Today we’d like to introduce you to John Marcoux.
John, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I took a class called “Explorations in Meditation” during law school and sensed possibilities beyond the hyper-rational legal training. While working as a corporate attorney, I took my first hot yoga class. I entered the room believing that I was an athlete in decent shape; I exited the room thoroughly-humbled but stress-free, so I took class every day with modest ambitions. I dropped 20 pounds in three weeks, felt my spine straighten, and fell in love with the whole discipline. One day I looked out of my office window at all of the other skyscrapers and wondered: how many other people with corporate jobs would want to feel this good? That was the catalyst to draft a business plan, attend teacher training, and launch Chicago’s first hot yoga studio in 2001.
Has it been a smooth road?
The first decade was a wonderful adventure of building a hot yoga community and ploughing the profits into building two more studios. The most recent six years have presented a variety of difficulties, including increased competition in a now supersaturated boutique fitness industry awash in discounted deals. A veteran staff of instructors and devoted clientele of practitioners have afforded us the opportunity to endure.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the 105F story. Tell us more about the business.
We are the hottest of hot yoga studios: we maintain the rooms at 105 degrees Fahrenheit and 40% humidity. We specialize in a traditional beginners’ class that leads students through 26 poses and 2 breathing exercises (but we are gaining a reputation for a diversity of heated offerings in vinyasa and Pilates, too).
I am most proud of our staff mantra, “Default to Generosity.” Whenever we encounter a situation that presents multiple possibilities, we choose to do the kindest thing and fret the costs later. We believe that kindness is the primary currency which stimulates the economic currency of our small business. We believe kindness affords extra-strength relief from the noise of this modern world.
The specific heat index of our yoga rooms, the kindness of our staff, and the quality of our instruction elevates 105F to an altitude that everybody in this busy, noisy, tired world should visit and experience.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The number of people trying yoga will continue to increase, but probably not enough to sustain the supersaturated boutique fitness market. Industry survivors will serve a populace that will continue to struggle with what it means to be a human in the 21st Century–to be dumped upon by an avalanche of information, stimuli, noise and distraction. I hope for a future that looks back and concludes that yoga served as a shelter from the avalanche, that yoga was a means for folk to stay healthy and attuned as we undergo what appears to be an era of accelerated human evolution.
Pricing:
- $39 Introductory Month — a popular, affordable way to try a bunch of classes and feel what’s possible.
Contact Info:
- Address: Wicker Park – 1344 N Milwaukee – 3d Floor
Lincoln Park – 2736-A N. Clark
South Loop – 47 W. Polk (Dearborn Station) - Website: www.105F.com
- Phone: 773.395.9150
- Email: info@105F.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/105fhotyoga/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/105Fyoga/
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
