091: Aryan Rashed (JetSet Miami)

Aryan Rashed on Innovation City

“Being candid with other entrepreneurs about your vulnerabilities or places that you want to improve actually enhance the business.” — Aryan Rashed

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s guest is Aryan Rashed, Co-owner of JetSet Miami. JetSet Miami is a fitness studio that utilities a modern form of pilates to transform your body and mind. Aryan joins the team today to discuss her passion for fitness and starting JetSet, creating a common purpose bigger than fitness, welcoming competition and learning from one another, the importance of negotiating as a small business owner, giving back to the community, encouraging authenticity, celebrating hard work, and much more!

They discuss:

• Her passion for fitness
• Wanting to build communities with the gyms
• Creating a common purpose bigger than fitness
• Fitness being a hard business to get into, in Miami specifically
• Working with other fitness studios around her
• Working with other female fitness entrepreneurs and being open about their businesses
• Welcoming competition and learning from one another
• The concept of “fake it to you make it” and it’s benefits
• The importance of negotiating as a small business owner
• Knowing ways to save yourself money (i.e. long leases, no personal guarantees, construction, etc)
• The importance of location and how that affects your bottom dollar
  • Prime but not too popular areas and up and coming areas
• Being honest and realistic with yourself about your numbers
• Things to pay close attention to, to know if you should scale up:
  • Know your numbers
  • Retention (both clients and employees)
  • Referrals
  • Attendance
  • Community impact
• Wanting to make a mark on the Miami community
• Giving back to the community, regardless of your company size
• Accessibility and fitness being a right not a privilege
• Defining success into 3 parts:
  • Creation
  • Completion
  • Deletion
• Wishing she would have memorialized JetSet’s values more early on
• Hiring people who take the extra steps to do a great job and want to uphold the company values
• Making sure that you adhere to your own company values to set an example for the employees
• Encouraging authenticity between employee – client interactions
• Reach out to JetSet Miami on their website to learn more or sign up for a class