We recently connected with Arielle Schmidt and have shared our conversation below.
Arielle, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
Here’s a story to share about how I said yes to quitting my job as a corrections officer and venturing out to be a business owner, which was one of the scariest and riskiest things I think I will ever do in this life. Back in 2017, while I had been a corrections officer full-time for just under 4 years, I had the opportunity to take a month off and travel to India to take a 200-hour yoga and Thai Yoga Massage training. The first risk of this opportunity was saying yes to going, emptying my savings account, and paying for the trip before I even knew if I could get the time off. Sometimes you must just go with your gut feeling and put out the fires later. I knew this opportunity would never come again, and since I technically had the time saved up, I thought, “why not?” After that month off, I came back to work and immediately was thrown into another 80-hour work week. This made me realize I could either continue to do this the rest of my life or prepare myself to take the biggest risk of all and walk away from the security of a well-paying job I was excelling at. After realizing I was ready to make a shift, I took on another Thai Yoga training, this time for 2 weeks in Costa Rica, and that was the training that unlocked the final push I needed to resign from my corrections officer job. Exactly one year from returning from India, I had put in my two weeks’ notice and left my job to be self-employed.
I will say that the first year was rough; I relied heavily on my savings. Yet with my relentless will to connect with anyone and everyone about what I was doing, I continued to see an increase in client after client at my business, Tranquility Rising. Now that I am 5 years out from that decision to leave my corrections job, I’m thankful I did it when the gut feeling hit, because the longer I would’ve stayed and the more seniority I would’ve gotten under my belt, the harder it would’ve been to leave. Today, Tranquility Rising has grown into a thriving holistic wellness boutique and I find so much fulfillment in the work I do.
Arielle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Arielle Schmidt, owner of Tranquility Rising, located in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. I am a Thai Yoga Therapy practitioner specializing in trauma informed bodywork and emotional coaching through the Five Element Theory of Chinese Medicine. Thai Yoga Therapy is a form of bodywork performed with the client fully clothed on a large floor mat. The client is taken through a series of yoga assisted stretches, acupressure on the meridian lines of the body (energy lines or sen lines), mindful rocking, meditation, and emotional connection coaching. Clients usually leave feeling rested, relaxed, reconnected, and grounded. What sets my type of bodywork apart from other Thai Yoga practitioners is the emotional connection of informing clients what each section of their body connects to emotionally and discussing tangible steps to help them move through blockages.
My work as a corrections officer has led me to have a unique ability to connect to clients who might view this type of work as too “fru fru.” I like to say Thai Yoga is just the gateway into the real problems of what might be going on because inevitably you cannot heal the physical body without shifting something with the emotional body; they go hand and hand. For most people it’s uncomfortable to talk about their traumas, or they might not even view what they went through as trauma, which prevents them from connecting the dots, so that’s where I come in. I do the Thai Yoga bodywork, which creates a map of what else we can work on during session and what the client can work on outside of session.
One of the most exciting things I get to see with clients is the speed in which they can heal and recover once they’re given the right tools for their toolbox. What I see most with clients is that they’ve been dealing with something chronic for years, whether it be shoulder or hip pain or fertility-related, and after a few sessions with me their pain is significantly reduced/eliminated. They find themselves less stressed in general, and with fertility clients sometimes it’s just enough to support their systems to support a pregnancy. The text messages I get from clients that say they are finally pregnant or they’ve cancelled their surgery have to be the most rewarding moments of my career.
Every single person’s journey with me is different. Sometimes I get to support in major celebrations and other times I get to support those in grief moving through new chapters of their lives. Also, no two client sessions are ever the same; they might be similar but never the same. You can think of a session with me like a cookie recipe: there are basic ingredients that make cookies taste good, but with each client I get to add their favorite add-ins to make their session perfect for them.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
What helped me build my reputation within my market was the endless curiosity of getting to the root cause of a client’s chief complaint. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of trainings that I’ve engaged in to help me see from different angles, modalities, and lineages of healing. I also make it a point to network with practitioners around my area who are experts in their field of focus. I fully understand my limitations and when I can no longer see improvement or have come to a place of stagnation in a client’s treatment, I have zero problem referring them to others or bringing a practitioner in to assist in the client’s current treatment plan. These professionals range from holistic doctors, chiropractors, nutritionists, Ayurveda coaches, acupuncturists, energy healers, and the list goes on. My entire goal with a client is to get them to a point where they no longer need me but they see the benefits of staying committed to their health, no matter if it’s with me or with other practitioners.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
When I first started my business, I chose to do a high-end coaching program that was 1-on-1. Let me just say, the amount I paid made my stomach sick, but I 100% know it was the right choice, as it was a leading factor in me shifting my sales to be successful today.
My coach told me that in order to get out of the cycle of one-off clients, I needed to create a program. From my point of view, a program would show the value and lasting effects of the work I was providing. One program that I still use to this day was already prebuilt into my training, and then I added my own tweak to it. I call it the 7 Session Protocol, and essentially it’s a program where clients sign up to see me for 7 weeks in a row, one session a week, 90 minutes per session. I also created the 12-week Honor Yourself Program that incorporates more dedicated Five Element Theory coaching as we work through the bodywork. Both programs are designed to make sure the entire body is moving effectively and nothing hidden gets missed. A lot of times, the chief complaint of why a client comes in ends up not actually being the source of the problem, so working on absolutely every part of the body is the reset that’s needed.
As I was offering both programs, I encountered a risk when my coach told me I needed to require clients to move through a program (after an initial evaluation session) before they could do single sessions. This would lead them to see the value of the work and the benefits of how they felt as the root issue was finally being fixed instead of a Band-Aid being put on it.
I’ll tell you that it was extremely hard to swallow the thought of taking off the single session option from my booking calendar, but I took this risk. A wave of anxiety was definitely there during those next few months. “Will I have enough clients who say yes? Will I be able to pay my bills?” But the shift that needed to happen and did happen was the shift into neutrality, a place that wasn’t reliant on the client saying yes to me but a place where a client was clear with what they wanted, and all I needed from them was a clear yes or no if they wanted to work with me. It wasn’t about what was best for me and my income but what was actually beneficial to the client. When I stopped thinking I needed a yes, this ease of authentic conversation came through with each client. There was this excitement I felt for the client that they were able to pause in their own space, see their worth, and know what they wanted and needed.
With that shift into neutrality, the abundance of yes after yes started to flow in. Sure, there was also a flow of no’s, but they became less and less because those who said yes were passionate about what I do, which led them to refer friends, family, acquaintances at nail salons, etc. And those were my ideal clients: people who were coming to their first session already knowing what’s in store, that it’s not a one-and-done session but an ongoing investment for their health.
Contact Info:
- Website: TranquilityRising.com
- Instagram: tranquility_rising
- Facebook: Tranquility Rising
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielle-schmidt-9a3892113
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHWxF2VejTep5pCdKmEctng
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/tranquility-rising-cincinnati
Image Credits
Juan Pablo Barba –www.jpbarba.com