Meet Molly Kranovich

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Molly Kranovich a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Molly, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

Finding my purpose has been a long and twisty road. When I when to college, I studied human services, it was a mix of psychology and sociology. Little did I know how much it would prepare me to open LUMI and be a small business owner. When I was taking those classes, I had never even taken a yoga class!

I began my career working in inner city schools through a year long volunteer program. At that point in my journey, I recognized how much I loved working with people but wasn’t sure where my path would take me. Fast forward a few years, when I was pregnant with my first child, I began taking yoga classes, I loved the way the practice gave me space to quiet my mind. A few years later, after having my third child, I struggled with postpartum anxiety. I began looking for ways to help myself through the difficult time. I decided to take a leap of faith and attend a weekend yoga teacher training to see if I’d like to do the full 200 hour training program. It quickly became apparent to me how much I loved the practice of yoga and wanted to share with others the amazing benefits I was seeing in my own life. It made the decision to continue on the with the 200 hour yoga training an easy one for me.

I began my teaching journey teaching adults in my basement and children at local schools and churches. After the pandemic, I really saw a need in my community for people to find a place to come in person and practice together and find their people. At the same time, I was outgrowing the space in my basement both with the number of yoga clients I had and the fact that my four children needed some more space to play.

Around that time my longtime friend and yoga mentor, Mary, mentioned to me that there was a landlord looking for someone to put a yoga studio in the downtown area of my town, Mt Prospect. It was a like a light bulb went off for me then. From that day, my mind went into overdrive thinking about how I could make it work. I know it’s my purpose at this point of my journey, because it was so apparent that it was what I wanted to do next even though there were setbacks, and I had four young children at the time. I continue to know it’s my purpose because being at LUMI, building the community there, brings me so much joy and energy. LUMI means bringer of light. While I don’t know what my future path will look like, I know I live my purpose when I spend my days trying my best to spread the light to those around me.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I own LUMI studio + shoppe. LUMI is a yoga studio, retail shoppe, and event space. At LUMI we offer an array of different types of yoga offerings. We currently have 14 instructors. We have a retail shoppe featuring over 40 local women vendors. In the shoppe we carry items such as jewelry, candles, clothing, crystals and greeting cards. We have an event space that hosts an array of different types of events including birthday parties, girl scout troops, reiki sessions, sound baths, and tarot readings just to name a few. We host events every Wednesday evening such as acupuncture and meditation, holiday parties, yin yoga and DIY art or craft making classes. We love to expose our community and clients to new activities and love to bring our community together to learn from one another.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the skills I’ve used the most in my journey are resilience, friendliness, and trusting my intuition. I would tell those early on in their journeys to not be afraid to ask questions and ask for help. Surrounding myself with others who’ve opened businesses before me has been hugely helpful. I also strongly believe in community over competition and would not be where I am today without all of the amazing community of small business owners in my life. For anyone starting out, I would highly recommend finding other small business owners in your community that you can collaborate with.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

We are always looking to collaborate with other small businesses at LUMI. We are looking for local artisans to sell products in the shoppe. We are looking for anyone in the healing and wellness industry to teach workshops at LUMI. Collaborating with other small businesses is our favorite thing to do! You can connect to us through email at [email protected] or through DM on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/lumistudioshoppe/.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Stefanie O’Donnell Photography

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