into such a large purchase. But embarrassment is also why stories like this remain hidden. People do not want to admit that persuasive marketing, personal attention and promises of abundance worked on them.

As someone who lives my yoga, especially Ahimsa, non-harming, and Asteya, non-stealing, it absolutely disgusts me that someone could dress up their scheme to fleece vulnerable yoga teachers with spiritual language.

I’m sharing this because the online coaching industry deserves greater scrutiny, especially when coaches use spiritual language, aspirational lifestyle marketing and exceptional revenue claims to sell expensive programs to underpaid professionals.

I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. I made the decision and handed over my card.

But people deserve to know what happened after the sales call ended.

I’m a yoga teacher, and I paid $9,000 to an online coach whose niche is helping yoga teachers build online businesses.

I had followed her content for months. Her message resonated because she spoke directly to a problem many yoga teachers know well: teaching $20 classes at multiple studios, driving all over town and exhausting your body just to scrape together a living.

I’ve taught yoga for 20 years. Early on, I did exactly that. I took every class I could get until I was burned out, injured and in constant pain. Today, I teach only one or two classes a week and support myself with a full-time job in another field.

Her proposed solution was simple: take your yoga business online and reach more people. She frequently referenced making $358,000 in her first year online, creating the impression that her system could help other yoga teachers achieve substantial success.

I didn’t book a call immediately because the price was not disclosed, and I assumed it would be expensive. Instead, I consumed everything she published: YouTube videos, podcast episodes and Instagram reels. I began applying her content advice and developing a niche.

As a gay man in recovery, I wanted to use yoga to help LGBTQ people struggling with addiction, shame and emotional pain. Yoga had played a major role in my own recovery, and I believed an online business could make that work sustainable.

Eventually, I saw an ad for a “free training” on her framework. It was essentially a video sales presentation designed to lead viewers toward booking a call. Shortly after watching it, I received a flood of emails and texts. She followed me on Instagram and began messaging me, praising my content and telling me she knew how to help me take it to the next level.

I booked the call.

The call included heavy sales pressure. She praised what I had already created while also telling me she could see the gaps and knew how to fix them. She referenced earning more than $300,000 in her first year online, “making sales in her sleep” and gaining freedom from a traditional job.

Then she quoted the price: $9,000.

I hesitated. She responded with spiritual language about abundance, telling me she believed I had found her for a reason and suggesting that sometimes you need to free up money for abundance to flow back to you. She also emphasized that spaces were limited and that few people were accepted because her time was so valuable.

Eventually, I handed over my credit card.

Almost immediately, the experience stopped resembling what I believed I had purchased.

I thought I was paying for hands-on, individualized help from her to refine my offer, build my course, review my sales funnel and develop my marketing. Her personal expertise and limited availability had been central to the sales pitch.

But during the entire 90-day program, I never had a single private coaching call with her.

The program included six one-on-one calls. Every one was conducted by members of her team, and most lasted no more than about 15 minutes. They were generally check-ins on assignments from prerecorded lessons: create a link in bio, define a customer avatar, outline a course, write sales pages and so on.

I built two complete sales pages. She never reviewed either one.

That remains one of the most shocking parts of the experience. The sales page is where the offer is explained and where a customer decides whether to buy. Yet the person I had paid $9,000 to help me build and sell an online yoga program never looked at either of mine.

My direct contact with her consisted mostly of Instagram DMs telling me my content was amazing or that she was excited about what I was creating. It felt encouraging, but it was not substantive business guidance. Before I paid, she said she could see exactly what was missing. After I paid, I received little concrete feedback from her.

There were group calls, but much of what I remember was listening to her discuss her success, lifestyle and freedom. The dream was constantly reinforced. The close practical oversight I thought I was buying was largely absent.

The core strategy taught in the prerecorded material was to create an inexpensive digital product and sell it to consumers through social media and advertising. Mine was initially priced at $47 and later discounted to $27.

Over time, I noticed a major contradiction.

Her extraordinary income was repeatedly used as proof that her method worked. But her own financial success appeared to come primarily from selling expensive business coaching to yoga teachers, not from selling low-cost yoga programs to consumers.

Those are very different business models.

I was being taught to sell a $47 yoga product while she was charging aspiring yoga entrepreneurs thousands of dollars. The income claims that established her credibility did not appear to come from the same model I had paid her to teach.

The most obvious way to replicate her success, therefore, would not be to teach yoga online. It would be to sell high-ticket business coaching to other yoga teachers.

A few weeks after I paid her, she posted a reel saying: “POV: You learned how easy it is to teach yoga online, so you went to Bali spontaneously.”

That reel crystallized the entire experience for me.

There was nothing easy about what I was trying to build. I was creating content, developing a course, learning funnels, writing copy, running ads and trying to earn an audience’s trust while working full time. I had paid her more than the combined cost of my two main yoga certifications, and she had not even looked at my sales pages.

During the Bali trip, she also sent me voice messages about the retreat, including highly personal details about cult-like dynamics, its sexual nature and other attendees making her uncomfortable. I found it strange and inappropriate that I, a paying coaching client rather than a personal friend, was receiving this information.

The Bali reel made the underlying dynamic impossible for me to ignore: the fantasy of effortless online yoga income was funding a very real and lucrative coaching business, while the yoga teachers buying into that fantasy assumed the financial risk.

I want to be fair about what I received. There were prerecorded materials. I had access to her team. I attended calls and completed the assignments. She did not simply take my payment and disappear.

But access to videos and brief calls with assistants was not what persuaded me to spend $9,000. I purchased because of her personal brand, income claims, the implication of individualized attention and the belief that her success demonstrated what was possible through the model she promoted.

In my opinion, what I received did not justify the price or the expectations created during the sales process. I later found other yoga business consultants offering comparable foundational material at dramatically lower prices.

The use of yoga philosophy makes this especially disturbing to me. As someone who tries to live by ahimsa, non-harming, and asteya, non-stealing, I struggle with seeing spiritual language used to pressure underpaid yoga teachers into costly financial decisions.

I also take responsibility for ignoring the warning signs.

I should have questioned the undisclosed price. I should have recognized the “free training” as a sales presentation. I should have slowed down when the texts, emails and Instagram messages began. I should have been more skeptical when abundance, destiny and “no accidents” were introduced into a high-pressure financial decision.

But those tactics worked because they were wrapped around a genuine pain.

Yoga teachers are routinely underpaid. Many teach because they believe deeply in the practice but struggle to survive financially. They drive between studios, teach exhausting schedules and watch others profit from an industry built on their labor. The promise of finally earning a living without destroying your body is extremely powerful.

I was also motivated by a purpose that mattered to me. I wanted to help LGBTQ people dealing with addiction, shame and emotional pain. I was not simply chasing passive income or a trip to Bali. I believed I was investing in a way to make meaningful work sustainable.

That hope made me vulnerable.

I’m embarrassed that I trusted her and angry that I allowed myself to be pressured into such a large purchase. But embarrassment is also why stories like this remain hidden. People do not want to admit that persuasive marketing, personal attention and promises of abundance worked on them.

As someone who lives my yoga, especially Ahimsa, non-harming, and Asteya, non-stealing, it absolutely disgusts me that someone could dress up their scheme to fleece vulnerable yoga teachers with spiritual language.

I’m sharing this because the online coaching industry deserves greater scrutiny, especially when coaches use spiritual language, aspirational lifestyle marketing and exceptional revenue claims to sell expensive programs to underpaid professionals.

I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. I made the decision and handed over my card.

But people deserve to know what happened after the sales call ended.

I’m a yoga teacher, and I paid $9,000 to an online coach whose niche is helping yoga teachers build online businesses.

I had followed her content for months. Her message resonated because she spoke directly to a problem many yoga teachers know well: teaching $20 classes at multiple studios, driving all over town and exhausting your body just to scrape together a living.

I’ve taught yoga for 20 years. Early on, I did exactly that. I took every class I could get until I was burned out, injured and in constant pain. Today, I teach only one or two classes a week and support myself with a full-time job in another field.

Her proposed solution was simple: take your yoga business online and reach more people. She frequently referenced making $358,000 in her first year online, creating the impression that her system could help other yoga teachers achieve substantial success.

I didn’t book a call immediately because the price was not disclosed, and I assumed it would be expensive. Instead, I consumed everything she published: YouTube videos, podcast episodes and Instagram reels. I began applying her content advice and developing a niche.

As a gay man in recovery, I wanted to use yoga to help LGBTQ people struggling with addiction, shame and emotional pain. Yoga had played a major role in my own recovery, and I believed an online business could make that work sustainable.

Eventually, I saw an ad for a “free training” on her framework. It was essentially a video sales presentation designed to lead viewers toward booking a call. Shortly after watching it, I received a flood of emails and texts. She followed me on Instagram and began messaging me, praising my content and telling me she knew how to help me take it to the next level.

I booked the call.

The call included heavy sales pressure. She praised what I had already created while also telling me she could see the gaps and knew how to fix them. She referenced earning more than $300,000 in her first year online, “making sales in her sleep” and gaining freedom from a traditional job.

Then she quoted the price: $9,000.

I hesitated. She responded with spiritual language about abundance, telling me she believed I had found her for a reason and suggesting that sometimes you need to free up money for abundance to flow back to you. She also emphasized that spaces were limited and that few people were accepted because her time was so valuable.

Eventually, I handed over my credit card.

Almost immediately, the experience stopped resembling what I believed I had purchased.

I thought I was paying for hands-on, individualized help from her to refine my offer, build my course, review my sales funnel and develop my marketing. Her personal expertise and limited availability had been central to the sales pitch.

But during the entire 90-day program, I never had a single private coaching call with her.

The program included six one-on-one calls. Every one was conducted by members of her team, and most lasted no more than about 15 minutes. They were generally check-ins on assignments from prerecorded lessons: create a link in bio, define a customer avatar, outline a course, write sales pages and so on.

I built two complete sales pages. She never reviewed either one.

That remains one of the most shocking parts of the experience. The sales page is where the offer is explained and where a customer decides whether to buy. Yet the person I had paid $9,000 to help me build and sell an online yoga program never looked at either of mine.

My direct contact with her consisted mostly of Instagram DMs telling me my content was amazing or that she was excited about what I was creating. It felt encouraging, but it was not substantive business guidance. Before I paid, she said she could see exactly what was missing. After I paid, I received little concrete feedback from her.

There were group calls, but much of what I remember was listening to her discuss her success, lifestyle and freedom. The dream was constantly reinforced. The close practical oversight I thought I was buying was largely absent.

The core strategy taught in the prerecorded material was to create an inexpensive digital product and sell it to consumers through social media and advertising. Mine was initially priced at $47 and later discounted to $27.

Over time, I noticed a major contradiction.

Her extraordinary income was repeatedly used as proof that her method worked. But her own financial success appeared to come primarily from selling expensive business coaching to yoga teachers, not from selling low-cost yoga programs to consumers.

Those are very different business models.

I was being taught to sell a $47 yoga product while she was charging aspiring yoga entrepreneurs thousands of dollars. The income claims that established her credibility did not appear to come from the same model I had paid her to teach.

The most obvious way to replicate her success, therefore, would not be to teach yoga online. It would be to sell high-ticket business coaching to other yoga teachers.

A few weeks after I paid her, she posted a reel saying: “POV: You learned how easy it is to teach yoga online, so you went to Bali spontaneously.”

That reel crystallized the entire experience for me.

There was nothing easy about what I was trying to build. I was creating content, developing a course, learning funnels, writing copy, running ads and trying to earn an audience’s trust while working full time. I had paid her more than the combined cost of my two main yoga certifications, and she had not even looked at my sales pages.

During the Bali trip, she also sent me voice messages about the retreat, including highly personal details about cult-like dynamics, its sexual nature and other attendees making her uncomfortable. I found it strange and inappropriate that I, a paying coaching client rather than a personal friend, was receiving this information.

The Bali reel made the underlying dynamic impossible for me to ignore: the fantasy of effortless online yoga income was funding a very real and lucrative coaching business, while the yoga teachers buying into that fantasy assumed the financial risk.

I want to be fair about what I received. There were prerecorded materials. I had access to her team. I attended calls and completed the assignments. She did not simply take my payment and disappear.

But access to videos and brief calls with assistants was not what persuaded me to spend $9,000. I purchased because of her personal brand, income claims, the implication of individualized attention and the belief that her success demonstrated what was possible through the model she promoted.

In my opinion, what I received did not justify the price or the expectations created during the sales process. I later found other yoga business consultants offering comparable foundational material at dramatically lower prices.

The use of yoga philosophy makes this especially disturbing to me. As someone who tries to live by ahimsa, non-harming, and asteya, non-stealing, I struggle with seeing spiritual language used to pressure underpaid yoga teachers into costly financial decisions.

I also take responsibility for ignoring the warning signs.

I should have questioned the undisclosed price. I should have recognized the “free training” as a sales presentation. I should have slowed down when the texts, emails and Instagram messages began. I should have been more skeptical when abundance, destiny and “no accidents” were introduced into a high-pressure financial decision.

But those tactics worked because they were wrapped around a genuine pain.

Yoga teachers are routinely underpaid. Many teach because they believe deeply in the practice but struggle to survive financially. They drive between studios, teach exhausting schedules and watch others profit from an industry built on their labor. The promise of finally earning a living without destroying your body is extremely powerful.

I was also motivated by a purpose that mattered to me. I wanted to help LGBTQ people dealing with addiction, shame and emotional pain. I was not simply chasing passive income or a trip to Bali. I believed I was investing in a way to make meaningful work sustainable.

That hope made me vulnerable.

I’m embarrassed that I trusted her and angry that I allowed myself to be pressured into such a large purchase. But embarrassment is also why stories like this remain hidden. People do not want to admit that persuasive marketing, personal attention and promises of abundance worked on them.

As someone who lives my yoga, especially Ahimsa, non-harming, and Asteya, non-stealing, it absolutely disgusts me that someone could dress up their scheme to fleece vulnerable yoga teachers with spiritual language.

I’m sharing this because the online coaching industry deserves greater scrutiny, especially when coaches use spiritual language, aspirational lifestyle marketing and exceptional revenue claims to sell expensive programs to underpaid professionals.

I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. I made the decision and handed over my card.

But people deserve to know what happened after the sales call ended.