Getting Real with Brittany Phelps

Well, hello, hello again. Again, again, again. We're getting real with Brittany Phelps talking about her journey in scaling her business. Getting up now to five locations in a business that often, often stays very local in what she's building. There will be talking specifically about her participation in the EO accelerator program and all the things that she's gone through as a leader. What is that like? Whether your business is large or small, there's something to learn from the experience of a leader and growing their business. Hi again everyone. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. You can find hundreds of episodes like these on leadership and scaling up at our website, scalingcoach.com, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify.

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Show are all about how our leadership has been shaped over time by the growth of the business, the kinds of lucky breaks that we've had, where we've navigated breakdowns and surprises along the way, the things that have frightened us or embarrassed us, the regrets that we've had and how we're growing and developing as leaders. What we're reaching for. Our episodes are sponsored by the Bay Area Entrepreneurs Organization Chapters. They're known as EO commonly and it's.

A member led organization that really provides a place for entrepreneurs to grow, learn.

And connect with other entrepreneurs in a.

Peer led, member led kind of an organization.

I'm proud to have been a member of this group for about 21 years now with a variety of companies and in different roles in the organization. These members in our local chapters in the Bay Area are then connected to chapters all over the world with over 14,000 members worldwide. So if you want more information about EO, what it's like, whether or not you should join or all that, you'll find that@eonetwork.org so listening now as we talk with Brittany Phelps about her experience in growing and scaling her business. Welcome to show. Brittany, welcome.

Thank you, Bill. So glad to be here.

Thanks for joining. So you are in Colorado somewhere, right?

I am. I'm in Summit County, Colorado.

And with the tan on your face, I'd say you've been skiing around Torres recently.

Skiing and biking.

Nice. I'm jealous of that I have not skied at all for the last year. I kept thinking I would go, but it was a little complicated with the COVID and I suppose I could have found a way. But I have been at the beach more than the.

Oh, that's a good trade.

It's not a bad. Yes. But you know, I do like to. To mix it up like in the winter, do more skiing in the summer, then spend more time in the beach, but then escape either one. Right. Like to go. To go in the winter, off to Hawaii or something. And then I don't know if there's an equivalent. Right. You have to go very far south, get down to Australia or New Zealand to go skiing or something in the.

Yeah. Chile in the summer.

Yeah. Never been. Awesome. So we're going to talk about your business.

Let's.

Let me just tell a little bit about. So Thrive Yoga Studios, right. Is the business and she's building a. A franchise group of yoga studios. And you'll speak to that a little bit because so many are very independent or just very regional. And then there have been some national chains, but you're doing yours a little bit differently, which I think is cool. She's a runner, skier, mountain biker, dirt biker, yogi, Loves integrating all of these things together. Started in Crested Butte, Colorado, then moved on to. How do you say that? Other town, Fruita, Fruita Fruta, Fruit of Colorado. And then has grown onto that now even in College Station, Texas. She works on getting a community and a business that says representative of the work and yet and yet scales and has this Pranapreneurs conscious business mentorship program that you'll talk a little bit about. So before we start about what Pranapreneur conscious business mentor. It's a whole mouthful, right?

Pranapreneurship. Why did you start this business?

Why?

Why this business? What were you doing before?

Sure, I had a pretty extensive background in sales and marketing for smaller mountain bike, outdoor adventure travel, travel and tourism companies. And I was also a yoga instructor. I have been since I was in college and always knew the benefits of yoga and bringing those principles to the world. And so I had an opportunity to do so and had an opportunity to test the waters of entrepreneurship. And so I did.

Now what was the impetus or that was there, like a shop came open or somebody wanted to sell their business or what created that first moment?

Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to share. It's a pretty cool story. So I was working in the mountain bike industry in Fruita and decided I wanted to do A winter in the mountains. So I moved to Crested Butte, Colorado. And Crested Butte is this amazing mountain town nestled it's really like 14 miles away from Aspen as the crow flies. But it's really hard to get to otherwise. And there was this great yoga studio that was there, and I fell in love with it, and I spent all of my time going there and had formed a great relationship with the previous owner. In a side conversation, she just said to me she wanted to move on and try something else. And without even looking at the facts or the figures, I just jumped on it, like, oh, I could do this. This could be my chance. So I fe love with that community. And eight months later, I had acquired that small business.

That's really cool.

So the obvious question, what about the last year? What have you done through Covid? How have you dealt with that?

Yeah, it's sort of like, what haven't we done to adapt in Covid? We. We closed. We opened with 20% capacity. We've adapted to 30% capacity with masks. We've taught everything outdoors. We've launched virtual platforms. We have evolved so many times and adapted so many times during 2020.

I wouldn't have wanted to be in, like, a Kundalini class in the last year.

Yeah, it was really odd. The benefits of yoga, the primary benefit is breathwork and moving your body and community. And those were two things that were shunned in 2020. So it was a really amazing thing, I think, though, for yoga studios, and it was for us, because we had a chance to stop everything and assess what is working, what wasn't working, what do we love, what do we not love? And so we took advantage of that and we got very organized. We took advantage of resources that were available to us. And, you know, honestly, as a group, we emerged way stronger than I could have even anticipated.

It's interesting that, that, I mean, because others have gone out of business, right? And some people have thrown in the towel, some people couldn't. Did you have to do anything like, did you get rent relief? Did you get PPP money? Can you do that even with contractor instructors?

So we. We did get PPP money. We got very little, but. But it was every little bit helped. You know, we were really lucky. I have a hilarious story of how I bought the business. And I made sure, for whatever reason, I heard this, like, Tony Robbins podcast about recession proofing your business. And I took that very seriously from day one. And so I worked very hard for three years to make sure we had no business debt. And when Covid hit. We were in an okay position financially.

Because you didn't have the debt, right?

Yep. And so our landlords, everyone was great to us. They offered us to. What would it. Would you say, like, spread out our rent for the next few months, which would be the next few years. And I turned that down just because I had money in the bank and I was able to pay our rent, and I didn't want to stretch that debt any longer than I needed to. So. And, you know, in Covid, I ended. I ended up. Because I was able to close my locations for three months. I had the time to build an operations manual, an HR manual, staff manuals, redo our websites. Like, I got so organized that we closed.

Because of COVID Because of.

Yeah, really good.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so we closed March 11. We closed our three locations, and then by April 15, I franchised my first studio, and then we opened in June, and by September, I franchised the second. So that pause was imperative for me, really, to be able to scale.

Interesting. So what would you say was harder? Getting into the business and funding it.

Initially or dealing with the COVID restrictions?

100% starting the business, because this is. This is hilarious. I'm so glad you asked me this, because in with COVID it was like the whole world was experiencing the financial crisis.

And.

With business startup, I was going on character. I was going on my forecasts. I didn't have the rest of, like, the banking and lending industry was not about saving small business necessarily. So, like, to be able to fund the business, create proof of concept, you know, just build my character, build trust, build community, was exhausting, you know, for. And that was like three years of all day, every single day. So I laugh because I am grateful that I had both. I've had the opportunity to experience both of those challenges.

It's interesting.

What would you say has been your luckiest break so far? Ooh.

I've had a few. And I'm going out on a limb here, but I feel like I'm just on the verge of my luckiest break right now through eoa, through my accountability coach. He just connected me with a woman who has 20 plus years of growing boutique fitness franchise franchises and units. And so we just started meeting, and I feel like I found the perfect mentor with the right contacts. Like, so I'm really excited about where we're heading with that.

Yeah. Interesting how a connection can be one of our luckiest breaks. Making friends with someone who knows something that we never realized we needed to know. So talk about your experience in the EO accelerator program. How long have you been in the program? What have you been applying from it? Where have you been benefiting from it?

Sure.

I joined, I think my class or my group began. My first learning day was in April of 2020.

And.

So I've been able to do three learning days or two learning days in our third is this Thursday. And those have been exceptional. My accountability, I mean, just to be able to apply the content that I'm reading to those active working sessions has been really productive. Like I said, my accountability group, my coach has really perfect connections for me and he's been very willing to introduce me to all the right people.

And so for our listeners, the accountability groups are a group of peers with a volunteer coach who's just got a little bit bigger business, who's helping the group move through the work of the program. And these accountability groups meet in between individual, what we call learning days. They're one day workshops where we dive deep into people, Strategy, execution, cash, the four decisions from the scaling it book. The scaling up book, really the genesis, the beginning of that started with an EO program called the Birthing of Giants, where in working with that program, Verne distilled and honed. He might say it a little bit differently, but roughly the original Rockefeller habits from reading the book titan about John D. Rockefeller's life. And then that eventually grew into the whole scaling up framework, which includes people, strategy, execution and cash. And that core curriculum is the foundation of the EO accelerator program, which between the participants in the program and the coaches, the other people are running the program reaches about 2,000 companies around the world roughly right now per year. And you are in the program in Colorado, right?

Correct, Correct. And it's been really interesting in the accountability groups to see the scaling of curriculum be so applicable and helpful across all industries.

Yeah. So it's not. These tools are not industry specific. This is what yoga studios need to do or what a construction business or what a web marketing firm or what, you know, pick any number of different firms. They are fairly universal things that deal with growing and scaling the business. So you're now five. And what does the growth look like for. For the next year for you?

I have three more pending locations and booyah. Yeah, it's really exciting. And moving more towards urban destinations. Right now all studios are in smaller towns.

Yeah.

So three more locations, which is more than I planned to accomplish as we're moving out of 2020. So I stand to be, I think I stand to be. What's the word? Like Corrected on what I thought we would accomplish in a year's time.

Yeah. And which of the tools or decision areas is impacting you the most? How is that showing up? What are you doing or not doing of these things? Where has it shifted your business?

Sure. Execution, hands down has been one of the most profound tools for me right now. In one less than a year, I've gone from being the owner operator of numerous studios to being the owner of a brand, to be developing this onboarding system and then having this onboarding system even need to scale to meet the demands of more studio owners than I originally anticipated. So in so many ways, execution is helping me systematize not only what's happening in the studios, but also what's happening within the brand. And more specifically, I lean on the 10 Rockefeller Habits. I look at them at least monthly, just as a checklist and reminder of what needs to happen within my organization as a brand, as well as what needs to happen within individual locations.

You know, I've coached billion dollar public companies that are not doing it with the same rigor. You're doing it. So I appreciate that you're digging in deep with it. So you're using the rock habits as your checklist on things. You're implementing the process. You're becoming more of a worker on the business than in the business and shifting that over time. So you've been in it for about a year now. The accelerator program.

Yep, yep.

We're coming back on execution day right now in the next quarter as we speak and record this today. Many people will hear this as our accelerator participants around the world are going through that deeper dive. So you're about to hear kind of some of the same things and then some new things in the world of execution. And you just came out of the.

People day right now, right?

Yep, absolutely.

So the stores, the studios that you have today, they are. Were those people originally employees or did they buy into these franchise concepts? How has that evolved?

They've all come to the studios a little bit differently, come to the studio brand. None of them have been employees thus far. One is a student, another one was a partner in the community. Another woman joined from being a part of Pranapreneurs. And then. So one of those owners owns two locations and then we have a new location opening in the next pending six months coming soon. Who found the studios through search and just coming to the other locations.

Yeah, I lost my train of thought there. Oh yeah. I wanted to understand about how your.

How your franchise model is different than.

Other yoga Franchise models. What have you done that's unique there?

Yeah, I love this question. So I don't know if you know this, but there's roughly 46,500 yoga and pilates studios in America. They do 500 of them are, are really successful like. And so that's. Well, now that number is growing with the emergence of a new yoga brand. So we'll say 2,000 of them are very successful. And most of those, if not all of them, are in urban areas. They are franchised and they just rely on volume. So they may not even be necessarily super profitable, but they're having respectable income and revenues. So Thrive Yoga Studio is what I'm excited about is my passion was to be able to put a yoga studio in every community that desired one. And so that means it's not the template and the business model isn't just based on volume. In fact, we can build studios in communities with the. We factor in about four students per class so we can build a profitable studio in a very small community.

Because you can do it with fewer people. Yeah. And does that work for the yoga instructors?

It still works, actually. We pay our. We are very proud that we pay our teachers very well. We don't cap their earnings. So some of our teachers, like in Crested Butte, can earn up to $200.

A class because they're putting a lot of people in the class and they're developing their following. Now it seems to me I don't know your category really well, but a number of the studios really focus on developing the teacher trainings, like getting people to become instructors who may or may not turn it into a business, but develop a level of mastery. Many probably think that they might do that. Is that good or bad? What are your thoughts on that?

I think it depends. Both. It's good if you're. If you're building a really quality program and if your end goal is to become more of a school like in your committing to that continuing education component, you where you're not just pumping out teachers with low level certifications, but instead you're setting your teachers up to be career yoga instructors, which is not a thing right now, but hopefully that becomes a thing in the next few years.

Now you're talking about a pranapreneur program. Are you also working with them on their business skills?

Yes, I am. So when I started, I had 30 subcontractors that were teaching a range from part time to full time in my one studio in Crested Butte. And most of them were also artists, massage therapists. I need multiple different types of therapists there. So they had this variety of skill sets and they just couldn't necessarily pull it all together in a way that could both build value and be sustaining for them as a career. And so I saw these really talented people and I got to work with all these really talented people and I started to kind of build this business training program for yogis and yoga instructors. And then as I got. As the years went on, I saw it was an opportunity for me to build a training curriculum for yoga studio owners. And so that's what it's evolved into. It's a conscious business training platform for those that are either already thrive yoga owners or are aspiring yoga studio owners.

Interesting. Do any of the other programs teach the business skills like that or are they focused just on the yoga skills.

Studios or other.

The franchise groups that are developing instructors?

My understanding is that the ones that we see doing very well do have solid owner training programs, and the ones that do not do very well and are losing locations actively do not have really great business training programs for their owners.

Yeah, it's a separate skill. And it may not be the core reason of. The reason that somebody started a yoga studio in the first place. It might just not be that, that, that world. So tell me about your biggest mistakes or regret. Is there something that stands out for you? Well, I really screwed up that and thank God I'm still here. But if I could go back and do it over a mistake or regret that you've had so far?

Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I can I share a little bit of a backstory about that.

Absolutely, yes.

We love story.

When I bought my first studio, I bought it with my tax return. Yeah, I had $10,000 and I convinced the owner to allow me to make her deposits over time so that I could pay down the balance and then I would pay her a fee every month. And so I bought this business with. I started this business with very little money and I had to account for every single penny every day. And that brought so much unnecessary stress.

And.

I also had some really good employees at the time. And because I was afraid of funding and going to get business loans, I didn't get to keep them. And I feel like if I had a little more confidence in the way my business would grow or how profitable it would be, I could have went out on a limb, got a little bit more financing and kept really good people from the start rather than losing them and having to regain that traction with my staff a couple times since then.

Yeah, it really Hurts to have to lose people and then try to bring them back. And if you can't give people something sustainable, they have to go and take care of themselves some other place.

Yeah.

That was one thing our learning day coach shares. You have a responsibility for your employees.

Yeah. Who's leading your learning days now?

Oh, gosh. His. I can't even. His name is Ryan and I can't think of his last name. Yeah, yeah, he's great. He's been great.

Yeah. He's very playful and energetic. Right. Loves the games and things like that. He and I are friends and we're.

So really different in how we do.

A lot of chicken gaps.

There's more than one way to do it and do it well. So talk to me then about what's your big challenge? What do you really want? If you look way out, do you have a bhag or something? Amount you want to conquer?

I really do. When I started with eo, I learned about this bhag, your big perio, and I said I would put a studio in every state. So I wanted 50 studios in the United States. I think that goal seems too small now, in my opinion. And so I am hoping to see about 100 studios in the next five years. And my goal is twofold. It's to grow as big as we can without losing our authenticity and to reinvent the franchise yoga business. Because right now it's pretty looked down upon by the 44,000 other yoga studios that exist in America.

So you're out to reinvent that. That business, the reputation of the business. Yeah. And create something that still stands. And it's. It's. You've moved from 50 to 100 or some number beyond that.

I think that I've moved from 50 to 100 just because of what I'm seeing right now and how boutique fitness is exploring, floating. And I just haven't been able to wrap my head around how I will maintain that authenticity and the quality above 100 studios. But I think I'm just missing the people who can show me how to do that. So I'm holding.

You don't have to look at the stats to realize something's going on. Because everywhere you look, there's something opening up, whether it's a yoga studio or a spin studio or an orange fitness or some other kind of thing like that. Right. Is popping up everywhere in these little boutique things where people crossfit. Right. Everywhere people are getting their thing on and they're focused not on having, like, everything. Oh, I want the equipment and Then I want the basketball and I want the pool and that kind of thing that, that old school like we have everything kind of health club and we have these boutique things where you get in, you do your thing, you get out of there. But they do kind of become a lifestyle community center around special interests, right?

Absolutely.

Of what we're into. It's really cool. So what do you think is your big challenge now in grappling and in moving towards that? What's the gap for you as the leader in developing the business?

Hmm.

What are you not good at? Where do you need something? Where do you feel like it's a real challenge for you, you'd really like to solve?

Right.

The challenge I'm sitting with right now is identifying who do I need, who do I need to help me take the next few steps. The franchise world is big and it's fast and I'm really happy in my small sweet town. And so hopefully this mentor or I'm hopeful that this mentor will help become a bridge. And then I know I need to find a few more influencers, mentors and people to hire and bring on board.

So one of our I'll just suggest something to you. One of our scaling up success stories. EO member all around nice guy Brian Scudamore of 1-800-got junk and now O2E brands has really figured out something about franchising that works for them and there.

Are some tools he uses including the vivid vision process.

But in particular he they're really focused.

On there's a certain kind of person.

That really works to become a successful franchisee and there are other people who are not and they work on finding.

And developing the people and he'd be someone for you to kind of check out and, and learn and, and study more in depth. He certainly talked.

There's YouTube clips and there's articles and.

Things like that with Brian out there.

Yep, yep, I'll look into that. I, I've become very familiar with his story in the last year.

O2E ordinary to excellent, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. That's a really awesome story.

I want to remind everyone that this show is sponsored by the Bay Area Entrepreneurs Organization Chapters EO members. EO is a member led organization. Best place for entrepreneurs to find the peers to connect and learn and grow with. And I've been a member of the organization for 21 years now. Oh my God. I'm a lifer. We're in each of our chapters connected to over 14,000 members around the world with access to their connections and their friends. And we have this thing called intimacy where we naturally help each other and are open and connected with each other. It's really remarkable. You meet somebody from Pakistan or from China, China from the UK or whatever, and suddenly you have a capable new friend who gets your world and gets who you are. If you want more information about eo, whether it be the Bay Area or somewhere else, visit eonetwork.org and to get more information, I want to give big thanks to Lucy Summers there helping in the background produce our show, get our guests prepped and scheduled and our shows distributed and all that kind of thing. If the show is helpful to you, please share it with somebody else so they get some help too. And if you enjoyed it, like it, subscribe to it, give us a review. If you subscribe, either wherever you get your podcast or on our website, you'll get them every week automatically and you won't miss a one. We do three a week, a little bit different format for each of the three. So there's a tip on Tuesday, there's a deep dive and there on Wednesday there's a Getting Real show every Sunday. And of course now we record them live so you can watch the live streams and get that too on YouTube and Facebook. You can also drop us an email to info scalingcoach.com if you want to give us some feedback or connect to anyone or suggest something or whatever. Info scalingcoach.com is your email all those episodes and more@scalingcoach.com Big thanks to Vern Harnish, as we said, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework. The audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions. Our shownotes are written up by Ein Codina and proofread by Tim McGowan. I want to thank Brittany Phelps for joining us today and sharing about your show. If you want to find more information about Brittany, Thrive yoga studios.com thriveyogastudios.com learn all about her business. If you're in that business, you're like, oh, I want to have one of those franchises right away. Talk to Brittany. Thanks again everyone for listening and watching. Keep Scaling Up. Bye bye.