Wellness entrepreneurs Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo have take downward dog to a whole new level. They are the co-founders of Puppy Sphere, a yoga class company with a special endorphin-boosting extra: puppies! Entrepreneur spoke with the founders as their business races to keep up with demand throughout North America. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Can you give us the elevator pitch for Puppy Sphere?
Albo: There are so many mood-boosting benefits of animal therapy, and we are bringing that gentle boost to people with our bestselling class, Puppy Yoga. We host 14,000 people a month in that class across all of our locations. We’re in 12 cities now. Lea and I fully bootstrapped this business and built it up, so quite a lot of love and labor went into building the startup.
Burbidge Izquierdo: It’s our absolute passionate dream.
How did you get the idea for it?
Albo: It started with Lea’s and my mental health journeys. We were both working corporate jobs before we knew each other. I lost all of my love for the biotech business I was working in. I was stuck in a cubicle and didn’t feel happy. I learned how much I cared about mental health and wanted to do something more pursuant to that angle, but I didn’t know what I was going to get into yet. Then I met Lea at a dog park. We were both strolling our dogs, and her dog was so cute. I had to snuggle it, and we ended up becoming best friends. She was unhappy with her corporate job as well, and we both had a string of failed side hustles. So we thought, Why don’t we try something together?
Burbidge Izquierdo: We thought, Why don’t we combine two things that we love: yoga and puppies? Selfishly, for our own mental health, we were like, let’s give it a shot. And who knew that so many people would pick it up and absolutely love it? Within two years of shifting fully into puppy yoga, we scaled up our business from our Toronto location to 12 cities.
Can you describe the experience a bit?
Burbidge Izquierdo: Basically, it’s a 75-minute experience. You start off with 45 minutes of gentle flow yoga, and the puppies are running around, giving everyone kisses, stealing your socks. The yoga is then followed by 30 minutes of chill time and healthy beverages, and people get to enjoy the puppies if they were really focused on the practice. But some people come and do no yoga, so all around it’s 75 minutes of just pure puppy love!
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What were the starting steps?
Albo: We started in Toronto. We were partnering with local yoga studios and cutting the worst deals just to get in the door. Most people didn’t like the idea of puppies coming into their space. They didn’t understand it. But we knew it worked. So it was a selling game for us to come in as confidently as possible and show our numbers.
Eventually, we started selling out every weekend, then we got our own studio, and we were furnishing it with items that we found on recycling days. I remember bringing my interior designer mom over, and I was so proud to show it to her, and she was like, “It looks like trash!” So it was definitely humble beginnings! Then we got our first private event. It was with Pinterest. [They paid] $4,000 for a two-hour event. That was a game-changer that led to this snowball effect. We realized it’s such a big model and we’ve hit it, so we canceled all of our other startup ideas and moved to New York.
Burbidge Izquierdo: Because if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere! We had to go play with the big game players to see if it worked. Is there a problem, and are we the solution? It turns out that we are.
So, where do you get the puppies?
Albo: We partner with local rescues and breeders for the classes. So they just come in for the classes, and they go right back to them after.
How have you handled expansion?
Burbidge Izquierdo: It’s a constant balancing act. On the one hand, we need to go slowly to make sure that [quality is high], the experience remains consistent across cities and that our team is strong enough. But on the other hand, we need to make sure we’re going fast enough because this is a new experience that other competitors might want to jump in on. We still need to win market share. Through experience, I think we’ve hit the nail on the head of how to do it properly. One of the big learnings is that just because something works somewhere, it doesn’t mean that it’ll work everywhere. You can’t really copy-paste it or put it on autopilot.
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Albo: The Miami market is crazy! Typically, we’ll market to women. But we learned we can’t target women in Miami. It doesn’t make sales. We target men. That’s the best way to go because the men are paying for the tickets! Different cities have different spending habits.
What is your advice for founders who have trouble getting out of the weeds of the day-to-day business?
Albo: I would say, even if you can do something better, it doesn’t mean that you are the right person for that job. Every three months is different when you’re in a startup. So the tasks you’re doing should change every three months, and you should hand them off to the next person. You need to focus on fundraising, investor relations, high-level finance and all those things. So, go through your task list and ensure that you’re letting go of at least 50% of those. You want other team members to grow with you, as well.
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Burbidge Izquierdo: We’re definitely looking at the future of this company every day, coming up with the plan and making sure that we’re following through.
Albo: We’re on our mission to bring the gentle power of puppy therapy across the world. In the next two years, we’re launching 30 new locations, which we can do with our own profits. And we’re talking with VCs and strategic advisors that can help us create laws around puppy safety and wellness to create a model that can scale beyond North America.
Wellness entrepreneurs Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo have take downward dog to a whole new level. They are the co-founders of Puppy Sphere, a yoga class company with a special endorphin-boosting extra: puppies! Entrepreneur spoke with the founders as their business races to keep up with demand throughout North America. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Can you give us the elevator pitch for Puppy Sphere?
Albo: There are so many mood-boosting benefits of animal therapy, and we are bringing that gentle boost to people with our bestselling class, Puppy Yoga. We host 14,000 people a month in that class across all of our locations. We’re in 12 cities now. Lea and I fully bootstrapped this business and built it up, so quite a lot of love and labor went into building the startup.
Burbidge Izquierdo: It’s our absolute passionate dream.
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