Fitness Warriors

Annoyed by her lousy yoga class experience, Sarah Larson Levey created Y7 Studio. She’s part of the upward-facing boutique fitness movement.

- Jeff Bercovici

Sarah Larson Levey is yoga’s newest mogul, and maybe its most unlikely one. “This all came about because I actually hate yoga,” Levey says of her five-year-old company, Y7 Studio, which has eight locations in New York City, two outposts in Los Angeles, and plans to expand to at least two more cities by next year. In its modish studios, young urbanites strike ancient poses by candlelight as hip-hop thumps through speakers and infrared heaters ensure everyone works up a good sweat. Y7 stands at No. 80 on the 2018 Inc. 500.

Levey, 31, swears she had nothing like this in mind when she and her then-fiancé, Mason Levey, started offering pop-up classes in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in the summer of 2013. She was motivated by the many unsatisfactory yoga classes she’d taken since moving to New York from Michigan. Too often, they featured endless chanting or confusing terminology or bright lighting and mirrors that made her self-conscious about her body. Her irritation level maxed out after one instructor spent 25 of the 60 minutes hawking a retreat she was leading in Bali. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding? I spent money to be here!’ ” Levey recalls.

She was ticked off enough to scour Craigslist for a cheap space where she could hold small classes with instructors willing to lead according to her specifications. She wasn’t looking to make money. She just wanted to find a few like-minded yogis to help defray the cost. Those first classes, held on weekends in a disused recording studio, were so popular that by the fall she was confident enough to sign a month-to-month lease on a tiny studio of her own. At 300 square feet, it was barely big enough to fit eight people.