We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachael Phillips. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachael below.

Rachael, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

We first started GOGA as a crazy idea I had for a fundraiser to raise money for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. We thought a few people would show up, but when we had hundreds of RSVPs to the event and the donation based tickets sold out in 30 minutes, we realized we actually had a huge event to plan. We originally asked our friends and family to come participate in the classes, but we quickly started calling them back to recruit them to come help us check people in, set up fencing, take photos, etc. It was such a last minute event and we never expected it to get so big (or get media coverage!) and the funny part is, so many people commented on how organized and well-staffed it was. Nobody realized we had just begged some friends to come help us in exchange for brunch and mimosas afterward.

Rachael, 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?

GOGA was founded by myself and my now-husband Trey Kitchen right after Hurricane Harvey landed in Texas. We wanted to find a way to raise money for Harvey victims, and I had been bugging Trey about Goat Yoga since meeting his mother, Roxie, and her goats a few weeks prior. Trey finally called his mom to pitch their crazy idea to her, and being the crazy goat lady that she is, she agreed to partner with them! The three of us immediately found that our strengths and weaknesses perfectly complemented each other, and we quickly realized that we were going to make a great team.

What started as a one-off fundraiser event, quickly turned into a full-time business. People immediately started asking when our next event was, so we planned another fundraiser for Hurricane Irma the following weekend. From there, everything just snowballed quickly. We realized that GOGA was more than just a fun activity to do for the instagram photos, and there really was something bigger to it. People would leave telling us how therapeutic it was, or how it was the perfect first yoga class since many of our customers had never done Yoga before.

5 months later, I quit my job doing Product Marketing at a local tech company, and dove head first into growing and sustaining GOGA. We ended up going to film for ABC’s Shark Tank later that year, and opening a full time regular Yoga studio as well. I always thought that GOGA would be a trend that only lasted a year or two, and I was okay with that, but here we are celebrating our 5th Birthday in September of 2022 after surviving the pandemic.

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

Any business has to be resilient at one point or another, and that is definitely true for us, too! When we first started, we were holding our classes on the top of a parking garage. Then, winter came and we were often up on the rooftop at 6am setting up for the day when it was only 30-40 degrees outside. We quickly realized we needed an indoor space to keep the goats and humans warm. There was a vacant storefront beneath us that the property managers let us use temporarily, but we could not renovate it or make any big changes. It had concrete floors that we had to cut huge screws out of so that nobody would get hurt. The restroom was not usable so we had to send people to the movie theatre next door. We made it work for awhile but when spring started coming around, we didn’t have A/C so we had a window unit that we put in the door with a big cutout of insulation around it. It was not pretty!

We started trying to secure a lease with them so that we could do renovations, but the commercial real estate company would not give us a contract because we were too new (and nobody took us seriously at that time), and it was so expensive for a retail space downtown that we just could not come to an agreement.

Luckily we later found a space out in the Hill Country Galleria in Bee Cave that did take us seriously and wanted us there, so we were able to completely renovate a large studio space and open up there, and we’ve been there ever since.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I had just started dating my now-husband, Trey, about 3 months before we started GOGA. I went to meet his mom, Roxie, and all of her goats for the first time a few weeks prior. It seemed really crazy starting a business together in such a new relationship, but it just worked! Not many people can say that they love their mother-in-law enough to run a business together for 5 years without an issues! It is not lost on us how lucky we are.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.goga.yoga
• Instagram: @goga_atx
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GOGAGoatYoga/

Image Credits
Monica Danielle Photography