Latest / The Curve / How to Grow a Business Without Doing Everything Yourself, with Rachel Beider.

Transcript

How to Grow a Business Without Doing Everything Yourself, with Rachel Beider. · The Curve

0:00
Today's conversation is transporting you to New York.
0:04
I hate that I just did that.
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I really wish
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I could do a cool American accent.
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I just cannot.
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So this conversation was recorded in America.
0:12
It was January last year.
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I was in the pits of a breakup and I was having a really rough time
0:20
putting on a brave face while recording the podcast.
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So, I mean, I loved this conversation
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and I had every intention of releasing it when we recorded it.
0:29
But I don't know, I just felt a
0:31
little bit uncomfortable with where I was at personally and I worried that that was coming
0:35
through in the conversation.
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And it's such a funny thing hosting a podcast where you do only show an
0:41
element of your personality and behind closed doors at that time, I was really struggling
0:46
and I felt like it was impacting my work and impacting the way that I interviewed people.
0:51
and recently our producer Emily, bless her heart, we love her, she was listening to and kind of
0:58
looking through the archives and she brought up this episode along with a couple of others that
1:02
we are going to now release and she was just like these are amazing, these are so interesting and
1:07
there's so many learnings and these are such good interviews, we need to put them out and I was just
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like really?
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So I've decided not to listen to the edit, I'm just trusting her judgment but
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what I do remember about this conversation was feeling really inspired and excited about the
1:25
way that different women do business.
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And I do think in the time that's passed over the last 12
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months, we've put out to the community quite a few times, do you want to learn more about business or
1:34
business finances?
1:36
And there's been an overwhelmingly positive response to that.
1:39
So this conversation is exactly that.
1:42
It is what I originally thought would be called maybe like
1:45
the millionaire muse section or segment or like ongoing thing where we could find incredible
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women who have made either million dollar portfolios or million dollar businesses and
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really get inside their brain about how they built the things that they built.
2:00
And this conversation with Rachel is transparent, it's open, she's built and scaled two very
2:05
different businesses and the way that she speaks so candidly about her struggles and
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transparently about the financials behind the business I think is really inspiring for
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a lot of people, whether you are a business owner or you want to be one day, or you're just slightly
2:18
interested in how things run behind the scenes of a business, this conversation is candid.
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It's
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interesting.
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And she is really, really amazing.
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So I hope that you enjoy the conversation.
2:29
And in general, if you like the idea of learning more about how female founders built their
2:36
businesses, we would really love feedback on this episode.
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Are you into it?
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Are you not?
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We're not offended if you listen and you think, actually, do you know what?
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I'd rather not learn about businesses and business finances.
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So no, the entrepreneur story is not for me.
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Or maybe this kind of thing is really interesting to you.
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Please let us know because we really want to make sure that the content that we're putting
2:56
out is what you want to hear and that you are learning as much as possible.
3:00
So without gabbering on too much more, I would like to introduce the amazing Rachel Beider.
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Rachel, I'm so excited that you're here.
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Thank you for coming in.
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And also you just look so
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well put together.
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You know, when people come in for interviews and they really show you up,
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I'm like, I should have made more effort today.
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No girl, I was checking out your sweater and I
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was like, damn, she's so cool.
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I love it.
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I'm really struggling with the New York temperatures.
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I'm struggling to like dress myself like black socks with white sneakers, not a look.
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Whatever works, whatever gets you through it.
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Now, the reason we wanted to get you on the podcast,
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there is a real buzzword at the moment the idea of being an entrepreneur is like all of a sudden
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become really common and quite like I don't know it sort of feels like it's the new cool thing that
3:49
people want to be able to say and I don't know if that's because all of a sudden I'm around more
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business owners or what that is but I think there's a misconception of what it means to have
4:00
your own business it's been quite like glamorized is this always the kind of life that you wanted
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or did you stumble into business because you had a great idea?
4:11
Yeah.
4:11
So, I mean, initially I had gone to art school.
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I was working as a photo assistant,
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which was a very low paid job.
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I was working as an intern.
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I did dog walking.
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I was a nanny.
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I
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was a bartender, kind of the New York hustle of one's early twenties.
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A little bit of everything.
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A little bit of everything.
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Yeah.
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So post art school, I was like, oh God,
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what do I do with my life?
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I am bartending.
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I'm not finding work in art.
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Big shocker there.
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I decided to embark on a backpacking trip as one does when you're 21.
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Eat, pray, love.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Off we go.
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You know, I'm backpacking.
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I'm sleeping on all these hostile floors.
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And I grew up with scoliosis.
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So all of this travel has wreaked havoc on my body.
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And I saw this Thai massage class.
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And it was really inexpensive to do like a tourist course to learn to give Thai massage.
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And so at the time, I was traveling with a boyfriend.
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And I was like, I really want him to learn to give me a massage.
5:02
Right.
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let's go to this class and learn how to massage.
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Hey, do you need to practice on me?
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Exactly.
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And, and, you know, I really, I loved it.
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When I think about my history, my mom was a professional ballerina.
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My dad was a businessman.
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So I feel like I am sort of the culmination of the two of them.
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You've done exactly what you were meant to,
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and you've taken genes from both sides.
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Exactly.
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There you go.
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So I ended up taking this class, loving it, doing more research.
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The best school of massage in New York was Swedish Institute in the country.
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It's like the oldest massage school in the country.
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It sounds amazing.
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So I applied, got in, moved back to New York City, went to school.
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And then I just, I really, post-school I was so lost and I felt like I don't like any of these work situations.
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I really want to work for myself.
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So I tried to think of a way that I could, like I couldn't afford to rent space at the time because it was like thousands of dollars for one little treatment room.
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but I found a physical therapy clinic in the neighborhood and I marched in I was like 24
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years old isn't it amazing how much confidence we had when we were in our early 20s amazing as a
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teenager I reckon I just thought I was the absolute shit you know like I would have done anything now
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I'm such a little scaredy cat it's so different it's so different I walked in and I was the
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naivete it took to start this business I will tell you so I walked in and I said hey I noticed
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PT clinic, do you have massage here?
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And they said, no, you know, we used to, we have a treatment
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room, but nobody's in it.
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And I immediately was like, I will trade you three mornings a week
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working on your patients in exchange.
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Let me use the space when you're not using it.
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Genius.
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Because I couldn't afford, I had time and energy, but I didn't have money.
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So I'm like,
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I have to trade something here.
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They kind of looked at me and it was May at the time.
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And
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they said, you know what, we'll try it for a couple months and we'll just kind of see how it
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goes.
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I think they were very skeptical.
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Good on them for being open to it though, to be honest.
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Right.
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I mean, I had at the time, maybe 10 clients who were like friends of mine, if I'm honest.
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And by the end of summer, I had 110 clients.
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Oh, so you'd absolutely nailed it.
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I also, I really looked out for, I tried to identify individuals who see a volume of their
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own private clients, because for me getting one-to-one person, it's a lot of effort.
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But
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if I can get to one person who sees 10, 20, 30 people.
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So I started looking at like hairdressers
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because they see 50 people a week, they're on their feet.
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I was trading massage for haircuts
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and highlights.
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My hair looked amazing that year.
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And they would send me, you know, they would get
7:30
massage and then they would send me all of their customers.
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Oh, you are a business owner at heart,
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you know, like I do think that that mentality of just like trying to think about how you can
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maximize your opportunity with limited resources is so necessary when you start.
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And I think,
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yeah, like you were just automatically doing all the things without even meaning to.
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Well, it took a lot of reading also because I have no business background whatsoever.
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So that was an idea I got from a book called Book Yourself Solid.
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And it was all about if you're in a services-based business, things that you can do.
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And so I don't do anything half-assed.
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If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.
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Same.
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It's quite extreme.
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Yeah, it can be.
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So it was a conscious decision.
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It was, I'm not really enjoying my work.
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How can I create an income for myself?
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Yeah.
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And how can I start a business without having to put myself in a place that doesn't feel that great for me?
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Yeah.
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I mean, and eventually, you know, I realized I need to stop trading time for space.
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I need to actually pay for a space.
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And they weren't interested in that.
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So I found a space down the street to rent, which at the time I was like, oh, my God, it's so terribly expensive.
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It was one little room.
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And I was still at the time working at a spa two days a week because I was so paranoid about leaving my day job.
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I think everyone experiences that, though.
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Just like, I need to, I need to just in case, you know, and I realized every single time I was at
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the spa, the room was sitting there empty.
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And I started thinking, what if I hired one person to
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work the days that I'm at the spa?
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And so I hired my first person who was like a girl I went to
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school with and said, Hey, do you want to try this two afternoons a week?
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See how it goes.
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And she was doing great.
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So I had basically doubled my income because I was making income
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from her working in the space when I was at the spa and I was working at the spa.
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And then I
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realized with one treatment room, if you divide the day in half, you can have a morning shift and
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an afternoon shift.
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There's this misconception that you need, if you hire three people, you need
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three rooms for them.
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And it's like, no, you need one room that you all split and you have a schedule.
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And if you're open seven days a week with the day split in half, that's 14 shifts in a week.
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Most people work three or four shifts.
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So all of a sudden I realized I could hire quite a few people
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out of that one little room.
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And I grew very intentionally slowly in that one room prior to
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expanding.
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So I'm really risk averse actually, and I'm quite anxious.
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So I like to make sure my
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bases are super covered before I move forward with anything.
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And so that was a nice way to ease out
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of it.
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I really appreciate the honesty there in terms of, again, misconception, but what people
10:00
probably think is in order to have or start a business, you need to be really ballsy and super
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confident and very like risk tolerant, but you can do it in a way that works for you.
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And I think
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And it's really cool to hear different ways of approaching it because obviously when you're reading business books, like most of the time, it's probably a guy that's written it and it's a particular style and the way that they've approached it.
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So hearing stories like that are really inspiring, particularly I would say for a lot of young women who have done their degree and are thinking about their career or are in their first or second job and aren't particularly fulfilled.
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starting to look around and figure out how else you could do it like are there different ways
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and that's super inspiring what I would love to do is for you to just have the floor for a second
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to explain how many staff you have how many locations you have your if you know your revenue
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turnover since you started like just some like big key business milestones to give context for
11:02
how big the business has gotten now sure so we are in four locations in Manhattan there are I want
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to say 70 something employees uh quite a few front desk and then the rest are massage and then there's
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four full-time folks including you five yeah including me I have to think about it I I include
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because I have another full-time person but he's at a different company that I own so it's uh
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canopy is a different project um shit i didn't know you had two businesses i'm not prepared
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yes no that's okay what's the second business yeah so canopy is a play space like an indoor
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play space for babies and toddlers ages zero to four this i did know yeah it's so random it's so
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cute and it looks like the intersection of what happens when a massage therapist makes a play
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space it's very relaxing it's very chill it's good music it's you know sorry to need to backtrack we
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milestones so we've got like around 70 employees four locations let's talk about the financials
12:01
like revenue wise yeah how is it going um last year we did just over 3.8 million in sales
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holy shit that gives me goosebumps that's so amazing i'm really happy with that isn't that
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crazy to think about that's so impressive we've we've recently been seeing about 500 just over
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500 clients a week, which is insane to think that there are 2000 people a month out there that we
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are physically touching, hopefully emotionally touching and who are just like feeling better
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and less stressed and happier.
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I love that.
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I love that.
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Oh, huge achievements.
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And then in terms of
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for anyone who hasn't run their own business, obviously I would like to celebrate the wins,
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but it's not truthful to not acknowledge that business is not all sunshine and rainbows.
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Can we talk about what some of your biggest challenges have been as a solo entrepreneur?
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Certainly.
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What would you say have been some really standout moments where either you've thought,
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I think I need to quit.
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This is too much.
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You're not seeing the sales that you thought.
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Have there been a few of those pivotal times that you thought about potentially giving up?
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Early in the business, it was right around the time I expanded to my second location
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and I was doing everything myself.
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And I mean everything, like answering phones.
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I was doing the laundry.
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I was cleaning.
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You know, I was doing every top to bottom.
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And I was very, I can do it, you know, can do attitude, must do everything.
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I can handle everything.
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And it's like I was so afraid to delegate.
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It felt like letting go of a steering wheel.
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And so I was spread way too thin.
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I was starting to burn out.
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And I felt like I was failing all the time, which is a horrible feeling.
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What do you mean failing?
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Like explain what you were feeling.
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I was trying to do so many things that I wasn't able to give 1000% of my attention to them.
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And I don't like doing things half-assed, as I said.
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So either things weren't getting done in a timely fashion because only I could do them.
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Or I wasn't able to do it to the standard that I would like.
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So whether it was writing blogs.
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And again, this is before AI.
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How on earth did you do all of those things?
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I mean, so you were essentially running the business, massaging people, doing all of the kind of like sort of housekeeping tasks.
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HR, hiring, managing, paying bills, paying checks.
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Were you in a relationship at this time?
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Like what was your personal life?
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In and out.
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I had a few relationships during that time.
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But my work came first, if I'm honest.
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It was really hard to focus on much else.
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There were definitely times where we would be at brunch and I would leave to take a call to book an appointment.
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and you know this was prior to having like even this was like paper I'm talking about like paper
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calendars we didn't have scheduling software things have gotten so much easier now that we
14:45
automate more I remember thinking gosh like I cannot keep doing this like this something's
14:52
going to give it's probably me and I think what happens is rapid growth reveals cracks in the
14:57
foundation and the foundation was me and so you know if you imagine if I send 500 people your way
15:03
tomorrow what's going to break?
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It's probably you.
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And so that's a good way to pressure test
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what works and what doesn't work.
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And for me, I needed to be convinced that I needed to hire
15:12
a second person.
15:13
And I took this amazing program.
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This woman, Victoria, runs something called Future
15:17
Women X.
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And it's basically a mentorship program where she brings in C-suite women from around the
15:24
world to work with beginner stage business folks like me.
15:28
And at the time, I was doing about a
15:29
million and a half in sales it was not you know it was nothing to nothing to shy away from how on
15:34
earth were you not thinking i need another person to think you have 70 people now and you're doing
15:38
four times or not even four times that but yet at that time it was just you it's like yeah how are
15:44
you doing anxiety like yeah just just i you know stubbornness um this thing of like it's weak to
15:51
ask for help which is bullshit god we're so annoying sometimes but just this idea that like i i can do
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everything myself and that that's a strength.
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And it's like, actually you shouldn't do everything
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yourself.
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Um, so, you know, when I was paired with the C-suite woman, the program had you go around
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to meet with all these different people.
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And the job of that C-suite woman was to have your back,
16:12
ask the questions on your behalf, really like get in there.
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And, and what that sort of did was sort
16:17
of sneakily expose what it feels like to have someone super competent, have your back.
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And I
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I was like, oh, I started to understand here is the benefit to hiring someone.
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Because also at the time it was like, wait, I'm going to pay out two thirds of my salary
16:34
to someone else to do this job.
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Because again, you know, there's overhead, there was expansion costs.
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And so the idea was like, I'm making this good salary.
16:43
Finally, even though I'm doing everything, it was pretty scary, an idea to pay out a
16:47
lot of my salary to someone else.
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but the very moment that I did it,
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I was able to expand to two more locations.
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I was able to increase the amount of work
16:57
that we were able to do.
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And I was able to decrease the amount of work
17:00
that I was personally doing.
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And I will never look back.
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I always need a number two person.
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Like it just, it's economies of scale as well
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because the more locations that you have,
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the actually, like the bigger it is,
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the easier it is to manage
17:14
because there's just so much more help.
17:16
I do think that this idea of outsourcing
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is not a natural inclination potentially for women or and maybe it does come from that sort
17:24
of scarcity mindset because yeah there was so many there still is stuff that I do at the curve
17:30
that I shouldn't really be doing um and it's a symptom of adding the numbers of okay well like a
17:37
a hundred dollars going to this person mean you know you you think of it in um quite literal
17:43
dollar value opposed to the zoomed out value of what you're getting from like spending to make
17:49
money essentially yeah I mean or also there's this fallacy of like well I can do it faster
17:54
and it's like that might be true but when do you have time to do it like are you going to get to
17:58
it faster than someone else you've hired to do I learned a lot also from Ari Mizell who he calls
18:03
himself an overwhelmologist um oh god right I feel like I maybe need to listen to that he has
18:09
a podcast.
18:10
He has a book called The Art of Less Doing.
18:12
And he talks a lot about delegation.
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And
18:14
that also helped me to delegate even further.
18:17
He has this idea that every year you and everyone
18:20
on your team should write down the top things that you're doing for the business and take 70%
18:26
of them off your plate and pass it down to the next person and teach that person.
18:29
Oh my God, but shit, what about the person at the bottom?
18:32
Well, automation happens at the bottom and people shouldn't be doing things that can be automated.
18:37
So-
18:38
I love that.
18:38
And that way there's forward momentum and growth for everyone on the team rather than stagnation because every year you're learning to do so much more.
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And then when you've freed up 70% of your time, you learn more things.
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You're able to network.
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You're able to do more with the business.
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I mean, that allowed me to open a totally different concept to my core business that I've had for 15 years.
18:58
So like a year ago, we finished construction on Canopy.
19:01
And I would never have been able to step away from that business if it wasn't running like a well-oiled machine.
19:07
that makes so much sense when it comes to scaling into a million dollar business was it kind of
19:14
doing more of the same was it a strategic like pivot or decision or was it just like did you
19:21
have okay I want to get here and this is how I'm gonna do it or was it more just like yeah that
19:27
kind of gradual build where all of a sudden you're like yes we've got there I think honestly I just
19:32
needed to get out of my own way.
19:34
The thing holding me back from getting there was me.
19:37
Like I was
19:38
definitely afraid to raise my rates.
19:40
I made all the rookie mistakes that one makes when they start
19:42
their career.
19:43
Like I didn't charge enough for my hour.
19:45
You know, I thought it was, I thought it was
19:48
good at the time, but in retrospect could have probably started with more.
19:51
I waited too long
19:52
to finally raise my rates.
19:54
When I did, I only raised them a little bit because I was scared.
19:57
And the funny thing is when I raised my rates, I got busier.
19:59
It was like I was running a sale.
20:00
every time we've raised our rates we've gotten busier I think people perceive that if it's more
20:04
expensive it must be better I actually agree which you know I mean if I can't afford something
20:10
I want it it's it's so weird so we had started in 2008 at $80 an hour we are now $165 an hour
20:19
it is it's a confidence thing because it comes it's it's the price is a direct reflection of
20:23
what you think it's worth and what you think people are worth and that can be really confronting
20:27
I mean, and I will say I had a five-year plan when I got out of school, which was like work for myself the first year, maybe have a private practice by year three and maybe have an employee by year five.
20:38
I just did it in six months.
20:39
God, that's so cool.
20:41
Well, also there's that thing, you know, Parkinson's law of the task will shrink or expand to fill the time allotted.
20:48
Oh, yeah.
20:48
Like it's like give something to a busy person and it will get done sort of situation.
20:52
It's so true.
20:53
Yep.
20:53
Do you mind talking about, you just spoke about the delegation piece and that massive learning of taking 70% of what your yearly role is and offloading and teaching it to the person underneath you.
21:07
What is the sort of servant leadership style?
21:10
Because I've seen you speak about it online and I'd love to have it explained in a really simple way so that people who aren't just running businesses that perhaps are working in a business, are managing people, can learn more about it.
21:21
Yeah, so I, maybe this is like a bit punk rock of me, but like I hate the patriarchal
21:29
authoritarian, like, I'm going to tell you how to do this and you're going to do it.
21:33
Sign?
21:33
That never really worked for me.
21:34
I didn't like bosses who behaved that way.
21:37
And I do think it's like a very male oriented way of doing business.
21:42
And when I came across the concept of servant leadership, I immediately was like, oh, this
21:46
is what, this is what makes sense for me.
21:48
So for me, it means my job at the top is to make sure that everyone under me has every single thing they need to do to thrive in their position, to feel really good about their work, to feel really happy in their job.
22:02
And so it's a lot of listening from top to bottom.
22:05
So management who's responsible for their employees, it is their job to serve them, to make sure that they have everything they need to thrive, feel really good, be successful.
22:14
And maybe that's more support.
22:15
Maybe that's mentorship.
22:17
I love that.
22:17
So it's essentially, it's what can I do to make you more efficient, happier, and thrive
22:24
in your role?
22:25
Exactly.
22:26
It's so interesting because it's normally the other way around, isn't it?
22:29
Exactly.
22:29
And I find that like a lot of people are with me for a really long time because of that.
22:34
Some of my full-time folks have been with me six, seven years.
22:38
Some of my part-time staff have been with me over 10 years.
22:41
And so, you know, it works.
22:44
Can you explain in a bit more detail?
22:46
Could you give me a couple of examples of how people could implement the style of leadership
22:52
in perhaps like different businesses or roles?
22:54
Yeah.
22:54
So I'm a big fan of having feedback sessions and really getting to like speaking with different
23:01
parts of your company, having them help you to problem solve by saying, here's a problem
23:06
I'm tackling.
23:07
Talk to me about what do you notice?
23:09
What do you see?
23:10
What's going on for you?
23:12
If you could make things 10% better, 20% better, 30%, you know, what would that look like in your job?
23:19
What would it look like for you to be super, super stoked to come to work?
23:23
How should we?
23:23
So, for example, we were talking about hiring.
23:27
It's very challenging to hire enough massage therapists in our industry.
23:31
There just aren't enough graduating from schools.
23:33
And it's a great job.
23:34
So if you want to go to massage school, you should.
23:37
The Swedish one.
23:38
What's it called?
23:38
Swedish Institute.
23:39
Yeah.
23:39
But it's really hard.
23:41
So we were trying to figure out like, what is the difference of working for us?
23:47
What makes us really special?
23:48
So I sat down with, you know, every massage there.
23:51
I was like trying to interview every single person.
23:53
I didn't quite get to everybody, but I'm still working on it.
23:55
And talk to them about what makes their job amazing.
24:00
What do they not like about it?
24:01
What could we remedy?
24:02
And sometimes it's just like the smallest things.
24:05
Like they wanted a nut-free granola in the break room.
24:08
I can manage that.
24:09
Oh, that's so cute.
24:10
It's the smallest things that like really contribute to happiness.
24:13
And I try to really, I want them to feel impactful in their own careers.
24:18
I don't want them to feel like a bystander or that they're not heard.
24:20
And so listening to your employees, like shutting up and actually listening and asking good
24:26
questions and having an open door, being accessible to people that if they want to vent about
24:32
something, you're a place that they can vent.
24:34
And then you can actually make changes, not just talk about it.
24:36
That's right.
24:37
Do you think that that has contributed to your financial success as a business?
24:43
Definitely.
24:43
Definitely.
24:44
Without a doubt.
24:45
I think when you empower people to make decisions,
24:48
when you treat people like adults, they're much more likely to act as such.
24:52
So for the front desk,
24:53
if there is a problem and it costs less than $300 to fix it, I want to let them know,
24:59
you go ahead, take care of that.
25:00
Let your manager know after the fact.
25:02
For management,
25:03
if there's a problem and it costs, and this has changed over the years, right?
25:05
Like maybe it was
25:06
$100 at first.
25:07
If it's $1,000 or less to take care of it, I don't want to hear about it until
25:11
our weekly standup.
25:12
What's great about this is it empowers them to make decisions.
25:16
We can course
25:17
correct after the fact.
25:18
Nothing is too crazy or too expensive.
25:20
And it reduces the volume of
25:24
noise that our management hears, which reduces the volume of noise that I hear.
25:29
So I think it's very, very important when you are at the top of a business, you get decision fatigue
25:34
very easily because you're dealing with so many questions and so many decisions and big ones,
25:40
little ones.
25:40
The water dispenser broke.
25:42
I don't need to pick out which water dispenser we replace
25:45
it with.
25:46
I want someone at the desk to say, hey, I noticed it wasn't heating water.
25:50
I tried to fix
25:50
it.
25:51
Didn't work.
25:51
I ordered a new one.
25:53
It'll come tomorrow.
25:53
And I want to hear about that at the
25:55
meeting on Monday.
25:56
I don't need to hear about it in the moment.
25:57
The decision fatigue thing is so
25:59
real.
25:59
Now, I would like to actually, before we move on from this business conversation,
26:04
I would just like to ask, there is a lot of everything in the world right now.
26:07
There's a lot of massage places.
26:09
There's a lot of everything.
26:10
You know, there's not a lot of what feels like to me.
26:13
There's not a huge amount of white space, you know, like totally untouched industries,
26:18
which are like ripe for the picking for a business to start in.
26:21
With that in mind, what kind of thoughts or learnings or advice would you have for people
26:27
that maybe do want to start businesses that are in competitive industries?
26:31
I think it's easier to differentiate yourself because sometimes people are like, well, what makes you unique?
26:36
And it's really hard for us to answer that question for some reason.
26:39
I like the framework of if you stopped offering what you do tomorrow, what would people miss the most about working with you?
26:48
oh it's your history for me it was growing up with scoliosis it was growing up with a lot of
26:54
pain management and understanding um really deeply like what chronic pain feels like and that allowed
27:00
me to connect really deeply with my clients in the beginning i love that i don't know who said
27:04
this quote but your mess is your message it's like when you look back at your experience in
27:09
your life all of the things that have happened to you usually that's the thing that resonates
27:14
with people and the way that you've overcome them.
27:18
And so when you're looking at business ideas,
27:21
I would recommend thinking about your unique strengths, thinking about the thing that you
27:26
bring to the world that is different from other people, because there is no one in the world just
27:30
like you.
27:31
And so mine is really freaking weird, right?
27:34
Like I'm a massage therapist who opened a
27:35
play space, but I'm also a mom who went through with my first kid who was born at the beginning
27:41
of COVID, I didn't leave my house for two years.
27:44
And when I was pregnant with my second baby,
27:46
I think the play space was perhaps an overreaction to that isolation that I felt the first time.
27:52
But I took something that was painful from my own history, my own experience,
27:55
that I knew innately was a challenge for me and put it out there into the world and discovered
28:00
this is a challenge for a lot of people.
28:01
And so it resonates.
28:03
So I would tap into your history,
28:05
your experience and you know with technology changing so quickly with AI I mean there there is
28:13
so much that can can be done I don't know I use AI every day I'm fascinated by AI it is so
28:19
fascinating isn't it I'd love to move on to personal finances wealth you know you we're not
28:25
going to pretend that starting a business there is no awareness of your finances you know like
28:30
And what I mean by that is you shouldn't start a business because you're trying to create financial freedom or be a billionaire.
28:38
But the reality is you work incredibly hard.
28:42
The dream really is to be able to create a lifestyle where you have freedom to spend your time in the way you like, freedom to go to an amazing place that you've always wanted to visit.
28:51
You know, like the idea really is you work hard to get the goodies.
28:54
That's, you know, the dream for most business owners.
28:57
Yeah.
28:58
It's also not the reality for a lot of business owners.
29:00
However, with press being so successful, you're in a really amazing position.
29:05
And I would love to ask what it feels like, you know, you're continuing to work.
29:10
I mean, it seems like you're not selling the business anytime soon, but you're in a position
29:15
where you have that sort of financial freedom, for lack of a better word.
29:19
Yeah.
29:19
What does it feel like to have got there?
29:21
Has it changed your perspective on how you spend, save, spend your time?
29:26
Like what, what does it feel like to have made it is really what I'm trying to ask.
29:31
I mean, it's allowed me so much freedom.
29:34
I love the people I work with.
29:36
I love the way that I work.
29:38
I love that I can say I'm going to, um, the Caribbean for a few days and I'll see you
29:44
in a bit.
29:44
Like I can travel as I wish.
29:46
I can work remotely.
29:47
I spend my summers.
29:48
We bought a house in Virginia and near the Blue Ridge mountains in Charlottesville.
29:52
And, um, I spend my summers there with my kids, which is awesome.
29:56
and the business I can pop in, you know, on Zoom and check in here and there.
30:01
But like it doesn't require the volume of time that it used to.
30:07
And I did make huge sacrifices in the beginning.
30:09
And so to be able to have a really wonderful team who I can depend on,
30:15
I just feel so held in that.
30:16
I feel so like relieved by that.
30:18
And financially, certainly, I still very clearly remember the ramen noodle days
30:23
or the days of going to a restaurant and not getting that side that I really wanted because
30:28
I needed to save for the main dish.
30:30
Or like I was telling my husband the other day, cause we were
30:33
ordering in Indian food.
30:34
And I was like, this is wealth to me.
30:37
I can get any dish that I want.
30:40
I'm not going to get 20 because like, that's crazy, but I can get any dish that I want and
30:43
not think about it.
30:44
And I know that that's such a small thing.
30:46
And for some women, it's a handbag
30:48
or for some, you know, I'm more of an experiences person than an objects person.
30:52
That said, I did
30:53
buy a house, which feels really good to me.
30:56
I have given myself the freedom to have childcare,
31:00
which has been really impactful because owning two companies and also having two children can be a
31:06
lot.
31:06
And so to have the ability to spend time with my kids and also spend time at my work and have a
31:13
balance of that has been really lovely, especially postpartum this time.
31:17
My husband and I took both
31:18
of our moms to Paris recently on a trip.
31:21
Like a team trip with all four of you.
31:22
That is so cute.
31:24
Us and the kids too.
31:25
And we also brought our nanny along.
31:27
And so at night, the parents,
31:29
you know, and grandmas could go out to a really nice dinner while nanny was home with the kids
31:33
sleeping in the hotel.
31:34
How incredible.
31:35
Like phenomenal to be able to afford to bring help
31:40
overseas and to be able to take our parents on trips, you know, to be able to donate to the
31:44
causes that I think are really important has been impactful.
31:47
I've certainly upgraded some pieces of
31:49
my wardrobe.
31:50
I used to do a lot more fast fashion, which I feel terrible about.
31:54
And now I'm invested
31:55
in some key pieces from smaller designers who I like, who have a better impact on the world.
32:01
But yeah, it feels really good.
32:02
Oh, your life just does sound quite dreamy, if I'm being honest.
32:06
Yeah, I would love to ask you if you felt comfortable speaking about, you know, you've
32:10
now got two very massive assets in your businesses.
32:14
You've spoken about having property.
32:16
When it comes to your personal, you know, budgeting, saving, investing, how do you approach
32:23
that?
32:23
And do you draw on how you've done it with your business to do it in your personal life?
32:27
Like
32:27
what is happening in terms of growing wealth outside of business?
32:31
Yeah.
32:32
So what's interesting
32:33
is I have been a one woman operation in charge of everything for like 15 years.
32:40
Right.
32:40
But when you
32:41
enter a relationship now there is a partner.
32:44
Um, so it's not just me having say over, over
32:48
everything.
32:49
Um, it's also my husband, his perspective, his knowledge, his wisdom, um,
32:54
his advice.
32:54
How long have the two of you been together?
32:56
We have been together six years.
32:58
So you had built the business up until quite a strong point when you met.
33:03
Yes, exactly.
33:04
And he is equally ambitious, passionate, driven, excited, super into
33:10
spreadsheets.
33:10
He's a very mathy lawyer guy, right?
33:13
And he has his own, you know, it balanced me in a
33:16
way because like if you were to look at the portfolio of our careers, mine is very volatile.
33:22
I go through changes, I go through ups and downs, but I also go through huge spikes.
33:27
He has a salary.
33:28
And so it's interesting because having the stability from his career has allowed me to take more risks.
33:35
And then also having kids has changed things.
33:38
So prior to having kids, we were able to put away a lot more money.
33:42
At this point in this junction in our career, we are definitely doing a lot more spending on child care, on diapers, on daycare, or whether it be private school at some point.
33:55
I have this motto where if I'm 80 in my rocking chair and I'm looking back at my life,
34:01
where are there times where I wish I could have thrown money at the problem to make it a little
34:04
easier on myself?
34:06
Having children under the age of five, from my experience now, I would guess
34:10
that that's that time.
34:11
Yeah.
34:12
Red hot, massive zone of throw money at the problem.
34:16
It's not
34:16
going to be the year.
34:17
And we agreed on it intentionally.
34:19
Every year we sit down and we
34:20
have like a vision board sort of like that is so cute we make like we make seriously a vision board
34:25
that says like what are our categories that are important to us freedom is a big one and financial
34:30
freedom is a big one and so you know we make intentional choices of this is going to be a year
34:36
where we're not going to put as much into the IRA or we're not going to put as much into the IRA
34:41
sorry um so uh it's a retirement account okay um or Vanguard which is our majority of our funds are
34:47
a vanguard.
34:48
I would love to ask one last question, which I think will be really interesting,
34:52
particularly for young mothers.
34:54
How have you become or gotten comfortable with your personal
34:59
financial decisions around money to focus less on growing now and investing in your family?
35:07
Yeah, I mean, the whole point of having your own career, your own company is that you can decide.
35:15
and I think there are phases where you're in growth mode and there are phases where you're
35:19
plateauing or there are phases where you can take a back seat and a pause and because I don't have
35:24
investors I have the luxury of saying this is not going to be a crazy growth year for me this is
35:29
going to be a year where I'm spending time with my family or this is going to be kind of a spend a
35:33
year I'm going to do some like bucket milestone things that um that I won't contribute to my
35:38
savings this year and that's okay just giving myself a little bit of grace and like I think
35:43
especially when you have young children, giving yourself grace.
35:47
Those early days, I remember
35:48
thinking, oh my God, I have to do every little thing.
35:51
And at some point I was like, you know
35:52
what?
35:53
I wouldn't hire someone in that headspace.
35:56
I'm going to just fire myself for like a few
35:58
weeks.
35:58
I'm just going to say, you know what?
36:00
You're fired from making any decision while you
36:02
are still- You know what, right, Jill?
36:02
Don't come to work.
36:04
Right?
36:04
And I'm like, you know, now is not the time for that.
36:07
You don't need to do every little thing
36:09
always.
36:09
There will be a season, there will be a time.
36:12
And for me, when the baby was super little,
36:14
I'm glad I spent that time with him.
36:16
And I'm also glad that I didn't give myself as hard of a time
36:20
about putting things into savings because money will come, time will not.
36:26
Oh, that hit hard.
36:29
Money will come, time will not.
36:31
Finding that balance of enjoying your life, doing the things
36:34
that you want to do, trying to maximize your pay, but also like kind of just comes down to the
36:40
classic, don't sweat the small stuff.
36:41
Like you just can do what you can do.
36:43
But at the end of
36:44
the day, like happiness really, and time with people that you love is always going to be the
36:49
most valuable asset you have, right?
36:51
Yeah, absolutely.
36:53
Thank you so much for your time,
36:54
Rachel.
36:54
It was so awesome to meet you.
36:56
If anyone would like to come and get an incredible massage,
36:59
where can they find you?
37:00
We are at PressModernMassage.com in New York City.
37:05
and if anyone has
37:06
a cute little kid
37:07
that they would like
37:07
to come and play
37:08
at Canopy
37:09
where can they find it
37:10
that is
37:10
thecanopynyc.com
37:13
thank you so much
37:14
thank you
37:15
thanks so much
37:15
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37:16
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37:17
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37:42
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