Niki Leondakis: CEO of CorePower Yoga
Episode 673
On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we’re joined by Niki Leondakis, CEO of CorePower Yoga, the largest yoga studio brand in the U.S. with over 220 locations nationwide. With a background in hospitality and decades of experience leading iconic brands like Equinox and Two Roads Hospitality, Niki brings a powerful blend of customer obsession, leadership wisdom, and personal purpose to her work today.
In our conversation, Niki shares how her personal yoga practice—and a lifelong belief in the power of intentional leadership—brought her to CorePower Yoga. We talk about how she’s helping to evolve the brand from a fitness experience into a modern movement rooted in strength, mindfulness, and community. She also opens up about the challenges of leading through change, building culture at scale, and why emotional intelligence is the skill every leader needs today.
Whether you're a wellness enthusiast, an aspiring CEO, or someone passionate about personal growth and purpose-driven leadership, this episode is full of insight and inspiration from one of the most respected voices in the industry. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.
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To learn more about Niki Leondakis and CorePower Yoga:
https://www.instagram.com/corepoweryoga/
https://www.instagram.com/niki_leondakis/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikileondakis/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/corepower-yoga/
https://www.corepoweryoga.com/
Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone. It’s Kara Goldin, and we are here on the Kara Goldin show. Super, super excited to have our next guest with us here today. We have Niki Leondakis, who is the CEO of CorePower Yoga, the largest yoga studio brand in the US, with over 200 locations nationwide, Niki is a legendary leader in the hospitality and fitness industries, having spent three decades building lifestyle brands and award winning workplace cultures, including as CEO of two incredible, incredible groups, the equinox fitness clubs, and also the Hotel Group, two roads hospitality. So now at the helm of CorePower Yoga, she’s on a mission to bring the transformative power of yoga to every mind, every body, everywhere. A long time yoga practitioner herself, Niki brings heart hustle and a deep belief in the power of mindfulness to her role. I am so excited to finally meet her. I have heard about Niki for years, so I’m so honored that she’s coming on today to share all of her wisdom with us and also talk to us much about the brand CorePower Yoga, which has just really, really taken off and is just very, very inspiring in and of itself. So welcome Niki, how are you?
Niki Leondakis 2:10
Thank you. Kara, I’m well. Thank you. Thank you for having me super
Kara Goldin 2:15
excited to have you here. So okay, so let’s start at the top with CorePower Yoga. How do you describe what makes it so unique?
Niki Leondakis 2:25
The differentiator between CorePower Yoga and other yoga studios and other boutique fitness experiences is that it is a highly intense physical yoga practice that blends high energy, flowing movement in yoga, Asana or postures, with breath work. So we’re coordinating breath to movement, which ultimately leads to a mind body connection. We infuse mindfulness messaging and theming of our classes so that students can take those yoga lessons from the practice on the mat in the studio, off the mat into their life. I
Kara Goldin 3:18
love it. So how old is the brand, actually, as well,
Niki Leondakis 3:22
we are 23 years old.
Kara Goldin 3:27
Wow, that’s incredible. And did you open all of those? I know you are not the founder, but did they open all of those? Did they acquire them? How did they get to 200 I mean, that’s that’s incredible,
Niki Leondakis 3:40
yeah, yeah. It was primarily just opening them, you know, market by market at a time over the course of 23 years, starting in Denver, Colorado, where we have our studio Support Center, you know, corporate office and a heavy population of studios throughout Denver, Boulder all around Colorado. And then Minneapolis and San Diego. Those were early markets for us, where we have a heavy, heavy presence. And then we just expanded. The company, expanded, before my time, you know, into other markets, both suburban and urban, throughout the country, both coasts, south, northeast, you know, Midwest Chicago over time, and there were a few early franchise partners With the founder, Trevor Tice, but not many and very few exist today. It’s not a franchise model that we’re we’re today offering there are mostly corporate owned. And so it’s really been once, one market, one studio at a time. I
Kara Goldin 4:56
love it. So you’ve led major companies. Case, as we said in the intro, you’ve been doing this for three decades of incredible, incredible work around major, major brands, including equinox and also two roads hospitality. What was it about CorePower Yoga that made you say, I gotta go do this. This is gonna be amazing.
Niki Leondakis 5:24
Yeah, yeah, it’s true. I had a my entire adult lifetime. Career, for 34 years was in hospitality, and that’s all I’d ever done since I was in high school, my first job, you know, working in restaurants, and it’s what I wanted to do, right when I, you know, was in college. I was a hospitality major, and I I didn’t really think about changing careers, but opportunistically, it came my way to become CEO of Equinox fitness clubs, and that was in 2016 and, you know, I thought long and hard. I hadn’t contemplated a career outside of hotels and restaurants, but I’d been with Ritz Carlton hotels, Kim tin hotels 20 years where I was president and COO and then community hotels, two roads I kind of started in Marriott, early and early, early in my career, I just thought, Well, what else am I going to do? I can go bigger and bigger, you know, had already done, you know, international acquisition, luxury, all these things. What else am I going to do that’s going to be exciting and new? And wellness and fitness is a personal passion. It had always been a deep personal passion. And even when I was in hospitality for the last 20 years, I had been bringing wellness and fitness programs to my leadership model and what in the company culture and what we offered. So I thought, you know, I’m just going to I’m going to do this life’s short, have another experience and do something you love, that you personally love. And what a privilege to be able to jump into an industry with no technical knowledge, but I had done that before, but a personal passion and a belief in my own leadership.
Kara Goldin 7:38
Yeah, definitely, it’s interesting. I’ve actually never really thought about this, but I feel like the fitness industry, I don’t know at what point it made the shift, but you were guests, right? Very similar to sort of the hospitality industry, in some ways, it wasn’t just you’re a member of the club, you’re a guest here, and there was a whole language difference that went on at some point. And I don’t know where that shift was, but it seems like kind of a natural progression. It is a progression and and it’s something that we see a lot in, you know, incredible, incredible leaders these, I don’t know you call them second acts, but I don’t even think it’s the second act. It’s, it’s more like getting in tune with I’ve done a lot of really incredible stuff. Now I’m going to go do something else. I have a good friend of mine who is I’ve talked about before. Does radiology, breast radiology. She’s been doing it for years here in the Bay Area, and she made the decision when the hospital was acquired. She was trying to figure out if she was going to stay on. And then she went on to do neuro radiology, which is very different, and after 30 years of doing the same thing, but she wasn’t ready to retire. She was ready to go and look at something different and think differently and and so I really appreciate that. And I feel like there’s, there’s a lot of us going around, where people are thinking like that as well, right? Yeah,
Niki Leondakis 9:21
life’s short. Have another experience and where there are parallels, you know, it does streamline the the learning curve. And, you know, I’m still serving human beings. I’m still in in a business where we’re serving people, whether, you know, I started in restaurants and then hotels and, you know fitness and now yoga. In each one of those situations, you’re providing a service, what you do every day to human beings and enhancing their lives.
Kara Goldin 9:51
Yeah, definitely, but little bit different than the hospitality industry, I guess you have members for sure, from the. Membership clubs, but it’s different than you’ve got subscriptions essentially, that you’re that you’re dealing with so, so how do you think about that, like, what challenges exist, and how do you get people to stay, I guess, and really continue to sign up and and support your brand? Yeah,
Niki Leondakis 10:23
I think what you’re bringing up is really poignant in that that was also interesting to me, because this membership model where someone signs up and is committed to this recurring payment to you as a member, you really have to think about the value proposition, what are we offering them, right? And what’s acceptable or delightful today, you know, tomorrow, the next day and the next day, it doesn’t remain the same. You know, there’s this concept in in service called the zone of tolerance. So we provide an experience for a customer, a guest, a consumer, and it falls within the zone of tolerance, and say, on a scale of zero to 10, that zone of tolerance is like, you know, for say, it, say, say, like, what people will accept is like four to eight, right? We’ll accept this, you know, we love it when it’s a 10, you know, we’re it’s we’re done, we’re out when it’s like a one or a two. But if you’re like a five, a six or a seven, you can’t just keep in there. They’re they’re paying their monthly membership dues. You can’t just keep delivering a five or six or seven. You have to upgrade that. You have to continually enhance that. So otherwise you slip backwards. So the challenge of constantly thinking about how you’re going to enhance that member value proposition, how you’re going to enhance that experience. How they going to be delighted today, differently and more than they were last week? Yeah, that’s a challenge,
Kara Goldin 12:09
definitely. So I read that you’re you’ve been a yogi for a long time, and really appreciate that and the personal yoga practice that you practice, I think is, is very, very helpful in leading others to to join in. I think it goes hand in hand with if you are leading an initiative or a company and you don’t drink the water, or you don’t, you know, care to actually go to the, go to any of the classes, then it makes it a lot harder, right? You don’t connect with this community in some way. You don’t see what’s missing. Can you speak to
Niki Leondakis 13:01
that a little bit? Yeah, I could not agree more. In fact, I believe in that so much that I you know, there have been opportunities over the last 3040, years that have come my way that were tremendous opportunities, but I couldn’t relate to the product or the experience. And if I’m not the consumer, or someone who is a consumer, you know would be consumer of that product or experience, I can’t do it because, yeah, you have to be you have to be living and breathing to be excellent at something. You have to be living and breathing it all the time, you know, and passionate and always thinking about, how can it be better? What else can we do? You know, that’s what creates excellence. That’s what creates differentiation. And so, yes, Part of my reason for coming to CorePower was, I’m a devout yoga practitioner, and have been since the 90s, so yeah, for a few decades now, and it has been transformational in my life and carried me through the most difficult parts of my life. So I’m a tremendous believer in the transformative power of yoga and what it can do for us as humans.
Kara Goldin 14:22
So CorePower blends the strength and mindfulness in a way that not every type of exercise does. How do you define this and how do you educate people to know what that means? Right? I feel like yoga today is as much about mindfulness as it is strength. It used to be. I remember images of people like almost wearing, like leotards or underwear when they were right and it’s it’s such a different mode today. But how do you get people to really understand it and come and try it without, I guess, being intimidated or having some other vision of it?
Niki Leondakis 15:11
Yeah, you’re you’re so right. Um, people get thrown by certain images or stereotypes. You know? You know, bare, scantily clothed, tightly clothed. You know, Instagram models doing pretzel looking poses, things like that. There are all kinds of notions about what yoga is. And, you know, those are postures, and those are individuals choosing, you know what they’re going to wear, and that we all have. You know, we all have our freedom to make our choices. If you travel to India, you wouldn’t see anything like that. You know, it’s loose clothing that you can feel comfortable and move your body in and breathe freely in. But it’s not. There’s no designated sort of apparel in the West, you know, we’ve moved to, you know, a certain style of of clothing. But it’s not about any of that. It’s it’s really about the breath to movement and the mind body connection that occurs when we become present in the moment and focused on the mat and moving our body into shapes or postures. That’s called Asana. That is only one limb of yoga. Yoga has eight limbs, and it’s a lifestyle and it’s a way of being. But how do you demystify it and make it accessible and approachable? It’s baby steps and it’s bites. You know, some people are introduced and that’s all you know. You know they’re they’re really looking for is the movement and the breath. And that’s good. That’s great, because that’s you know, you’re better than you were yesterday when you weren’t doing that move your body and breathe, and coordinating breath to movement is a tremendous step forward. There’s a lot more people can do. There’s so much more potential within you know, an overall yoga lifestyle to optimize your holistic wellness and yourself and your best self. But we demystify it by trying to make it approachable. One we try not to you. We instruct our teachers, our training instructs our teachers not to speak in Sanskrit unless they’re speaking in English first. So don’t name a posture unless it’s an it’s English, English language. If you want to use Sanskrit, then that follows the English description. We teach our classes to be all levels for the most part. You know, we have a foundational class called c1 and you could call it intermediate c2 but c2 can still be our teachers teach with modifications, and everyone is encouraged to do what their body can and take Child’s pose any time you need it, which is a resting pose. So we make it fun, so it’s set to music, and it’s a welcoming environment to everyone. One of the things we do is community classes on Sundays that welcome people into CorePower complimentary. So they’ll try it. We want people to try it. Just try it. So many people have a should I should do yoga? But, yeah, I don’t know. It’s intimidating, you know? So we try to just try it.
Kara Goldin 18:42
So every Sunday, people can come in and just, there’s
Niki Leondakis 18:46
a community class every Sunday on all the studio schedules, that is a free class to come try.
Kara Goldin 18:53
What is the average that people come and visit you every week?
Niki Leondakis 18:59
It’s about three times our members practice a week. Yeah, some, some, a little less.
Kara Goldin 19:08
I feel like I have, I have a millennial and three Gen Z years, and they love yoga. Have you seen this Gen Z trend of yoga. I mean, I think millennials clearly Gen Xers, but I feel like Gen Z is very much your next big audience. That is really they get it. They love yoga.
Niki Leondakis 19:35
I think that’s right, and our data would support that our attendance is up 24% year over year, year to date, in 2025 where are these people coming from, right? And so we, more and more people are being attracted to yoga. And one of the primary reasons, I believe, is that. One of the, I think, things that happened as a result of the COVID pandemic was the destigmatization of mental health and the increased awareness of the importance of mental health and taking responsibility for your own mental health. And it’s well known that there are benefits mental health benefits from yoga. So I think that’s part of the attraction, and I think Gen Z is acutely aware of their mental health, and that’s why people are coming to yoga. And our, like I said, our type of yoga balance is the physical and the mental. It’s a highly physical so people really like the idea that they can get a workout in and the Mental Health Benefits of Yoga into a 60 minute class.
Kara Goldin 20:47
Definitely. How do you scale then, without losing kind of that community feel? Because I definitely feel like when I go into any class, whether it’s a fitness class or an art class, or anything, you have to sort of you look around the room and figure out if, if there’s like minded people had, but if it gets too crowded, you may lose that kind of community feel. How do you think about that as you continue to grow your business?
Niki Leondakis 21:20
Well, you have to understand that community can’t be created at a corporate level. You know, I, as the CEO, can’t demand community out of my people, you know, like that doesn’t that doesn’t happen. It has to be inspired and empowered at the studio the local level, and so we we do things that we hope inspire our teachers. We have over 6000 yoga teachers and our studio managers, our leaders at the local level to con, to build that community. And it’s not that difficult, because our teachers become teachers at CorePower Yoga the majority of the time because they were students at CorePower Yoga and already loved the community and the opportunity to be part of it, to create it. They’re all they already want that they get it. It’s a big part of their experience and why they want to teach, and then why they want to become a manager. It’s inherent in their first experience. But we also do things like, we give them a budget to spend, to hold local events at their studio to bring people together after class, it might be, you know. And we work with different businesses, and we empower our studio managers to work with local business to create opportunities to try new things and experience new products that are in the neighborhood, you know. So we empower that community and inspire at the local level. So
Kara Goldin 23:04
what does innovation look like inside of a yoga company? How do you keep things fresh without kind of diluting the essence I I feel like there’s, um, consistency is probably really important for your brand overall. But is there such thing as innovation within yoga, within CorePower Yoga as well?
Niki Leondakis 23:30
Yeah, two things I would, I would say in response to that. One is innovation happens organically from the inside out, when you have a culture where people feel comfortable being their authentic self and they they have freedom and feel the freedom to be themselves, express themselves, and Ultimately, express their ideas, and then two, a culture of listening. As a CEO, I have never really been in this role thinking I was the smartest person in the room, or that I had to be. I just, I just don’t assume that, and I don’t believe that I I think one of the important, most important traits we must have as leaders is listening, and so culturally, we’re constantly listening, listening to our employees, listening to Our consumers, listening to those that aren’t our consumers and why? And from surveys to, I’m just on a I’m on a 365 listening tour all the time. And there are formalized ways of listening and informal ways of listening, you know, through, you know. Teacher chats, to customer focus groups, to classes with teachers to, you know, we’re all participate. Bring in our marketing people. They’ll, you know, we just do all these different structured and formal and informal ways of listening, and we take in that feedback. And then when you have this environment of freedom and no fear, a leadership model that’s not based on fear and intimidation, so people don’t feel afraid to express an idea because it might be perceived as stupid or dumb. Lack of fear, empowerment, listening those things come together, and that’s where innovation happens. And a great example of that would be a couple of years ago, in our annual survey, our students told us the top two things they wanted from us, you know, from a values prop standpoint, was strength training. They wanted, they wanted to build strength. They they and and two, they wanted to bring friends. So as a result, we launched buddy passes for membership. You know, you get free buddy passes every month to bring friends. Love it. And we worked for over a year developing a new class format called strength x, which is unique to CorePower. And it was the first class that was launched in 10 years. We launched it in 2022 I think maybe 20 I think we started developing it in 22 we launched it in 23 but it’s, it’s, it’s heavy weights, it’s it’s strength building. We partnered with some outside consultants to train our folks, hired some people and launched this strength X class in response to that. And it’s highly, highly popular because people want it.
Kara Goldin 26:56
Yeah, I love it. Very, very smart. So biggest challenge you’re currently focused on solving at CorePower. Maybe it’s something that you’ve never tackled before in your leadership or your you have but this is definitely a big focus for the brand.
Niki Leondakis 27:18
I would say for us, it’s we’re back to growth in a post pandemic era, and it’s finding and developing the best teachers, yoga teachers. You know, a lot of people say they want to be a yoga teacher. A lot of people, you know, maybe even go through training. But for us to grow at the rate, we intend to grow finding the talent, the best yoga talent out there, we have world class yoga teacher training, and it’s known for it’s, you know, high quality. It’s some of the best out there that you can go through, but making sure we attract the people to go through it that are really committed to service and serving humanity. And it’s not that they’re not out there, but it’s a challenge at the the rate we want to grow, how many we need to find, and the way you filter them, yeah,
Kara Goldin 28:23
so interesting. So when you think about success and sort of defining that for CorePower, I’m sure it’s not just financial, although, you know growing is great, but culturally, spiritually, you know, when you run into a neighbor and they hear that you’re the CEO of CorePower Yoga, and they’re like, oh my god, I love it. Like, what? What is it that really makes you excited about the success of of the brand that really kind of gets you up in the morning and gets you psyched that you’re leading this.
Niki Leondakis 29:05
Yeah, thank you agreed. I mean, the financial performance part of it is baseline. It’s like, it’s my job that I get paid to do, and it’s a must do. It’s like, you get up and you have to brush your teeth. Like you can’t go on about your day without brushing your teeth. I must do that part of my job. And that gets me excited, because it’s always a challenge to balance the aspirational with, you know, the pragmatism of the business side. And I’ve always really felt personally that these two are not mutually exclusive. They do not have to be and and integrating them actually enhances both. However, what really like, what really gets me up in the morning is that our higher purpose is. Is about transforming people lives, and you’ll see the words powering love from the inside out. That’s our higher purpose, and helping people see their own potential. And you know, bringing them yoga and getting them into a practice that enables them to access the best part of themselves, to love themselves, to take care of themselves, is the beginning of being able to love others and shine that love onto the world, and touch others and make a difference in other people’s lives. So the potential ripple effect of that with 1000s and 1000s, if not millions. I mean, you know, yeah, we had 10 point 1 million people taking classes last year, classes that happened last year, 10 point well, 1 million yoga classes. So the glow people feel after they practice hot yoga for 60 minutes with us and they go out have a better day. Touch other people, make other people’s day. The vibration of that in the world, that’s what gets me excited. I
Kara Goldin 31:13
love it. So Niki, thank you so much for coming on and this great conversation. Your leadership, from going from hotels to high performance fitness to mindfulness of yoga. I mean, you are just doing incredible things, leading with purpose and heart, clearly so for everyone listening, head to CorePower Yoga and go take a class, go to the Sunday intro classes. Also, their digital studio is pretty incredible. So you guys have done an incredible job of creating a brand that is here to stay, for sure. So thank you again. Really appreciate it. Thanks everybody for listening. Goodbye for now. Thanks so much, Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now you.
