How I Accidentally Started a Fitness Company in Mykonos

There are probably more sensible ways to start a company than quitting your job in New York, moving to a Greek island where you don’t speak the language, buying 17 spin bikes and 100 yoga mats, and deciding you’re going to build an outdoor fitness business. But that’s more or less what I did.

My name is Lauren, and I’m the founder of Sweat Vacay, a fitness, wellness and travel company based in Mykonos, Greece. This blog is the story of how I got here.

And by “here,” I mean both literally here… on a tiny, windy, wildly beautiful island in the Aegean Sea… and figuratively here: running a business I absolutely did not set out to create, in an industry I had never worked in, in a country whose language I did not speak.

There have been incredible highs, spectacular mistakes, bizarre Greek bureaucracy, beautiful places, questionable financial decisions, wonderful people, plenty of ouzo, several reinventions and at least one global pandemic. So perhaps we should start at the beginning.

Before Sweat Vacay, There Was Advertising

I wasn't a fitness professional. I was an advertising creative.

I studied photography and communications at Guilford College and graduated directly into the 2008 financial crisis, which was not exactly ideal timing for an aspiring creative professional.

I moved home to Naples, Florida, worked at a coffee shop, and quickly realized that whatever my future was going to look like, this wasn't it. So I went back to school.

I moved to Savannah, Georgia, attended the Savannah College of Art and Design and earned an MFA in advertising with a focus in copywriting.

A few weeks before graduation, a recruiter from McCann Erickson in New York found my portfolio online and called me about a job. This was the dream. New York. Advertising. McCann. I said yes.

I ended up spending about eight years at McCann, eventually becoming an Associate Creative Director and working across brands ranging from General Mills and Choice Hotels to L'Oréal and Lockheed Martin. I helped build brand voices, wrote campaigns, produced commercials, worked in digital and social, and learned how companies create identities people actually want to engage with.

Without realizing it at the time, I was learning almost everything I would eventually need to build a brand of my own. Almost.

Nobody at McCann taught me how to import yoga mats into Greece. That lesson would come later.

Then I Finally Took a Vacation

Advertising is a funny industry. You technically have vacation days. Actually taking them can be another story entirely.

By 2017, I had spent years working long hours behind a desk in New York. I loved being a creative, but I was also increasingly aware of what sitting at a desk all day was doing to me.

So I did something surprisingly radical. I took a proper vacation. I went to Greece.

And like a lot of New Yorkers, I was a devoted user of ClassPass. Working out wasn't something I only did when I was “being healthy.” It was woven into my normal life. Yoga one day. Cycling the next. Pilates. Barre. Whatever I felt like doing.

So while I was on vacation in Greece, surrounded by spectacular beaches and those ridiculous blue Aegean views, I had what seemed like a very simple idea: I'd take a yoga class on the beach.

Except I couldn't find one. At least, I couldn't find one in the way I was accustomed to finding fitness in New York. There weren't lots of regularly scheduled classes. There wasn't one place where I could see what was happening. There wasn't an easy way to book something online.

And I remember thinking: How is this possible?

Mykonos welcomes travelers from all over the world. Many of them exercise regularly at home. They're staying in beautiful hotels and villas. They're already spending money on experiences. Surely I'm not the only person who wants to go to yoga in the morning before going to the beach.

The more I thought about it, the more obvious the gap became.

And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

What If the Island Became the Studio?

The original idea was pretty simple.

Instead of building a traditional gym, what if the destination itself became the gym? A cycling class overlooking the sea. Yoga outside at sunrise or sunset. Pilates on a terrace. Bootcamp beside the beach.

Different teachers. Different locations. Different types of classes throughout the island.

Essentially, I wanted to take the variety and convenience I loved about boutique fitness in New York and combine it with the thing Greece already had in abundance: Extraordinary places.

The workout shouldn't compete with your vacation.It should become one of the experiences you remember from it.

Eventually, that idea became our tagline: Workouts With Local Flavor.

And Sweat Vacay started becoming real.

There Was Just One Tiny Problem

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I didn't speak Greek. I didn't have a background running a fitness company. I didn't have a business degree. I'd never operated a studio. I had never built a company in a foreign country.

I was a copywriter. I wrote commercials.

And yet the idea felt so obvious to me that walking away from it somehow seemed crazier than trying.

So I started learning.

I became Stages-certified as a cycling instructor. I trained in barre. I started building relationships with trainers and venues. I worked with lawyers, accountants, tax specialists, insurance brokers and eventually developers.

And at some point I made the slightly terrifying decision to stop talking about the idea and actually build it.

I left corporate New York. I moved to Greece. I raised funding.

I bought 17 Stages C3 spin bikes, around 100 custom yoga mats and what felt like an endless supply of blocks and equipment.

Then I started building little pop-up fitness studios around Mykonos.

In 2019, Sweat Vacay officially launched in Mykonos with yoga, Pilates, cycling and other group fitness experiences taught in beautiful outdoor locations around the island with a talented group of guest instructors from all over the globe. Greece. France. Spain. Indonesia. The US.

It was happening. The slightly ridiculous idea I'd had on vacation with my friend had become an actual company.

And Then the World Shut Down

If you happened to be designing the single business model least compatible with a global pandemic, you might come up with something like: “Let's build a company based entirely around international travel and people exercising together.” Which was basically Sweat Vacay.

COVID could have ended the story. Instead, strangely, it created the next chapter.

One of the problems I had encountered while building Sweat Vacay was that the digital infrastructure I had relied on as a consumer in America simply wasn't available in many of the markets where I was now working. I wanted a ClassPass-style marketplace. It didn't exist.

I wanted an easy booking and payment solution for independent instructors and studios. And those options were extremely limited. So I decided to build that too.

During 2020, I began developing Sweat Booker, a wellness discovery, scheduling, booking and payment tool designed to give independent instructors, studios and wellness businesses access to digital tools without expensive monthly fees.

The pandemic also accelerated something that had been moving much more slowly in Greece: digital adoption. Suddenly businesses needed online solutions. Consumers needed contactless solutions. Smartphones became essential in everyday life.

The problem I had noticed before COVID suddenly became much bigger. And much more urgent. So while Sweat Vacay was largely grounded, I spent that year building.

Sweat Vacay 2.0

When travel slowly began returning, Sweat Vacay returned with it. But the company that came back wasn't exactly the company that had gone into the pandemic. We started evolving.

At first, I had resisted the retreat model. I loved the flexibility of individual classes and the idea that someone could simply add a beautiful workout to an otherwise completely hedonistic Mykonos vacation.

Yoga at 10. Rosé at 1. That's balance.

But our clients started showing us that there was another opportunity. They didn't only want a class. They wanted us to help create the entire wellness experience.

So Sweat Vacay grew from pop-up outdoor fitness classes into retreats, private wellness programming, villa experiences, hotel partnerships and wellness consulting.

We began working beyond Mykonos and eventually created experiences and partnerships across Greece and in destinations including Italy, France, Austria, and Costa Rica. We also began helping hotels and private residences develop their own fitness and wellness spaces. The company kept becoming something slightly different from what I originally imagined.

I'm learning that this is one of the recurring themes of entrepreneurship. You have to be stubborn enough to believe in your idea and flexible enough to let the idea change.

And That's Why I'm Starting This Blog

Sweat Vacay has now been part of my life for years. But there are so many pieces of this story I've never really told.

What does it actually take to start a company in Greece?

What happens when your business partner leaves?

How do you build something when you're operating between two countries?

How do you find instructors?

How do you convince a luxury hotel to let you put spin bikes next to its pool?

What happens when the Greek government wants a document you've never heard of, your accountant is telling you one thing, your lawyer is telling you another, and the entire island appears to have collectively decided not to answer email because it's August?

How much of the glossy version of entrepreneurship is real?

And what happens when the thing you're building starts changing you, too?

Those are the stories I want to tell here.

There will be business.

There will be travel.

There will be wellness.

There will be Mykonos.

There will probably be some fitness advice, island recommendations, behind-the-scenes disasters, places I love, people I've met, things I've learned, and a few stories that may require names to be changed.

Because building Sweat Vacay hasn't just been about starting a company.

It changed where I live. It changed how I work. It changed what I consider success. And it turned what was supposed to be a vacation in Greece into an entirely different life.

Welcome to The Mama Mia Diaries.

This is how it happened.