‘We had to put everything on the table for it’

Female entrepreneurship is booming post-pandemic. Women now own over 40 percent of American businesses, and are closing the gap fast. According to a 2026 report by Wells Fargo, the number of women-owned businesses grew 12 percent from 2022 to 2025, nearly double the growth rate for businesses owned by men. Even as women remain under-represented in corporate executive roles, historic numbers are forging an alternate path to leadership and autonomy.

Dirt sat down with four local women, all moms, who’ve taken the ultimate leap of faith, taking an idea and building it into a business that fills some niche in their community. We visited with each in her place of work: a hot yoga studio, a gourmet mushroom farmers market stand, a sourdough donut bakehouse, and a healing spa.

Turning up the heat

How a former educator built the yoga studio she couldn’t find

Kristin Harris, of Goshen, NY, was not in obvious need of a new gig. She’d been a seventh grade English teacher for 16 years and ascended to head the English Language Arts Department at Newburgh Enlarged City School District – a position her younger self would have considered a dream job. She then spent seven years as an editor in educational publishing, designing curriculum.

But her passion, increasingly, was yoga – a very particular type of hot yoga – and the mother of two found herself driving to studios in Beacon, Fishkill, Wappingers Falls. A survivor of the virulent triple negative breast cancer – and then a car accident that crushed her foot – she felt her best when she was practicing regularly. But taking three hours away from her family on a busy weeknight to sit in rush hour traffic for a yoga class was getting untenable.

“So I can’t practice,” she told herself. “There’s nothing around here. Or... I could build it.”

Opening her own hot yoga studio had long been her “stray cat idea,” as Harris calls it, visiting off and on over the years. Now she was finally ready to adopt it. In January, she found a “Goldilocks” space – at 1,400 square feet it was not too big, not too small – on Main Street in Florida, NY, on the ground floor of a building in a new mixed-use development. She signed the lease in March. Never a fan of slapping a name on the ancient practice of yoga, she would call her studio, simply, Hot Yoga New York.

Harris cherry-picked her favorite aspects of studios she’d admired over the years, like spot booking, where you can select exactly which mat you’ll be on, because yoga “can be a very type A type of practice,” and some people like to be way in the back, or right in front of the mirror, or next to the bar.

The aesthetic is modeled on now-closed Brooklyn studio Yoga Vida. “I went there, and I remember saying, ‘If I were to open a studio, it would look like this,’ because I felt like it was modern, but not disrespectful. I felt like there was just really nice quality things that I could probably never afford. But I just loved it.” Sure enough, about five months before Harris planned to open, she saw on Facebook Marketplace that someone was selling the contents of a storage unit that held none other than the furnishings from a Yoga Vida studio: 25 infrared heaters that retail for about $1,000 each, estimates Harris; non-slip yoga mats made from natural rubber; double-sided towels that retail for about $80 apiece; a rack of hooks for the foyer wall; a handsome wooden bin for used towels (“it’s going to be laundry out the wazoo,” said Harris); a coffee table; even a chalk signboard to list the day’s offerings. Even with these secondhand steals, preparing the space – from the wood flooring to the bathroom fixtures – required a significant financial outlay.

“It’s such an investment to get the space to work right,” she said. “But I feel like we can build it and it’s going to be done, then it’s like that for perpetuity.”

The rainy mid-April day I first visit, Harris hurries around with a hand broom and dustpan, sweeping. She is a couple weeks from opening, and there’s lots to be done. The infrared heaters are on the floor, awaiting installation. The entire building, in fact, is awaiting electrical hookup by Orange & Rockland – that, I realize, is why it’s so nice and quiet in here that we can hear the rain pattering on the roof a story above.

Perhaps the best thing about the studio, Harris reflects, is that “I get to have cool friends.” The teachers who’ve agreed to teach at her studio are kind of a big deal in the yoga world, she explains, like Broadway actor and dancer Stephanie Pope Lofgren, who’ll be coming from Queens; author and Ironman runner Dana Humphrey, making the trek from Edgewater, NJ; and Harris’ original teacher, Roberta McGinley – “the OG hot yogi of the Hudson Valley,” as Harris thinks of her – coming from Wappingers Falls, NY. Harris has been surprised by how many have said yes.

In the past, anytime Harris had mentioned to McGinley the idea of teaching in this neck of the woods, McGinley had always demurred; the drive was too long. But now that the studio is built, an energy seems to be building, and Harris is hearing from people she never expected: “I want to teach at your studio.”

She’s thinking of getting an additional studio or apartment space to house these out-of-town teachers, she said, “to make it worth it. I’ve got to figure that out, because some of them are traveling far.”

How scary is it, to start your own business from whole cloth?

“It feels like I asked my crush to the eighth-grade dance,” Harris replied instantly. What gives her courage, she explained, is that she sees herself merely as a facilitator in offering this thing she loves to her neighbors – at a price point that includes teachers, veterans and the people who end up moving in upstairs. “I’m just trying to make it accessible. So I don’t feel like there’s any real ego about it, because my job is almost ‘hire hard, manage easy.’ Get the people who are incredible teachers, who do this because they love it, and offer a safe place and introduce people to this thing that is really a lifelong, transformative practice.”

It would be scarier, she reflected, to let the moment pass her by. “I was like, if not now, I am going to turn around and say I probably should have opened that studio,” she said. “I had to. It would be weird not to.”

Two weeks later, I return with my 13-year-old for a hot yoga class – her first ever, my first in probably two decades.

“Is it bougie?” my daughter asks on the car ride there. I hesitate. I haven’t seen it finished; also I’m not sure if bougie is good or bad in this instance – desirable or intimidating? I finally hedge my bets: “It may be the bougiest place in Florida, New York.”

After the class, pouring sweat and already plotting when we will return, my daughter issues her verdict: “It’s just the right amount of bougie.”

Making mushroom believers

After a layoff, they used their Covid checks to start a mushroom farm

KC Lovell, of Chester, NY, was an occupational therapist working for a New Jersey nonprofit when Covid hit. She was on her way to do her first large training when her husband, Jeff Lovell, called to say he’d been exposed to the virus. She turned around, went home, and shortly thereafter got laid off.

“Now I’m actually grateful,” said KC. “But it’s still something to be kicked out of the pack.”

On their way back from a three-hour road trip upstate to get vaccinated (Jeff was an “essential” worker and KC is a fragile diabetic), she came across something about mushroom farming on her phone. By the time they got home, KC had been down the rabbit hole and sketched out an action plan for her own mushroom farm.

Her beginnings were humble.

“When we started, talk about shoestring, we were down one salary and my unemployment benefits did not clear until the next year. It was our Covid checks that we invested and just put the mortgage on hold for a little bit so that we could have the money to buy the equipment to do everything,” said KC. “Our very first market, we sold seven pounds, and we were so proud. Seven pounds is nothing – it is absolutely nothing. Over time, we learned how to grow better and better, started doing larger markets.”

Growth has been studded with setbacks, naturally. KC was looking around for her first regular employee when a fire took out a new outdoor greenhouse, pushing her back 18 months. She’s hoping to hire someone this year.

Even so, five years in, 4 Wall Farm is growing about 50 pounds of mushrooms a week on 160-square-feet of shelf space – currently oysters, lions mane, king trumpet, chestnut and white enoki – and bringing in as much as KC was making at her previous job. KC and Jeff, an information technology specialist during the week, can be found every Sunday of the year at the Beacon Farmers Market, where they have expanded to two tents to accommodate the mobile kitchen that KC started in 2023.

KC has leaned into her passion for cooking, publishing The Mushroom Farmer’s Cookbook in 2023. It’s a way to differentiate herself in the local gourmet mushroom niche, which has gotten crowded all of a sudden. When 4 Wall Farm opened, there was one other mushroom farm in this neck of the woods; now there are six.

On a hot Sunday in mid-May, KC was making oyster mushroom breakfast sandwiches with local eggs, gouda and bread from Lalima Bakery in Monroe in the mobile kitchen. (My three kids, who have never before willingly eaten a mushroom, polished off one sandwich and asked for another.) Jeff was manning the retail tent, stocked with fresh and dried mushrooms, lion’s mane fizzies, and mushroom-based products like risotto, chocolate elixir, teas and smoothie mixes.

Jeff chatted up customers, handing out KC’s printed recipe for an oyster mushroom po’boy. “We give out free recipes so people can try these crazy, expensive mushrooms that look weird,” said KC. “That was part of our thing: how do you teach people the value of mushrooms? How do you teach people to enjoy them? We’ve had a lot of mushroom converts over time.”

One of those converts is Jeff. Though he didn’t tell his wife for awhile, he did not like mushrooms when they embarked on this venture. Every time she asked him to try a mushroom recipe, he’d do it to be supportive, intending to grill himself a real dinner afterwards. But after polishing off an oyster mushroom po’boy and finding that he was satisfied, he had a realization. “Maybe I can’t say I don’t like mushrooms anymore,” he laughed.

The sweet taste of self-reliance

A homeschooling mom turns her pandemic hobby into a bakery

Yvonne Brennan, of Milford, Pa., has been frying her donuts in beef tallow since way before RFK started talking about it.

Brennan’s parents are Polish, and growing up in New Jersey, she baked with her mom a lot, always from scratch. But it wasn’t until decades later, when she discovered that her sons both have a genetic mutation that makes them unable to process folic acid, that Brennan started making bread, which had always intimidated her.

Folic acid is found in enriched bread products. Short-term, eating storebought bread led to behavioral issues for her sons. Long-term, the folic acid gets stored as heavy metals, Brennan explained, and could lead to serious health issues down the road like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. “We found with the boys and their genetic mutation that we need to go as natural as possible to keep them as healthy as possible,” she said.

During Covid, with time on her hands, Brennan caught the sourdough bug. She’d tried it before with little success, but this time she found the process therapeutic. “Being able to focus on sourdough and providing just kind of kept my mind off of reality for a bit,” she said.

Baking daily, she was soon cranking out more bread than her family could eat, so she gave some away to friends and neighbors. Orders started coming in. So Brennan, who was homeschooling her boys at the time, got her cottage license and began selling bread and scones.

The business might have remained a home-based operation if not for her younger son. In 2024, Owen wanted to try making sourdough donuts for a youth entrepreneur fair in Milford. They sold out: 600 donuts gone in an hour. Word spread. Coffee shops started requesting Brennan’s donuts. She looked into renting commercial kitchen space, which would allow her to sell retail, but it was hard to find.

“Then we stumbled across this place,” she said, of the historic “Normandy Cottage” in the heart of Milford. “Once we found this spot, we fell in love with it.” The 1903 building was far from donut-ready. It had been an artisan market and had no kitchen. But it was in the heart of the borough, which has been steadily growing since 2020, driven in part by people relocating from the New York metropolitan area.

Brennan and her husband, Matt Brennan, a contractor, signed a lease in July and got to work converting the second floor into a kitchen. (Yes they were concerned about an upstairs kitchen; would people fall carrying trays of donuts or 50-pound bags of flour? So far, so good, and “the 19 stairs are keeping us fit,” said Brennan.) Despite some major setbacks – like a septic system that required upgrading – they opened in December.

The business has been a family affair from the start. Matt retrofitted the building, including installing a new ventilation and fire suppression system that required breaking through the slate roof. The boys came up with the name, Deez Donutz. Owen, 13, mans the bakery counter after school and – endowed of a sweet tooth – comes up with new flavor ideas. Michael, 17, helps out with donut-cutting, cleaning and driving. Still, at first, Yvonne was often at the store for 17 hours a day, going home only to sleep and shower.

All the work seems to be paying off. The shop regularly sells out. Six customers came in on a late weekday morning in the five minutes I waited for Brennan, who was upstairs baking – as she does Tuesday through Sunday. (Mondays she comes in to mix the sourdough starter.)

On display are sourdough loaves, baguettes, scones, muffins, cookies, a grapefruit olive-oil loaf. Then there are the donuts, oversized and airy. The complimentary strawberry-lemon donut that I walked out with, though twice as big as a Dunkin donut, was gone by the time I reached my car a block away.

The reception has not been all positive, though. “We’ve got the people that love us, and we’ve got the people that hate us,” said Brennan. Like whoever left a one-star review on Yelp: “Congrats you found a way to ruin a donut... These clowns fry your donut in beef tallow imparting a lovely beef fat taste!” Others object to the price point: $4.50 for a donut? “I don’t think they really understand how much organic everything costs,” she said. But Deez Donutz’ overall four-and-a-half star rating suggests that the haters are in the minority. “In beginning it hurt my feelings,” said Brennan. “But I’ve grown a much thicker skin the last few months, because you’re not going to be able to please everybody.”

Unable to secure a small business loan, the Brennans refinanced their house to start the business. “We had to put everything on the table for it,” said Brennan. “We weren’t handed anything. Everything that we have came from our pockets, you know, to build this.”

But that self-reliance has become an important part of their story. “We wanted to not only have something for the boys, to maybe pass along to them in the long run, but to show them that you can do it,” she said. “Once you have a goal, just put your mind to it.”

A studio of her own

Massage therapist builds a healing sanctuary — and a life on her own terms

Ruby Randig has known since she was a kid that she wanted to do massage, though it wasn’t something she grew up around. “It was something you saw in movies, the fancy person in the TV show would be getting a massage,” she recalled. “But I was always just like, that’s something I’d be good at.”

After moving with her husband from her native Brooklyn to two-and-a-half acres in Warwick, she opened Iron Mountain Healing. The spa combined her skills as a massage therapist, esthetician, crystal healer and reiki practitioner – an art she learned from her dad.

At first, her studio was a room of her house, which had its own entrance and bathroom. Her clients assured her they didn’t mind the sounds of her children nearby, but “I was like, I do,” said Randig. “I can hear them fighting with each other, and there’s no way to keep them from running up and down the stairs.”

Randing had worked at a five-star hotel in the city, and her standards remain – as her husband still sometimes kids her – impossibly high. She knew she wanted her own studio space. The family could use a garage, too. So they planned an 800-square-foot, two-story building. “We were like, just add in a septic system and run some electric, what’s the big deal?” Randig recalled. “It’s a huge deal.” The permitting alone ended up taking 11 months – “a whole chapter of my life.”

But at last it was done, and Randig started seeing clients in the new studio in February. Her clientele has grown in step with the post-Covid influx of new Warwickians from the city, who sometimes hail from the same Brooklyn neighborhood Randig grew up in. She gets referrals from other practitioners, too: acupuncturists, chiropractors, psychologists. Massage and energy work can complement talk therapy, said Randig, “soothing the nervous system when we’re so wound up and in our head.”

Part of the appeal of this work was the ability to prioritize motherhood. “I’m still, like, the maid and the chef,” she laughed. She works three, sometimes four days a week, with a lighter schedule in the summer. She can block her schedule off for a day, whether to be in her kid’s classroom or to hosther daughter’s dance group to cyanotype the fabric for their recital dresses. (Randig has a degree in costume design.)

On the flip side, that flexibility turns her work schedule into a fraught decision that presents itself anew each week. When you’re creating your own thing, it’s up to you to decide what to prioritize: family, work, self-care, not to mention that never-ending pile of laundry?

“There’s so much around that, about mom guilt, and what am I supposed to be as a mom? What am I supposed to be as a business owner?” Randig reflects. “And I think working for yourself, part of the wonderful part, and part of the scary part, is you get to define that.”

Randig’s exactitude is apparent in every aspect of her new studio, from the linen curtains she sewed herself, to the stone plaster walls she applied with her own hands, to the mugwort tincture made from plants harvested just outside, which she adds to a glass of water and offers to this visitor in a palm-sized, hand-thrown mug. “It’s not just like hiring someone to slap some paint on the wall,” she said. “I’m infusing the space with intention.” Because her studio is only 325 square feet, “I can get super particular. I get to make my herbs for my floor wash.”

As part of our interview, Randig offered a complimentary treatment. I’d never had a facial before. Lying on a heated table, I closed my eyes while chimes and flute played softly on a speaker, mingling with birdsong from outside. Randig’s property abuts Wawayanda State Park. Her waiting room, many husbands are happy to discover, is 34,000 acres of wilderness.

I have known Randig casually for a handful of years, while our kids were in the same preschool. Now I came to understand her in an entirely different way. Her strong, confident hands kneaded and manipulated my face, neck, scalp, shoulders, arms. She seemed to be everywhere at once, treading silently on bare feet. Heated towels were applied, cocoon-like, to my face, later to my belly, my feet; rosewater misted over me; a mud mask was smoothed onto my skin. A word floated languidly across my drowsy brain that seemed to encapsulate the experience: celestial.

Randig’s husband, Mateo Prendergast, works in gas construction, and the family is not relying on her income. Her goal for now is for her business to sustain itself, a much more significant proposition than when she worked out of a room in the house.

“I do have moments every now and then where I’m like, it’s a lot,” said Randing. “Sometimes, when my house looks really amazing is when I have a slow week, and I’m kind of like, ‘Would it be better for everyone if I didn’t work and I just took care of our house?’

“Probably not in the long run,” she concludes. “I went to school and got licenses and did all these trainings and stuff because I had a passion for this, and because I wanted to pursue it, and because I am good at it.” She could easily spend all her time on the never-ending chores of parenting, but, she muses, “I feel like I would be wasting myself.”