MY STORY: HOW I BECAME A POLE/ AERIAL STUDIO OWNER. PART 1. BACKSTORY.
TL;DR: a young woman who moved to the area, didn’t know how to make friends, finds pole studio.
I want to share the story of FM Aerial & Movement Arts, so that you get a better understanding of the history, how we came about, and what are our hopes for the future. This first part is to share a bit about me as a person, and how I came to both Fargo, pole, and made the decision to become a studio owner.
**This story is mine and from my point of view. I cannot elaborate on the stories of others, but can only share how the experiences shared impacted my life and story**
Commence: The Long Version:
Hi! My name is Yvette Reyes and I moved to this area after the painful realization that a traditional four year college was not a choice for my debt-ridden family.
Growing up, I thought I had checked all the boxes: 1. Get good grades in school. Check. 2. Aim to excel in all things academic, community, and leadership to appeal to higher education institutions. Check. 3. Apply and be accepted into an international boarding school to better my chances of applying and being accepted into prestigious colleges. Check. 4. Get accepted into the first women’s college established in the USA, with copious amounts of grants. Check.
So... what happened?
As far as I remember I have been dubbed “ambitious.” All I ever knew was that I was going to go to college and help make life better for my family, and eventually the world. Ok… these are *very* big ambitions, but as a youth I had the entire world ahead of me if I just worked harder, applied myself, and outworked everyone alongside me. My priority was clear: enter the most prestigious college I can find, and the rest will unveil itself in due time. I want to make the world a better place, and this is the way to do it.
Hello, Reality ... and interesting times.
And of course, enters “Reality”. My parents can’t afford to send me to college, even with Davis money, even with 40k in grants, even with loans. And I made the mistake of applying Early Decision, so there was no going back. Life plan ruined.
I tend to conjure …interesting…. solutions to problems. I like to call this *Creativity*. I realized that if my parents could not afford to send me to college, at the least I should find a way to take care of myself so that my younger brother would have a chance to go one day and become somebody.
So here we find nineteen year old Yvette: late night google searching “trades that will provide a high starting wage.” Boom. Welding is number one. The nearest trade school has a waitlist of 10 people on it. The school 45min away in Thief River Falls has openings. So I enrolled, and told my parents after.
I had no idea what welding was. I soon found out that it requires electricity and it is relatively easy to start oneself on fire. Literal flames.
I was also working a full time job in a production shop, and picked up shifts working weekends at a gas station. I worked 7 days a week. I would wake up, drive 45min to TRF, be in class for 8 hours, then drive 45min to work an 8 hour shift in Crookston, then work the weekend evening shift at a gas station. Again, the thinking went: success will come if you work harder than anyone else. What that thinking brought me was a zombie-like version of myself. I was too tired to function, and I was constantly getting sick from lack of sleep. Never again. Guys in the shop started to become ass-hole-ish because I wouldn’t laugh at their jokes. Bro… I am barely conscious and am in steel toe boots for over 16hours a day.This is job training, I’m not here to make friends. Leave me alone. At least I had tested out of the math and English classes, so I was only at school for hands-on training.
At the end of the year/ first semester my body decided for me that two jobs was too much so I quit the full time production shop work and instead would wake up at 3am to run a couple of miles and lift weights before school. I always seem to be trading one form of overwhelm for another. I missed my friends dearly at this point. Everyone else had either gotten into Ivy league schools or had full-scholarships. I felt very behind, and lost,and intensely sad. But I didn’t also want to be a burden to my family so I kept at it.
I didn’t attend my welding program graduation. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I was one of maybe two people who had successfully completed their diploma, which seems to be a very common scenario I’ve come to see. However, I was burnt out and really did not have a connection to my classmates or the school (well besides Kareem, if you are reading this. Ayee homiee!). This is also something that I notice about myself. I tend to treat traditionally momentous occasions with an almost disregard.
Perhaps I didn’t attend my graduation because it was “fluffy” or extra. I already had a job lined up in West Fargo, so my mind was already onto the next project. I lied to the people who had interviewed me and told them that I planned to work full time for the foreseeable future. My real intention was to work for the summer and then transfer to a college to continue my education.
I moved to Fargo and had no idea how to make friends. Up until that point, at 20 years old, I had been institutionalized and didn’t know how to talk about anything other than school and dreams of the future. All of my co-workers were men and I worked from 4:15pm to 2:55am. Not ideal circumstances for friendship-making.
Once again, comes in handy old Google: “alternative fitness Fargo”. I tried boxing for two classes and my strange schedule and asthma decided it was not a good fit. I also saw a 4-Week Intro to Pole series and was really interested. It seemed like if I can’t make friends at this point, at least I can be in the same place with other people and hopefully at least make acquaintances. I waited for a few months before finally signing up in January of 2016. Pam, the owner of Total Woman, was my teacher, and boy! It was not what I had expected… not that I had really expected anything in particular. It was really fitness-focused. We had a short warm-up followed by resistance band exercises, we learned different spins, how to climb, two songs at the end where we would do cardio and then a slower cool down song followed by an actual cool-down. Pam is an incredible instructor and most of the women in my class were from the same tattoo studio. They were so friendly and would invite me to lunch (human connection, hurrah!). I was too self conscious and would make up excuses for needing to go home. I was scared of not being interesting enough or being awkward. I did build up the confidence to go at least once to lunch ( baby steps!).
I am a person who has kept journals since I was 13. In my journal at this point in time there was a distinct shift in my writing. Pam and pole gave me something to look forward to every week. These were the highlights of my week. I could physically see myself gain strength with the different skills we were trying, and the classes were progressive and very well-thought out. It gave me an outlet and also connected me to other people. My writing used to be very sad ever since the second and final year of my boarding school. I hadn’t been myself in a very long time at that point. I felt so empty and void of life. Afterall, my life’s goal had been to change the world by going to a prestigious college, and now that I had taken a detour I would be too old to do anything meaningful (again, this was my thinking at the time. I’m happy to report that things have changed.) After starting pole, my journal had started to read again of hope and looking forward to the tomorrow’s rather than wishing them gone. I still felt sad that I didn’t have my friends, or a sense of real purpose, but at least I felt like I was still learning.
And at the head of my pole journey was Pam. The woman that I remember as Pam is this fierce power house of a woman. I believe she was around 55 when I first took classes with her, and I remember being in awe of how much control and strength she had: climbing the pole with ease, effortlessly inverting. This woman was *goals*. And she was super conscious of safety and making sure her students were following the proper progressions. She had a lot of knowledge about how the body worked: she could tell you exactly how to achieve a move, and believed and cheered on her students whole-heartedly. She was the first person to start a pole studio in Fargo, Total Woman, and she really had to fight to get it started. Pole was not accepted in this area, believe it or not, 10+ years ago. Even when I started, I didn't dare tell anyone for a long time, and when I did, I whispered it to a trusted co-worker. People nowadays post their pole pictures/videos to Facebook/Instagram shamelessly, and I am loving it. (special thanks to Jlo and TikTok).
However, things for my mentor had taken a turn. I didn't know at the time that she was going through a really hard season. Pam was transparent about a lot of things about the business, but she wouldn't share everything. Over time she started to open up more about her struggles. She had started to talk about closing the studio. There were various reasons, but they are not mine to share.
My heart hurt a lot. Here was the place that brought me out of my darkest time, and had provided me with tools to express myself so that I wouldn't go mad with the daily bs I had to deal with. Here was a place that I finally felt like I could start to, one day, come back to my old self. A place of possibility, a place of curiosity and camaraderie. I did not want to lose it... it meant too much to me.
At that point in time I started to think about the possibility of owning the studio. I had been saving money to quit welding and go back to school. My thought process was "I am young. I don't have debt, and I don't plan on having children in the future. If I fail I still have time to pursue something else." But ... who was I to own a studio? There was a lot of doubt. Pam believed in me and told me she could see me doing great things with the studio. (thanks, Pam!) However, I can't say my partner was exactly overjoyed. It was an expensive risk. However, in my mind, it was either I own the studio or I lose this special place forever. Two choices. I never wanted to be a business owner, it wasn't something I dreamed about or thought would bring about meaningful change, but I also didn't want to lose my precious space and students. (Edit here: owning the studio has absolutely brought about meaningful change. I've seen people blossom and create friendships and achieve incredible things, and I am so, so glad that I was too broke to go to a traditional 4 year college, because otherwise I wouldn't be here writing this. I strive to create a safe space for people that may not find it elsewhere, because I know what it feels like to be on the outside.)
And so, after talking to Paul at the SBA, we settled on my acquiring the assets and changing the name. Being who I am, I couldn't *just* be another pole studio, I wanted to be different by establishing a goal that was true to me: bring a new artform to the Fargo-Moorhead area, and to respect it by taking time to learn the ins and outs so that I can respect people by keeping them safe and teaching skills properly. So I thought: FM Aerial & Movement Arts, with the intention to bring Aerial (Lyra, specifically) to the FM area within a few years. Pole makes up the Movement Arts, but it would also allow for other forms of performing arts as well. Our focus would be community building through skill acquisition, creativity, exploration, and expression.
And so, April 1st 2019, I became the owner of the newest pole(and one day aerial) studio: FM Aerial & Movement Arts. Initially I had envisioned the studio as an association, so that it was a team effort to keep the studio open, however I messed up the legal process a bit and we ended up an LLC, which turned out for the better in the end. And this is the beginning of FM Aerial & Movement Art’s story, a student turned owner of a pole fitness/dance studio intent on becoming the first dedicated aerial arts studio in the Fargo-Moorhead area. The end of 2019 brought a lot of hope for the future, but there were hard times to come…
STAY TUNED: PART 2 MENTORS AND FRIENDS: HOW TO BUILD A STUDIO.