We recently connected with Lindsay Grabb and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lindsay, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Integrity is vital. Being clear on why I’m doing what I’m doing and then having my thoughts, words and actions line up 100% of the time. This builds trust with my team and my students. It also creates balance for myself as I work faster and more efficiently if I’m clear.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I first experienced yoga when I was pregnany with my first daughter. There is a fabulous prenatal studio in the minneapolis area (Blooma) that is extremely welcoming. I found the movement, breath and connection to self empowering as it prepared me for birth and motherhood. A year or so after my daughter was born I was feeling lost so I rolled my yoga mat back out. This time in a heated vinyasa class where I could now focus only on myself. It was the first time I remember really asking myself who I was, why I did things the way I did and what I wanted from my life. Who did I want to be for myself, my child and my community? I decided to do a teacher training simply to deepen my practice and soon realized I wanted to keep learning and wanted to share what I’d experienced with others. I started teaching in 2012 and loved the balance of my own practice with leading others. In 2016 I decided to open my own studio. I had recently moved back to Minneapolis from Singapore and wanted to create a space in my neighborhood that was rooted in community and also offered high quality, heated power vinyasa along with some slower moving classes. I believe this practice can benefit so many and is accessible to so many but is also intimidating to walk into a bigger, more corporate environment.

I don’t think about what we do as ‘solving problems’ but I do think so many people live in patterns they don’t realize. They move through the world without asking why or realizing they could make a few shifts and feel entirely different. What we deliver in our yoga classes is more than physical asana. We ask our students to feel and breath. We ask them to connect with themselves and each other in a way that may be different than they are used to. Human connection is critical for a full life. We offer connection to self and connection to others.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In 2019 our studio was growing quickly and my then bisiness partner/husband and I decided to open a second location. It was about 15 minutes away in a market we new little about. We were good at building a studio and felt we could do it again. However, there were three main factors that either I didn’t understand or prepare for that I have now overcome. 1. I underestimated the value of knowing the market and being established where I was opening. When I opened my first location I had students that lived near by, and my teachers that came on board were also established in the area. This enabled us to open with enough students to pay the bills and grow from there.
2. Covid shut down the country just weeks before our scheduled open date. By the time we could open, the cities were still essentially shut down and people were not interested in coming to heated yoga in a mask in a new place.
3. I divorced and bought out my now ex-husbank just months after we opened the second location.

I hired a business coach after I became the sole owner to better understand my financials since my ex was managing that area. During this time I made the tough decision to close the second location (at a pretty substantial loss from the build out) but I also managed to find another group to cover the lease and they are wildly successful. With this decision I was able to bring 100% of my attention back to our original location. I rebranded and redesigned the studio to bring a sense of new after covid and the divorce. The students love the fresh energy and I was able to recoup that expense within a few months and now having just one location has brough a deeper community, more students and piece of mind to me. Our financials are better than I ever could have estimated and I’ll recover the money lost on the second location faster than I think I could have maintaining both.

It was a very challenging time but I’m proud I dug in, asked the hard questions, came back to why I opened the studio and made the necessary changed needed to grow and still have some ease in my life.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Engagement! As a yoga studio in a city with multiple corporate options what sets us apart from them is our personal engagement with each and every student that comes through our doors or joins us online. We learn their names. We reach out via text and email with encouragement, specials and workshops they might enjoy. We call them by name in the studio. We give hands on adjustments. We accept feedback and put it into action. We exist to bring yoga to our neighbors so they can connect with themselves and others around them. We have the luxuries of the big box places (showers, top of the line heat, mats to rent, exceptional teachers) but we also bring a small town feel in a big city. We’ve never paid for advertising, it’s all neighborhood driven and referrals. Our retention rate is high because of this. Especially during covid when we went online almost 90% of our students remained with their memberships throughout 2020.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.upyogamn.com
• Instagram: @upyogamn
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/upyogamn

Image Credits
Kali Lynn Photography