Today we’d like to introduce you to Brittany Hopkins.
Brittany, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m into yoga and my husband is into bikes. We were living and teaching at an international school in Beijing, China, when the idea of opening a yoga studio and bike shop formulated. In 2014 I moved back to the U.S. to start the biz with free yoga in the park until we found our indoor home in Lakewood, Colorado. To date, we have served yoga to over 5,000 individual beginner and season yogi’s and tuned up over 1,200 bikes.
As a yoga studio: community is super important to us and we want everyone to feel welcome to join us in person or live online for our empowering flow and gentle yin/restorative yoga classes. We also offer tons of other community activities, workshops and yoga teacher trainings to support you in connecting with yourself and the world around you using the tools of Baptiste yoga!
As a mechanic, Russ is incredible at getting your bike safely back on the road for a cruise around the lake, or a road or mountain bike ride. His customers never feel like he’s trying to sell them on something. He’s simply here to get their bike in the best shape possible to fit their needs as quickly as possible.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has definitely not been a smooth road; it’s been an emotional road. Being an entrepreneur requires resilience, creativity and grit. There were so many classes early on that no customers showed up for, and I would teach anyways. And by teach, I mean, I would record a class to put up on YouTube. Some of those early recordings now have 1,000s of views and have supported with brand recognition and credibility.
There have been many ideas that didn’t pan out, that flopped. One example was chair yoga. I got certified and bought 25 chairs and was so excited to serve yoga to the population that couldn’t do our power yoga classes. It turns out that the population gets yoga already at the community centers they can go to for significantly cheaper than we needed to charge to pay a teacher and pay the bills. I now use those chairs for team gatherings and yoga teacher trainings. 🙂
My husband, Russ, tried offering bamboo bike building workshops for a few years, and that market was tapped pretty quickly, so he sold his setup and now builds custom bamboo bikes as requested, in addition to doing bike repairs.
Bumpy road requirements: be 100% committed and 100% adaptable.
We’d love to hear more about Container Collective Yoga and Bikes.
I specialize in teaching Baptiste Power Yoga and leading Yoga Teacher Trainings. Lots of people have 200-hour yoga teaching credentials in this day and age. And quite a few people have 500-hour credentials. I have 1200 hours of certification and 700 of those hours are specific to facilitation of workshops and teacher trainings. I love this practice and love sharing it with anyone and everyone, whether they are new or seasoned yoga practitioners. I especially love teaching others how to teach others through 200/300 hour yoga teacher training programs.
As a yoga studio, what I hear over and over again from our community is that everyone truly feels welcome and like they belong when they join us live online or walk through the door for the first or 500th time. They don’t feel like they need to have a certain body type or be a particular age, wearing the “right” clothes in order to practice with us. As a bike shop, Russ makes each customer feel proud of their bike, regardless of how much it cost, to begin with.
Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
Both my mom and my stepmom have always been inspirational women to me. My mom created a career as a well respected floral designer when she had no background or education in that field. She taught me that you have to be willing to practice and do the work in order to get better at something.
My stepmom was a captain of a fire department in Texas when she retired. When she joined the crew in her 20’s, there wasn’t even a women’s restroom at the fire station. She was a trailblazer for women in fire fighting. She taught me that I didn’t need to wait for an invitation to do the things I want to do but to just do it!
Pricing:
- We offer 14 Days of Unlimited Live Online and On Demand Yoga Classes for $1 for new customers
- A Bike Tuneup with Russ is only $75 and he usually gets it back to you within a few days.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1492 Ammons St Lakewood, CO 80214
- Website: www.cc360denver.com
- Phone: 7204370638
- Email: info@thecontainercollective.com
- Instagram: @thecontainercollective
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/containercollectiveyoga
- Other: www.brittanyhopkins.com
Image Credit:
The yoga photos were taken by Fiona at Calypso Creative Photo
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