We're proud to share that our Founder & CEO, Dr. Soodeh Farokhi, has been nominated for the She & Success Business Awards 2025-26, presented by She & Success Business Magazine and CanadianSME Small Business Magazine.
It's an honour — and like every milestone at NexScale, it belongs to more than one person. It belongs to the studio owners who trust us with their businesses, the team building alongside them, and the growing community of operators who believe wellness and fitness businesses deserve to thrive. So before anything else: thank you. To She & Success, to CanadianSME, and to everyone who has been part of this journey.
But recognition is only meaningful when it points at something bigger than itself. For us, this nomination is a chance to talk about why we do this work in the first place.
The bigger belief: wellness businesses are longevity infrastructure
Walk into any boutique studio in your neighbourhood and you'll see something quietly profound. A yoga class that gives someone their first calm hour in weeks. A strength session that keeps an aging body mobile and independent. A community that turns "I should exercise" into "these are my people." These businesses don't just sell memberships — they build the daily habits that add years to lives and life to years.
That's the foundation of human longevity, and it's being built one class, one member, one healthier day at a time.
The problem is that the people running these businesses are often the most overwhelmed people in them. Studio owners are coaches, schedulers, marketers, bookkeepers, and customer-support reps all at once. They're stuck in founder-mode — reacting to whatever is loudest that day — with no time or systems to grow sustainably. When an owner burns out, the studio struggles. When the studio struggles, a community loses a place that was keeping it healthy.
That's the gap NexScale exists to close.
What we're building
NexScale is an AI-native company building Chloe, an AI Business Partner for wellness and fitness businesses. Chloe isn't another dashboard or a CRM to manage on top of everything else. She works like a true teammate — sitting on top of the systems a studio already uses, deciding what matters, and taking action.
That means spotting members who are quietly drifting toward cancellation weeks before they leave, and prompting the right follow-up. It means handling the check-ins, reminders, and outreach that keep people engaged. It means giving owners a clear daily brief instead of a chaotic inbox — and giving them their time back.
The throughline is simple: help operators move from founder-mode to system-mode, so they can scale without burning out. Insights alone aren't enough. Owners need execution support, and that's what an AI business partner is for.
Why it matters now
Small businesses deserve enterprise-grade AI — not someday, but now. For too long, the most powerful tools have been reserved for companies with technical teams and big budgets. The owner-operators holding up our local wellness economy have been left to stitch together fragmented software and hope it holds.
We don't think that's good enough. We believe AI should augment people, not replace them; reduce overwhelm, not add to it; and strengthen the human relationships that make these businesses special in the first place. When the technology works quietly in the background, owners get to do more of what drew them to this work — coaching, connecting, and building community.
That's the future we're working toward: healthier businesses, healthier communities, and longer, fuller lives.
Onward
A nomination like this is a signal that the mission is resonating — and it follows recognition from our own city of Markham for the work NexScale is doing to help studios keep members and improve community longevity. We're grateful for every bit of it. But we hold these moments lightly, because the real work is still ahead of us.
To every wellness and fitness business, every teammate, and every community member building alongside us: this is your win too.
Congratulations, Soodeh — and thank you to the She & Success and CanadianSME teams for celebrating the people doing meaningful work in our business community.
We're just getting started.
