Online MBA Student Leads With Her Values
Tori Clark is leaning into ethical leadership with the support of her Online MBA community.
When she was 24 years old, Tori Clark inherited her grandparents’ charter bus company in a state of near bankruptcy. With grit, determination and “courageous conversations,” she drove the company out of the ditch and into an era of unprecedented success.
Now, as the founder and CEO of Spa Luxe, an award-winning luxury day spa in Georgetown, Texas, she is incorporating leadership lessons from her Online MBA program to become a more ethically-grounded, impactful leader than ever before.
Navigating Crisis
Clark’s grandparents built Clark Travel, a nationwide charter bus company, from the ground up before she was born. For as long as she can remember, she was involved in the family business. At four or five years old, her job was to walk the aisles of the buses, pulling up footrests to make it easier for staff to clean. By 10 or 11, she sat at her grandparents’ kitchen table helping them calculate payroll.
When her father passed away during her junior year at Texas Women’s University, Clark moved back home and finished her psychology and general studies degree online so she could spend more time helping her grandparents. At only 20 years old, she joined Clark Travel full-time, taking over operations and logistics. She would frequently work with Baylor, one of the company’s top clients, to navigate the logistics of moving people to and from the airport, campus and sporting events. Whether she was wearing a sales or operations hat, she took full responsibility for serving customers in an efficient way.
“Most of what I learned was self-taught, on-the-job training,” she said. “It is a very niche industry. My psychology degree might not have helped me with things like accounting or finance, but it became invaluable in building strong relationships, which has been key to success throughout my career.”
When her grandparents passed away and left the company to her, she discovered a mountain of business debt she never knew existed. The business was valued at $4 million but owed millions.
Only four years later, the business was sold at a valuation of nearly $15 million.
She attributes the remarkable turnaround to two factors: relationships and utilization.
First, she relied on relationships with vendors to buy more time.
“There is nothing like calling someone to whom you owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and asking them to believe in you,” she said. “But people actually did. I had a number of these courageous conversations that made all the difference.”
She also learned to utilize employees and resources more efficiently. After taking more time to identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of 100 employees, she placed some in different positions and watched their performance improve. She also made a deal with her bus manufacturer to trade in part of her fleet for fewer, but newer, higher-quality buses. As a result, her utilization rates increased and maintenance costs went down. The company went from making $4-5 million in revenue with 35 buses to more than $8 million with 25 buses.
She never expected to sell Clark Travel, but by then, she had developed a taste for the process of building a business, and she was ready to build another one.
“Some people have hobbies. I like to build businesses,” she said. “I am passionate about creating something that creates success for other people and makes a positive impact on my community.”
She joined forces with a friend to build The Spa Mart, a B2B distribution company for spa products and spa equipment. Over the next two years, she spent her time visiting a wide range of facilities, from spas located in five-star resorts to small, single-practitioner esthetic spas.
“I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of the spa industry,” she said. “What I noticed is that most of them lacked genuine hospitality.”
Confident she could do better, she founded Spa Luxe, a full-service luxury day spa, in 2018. From the moment a guest walks in, their experience is vastly different than the norm. A hospitality team greets them warmly, offers them a drink that is personalized to their preferences and leads them into a meditation lounge to relax before their service begins. From table temperature to add-ons, each service is carefully tailored to the guest.
“Guests will always remember the way we made them feel,” Clark said. “We do everything we can to make them feel seen, heard and appreciated. No one is a number here.”
After a booming start, Spa Luxe was forced to close when Covid-19 hit in early 2020. Three months later, it was permitted to open at 25 percent capacity—a number that steadily increased before returning to 100 percent a year later.
“We had a tough time making it through those three years,” she said. Relying on the courageous conversations that had propelled her through crisis at the helm of Clark Travel, she navigated relationships with her landlord, bank and vendor partners, creating arrangements that allowed Spa Luxe to stay afloat.
The Next Chapter
After successfully weathering the storm, she decided it was time to pursue her long-held dream of earning an MBA.
“For years, I found a reason to defer it, but ultimately, I decided that I wanted to grow as a leader and learn from people who had mastered things I am still working on,” she said. “I decided to invest in a new journey.”
Clark identifies “faith, family and integrity” as her top three core values, which aligns closely with Baylor’s mission. She already viewed herself as a servant leader, but she wanted to lean into the concept of leading with her values in a practical way.
Since she began her Online MBA program in the spring of 2024, it has yet to disappoint. “Every week, I find ways to implement practical, hands-on knowledge from my courses,” she said.
She points to the value of a course called “Leading with Integrity,” which sharpened her ability to articulate her beliefs. Throughout the course, students explore corporate scandals through case studies, pinpointing ethical dilemmas involved in those scandals.
“These case studies prompted me to think more intentionally about building an ethical culture at work,” she said. “Before taking that course, my team would probably classify me as an ethical person, but I did not speak to them daily about how our values translated into practice.”
One way she has lived out her values at Spa Luxe is by hiring W2 employees instead of 1099 contract workers.
“My industry gets a bad rap for a lack of transparency,” she said. “There is a lot of exploitation. People are routinely asked to do things they are not being paid to do.” Clark routinely reassures her employees, many of whom were skeptical that she would be different than their previous employers, that they will be compensated for their time. Trust comes slowly, she has learned, but her efforts are paying off. At Spa Luxe, the turnover rate is only a third of the industry average.
Clark also leads with her values by emphasizing transparency in the pricing and effectiveness of the products and services she offers.
“I never want to see my team members overpromising what a product can do,” she said. “We present the real-world view, not the best-case scenario. We do not use any tricks or gimmicks to get someone to make a purchase.”
Clark has also expanded her technical toolkit through courses such as “Fundamentals of Applied Business Finance.”
“This was the class I found most intimidating before starting, but Baylor’s MBA Math preparation program gave me the resources to succeed,” she said. “Now, I can more confidently build my own Excel formulas when I am budgeting or evaluating expansion plans. I do not have to rely on someone with an accounting degree.”
As Clark grows in knowledge and perspective, Spa Luxe grows along with her. She and her team plan to expand brick-and-mortar locations in the near future. They are also poised to break into a new industry within the industry, a niche that will empower spa professionals to take on more of an entrepreneurial role at Spa Luxe.
Clark was a seasoned entrepreneur before enrolling in the Online MBA program, but she has gleaned even more than expected from her courses.
“Entrepreneurs tend to rely on their own instincts,” she said. “An MBA sharpens those instincts with structured theory and enhanced expertise. The return on investment is not just evident in increased revenue but in a more profound understanding of leadership and ethics. And ultimately, it is always worth it to invest in your own growth. There are great things to come.”
What’s Next
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Click here to read a story about another successful entrepreneur who launched a business during his Online MBA program.
