We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dunia Hamed. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dunia below.

Dunia, appreciate you joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

I opened my business, Peach Lab, with the intent to scale and grow it. I think it’s really important to know that if you want to open more than one location of the same business-systems and processes need to be firmly in place, organized, and easily replicated. You definitely can’t scale a business by running it like a mom and pop. Procedures, policies, and processes all need to be organized and implemented across the board. When you don’t have these systems in place, it makes growing a disaster. You have to be able to open another business and know that it will be ran exactly as you’d want your first one to be ran and you can do that without clear guidelines. Hiring processes, opening and closing checklists, policies, procedures, budgets, etc. all need to be organized and implemented across all stores.

I definitely didn’t realize a lot of this when I just had my one location open-I had to learn and adapt as I grew. I think just knowing that you will have to regroup and adapt multiple times is really important, and also knowing that owning one business is hard so owning multiple is even harder. Mentally prepare yourself for the work because the reward in watching your business grow is so worth it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always had a passion for health and fitness, and have been a personal trainer for most of my adult life. I went to college for something completely different but kept finding myself coming back to the fitness industry. Most of my clients were females and almost all of them wanted to focus on lifting, shaping, and toning their glutes. I began running classes and my clients were getting great results. My husband has always been an entrepreneur and so he inspired me to open my own business, and I remember telling him I think that it would be amazing to have a studio where the classes are centered around the lower body since that’s what the majority of my female clientele have wanted. I saw a gap in the market in the studios that seemed very male dominated and environments that were intimidating. Peach Lab was the marriage of the concept for creating a class based studio for lower body workouts and the “peachy environment” I, as a woman, have wanted to see in other studios. Peach Lab is first to market with class based lower body workouts, and is a very clean, beautiful instagrammable studio.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

For us, building a strong community has been key in our company’s success. We do a lot for our clients to foster brand loyalty aside from having a great product. We do a ton of community challenges that keep the clients engaged and interested in continuing their workouts. For instance, we do a 12 days of Christmas challenge every year where there are daily challenges and the winner receives a prize from other local businesses daily. We do a lot of philanthropy in the studio as well-this is a great way to keep the clients and community together and to bring people close for great causes. People love to see business owners give back in their communities. We also do a ton of community out reach and pop ups with other local businesses. We love to bring businesses in our studio so clients can shop, have tasty treats, or get some quick services in after a workout. It’s great exposure for all businesses involved and the clients love the fun, thoughtfulness of it. We also do client appreciation days, anniversary parties, etc. The more we can do to keep our clients engaged and to keep things exciting, the better.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I think it’s so important for every team member to feel heard and valued. I think it’s important to organize staff outings to keep your team engaged and to let them know that you care. Regular communication is so important-you want your staff to feel like they can come to you with problems, issues, or ideas. Setting your ego aside and allowing ideas to flow freely with your staff is crucial in maintaining an environment where staff want to come to work and want to put in the extra effort. Creating a “me vs you” environment is one of the worst things you can do as a leader-people thrive in collaborative environments. Also-small gestures go a long way. Staff appreciation days, bringing in coffee or lunch, birthday surprises, New year bonuses-these things go a long way for morale.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://peachlabmi.com
• Instagram: @Peachlabmi, @peachlab.rochester, @peachlab.annarbor, @peachlab.tampa