Dear FoundHer · Episode 236 · June 6, 2024 · 52 min

She Bootstrapped Beyond Yoga for 18 Years Without Outside Investment and Sold It for $400 Million

For simple actionable tips to grow your business, subscribe to The FoundHer Files . Building a hundred million dollar company without outside investment is rare. Doing it while holding the line on body inclusivity, never photoshopping a single model, and keeping your entire team intact through an acquisition is something most founders never pull off. In this episode of Dear FoundHer, Lindsay Pinchuk sits down with Michelle Wahler-Adams, co-founder and former CEO of Beyond Yoga, to talk about what bootstrapping a business really looks like across eighteen years of slow, disciplined growth. If you are a female founder who wants to build something real without giving up control or compromising what you stand for, this conversation is for you. Michelle shares some of the most honest and specific real founder stories you will hear about scaling a company from a trade show connection to a four hundred million dollar acquisition. She talks about discovering the Space Dye fabric that changed everything, and why managing teams well, starting with hiring her husband Jesse as CFO and COO, was the unlock that made everything else possible. She explains how she navigated six million dollars in COVID cancellations, pivoted into mask production to keep her contractors employed, and leaned into performance marketing when everyone else pulled back. Managing rapid growth while staying true to the brand's mission required hard calls made quickly, and she made nearly all of them right. This episode is for women founders who are figuring out when to hire, how to spend, and whether staying bootstrapped is the right call for their business. It is also for anyone navigating the tension between scaling responsibly and moving fast enough to matter. Michelle's story does not end with the sale. It ends with a woman who protected her people, passed the baton with intention, and is now spending her days meeting with other female founders because she genuinely wants to help. That is what building something that lasts actually looks like. Quotes “I knew that if we sold to Levi’s, we were going to make sure that Beyond Yoga was going to be a brand that lived on forever… This was our legacy… I joined the leadership team so I can say that, in truth, they really live their principles. It’s all about principles over profits…” (41:24 | Michelle Wahler)  “You will learn, and you are smarter and more capable than you realize. You have to turn off that voice in the back of your head that thinks everybody else knows things that you don’t. Just trust yourself. You’re gonna do great.” (50:23 | Michelle Wahler) Connect with Michelle Wahler: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-wahler-4b43315/ Grab Lindsay’s JumpStart Your Business Blueprint from last week's episode: https://lindsaypinchuk.myflodesk.com/11stepsforbusiness Grab Lindsay’s Reels Cheat Sheet + Social Media Challenge. CLICK HERE Join us LIVE at our networking events, Dear FoundHer... LIVE: https://www.dearfoundher.com/events If you like what you're hearing, please leave a rating or review at: https://ratethispodcast.com/dearfoundher If you know a FoundHer... we should meet, please tell her to share her story with us here. Don't forget to follow along @dearfoundher and @lindsaypinchuk. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.