Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurism have always fascinated me. Hence, I was thrilled to see that in a recent TCU Neeley Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation ranking that “tracks research articles in premier entrepreneurship journals for the past five years,” my colleagues in the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business Tom Love Division of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, directed by Professor Tom Lumpkin, were 7th in the WORLD! Boomer Sooner!
And since coming to OU, I’ve had the good fortune to meet an inspirational, 4th generation Oklahoma entrepreneur, Merideth VanSant, in attending 405 Yoga OKC, the 2018 Best Yoga Studio in OKC, and one of four studios owned by VanSant. The U.S. has more than 6000 yoga studios, so VanSant’s success is no small feat. Yoga is big business: Americans spend about $16 billion a year on classes, clothes, and related equipment. In fact, America is now a “Nation of Yoga Pants.”
VanSant has long made extensive use of her entrepreneurial and leadership abilities, whether in running award-winning yoga studios, supporting various federal agencies in the transportation and aviation areas (and receiving the 2014 National Senior Consultant of the Year Award for her work), or co-founding True U, a national social entrepreneurship enterprise bringing yoga, mindfulness, and leadership to underserved teens. In her spare time, she’s completing an EMBA at NYU!
Given our yoga, business school, entrepreneur, Oklahoma nexus, I thought it might be worthwhile (and fun) to ask VanSant a few questions, and to distill our Q&A for readers:
Always been an entrepreneur? VanSant grew up sandwiching the school day with working in her family’s lumber yard. These early experiences instilled grit (great Ted Talk on its importance), a strong work ethic, and an appreciation for “working with my hands…[and] the sacrifice and sweat that goes into creating a successful business that serves the community.”
Why yoga studios? “As an undergrad in the Midwest, I started to see intelligent and gregarious women taking themselves out of the running for awards, title promotions, career mobility, opportunities, advanced education, the list goes on and on. The more I listened, the more I heard that women in my community thought they had only limited opportunities available. They were taking their foot off the gas pedal before they turned the car ignition on…I wanted women to feel empowered, which is why I opened our studios, empowering our community with a strong power practice that creates change from the inside-out.”
VanSant’s mission appears to be creating empowering communities, with yoga studios and True U being vehicles to promote this objective. From my own experience, I can attest to the powerful, empowering community at Yoga 405-OKC.
Thoughts on how universities can best foster entrepreneurism at the undergraduate/graduate levels? “I would like to see universities opening up their entrepreneurship classes, services, and incubators to different majors, disciplines, and courses of study. One of the challenges I see with emerging entrepreneurs is that they are skilled technicians but are missing crucial skills in business development and management. To be able to connect medical doctors, therapists, engineers, lawyers, art teachers, to name a few, to university entrepreneurship services could allow professional trades and technicians to become well versed in high level business skills and administrative concepts that are both vital to the health of a company.”
Finally, how can power yoga be particularly helpful for professors or students? “I think power yoga is a life saver, students and professors included. I practice yoga to allow time away from devices and work emails, which in turn creates some distance to clear my mind and create clarity in how I want to interact with my environment. Practicing yoga also allows me to move my body daily in a way that is strength building, sweat inducing, and calorie burning – which are all important to maintain my physical health in a daily routine where I would otherwise be sedentary. Students may benefit from clarity of mind and physical health since both may be important to handling academically rigorous courses and externships.”