
New book draws on 42 industry leaders across nine countries to map the four phases of growth from a single location to institutional scale
SEATTLE, Sept. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Sudheer Koneru, CEO and founder of Zenoti, today unveiled Growth Diaries: How the Best Beauty and Wellness Brands Scale from 1 Store to 100+ at Innergize, Zenoti's annual conference for the beauty and wellness industry. The book, Koneru's first, is built from conversations with 42 founders, CEOs, and industry leaders across nine countries who have built beauty, wellness, and fitness businesses from single locations into multi-unit brands.
Business publishing has produced extensive playbooks for scaling software companies, retailers, and restaurants, but far less has been written about scaling beauty and wellness businesses, where services are delivered live, an unfilled appointment represents revenue that cannot be recovered, and culture and craft have to scale alongside operations.
Growth Diaries grew out of Koneru's video series of the same name, in which he interviewed the leaders building some of the industry's most successful brands. The book organizes their experiences into four phases of growth: the first store, the early chain, infrastructure, and institutional scale, giving founders a practical playbook for each stage. It also reflects Koneru's belief that the impact of these businesses goes far beyond growth, helping people feel more confident and ready to take on the world.
Among the leaders featured in Growth Diaries are 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.
Koneru brings an operator's history to the material. Before founding Zenoti, he ran Latitudes Health Club and Tangerine Spas, and has since built the cloud platform trusted by more than 30,000 beauty and wellness businesses worldwide. That combination of firsthand operating experience and years of relationships across the industry shapes the book's approach: the founders' own experiences carry each chapter, including the mistakes, systems, and moments of reinvention that accompanied growth.
"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," said Koneru. "Their businesses looked nothing alike. Their answers, again and again, did. This book is my attempt to put those answers in one place."
Growth Diaries is available now on Amazon.
ABOUT ZENOTI
Zenoti is the leading cloud software platform for the beauty and wellness industry, trusted by more than 30,000 businesses worldwide – from independent boutique salons to multi-location enterprise brands. Zenoti's unified platform covers appointment booking, payments, marketing, memberships, inventory, employee management, and AI-powered intelligence, giving operators a single source of truth across their entire business.
ABOUT INNERGIZE
Innergize is Zenoti's annual conference for the beauty and wellness industry, bringing together salon, spa, medspa, and fitness leaders for keynotes, hands-on AI sessions, peer networking, and industry awards. Now in its third year, Innergize has become the defining gathering for operators who want to lead, not follow, what comes next.
SOURCE Zenoti
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