Why Can't We?
Grace studio co-owner Lenore Baker explains what she loves about having a business partner.
The following is the second in an ongoing series in which I interview entrepreneurs I admire to find out how they tap into their courage and move beyond thinking about taking action to actually take action.
Lenore Baker is the co-owner of Grace, a yoga, Pilates, and strength-training studio in downtown Silver Spring, MD. She spoke to me recently about how she and her long-time friend Michelle Radecki decided to open Grace together, a seemingly crazy idea that quickly took shape over a cup of tea.
At the time, Lenore was still busy working in corporate wellness, and she had been teaching classes in and around Washington, DC for years. Michelle had just retired from a career as a corporate attorney.
Their backgrounds and skillsets fit together nicely, and their partnership served as the essential foundation of their business.
Lenore told me about the tough times in the business, learning to trust herself, and what she loves about having Michelle as her business partner.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Lenore: Michelle and I have been friends since our two oldest children were one-year-olds. We both found our way to practicing yoga together, and we would go to various places. We enjoyed vinyasa flow, but none of the places were in downtown Silver Spring.
She called me up one day and said, “I have an idea. It's a crazy idea, and I don't know if you're on board, but I think we should open a yoga studio for traditional vinyasa flow.”
I did not hesitate. I said, “I’m in.” I was not even thinking how we were going to go about doing it. I was ready.
So that's how it started. We got on it right away. We opened the studio within a year of the discussion, and I credit her for that.
I trusted Michelle — she's the detailed person, and I trusted her.
Michelle is the one that’s like, let's do it, and I tend to think big but not think through how to get it done. In a partnership, you need that…somebody who thinks big, and then somebody who says, “Let's go. Let’s get it done.” And honestly, it was the perfect combination. I wouldn't have been able to do it alone.
Dani: When you look back to that time where you were first discussing it, do you remember any of your thinking?
Lenore: I always imagined, one day, wouldn't it be amazing to have my own space to teach my classes, to do personal training?
When Michelle came to me, that was my “why not” moment. I thought, “Why can’t we, together?”
It never was a me. Honestly, it was always the two of us. I thought, “She really feels like we can do this, and so I think we can do it.”
What you see with Grace is what you get from the two of us. Our mission is to offer a space where people can come and practice — yoga, Pilates, or strength — and just feel completely welcome wherever they are at that moment. And then we help them grow in their practice from there.
Both of us really wanted to make it a community place. It was important that it felt like it a neighborhood place.
We bit off more than we thought we could chew, but we did it.
Dani: What did you feel was more than you could handle?
Lenore: Just keeping it going!
Back then, we did everything, everything… all the registration, all the computer stuff. We cleaned. We marketed. We were there for every single class, checking people in, welcoming people. It was nonstop for three solid years.
We were figuring it all out… the schedule, payroll, how many classes to have a day or each week. That first three years was such a learning curve.
Then, for reasons that were out of our control, our landlord wanted the space back to make a conference room for their business space, and we were basically thrown out.
We sat down and said, “Do we want to continue this, or is this the end of the business?”
We both wanted to continue. That was a good sign, right?
Again, I give Michelle credit. She found the building we are in now. She and her husband were walking in downtown Silver Spring, and they looked up and saw a “For Lease” sign, and interestingly enough, it was in the building where she and I had had our first meeting, when Michelle had invited me for tea, and we first talked about the idea of opening the business! At the time, I remember thinking ‘This building is beautiful!’ but it wasn't even an option to us then.
Dani: How do you measure your success and your failures?
Lenore: There are so many different ways. Obviously, some of it has to be the money, right? I mean, yoga is this beautiful, beautiful thing to do, but it's still a business.
We had some struggles in those first three years. With any business, it just takes time to grow. You have to learn the patterns and the ups and downs. There’s definitely a pattern to our business, when people are more engaged and wanting to come and invest in themselves. We figured out the pattern, and then we knew how to ride the storms. We learned how and when to tighten our belts and cut our costs.
In terms of success, it’s definitely been about sustaining the business, looking to the future, and seeing the investment of all this time and energy pay off.
Back when it was hard in those first three years, I was thinking we are not going to be able to do this for the duration of our lease. It's too hard.
Somehow, we dug deep, and we did it. We got through COVID, and then we got out of COVID, and now I'm the happiest I've ever been, ever.
And that happiness with the studio translates to my happiness in all areas of my life. I just love it. I can't imagine doing anything else.
Dani: What kept you going when it was really hard? What did you turn to?
Lenore: When we first opened, I was still working for other people. Michelle was not. She had retired. So, we were each doing all this stuff, and then we would text and try to email each other about all the issues we were having.
We decided to have these weekly meetings and that changed everything. Every week, we met no matter what, and we could connect and discuss everything. You came to the table with all your emotions, all your ideas, and we'd have an agenda of everything that was happening in the studio, which was at least two pages long, and we would go through it.
I think, when it was very tough, we would ask ourselves and each other, how can we make it more doable? We both definitely felt committed, no doubt. We didn't want to fail. We had all these people, and this was now their yoga home. We didn't want to let our students down. We couldn't.
Through those weekly meetings, we saw that it was all doable. We just had to work together, and then it became much more manageable.
Dani: In what ways did you get support around your fears or your doubts? Did you talk about that very openly?
Lenore: That was the benefit of being close friends. Raising our kids together, we already had that intimate relationship, and we still do. We still talk about everything. We trust each other so much. We talk about all of our fears and emotions and big, stupid dreams, and we help to motivate each other.
If either one of us has a concern or a sense that something isn’t working, we listen. There is no pretending, no holding back.
Dani: Do you switch places in that role or does it play out sort of in a similar way each time?
Lenore: We flip flop. If it's a decision we have to make, and one or the other has a stronger feeling about it, we listen. If Michelle makes a good case for doing it one way, I'll say, “Okay, I trust you. If you feel that strongly about it, let's give it a go.” And then she would say the same for me.
We’re open almost 10 years now, and that developed each year and got stronger and stronger.
Dani: So, you have this great trust for each other. Did you ever have any challenges with trusting yourself?
Lenore: Oh, I felt like an imposter for the longest time. It felt like it was luck that I even had this opportunity. I trusted myself as a teacher, but in terms of the business decisions, I did not trust myself at all in the beginning.
That's why it was so good to have Michelle because she'd been in the business world and a lot of it was intuitive to her. And Michelle would build me up so much. She would say, “Lenore, you are so much smarter than you know.” She had a confidence in me because I'd been in the industry for so long, like literally my whole adult life, I'd been in it in some way, shape, or form, and I did have good success. You know, some of the students we have now at the studio have been with me since I was 25!
As time has gone on, our roles over the past 10 years have changed a little bit. I am handling more of the day-to-day of everything now. I do a lot of that stuff now, the stuff that I was unsure of that I used to constantly check in with her about.
I have more of an intuition now, and I just feel better about it.
It's from experience, and I trust myself. That was a long time coming.
Dani: How long?
Lenore: It was probably about five years in before I felt like I could handle everything about the studio.
When you're first doing an endeavor as an entrepreneur, your intuition gets clouded and confused with fear. For me, whenever I was going to make a decision, it was “I can't do it…” It was so fear-based. It takes time to sort and separate that out, and then you can start listening to your actual intuition. And it came from understanding the customers, which for us is our students. So, understanding my students, listening to my students more, and asking “What's going on around us? What is the industry like?”
I started to recognize that all the things I was so worried about that I thought was coming from my intuition was not my intuition at all. It was self-protection telling me “Don't take the risk.”
Now I really feel like I do have a sense of the industry and of business in general. I feel so different. Before, when people would call me a small business owner, I’d say, “Oh, no, it's just a yoga studio.” Now I'm like, yeah, you know what? I am a small business owner.
Dani: How helpful was it to be dealing with something that's real and in front of you versus getting stuck in thinking about what you might do hypothetically?
Lenore: If we had overthought it, we wouldn't have opened. We both still had young kids at home! If I had known what those first three years were going to be like, I would have said, “No way!”
It’s so much better to just throw yourself in. Then you’re responding to what is real, and it's contextual.
Once we were in it, we knew we were committed, and we just had to do it, and her family and my family, everybody pitched in.
Dani: What motivates you now? How do you create or sustain your momentum?
Lenore: The way I feel now is how I always imagined I would feel having my own studio.
We've come a long way. Now we have help. We have somebody who cleans. We have the work-study staff that we love and trust. We have these teachers… a lot of the teachers have been with us since we opened. And we hired a studio manager who takes so much stuff off our plate. It allows you to enjoy it more when you have staff that you just feel so good about.
We are doing well.
It's hard work…so much more work than you think it's going to be, so you have to love it. It has to be a labor of love. When I thought of opening a place, it wasn't to make money. It was because I loved it, and I wanted to do it on my terms.
It has also felt so much less overwhelming because I have a business partner. It’s so much better than doing it alone! To experience all the ups and downs with Michelle, and then here we are today, still best friends! It has made such a rich relationship between us.
That's why we've been successful. I feel so blessed and lucky.
Next up: I speak to Nikki Pitman, a young licensed massage therapist in the early stages of her career…
Read last month’s story about chef Beth Yohannes.
If you have a story you’d like to share, or you know of someone you think I should talk to, write to me: dani@curiousmindopenheart.com