 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business, a collaborative effort by the Small Business Administration, the Department of Development Center, the Veterans Business Outreach Center, and the Patsy Teemake Center for Business and Leadership. I'm Teri Funakoshe, and I'm your host today. And today we have with us Hillary Darby, owner of Belakai Yoga. Before we start, Hillary, I want to congratulate you on your award this year for being the Veteran Women-Owned Small Business of the Year, awarded by SBA and VBOT. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I could not have done it without the support of the MCBL team, so thank you. Congratulations. So, Hillary, why don't we get into it, and why don't you just tell us about yourself, your background. I'm excited to hear all the good stuff. Yeah. Well, as we discussed, the name of the program is Tales of an Accidental Yogi, and I came into this completely backwards. My name, as you said, is Hillary Darby, and originally from Georgia, but joined the Navy when I was 17 years old, and have been doing the Navy ever since, and found out my love for yoga through some mandatory fun, as we call it in the military. And went to my very first hot yoga class, and got hooked there. So a little bit additional background, though. I went to the Naval Academy, I graduated from there, secured a billet in flight school, and went to Pensacola, Florida, earned my Wings of Gold, and had the great privilege and honor to be on the wave of combat aviation as they were opening up. And so I was selected to fly the SH-60 Bravo helicopters. And so each service has a variant, and I fly the Hawk, so the Seahawk. So there's the Black Hawk, the J-Hawk, anyway. Each service has its own version, and they had just opened that up to women. So I was able to step through that door and explore aviation in a whole new way. Wow, that's exciting. So, yep, and they gave me the training, they gave me the resources, and then I was able to fly off of both coasts. San Diego, Jacksonville, I served as a flight instructor, and I've been on a major staff and really have just had some amazing and exciting opportunities, got my education, have a master's in international service from American University, and that was just one of the many, many opportunities that I've been afforded along my journey. And the overarching drive, though, has been in service. And I've always believed that it's about having a vocation and not a job. And so wherever I am, I try to think in terms of how do I best serve. And so I think that that is where I am now, that is where as I look forward in the future. Great. So how did this all translate to having a yoga studio? I know, I know. So as I was sharing, I was working with the Marines. And at the time, our commanding officer, and I was his second, said, Exo, we're going to go do some high yoga. And I went, why? Who wants to do yoga in the heat? And so as a good second in charge, I said, yes, sir, let's go do that. And so we went and grabbed the mat, the towel. And I was exhausted and transformed at the end of class. And I just kept going back. And then a couple of years later, the studio was for sale. And it had changed hands multiple times. And so I had seen it and gone through that little bit of panic as a student, kind of like you would if your favorite coffee shop was going out of business or your favorite restaurant. And I saw the studio change hands. And it was about to change hands again. And I remembered that desperation of where will my home be to practice yoga? Because by that time, I had realized that the yoga was an element that allowed me to better live every aspect of my life. So I was a better mom. I was a better wife. I was a better leader in the military. And I also found that through yoga, I could also facilitate relationships not only with others, but with myself. Wow, that's a lot. So tell us exactly. So you didn't want your yoga studio to close, right? You had an entrepreneur kind of buzz. So what was the next step? How did you actually acquire the studio? Oh, my goodness. So I talked to my husband. And I said, I know this sounds super crazy. But I think we can do this. And how do you feel, because I was retiring from the Navy, how do you feel about us buying the local yoga studio? Because it's right down the street from my house. And so I was in communication with the previous owner when she was in the process of selling it. And she had another potential buyer. And it felt as strange as this sounds, like a compulsion from the universe. Some strange compulsion that we had to go forth and purchase the yoga studio so we could keep it local, keep it for the community. And our goal has always been to be a beacon of light for the Wynward community and the heart of Kailua town. And so, but I did it all wrong. I absolutely, I mean, I answered the call. And I went with my gut. But I also, I didn't have a business plan. I didn't know, I wasn't trained to teach yoga. I just knew I loved to take yoga. And I thought to myself, yeah, it's probably like owning a football team, right? Or those people that own the Dallas Cowboys or the Atlanta Falcons, they don't play football. They just run the show. So I can do that. I know how to run a show. And wow, there are a lot of lessons to be learned in that journey. So I found out after the fact about all the tremendous resources and I think we'll get to that later. But we jumped in just like holding our nose, our eyes open and we're like, oh my gosh, just jumping into the pool and trying to figure out how to swim is how our adventure began. With the love of the yoga, the love of the community and a firm belief that it would work itself out as long as we focused on making a difference before we focused on making a dollar. So I know that's the passion. You went in, you loved it, you started it. And then when did you realize like, hey, I might need some business to be here. Oh my gosh, day one. Like as soon as the paper was signed, because you know, it's like kind of like buying a house when you're buying a preexisting business. I didn't go through that, hey, let me look for a space or let me just kind of line up everything. It was just like, okay, here you go. You're now the new owner of, and at the time it had a different name. So you're the new owner of, you know, Vikram Yoga Kailu and I went, oh my gosh, I have to make sure that, you know, and then some of the teachers went away. So pretty much as I was stepping into it, I was having to figure out, you know, bringing in resources, understanding payment, understanding the systems that allow you to sign in and check in, setting up bank accounts. I mean, it was from pretty much day one. And of course my husband was out of town at his job. Right? And I went, what have I done? So what kind of resources did you find to help you? Well, I was actually just kind of sharing with a friend and she knew Noella Napoleon from Launch My Business. And so I was talking to my friend and she said, Hillary, I think you should talk to this lady. She's my business mentor, my business counselor, and this is part of the resourcing at the Patsy Mink Business Center. And I never heard of you guys and I remember going, huh, I wish I'd known about this before because I had tried to do a Boots to Business class with the military because I had heard of that and I thought, okay, so I'll learn about being an entrepreneur that way even though I'm now already one. And so something happened, the class got canceled and anyway, I met my friend who referred me to Noella and so we met a few times as I were, you know, shared some of the challenges of the business and then I learned about that cohort class. They'll launch my business class and she said, Hillary, you really should go because you're just gonna get this wealth of information and then this forever resourcing that you can always reach out and call and if they don't know the answer, they're gonna help you find it and that was so true. And when I went, I was, you know, because I'm used to like protocol and organization and things like that and the class was actually exceeded all of my expectations and I had high expectations because I had already met, you know, one of your, the lead teachers for that and I thought, wow, this is well done and I went home that first day. It started actually at the little in-doc session that you do for us and I went home that first day and I said, which I'd known about these folks beforehand because it has just been nice knowing you have a partner in your journey, in your business journey. Well, we're happy to see you grow. We saw you from, you know, when you came in till now winning all these awards. So I want it, I know we have a picture of your studio so I want everyone to see that because it's really nice and you did a great job. So tell us about what we're looking at. So this is the lobby as you walk into Belakai, Yoga. We're on the second floor on Hololive Street in Kailua town across from Harawa, Hawaii and right on top of B-Box Cafe. So you walk in and we really wanted to evoke a sense of safety, a sense of carefree, a sense of arriving home. And so the name Belakai actually is intended, our daughter's name is Bella and Kai is the ocean with its limitless possibilities and that sense when you look at the ocean and you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself and that's what I want people to feel like when they walk into the space. So you walked in and we had one of our students actually helped us with the feng shui and so right now you're seeing a picture of our warrior wall and we'll talk a little bit about warriors at ease, the nonprofit that I work with. And so we have a whole section dedicated to the warrior wall, another section to the hot because we do a lot of the hot yoga and we really just want to have a warm, inviting space so you can talk story and feel like you're with family. Oh, that's nice. So you said it, you named it after your daughter. Yes. Tell us a little bit about your family. Well, my husband, JD, he's a godsend. He has been supporting me every step of the way and he's former Navy, he works for the government and he retired after 30 years of service with the Navy so we're very like-minded in our approach to service and also with our daughter who is, she just turned 13 and so she's been with me as well and she helps me when she can and she's one of the inspirations. We have a little wall where it's got mermaids and aloha and so we have some fun stuff there but she is our safe space. She is our representation of being part of something bigger than yourself and so really I wanted to translate that feeling that we have within our small family to the windward family and to create that sense within the extended aloha of you can come, you can be yourself, leave your judgment at the door, just be with us. And so, and nothing matters, right? And so Bella is like that and she is just the most amazing soul and so once again she inspires me to do what I do and she's already entertaining ideas and options for service, she's not sure yet but she's working with the Girl Scouts, has already worked with the Pacific Aviation Museum and some different things with me and so. That's great and I know that they're an inspiration and I met your family and they're wonderful and all entrepreneurs need that support so very lucky you have such an amazing family but we're gonna take a short break, a one minute break but when we come back, we're gonna ask you the hard questions of more challenges and then ask you the fun stuff. What's so unique about your business and what kind of programs you run? So we'll be right back in one minute. Stay tuned, thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I'm getting older, do I need to worry about falling? Yes you do, each year one in four people 65 and older will experience a fall and many will be serious. The majority of falls happen at home so remove things that could make you trip and install handrails to keep you steady. To learn more about the steps you can take to help prevent a fall, please talk to your doctor. You can also visit aarpfoundation.org or medicaremadeclear.com slash falls. This message was brought to you by United Healthcare and AARP Foundation. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough where we motivate, educate and power and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. And I think they're. Aloha, welcome back to Adventures in Small Business. We're talking with Hilary Darby from Bella Kai Yoga. So Hilary, we left off and then I wanted to ask you so what are the challenges in the yoga industry? So in Hawaii especially there is a lot of competition so that was one of the challenges that I knew it but I didn't really think about it in very real specifics in terms of sales or inventory. I just assumed that if I continued to offer a good product and a good service then it would yield just like effort equals yield. But I learned it becomes important and that's one of the other things that I learned at the Patsy Minx Center about really trying to assess what you offer, define your brand and then try to market in the way that you're different from the competition because there's nothing wrong with the competition. They all have what they bring that's unique but then you realize that you are trying to sell your brand to those folks to bring them in the door and that was a good lesson for me to know. The other thing too is that there are a lot of different teachers but not every teacher is made the same and so just learning to navigate how to work with personnel and to try and though I have experience working with different personalities I had never really worked with it in this kind of niche before because my background is very different than a yoga background so I question whether my previous experience had translatability and then because I wasn't a trained instructor at first I also thought am I, do I not, because I'm not walking the walk, how do I talk the talk? So that for me became a priority was to get myself certified to teach so that then I would have credibility because in my previous opportunities I've had credibility because I've already been in the trenches but here I didn't feel as if I had the credibility so I was swooping in so working to get that credibility understanding that the competition and then the other thing too is sometimes you have challenges like with your landlord for example and when how to navigate those waters in a very constructive and productive way and finding those lines between diplomacy but then also realizing at some point you're not only standing up for yourself but you're standing up for every single client that walks through the door and that becomes important to understand and then to realize that there's certain ways that you have to respond and work through that. So you're talking about commercial leasing that's a big topic for a lot of entrepreneurs that rent space. Do you have any examples that you wanna share or that advice to give other? Well I certainly would when I went through this process at the beginning I just hired a lawyer out in town and I paid a lot of money and I remembered having one of my first conversations with Noella and she was like you paid what for what and found out that basically the Patsy Mink Center would have helped me do almost all of that for seriously pennies on the dollar and so they would have saved money which would have been part of that cushion of entrepreneurship because that capital is so important to have. So even still as I've gone through different challenges I've worked through the Patsy Mink Center because you can meet with a lawyer they'll review your lease and then they also refer you to their previous cohort graduates so they're a launch of my business graduates then that they've worked and mentored with so you already have a network that is kind of like endorsed it's like the Angie's list of good business entrepreneurs so you feel that your dollar is gonna be respected and sometimes when you're kind of navigating these waters you're just going oh I hope this is right and so it gives a real comfort to know that and some of the challenges could be everything from parking to maybe it wasn't clearly defined in the lease and now or you didn't read it as carefully as you should have and now you find that you are responsible for things that perhaps you didn't realize and now you have a disconnect between what you think should be taken care of by the landlord and what the landlord thinks should be taken care of by the landlord so once again just having some advocates you know I know I keep beating the drum and no I am not getting paid to say this but it has just really been helpful. Well I mean that's always number one like before you sign a lease look through it, does it meet your needs, right? A lot of times leases are written you know for the landlord, for the property but what do you need as an entrepreneur so I'm glad you got that service and I did and I had actually gone to the right what I thought was the right folks but they didn't read it with the eye for small business which is very different than just big pockets large-scale business. That's interesting right, I'm looking at it not just legally the words and what's in there but actually for you for that small business. And I believe that had I taken advantage of your resources that I would have had that lens that would have been helpful to me and would have enabled me to ask maybe better questions or maybe bring it back for negotiation on some things. Well I mean that's a tough one but you know live and learn right? But I want to get to what makes your yoga studio unique I know you have a lot of wonderful programs so you want to tell us about that? Sure, well first you know we've alluded to this and I've brought up the concept of service over and over and over again so you know when you look at our website you know we talk about service and then we also illustrate the different things that we're doing to try to serve the community so we work, I started working initially with Huakailani School for Girls which is now at the Kokokahi YWCA and our daughter has been there since she was four because I wanted to help enable the passion that I'd seen there and our tagline is practice with passion and so I wanted to kind of honor the passion that I see in all of those teachers and then once again through a backdoor mechanism I found out about warriors at ease and so I was at a friend of mine who I had met through the school ironically and they live on the east coast and they'd come back to Oahu for their daughter's bat mitzvah and we were in the same row with the Warriors at Ease Executive Director and myself and so that east coast friend of both of ours facilitated a connection now that we're going forth and growing with so Warriors at Ease is a national non-profit that works essentially to try to promote health and resilience within the active duty veteran and military family community and so what they do is they take a yoga or a meditation teacher and they give them techniques so that they can present yoga or meditation in a more effective way and so all of the yoga is trauma sensitive military culture informed and evidence based and so there's a lot of research on the website a lot of and we've seen firsthand how it's making a difference not only in the lives of our studio members and I think there's some pictures too I don't know if you've already showed them or not oh yeah we have some pictures of you actually doing yoga with the Warriors at Ease so let's take a look at that I love those pictures so right there that's Ms. Cindy and actually these pictures were taken for an article that came out November 9th on how to lose civil beat and so they came to the studio and they took some wonderful photos but this is why we're doing what we're doing so you have not only the visible wounds of war or the visible wounds of service you have invisible wounds so it could be sexual assault, sexual harassment or post-traumatic stress as well and so it allows this program trains the yoga teacher trains the meditation teacher to understand that and to have techniques so that they can create that safe container that safe space so that people feel comfortable and want to come practice so we have families there you know kids come sometimes and it's just this cross-section of people so we offer for yoga on Wednesday nights to active duty veterans and their families at seven o'clock at the studio and all of those classes are facilitated by a Warriors-Eddie's trained teacher and a lot of folks that I've talked to has said that this is grounding that this often will allow that tool in the toolkit along with other things so Warriors-Eddie's doesn't try to say all you need in your life is yoga but they say it can very much be a compliment to living your life more fully and we all have trauma this isn't unique specifically to military the idea of trauma but we all have trauma and understanding how to more therapeutically and effectively cope with stress is a goal and they've really quantified and edified how to do that process wow that's wonderful so how do they find out more information if they want to find out more about your program well they can come to our website at Belacai Yoga so www.belacaiyoga.com or send an email Belacai Yoga or I'm sorry www.belacai.com and then so Google Belacai and you'll find it and then belacaiyoga.com and we can send all kinds of information but on our website are links that talk about Huakailani School for Girls and what we've done together so we've fundraised lots of funds so over thousands of dollars to contribute to both of these causes and so Warriors-Eddie's actually has a direct link and so you can go into their website and see some of the amazing photos and the testimonials and the stories and the research that's in there and so our website actually serves as that one stop shopping not only can you see that kind of information and what we're trying to do for the community but then you can see you can dig in and you can see our schedule and you can see what we're all about and meet our teachers that way so that's great thank you so much for being a community contributor so now here's the question you're doing such great work you've been recognized this year for all your work so what does the future look like for Bella Kine next, I don't know, five, ten years? You know, I am going to probably get some good consulting on that but what I would really like to do is expand our reach and to still focus on being that service-oriented but to diversify a little bit more I'd like to find a brick-and-mortar somewhere else I think maybe somewhere more centrally located when we're a community and I'd like to be focused on really facilitating wellness programs and maybe we expand beyond yoga so we have now such an amazing cadre of folks that I've met everything from people that teach Tai Chi that are warrior cities, teachers to other folks that are massage therapists acupuncturists so I really have a vision of a more well-rounded wellness approach as well as how to be programmatic and to give more tools to the women's side So you're trying to expand? Yeah Oh, that's wonderful so do you have any prospects in line at where you want to expand in the area? Am I allowed to say that? Oh, I don't know So, I don't know we recently worked, actually it was three of my contacts at the Patsy Mings Center we worked with Huakailani School for Girls and they just relocated to the Windward the Kokokahi YWCA on Kaniyia Bay Drive and that campus is so beautiful and that when you walk in and you drive down and you look at the bay and you see the greenery and you know that they're farming and there's the butterflies and their association with the Girl Scouts and they're trying to grow those programs I would love to figure out how to make Kokokahi a home and marry up with the YWCA That wasn't a plug I was just asking Yes, no, I would that I was just there yesterday morning dropping my daughter off and I looked out over the water and said this feels like home Yeah, it's beautiful out there so I know what you're saying but Hillary, I want to thank you so much for joining us today you know, I know your work and I thank you so much for everything you do for the community and for the veterans and again, congratulations on your achievement and your award and again, please tell the audience where they can help you get in touch with you, your website Sure www.bellacayoga.com or you can send an email to bellacayoga.ech-email.com Great, thank you and thank you for joining us at Adventures in Small Business and we'll see you next week Thank you