Seattle – September 21, 2026 -- Sudheer Koneru, CEO and founder of Zenoti, unveiled a new book, Growth Diaries: How the Best Beauty and Wellness Brands Scale from 1 Store to 100+, drawing on interviews with 42 founders, CEOs, and industry leaders across nine countries.
Book maps four growth phases for multi-unit beauty and wellness operators
Growth Diaries organizes the operators' experiences into four stages: the first store, the early chain, infrastructure, and institutional scale, providing a stage-by-stage framework for founders scaling service-based businesses. The book argues that beauty, wellness, and fitness brands face distinct scaling challenges compared to software, retail, or restaurant companies, since services are delivered live and an unfilled appointment cannot be recovered as revenue later.
Featured leaders include founders of Van Michael Salons, Anytime Fitness parent Purpose Brands, and Endota Spa
The book profiles Van Council of Van Michael Salons, Shane Evans of Heights Wellness Retreat, Dave Mortensen of Anytime Fitness and Purpose Brands, and Melanie Gleeson of Endota Spa, among the 42 leaders interviewed. Growth Diaries grew out of a video series of the same name that Koneru previously produced, interviewing operators behind some of the industry's largest brands.
Koneru draws on his own operator background before founding Zenoti
Before founding Zenoti, Koneru ran Latitudes Health Club and Tangerine Spas, and has since built a cloud platform now used by more than 30,000 beauty and wellness businesses worldwide. "The most valuable lessons often come from the people who have already lived them: what they figured out the hard way, what nearly broke them, and what they would tell themselves 10 years back if they could," Koneru said. "Their businesses looked nothing alike. Their answers, again and again, did."
Book launched at Zenoti's Innergize conference, now in its third year
Koneru unveiled the book at Innergize, Zenoti's annual conference for salon, spa, medspa, and fitness operators. Growth Diaries is available now on Amazon.