Finding a place for a Reiki business (my journey)

I just wanted to share some of my experiences/challenges with trying to find a place to establish my Reiki business. As some of you know, I've had my Reiki business (Dragonfly Reiki) for just over a year now. Some months are busier than others, but I have been blessed with a relatively steady and slowly growing client base. Some weeks/months I have more time and energy to promote my business, and other times I let the momentum happen on its own. I have a regular full-time corporate job, so I am not dependent upon the income, but the extra money has helped pay off some debt, save for a house and have a little cash on hand for special occasions. Eventually I would love to have a full-time business, maybe partering with someone else to open a holistic wellness practice.

For the first few months I was in business, I worked out of a chiropractic office owned by a friend of the family. Her space is rather small and I ran into some scheduling issues using the room her massage therapist uses (I don't think they anticipated I would be as busy as I was!) so I had to find another place to work. I found another chiropractic office nearby with more space and hours that were compatible with my schedule. It worked great for a while and I started to hold classes.

Well, their business suddenly got a lot busier, so they changed their hours and are now going to be open on Saturdays. They are also holding more events on the weekends, which was my main time for clients and classes. The husband of one of the chiropractors is a massage therapist and also does other stuff, so now he is also using the space! While I am glad for them that they are achieving success, it puts me in the position of having to consider othe options. Ideally I would love a home studio, but we don't have the space for one. Renting from other businesses (spas, massage therapy practices, etc) can be somewhat more cost-prohibitive because you usually have a dedicated room, whereas the arrangement I've had with these offices is that I share the space and pay a percentage of what I make.

I may actually have the option to return to the first chiropractic office I worked at because she is expanding her space and will have more room. Still, I think this would be a stopgap measure (maybe for a year) until I have to make a more permanent decision about what I want to do in order to keep my business stable and be able to grow it further.

I'm sharing this with you all because it's a journey and challenge I could not have foreseen when I started practicing Reiki professionally. I don't want to say this to dissuade anyone, because overall it has been great and no one is more thrilled than I am that I've been able to sustain a steady Reiki business, given everything I always seem to have going on. There are so many lessons learned trying to do it from the ground up with almost no investment.

Has anyone had similar experiences? Successes?

Dragonfly wrote:

Has anyone had similar experiences? Successes?

It's certainly a learning curve setting up your own business, whatever the service you provide.

I think I may already have told you this, but I used to practice from a clinic in Warwick, renting a room. I found out that my landlady hadn't been paying her landlord, and I had 3 days to get my stuff out before the locks were changed. Well I went and negotiated an extension, but in the end I did get out of there. The day after this happened I was sitting staring at the TV thinking "OK so now what do I do? I had so much invested in there, I have no money to invest in a new venture". The phone rang. It was a hypnotherapist who wished to expand his practice in Coventry, and had seen my website and wanted me to come on board with him. This is now going ahead. I've also had an offer from a local B&B owner who wants to set up a holistic retreat centre - he's one of my Reiki students.

What I learned from this is that Reiki will look after you and make sure you are where you are meant to be. OK sometimes the process is not exactly pleasant!

Good luck and I'm sure the Reiki will provide you wish somewhere better.

Pandora wrote: The day after this happened I was sitting staring at the TV thinking "OK so now what do I do? I had so much invested in there, I have no money to invest in a new venture". The phone rang. It was a hypnotherapist who wished to expand his practice in Coventry, and had seen my website and wanted me to come on board with him. This is now going ahead. I've also had an offer from a local B&B owner who wants to set up a holistic retreat centre - he's one of my Reiki students.

What I learned from this is that Reiki will look after you and make sure you are where you are meant to be. OK sometimes the process is not exactly pleasant!

Good luck and I'm sure the Reiki will provide you wish somewhere better.

Wow - terrific course of events! That's very encouraging for me and just what I needed to hear. You are right about Reiki looking after us.

I think the place I'm working at really wants me to continue working there; it's just getting harder and harder to make the schedules work out for everyone when you're sharing a treatment room with other practitioners. I try to let them know in advance when I have clients, but they are not so good about letting me know if the massage therapist or other people might be using it, which has led to some confusion.

Dragonfly wrote:

Pandora wrote: The day after this happened I was sitting staring at the TV thinking "OK so now what do I do? I had so much invested in there, I have no money to invest in a new venture". The phone rang. It was a hypnotherapist who wished to expand his practice in Coventry, and had seen my website and wanted me to come on board with him. This is now going ahead. I've also had an offer from a local B&B owner who wants to set up a holistic retreat centre - he's one of my Reiki students.

What I learned from this is that Reiki will look after you and make sure you are where you are meant to be. OK sometimes the process is not exactly pleasant!

Good luck and I'm sure the Reiki will provide you wish somewhere better.

Wow - terrific course of events! That's very encouraging for me and just what I needed to hear. You are right about Reiki looking after us.

I think the place I'm working at really wants me to continue working there; it's just getting harder and harder to make the schedules work out for everyone when you're sharing a treatment room with other practitioners. I try to let them know in advance when I have clients, but they are not so good about letting me know if the massage therapist or other people might be using it, which has led to some confusion.

Suggestion for you: Google Calendar allows you to share calendars. The practice in Coventry uses it. What you do is you set up a calendar for each therapist, and appointments are booked on each therapist's calendar. You can set up a master calendar for the therapy room, and on this master calendar, each therapist's calendar is shown, so you can easily see if the room is booked before you book your appointment. Hope this helps

Chris,

I have actually suggested using Google Calendar for these practices to help us schedule appointments and for whatever reason, everyone has been resistant. I can't really understand why that is, because it would make everything so much easier. I think people get used to their own way of doing things and don't want to change - they fear a loss of control over their space, even though it really would be benefitting them.