In this instructional video, Angelica, a 17‑year yoga teacher, shares how she launched a profitable yoga studio despite being in bankruptcy and having virtually no capital. She emphasizes that the core purpose of yoga is helping people find happiness, not just fitness, and that a clear intention can attract opportunities. Angelica outlines a step‑by‑step, low‑cost approach: start with a tiny, inexpensive space (her first studio was a 400 sq ft garage at $400/month), negotiate trade‑space or sub‑leases through extensive networking, and pre‑sell memberships before opening to generate cash on day one. She stresses keeping rent low—making payroll the biggest expense—and continuously marketing to bring in new clients, as reliance on existing members alone leads to failure. Angelica recounts how a $5,000 poker win funded her initial equipment and how a chance conversation about a vacant storage room led to her first lease. She describes scaling gradually, moving from the garage to a larger 3,000 sq ft space and eventually a 6,000 sq ft studio, always ensuring rent remained affordable. Throughout, she encourages viewers to talk to everyone about their studio dream, leverage community connections, and focus on excellent customer service. The video ends with a call to action to join her Facebook group, comment with questions, and subscribe.
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How to open a yoga studio with no money. If you are not teaching as many people as you would like to, grab this free course, Thriving Yoga Teacher. Get it in the link in the description below. Hi, I'm Angelica. I've been teaching yoga for 17 years. I'm so grateful that you're here and that you're checking out this video because you want to open a yoga studio you don't have any money to start one. That's exactly what I did, and I'm going to tell you exactly the way that I did it. So maybe you might be inspired to go out and find a way to open a yoga studio and follow your dream. How did I open this yoga studio? Because I just had a dream like you. I wanted to open a yoga studio and I wanted to help people. I really like deeply wanted to help people through the practice of to yoga. And for me, more than anything, yoga is about helping people find happiness. It's not really about the fitness part. And maybe that resonates with you and maybe it doesn't. Like, maybe you're all about the fitness part. It doesn't really matter, like, why you want to. You just want to, and that's perfect. Like, whatever your reason is, I'm sure you're going to help a lot of people and it's going to be awesome. Now, I was just going through a bankruptcy when I opened my yoga studio. I actually declared bankruptcy in 2010 and I opened my yoga studio in 2012. So, um, I don't know, maybe that was like when the world ended and it was like, "Woo! Angelica opens this yoga studio! Woo-hoo!" But I have been looking for a space to open the yoga studio forever. Like, forever I wanted to open this studio, and everywhere I looked, it was just too expensive. I mean, honestly, yoga studios, you know, even with these mega studios, like, $5,000 a month is too much. Like, if you want to just teach yoga, that's too much. You have to find a place that is going to work with you and allow you to teach yoga, but not have to pay these huge rents. Like the way that more— or the way that rents work for big companies, like say McDonald's or something, is you are in this build— you're in this building in a strip mall. And the people who are in charge of it, say it's GGP, Growth Group Properties, are Simon Properties or Westfield. They're like the big property managers in the United States, and they take a percentage or a really high amount. So when I worked for retail— I worked for a retail company, we would scout new locations. And like, for instance, um, in Boston, uh, we had a location and we paid $35,000 a month in rent. And so that was pretty expensive, right? Uh, Lincoln Road in Miami was like astronomically expensive. And so these are places that it would be really hard to open. So you'd want to open on like a side street if it's your first studio. Once you get to your second studio, like I did, you can have something that's a little bit more expensive. But even then, the reason why I was profitable is because my rent was low. So I just told every single person that I ran into that I wanted to own a yoga studio because I knew that I couldn't pay $35,000 a month in rent. I couldn't even pay $5,000 a month in rent because you want to be profitable, right? Like at the end of the day, like even if you have $30,000 to start your yoga studio, that's nothing. Like that's like nothing. And I don't suggest that. I think the studio should support itself. I was always in a place of profit. From the day I opened the door. I actually sold memberships before I even opened so that I would be making money the day that I opened the studio. And I suggest that to everyone, and everyone that works with me in my mastermind or in my 200-hour yoga teacher training or my online 300-hour yoga teacher training, I always say, like, if you're going to open a yoga studio, start small and build. And that's exactly what I did. I started in a garage and it was 400 square feet and we would all come to the garage and practice and that garage is like famous now, like people are like, "I remember when I went to Angelica's classes in the garage." And I have people contacting me and they're like, "I'm in the garage," you know, it was just super cool. So anyhow, what you don't wanna do is get in a rent situation that's stupid expensive because that is not going to help in the long term. You want your rent to not be a huge cost. Your biggest cost should be payroll and not the rent. So what we wanna do is find a location to start in that's not expensive. So my first location, and I mean, this is 2012, but I was paying $400 a month. But you know, it still happens to this day. Like one of my students is doing a trade situation where she opened her first yoga studio in someone else's space, and she doesn't even have to pay for it because it's bringing business to this other person. Now, I'm not saying that that's going to happen for you, but what we want to do is start looking for opportunities. And the only way that's going to happen is to ask a lot of people and to tell a lot of people to say, I wanna, I wanna open a yoga studio. I'd love to open a yoga studio. I'd like to open a yoga studio. And then after I'd been in this space, it was 400 square feet for 4 years, I'm 3 or 4 years, I moved over to a much larger space and then I got the space next door. And so then it turned into from, you know, 3,000 square feet to 6,000 square feet. And by this time I have the business coming in through membership, through monthly membership, to sustain that next level of growth. Um, but I still was never paying $5,000 a month in rent. It's just a lot to put out. And, you know, being on a busy street for yoga studio isn't going to make that much of a difference. When I was in the smaller studio, I learned how to build my business to get to the next level so that when I got into tight situations, I knew how to gain more clients. And I knew somebody who'd opened a yoga studio and she closed it. Like very shortly after, like I think only within like a year or two. And I said to her like, why did you close your studio? And she said, well, people just stopped coming. There weren't people that weren't coming anymore. And I was like, you gotta bring more people in. You're always having to get more people. You have to always constantly be doing outreach and getting more people to come to your studio. You can't just expect that like the people that come the first time are going to be the ones to sustain you forever. Those people are going to come and go. So you've got to be constantly bringing in new people. The efforts have to be focused on marketing. And that's something I think that people really don't do well, is marketing and bringing in new people. But that's a whole nother topic. Today we're talking about how to open a yoga studio with no money. And you obviously have to have a little bit, but my initial investment was less than $5,000 in my first studio. And the only reason I had that much money is because I won a big poker pot at the Wynn Las Vegas. I was playing poker and I got involved with this crazy hand and I flopped a straight. And then all these people after me start— like, I raise and they like go in and they go in and they go all in and they go all in and they go all in. And then all of a sudden I'm like, what? It's back to me. I guess I have to go all in. I have the best hand right now. I mean, there's 2 more cards to come. I could have been beaten, but I wasn't, and I won that hand. And the universe was like, "Here, here's $5,000. Go and buy some Mexican blankets and bolsters." And I was like, "Yeah!" And I did. So you never know where it's going to come from. If you've read The Alchemist, you know that when you have a pure intention that you want to create in the world, just go out there and the universe will conspire to bring it to you. If you want to open a yoga studio and you don't have any money, but you have a good heart and you want to make it happen, then I suggest that you speak to every single person you meet and you tell everyone that you want to open a yoga studio. Because what happened to me is I was getting my eyebrows waxed and my whoo, and the lady that was waxing me said, there's a yoga studio in the back. Of this building that I'm in, and no one's using it. We're just using it for storage. And I was like, would they rent it? And she was like, here's the owner's phone number. So I called her, and sure enough, they rented it to me. And that's how I opened my first studio. And that could happen for you. It's about networking and talking to as many people as possible. And then over time, it gives you the time to build your pre— your business without any pressure, so you can concentrate on being great and having fantastic, wonderful customer service and really helping people. At the same time, enjoying yourself. You're not sweating it over rent all the time. You know, like, you can lower your expenses if you need to, and that will allow you to make long-term growth and stay profitable, which is the most important thing if you own a business and you want to keep it thriving. I am happy to answer any of your questions. Drop comments below. I will answer any questions that you have in the comments. I also would love to connect with you personally. Join my Facebook group, please hit the description below for that, and subscribe because it really helps me out a ton when you subscribe. Like, if you could share this video and subscribe, that would really help me a lot, and I would appreciate you, and I'm giving you a virtual hug. Here comes your good energy, energy. Anyhow, I'll see you in the next video, friends. Thank you for watching. Bye!
