I recently went on live television — and it reminded me how much intentionality goes into both getting these opportunities and preparing for them.
In this episode, I share how media invitations actually happened for me (spoiler: it wasn’t cold pitching networks)… and how I prep so live TV doesn’t fry my nervous system. If you have a book, retreat, teacher training, or offering you want to grow, this is the real behind-the-scenes.
In this conversation, I cover:
🔹 The two-part strategy that builds visibility over time
🔹 Why doing “three uncomfortable things a day” changed my business
🔹 How local relationships led to magazine covers and TV invites
🔹 Why credibility and backlinks matter in the age of AI
🔹 My exact rehearsal process for live segments (so I don’t freeze)
This episode is about outreach, alignment, nervous system awareness — and building momentum without overriding yourself.
Because visibility should feel expansive, not depleting.
📘 Want to explore the work I referenced in this episode? Grab Healing with Somatic Yoga here → https://amzn.to/3WGulGG
FREE Practice: 30 Minute Morning Vinyasa Yoga Flow for a Boost of Energy | WAKE UP & STRETCH
Relevant Blog: Exploring the Five Human Design Types: A Guide to Self-Discovery
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
📖 Yoga Life Book
📚 Healing with Somatic Yoga Book
🔮 300-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🎧 Also Listen to:
#291 – How to Get an Agent, Write Your Wellness Book and Make a Bigger Impact
#326 – How To Plan The Ultimate Yoga Photoshoot
#386 – Stop Selling Products—Start Selling YOU: Human Design for Visibility & Flow with Juliette Stapleton
#396 – Rewire Your Nervous System + My New Somatic Healing Book is HERE!
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
Transcript:
Welcome to the Uplifted Yoga Podcast, where ancient yogic wisdom meets modern business strategy. I’m Brett Larkin, creator of Uplifted Yoga, where I’ve certified thousands of yoga teachers, built a multi-seven figure business, and guided over half a million students on YouTube. Here’s the truth, you don’t have to choose between embodying deep yogic wisdom and building a thriving, freedom-based business.
This podcast is your space to integrate both. Because yoga isn’t just what you do on the mat, it’s how you show up in every part of your life. Whether you’re here to deepen your yoga practice, grow your teaching career, or align your energy with your purpose, you’re in the right place.
Let’s dive in. I recently went on live television, and let me tell you, it reminded me of how much intentionality goes into both getting these types of opportunities and preparing for them. In this episode, I share how media invitations actually happen for me, and spoiler alert, it doesn’t involve me cold pitching network, so don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to do that.
But I am going to share the two-part strategy that builds visibility over time that you can use, the power of local relationships, why credibility and backlinks matter, especially in this age of AI, and my exact rehearsal process for live segments so I don’t freeze. If you’re curious about how I prep for live TV or speaking engagements in a way that doesn’t fry my nervous system, maybe you have a book, retreat, teacher training, or offering you want to grow, this is my real behind the scenes, my strategy, my rehearsal process. If you want to build momentum in your business without overriding yourself, this episode is for you.
So in less than 48 hours, I am going on television. And this is something I’ve done before, but I was prepping for the interview for the segment I’m going to do on TV, and I thought, you know, maybe people would be interested in hearing about how I prep for something like this. And not just that, but how I actually got these kinds of opportunities in the first place.
Maybe you want to have a relationship with the local news channel in your town. For me, I think it’s an NBC affiliate. Maybe you have a book or a product or a workshop or a retreat or something you’d love to promote in a bigger way.
So if you want my casual download on how to do that, this episode is for you. So I’m going to link up the behind the scenes story of my first book, Yoga Life, and what that book launch looked like, because that book launch was very, very different from the way that I launched my second book this year, Healing with Somatic Yoga. And maybe unsurprisingly, the second book was a very slow, somatic, and embodied launch.
I feel like with that first book, Yoga Life, I put so much pressure on myself. I was like, I need to go on, you know, every TV show I possibly can, every news show I possibly can. I need to do like over a hundred podcasts in a three-month period.
I really pushed so hard. And what I can see now in retrospect is how that was overriding my body. It was actually me being so disconnected in many ways from what my nervous system is capable of, from what I’m capable of.
It’s so funny because it’s like when you don’t have a relationship with your body or understand nervous system care, self-care, you’re able to kind of do these superhuman things that can be definitely worthwhile and interesting. But looking back on that, having grown and evolved, I’m grateful for those experiences. But I decided to do my second book launch in a completely different way.
I didn’t put any pressure on myself. I really only chose avenues and marketing strategies that aligned with my energy and spending time with my family, really took into account how I could feel safe, how I could feel supported, how I could not feel overwhelmed. And if you ask anyone who’s ever launched a book, they will tell you that it’s a very unhealthy process.
It’s just a very, very intense thing to go through. But I practiced Ishvara Pranidhana from Yoga for Self-Mastery, and I really relinquished control of my second book to the universe in a way, to all of you in a way. I was like, this book will be supported if people value it.
I don’t need to run myself ragged, fly all over the country like I did with my first book. I had a much more grounded stake in the ground, literally, of what I was willing and not willing to do the second time around. And that is such a fun feeling, to be selective with what opportunities you choose to take.
And that’s something that you can start thinking about and doing right now. Even if it’s your first book, or your first retreat, or your first anything, is to almost rather than feeling really desperate and you have to say yes to everything, really know what works for you, what works for your energy. I’ve recorded prior podcasts on human design and how that was such an eye-opener for me.
Once I really understood my human design, it was like, oh yeah, that’s who I am. This is how I like to work. These are the kind of things that work for my energy.
These are the kind of things that don’t. And it was so empowering to get that validation. I didn’t know any of that years ago.
And I think knowing that this year, it’s really changed the way I do business. It’s really changed the way I do everything. Because I’m like, I’m honoring me, and my design, and my nervous system, and what I can handle, and my family, like number one.
And then everything else is designed around that. And I just want you to sense how you can do that too. Like that’s very different than feeling desperate and like you have to say yes to everything.
One is almost like my glass is empty and I need to say yes to anything that can fill it, even if it means flying all over, you know, across the country or saying yes to something that I’ll know I’ll dread doing the day of compared to like, I’m not even a glass. I’m a table. I have four legs.
I’m so wide. I’m so secure. I’m so big.
I know what kind of table I am. I know what I stand for. I know what can fit on this table.
I know what doesn’t fit on this table. And I’m very selective about what is placed on me. And I wish I had gotten to that place in my career so much sooner.
So even if you’re really new in business, really new in yoga, I really invite you to start thinking about like, how can I do all this on my terms? How can I respect me and my values and my boundaries as a first step? And that means you need to really know yourself, which is Svadhyaya, right? The other pillar of yoga for self-mastery, Kriya Yoga. And I think human design can be really helpful in that. Now, once you’re this secure table analogy, it doesn’t mean that you just then sit back and do nothing.
You still have to practice tapas, the other principle of yoga for self-mastery. Discipline, effort, right? I wasn’t planning on this being like a yoga for self-mastery Kriya Yoga concept review, but clearly it is. Here we are, right? So you still need to put yourself out there.
And the way I’ve always described this from the very beginning of teaching business to other people is this idea. And this was taught to me by a mentor many years ago, do five uncomfortable things a day or three, if you can’t do five, three is good too. But this mentor of mine, like before she’d even drink her coffee in the morning, she would force herself to do like send three uncomfortable emails that aligned with her dreams, that aligned with how she wanted to work in the world.
Okay. I’m not saying to pitch yourself for stuff you don’t want to do, but this is how I grew my business from jump from day one. I would, similar to her, what she told me to do, I would get up and I would promote myself, pitch myself first thing in the morning.
It was very uncomfortable, but here’s the thing. The more you do that uncomfortable thing, the more your comfort with that discomfort grows and expands. And I promise this is going to become full circle because this is how I ended up getting on television.
Now, actually a little bit, take that back because it’s not like I wrote cold emails and pitched myself to networks or anything like that. But some of my early TV experience, like filming series for Grokker or for Gaia or big companies like that. But I feel like a lot of those opportunities came to me through my blog a long time ago and my blogging in particular with Yoga Outlet, which doesn’t even exist anymore, but was a big company back in the day.
And actually, when I think about Yoga Outlet, I think they found me because I had been blogging. So funny, like looking back now, thinking of how all the puzzle pieces fit together. But if you can take some uncomfortable action each day to pitch yourself like outward focused, and then also build something, whether that’s a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog.
I was hyperproductive back then with no children, so I had all three. There’s this compound interest effect of people, like you’re leaving breadcrumbs that people can use to find you. And this is kind of the magic marriage that I want to talk a little bit about, like that you need both.
You can’t just be in creation mode 24-7, like just doing YouTube, just doing your podcast, just doing your blog, kind of on your own, in your own environment. You have to also have the external, the pitching, the doing the uncomfortable thing, the three uncomfortable things every morning. But if you just do that, I don’t think that works either, because ultimately why Yoga Outlet asked me to write for them is because they saw that I could write from having seen my own blog.
And the reason Gaia and Grokker and some of these TV opportunities started coming my way is because they weren’t nervous about putting me on camera, because they saw my YouTube channel. They were like, this person knows what they’re doing. So if you’re listening to this and you’re a yoga teacher or a wellness professional, it’s just like, what are those two things? And it doesn’t have to be everything, but it’s like, what is the thing you’re building on your own that’s like a demonstration of your competency and your work? And then what’s your outreach strategy that ideally should feel a little bit uncomfortable each day? We talk about this so much in 300-hour teacher training, your revenue-generating activities.
It’s often not a revenue-generating activity if you feel comfortable doing it. I also invite you to think about, do you talk about your business? Are you out in the world talking about your business and what you do? Because that’s another thing I see so many people in our advanced 300-hour teacher training struggling with is they have their former pre-yoga identity and they just don’t want to pitch their former co-workers or fellow elementary school teachers or nurses or whatever their new yoga offering. They want to keep everything separate.
And that very, very rarely works. Now, I’m not saying you have to submit your yoga offerings to your prior community, but are you in community with other people talking about yoga? If not, your business is probably going to struggle. So how I ended up having a really strong relationship with the local news affiliate here is that I was actually in a mom’s group with a woman who ran a pretty large magazine that circulates in our area.
And I didn’t know this about her when we became friends. She was pregnant after I was pregnant, I think with my second. I gave her a bunch of stuff.
But we were in this group that met, it was weekly or semi-monthly something. So we were in community together. And when I found out she ran this magazine and she found out I ran this yoga business, it deepened our friendship.
But then ultimately when my book dropped, I was comfortable enough to ask her, which again, it was a little out of my comfort zone, of course. But I was like, hey, could you release the fact that I published this book in your magazine? I was hoping she’d just plug it on because I knew on the last page of the magazine, they kind of were often plugged like local people or authors or whatever. But she actually did that.
And I think then a couple of months later was like, do you want to be on the cover of the magazine for their New Year’s or their fitness issue or something? And I said, yes. And it was really funny because I think I’d given birth at that point. I was still somewhat postpartum.
She brought this huge camera photography crew into my house and was asking me to do the hardest poses. She was like, can you do a headstand? Can you do the thing that looks like a backbend with one leg up? She really made me work for it. But anyway, I got on the cover of the magazine.
And sure enough, it’s through seeing me in the magazine that the news outlet here got wind of who I am and invited me to come on. And they felt very, very comfortable doing that. Why? Because they were able to look me up online, see that I had a YouTube presence, see that I was going to be okay on camera and not freeze.
I mean, this is a show that is filmed live, so it’s pretty intimidating. And they actually want me to come on much more than I want to come on at this point. I went on for obviously my book launch and like a couple of other times throughout the year.
But going on TV is huge preparation, time commitment. So let’s talk through a little bit what that actually looks like. But for those of you that are wanting to grow your business, I just want to share a little bit of the puzzle pieces of how this all came together.
What is your outreach strategy right now? Who is the promoter that you’ve hired that’s also secretly you and another identity that sends outreach emails on your behalf or asks friends or friends of friends to get the word out about what you’re doing? Number two, what are you doing in your local community? Even if you’re part of a mom’s group or a hiking club or a golf tournament, do you mention to all those people that you have a yoga business or you have a yoga offering? Sorry to interrupt and we’ll get right back to the show. But if you’re already a yoga teacher and feeling that quiet nudge for more depth, my online 300 hour yoga teacher training is where your teaching becomes embodied. Not just technically strong, but intuitive, grounded and truly yours.
It’s open year round and fully online so you can move at your own pace. It’s also supported live. It’s deeply experiential and designed to help you integrate nervous system awareness, subtle body work and your own authentic voice as a teacher while giving you all my best business strategies.
Amplify both your income and your impact. Start treating your business as a spiritual practice. Learn more about the uplifted advanced 300 hour teacher training at brettlarkin.com. At this mom’s group, I could have just said nothing about yoga ever.
Me and this other mom would have never discovered this synergy in our companies because we’re like, oh, why would she want to hear about my new book or whatever? But even though it was a not yoga related event and mom’s group, there was actually a lot of potential there for me. So it’s probably the same for you. And then number three, it’s like, what are the breadcrumbs you’re leaving so that when these opportunities come, people can really easily understand who you are, what you do and trust you and have that credibility? Is it a blog? Is it a YouTube channel? Is it your podcast? Is it your sub stack? And speaking of credibility, like that is one of the best reasons in my opinion to go on television.
Maybe it’s actually the only reason to go on television. Okay. Of course, when you go on television, you are reaching people who will never find you on Instagram or Google or like the traditional avenues.
It’s just a totally new set of eyeballs. So it really lets your work travel further than you can, but it’s also a really great visibility builder. I love that I have clips of me speaking on CBS in Florida at one of the big networks in Washington, DC at a couple of the big networks in New York.
I have all that footage and I have it in some of the trailers for my programs or promotions for my book. It’s incredibly legitimizing when you’re not just a random person on the internet, but you’re someone who’s been vetted enough through actual news outlets to speak and to have that confidence to speak on camera. So for me, that was a huge driver, a huge motivator.
I was like, even if there are no viewers, just to get the footage essentially is so credibility boosting. So even if you’re not interested in TV as a long-term avenue, because I’m definitely not, but it might make sense for you to try to do it just once or twice, just to be able to say you did and to have that footage or to have those logos on your website. Another really great reason to do it.
And the main reason why I’m about to go on later this week is actually not for any of the reasons we just talked about, but it’s actually because a lot of business strategists are saying right now that one way that AI, AI search is figuring out who to recommend and who not to recommend when it comes to certain topics is that they actually look and poll who’s been featured on local news. And this makes total sense, right? Because in a world or an algorithm where it can be very difficult to determine who’s legit, who’s not legit, who’s the real expert on this, that yeah, the AI bots would be like, well, let’s verify like who around this particular topic can we trust? Like we know AI looks at Reddit a lot, which is like user-generated opinions on like who’s good or who to trust on certain topics. But obviously someone who’s been featured in New York Times or Yoga Journal or NBC, CBS, some of these big TV networks, that’s going to be weighed in the recommendation algorithm that gets spit out.
So for me, the biggest reason to go on TV right now is actually that, trying to set myself up well in AI search. And here’s one of my first really big tips is when you go on any of these shows, they always pretty much do like a write-up of your segment. They usually put it on YouTube.
Sometimes they put it also on their website, but always ask for a link, a link back to you, a link back to your website, a link back to your program or your book. I’m definitely going to be asking for that when I go in on Wednesday, because that link is your legitimizer in Google, in AI saying that this news outlet linked to you as an expert. So I always, always ask for that.
Second, I spend a lot of time preparing. I’m someone who goes on camera a lot, but there is something about a live news studio that is like next level. It’s next level stress.
It’s not like me filming myself doing yoga in my house or even a studio or a set that I’ve paid for where I can, I know I can redo stuff if needed. This is live. You cannot mess up.
The way many of these news segments work is that you have about five minutes. It’s not long at all. So you really want to make that count.
You want to use short, punchy sentences that viewers can remember. So the shorter, more staccato your sentences can be. Those of you who’ve done teacher training with me and know how I like to cue and teach cueing yoga or like rolling your eyes right now, because I’m always like short sentences, short sentences.
But the reality is like, whether it’s a yoga student or a viewer, people can’t remember like your run on long sentences. We need things short, simple, soundbites, like think soundbite. Soundbite is literally like a quick snappy thing you can say.
It’s easy for someone to remember and associate with you. So I plan my segment out like in a hundred percent entirely scripted. I script exactly what I’m going to say.
The way that it almost always works for me when I go on these shows is that I answer one or two questions and then I demo three or four poses. Now for me, the pose demos are easy. Like once I get to that part of the segment, I’m very comfortable because it’s essentially just like teaching yoga and you can just treat the host like a real person.
And obviously I still plan out talking segments and what I want to say, because the more you can share like the science behind a pose or where someone’s supposed to feel it in the body or why it works, you know, those are things that viewers and producers love. But that part of the segment usually feels easier. It’s those upfront two questions that you really want to prep for or that I’m really spending time prepping for it because your nerves are high because you’ve just stepped on set.
You know, someone’s going to judge you in like a snap second. So the way you answer that first question is literally like whether someone’s going to keep watching or change the channel or like look down and, you know, kind of not focus for the rest of the segment. So I memorize as if I’m like going to have a role in the school play, I memorize what my answer is for those first two questions.
Of course, I always confirm with the producer, like here’s what the question should be, but it’s usually fairly obvious. It’s like, what is somatic yoga or who are you? Why did you write this book? And you need really catchy, soundbite, simple answers to these questions. Write it out.
You want to write it out. And for me, it’s so easy because I, this time around, had AI write it for me because my AI knows a lot about my book and a lot about me. And of course, I had to give it some feedback and iterate and all how to do that if you want to do it too is in my AI course.
Even if you think you’re really good at AI, I really suggest getting my AI course because so many people have told me that it’s absolutely changed the way they do business and save them 10 to 20 hours a week of like busy work and admin work. I teach a split workflow. So many cool, I think really nuanced hacks, but I digress.
AI really helped me create like a really tight script. Of course, I had to go back and forth with it, but once we kind of got it and I was happy with it, what I did is, this is the other tip. You can’t just read your script.
You need to say the lines out loud, just like you were really going to be in the school play. So I read the segment to myself, like as if I were speaking on TV, like how I’d say it as a voice note on my phone. And now I can listen to that voice note all the time and I can on the go, like play the voice note, force myself to say the thing, rewind back, see if I said it right and just refine, refine, refine.
A lot of actors I know they’ll like listen to their lines as they fall asleep or if you need to memorize something. So just having it recorded on your phone so you can listen to it 24 seven, it’s fantastic. But just know that’s not enough.
You need to say it out loud, like at least 30 times. So when I’m just driving around or going on a walk, having the voice note, I can pull it up, listen, parrot it back and say it because muscle memory is real. And when you’re freaked out under cameras, lights, live, whatever, like the muscle memory of having said your thing 30 times before will really, really help you.
Next up, wardrobe. Oh my goodness. I feel like I’ve talked about this a little bit before in my podcast about prepping for your yoga photo shoot.
So I’ll make sure to link that podcast here as well. But with TV, you have a lot of bright lights on you. You want to have a lot of makeup on, like way more than you think you need.
You also want to put a lot of thought into what you are wearing. You want to have high contrast, bright colors. You want to think about what’s flattering.
This is one of my least favorite things, but I’m going to force myself to organize what I’m wearing or try on outfits later tonight because you don’t want to be doing this morning of, especially because what’s going to happen is the one thing you want to wear will be dirty and you won’t have time to wash it. If you are promoting a book or a product, I always bring that, obviously, to the interview, obviously, so you can hold it up and see it if appropriate. But I always gift it to the producer, maybe have a couple extra copies to gift to people on staff.
I think when I go this week, I’m actually going to also gift them all chocolates or do those things to make them remember you. Wow, this was a great guest. We really like this person.
We’re definitely going to give her the back when she asked for. And then it’s all about networking and community. The producer of this particular show, she’s on my Christmas card list.
I’ve made a real effort to keep in touch with her throughout the years. The host of the show, it’s like I followed her on Instagram. Occasionally, I engage with her content.
I genuinely like her and go that extra step to make sure she knows who I am and stay top of mind because who knows what other opportunities she will have personally of needing someone to teach or needing a speaker for an event. All of this sounded so impossible to me when I was first starting my yoga journey. Like the fact that I could just like easily get on television or like when I launched the second book, I just literally emailed the producer.
I’m like, hey, got a new book. Can I come on? She’s like, yeah, fantastic. Like would love it.
Right. It was so easy. It was so seamless.
And that’s something that for me 15 years ago would have felt like impossible. Like I’d never, ever get to this point. So I just wanted to record this to show you like it is possible.
And hopefully you feel like I’ve given you some clear steps of how it’s possible, right? Getting out of your comfort zone, doing outreach, having a consistent creative thing that you’re doing that shows your track record in blogging, TV, whatever it is you do, talking about what you do out in the world, even if it’s in like non-yoga circles. So many people write that off. It’s so valuable.
And then if you do get opportunities like these, really take it seriously, really prep a lot. Another thing I think I’m going to do later today is actually, because there’s one question, the first question that is a little harder for me to answer and memorize. The second one’s a lot easier for some reason, but I think I might actually write it out, like write it with my hand in a journal.
So that combination of listening to it, saying it constantly, and then actually also writing it, physically writing it is really going to ingrain my soundbites, my talking points into my head. And I think it’s going to really help me. And then smile.
You want to smile. That’s so, it’s so hard. It’s so hard.
But smiling when you’re teaching, smiling when you’re on TV, it sounds so silly, but it makes such a huge difference. I always say, if your cheeks don’t hurt after you’ve been teaching, you’re not smiling enough. This is especially important if you’re teaching on camera.
So wish me luck by the time this podcast episode airs. This segment will have already happened. Maybe we’ll even be able to link it up for you somehow.
But I hope this was fun to get an inside look at some of my process on how I prep and get these opportunities and hopefully inspiring for you as well. Until next week, do some outreach. Think about how you can grow your business in a way that aligns with your values and take care of you.
Loving what you’re learning on the podcast? Apply the ancient science of yoga to your daily life, surrounded by incredible peers in my uplifted 200-hour online yoga teacher training, or grow into your role as a leader of others in my 300-hour professional program for yoga teachers, which is also a high-level business mastermind. At any time, I would love to welcome you into my Yoga for Self Mastery course to help you uncover your personal blueprint to serenity. Or join my Uplifted Yoga membership for an all-access pass to my most popular yoga courses, thematic class plans, and practice calendars.
Don’t forget to prioritize your well-being and get on your mat today. From my heart to yours, namaste.
