We recently connected with Steven Yerardi and have shared our conversation below.

Steven, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I started dancing at a young age and danced through high school. I went to college and majored in dance performance and always wanted to start my own business of some sort. I thought when I was in college that I would be opening my own dance studio or theater company, the universe had other plans. I started working professionally and was exposed to the aerial arts and fell in love. When my performance career was coming to an end and I had to think of my next step in life, opening an aerial studio was the clear front runner in my mind. I had so many years of working with kids in my past by teaching dance and choreographing for high school and summer performance camps, so working with kids was my main focus, it’s what I knew. I combined aerial with kids and performance and came up with Born to Fly Productions, our original name of the studio. The studios main focus was to teach aerial arts and once we had the basics covered, we would add in the performance element, my main goal was to one day have an aerial Nutcracker. Within the first year we had to actually grow and become something, then change our name, and then move locations. It was a heck of a year of learning, but we did grow and become something, we did change our name, and we did move to a new location which gave us the opportunity to perform our first Nutcracker.

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

I started dancing at a young age and danced through high school. I went to college and majored in dance performance and always wanted to start my own business of some sort. After college I had the amazing opportunity to tour with Sesame Street Live as the tall understudy/onstage swing. I toured the country for 2 contracts with Sesame Street and then was able to sail the seas with Disney Cruise Lines, where I was introduced to the aerial arts. My first ever and all time favorite apparatus was Spanish Web. In between contracts I would further my education at the Toronto School of Circus Arts where I would train silks, hoop, straps, and static trapeze. After Disney Cruise Lines, I sailed over to Norwegian Cruise Lines where I had the opportunity to perform as a dancer/singer/aerialist. During my 6 contracts with Norwegian Cruise Lines I had the wonderful opportunity to be dance and aerial captains. The captain position in the cast has the responsibility to keep the shows looking the way they left rehearsals, in addition the aerial captain was also in charge of all safety checks for all the aerial equipment on board.

InFlyte Entertainment provides a safe space for both youth and adults to spread their wings and try something a little out of the ordinary. Our youth classes consist of all levels of silks, hoop, and hammock aerial classes and seasons can last anywhere from 3 months to 6 months. In addition to those classes, we provide ground skills and mixed aerial classes for our older flyers and then a Flyte Training class for our younger flyers ages 6 to 8, which covers basics of all apparatus provided at InFlyte. Our adult classes are drop in classes with apparatus in silks, hoop, and hammock. Our youth and adult flyers perform 2 showcases each throughout the year. Our youth performers are able to join our Summer Performance Camp where we put together a full scale show in 2 weeks. All of our performers are able to perform in our annual Nutcracker which is one of our biggest shows of the year. As much as we do focus on the performance aspect of things mixed with the aerial arts, no one is required to perform, all you and adult flyers are encouraged to perform if they would like.

I am most proud of all of InFlyte’s students and seeing how much they grow throughout the years. The Showcases are really set up so that family members and friends are able to see all that the amazing flyers have been working on throughout the season. It is not easy to step in front of an audience but so many of our youth and adult flyers do, and it is amazing to see what they can do.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Learning how to pivot quickly and seamlessly has been a frequent test and something that I have grown to just learn and go with. My first big pivot was within less than 9 months I learned that another company had the same name, the company was in the aerial business and had trademarked their name. With no business background, I didn’t even think if looking for other businesses with the same name. I was devastated, I had created this name “Born to Fly Productions” and fell in love with it before I had even officially started the company. I thought that changing the studio name was the worst thing that could happen, but if the name didn’t change, there would be no studio, so we had to pivot. I had many different names and luckily with the help of family and my now fiance, InFlyte Entertainment came to life, and I feel like I like it so much better than Born to Fly Productions. I learned it’s not the name that holds the business up, it’s the people, the staff, the flyers, the families. Though our name is how people navigate to get to us, it’s not what makes us who we are.

The next pivot was when I was on a family vacation for a destination wedding and got and email saying that I would be evicted within a month. This was not my fault, but I was paying for it. Turns out with the zoning laws, InFlyte was not supposed to be in the building, both myself and my landlord learned something that day (side note, they were amazing and felt so bad and did all they could to help). Same as the name change, if I didn’t find a place to go, there would be no studio. The pivot came in while on my vacation I was reaching out to anyone and everyone I could think of. Once home from vacation I was on the hunt, and some way, some how we found the amazing space that we are currently in. The studio grew from about 400 square feet with 10 foot ceilings to a 1400 square foot space with 15 foot ceilings and our amazing landlord was able to help us out with the big move. Our new space has given us the opportunity to grow so much and I am so grateful. At our first location we were only able to have one apparatus up at a time and had minimal room to grow. We now have 2 rooms, one is able to have 5 apparatus up at once and the other is our intro room which is able to have 2 apparatus up at once and we have a costume closet! We were able to perform 3 of our Nutcracker shows, one of our Summer Performance Camps and currently perform our youth and adult Showcases in the studio.

Pivots are just a way of life as a business owner.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Building the reputation where the business is, is all about being seen. InFlyte so different and trying to explain it to people can sometimes be confusing or intimidating. We have many opportunities in our amazing town that we are able to be seen, we participate in outdoor festivals 2 to 3 times a year where all of our students are able to have another opportunity to perform in front of a new audience. We perform at the annual Holiday Stroll which also happens on a day of our Nutcracker performances so we can promote the studio and the show. We participate in the downtown trick-or-treat by handing out candy and giving kids the opportunities to talk to our flyers while walking downtown. Our assistants for our youth classes help our teachers hand out candy and help to chat about the studio. Going to all these events help to educate everyone on what we do at InFlyte. We also are so happy to be able to be a part of the community which helps with word of mouth. A big part of the studio and getting people in to fly is word of mouth, if you haven’t seen us and you are in our town, then you probably have heard about us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inflyteentertainment.com
• Instagram: inflyte_entertainment
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inflyteentertainment
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/inflyte-entertainment-hudson
• Other: Book a class: https://app.iclasspro.com/portal/inflyte/dashboard

Image Credits
White background with blue t shirt – Meena Khayami mkhay.photography@gmail.com