Katie Rose on Building a Portfolio Income

We’re celebrating yoga teachers who have transformed their love of yoga into a thriving career. Through our new storytelling campaign, we’ll feature inspiring journeys, lessons learned, and the positive impact teachers are making in their communities.

Katie Rose left school at sixteen to teach yoga. Her first job was at triyoga in London, which she describes as one of the most prestigious studios in the world. She moved to Sydney, opened Samadhi Yoga in Newtown, and ran it for years. It became Jivamukti Yoga Sydney and reached four locations across the city, through a stretch she calls a time of growth and expansion in Australian yoga.

Seven years ago she moved online, into a yoga and Āyurveda business, Bhakti Rose, now Devotion Rose. A wild ride, in her words, and a contemplative one. The online space put her in front of people she would never have met in a room, and it turned out to be fruitful.

Some people think making a living online has become hard, and Katie refutes that flatly. She has found a way to monetise across the relatively conventional yoga and Āyurveda business, as well as consulting to other yogis who are growing their businesses.

Her main programs run for pregnant women and for the teachers who work with them. A membership sits alongside those and gives her guaranteed recurring revenue, which she names as an important branch. She coaches people to write books and has published her own. In person she runs a yoga teacher training once a year and takes groups of women to India twice a year.

Katie calls the result a portfolio income. She is multi-passionate, likes running a few things at once, and finds the variety keeps her interested while spreading the income across several sources. She depends on no single stream for her livelihood, and she puts much of her success down to that.

Teachers who sense a possibility online should keep going, she says, and AI has not ended it. She hopes they will feel into it and find their own way of serving their communities.

Build your own second stream

Katie’s structure comes from years of experimentation. Yoga Australia members can shortcut some of it through our library of CPD Short Courses, featuring gems like: