Business: Isabella Massage & Nutrition Services

Location: Santa Barbara

Established: 2006

What prompted you to start your business?

I knew that I would be an entrepreneur from a very young age, almost too young to know exactly what an "entrepreneur" was and all that the title implies. I simply knew that owning my own business meant the freedom and creativity to pursue any number of endeavors, potentially with multiple businesses in different fields.

When I first started "My Entrepreneur Book", a blank book that I filled with potential business ideas, logos, and clippings from experts, I thought I would own a specialty food shop, much like that of Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa store that she ran in East Hampton at the time. Over the course of my college years, my love for food morphed into an equal appreciation for the nutrition behind the food and the use of food in people's lives - for health, for social connection, for ritual, and for expressing emotion.

When I completed my Dietetic Internship to become a Registered Dietitian in Santa Barbara, I had the opportunity to work at one of the famous Canyon Ranch Spas, doing nutrition consulting based on the Canyon Ranch model. It was at that crossroads that I decided to turn down a dream job position in exchange for pursuing my original dream of working for myself and sculpting a private nutrition consulting practice around my philosophies, research, and experiences. While initially daunting, my dream was eased by a lifelong interest in and practice of Massage Therapy; I was able to complete massage school and use this as an adjunct service to grow my business. Today, both my massage and nutrition practices, while good complements to one another, remain mostly mutually exclusive in clientele and practice.
 

What role did WEV play in the opening/growth of your business?

Though I had already been in business for myself for several years before I entered WEV's Self-Employment Training course, I knew that I only had the skeleton of the framework needed to grow my business to the level I desired. WEV's SET course took that framework and added the real meat of entrepreneurship, using the Business Plan as the bulwark of the class. I couldn't have told you exactly what a Business Plan was before I completed SET and while I may not always adhere to it in a strict sense, it makes me think about every angle of my business with incredible scrutiny. With this outlook, I have been able to double my income in less time than it took to complete the course!  

Please describe your community involvement and the use of sites like Groupon, SB Axxess, etc for your business sales?
When I started my business, before being introduced to WEV, I invested quite a bit of my own money into advertising in local magazines and publications, but with little to no conversion to new clientele/sales. WEV helped me to hone in on the marketing strategies that would garner the largest return for the least investment. Having now been a Santa Barbara Axxess merchant for a year, and having just run my first Groupon special in June, I am starting to see the value on non-traditional marketing approaches, though my experiences have not been without trial and error.

Some of my most successful marketing approaches have been the old-fashioned way: face-to-face talks with small groups of my target audience. One of my nutrition specialties is working with parents to help them feed children in emotionally and behaviorally healthy ways. Based on this topic, I have developed a Signature Talk,"Talking With Their Mouths Full: How toddlers through adolescents use food to communicate underlying emotions and how parents can react and intervene in healthy, productive, and validating ways," which I have been pleased to present on several occasions, at both the Girls Inc "You Grow Girl" event, as well as in my office to groups of local mothers and healthcare professionals. A recorded DVD of this talk will be available in the coming months.

What advice do you offer others who might want to start their own business?

Starting your own business, depending on the sector of the market and size of the business, does not require much. In fact, I had no savings, no loans, no website, and no clue what I was doing when I applied for and received my first business license. Even my first DBA has changed at least 3 times since I initially filed for it 5 years ago. The key is to just start somewhere. You don't have to know where you're going, where you'll be in 5 years or even 5 months. You will make a lot of mistakes, some costly, but you will gain a tremendous amount of knowledge about yourself, pride in your work, and space to expand your vision in ways you never imagined. Let WEV help you with all of this! Their resources are vast and extremely inexpensive for their value.