#HASHTAG: LAURA MERLO

How do you find true happiness at age 50? For LAURA MERLO, owner of Reach Yoga and co-owner of Merlo’s Italian Restaurant, happiness is creating a life you don’t need a vacation from. Growing up in New York and moving to Chicago in 1992, Merlo settled in Glencoe 13 years ago with her husband, John, and two young kids. Five years ago, when the opportunity arose to buy the town’s beloved yoga studio, her life suddenly had much more meaning. Juggling life as an owner of two thriving businesses while managing the well-being of two teenagers has its challenges, but somehow her work and personal lives flow seamlessly. Merlo notes this wouldn’t be possible without the help and encouragement of an incredibly strong staff and supportive community. This restaurateur and yogi steps away from menus and mats to share how she stays on trend in a busy world.

#ON MY NIGHTSTAND

I always have a notebook and pen to jot down ideas and inspiration that come to me in my sleep as well as class sequencing, and other things I must remember to do. Everything always seems more important and exciting at 3 a.m.

#ON MY MOBILE

I wish I could say that I’m not attached to my phone, but I am. Without it, I’m not sure how I would function because I use the calendar to remind myself about everything! I use MapMyRun for my daily pre-dawn jogs, the Starbucks app for my daily Venti Green Tea order, Hyperlapse for creating videos to post my teaching schedule on Instagram and Facebook, the Sling app for creating and updating Merlo’s hostess schedule, OpenTable for making and checking reservations on the fly, Mindbody for observing Reach’s daily retail sales and class enrollments when I am not on site, the Hometown Coffee & Juice and True Juice apps for pre-ordering my daily lunch fixes, and Shazam for when I hear a song I must grab for a future yoga playlist! If someone took my phone away, I would most likely be way more present than I claim to be.

#IN MY EARBUDS

I listen to How I Built This with Guy Raz for business inspiration, and SmartLess with Rob Lowe, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, and Just B with Bethenny Frankel podcasts as background noise for the moving meditation that is my daily run. I love that Spotify sends me new music weekly that I use to create playlists for my classes. Depending on my mood, you might hear soundtracks from ‘80s movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or About Last Night to dance mashups from all the years I spent bartending and dancing at nightclubs in my 20s to any cover I can find. I love familiar, but different.