We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brittani Harris. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brittani below.
Alright, Brittani thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
As a small business owner of both a yoga community and an ecommerce business selling physical goods, I’ve tried to challenge a lot of the norms you might find in these two spaces. At Eight. Yoga, for example, instead of having folks pay for classes that can get extremely pricey and ultimately exclude folks, we operate on a pay-what-you-can model (sometimes called donations-based model) where everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, can take class and benefit from a yoga practice. I think the initial response in our capitalism-driven world is to think, “oh that couldn’t possibly work” but the reality is, it can and it does. We’ve also decided to donate quite a bit of our classes’ proceeds to a different organization each month, which challenges the notion of maximizing profit and shows that there are other types of business goals out there. Through Boundless Good Co., our ecommerce wellness branch of Eight. Yoga, I’ve tried to start from the abundance mindset of “we already have what we need” and go from there. The glass containers that our hand-poured candles are made in come from repurposed and recycled glass and many have been sourced right from our very community. This, in turn, keeps our costs lower and allows us to sell at reasonable prices back to the community so that no one feels left out due to any economic reasons and everyone feels a part of the business. Ultimately, I believe that there is always a better, more empathetic and community-driven way to do things; even business.
Brittani, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Simply put, I run Eight. Yoga, which is a yoga community here in the Boston area that offers pay-what-you-can virtual and outdoor yoga classes that benefit various organizations and their causes each month. To compliment our community’s at home yoga practice, we also offer 100% clean-burning soy wax scented candles through our wellness branch, Boundless Good Co. But every story has quite a bit more background than that!
For starters, my background is not in business, entrepreneurship or otherwise. Like most people, the pandemic simply created an opportunity for me to step back and see how I could be useful in creating and maintaining community for folks.
Back in early 2020 I was a yoga instructor for a very corporate-run national yoga studio chain and was teaching a great deal of classes. I really enjoyed the community and had been a part of it as a student since 2016 and as an instructor since early 2018. It wasn’t everything I wanted and at times could be a bit rigid, but it was what I knew. When the pandemic really started in earnest in March 2020, the studios were shut down and all of us were left without our jobs, but also without our yoga practice and most detrimentally, without our community. As a result, I saw an opportunity to start teaching virtual yoga to keep everyone’s spirits up and maintain some normalcy, and this ultimately began to morph into what is now the community of Eight. Yoga.
From the start, I knew that I had a chance to take the good and leave the bad from my corporate studio. I knew that almost $30 for one drop in class (the studio price) was too much for a lot of people, especially given the massive quantity of job losses at the time, and I remembered a donations-based yoga studio I went to in Austin, TX a few years back. If they could make pay-what-you-can yoga classes possible, why couldn’t I – especially virtually? Coming from my social work professional background, I also thought about how many lower income individuals this could ultimately invite to the practice of yoga who had never felt welcomed before. I was lucky enough to still have my full time job for income, so donating my time was not a big issue. It also gave me a chance to practice seva, or selfless service, which is a major tenant of a yogic lifestyle. To take this one step further, I wanted to make sure to donate part of our proceeds to organizations who were helping those who needed it most. For me, this seemed like a structure that was a win all around. Together as a community we participate in various activities outside of yoga classes, like the Walk for Hunger put on by Project Bread! We also host community potluck picnics, and support other small businesses community members run or are a part of. We’ve been able to keep classes donations-based thanks to our community, but also thanks to organizations that I’ve consulted for, like YouthWorks where I created a class series to introduce at-risk teens to yoga and mindfulness over the course of 4 weeks.
The wellness goods offshoot of Eight. Yoga, which we named Boundless Good Co., happened a little over a year after starting Eight., where I was nervous about the harm I might be bringing to myself, my partner, and my pets by burning the paraffin candles that complimented my yoga space so well. Hand-pouring and designing 100% soy wax candles gave me a chance to practice ahimsa, or non-harm (another yogic lifestyle principle!), and now I’m able to share that with the community and others as well. We even started selling specifically made candles whose proceeds benefit our organization of the month (Cause Candles!)! I’m excited to see where this branch of our community takes us.
I’m most proud of how much we’ve been able to donate as a small community, and the work I’ve done spotlighting various grassroots, local, national, and international organizations and their causes. There are so many great people out there doing incredible things to support vulnerable or historically marginalized communities, and often they go without recognition. We’ve learned in recent years how impactful small donations from individuals can be (just look at AOC’s entire fundraising platform!), and I really wanted to leverage this to educate and inform our community members, and ultimately use this to raise funds to support these incredible organizations. To date, we have donated close to $8,000 across 24 organizations and my hope is we won’t stop anytime soon!
I want people to know that Eight. Yoga and Boundless Good Co. stand loudly and proudly against hate, xenophobia, racism, classism, and misogyny; that we believe yoga and wellness are paramount to practicing self care which makes us all the more capable of enacting community care; and that you don’t need to earn a certain amount of money or look a certain way to practice yoga and be a part of this community. Everyone’s presence is a gift and we couldn’t have gotten here without every single person who has supported us and our mission!
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I often see so many folks tout business development books, but I have to admit that I’ve never read them. What I did read that seriously and significantly shifted my perspective during my deepest business-idea ruts was Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. There were times where this book somehow knew exactly what I was thinking and challenged me to step outside of my patterns and try something new. I owe virtually my entire business and it’s existence to how this book pushed me and made me self reflect!
Beyond this, reach out to others! Talk to your community. For some reason we often think that we are the only ones experiencing what we are experiencing, but there are so many other small business folks or entrepreneurs out there who would love to brainstorm with you, hash something out, or even just rant. It all makes a difference.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
For Boundless Good Co., we currently sell on Etsy because it was the lowest barrier to entry and provides a lot of great tools and resources for those just starting out. What they take in turn, however, is around ~10% of your sales. This may not seem like a lot, but it certainly adds up. Shopify is just as harsh on small business, charging a fixed monthly rate of $29, on top of processing fees, regardless as to how many sales you make. For those just starting out and only planning to do small inventory, this simply doesn’t do it! If you do use Etsy, however, I recommend integrating your account with Pirate Ship too. Pirate Ship is very easy to use and is often much cheaper for sending out ecommerce packages than Etsy.
What I learned, that I don’t think a lot of folks realize, is that you can use a PayPal integration on your regular website and there is a function to sell goods right through that! Folks can use their PayPal account, their Venmo account, or enter in a credit or debit card. They charge processing fees, of course, but if you are hosting your website already this is easily the cheapest option!
For us, now that we are established on Etsy and have built a good reputation, we are planning to build out our website with an ecommerce aspect to keep more of our earnings. This, in turn, allows us to keep our prices low and helps us continue to support great nonprofits out there!
Contact Info:
- Website: eightyogacommunity.com
- Instagram: @eightyogacommunity
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eightyogacommunity
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUrjEXuTGtM_TFJ7YziA2w
- Other: Boundless Good Co., our wellness branch of Eight. Yoga, can be found at @boundlessgoodco or boundlessgoodco.com.