Today we’d like to introduce you to Suzanne.
Hi Suzanne, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I came to entrepreneurship the way most people do, out of necessity. After leaving a career in television news, I spent years finding my footing, teaching Montessori, becoming a mother, and somewhere in that quieter chapter, discovering yoga. I practiced for nearly sixteen years before it ever occurred to me to teach.
When my life came apart, second marriage over, no money, no credit, no savings, I had a choice. I bet on myself. I was rejected for a small business loan eight times before a lender that worked specifically with low-income women gave me a shot. I opened my first studio in a tiny storefront next to a barber shop. I did every job myself. I grew that studio until I outgrew it, opened another, and then in 2021, in the middle of a pandemic, opened a third. The business not only survived. It grew.
Today I run The Om Lounge Studios in Pittsburgh. We are two yoga studios and a rebounder studio. I teach five days a week, train teachers, and have built sequencing methods and class formats that are entirely my own. After eight and a half years of building something I am genuinely proud of, I am also starting to write again, which is what I always wanted to do in the first place.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No. And anyone who tells you their road was smooth is either lying or not paying attention.
I was rejected for a small business loan eight times before someone said yes. I had no credit, no savings, and no safety net. I did every single job in my business myself for years, including cleaning the bathrooms and removing a dead mouse from the common area at 9:30pm on a Tuesday after teaching two classes and a training lab. There was no one coming to help. If something broke, I fixed it. If something needed to be built, I built it.
The financial reality of running a boutique fitness studio is brutal. The profit margins in yoga hover around 6%. It is a service business with payroll and leases and overhead and a hundred personalities, and the world expects you to be centered through all of it. When the pandemic hit, I did not close. I pivoted. I figured it out. And then in 2021, I opened another location. People thought I was crazy.
The harder struggle was internal. I spent years proving myself, running on fumes and calling it drive, worrying more about whether my staff liked me than whether I was making smart decisions. I gave discounts and free things for years thinking I was being generous, until I understood that I was actually teaching people that my worth was negotiable. Learning to run a business like a business, and not like an apology, was the real work.
We’ve been impressed with The Om Lounge Studios:, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The Om Lounge Studios is a boutique fitness brand based in Pittsburgh with two yoga and sculpt studios and a rebounder studio. We offer yoga, sculpt, and rebounder classes, and I also run yoga teacher training programs. I still teach five days a week myself, which I think matters.
What sets us apart is the method. Over thirteen years I developed my own sequencing approach and class formats from the ground up. These are not generic yoga or sculpt classes. The sequencing is intentional, progressive, and built around how the body actually moves. Teachers who train with me learn a specific methodology, not just how to cue a pose.
I am most proud of the community that has walked through our doors. Thousands of people over the years, across multiple studios, through a pandemic. We did not close. We did not shrink. We figured it out and we grew.
What I want people to know is that The Om Lounge is not a wellness aesthetic. It is a real place, with real instruction, run by someone who has done every single job in the building and still shows up to teach. That is not common in this industry and I think people feel the difference.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I am a risk taker. I have always been. My mother put it best when she said, “You are always crossing lines that other people would never cross.” She meant it as a warning. I have come to think of it as a personality trait I stopped apologizing for.
Every major move in my life has been a risk. I quit a stable television news job at 24 with nothing lined up. I walked away from a marriage with no money and no plan. I applied for a business loan eight times and was rejected eight times before someone said yes. I opened a yoga studio in a tiny storefront with a small loan and no safety net. Then I opened another one. Then in 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, when every fitness business in the country was fighting to survive, I signed a lease and opened a third location. People thought I was out of my mind.
My view on risk is this: the risk of staying still has always felt greater to me than the risk of moving. I have never been someone who could wait for the right moment, the right circumstances, or the right permission. If I waited for any of those things I would still be sitting at a news desk at 2am wondering how I got there.
Risk without preparation is just chaos. Every risk I have taken has been backed by work. Relentless, obsessive, unglamorous work. The risk gets you in the door. The work is what keeps you there.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.omloungeyoga.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/hereiamsuzanne
- Other: https://hereiamsuzanne.substack.com
