Kristen Gayle, CEO and founder of beauty bar The Ten Spot, faced big hurdles when she decided to franchise, but her persistence paid off and the business now has 47 locations across the United States.Offering
If Kristen Gale had known what she was getting into, she would never have franchised her beauty bar business. As she prepares to open her 47th location, she’s grateful for her ignorance.
Ten Spot’s CEO and founder opened his first store on Queen Street in Toronto in 2006 at age 24, after being fired from an unpaid internship and being laid off from his first job.
“At the time, 18 years ago, there were very high-end, very expensive ‘go with your mom and she’ll pay’ type spas, and then there were the lower-priced nail salons,” Gayle says. “I thought, ‘What if I combined the best parts of the high-end market, the great guest care and cleanliness, with the lower price point and the more casual atmosphere of a lower-priced salon?’
The concept was a hit, and Gale soon opened a second location in Toronto’s Leslieville neighborhood and was planning two more: one in Bloor West and one in Hamilton. Gale then decided the best way to meet the demand was to become a franchise, which she thought would be as simple as going to a lawyer and filling out the necessary paperwork.
“It was a tough, scary, terrible, humbling lesson. [franchisees are] “They’re not my managers, they’re the business owners,” she says. “My business model used to be manicures, pedicures, waxing, facials, and my customers were people who came in for those services, but now I’ve gone from people who didn’t know anything about how to run a business, how to run a spa business, how to run a Ten Spot business, to people who are fully trained and can open and run it, and they’re my customers now.”
In 2011, the entrepreneur was preparing to give birth to her son when her first two franchisees asked her some very basic questions about how to run the business (for which Gayle says she only knew the answers in her head).
“I have a picture of me breastfeeding my son on the first day he was born, with my laptop next to me texting,” she says. “It was hard. Tough conversations, tough decisions, rushing, staying up late, trying to go from being 10 steps behind where I needed to being one step ahead.”
Adversity is inevitable in entrepreneurship, but those who are able to demonstrate the resilience to overcome difficulties usually emerge stronger and more prepared for what comes next.
Gayle says the Ten Spot franchise model now works smoothly, with clearly defined systems, policies, protocols and manuals to guide new owners through each step of the process, and the experience also prepared her for the next time she felt overwhelmed during her early expansion south of the border.
“Even then, I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” she said, adding that having overcome similar challenges before gave her the confidence to take on this latest “tough challenge.” The Ten Spot now has four locations in the U.S. with plans to expand.
Like Gayle, Erin Barry faced unexpected challenges as she expanded her business. The CEO of Willful, an online estate-planning platform she co-founded with her husband, Kevin Olds, in 2017, believed the only way her company could reach its full potential was to fund rapid growth with investor money.
The company had raised about $1.5 million through 2021, but early last year, when Berry was looking to raise another $3 million to $5 million, he realized the market was shifting.
The recent economic climate has been particularly tough for tech startups, with rising inflation, changing consumer behavior and other factors creating market volatility and investor caution. For entrepreneurs like Berry, navigating these complex conditions has required a major shift in strategy and thinking.
“It quickly became clear that things were tough because of the economic situation,” she says. “Investors were not buying the valuations that companies had received a few years earlier and were writing fewer checks.”
Barry says her initial reaction was to work harder. She spent months and hundreds of hours refining her pitch, networking, and reaching out and meeting with investors. But in the end, she didn’t find the deal she was looking for. At the same time, Barry says she saw tech companies that had raised a lot of money suffer massive cuts and layoffs. That’s when she started to question whether she needed all that money.
“We had to shift our mindset from raising capital and riding the tech spaceship unicorn to focusing on running a healthy business, profitable, self-sustaining, and not relying on investors, because it’s really unpredictable,” she says.
Research supports this change in perspective. A study published in the Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research found a strong link between entrepreneurial resilience and success at both the individual and organizational levels. The study highlights that resilience is key to overcoming challenges and emerging stronger.
Ultimately, Wilful raised $1.1 million, mostly from existing investors, and shifted its strategy from growth at all costs to profitability.
Reflecting on lessons learned, Berry emphasizes the value of stepping back from the relentless pursuit of fundraising. “I think the key lesson learned here is that you don’t have to be in the loop as an investor forever,” she says. “I’ve done that before, and it took me away from what brings me joy: building a product, working with a team, and impacting as many Canadians as possible.”
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