We recently connected with Angie Jimenez & Anibeliz Marquez and have shared our conversation below.

Angie Jimenez & Anibeliz Marquez , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

We wanted something that represented both of us. Angie’s favorite flower is a sunflower and Anibeliz favorite flower is a daisy. In Spanish a sunflower is called “girasol” and we figured we use the ending to incorporate our Latina roots and a play on words for “soul”, and thus Sol Daisy was born! We included “wellness” in our name since we feel massage therapy is a great additive to your overall wellbeing. Now we are Sol Daisy Wellness !

Angie Jimenez & Anibeliz Marquez , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Anibeliz knew early on she wanted to be a massage therapist and applied for massage school after graduating high school ,and had never lost her passion for massage therapy. As time went on her passion and skills only enhanced. Meanwhile, Angie fell into the industry by accident! After high school she was actually a cosmetologist and wanted a change. She wanted to get into the medical field, however most places she looked into had a long wait list. She decided to take the massage therapy course while waiting for the waitlist to decrease in medical assisting. She worked as a massage therapist while in school for nursing, became a cna, and realized shorty after she couldn’t let go of being a massage therapist.

Our business was created after years of working for others. Angie has always aspired to work for herself with different visions of what that would entail. After years of working for massage franchises and a few small businesses, she was feeling disappointed in its operation system. Most places felt very impersonal and “corporate” and didn’t allow genuine human connection between therapists and clients and it was a very “in and out” process. She asked Anibeliz if she would consider starting their own massage business. They started small, turning Angie’s spare bedroom into a massage room and offering chair massages and mobile sessions to clients, family, and friends, and learning how to run a business one day at a time. Later on, they were presented with an opportunity to apply for a non-profit organization called EForAll, which is an entrepreneurship program that helps small business owners both new to the field or experienced . The program was an accelerated business program that also helps fund your business! This is where they learned everything they needed to know about business. While in the program they won funding for their business, created a website, an llc, found their first location, and became Sol Daisy Wellness! It’s been about two years since they finished the program and they still use a lot of the tools and information they learned from Eforall, and are grateful for all the wonderful connections they made along the way.

What we offer is a therapeutic massage service. We wanted to create a safe space where our clients felt loved, heard, and seen. We allow our clients to be vulnerable and vent when they need to and offer hugs as well. We are more personal than a franchise where it was fast paced and impersonal. We take our time with our clients making sure their needs are met, and massage with intention, love, care, and intuition.

We offer in-store massages, as well as mobile sessions, and chair massages! We offer various enhancements like aromatherapy, cupping, hot stones, and massage gun. Just last year we introduced monthly memberships that help our clients save more on their sessions!

We believe our various options and reasonable prices help solve our clients problems. Most people find massage therapy to be expensive or a luxury and we tried really hard to price our business as affordable as we can . Our options to have mobile sessions make it difficult to avoid getting massages. Whether it’s a 15min chair massage at your work place, an event, or a 90min massage at your home, we try our best to heal the world one massage at a time.

Our massage techniques set us apart from others because we combine deep tissue and Swedish techniques for a customized massage experience, while providing the option to have in-home or in-studio sessions does give us a bit of an edge as well.

Our proudest moment was being one of the winners of Eforall and becoming female entrepreneurs, as well as becoming the first latina female entrepreneurs in our immediate families! We dove into this by facing our fears, getting out of our comfort zone, having no clue what owning a business entails, and we created something beautiful!

The main thing we would love our clients and future clients to know is that we massage with love! We love what we do and we are grateful for every person who supports our business. We care for every body that steps into our studio and our “SOL” mission is to make sure we are helping you have a more pain free and stress reduced life.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We are best friends! We have a mutual best friend (Anthony Alicea, we love you!) , who knew we were both going to the same massage school. He told me (Angie) that I should introduce myself to Anibeliz since she’s more introverted and I’m more extroverted. I went up to her asking if she knew our mutual friend, in which she replied yes, and I told her he mentioned we should be friends, and the rest is history! We have been friends for 12 years, and even worked at the same franchise for a while before we became business partners , which will be making two years in the business soon!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We had no idea what that entailed! We started our business by paying out of pocket. We had no idea there were business credit cards, loans, or grants that help first time business owners. We had won funding from Eforall twice since we were part of the program, and that really helped us purchase the items we needed for our business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://soldaisywellnessaa.wixsite.com/sol-daisy-wellness
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soldaisywellness?igsh=MXhndTJ4NzZ4eWJsbQ==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1B18CqBaxZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr
• Linkedin: Sol Daisy Wellness
• Other: TikTok : SolDaisyWellness

Image Credits

Sandy Tep Photography