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

Hi Christine, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

In the very beginning, it was just me, and desperation. I was desperate to get out of veterinary medicine. I knew the path I was on wasn’t sustainable or healthy, and I realized that if I truly wanted to live a life rooted in wellness, I had to embody it. While back in school for vet school pre-reqs, I took an exercise science class and it flipped a switch for me. I was hooked. I got my CPT, started training friends and family for cheap or free, then landed my first gym gig on a revenue split.

I wanted to teach group classes, so I built my own bootcamp and started teaching all over town—3 classes a day, 6 days a week, for 6 years. Eventually, I hired Jenni Hendricks, who still teaches with us today. That was my first hire, and honestly, it was pure luck. Jenni has a degree in exercise science, and we met on the roller derby track. That’s how recruitment started back then, just community connections, word of mouth, Craigslist ads, and Facebook posts. I wasn’t doing interviews so much as just finding warm bodies who were passionate and ready to show up. I needed help, and I leaned on whoever was willing and able.

But as we grew, so did our hiring process. Now we have a structured interview process that includes live auditions for teaching roles, intentional questions to assess alignment with our values, and a big emphasis on community fit. We make it clear from the beginning that working here is not just about showing up to teach a class. It’s a team effort. You get what you give, and more.

What’s most unusual or unconventional about our hiring process now isn’t the interviews, it’s what we expect after you’re hired. We ask our instructors to be integrated in the business, to use their platform and voice to help themselves, and help us grow. They have a captive audience every time they teach, how are they using that opportunity? How are they nurturing relationships, spreading the word, and embodying our mission?

Relationships are everything in a town like North Lake Tahoe. We’ve built a studio that thrives on collaboration, connection, and care. And our recruiting reflects that more and more each year.

Later, I brought on Meredith Calderas, a yoga teacher who introduced me to Kelly Smiley. I was still yearning for connection and collaboration with someone who shared my passion and drive. Kelly and I realized we were the missing pieces in each other’s communities. I brought the fitness and cross-training; she brought the art, the recovery, the aerial world. We merged our strengths and ran our businesses under one roof.

Eventually, I began buying her out of the business, as I pursued scaling the business, while Kelly leaned into her own vision of spending part of the year in Mexico with her family. She stayed on to run our aerial program, while I focused on team management and business development.

Over time, I hired more teachers to fill schedule gaps and brought on a studio manager, Tailor Pollak. Our vision has always been rooted in whole-person wellness, from HIIT to Yoga Nidra. We built a business that was 50% fitness and 50% movement arts.

Then COVID hit.

Our growing team was torn apart. Teachers stepped back, our manager Tailor left, and California’s strict gym rules pushed us into survival mode. But I saw opportunity in the chaos. People were leaving the city, and I leaned in, offering virtual classes, embracing tech. That’s when I hired Julia Zasyatkina, I call her “the unicorn”. A yoga teacher, a Google alum, and someone who wasn’t afraid of tech or sales. She’s now our Director of Classes and Partnerships and has helped rebuild and stabilize our schedule and team. Julz found us through a mutual connection of Kelly’s and sought us out.

With Julz’s help, we returned to in-person classes. Kelly had a solid aerial teaching team, with Tailor becoming the backbone of that program. Then the unthinkable happened: Kelly passed away unexpectedly. A vibrant, healthy woman in her 40s, a mother, a wellness coach, and a beloved teacher, gone. It crushed our community. I was heartbroken and unsure where to begin. But giving up wasn’t an option. Kelly wouldn’t have wanted that.

So we rebuilt. I leaned on our team and filled leadership gaps with strong, passionate people. We brought on Alicia Streetman as our Aerial Director and Angela Kearns as our Marketing & Community Outreach Director, both aerial teachers, with strong backgrounds in those areas. Meg Cooper, one of Kelly’s closest friends, a dedicated movement artist, and an original Tahoe Flow Artist, became our Circus Camp Director to help build out our youth programming, an essential niche in our mountain town.

Our fitness and yoga side stabilized under Julz’s strong leadership. She now helps with scheduling, hiring, pay rates, and more. We recently added Abi Collomb as our Studio Coordinator to support administration and sales as we continue to scale, mindfully. Our team structure is unique. With over 20 instructors and a transient local population, we don’t always see each other. Partner teams, and Morning and evening teams sometimes feel like ships passing in the night. To bridge this, we host monthly team meetings, trimesterly reviews, and maintain active Slack communities.

We also invest in our team: continuing education credits , studio membership, discounts, and most importantly, transparency. We’re an open book with finances and actively involve our team in everything: mission, vision, SOP development, and more. We want their feedback, and buy-in, because when they thrive, our students thrive.

If I were starting today, would I do anything differently? Absolutely. I’d build systems and leadership structure much earlier. I carried too much alone for too long. I would’ve invested in collaborative leadership sooner and created sustainable pathways for team growth from the beginning. But every piece of the journey was part of the story, and what we’ve created is a rare and beautiful thing. One that we continue to grow, together.

Christine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Christine Bettera, and I’m the owner of Tahoe Flow Arts & Fitness, a community-driven studio in North Lake Tahoe where fitness, movment arts, yoga, and wellness come together under one roof.

I didn’t start out in this industry, I actually began my career in veterinary medicine. But I quickly realized that while I was helping animals, I was neglecting myself.. While back in school for vet school pre-reqs, I took an exercise science class. and it was like a spark went off. I got my CPT, started training friends and family, and before long, I was teaching bootcamps and fitness classes all over town. I am now a Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach.

What began as me teaching three classes a day, six days a week for years has grown into something so much bigger: a thriving studio where movement, art, and community meet. At Tahoe Flow Arts & Fitness, we provide:
Fitness & Cross-Training – HIIT, strength training, mobility, dance, and functional fitness.
Yoga & Recovery – everything from Vinyasa Flow to Restorative, emphasizing balance and restoration.
Aerial Arts & Circus Training – silks, lyra, rope, youth programs, and circus camps.
Community Events & Retreats – live performances, workshops, resort partnerships, and local collaborations.

Our offerings are intentionally diverse, because we believe in whole-person wellness. Our clients don’t have to choose between “being strong” or “being artistic” or “finding balance”, they can have all of it here.

We live in a unique place, Lake Tahoe. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, but it can also be transient and isolating. Many people struggle to find consistent, meaningful community and well-rounded wellness opportunities here. We solve that by creating a space that’s more than just a gym or a studio, it’s a hub of connection. Our clients come for the fitness, the yoga, or the movement arts training, but they stay because of the relationships they build and the support they feel. Our programs are designed to be sustainable, fun, and deeply nourishing, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Integration of Fitness and Arts is part of what makes us unique: We’re one of the few studios blending fitness training with aerial arts, yoga, and recovery. It’s not either/or—it’s both.

We operate as a collective. Our teachers aren’t just staff, they’re leaders, collaborators, and part of decision-making. We are radically transparent about finances and operations, and we involve our team in shaping our mission and vision. Tahoe is a hard place to keep a steady team. We’ve built one with many long-term instructors by paying fairly, offering incentives like CE credits, and fostering real connection and growth. From local resorts like the Ritz Carlton, to community events, we create opportunities for both our teachers and our students that go beyond the walls of our studio.

I’m most proud of our resilience and heart. This community has weathered huge challenges, COVID, the devastating loss of my business partner Kelly, and the realities of running a studio in a mountain town. Each time, we came together, rebuilt, and found new strength. I’m proud that we’ve built a leadership team of incredible women. Together, we’re scaling mindfully, keeping our mission front and center. And I’m proud that we’ve stayed true to what makes us special: showing up authentically, putting people first, and never losing sight of joy.

Tahoe Flow Arts & Fitness isn’t just a place to sweat, stretch, or fly…it’s a place to belong. We believe rising tides lift all ships. When our teachers thrive, our students thrive. When our community is connected, we all rise. And every day, we remind ourselves: we get to show up and do what we love, not just for ourselves, but for the community we serve.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

For us, the biggest shift came when we stopped obsessing over constantly finding new clients and instead focused on retention. Julz and I attended several fitness business conferences, like SCW, and MINDBODY’s BOLD conference, and one message kept hitting us over the head: if people don’t come back, nothing else matters. You can run all the intro offers and flashy promotions you want, but if a client comes once or twice and then disappears, you haven’t built real growth, you’ve built churn.

We invested in contractors to help us train our team on retention and learned how to use our MINDBODY software to track the right metrics. We built reports, studied patterns, and got serious about answering questions like: Why do some people come back, and why do others disappear? What does it take to turn a first-timer into a loyal member? And the answer, time and again, came back to personal connection, and community.

We helped our instructors understand that retention isn’t about discounts or gimmicks, it’s about making sure people are seen, valued, and missed. For example: if one of our regulars stops showing up, do we notice? Do we care? And if so, how do we reach out in a way that feels authentic and supportive? Our teachers have the pulse on their students, so we empower them to nurture those relationships.

We also mapped out the client journey, from the first intro class, to buying a membership, to becoming a “regular.” We asked ourselves: how do we make this process friction-free, welcoming, and a no-brainer? The result was a more thoughtful, intentional approach that makes every step feel seamless.

This strategy has become our backbone. We don’t just want numbers in a software system; we want real people who are part of something bigger. Our studio is welcoming, inclusive, and deeply community-centered. That’s why our members stick around. And when members and team members feel that kind of connection, word of mouth takes care of the rest. Retention, not acquisition, has been the most effective way we’ve grown.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

So many. I’m a big believer in continuous learning, and certain books and resources have really shaped how I lead and build my business. A few that come to mind:

Herding Tigers by Todd Henry – This one was huge for me. Managing creative teams requires a different lens, and while most people think of “creative” as artists or designers, I see it in my world every day. Aerialists and dancers are obviously creatives, but so are fitness instructors. A great group fitness leader is part coach, part entertainer, part community-builder. From playlists to class formats to how you show up in the room, it’s all creativity. This book helped me understand how to support and empower creative professionals without stifling them.

Atomic Habits by James Clear – I use this everywhere: with clients, with students, and with my team. The power of small, consistent habits compounds, and I’ve applied that both in helping others build wellness practices and in guiding my team toward solid work and creative habits.

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant – I love Adam Grant’s work. This book, in particular, shifted my thinking around untapped growth in individuals and organizations. It reinforced my belief that with the right environment and opportunities, people can rise far beyond where they started.

The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan – This helped me focus. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get pulled in a million directions. This book taught me to get clear on the priority, the “one thing” that makes everything else easier or unnecessary.

Motivational Interviewing – This isn’t a business book per se, but it’s been one of my most powerful tools in management. I use it constantly to help guide my team toward autonomy in their careers. Coaching, leadership, and management all come down to asking great questions and helping people uncover their own answers.

Start With Why by Simon Sinek – This was a grounding resource for me, always bringing me back to the purpose and the “why” behind what we’re building.

Dare to Lead and other works by Brené Brown – Brené’s work around vulnerability, courage, and leadership has had a deep impact on how I show up as a leader.

Podcast: How I Built This with Guy Raz – I listen to this regularly for inspiration. Hearing the stories of other entrepreneurs, how they started, what challenges they faced, how they pivoted, reminds me that there’s no single “right way” to build a business. It’s messy, it’s hard, and it’s worth it.

All of these resources tie back to my management philosophy: empower creativity, build strong habits, focus on what matters, lead with purpose, and create a culture where people feel safe, supported, and able to grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: Tahoeflow.com
• Instagram: @TahoeFlowAF
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TahoeFlow/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachchristineb/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@tahoeflow
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/tahoe-flow-arts-and-fitness-tahoe-vista

Image Credits
Tom Zikas