(soft music)
- Hey everyone, I'm Scott, Shigeoka,
GoDaddy's Entrepreneur-In-Residence,
and I'm here calling from my home in San Francisco,
following the shelter-in-place orders.
And I've been talking to small business owners
about how they've taken their work online.
But what about entrepreneurs who teach classes?
How have they made the transition?
For today's virtual round table,
I'm talking to instructors who teach cooking,
fitness and language classes,
and I'm learning more about how they've managed
to transition from the in-person classroom
to the online one.
So wonderful to be in conversation with the three of you.
I cannot wait to learn more about who you are,
what you do, and I thought we could start there.
- All right, cool.
My name is Zachary Sass, I'm an executive chef.
I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
After COVID-19 crisis happened,
I was laid off from my restaurant job.
And so after I got laid off,
I had to come up with an idea to provide for my family,
so I came up with chefsaccess.com,
which is a virtual online cooking class.
- So my name is Maria.
I am originally from Argentina and right now,
well I moved 34 years ago,
and we offer Spanish classes for kids ages one to 10.
Because of the coronavirus,
we had to switch and pivot 180 degrees
and started teaching online from a Friday to a Monday,
having all the systems in place
and the content on the website.
And so from that came offering new services.
- And then what about for you?
Do you go by Liver or Olivia?
- Olivia, so, my background is in food.
Zach, I went to culinary school,
so I worked with celebrity chefs for eight years,
and then, stopped or left that part of my life
to start a fitness concept called Box and Glow,
which is a boutique hybrid studio boxing yoga mix.
And I just opened my second studio flagship,
3,000 square feet, three weeks before shutdown.
And I closed my studios, both,
and I laid off my 30 employees
and I moved to my parents house in Miami beach, Florida.
And I've been here for two months
and have taught like over 60 classes,
dancing in a leotard from their living room.
So launched a whole digital platform,
like you just keep a community alive, particularly because,
I need to, at some point reopen and yeah,
create some conversation through all of this.
- I think that's so great.
I think for each of you,
whether it's in food or language or fitness,
like you all are doing something that's so needed.
People are craving connection.
People are craving this desire to get into their body,
to find nourishment, to learn.
And so I love that you all are finding ways
to do this digitally.
You know, what are you seeing as a benefit
for taking your work online?
- It has proven that my messaging and my product
is well beyond the four walls space
of a New York City studio.
50-50 split of my client is New York City and global,
which is wild.
So now in reframing my business,
I'm going to invest further in the digital platform,
which I wasn't really focused on prior.
So I think the reach is so much farther.
- I think that going virtual is gonna stay.
This quarantine has changed the way forever.
We're reaching kids who're in Japan, for example,
out of state as well.
But it's like, whoa, we reach more people.
It was an amazing feeling like this goes beyond
what I thought.
It's beyond my dream.
- This is something that I can practice now forever
it's not something that just ends once COVID-19 is gone.
This is something I wanna pursue.
The great thing about this is that,
if I do a dinner with somebody in Canada
and somebody in California, and then somebody in Texas,
I can fit almost three calls into one day,
I've done, a class in Mumbai, India,
a guy saw me on the internet
and he said that he wanted to learn.
So we made pizza and hamburgers, easy stuff
that may be something that somebody wouldn't do
in a whole different country,
and I was able to share that experience with them.
- Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs
who are looking to transition their businesses
to the online world?
- I think that it's really good to just start.
Just start and then you're gonna be improving your seasons,
improving the way you you teach,
and of course we as entrepreneurs,
we wanna do the best we can and offer the best.
And I would say, "Don't stress out, just start."
- Continue being yourself.
Because I think if anything,
as an entrepreneur from day one that has held me back,
it has been the perfectionism,
the want and the need to not start
because I didn't know that I was doing it right.
And I realized through this two months of teaching,
you can feel the connection and the energy,
if you're open to it.
Because as teachers we're giving all of ourselves
in person or on screen,
and if you continue to give all of you,
you're gonna get some reciprocation returned
because people feel that energy,
they feel that connection.
And it actually is quite possible through a screen.
- If you have a great idea, run with it, broadcast it,
use all the free social media platforms you can.
I'm not a website designer either.
I went to GoDaddy.com to use their website platform builder
and it was really simple.
I was nervous at first,
but at the same time just apply the drive
that you had to create your business
and stick to it and you can do great.
- What has been struggling or challenging
about this journey?
- We don't know what to expect going forward
and then restaurants or fitness, studios, whatever it is,
any public place really, it has to operate at half capacity.
You can't continue your business that way.
You can't quadruple business.
So you have to get innovative on how to make up those costs
and hope that there's are government regulation
or some leniency from your landlord,
so that everything can balance out
and who knows how long that will take
and what that even looks like.
I also don't think that you can shut off this idea of true,
of reality that is looming.
There are real costs.
There is real impact and we don't also know in a restaurant,
in a fitness studio, in a school,
what the public is gonna
be comfortable with reentering into.
- Being able to adapt and try to focus the same energy
that I apply to my day-to-day regimen into my business
and trying to focus all that positive energy
during these times and share that with people
has probably the biggest struggle.
It's tough, first couple of weeks without a job,
no money in the bank, I've been living paycheck to paycheck
in the restaurant business for years,
and having to figure out what to do next,
to be able to provide for my family
and then still being able to cook.
My passion is cooking.
My passion is to be in the kitchen.
And I wanted to continue that during all this time
and to be able to put myself in somebody else's kitchen
without actually physically being there.
It's been a very big struggle.
- It was a struggle to be alone,
just feeling that you are alone,
that you are disconnected with people.
What are other people doing?
I've been working many more hours behind the scenes,
to create a new way of teaching.
It was very stressful 'cause you gotta,
when you're teaching a class, like all of us do,
you gotta put the best and behind the screen,
it's like double the energy and double the show
and then it's really exhausting for all of us
who teach behind the scenes.
So we had to learn new ways of communicating
and establish a new way of teaching.
- What words or what message do you want to share
with small businesses like yourself
who are also going through this moment?
Who are also trying to figure out
how to they take their work online?
I always live on like warfare mode.
Like I'm in it, every day, guns blazing,
but with a sense of calm, because I believe in living
to like flow through the fight.
No matter when, where, how, what time, the experience,
the environment, always finding ease to resistance
within yourself, within your team,
within your relationships, the work that you do,
the food that you eat, always.
you want to find this place of calm,
regardless of the crazy, the chaos.
- Broadcast your message.
Like I said before, I use social media platforms
to sell myself, share what I have
and the talent that I have with other people.
I've been able to create awesome dishes that people
didn't even fathom that they had the ingredients for already
inside their home.
Bring them into a different culture.
It's not easy by any means, it's very difficult.
There were times where I've had zero classes.
There are times where I've had 10 classes.
So it's definitely struggling,
but, keep your head on it and run with it.
It's gonna shine.
- I am a strong believer that if you're convinced
that what you're offering is good, then you just go for it.
- Y'all amazing humans,
beyond the work you're doing, just amazing humans.
And I'm so I'm so happy to share this space with you all.
- All right, thank you very much, it was a pleasure.
- Bye. - Much love y'all.
- Thank you. - Bye.
So we're all facing difficult times right now
and teaching and online learning
has its own sets of challenges.
But through this virtual round table,
I hope you walk away with some insights
and some inspiration that you can take
into your own small business.
And if you have questions,
you can always leave them in the comments below,
and you can subscribe to the channel to stay up to date.
And check out openwestand.org for inspiration
and resources and advice for your small business.
And until next time, I hope you stay safe and well,
and thanks so much for joining.
(upbeat music)