Business 1 on 1 with Rachel Gerrity, co-owner of Hometown Yoga in Macon

Rachel Gerrity and Ashley Dunwody, co-owners of Hometown Yoga LLC, 4537 Forsyth Road, 202-4994.

How long have you been in business?: "Ashley and I grew up together, graduated from Stratford (Academy) together and went our own ways. We went to college in different areas and both ended up returning to Macon. We were teaching yoga in a bunch of different places, in gyms and studios. We wanted a home base for ourselves, our teachers and students.

"We wanted to start a community together for our teachers and our students. We wanted a home base ... We got together and had lunch and decided we were going to do it."

Gerrity and Dunwody celebrated their second anniversary in business Dec. 8.

What do you like best about your job?: "We get to do something we both love, ... which is to do and teach yoga. And we get to create something from scratch so any idea we have ... we get to create it and see it through to completion. That's also been really exciting for both of us."

What is your specialty?: "Our mission is to create a community and what we discovered was ... that we can reach so many people by holding studio classes. And that's great and that's the base of our business. But we realized if we wanted to reach more people we had to get out of the studio. ... We need to go out in (the community) and not wait for people to come to our studio.

"We hope to make classes accessible to everyone. We have some ... physically vigorous, we have gentle yoga. We on purpose don't have a specialty in order to engage more people."

What are your future plans?: "What we are hoping to do in Macon is continue doing community-focused events."

Gerrity plans to open Homegrown Yoga LLC, a separate business by herself with the same concept, at 150 S. Houston Lake Road in Warner Robins. It is expected to open in mid-January.

-- Linda S. Morris

This story was originally published January 3, 2016 at 8:01 PM with the headline "Business 1 on 1 with Rachel Gerrity, co-owner of Hometown Yoga in Macon ."