- that it became⁠—
genuinely.
Daybreaker really started out as a social experiment.
It was just an idea.
Would people be willing to connect
in the morning when their energy
was the most full without alcohol, without drugs,
and it took off, yeah.
- In 2013, with just $2,500, Radha Agrawal
threw a big, morning dance party for her friends.
- This party was really very much a party
that I threw for my friends.
And they were like, "Let's do it again, let's do it again,
let's do it again!"
And I was like, "All right, great, let's do it again."
- And with that, Radha launched Daybreaker,
a global wellness movement that uses yoga, dance,
and the pursuit of joy
to inspire a more meaningful lifestyle.
- So, when you come to a Daybreaker event,
you think you're going to just come to a dance party,
but what you're actually getting
is 10 years of therapy in 3 hours.
I mean, like literally it's like joy therapy.
- You just started your dream business.
How much profit would you need
to pay your basic living expenses like rent and ramen?
This is a show on the economics of entrepreneurship,
and founders turning their dreams into reality.
This is "Ramen Profitable."
- I don't think anything is normal about Daybreaker
in our business model
just because we are a community first,
and I think so often the events world
is just, 'How many tickets can I sell?'
It's just like, 'How can I fill a room?'
- Daybreaker events can seem
like just a yoga-infused dance party at six in the morning.
But there's science backing the power of joy.
- So when I think of designing experiences,
I think about it through the lens of your brain:
- The four primary chemicals in your brain
that drive your positive emotions are
dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.
Radha aims to target those through music,
physical activity, and a sense of community.
- We can reverse engineer our Daybreaker experiences⁠—
so every single one of your happy neurochemicals
are released at a Daybreaker experience.
That was the 'aha!' moment for me.
- By creating experiences that are focused
on bringing people joy,
they quickly grew from a handful of friends to a community
of half a million people across 30 cities around the world.
- Welcome to the Daybreaker office.
We do all of our big, team brainstorms
for all of our events in here.
And it's a really wildly-dynamic space
that we're constantly kind of experimenting
with all of our new ideas.
So, Daybreaker's business model is twofold:
We are a ticket-sale event business
and we are a sponsor business.
But I would say it's an 80/20 split,
80% sponsorship revenue, 20% ticket-sale revenue.
We differ from other businesses
in that we are fully self-funded.
We don't have to align to a shareholder 10-year plan.
I get to talk to my community members
and ask them what they want,
it gets to be a true
for-community-by-community business.
- By 2020, Daybreaker was on tour with Oprah
and thriving with their community-focused events.
- Daybreaker was very much about the IRL community,
in-person experience.
I was staunchly, actually, against the virtual space,
and then the pandemic hits⁠—
our sponsors all pulled out.
Every single city had to cancel,
so we literally did not have a business.
But, we had a community.
People need joy and dance and play more than ever.
And so we said, "No, no, no this is our opportunity
to show up for a community.
Let's figure this out."
We did our first virtual event
and 6,000 of our community members showed up.
And I'll never forget the glitches out,
people couldn't hear us,
it was like a tech nightmare,
but everyone was like,
"Thanks for trying, you know, we appreciate
you being here with us.
Like, this was so fun even if we couldn't hear you,"
you know, and we continued to build
on this sort of live stream studio.
- They eventually gained back their sponsors
through these virtual events.
- We built a multi, seven-figure business
through sponsorships who came back
because we had community online.
- The success of their virtual events led them
to launch Daybreaker+,
an online membership platform dedicated
to practicing joy at home.
- The pandemic really taught me a lot
of lessons on community in the virtual space.
We could serve community members
like elder community members who could not come
to a Daybreaker IRL; that we could be in cities
anywhere around the world if you had the internet.
So all of a sudden, 20,000 people,
30,000 people every week
would invite us into their homes.
So we learned that the virtual space
has its place⁠—is beautiful.
- Investing in this digital community
ultimately doubled their revenue streams.
And with cities beginning to reopen,
they've started touring again.
- Let's go!
- Daybreaker! - Daybreaker!
So in January, we launched the 'W⁠ünder Tour,'
the 10-city comeback tour all around the country
to bring joy back post-pandemic.
For me, when I've had so many different obstacles
that I've had to move through,
I've kept telling myself, "Radha, don't give up.
We have to keep doing this,
we have to keep bringing this joy to New York City."
When the pandemic happened,
it gave us an opportunity to sink back in,
to lean on our community.
And what I realized is that I can't help it,
it's just in my blood, it's in my DNA.
I'm an entrepreneur through and through.
You can knock me down, but I'm gonna get back up.
- Now that Daybreaker is back to in-person events,
Radha is looking towards the next challenge:
continuing to evolve and grow their community
both virtually and in-person.
- I think one of the most exciting insights
that I learned over the years was
not to just be driven by the data,
but how can we be driven by human insights?
How can we merge together these worlds
to create a much more thoughtful decision
for how to move your business forward?
It's the community piece that not only scales your business,
but it's the community piece that also gives you life,
it gives you wings, it makes you happy as the entrepreneur.
Thank you for continuing to invest in the arts,
to be in the dance with all of us,
this is what it's all about.
So thank you so much.