Spotlight on Melanie Breitkreutz: From One Business to Another

The entrepreneurial journey can come with a lot of bumps in the road and surprises. You never know where your entrepreneurial path may lead you and for Melanie Breitkreutz, it brought her to a place she never would have envisioned ten years ago.

In 2007 Melanie started Be’ato Coffee Company Inc. which specialized in freshly roasted coffee beans that were mailed out to customers through a subscription service. It was only five years later when Melanie had a new idea come to her. The idea was to create an online fitness company where Melanie and her business partner Chelsea Harrison upload daily 12 minute high intensity interval training (HIIT) workout videos for followers to follow along with.

Melanie knew that this was a sign that she needed to sell her beloved Be’ato Coffee Company so she could focus on an idea that she was now more passionate and excited about, HIITit.ca. So in 2012 Melanie sold Be’ato and by 2013 she had met Chelsea and started building out the idea of HIITit.ca. What started as a passion project that offered 12 minute workouts to their friends and family, grew to having hundreds of subscribers who regularly follow along each day.

Starting a second business is still not easy, but having five years of entrepreneurship experience under her belt definitely helped set Melanie off on the right foot. When building her first business, Be’ato, Melanie worked with Futurpreneur Canada to help get her business off the ground. Futurpreneur’s financing and mentorship program was instrumental to Melanie having the confidence to start her first business, she explained. “This was the ground work that led me to knowing how start my second business.” Melanie’s mentor, Rosemarie Enslin instilled lifelong business strategy into her which she shares she’ll never take for granted.

Futurpreneur pairs all entrepreneurs that go through their start-up program with a mentor for up to two years. Melanie’s mentor helped her set goals, map out how she was going to achieve these goals and most importantly, held her accountable. “Rosemarie also never coated anything with sugar. A bit scary when you are new to business, but in the long-term her strong beliefs, personal experience and advice have served me so well and absolutely contributed to our business success,” she explained.

This valuable insight and experience she gained through her mentor and her first business is what prepared her for the launch and success of HIITit.ca. Today, HIITit.ca memberships can even be found in Costco which Melanie explained as being a long time coming after going through a long process to get them there. “We dropped editors and buyers notes over the course of three years about who we were and what we were up to,” Melanie shared. “Costco Magazine wrote an article on our 12 minute workouts in the summer of 2016 and the months following after we were asked to sell online with Costco.ca.” To have HIITit.ca available to such a large audience was a major milestone for Melanie and Chelsea.

The business duo hope to continue to see their business grow with more women jumping on board with their program. As a piece of advice to other entrepreneurs, Melanie shared the following:

“Find and pair up with a mentor who you respect. Futurpreneur is just the most incredible way to get connected with those who have gone before you, lived business and now are ready to share and help. For me, having a business mentor was the best thing I could have done.”

To learn more about the Futurpreneur program which includes mentorship, click here.

Written by: Lauren Marinigh, Social Media & Content Specialist, Futurpreneur Canada