Beauty Business Strategies
The podcast where salon, spa, medspa, barbershop, and lash studio owners — just like you — learn quick tips to make more money, inspire your team, and create world-class client experiences.
Beauty Business Strategies
From Injury to Innovation: Ben Atanga’s Journey to Holistic Wellness with The Stretch Loft
In this episode, we sit down with Ben Atanga, a dynamic entrepreneur who is reshaping holistic wellness. Ben shares his path from studying child psychology to founding The Stretch Loft, a cutting-edge business that harnesses the power of stretch therapy and guided breathing to release tension and promote healing. His personal experience with injury recovery led to the creation of The Stretch Loft and The Stretch Loft Academy, where over 200 practitioners have been trained under his guidance. With the successful launch of his seventh studio, Ben offers insights into how this innovative approach addresses muscle tension in a way no other modality does.
We also explore the untapped potential of integrating stretch therapy into existing businesses, boosting both diversification and revenue. Discover how adding this service can transform a simple appointment into a comprehensive wellness experience, enhancing client engagement for hairdressers, massage therapists, and spa owners alike.
Learn more about The Stretch Loft: https://thestretchloft.com/
Follow The Stretch Loft on Instagram: @thestretchloft
Email Ben: ben@thestretchloft.com
Conversation highlights:
1:03 What is stretch therapy?
3:30 The difference between stretch therapy and other holistic wellness services
6:05 What does a stretch therapy session look like?
10:40 The mobility assessment that tells the story of your body
12:58 Diversifying your business with stretch therapy services
16:29 How being team-based supports the franchise model
20:53 How being team-based changed the Stretch Loft's culture
Watch the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/LLzJyensi_0
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Timer. Look at you You're a machine of just efficiency. Perfect, perfect, perfect. All right, ben, are you ready? I'm ready, all right, here we go. We're good, ali, all right, all right. Well, welcome to the Beauty Business Strategies podcast Again, michael Yost, with you today, and I am joined today by Ben Atunga. Ben, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How are you doing, Michael?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. So, as we always do on podcast is we love to bring you people that have great information. But most of all, I always am drawn to people that have passion, and I'm going to tell you right now, we find no greater passion than talking with Ben. Ben's one of those people that when we first encountered if you meet Ben in person, it bleeds out of him, and so it's really awesome and, again, I think that's contagious. But he's got some great things that we want to talk about today and he's got a great business and, anyway, there's a lot of ground we want to cover. So, to get into it, ben, what I would love for you to do is, for those not familiar with you, just give us just a quick introduction of yourself, kind of your background and, again, the business that you have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, sure, and I just wanted to say I appreciate this opportunity. Hello everyone, my name is Ben Atanga and I'm located in Maryland, in Prince George's County, right outside of DC, and the field that I'm in is in holistic wellness, specifically stretch therapy. I own a business called the Stretch Loft and we just launched our second location, and I also own another part of business called the Stretch Loft Academy the Stretch Loft and we just launched our second location, and I also own another part of business called the Stretch Loft Academy. The Stretch Loft is a holistic wellness business that caters to the release of stored tension, trauma and energy from the body via stretch therapy and guided breathing, and the Stretch Loft Academy is an academy that trains aspiring stretch practitioners in the field and modality of holistic stretch therapy. So we train them, we certify them and we mentor them, and so I've got the brick and mortar which we provide, the service. I have the academy, which we provide the education.
Speaker 1:We've been around for four years and I didn't go to school for this. My bachelor's is in child psychology. I I came into the thing from personal training, from an injury that I had that doctors couldn't figure out, and I met a trainer one day who stretched me. It unlocked my body, I felt alive and, uh, after you know, I went out and I sought out certifications to learn how to do it. Um, and once I started practicing it, instantly I started making a difference in in people's lives and the way they were feeling and the things that they were dealing with, and so I've been able to grow rapidly in this industry.
Speaker 1:I'm on my second business now. I'm opening up my seventh stretch studio and in the last three years, we've trained over 200 aspiring stretch practitioners who are also inside of this work now with their own businesses. So this is a great opportunity and I just really want to share what I do. Whether you're looking to come in and receive the service or you're looking to maybe expand on what you're doing, I think that this is something great and, like Michael said, I'm very passionate about.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. So, ben, you know what's interesting to me. You mentioned all the you know in that intro, just all the ways that the benefits, right. But talk to me about what's different between because again, I will freely admit I do not know and I don't even pretend that I understand what will be some of the main differences that you see between, like, if we're talking about stretch therapy and what you do, what's the difference between that and like, say, massage, or even I won't even throw, even thrown like other things, like maybe even chiropractic services or those kind of things? Where, where does stretch fit in and what are the? What would be, what would you classify as the differences in the different areas?
Speaker 1:I think that stretch is an ancient and a hidden modality and where it fits in it fits into holistic care, like when I embarked on stretch therapy, I had seen three chiropractors, I'd seen multiple physical therapists, I'd seen massage therapy. I had an injury. I dropped the weight on my foot. I didn't break anything, but it caused me to start compensating and putting most of the pressure on the right side of my body and over time, the joints and muscles in that side ended up locking up, which made it very uncomfortable to sleep, to drive, to move. I visited chiropractors, I visited physical therapy. I was either getting misdiagnosed or they wanted to perform surgery. I'd go to massage therapists and they would rub the area out and it would feel great while they're doing it, but by the time I got back to my car I was still in pain. And so the biggest difference with stretch therapy is that stretch therapy number one it does to your muscles what your muscles need. Your muscles contract, and well, they contract and release. Right that contracting and releasing helps for blood to flow but also for oxygen production. Right, like when you go to a chiropractor, a chiropractor may adjust your cervical, your lumbar and your thoracic spine, and they believe that by adjusting it that everything will fall into place. That's not necessarily the truth, right? And massage therapy you go there. If you have a crook in your neck, you're going to go there. They're going to try to massage it out, which is great, but then if you don't stretch it out, then you don't restore the length tension relationship.
Speaker 1:So the reason why I say that stretch therapy is like a hidden modality is because this is something holistic. It's something natural. We're doing something natural to the body, and when you go through a full body stretch, things tend to realign. Right, and when you're realigned, you think better, you sleep better, you're able to process things better. Right? In recent years we've heard about how the body keeps score, like restore everything inside of our bodies. This is one way that you can release it. When you mix, when you infuse, stretching and breath work like it's just people leave off the table with just like, like, feel like, a million bucks, you can actually see the energy just kind of just flowing off of them, and so I would say that that's the biggest difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really fascinating. So what would it be like? Say, let's say for myself, I'll put myself in this position and say, hey, listen, you know, I recognize the fact that, wow, I really am already gone. Man, I can really use what you do. What would be like, what's a normal, if I came into your business? What's a normal service look like? Like length of time, is it a 30 minute, is it 60 minutes in length? And what would be like if I were trying to maintain, like all services, like I said, I'm you know again my background, being a hairdresser I'm used to saying, hey, listen, I need to go in every four weeks, every six weeks, every eight weeks to maintain this. Again, I know, being somewhat familiar with chiropractic, you know they recommend a schedule. Is there a recommended type of maintenance and schedule in stretch? And what does that look like? And again, what's the general service itself look like?
Speaker 1:Gotcha, gotcha. So most likely, if you came in, there's probably something going on right, like you're experiencing pain somewhere. You may be experiencing sleeplessness, maybe some anxiety, right, and so every case is a little bit different. You may be experiencing sciatica, and so, because every case is different, everybody's plan is a little bit different. Like we have like acute plans. Like if you came in and you're like dude, I've had chronic lower back pain, I'm having sciatica, you're going to need something a little more acute. You're going to need to see us maybe two to three times a week for a few weeks. Let's say three to six weeks, okay, but overall maintenance and that three to six week period, michael, we would stretch just about every single muscle in the body and we would loosen you up and realign you, okay. But then we would send you into what we call our maintenance plan, which is anywhere from about two to four times a month, Okay. Or, like I say, the best one is about one every 10 days. Stretch every 10 days, right, we'll keep the body nice and flexible and loose and keep you light, okay. And so, as far as length of time, we can get through a full body stretch session in about 28 to 30 minutes. Okay. If you are looking for more of like a relaxation stretch, you want us to slow it down, you want more repetitions, then we can expand that to a 50 to 60 minute. But also if you just need something quick, right. Like you know chronic lower back pain, I ran a 10K this weekend I just need something real quick before work, during lunch, after work, you can come in and get a 15 minute.
Speaker 1:We call them energizers, okay, and we do those energizers for people who are in competition too, like before a race, before a cycling event, before a football game. Get an energizer, it warms the body up, it gets the blood flow going. And the average client, you know this is something that you're going to need the rest of your life. Like I always ask people like well, how long do you want to be, remain flexible and movable? Yeah, right, the rest of your life. And so two to three, two to three, two to four times a month is about that frequency, which is also a huge difference from chiropractic and massage and massage world. We see most people get massages once a month and chiropractic, something's got to be wrong and they put you on a treatment plan, stretch therapy. Whether there's something wrong, something's not wrong. You can come in and just maintain that and maintain that vitality and mobility and flexibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, you got me thinking.
Speaker 2:I think about my own like stage of life that I'm in right and, uh, in now my mid fifties, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, if I don't start to whatever I start to do, I mean should have been doing this even before now, but like I still look at it and go, the habits I start doing now are going to carry me into having good sixties, seventies and eighties and beyond. But again, I think you see it so many times where, again, as people get older, as I, as I look at even my, my within my own family and my parents and things like that, of course age brings that atrophy, that that, again, that we're not stretching those muscles, we're not using those man I'm sure, what a huge difference. Probably a bad sign, Ben. I mean, tell me if this is a bad sign, because probably if I stood up right now and I tried to bend over and touch my toes, I probably couldn't do it. It's probably a bad sign, isn't it? There are some bad signs out there that we should be aware of.
Speaker 1:You know everybody's relatively different, right Like? I never compare like one person to another. Um, cause your flexibility is relative to you, right? Like? Like, some of us got longer limbs than others, right, some of us are are just just just prone to be more tight. Like, believe it or not, people are, they're people that are just born tight to be more tight. Like, believe it or not, people are, they're people that are just born tight, right? Um, I wouldn't say necessarily it was a bad sign. However, it's it's. It's what I would encourage is hey, let's see if we can improve upon that, right.
Speaker 1:Like and that's what most people think Like. When I think flexibility, can I touch my toes? Right, there's a lot more that goes into it than just being able to touch your toes, and the muscles work together, but they also work independently of each other too, okay. So there is another test that we not a test, but an assessment that we do and it's called the overhead squat. So I basically I make people stand up, put their hands above their head, and I make them squat down to see if they can get their butt all the way down past their knees and to sit almost like on their heels.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that in itself lets me know where you're tight, where you're weak, like if some people did that, let's say you did that and your heels came off the ground, then I know that, okay, cool, you're tight in your Achilles and your calf area. If you did that and you sort of started to fall forward like this, okay, so you've got tightness in your hip flexors. If your arms fell forward, okay, you got tightness in your chest, maybe your mid back area, and so I like using that assessment better, because that assessment is more functional, right, like we sit down, we sit on toilets as we get older we, you know, sitting and standing up gets harder, right? It also assesses our range of motion in our knees, our ankles and our hips and our shoulders. Okay, so if you stood up and you did that and you weren't able to, then I'd say, okay, like we've got some things to work on.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm tempted right now, but I'm like I'm not going to do it right now, but I sure will as soon as we're done with this. I'm like I got to figure that's really cool. I'm like I I sure will as soon as we're done with this. I'm like I got to figure that's, that's really cool. I'm like I'm wondering how many people are listening to this podcast or watching like all right, hit pause and doing this right now and going all right, what happened there? But that's, I mean it's super fascinating. I mean this brings us to.
Speaker 2:You know, I want to kind of keep evolving in the time we have our conversation and moving it forward. So something we talked about and I think this is a great time to kind of bring this in something we talked about just kind of off camera and before we hit the record button on this, was just talking about how, what you do in stretch therapy, how that could really start to lend itself to being another way to diversify your business, a way to diversify your business, and I thought that was a really fascinating point because I'd never really thought about it in prepping for this podcast. I never really thought about for people out there that are business owners and they might be listening and thinking about, you know, other opportunities to create different ways to kind of again diversify. You know you mentioned that and you know I thought, wow, that's a really unique thing. Talk to me about why you think this could be such a really good way to diversify an opportunity for someone possibly.
Speaker 1:Well, so number one, we're in a time period where there's online education, more and more people are going out and seeking services different types of services and if you are a one trick pony out there, right, like the people who come to you are also going somewhere else to give their money somewhere else. So if you already have a business, right, let's say you're a hairdresser, you already have a business. You have a client that comes to you every three weeks, right, and they sit down on your chair, right. That client is also most likely storing tension, trauma and stress in their body. Right, and because this is such a skill set that you can learn pretty quick, wouldn't it make sense to maybe offer that as well? You could turn a $100 service into a $200 service versus looking for another $100 service, right? Or if you're an owner of a business, you can have a separate area where this is going on, like, in the last 10 years, I've taught chiropractors, physical therapists, med, spa owners, salon owners hey, why don't you utilize that space over there in the corner, that extra room, and have stretch therapy going in there? Because these clients are coming in here for these services and that lets us know they most likely probably care about their health, they care about the way they look, feel, and so why not have that right there and have a complete revenue center Like I?
Speaker 1:Um, I came into this thing from being a personal trainer and when I first started I just blended my services Like it just made sense to train someone for 30 minutes and then turn around and stretch them Right, and so I could see a massage therapist doing that, I could see. I could see a hairdresser, people in the beauty and cosmetics fields doing beauty and hair field doing that. Right, people who are cosmetologists actually licensed to touch. Right, they actually have a greater license than someone who, like me, who I don't necessarily have a license to touch I'm just in a field where it doesn't require a license, right, and a lot of these people are already very self-aware. They already have a great, you know, client interaction, and those are some of the things and skills that it takes to be able to do this. So why not? I mean you could easily increase your revenue 30, 40, 50% by just adding this to the side or hiring someone who could do it out of your space.
Speaker 2:Right, right, just again, a greater service offering. I love it. So we met about a year ago. We met at our annual conference and were first introduced, and so, again shifting the conversation to more to the business side of things, you really kind of gravitated to just the overall team-based business model itself, and so I know it was something that you were looking for, something in your business that you were looking for. You found us, you decided, hey, listen, I'm gonna check out the conference that you guys do, and from that point forward it's been a really kind of cool and fun journey along the way. So talk to me about what has been for you over this last year, as it kind of we're talking about the overall team based business model and adapting that into your own company. What have been some of the highlights for you? What was, what are some of the been some of the highlights for you? What are some of the wins for you? What was the draw for you? I mean just the overview of this last year.
Speaker 1:The draw for me was I've been in this industry about 10 years and when I got in I immediately went into business and there wasn't anyone else who could show me how do I run or manage a stretch business Like I studied the massage industry, I studied personal training, I studied different modality, different industries, and I just couldn't find it. And when I came across neil on youtube talking about like this, this structure, the system, like this, this way of bringing people together and having something more cohesive, that's what drew my attention right. Like I've made a lot of mistakes in this thing, you know, in the last 10 years, I'm sure a lot of business owners have, I was gonna say that's a common a yeah, a common phrase.
Speaker 1:And so when I came to TBX a year ago and I got a chance to go to those different classrooms, it was just to be honest with you. I just never heard of these sort of concepts inside of commission-based businesses, right Like teams working together, teams coming up with stuff, teams basically being able to profit off of the profits of the business. I just never seen or heard anything like that.
Speaker 1:And the one thing that really drew me was like, hey, like these guys are like, like the people who work for strategies and the clients, I see a lot of like family, like you guys are leaning on, like like they're like, you guys are leaning on like things like compassion and working together, and that's that's not the industry. You know what I mean. Industry is like my clients, my money, like that's it Right, like I don't give a crap about the next person, but that's not what you guys were doing. And so over the last 12 months, as we've gone through like the different tenants of what team-based culture means, and implementing no compromise into our business and implementing the huddles, it has given us like a synchronization amongst our team that wasn't there before. But also my business is franchised.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm the main franchisor and I held back on actually launching that franchise because I knew that we just didn't have a system in place that was duplicatable, like that system was based off of me. And so now, almost 12 months later, it's like no, like I have a system where I can. I can show or provide a potential franchisee and say, hey look, this is how we do, this is how we manage our business. This is how we manage our costs and this, and and I could show this to a new potential employees that like, hey, here's the track, this is how you, you enter our company, that's how you grow inside of our company. You're not, you're not on your own right, you're inside of a system.
Speaker 1:Um, and the biggest thing is just really being able to provide benefits, being able to provide, uh, uh, like, just time off. You know, like I always tell my team, we're doing something inside of the body work industry that has not been done. Like those other guys, they don't pay people enough, there are no benefits, they don't make enough, like, and the people inside the business aren't profiting off of the profits of the business, right, and so, um, I'm really excited. We we Jackie just converted and went team-based two weeks ago, so we're still very new and, um, um, I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, just kind of seeing how this thing turns out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome, I mean, as as are we, and again, this would be something. It's a great excuse to be able to come back and do another conversation with you and another, you know, eight, nine, 10 months down the road, get into kind of the end of our time, though there's one, you know, kind of one last thing would be in this past year. Then again, you know it's been, this has been a journey, a series of changes and evolution in your company. You know, as far as that goes, what changes have you seen, like what's been the team's reaction to the, to the progression, because obviously, a year ago probably, your team was kind of in one place and kind of with, with a way of thinking, whatever that you know, whatever the culture was and and whatever you guys, you know yourself in leadership and the other key people in your team, leadership teams probably was heading one direction. But how is that even evolved in this process of change over this past year?
Speaker 1:So, like I mentioned, you know, we just we just the entire company just went team based. We've been, you know, talking to what our teams and we've been implementing, like things like huddles and productivity and productivity, and the one change that I see is that my practitioners are, they're more involved in the business. Like before, things like productivity and rebook weren't a thing, and now, like I can ask anybody in the company and they know what the productivity rate is, they know what the rebook rate is right, and so it gives them more responsibility and more, I'd say, responsibility and pride inside of what they're doing. You know what I mean. Before I would say we didn't have a real way of tracking performance or metrics. You know it was sort of just what you did is what you did and what you got paid is what you got paid. Now it's like, well, no, how productive are we? What's our rebook rate line?
Speaker 1:These are some of the main drivers of the business, and so it's given me, as an entrepreneur, a better opportunity to understand my business, but also it's given my staff a better opportunity to also understand what I'm looking at. Right, like we always say as entrepreneurs, your team thinks that like they get a little bit and you, as an entrepreneur, get the rest of the money Right. So they're starting to get a better understanding of that, which is great, because, as we grow, I'm going to need people who can understand the numbers. I'm going to need people who understand the system.
Speaker 2:So Yep, right, it's exactly. It's like getting everyone involved. So again, so there's that understanding like you just shared. I love that. So, as we kind of wrap our time up, you know probably some people out there just kind of wondering. It's like hey, listen, you know I hadn't thought about stretch before, I hadn't thought about what those opportunities you know could look like you know I'm in, I'm interested to maybe learn more about this. Know could look like you know I'm, I'm interested to maybe learn more about this. What would be the easiest way to to connect, possibly with you, uh, or just get more information you know, on yourself, your business, these opportunities that might be out there. What's the what's the easiest way to connect?
Speaker 1:I think every a lot of people out there have Instagram and, uh, we have a. They can reach out to me on Instagram at the stretch loft, um, or they can reach me out via email and Ben at the stretch loftcom.
Speaker 2:Perfect, Awesome. And if you are not a follower, Ben's got a great social media, great Instagram. Uh, how many followers you had now? What? Eight? Like 800, gajillion or something like that. But what are you at? Like 80,000 or something.
Speaker 1:We're right under, I think, about 71,000.
Speaker 2:All right, 70 plus thousand Love it. It's a great follow. Check them out. Like I said, also, we'll put all this information, of course, here, you know, attached for you. So if you missed anything, not a problem, just go into the uh, into the links here, and you'll find out all of that stuff. But, ben, it's been awesome talking to you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:All right and to everyone out there. Thank you guys for listening and watching and we'll see you at our next podcast. Awesome, thanks, ben. Yeah, thank you, thank you, that was great.