Founders of Move Your Frame studios Pip Black and Joan Murphy turned their friendship into a business partnership after discovering a mutual love for exercise, fitness and health. They now have two studios, one in Queen’s Park, the other in Shoreditch, and three signature workout classes.
We met…
Through friends on a weekend surfing trip to Newquay eight years ago and we just hit it off.
The idea came about…
When we talked about how we missed being able to include exercise and fitness into our life while trying to start a career. We’re both from very sporty backgrounds and had business degrees so we looked around for places to go that offered enjoyable fun exercise that worked with our busy work lives, but we couldn’t find anything we liked so decided to create a place of our own. Everything was membership based but with a busy work schedule we didn’t want to commit to work memberships, we wanted to find something pay-as-you-go that wasn’t expensive or elitist.
We are passionate about…
Getting people moving rather than just focusing on food and what they look like. If we can effect people’s endorphins it means they will make good life choices, and healthy food choices which all contributes to a positive body image. In all our classes we don’t talk about calories you burn or losing weight, we talk about getting leaner, stronger and achieving things.
We want to get away from the negative connotations attached to exercise: doing it for weight loss and being skinny. People have busy jobs, they can’t sleep and often have anxiety so getting them moving is a great way to combat stress without medication. Once you’ve exercised it is very difficult to have a negative outlook – and that will flow into other areas of your life.
It isn’t about eliminating it is about – the more consistent you are with working out the easier it is to have lax periods and let yourself go and not have to eliminate things out of your diet.
And doing things you enjoy.
Our working philosophy is…
Passion, Perseverance, Positivity and People.
Whether you are starting a business, training for an event, want to travel up the career ladder or build a relationship you need to have passion for what your doing. But just because you have passion for something it doesn’t mean it is going to be easy, you have to perserve. Positivity rubs off on other people. And whatever it is, make sure you are working with the right people, who can bring out the best in you and help you achieve your goals.
We work well together because…
We genuinely love the same things, we can finish each other’s sentences so it doesn’t matter if one of us isn’t there it is always the same outcome. Sometimes we test ourselves on a piece of paper and we always write the same things down. Our vision is the same, we want the same things, we enjoy the same stuff – our business is a product of what we enjoy.
Apart from being business partners, we are best friends, it works because we respect the environments that those relationships work in.
We both help each other play to each other’s strengths which makes work so much better. Pip’s great at coming up with creative copy and coming up with the tone of voice for the brand, Joan is very enthusiastic and is always coming up with ideas out of the box, especially when it comes to classes.
Our biggest challenge so far…
Has been finding properties suitable for new studios. Also finding the right instructors, we are very particular – it is a social business so we need to make sure everyone who works for us fits our brand, ethos and energy – we have 110 people working for us now.
When faced with obstacles we…
Come up with Plan A and then Plan B and then sleep on it. Always save a challenging email and draft for the next day.
Our top business resource is…
Our booking system, we wouldn’t have a business without it. Followed by brand collaborations – working with like-minded businesses and business people. In the six years we have been open there are lots of brands with similar ethos to us who are developing in the health and wellbeing world. Word-of-mouth from our clients, they are the ones who help us build Frame by telling us what they like and what they don’t.
We were lucky because…
We met each other and we do what we love. We took a gamble and it paid off. After seven years working together, we are still as close as ever and have both been able to start families. That’s been possible because the other could hold the fort while the other was off having babies!
The biggest lesson we’ve learnt…
Is trust your instinct – people thought we were mad when we signed the lease in Shoreditch because it was such a big space. We knew it had a great energy about it so we went with it. And always be prepared – not everything is always going to go to plan, but if you are prepared you can make Plan B work.
Our favourite quote is…
“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”
