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

Alright, Elyssa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

When you hear AwareWolf, we would bet money that ‘yoga studio’ doesn’t come to mind. AwareWolf started as a play on words. Our tag line is “A Space to Transform” – so if you think of the thrilling creature that haunts us in Halloween stories, you would think of a werewolf, and they transform. But as we thought about, more and more the name made sense. We are a space that encourages transformation, whether that be through a yoga practice, event, or community gathering. We also sit on the rooftop of a nightclub, so each weekend we “transform” back to a night club, then back to AwareWolf during the week. We want to help people build awareness; awareness of self, awareness of others, and awareness of the planet. So the name ‘AwareWolf’ stuck. It represented all things we wanted to bring to the community. Transformation, awareness, and definitely a lil something out of the box. As a bonus, a wolf is an amazing creature, representing strength, community and intuition. Thus how we became AwareWolf.

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?

My name is Elyssa, and I’m one of the co-creators of AwareWolf SD. AwareWolf is a unique yoga and event space on the rooftop of Spin Nightclub. We offer 25+ classes a week on our beautiful rooftop, as well as classes at the Grand Artique in Barrio Logan and Quartyard in Downtown SD. We host an array of community events such as sound baths, local hikes, yoga & DJ classes, comedy shows, workshops of all sorts, festival & holiday markets, and so much more. Our main goal is to build community. My passion is bringing people together – I love it, so no better way to do that then to start a business that gives me the platform to do just that,

AwareWolf is community. Sure we teach yoga, but we go far beyond four walls of a yoga studio. Quite literally given we are a rooftop experience. We’ve created a space for people to get whatever they need from their yoga practice; insight, healing, restoration, community, connection, and of course transformation, but also a place to go beyond the yoga mat, to take what you practice on the mat, off.

I’m most proud of the community we have built thus far. It’s a collective of rad humans out to make a difference in this world and within themselves. As we grow, we are always looking for ways to keep the community strong, always coming up with fun new activations and events.

You can’t come to AwareWolf with expectations of what a yoga studio ‘should be’. We offer a variety of unique classes that highlight our teachers talents and individuality. Our space alone is unlike anything else. So if you are a “think outside the box or do things a lil differently” kinda person, then we’re the place for you!

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Branno and I met through mutual friends. He’d come in and out of my life for the first few years of knowing him, each time getting a little more insight as to who he was. Even as the years passed, and only seeing him for shorts amount of time, I felt a deep connection to him, I knew he was ‘my people’. When my husband and I got married, we asked Branno to officiate our wedding in 2016. Fast forward to quarantine in 2020, Branno was over at the house when I asked about using the rooftop of Spin Nightclub to host in-person yoga classes. Thus AwareWolf was born.

Our story may not be a fascinating one, but what I love about it is how our relationship had to build slowly over the years. We had to learn skills, make friends, lose friends, and experience success and failures in order for our paths to align perfectly when it did to bring AwareWolf into fruition. We’re in this moment of time together for a reason, and I am so incredibly grateful for his friendship, trust and guidance through all of it.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Oh social media, it’s a love/hate relationship isn’t it? When it comes to my own personal social media platforms (mostly Instagram) you’ll find pictures of my family, pretty plants and murals – I never put too much energy to ‘build it’ or promote myself as a yoga teacher or become an influencer. I honestly though it was too much work, but with AwareWolf, I had to. So many people use social media, instagram specifically, that I knew I had to change my outlook on it. We are lucky that we have such a beautiful rooftop space, the pictures of that alone are enticing, but social media is so much more than pretty pictures (at least it should be). We started creating posts that highlighted our staff, posts that offered tidbits of knowledge that related to our brand. Funny juxtapositions about disco balls and yoga, and posts that were relatable to the audience we were trying to attract. I think a lot of times, people look at social media posts and think “I wish” or “some day” but we wanted to tap into the now, we want people to read or see something and think “that’s me”. I’m no expert on this topic whatsoever ever, but I can say that I honestly believe that if you post as if you are talking with your best friend, it will come across that way, your audience is your friend, treat them as such.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.awarewolfsd.com
• Instagram: @awarewolf_sd @lionandswan
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/awarewolfsd

Image Credits
Myles Heidenreich Arlene Ibarra