For Fitness Upstart, Three's Company

This article is more than 2 years old.

Last week I wrote about how hard a threesome partnership can be. Of course, that's not always true. To offer a counterargument, I looked to a company that I know well—because I've worked with the partners as a consultant and seen their dynamic in action—to illustrate how asymmetry can be an asset.


I  am Leanne Shear. I have two partners, Katie Currie and Helena Wolin. We started a women-only boutique fitness studio called Uplift.

How did your partnership start?

We were all leading very different lives and careers before the inception of Uplift, and none of them had anything to do with women-only boutique fitness! Katie had been a corporate event manager for a large bank. Helena was working as a corporate lawyer. I was a writer who was doing a bit of training and coaching on the side, mostly focused on running, as a release from the solitary freelance writing life.

One day, I was pitching an article to an editor at Daily Candy who interrupted me and proposed writing about my training/coaching business. The article created tremendous visibility, a huge new client base, and was the impetus for our coming together. I went to college with Helena, but we hadn’t spoken in about ten years; she saw the Daily Candy piece and reached out to me because she was thinking of switching careers. Katie contacted me to talk about becoming a client. Before long, we had decided to embark on the adventure that eventually became Uplift.

It turned out that we all wanted a change in our careers and the opportunity presented itself at the right time. The concept—from the very start it was about women, fitness, classes and community—was incredibly appealing to all of us from the start and quickly turned into a serious passion. Finally, we all felt an immediate “meeting of the minds” kind of connection that we felt would foster a successful business. In other words, while we have grown to love and respect each other as friends and enjoy social time together, our first priority as a threesome is not friendship, it’s Uplift.

uncaptionedWhat are your respective roles and how do you share responsibilities?

Helena is our CEO; she is responsible for accounting, handling all legal issues, hiring/firing of employees and other personnel issues—she generally runs everything on the business end. Katie is our COO; she handles all studio events, classes and schedules, instructor schedules, etc., as well as collaborating with Helena on various investor-related and strategic initiatives. I'm the President; I spend a lot of time “on the ground” with Uplift’s clients, serving as both client-relations and retention manager. I also act as the company’s media relations liaison.

All three of us are intrinsically involved in sales and marketing as well as Uplift's bigger-picture ventures.

To what do you attribute the strength of your partnership?

We attribute the strength of our partnership to two things: open and transparent communication and the fact that the business comes first (before our friendship). A corollary to that is the fact that there are three of us: at least in our company, that is the perfect partnership balance. It also helps that we have a nearly perfect alchemy between us in terms of style, outlook, work ethic etc: we all work equally doggedly every day but approach things just differently enough that fresh perspective is always a part of our day-to-day interactions

What habits do you cultivate that support/strengthen your relationship?

We delegate responsibility and authority based on our roles and responsibility. We collaborate on big decisions, but we each have our areas of specialty that we focus on—that helps mitigate frustration over constant emails and questions among us.

We hold a weekly partner meeting where we try to contain discussions about all the major issues that week, rather than going back and forth all day, every day. We immediately address any issue—big or small, among one, two or three of us, or among any members of our team—openly and honestly. Of course we disagree at times, but from the get-go we have put into place a “majority rules” decision-making authority: If two of us agree on an issue and the third does not, she is overruled. So far, we have not had any problems with this arrangement and it helps move things along.


The biggest challenge we faced was when the day Hurricane Sandy started, a pipe burst on the floor above the studio and flooded down, destroying our bathroom/locker room/showers. Then we had to close for a week due to the storm (and lack of power and water) so lost a whole week of business that way. Once we were back up and running, it took almost two months to rebuild our locker rooms because insurance companies were flooded (so to speak) with Sandy claims.

Let’s just say that all of that combined made for a very difficult November and December. We got through it the way we get through everything. All three of us gritted our teeth, dug in our heels and got to work—as in, we went on with the business of building our business. Whenever we face a challenge (and the ensuing emotions like anger or fear), we never turn on each other. Instead, we all look for ways we can do better work together. We took it day by day, worked out a makeshift shower situation so our morning business wasn’t completely decimated, and just kept moving forward in a positive direction.

 What was the biggest disagreement you have had to resolve?

We have never had a major disagreement that required a big resolution. We certainly disagree every day on things. But thanks to our open communication and structure for dealing with every issue, rarely does a disagreement blossom beyond the seed stage.

What advice would you give to new partners?

Write, sign and agree to a prenup for your busines. It’s not very “romantic” but sit down and literally come up with every worst-case scenario (including a partner’s death, etc.) that could possibly happen. Write them all down and then write down how you collectively plan to deal with it. There are always going to be unforeseen things cropping up, but having something like that in place will save a lot of headaches down the line. Then also decide, like we did with “majority rules,” how you plan to deal with all the challenges or issues that come up on a daily basis. Having a problem-solving structure in place—both of the bigger picture variety and as a smaller-scale daily problem-solver—will make things sail MUCH more smoothly!


This is part of a series of interviews with real business partners who open up about what makes their partnership tick. Do you have a partnership that is thriving? If you’re willing to share your story, fill out my questionnaire and I may feature you in a future column.

