How Fitness Guru Taryn Toomey Learned to Love Cash Flow and Created Jennifer Aniston’s Favorite Workout

Even now that The Class is a success, I’m always thinking about how to create more cash flow so I can live a life that I love, and for me that’s meant figuring out how I can make money doing things that I enjoy. That summer in East Hampton, I got to live in the house and make money on the house. When I started hosting retreats, it was because I wanted to go on vacation. I never traveled much and I wanted to experience music, movement, community, and good food in beautiful places. I built the retreat so I could make money on the retreat so I could then go on the retreat.

People didn’t believe that what I had created could scale. It was like, “It’s just you, Taryn. This is a brand of personality. This is not something that you can teach other teachers to do.” I would just tell them, “I appreciate your feedback.”

That’s really how I created The Class. I taught it for two years with no name and for no money. At some point I decided I needed a website so I had to have a name, so I called it The Class. That was September 2013, and I did two classes a week. Demand was insane, so I added a third and then a fourth. And then it was like, “Wow, wait a second. This is an income.”

At first I rented a kids’ dance studio, and I had zero other overhead costs. People signed up because a friend told them about it. One summer we had to last-minute move because it was summer and there were more kids’ classes. I found a place down the block and just hauled the 45 mats over there so that we wouldn’t have to shut down for the entire season. It was hard to grow, though. Really hard. Because people didn’t believe that what I had created could scale. It was like, “It’s just you, Taryn. This is a brand of personality. This is not something that you can teach other teachers to do.” I would just tell them, “I appreciate your feedback.” I knew in my gut we could pull it off.

We have 22 teachers now, and I recoup 15 percent of revenue. We’ve proved it’s a method and not just me. I also think it was important that I invested in the teacher training manual, which I would recommend to people who run businesses. I saw that as intellectual property, and I wanted it to be really solid. We’re now on our fourth iteration of it. When we nailed that down, I felt like, OK, this is a real business that I operate and that will be able to exist when I’m gone.

One piece of advice I got early on was to hire slow, fire fast. We have a really supportive company environment, but it works for some people and it doesn’t for others. That’s fine. It's vital to know when something is not working and act with precision to execute and be as unflappable as possible because your team is watching you. In those moments, trust your gut. Elizabeth Cutler, one of the cofounders of SoulCycle, once said that. She probably doesn’t even know what an effect it had on me. It really empowered me. And it’s the truth. The answers are in you.

This year, 2019, is going to be the year you’re going to see us everywhere. We’re going to be out there in a much bigger way, and I’m excited. When I first started it, it was just The Class. But an old business partner suggested we make it The Class by Taryn Toomey, just to give it a human behind it. I understood it at the time. But we’re at a phase right now where I want to take my name off it and go back to the spirit and ethos of how I started it. A good business is bigger than one person; this is bigger than me.