So every year from the time BL opened until 2008, we grew! Just a steady increase in bodies, number of classes and revenue. Then 2008 hit us hard as it did most businesses. But thanks in large part to the huge popularity of Zumba at this time, we were able to keep our heads above water and land on the other side of the 2008 -11 recession. Shortly after this, the physical therapist who was had occupied the space between fitness and yoga moved out. So for those of you who weren’t around at this time, let me paint you a picture. You walked in through the same doors your do now to sign in but then if you’re going to yoga you walk right back out the same doors and head in to the yoga door two doors down. No big deal except when it’s pouring down rain or in the middle of a snow storm. So when the landlord told us this space between fitness and yoga was opening up, it just made sense for us to take it over.
I say that with apparent ease now…like it just made sense so let’s do it BUT those around me at this time knew that I really wrestled with taking on more space. Not only would I be paying significantly more rent but my utilities would almost double. PLUS…we had to figure out what we were going to do with this space. We tossed around several ideas like adding Spinning or a third room for either another fitness or yoga class. We even considered making part of this area a Blow Dry Bar. Ha!! What seemed to be obvious to others is that if we were taking on more cost we should defray some of that by brining in more revenue. Right?? But as were tossing around a bunch of ideas, what Chris and I kept coming back to is that what we really needed was more space for our BL peeps to connect. We knew that much of what set BL apart from other workout or yoga businesses, was our community. Many of us have come to BL looking for a great workout or yoga class and been thrilled to have made life long friends along the way. So if that’s a big part of what BL is about, why not create more space for us all to connect? Oh, and it also created a space for those students who ONLY did fitness to meet those students who ONLY did yoga. (And realize they aren’t so scary!) It created a more inclusive environment which has since resulted in more peeps crossing back and forth from fitness to yoga. It has offered a space for students to linger after classes and get to chat to their friends and make new ones. It also has given us a space to do social hours after many of our events.
With this vision in sight we now needed to figure out logistics, traffic flow and oh and a name for the area!! This venture was challenging. Dave took an entire year off his art job and employed Chris’ son, Chase, and the 2 of them took on, what turned out to be, a year long project. There were a LOT of decisions to be made like where to put the child care room, how to bust through a cinder brick wall, and which doors did we want students go in and out of. Not to mention picking out the faux finishes for all the walls and decorating the whole space. We had a good team with different skill sets. Chris was great at envisioning traffic flow and managed all the logistics…Dave was capable of executing and beautifying whatever we were envisioning and my role was often just to say…yep, I love turquoise!! One of the biggest challenges was busting through the cinder brick wall. We had to hire a structural engineer and close BL for a week due to safety and the huge mess this created. So we moved our classes to upstairs at Matter of Taste for one week. Clients said they loved doing yoga or fitness with a view of Union Lake.
Now that we have busted through the wall, we needed a name for the space we had created. Chris and I were at our friend Mary’s getting our hair done one afternoon, and we started brainstorming. Objective was to find a name that described a space for students to connect but also to describe a connection between fitness and yoga. The key word was connect…Mary was actually the one who came up with the perfect name…The Link!!! It says it all!!
Start to finish…the Link and the lower level Zen Zone for massages, took us a year to complete. Chris and I had lot of fun decorating it with furniture and rugs donated by family members, picked up at garage sales or, the place that became our favorite place to be, Home Goods!! Looking back, I’m so glad that I was encouraged by Chris and Dave to make the leap, to take on this additional space and that so many have enjoyed and appreciated this space to connect!!
