Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Beth Weber. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Beth, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I had been doing yoga for about 20 years when I found out our yoga teacher wanted to sell her studio. Our Pilates teacher wanted to buy it, but couldn’t do so alone so she asked me. We went back and forth and finally, I decided to take the risk and buy it myself. My goal was to keep the studio open. So many people depended on the studio for their classes, their get away, their sanctuary and fellowship. How hard can it be ? Boy was I wrong. I quickly learned I have no business skills at all (my real job is being a pharmacist) and have no idea what I had gotten myself into ! I called the previous owner every day to ask a new question. Our Pilates teacher, Gaby, became the studio manager and would make the schedule and handle a few other small things. So here we are December 1, 2019, two people who are not yoga teachers owning and running a yoga studio ! Then comes March 2020 and the big Covid lock down. What now ?? Do we close after 3 months ? Do we tough it out ? We physically had to close for 2 months due to mandates. Thankfully. the landlord gave us 1 month free rent. When we re-opened, we had to limit classes to 6 people in the studio for social distancing. We had also put all classes on Zoom. It was a lot of work to keep things going. Thankfully, we had found an awesome woman, Stephanie to do our marketing and media and she got everything set up on Zoom. If it had not been for her, I know we would have lost everything. We can never thank her enough. We have been through quite a few media managers since and none can compare, but she was at the right place at the right time to help us survive. We have continued to struggle but we are still open ! We have a few people that have stuck it out the whole time with us. We are finally getting some new people. It has truly been a labor of love and I have thought about selling it many times. But, I have achieved my goal, we are still open 3 years later !
Our next leap of faith will be with our location. Our landlord wants to sell the building, but I can’t afford to buy it. We are looking for a new place just in case the new owner won’t let us stay. We will be taking another risk one way or another, but we know we will be where the Universe wants us to be ! Namaste’

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Beth Weber and I have been a pharmacist for over 30 years. I have been doing yoga for a lot of those years because Pharmacy gets more stressful every day ! I had the opportunity to buy our local yoga studio, which I wanted to do so it would stay open. We all needed to continue to get it’s benefits. This also fit into health and wellness since I am in the healthcare field. We added Pilates to the previous name of Grace Yoga Studio. We had been offering Pilates for years, but could not grow the class. We have not raised our prices and we are competitive with 2 other studios in the area. We have added a few different payment options, class packages and an on-line calendar to register for classes. We have also added Zoom options, which we have continued so students will have the option to continue classes at home or in bad weather. We hope we can expand our reach and have others outside of our immediate area join us !
We really want to get back to where we can offer special programs and workshops. It has been very hard for me because I am not good at any of this business stuff and I have to maintain my career to help keep the studio open.
Even though it seems like a train wreck at times, I am still proud of the fact that we have achieved our goal – to stay open so others will have a place to go ! We want to add more health and wellness things as we grow like dieticians, acupuncture and massage.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We had only been open about 3 months when the Covid Pandemic took over the world ! We had no idea how that would turn into the situation it has over the past 2+ years. I had just taken over the existing business and didn’t want to lose what I had just bought, so we just kept going. One day at a time. We had to make many changes and decisions during the early days of the pandemic to comply with mandates, keep our students safe and to continue to grow. Or at least maintain until it was over. Well, I think we can all agree it will never be totally over and things will never be the same. But, we believe in our little studio and wonderful community of yogis we want to continue to serve. So when we think about throwing in the towel and yoga mat, we just put it back down on the floor and go to our happy place !

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Our little studio was very low key. We signed in a book when we got to class, we wrote checks, we stayed after class to chat. It was a wonderful little community. When I bought the studio, this is what I envisioned. No real computer work, no payroll, no real hassles. Then Covid changed everything. And everybody. We had to learn a lot and learn it fast to stay open. We were changing the website anyway, but we had to add a calendar to book and pay for classes. No more just showing up and writing a check. We had to open a Zoom account and make classes available on that platform because we had to close the studio for 2 months due to the lock down. We had to come up with cleaning protocols and temperature checks at the door and various other Covid related issues. Thankfully our new media and marketing person knew how to do all this. I can never thank her enough for jumping in and saving our studio. Covid forced us to do a lot of things differently in a short amount of time, but we managed. We are still learning a lot today and changing and improving as we go.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.graceyogaandpilates.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/graceyogaroanoke
• Facebook: facebook.com/graceyogaroanoke
• Linkedin: Grace Yoga and Pilates LLC
• Youtube: @graceyogaandpilatesstudio5466
• Other: email ; [email protected] phone ; (540) 815-4545

Image Credits
Dennis Deacon