Building a Brand
T Minus 3 Years
When I opened a yoga studio, it might have been the first time in my life that I did something out of love, rather than a desire to prove I could do it. Of course, it felt good to know that by the age of 29 I was the owner of a brick and mortar business. But that was never the point.
At first, my job with the software company was a dream come true; a good paycheck and lots of travel. I was on an airplane Monday through Friday. Each day, a different city, another rental car, another hotel room, another airport. But it wasn’t long before I was exhausted. I was earning a nice paycheck, so I upgraded from my inland, shared living situation to a studio apartment on the sand at the beach. I bought a cute little car and an attractive new wardrobe. And I was still exhausted.
A handful of times while in grad school, I had surfed, taking out a board and splashing around. But the summer I moved to the beach, I surfed almost every day until wetsuit season that fall. I was hooked. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t paddle past the white water or turn my board; it felt like a part of me that I never knew I possessed had come alive. Living at the beach, waking each morning to the sound of waves and the smell of salt, made me feel like a rose, just beginning to open. Around this time, I started practicing yoga. I joined a studio whose classes made me feel like I was undergoing heart surgery.
Surfing needs to be done when the swell is at the correct size and angle, when the tide is right for the location, and when the wind comes from the correct direction. Additionally, surfing is best enjoyed when the crowds are light and the sun is shining. Rarely do all of these conditions conspire at the same time. Even if just a few of the factors align, surfers value the freedom to get out in the water when the waves are good. I was falling in love with surfing, but my job made it almost impossible to freely enjoy it.
All weekend, I would surf with Kurt, but Sunday night would arrive and I would board an airplane and fly to places like Fresno and Scottsdale. And I would wilt. Many developing surfers are faced with the same dilemma: a steady job or a surf lifestyle. It took two years to work up the courage to find another solution to pay my bills. My father ran his own business, my sister was self-employed in real estate, my older brother and his wife both ran their own businesses, my younger brothers always had side hustles going on…it was time for me to venture out on my own. I wanted to be with Kurt and at the beach. I wanted to surf and do yoga and be around the man and the place I loved.
And I was falling madly in love with Kurt. We had been together over a year, and I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. One day, on another work trip, I called him from my hotel room. I told him that I saw a family in our future. I told him that, with my current job, there was no way that would happen. I would need to have a job that allowed me to be a mom. Thus began the conversation about opening a yoga studio. I wrote a business plan, applied for funding and the idea for TriPower Yoga was born.
After a couple of months of planning and saving, I eagerly shared with my Mom my plans for starting a small business. My Mom, in her unhelpful helpful way, shot back all the reasons I could fail. Being one that always needs outside permission, especially mom’s permission, I allowed her to infect my mind with questions of worthiness and arrogance. Am I crazy arrogant for wanting to do this without a business degree? Who do I think I am to do this when I wasn’t an experienced yoga teacher? That night, I told Kurt what my Mom had said. I asked him if I was crazy for wanting to open a yoga studio.
“No way!” he reassured me.
“You are so smart, you can do anything you try. Even if it doesn’t take off right away, I can pay the bills. You should do what you love. You are smart enough to make it work!”
And that was it. With Kurt’s permission I felt validated. I put in notice at my job. I had saved some money, and a small business loan came through for the rest. Over Christmas break, Kurt and his contractor friends completed the build out of TriPower Yoga. I built a website, designed a logo and promotional materials, plastered the town with posters, created a social media presence, mailed out flyers, joined the local merchants association, hired instructors and planned a grand opening.
My heart ached for success, not because I cared if anyone knew me or knew of my yoga studio, but because I wanted to do something I loved. I wanted to share my gift of teaching and help people learn something that was helping me. I wanted to be near Kurt and create an income source that would self-sustain after a few years, so Kurt and I could consider having kids. I wanted to bring something positive to the run down beach community that I loved. I wanted to get my hair salty and lose myself in the ocean on a daily basis.
I had no clue what I was doing. But the home schooled student inside me, the one who taught herself how to read and solve equations, was confident she could figure it out. I had never run a business before. But I knew that other people had done it–why shouldn’t I? I hadn’t even completed my yoga teacher training certification when we opened the doors. But I had been teaching some donation classes and was confident I could do the job well enough. I stood on the corner every week, for hours, meeting people and handing out flyers for my studio. This was both humbling and awesome. Four out of five people would push past me like I was annoying them to even suggest that they might want a free yoga class. But the ones who stopped and took me up on my offer were genuinely excited, and many ended up becoming my friends.
My confidence, however, was still lacking. I was opening on a shoestring budget, so my studio wasn’t as nice as the one up the road. Despite my initial optimism, I had no real faith in my teaching ability. My family having taught me to be so frugal, I fretted, Who am I to charge a premium for my service? So, I undercut the industry and made my classes the cheapest in the entire city.
Opening a business in one of the poorest beach communities, presenting a product at a price point that made it seem sub-par, was an approach exactly in step with my normal operating mode. I believed I wasn’t worth much. I believed I had something to prove before I would ever be worthy. Therefore, I believed my product wasn’t worth much either.
For six months, the business grew slowly and consistently. But things never took off as I had hoped. I was out of savings and depending on Kurt to pay most of the bills. Although Kurt was the type of person that loved to take care of his girl, I was humbled. I had been paying my own bills since 18, and had never once asked anyone for money. But I was happy, and remained hopeful. I felt I just needed to find the right marketing niche.
But the money never became what I thought it would be. Within 18 months of TriPower’s opening, three more yoga studios opened in the same neighborhood. Kurt willingly paid all of the rent on our apartment, utilities and food. I brought home just enough to cover my student loans, cell phone bill and gas for my car. But I was surfing every day, doing yoga and spending time with the love of my life. I remained hopeful that things would take off at TriPower. So, my labor of love went on.
Falling back on the example of my father, I began working harder. Clearly, I was doing something wrong. I put in more hours, created more events, spent more time marketing. I stood on the corner longer, handing out free class flyers for months. Before long, I surfed less and spent less time with Kurt. I was teaching so many classes to save on payroll that I never wanted to practice yoga for myself. I calculated that, if I taught the same number of classes for someone else, I would actually be making more money.
I could see Kurt’s growing frustration with my lack of success, or at least that’s how I perceived it. I never considered that I might be the frustrated one, passing judgement on myself. Kurt seemed upset when I’d pass a restaurant check to him. But, in retrospect, I don’t recall him ever saying anything about it. I would come home from the studio, and he would ask me how many people had attended class that evening. I felt like he was judging me. He wasn’t. He wanted me to be successful just as much as I wanted to be. But my frail self esteem didn’t see it that way.
Little by little, Kurt seemed to change. He seemed less interested in going out surfing with me, going for bike rides or attending social events with me. I assumed it was because I was such a miserable failure and he couldn’t stand to be around me. While he watched more surf movies, I stayed longer hours at the yoga studio because something felt off in our home. He quit serving on the board of directors at a recovery facility because he couldn’t stand to wear a tie. His topics of conversation shifted from objects of gratitude to how he thought his friends should act. It must have been all my fault. I was making him miserable.
When we finally decided to communicate about what was going on, I got a much different answer than I expected.
He Called The Me F word
T Minus 2.5 years
My two years with Kurt were better than those I had with Josh. Still, a lot of me ignored him as I spent long hours building my yoga brand, and he ignored me while spending long hours watching TV. Eventually, that tight feeling in my chest returned, and we revisited the conversation we’d started on the plane…the conversation we’d started just a few days before I agreed to spend the rest of my life with him.
One night, sitting on opposite couches, Kurt zoned out to the TV while I browsed my email. The silence was so loud I couldn’t take it. The familiar tension in my chest seemed to choke me. Something needed saying. I blurted out that I was feeling like a roommate, not a lover, that sex had dwindled, that he didn’t compliment me or touch me anymore, and that I felt like I annoyed him more than anything.
“Well, there is one thing we should talk about,” he said. He muted the TV and asked me to come sit by him. He looked me in the eye and said the words I will never forget.
“I love everything about our relationship. I have so much fun with you. I really love you.”
He rested his hand on my leg. I could feel him setting up to dish out a blow.
“There is just one problem,” he paused to choose his words, “You’ve gained so much weight, I’m just not attracted to you anymore.”
I wanted to puke. My entire body, not just my stomach, felt like it was going to vomit. My blank face refused to form an expression. I was motionless. Time stopped. Finally, I managed to say that I didn’t understand. He clarified,
“Well, you have gained a lot of weight since the wedding.”
“I’ve gained three pounds.”
It was true. I tracked my weight weekly, with an app. I had gained three pounds. I had six pack abs and rope-like arms. I wasn’t getting my period because I was underweight for my frame.
But I knew exactly how he had arrived at idea that I was getting fat. I had given it to him myself.
My body was as lean as ever, yet my body image was in the worst shape ever. I constantly complained about how I felt fat. The complaining was really just my way of looking for reassurance that I was not fat at all and, even if I was, that I was still loved. But no outside source could ever give me the validation I needed. What I was asking from Kurt was not only unfair, it was impossible for him to give. It was no wonder he had been distancing himself. He subconsciously understood that he wasn’t able to give me what I needed, and it pained him. Kurt was in a bad spot mentally too, believing he wasn’t worthy of all the good things in his life. He had stopped regularly attending recovery meetings and wasn’t working a spiritual program. So, we both found ways to sabotage the blessing we had in each other.
I grabbed my purse and my journal, and left. I spent the night in the yoga studio. After two hours of crying in child’s pose, I remembered the warning he had given me when we first started dating:
“If I ever relapse, promise me you will leave me.”
It was the loophole to my vows that day on Sunset Beach. I told my journal, “I want out. A part of me hopes he relapses. Of course I don’t want that for him, I just want out.” I piled up ten yoga mats and used two more for blankets. I spent a miserable night tossing my bony frame from side to side and crying, feeling absolutely trapped.
The next morning, I told him something had to change. He promised things would change. He promised he would go to more meetings, go to therapy, meet with his sponsor, sponsor other guys in the program. And he meant it. He felt awful. He really did love me, but we shared the same issues, and neither of us loved ourselves.
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*some names have been changed to protect privacy
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