My Journey From the Operating Room to Yoga to Brand & Website Design
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And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
Genesis 1:3-5
“Let there be light.”
Have you ever felt like you’re stuck in the dark when it comes to running a successful business? Like everyone else has the midas touch, but nobody’s letting you in on the secret?
If you’re like me, maybe you’ve turned to a search engine for help, and when that didn’t work, you tried an expensive course from some social media influencer who claimed that, “You’d be making six figures in no time!” There are so many shiny objects out there that make unrealistic promises about how simple it’s going to be for us to not only start a business, but also to jump from zero to 100k in the snap of a finger.
Friend, I’m here to tell you to stop chasing those shiny objects, and start trusting the source. The God who said the words, “Let there be light,” …and then there was actual light.
When you make the decision to let go of the way that the world says is “the right way” to start (and run) your business, and to start listening to the way that your creator tells you to run your business, this is the moment when you step into the light. This is when you’ll receive true clarity about your business. You’ll know with 100% certainty that you’re doing exactly what you were created to do.
Here’s my story about how I finally decided to stop searching for light in all the wrong places, and started trusting the source. It’s my prayer that you’re in a place in your business to do the same - it will make all the difference in the world!
from darkness to light: My Messy Entrepreneurial Journey
My path to creating Studio Four10 was anything but a straight line. I have a bachelor’s degree in public relations and a master’s in communication studies, so obviously, after graduate school I decided that I was going to take a neurodiagnostic job in the operating room 🤡. My job was to monitor nerve function for patients who were undergoing spine surgery…so high pressure, high stress, and extremely terrifying. What was I thinking taking a job that I clearly wasn’t cut out for?! I was not.
Luckily, I was only six months into this career when I found out that my husband Jason and I were expecting our first son, and my OBGYN told me that I shouldn’t be around all of the radiation during pregnancy. Praise the Lord for a clean break. As scary as that first job was for me, I’m thankful for that time in the OR, because it was enough to make me certain that I wasn’t cut out for an stressful career. Or a career in the medical field. Or any kind of career that didn’t allow me to exercise my creative brain. This knowledge combined with the growing life inside me also made me certain that I wanted to be able to choose my own hours so that I could be home to raise my family.
Honestly, pregnancy changed everything for me. It made me hyper aware of the way I treated my body - how much and what I was eating, the type of exercise I was doing, how much sleep I was getting, and the way I wanted to live my life. It was no longer all about me, it was all for something bigger. During this time, I started practicing prenatal yoga, and I became obsessed with how connected it made me feel to my baby.
Cue business number one: Blooming Sprout Yoga
Here’s me at 8 months pregnant getting my first yoga teaching certification. I was all in. I partnered with one of my best friends who got certified to teach kids yoga, and together we created Blooming Sprout. We partnered with other studios in town to teach kids classes during their regular adult yoga classes, so that people could bring their kiddos along with them to class. We also taught yoga enrichment in schools and weekend mommy and me classes in parks and recreation centers. The only class that we had to rent space for was my bi-weekly prenatal yoga class. The business grew quickly and we were loving every minute of it.
A couple years later, my business partner moved out of the state. This is the first time that I realized that my favorite part of the business was keeping up with the website, creating all of the marketing content and designing merchandise. I was good at teaching, but it wasn’t where I thrived.
Cue business number two: Whole Family Wellness
AKA selling essential oils. Ok, now how does this fit in with what I just told you I was good at? Well at the time it didn’t make sense to me either. I knew that I loved oils and that my yoga students loved when I used them during classes, so I decided that I could do both. And it was a hit! My oil business took off, but now instead of just teaching yoga classes, I was also teaching intro to essential oil classes. More teaching, less of what I had already learned I was good at - branding.
I had created an awesome little team of oil lovers, but instead of wanting to help them teach classes to others, I wanted to help them create brands and websites. In my spare time, right?! At this point, I was a mom to a toddler, was pregnant again, running a yoga business, running an essential oil business, and on my way to starting business number three…
Cue business number three: Kelsey Lenzmeier Branding
This was the first time that I created a branding course, directed toward other women in MLMs. Teaching this content absolutely made my heart sing. It was the first time that teaching felt right…because I was actually teaching something that came naturally! As much as I loved practicing yoga and using essential oils, the teaching aspect was always so forced. I would get nervous before classes and feel unprepared, even after doing it for years. The branding course felt so different.
But, enough was enough, I obviously had too much on my plate. I decided that it was time to let go of the yoga business (my first business baby!) At this point I should have let go of the oil business too, but hindsight’s 20/20, right?
Well, fast forward to a year after our second son was born. I was still working both my oil business and my branding business, had a toddler and a baby and was headed straight for meltdown city. My husband was working 80+ hours per week and wasn’t happy in his career at this point, so we decided that we needed a total life reset. We rented out our home for six months and moved to Nicaragua. This, my friend is a story worth hearing, but we’ll save it for another time. When it came down to it, living in Central America was a total roller coaster. It was crazy, hard, exciting, scary and totally life-changing.
During our time in Nica, I realized how much I tended to rely on outside opinions when it came to both my life and my business. Everyone always had an opinion, and I was all ears. That people-pleaser gene runs deep. Thankfully, moving out of the country had finally freed us from relying on those outside opinions in life - the fear of not following the status quo was gone. But for some reason, those outside opinions in business were harder to let go of. In fact, I was willing to try anything to be “successful”…
“I started following the marketing plan that some man on a podcast said to follow, because he promised 10k per month - even though his beliefs didn’t align with mine.
I posted three times a day on social media because some influencer said that’s how she got to 50k followers - even though her beliefs didn’t align with mine.
I did ALL THE THINGS that all the “successful” people said to do. Guess what? Nothing worked, and I was SO over it. ”
I was ALSO over living in Central America. When the newness wore off and things got tough (and they got REAL tough) I was used to being able to run to my mom, my sister or my life-long friends for help. Down there, it was Jason, my tiny kids and me. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It was during this time of extreme loneliness that I had my big ah-ha moment.
I’d heard of people having these moments of total clarity before, but never experienced one for myself - and it truly changed everything for me. I realized that I had spent my entire life relying on other humans to help me fix all of my broken parts - in life, business and everything in between. I had been a “Christian” since I was little, but I had never actually relied on God for anything. I went to church, I tried to do the right thing, but that was the extent of it. It turns out that in my moment of need, He was there waiting for me, and He had been all along. It was on that day that I actually started pursuing a relationship with God. Hallelujah, right?!
I’m so grateful for the six months that we spent in Nicaragua for many reasons, but especially for the change that happened within me. It was everything that I had been looking for. Since then, God has been my Numero Uno. If I need advice, He’s my man. If I need to be cheered up, He’s there. If I’m scared, anxious, sad, lonely, confused, He’s one prayer away.
Cue business number four: studio four10
It’s been such a messy journey to get here, but Studio Four10, business number FOUR if you’re still counting, was God’s answer to all of my years of struggle as an entrepreneur. Once I gave up my life to him, everything became so clear. My life is not mine to “figure out” - it’s all in His hands.
“Success in my business is not something I can force, it’s something that I can pray about and receive guidance on straight from above. No more chasing shiny objects. No more misaligning myself with people who don’t share the same values that I do. ”
Studio Four10 is named after 1 Peter 4:10 which says, “Each of you should use your gift from God to serve others as faithful stewards of His grace.”
It is now my mission in business to help women like yourself listen to where God is calling you to use your gift. You are uniquely and divinely blessed, and I absolutely can’t wait to help you turn your gift into a beautiful, purposeful, thriving business.
“Let there be light!”
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