We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brent Laffoon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brent below.

Brent, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the story behind how you got your first job in field that you currently practice in.

I was fresh out of teacher training. The only experience I had was a handful of classes I’d offered to friends and family in my driveway. There were probably thousands of yoga teachers in Los Angeles who were more qualified than I was. But I was determined, and I believed in myself. So after taking a class one night at a studio in Santa Monica, I asked the teacher if she had any recommendations for how I might start teaching at a studio and making a living as a yoga teacher. “You should start at gyms,” she said. “Usually people at gyms don’t care who the teacher is, but if they like you you’ll build a following, and then you’ll have a better chance of getting hired by a studio.” It sounded good to me. I was happy to teach anywhere I could, so I thanked her, and before I could say anything else she told me I had a nice practice and offered to send my resumé to a couple gym managers she knew. That sounded good too. Only problem was I didn’t have a resumé. At least not one that was going to impress anyone. But a shot was a shot, so I put together a resumé, which said, basically, that I’d completed Teacher Training a month and a half ago, that I’d taught a few classes to friends and family at home, and that I’d also taught English in the Peace Corps thirteen years prior.

Not surprisingly, after sending her my resumé, I didn’t hear anything back. So after a couple days I followed up. She was very polite and told me she was sorry, that based on what she’d seen of my practice, she thought I was much more experienced than I was. Upon seeing my “resumé”, however, she realized how green I was and told me that I wasn’t ready to teach. At first I was annoyed that she was going back on her offer, but I took a breath (as I’d been taught in my Teacher Training to do) and recognized that she wasn’t being unreasonable. I told her I understood why she felt the way she did, but that respectfully, she’d never seen me teach, and until she had, she wasn’t qualified to make a determination as to whether I was ready to teach or not. So I invited her, no pressure, to come the next time I offered a class to my friends and family.

I didn’t expect that to change her mind, but to my surprise it did. She told me that I had a good point, and that I was clearly passionate about teaching. She also told me that she couldn’t make it to the next class I was offering, but that she was happy to put me on the sub list at her studio (I didn’t even realize when I’d taken her class that she owned the studio). So I thanked her, and about a week later an opportunity came for me to sub a class, so I accepted it… and so it all began.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve been teaching yoga for just over thirteen years. Prior to that I was working on a career as a screenwriter, and even though I had two small films made, things weren’t going in the right direction. I was also in a relationship that wasn’t working, and as I rounded the corner toward 35, my body was beginning to ache and get soft. I needed a change. I didn’t know anything about yoga, but one day I went to a class and pretty much immediately I had a feeling that I should learn how to teach. I didn’t expect it to become a career, but the more I did it the more I fell in love with it, and the more everything else in my life seemed to move in the right direction, as well. So I kept doing it and within a year I was teaching full time, and within two years it had become clear that teaching yoga is something I was simply born to do.

There are many styles of yoga. Some are gentle, some are intense. Some involve a lot of movement and postures, others involve a lot of stillness. Regardless of the style, though, the goal is this same: To live your best life. That’s what I help people do. Sometimes I do it by helping them get in shape physically. Other times I do it by helping them calm down and see things from a different perspective. Sometimes I do it by teaching them about yogic philosophy, and sometimes I do it by holding up a mirror so that people can see themselves more clearly.

In order to live our best lives, it usually requires that we be willing and able to change. This is what I’m most proud of–that I was able to learn a new skill and use it to change my life completely–and this is what I excel at–helping others to realize their potential and transform their lives in radically positive ways.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Covid changed everything. Overnight the studios all shut down, virtually all private clients canceled their sessions, and retreats were a no go. At that point, those things made up almost 100% of my business. But one thing was clear: People still wanted and needed yoga. In fact, they needed it more than ever. It was just a matter of figuring out how to provide it. Like a lot of teachers, I began offering classes via Zoom. That seemed to work alright for a minute, but it didn’t take long before Zoom fatigue set in and the numbers began dropping off. Fortunately, the beach is only a twenty minute walk from where I live, so in late May of 2020 I started offering classes by donation on the beach. It turned out to be a hit. Within a month I went from one class a week to four. Some of the people who came were longtime students of mine, but many were people who simply saw us practicing and wanted to join, so that helped me find a whole new student base. Then in the fall of 2020 I decided to offer a Teacher Training in a park in Holmby Hills. I had no idea if anyone would want to do it, but it turned out to be very popular, so I did it again the following spring. Not only did those trainings turn out to be good for my business, they also turned out to be great for my teaching skills because for the first time I was leading my own trainings, which required that I learn about a lot of things that previously I didn’t know that much about. It was definitely not easy, and it required a lot of hustling, studying and hard work, but what caused many yoga teachers to find other jobs turned into one of the biggest blessings of my career.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Maintaining my personal practice is the single most important thing I’ve done to grow my business. When you teach yoga for a living, you tend to get to know a lot of other teachers, and one thing you hear over and over is how hard it ends up being for a lot of teachers to maintain their own practice–partly because in order to make a living as a teacher you generally have to teach a lot, which doens’t leave a lot of time for one’s own practice; and also because when you teach for a living, it can be hard to find the energy or inspiration to maintain a regular practice. But my practice is what feeds me. It’s how I come up with new sequences and ways to challenge and inspire people, and it’s how I not only maintain but deepen my own connection to the yoga tradition. These things are essential for me to feel excited when I teach, and that excitement is what keeps people not only coming back, but telling their friends and others in their circle about how much they love yoga and what a gift it is in their life. That’s how the torch gets passed, and it all starts with me doing my practice. Every. Single. Day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.brentlaffoon.com
• Instagram: @brentasana
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/brentlaffoonyoga

Image Credits
Kai Franz Patricia Pena Silvia Frigerio