Picking up where I left off…we have just opened the yoga center. It’s Fall of 2003. BL now has a designated fitness room and yoga room for the first time ever. Those of you who know me, know that I’m a numbers person. Numbers stick in my head especially when there is something emotionally charged about those numbers. We started BL out with 17 fitness classes per week and now here we are in 2004 with 75 classes a week between fitness and yoga. So, it was around this time in the evolution of BL that I reached a peak in my teaching. Here’s what I remember…One day I taught 6 classes…One week I taught 16 classes and One month I taught 60 classes. Ouch!! Don’t get me wrong…I had a great staff but still there were just a LOT of classes to get covered AND I was capable of teaching them all. Also, I thought if I could keep payroll costs down, I could turn this “hobby” of mine into a profitable and viable business. Just to give you an idea of where we were financially at 7 years in to buying BL: Dave had quit his corporate job…we had a Senior and a Freshman at University of Michigan and our joint adjusted gross income was $25,000. Ouch again!! Definitely an emotionally charged number!! (Thank goodness for FAFSA and Home Equity loans.) BUT…it was time for me to revisit the lesson I learned when I first bought BL and tried to “do it all.” I was burned out physically and emotionally plus still trying to be there for my 3 daughters. In addition to teaching all those classes, I was also covering many desk shifts, helping out with retail, and doing all the scheduling for fitness, yoga, managers and child care. It just made sense to me that the more I worked in the business, the more money I would save and the more likely I would be successful.
It was about this time that one of our managers, (does anyone remember Karen A?), nudged us to start using a computer. Baffling I know, but we were still doing everything old school at this point. She did the research and found out that other local yoga studios were using Mindbody as their software. We signed up for Mindbody in 2006 and we were client 1059. Two guys had created this software out of their garage and we were jumping in right at it’s inception. Of course, as many of you may know, Mindbody presently services millions of businesses all over the world! In addition to using their software, Mindbody offered a training called Mindbody University. So Chris and I hopped on a plane and headed down to Hollywood Florida for our first Mindbody University. The information we gathered and the changes we made as a result of this training was pivotal to Body Language. We streamlined our membership options, changed our price structuring, discovered the value of auto pays, learned about the value of investing in marketing…the list goes on and on. But the biggest take home of all for me was as a result of reading a book that Mindbody suggested called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Gerber described the “E”ntrepreneural Myth as the flawed concept that many business owners have that if the do it all, they will be more successful. He uses the example of a baker who opens up a bakery because he/she is passionate about baking. Then the baker tries to bake all the goodies…run the cash register…and essentially do it all. Problem is the baker is so busy working “in” the business, he/she can’t work “on” the business. This was definitely me!! I didn’t have time to grow the business when I was so busy teaching and putting out daily fires in the business. This is when our mentality started to shift as did our business model. Chris and started going to more and more conferences on growing the business; in fact, one of the seminars was entitled “Top 10 mistakes most small businesses make” and guess what?? We were making all 10 of them!!
So here is where my story leaves off…I started teaching less…trained managers to run the desk…and Chris and I spent the next several years attending seminars and workshops to learn how to more successfully work “on” our business. One by one we corrected those Top 10 small business mistakes. Oh, and I asked all our managers to read The E-Myth book as well…highly recommend to all fellow Entrepreneurs!
