Member Blogs

by Myk Likhov and Phil Asquith, Green Monkey Founders

We are the Founders of Green Monkey, and would like to introduce ourselves. We are two friends from California who believe in living our lives the way we want to: enthusiastically, joyfully, and in balance with ourselves and our environment.

About a year and a half ago, we chose to start a company based around balanced living because we wanted to spend our days learning about topics we find interesting and surround ourselves with great people.

The choice to build Green Monkey is fundamentally grounded in our personal needs as individuals. In case you didn’t intuitively know this already, an article published by the Economist in 2006 stated that 3 of 4 adult Americans feel that their lives are out of balance. For real. So I suppose the way to describe Green Monkey is as a tool for those of us who are looking for balance.


We started with the idea of Green Monkey as a network of physical “balanced living clubs” that would offer a range of services like yoga, Pilates, and other mind-body classes, a healthy food café, a library and lounge area with cool programming, and retail. Basically, it would be a casual place to go take a class, to hang out over tea or organic sangria, or to hear a lecture on hybrid cars, Taoism, or nutrition.

Green Monkey is unlike a resort or a day spa, which act as opportunities to escape your routine. Green Monkey is a place that you can integrate into your daily life, like Starbucks, but better. Very few places like this exist in the US, and there is no one doing it across multiple locations.


As the Green Monkey concept evolved, as all things usually do, into the idea of a balanced living brand it became increasingly clear that our physical clubs would be even more beneficial if we could provide extra value like answering questions on balanced living topics, recommending cool products and services, and extending the community beyond each location. Enter Tiffany, who we met when we moved to Miami. She’s into the same things as us, wants to live responsibly, enjoy her life, and offer people the opportunity to find balance in their lives. AND she’s coming at it from the online perspective. Pretty cool match, huh?

We spoke with Tiffany over several months and came to believe in the value of combining the physical and online approaches. Both are super important, and build upon each other.

Ultimately, we decided on partnering and creating “Green Monkey Interactive,” which will include content and product forums, an online store, corporate wellness tools, a social network, and other services.

By integrating old world business models (club membership and café) with new world technologies (online communities/shopping), we hope to offer our members, readers and customers multiple avenues to restore balance to their lives. If you think it sounds like a rad idea, so do we – and we’ve dedicated our careers to making this work; because seriously, it’s a good idea, and someone needs to do this.


So if you live close to our initial locations in Coral Gables, FL, come pay us a visit, take some yoga and check out our bookstand. If you don’t live near us, please stay informed about what Tiffany is doing with Green Monkey Interactive...it promises to be very cool...like what she was doing with BalanceBoost, but with more support. If you want to learn more about how Green Monkey is swingin’ along, visit our website, and if you’ve got cool ideas for us send us an email.

We appreciate all support and feedback.