From employees to owners: how Rodrigo and Michele Freitas bought the academy where they worked
The Brazilian couple took over the school in 2013, with about 150 students, and now has more than 500 in California. Michele tells VF Comunica about the month she cried every day
Inspirit Academy, in Redondo Beach, California, now has more than 500 students and a facility its owners put half a million dollars into. On May 1, 2013, when Rodrigo and Michele Freitas took over the business, it had about 150 students, the couple’s savings spent on the down payment and two owners with no experience running a company. Michele told the story in an interview with Vitor Freitas for VF Comunica.
The instructor who treated it like his own
Before becoming an owner, Rodrigo was the head instructor at a friend’s academy. According to Michele, he never acted like an employee. “He took on the academy as if he were the owner,” she said. When Vitor Freitas summed it up by saying he was an employee who cared like an owner, she added: “And got paid like an employee.”
The example she gives is the weekends. Rodrigo would go out to hand out flyers for the school, and she, who still lived in Brazil at the time and was on vacation in the United States, went along. “I could have just said, ‘No, let’s go to the beach, it’s not ours, let the owner figure it out,’” she recalled.
Michele also wanted to build her husband’s name as a competitor. She noticed the other athletes had their own brand and drew a logo, which a student helped take to the print shop. “I said, ‘Man, I need a logo.’ I drew it, and it was really bad,” she said. The logo ended up on gis and T-shirts.
“Take it or leave it”
The turning point came when the owner decided to sell and offered the academy to Rodrigo. For Michele, the offer went against everything she had planned. “I grew up saying I would never be an owner. I wanted to be an employee,” she said. But turning it down meant leaving her husband without a job. “It was take it or leave it.”
The couple used their savings for the down payment. The former owner, according to her, set a price that recognized what Rodrigo had done for the school without asking for anything in return. The three are still friends.
A month of crying every day
The first month was the worst. The academy’s bills, starting with rent, were theirs from day one, and Michele didn’t yet know if the revenue would cover them. “I cried every day, for a whole month,” she said.
Rodrigo reacted differently. She describes her husband as someone who looks for a spot in a parking lot sure he will find one right by the entrance. “He kept reminding me everything would work out. And he was right, everything worked out,” she said.
Neither of them had a business background. She is a nurse, he is a Jiu-Jitsu instructor. They learned by doing, and Michele says she knows every role in the company because she has done them all, starting with the front desk.
The second leap
Years later, with 300 students in a small space, the couple reached another crossroads. “Either we made a very big jump, or we were going to go backward,” she said. They chose to move to a bigger facility. “It was scary at first, because everything doubles, sometimes triples.”
Michele credits the result to a habit from the time Rodrigo was an employee: doing more than what was asked. “The difference is doing it and doing it well. You’re always giving a little more than what’s asked,” she said.
Full video on YouTube
The full interview with Michele Freitas is on the VF Comunica YouTube channel (in Portuguese).
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