We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jill Berkana. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jill below.
Jill, appreciate you joining us today. Risking Taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
In my long entrepreneurial journey, I am currently in the middle of taking a great risk in order to level up. I have been renting buildings to run my massage therapy Institute for 17 years. My lease is ending this May and I feel the only way I can continue to run my business and keep my heart in it is to buy my own building.
Calculating the hundreds of thousands of dollars I have spent paying other people’s mortgages is something that makes the idea of moving and renting again intolerable, and so, I am working extremely hard right now to purchase my own building. Sometimes you have to become disgusted with the status quo to finally jump off a cliff with the hopes you fly. When you are planning to make a big move to level up you must factor in contingencies. You also have to look at the real possibility that you will fail and fall flat on your face. When the stakes are that high, it creates an environment within you for incredible creativity in the face of adversity. In other words… you flap your wings REALLY hard, and while you are doing that, you are learning and becoming stronger. You become fierce. You must have the courage to fail and the faith in yourself that chances are good that you won’t. Additionally, when you start to traverse unknown territory in business you often must take the first step, before you can begin to see and understand the second.
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
I am an education entrepreneur and internationally known leader in the massage therapy profession. I have been a massage therapist since 1990 and have been founding and running massage schools since 2005. My first school was a destination school in the jungle of Costa Rica where my then partner and I developed an extensive campus with student housing on an old pig farm by a beach. My school, The Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy has been operating since 2011. I have had campuses in Captial Hill, LoDo and Prospect New Town in Longmont. I am hoping to move to another Victorian Mansion in the heart of downtown Longmont this Summer. I teach an exclusive total immersive and holistic massage therapy program that only takes 5 months and prepares our students for licensure. The Berkana Institute is well known for excellence and producing some of the finest massage therapists in the world today. Our pillars are artistic expression, ethical practice, and an evidence informed and mindful approach to massage therapy. We have a powerful faculty of subject matter experts who are passionate about our students’ success. Our original 600-hour curriculum has produced a 100% success rate on the US National Licensure Exam for Massage Therapy. I have served as a Judge at the world massage championship, a Board Director for the National Board of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork and serve as a witness to testify in the state of Colorado as an expert of best practices in the massage therapy and bodywork profession.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In the last 3 years I burned out. It came to the point that I knew my project was either going to kill me or I was going to kill it. I had to make a significant change and become good at deligation. It takes a lot of courage to trust other’s to run your show when you have been running it for so long, but in the end, the people you trust can often bring in vision and creativity that you never could on your own. It did take 3 years to hand the torch off to my team and it literally took 10 people to do everything I was doing myself. We entreprenuers are a strange breed.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Always bringing my best and pushing it to the next level as a consistent approach. Also, it has been very important not to look too closely at what my competitors are doing. That can limit your creativity and put a lid on your potential to expand your own vision.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.berkanainstitute.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/berkanainstitute/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=the%20berkana%20institute%20of%20massage%20therapy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/berkana/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/massageberkana
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/berkana-institute-of-massage-therapy-longmont-2
- Other: tiktok@berkana_institute