How did you start your own business? What steps did you take to get started?
I am here to tell you right now, if there is something you want to do – you can do it. I am not trying to be uplifting or corny, I truly believe that if there’s something you want to do badly enough, you can figure out a way. That doesn’t make the path any easier, it just makes it possible.
When I was getting City Cycle off the ground, there were a lot of people (real estate agents, accountants, marketing companies) that blew me off because I was young, because I had blonde hair or because I was showing up to meetings in yoga pants (maybe that was my mistake, but hellllooo I was opening a fitness studio). There were so many people that ignored me and tried to make the whole business process look so much more difficult than it really was. I am here to tell you, nothing is a complicated as it seems. And just a friendly little P.S.A. for you – the google search bar is your friend!
When I hired a real estate agent, she asked me to send her my business plan. I went straight to google and searched “How to structure a business plan.” When I had clothes made with our logo on them, the seller asked me to send over my resellers permit. I went straight to google and searched “What is a resellers permit?”
Lesson 1: You don't have to have all the answers to get started. It's not always easy, but you can do it - whatever 'it' is.
One thing that kept me from starting my business a lot earlier than I did was intimidation. I would hold myself back because I would think, who am I to start my own business? Who am I to build a community? Who am I to do something different than the norm? One major lesson I have learned from starting a business, is that not everyone has it together. There isn’t someone out there with the playbook that has all the secret codes (okay maybe Oprah). When I started, I 100% was figuring it out as I went. In my naïve mind, successful people were just successful, and they had amazing opportunities come their way because they were already successful (HA). Well quickly I learned in business nothing is given. You have to earn every single inch of success, which is extra hard because people are trying to drag you down and poke holes in your armor along the way. So inch by inch, I started creating success.
Lesson 2: You can't be scared to ask for what you want.
Half the partnerships/ambassadors programs I am a part of are because I messaged them on Instagram! Seriously! There is nothing embarrassing about being vocal about the things that you really want. What is embarrassing is living in the shadows, too scared to speak up in fear that you will be rejected. Get up, go get it. If you don’t get it, no one will ever know. Success is earned in the dark.
For the longest time I would stalk all of the lululemon ambassadors on social media and would admire their connection with the community. I would wait and watch and just hope I could be an ambassador one day. The connection the ambassadors get to be a part of, the education they provide – the legitimacy, I wanted it so badly. I would talk to my mom about how jealous I was of the ambassadors, when she stopped me and said, “Have you ever just told someone that works there that you want to be an ambassador?” I laughed and explained to her that you can’t just ask! She said something that has stuck with me:
“If you don’t say out loud that you want something, how are people ever supposed to know?”
From that point forward, I’ve forced myself to be vocal about my goals.
Lesson 3: You don't have to be good at everything to be successful.
When I started City Cycle, I was really good at teaching cycling. I knew everything there was to know about indoor cycling. I knew nothing about taxes, how to pay employees, or accounting. I was so intimidated by those things that I wasn’t educated on. How can you run a business if you don’t know how to run payroll or structure your taxes? My dad told me, “Lauren, you aren’t an accountant so why would you know how to do the accounting. You have never worked an HR job, so why would you know how to do payroll?” He was right – and I think this is a huge mistake that entrepreneurs make when first starting out.
I wanted to be in charge of everything and oversee everything. I wanted to open a cycle studio, but then I thought maybe we should add yoga -then I wanted to add in a coffee bar in the lobby. My dad said, “Pick one thing. ONE THING. Be the best person in the entire city at that one thing. Hire people for the other things, ask for help for the other things, but focus everything you have into one area and that will make you successful. So that is what I have done. Of course you have to pay attention to other areas of the business to be successful, but the point is – you don’t have to know everything to get started. I focus my heart and soul into teaching the best cycling class that I can. I have made so many mistakes as a business owner and I continue to learn something every day, but my success comes from focusing everything I have on my craft – cycling.
“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way that it is and your life is to just live inside that world. – Life can be much broader than that when you realize one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”
– Steve Jobs
