What does Yoga and Hip-Hop music have in common? Not a lot usually, but local Perth mum Kaye has changed that with her studio, Vital Beats. This young mum is taking out all the awards, winning gold in the Ausmumpreneur award for Health and Wellness in what most would consider the hardest year yet for the industry. What’s even more impressive, it’s not her first time!
Last year the fitness industry was hit hard with mandatory closures and new procedures introduced to fight COVID 19, but that hasn’t stopped Kaye Waterhouse, a Perth mother of two from succeeding with her hip-hop yoga studio. Kaye built her studio up from the ground to be the successful escape that so many Perth men and women enjoy each day. Kaye herself is a remarkable woman, in four short years Kaye has created a thriving, award winning business, also taking out silver for the Ausmumpreneur Rising Star Award in 2020.
Being your own boss, taking your vision and making it a reality is the very Australian dream. Kaye loves to share her journey into entrepreneurship with others helping them to achieve balance and motivate them to strive to achieve their dreams. Kaye’s tips to achieving your entrepreneurial dreams are simple: delegate and now!, figure out what success looks like for you, and hire outside your comfort zone.
She says it’s important to delegate early, to avoid burnout or job fatigue. “Don’t wait for a certain level of income before you start hiring! If you try to do it all, while waiting for enough revenue to pay someone to step in and help. Will end up exhausted and/or resentful of your business or your clients! When I was in start-up & low-income phase, I made the choice between paying myself $200 a week and working 40-50 hours a week, or paying an assistant & a VA $200 a week and freeing up 15 hours of my time to focus not only on tasks that would grow my business, but also my family and my own mental wellbeing. Don’t think of it as an expense, think of it as a calculated investment in your wellbeing and the future trajectory of your business,” Kaye said.
“Get really clear on a success pathway and what success looks like to YOU specifically, as it’s a very personal thing. It might be a certain number of orders, a specific turnover goal or number of premises, clients, or staff, or a degree of prestige, but if we look beneath the surface of those figures we can start to understand what it would mean to us if we actually achieved them. Would we move onto the next goal or would we find contentment?
“For me, success is defined by owning a business that doesn’t actually NEED me, to make the wheels turn. Far from revenue turnover or client membership size, I feel truly successful when I can take a spontaneous week off, or stay home when my kids are sick, or run the business remotely while we travel Australia in our bus! I’d happily have less zero’s in my bank account to have the freedom that I have now… at any point I could step back into a managerial role and double my income but that wouldn’t make me nearly as happy as a handful of hours doing strategy & planning work my laptop on the Kalbarri foreshore while my kids build sandcastles.
“Don’t hire people like you. There is strength in diversity of experience and background. You want to find people who complement your work style, not mimic it! Whether it’s my marketing assistant, my studio manager, or my accountant, I hire to fill gaps in my skillset and gaps in my working style so that the business operations are well-rounded and robust. The same goes for my teaching staff, it’s very important that I have diversity in my teams’ teaching style & background, as our student community is so unique. They will gravitate to those they resonate with and the more they can identify with or connect with my staff, the greater retention we have and the more powerful our community.”
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