We recently connected with Kris Radzanowski and have shared our conversation below.
Kris, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk 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.
After 20+ years in a solid financially secure career, I lost my corporate job during the economic downturn in 2009. After pulling my kids out of daycare and telling my husband we have to sell a car, stop eating out and switch to the cheap wine, I knew I needed to do something for the budget. The one thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to go back into that world of long hours, lots of travel, pressure and missing my family.
I loved taking yoga classes, so decided to go to teacher training. After 9 months of training I started teaching classes and taught at 5 different studios around the area. I loved the practice, but ‘teaching’ didn’t inspire me as much as it should in order to teach that many classes a week. I learned so much about how different studios were run, what I liked and what I didn’t. What inspired teachers to do better and what shut them down and stunted their creativity.
5 years later, the opportunity presented itself for me to take over a space and open my own studio. Taking the risk to open my own business, take out loans and not have any income for an unknown period of time was so frightening!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you introduce yourself and your business to our readers.
I’d love to! I’m at the point in my life where I guess I’m ‘becoming sage’ as they say. I’m 55 this year and so happy with where I am in my life. I’m married to an awesome husband who fixes aircrafts at night, so it’s nice because he can also fix just about anything else that breaks at home or at the studio. We have a daughter at Ohio State and our son is a Sophmore at our local high school. We have 2 pets, a horse and a dog. We love to travel and are wanna- be foodies and wine connoisseurs!
I structured our studio to be all of the things I loved from certain studios (authenticity, cleanliness, welcoming and inclusive) I worked for and at the same time steered away from the things that didn’t feel right in other studios (pressure to conform, rigidity in class planning, a beauty pageant atmosphere),
Due to our philosophy and community feeling, we have been able to bring in the most talented and experienced teachers from around the area. There’s not one class on the schedule that I can’t recommend 100% and have complete faith in our teachers and desk staff to make the client feel welcome, and a new love for yoga.
We are the welcoming space where each client feels valued and accepted exactly where they are in their yoga journey. Props such as blocks, bolsters, straps and blankets are offered and used in all classes to provide modifications so everyone can enjoy the class at their level of comfort.
Our niche is in the therapeutic style of classes. We called them wellness or similar class names which all focus on gentler movements, stretching, meditation and overall feeling amazing. We have crystal bowls and other healing vibrational music instruments in our calming space which are used in about half of all of our classes if the teacher has experience in sound healing or therapies.
We also have vinyasa, barre, Pilates and more classes every day that focus on more of a challenging flow or workout. These classes and our wellness style classes create the perfect balance to be the one stop shop for our clients. They can choose any class, any day with any package and get what their mind or body needs on that particular day.
Any advice for managing a team?
Our staff feels like a family. Even though there are some staff who work evenings that may have never met the morning crew and vice versa, there is a level of love and respect that we all have for each other.
Treating each teacher or desk staff as a whole individual person and working with their unique needs and wants helps us create a team with longevity. Many of our team have been with us since we opened in May 2015! We don’t see much turnover.
Everyone feels valued and has free rein to use their creativity and talents to teach their most authentic class. This shows in each of our class styles and keeps our clients engaged, always trying something new and excited to come to the next class.
We added a software option where clients are prompted after classes occasionally to give a review and provide feedback. Its honestly the best part of my job when I receive these amazing reviews to pass them along to the teacher that it references. These reviews showcase to each teacher all the things that touch our clients and make them happy in class and loyal to us. Reviews are then also auto-populated into our website home page so those who don’t know EssentialZen can get a feel for us through the eyes of our clients.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
It’s probably the most used one in todays world but as covid was coming down the pike, we did a quick pivot and the timing of a quick decision and clear communication was one of the reasons we survived through 2020 as a small business.
We had just begun an in-person 200 hour YTT (Yoga Teacher Training). They had about 10 hours under their belt and we had to go virtual. Luckily the 3 lead teachers were flexible and creative and made this work. The 8 trainees also rose to the occasion and we did everything on line, or outside 6 feet apart and were finally able to come back together in our space just the weekend of graduation. But they DID IT!!
As we were hearing we may have to close but not sure for how long. I was thinking maybe just a few days. Which later turned into a tumultuous 3 years of up and down every time a new strain was in the news! We quickly bought an ipad, airpods, and a stand and began live streaming our classes just a day prior to being shut down, but those few days gave us a head start from other studios that sat back and waited. We used Facebook live to also quickly get the word out that we were going virtual and would stay connected with our clients however long it lasted.
After trying 3 different platforms to get the live stream and recordings in front of our clients and potential new clients, we settled on one that wasn’t fancy and perfect, but one that was super quick and simple to set up as well as cost effective. The studios with the fancy set ups stopped doing virtual or had many glitches. We prevailed and even though 90% of our clients are all back in-person, we’ve kept the virtual option for many of our classes. This allows our members and clients to take classes while on vacation, or not feeling well or just not enough time to drive to the studio on certain days.
We also started recording these live classes on day 1 and have built a library of hundreds of our regular classes and specialty classes. Access to the library can be purchased in a day pass or monthly autopay and accessed 24/7. Access to this EZ On Demand library is free and included in all of our unlimited memberships. Its a great perk! ( Notice the pun EZ On Demand (EssentialZen)
We spun in circles as we guessed and played with ideas and somehow settled on the best unique version of being able to offer virtual long term. Looking back I’m in awe of what our team has accomplished.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to you!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.essentialzen.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/essentialzenyogastudio/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/essentialzenyogastudio
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/essentialzen-yoga-studio
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@essentialzen3383
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/essentialzen-yoga-studio-aurora
Image Credits
Janet Miller, Evan Radzanowski, Laura Lewis