Sarah Moudry

My journey in business started 18 years ago at Anytime Fitness Corporate, which was a startup franchise at the time. I put 10 years in there, and that's really where I got my passion for entrepreneurship. I just lucked out -I got really lucky at the right company at the right time. I dug my heels in and wanted to learn everything about business and entrepreneurship, but I think the real education comes from being in it. I was teaching yoga there, super involved, and it just felt like a really huge family. I learned so much from that company about systems and processes, what makes a business great, purpose, values, and mission - all the things that really make an excellent company versus just kind of middle of the road. Even though it was a great corporate job, I was still doing side hustles because that's all I kind of know, always having something as a backup. After that, I went to Zips Dry Cleaning, which was a total shift from fitness to dry cleaning, but that really instilled confidence in me. I got to work directly with the CEO, and he taught me a lot about speaking, having confidence, being able to talk through your subconscious, and preparing for meetings. Then, my transition into the spa industry was during the pandemic with Hand and Stone Franchising. Looking back, I realized I really like innovative brands - I'm more of a futurist. I love to think 20 years in advance, thinking about what people want, where the true customer demand is, and how to make our planet a better place. My excitement comes from creativity. My family decided to invest with a lot of encouragement from me, and we purchased a Hand and Stone franchise in Chanhassen, Minnesota. We'll be celebrating 4 years in business. My sister and I ran it - I was GM for 2 years, she ran it for 2 years, and now it kind of runs itself with a couple of assistants. We made so many mistakes but learned valuable lessons. It's allowed me the freedom to build BizLinxAI.com, my AI exit firm that I've been working on for 4 years and launched 2 years ago. I filed the S Corp in February 2023. I've always wanted to run a company that was automated. I saw business brokering changing 10 years ago and was screaming at the top of my lungs to these billion-dollar corporations that they really need to start thinking about all their systems and processes being automated. It's been an interesting experiment to build an AI company - I launched it before AI was as great as it is now, but I saw it coming down the pipeline. It's cool to be in the mix of it during this huge economic shift. I am going to keep experimenting and trying, see what happens.