We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kisha Ray a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kisha, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My mission is to make therapy & self care a priority for our culture. I can remember going to a Spa for the first time over ten years ago & saying to myself “wow” everyone should be able to experience this & rejuvenate the mind, body & soul on a regular basis & not just on special occasions. We give a lot of ourselves away everyday at work, to our friends & our loved ones. We need to recognize that our needs are just as important as everyone else’s.

Kisha, 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?

I am a Massage Therapist & Esthetician. I service a lot of celebrities & professional athletes. I also have a apparel & shapewear line “Ray Of Beauty” where we cater to women of all shapes & sizes. It all started for me a little over 10 years ago. I was working a bank job that wasn’t consistent & decided I needed a career change. I started looking for different trades to learn & landed myself in Esthetician school then Medical Massage Therapy school. After getting certified I started working part time at luxury spa’s & still had my banking job at the same time. While working at the Spa I was able to learn the business hands on. A lot of my clients would ask if I could travel to there house or place of business. Shortly after I started a mobile massage business. It went very well but it wasn’t the most safest thing to do. Not to mention I still had my banking job & I was still working part time at the spa on top of doing the mobile business. 1 year later I decided it was time to step out on faith. I quit my banking job of 6 years & opened my own business Relaxation Loft where we specialize in massage, facials, waxing & body contouring.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

After taking that leap of faith & starting my own business Relaxation Loft, I was extremely nervous about what the outcome would be. I rented out a very small space within my budget at the time where I offered clients my services. The first couple of months were very slow & then suddenly things started to pick up & I started getting new clients. Right when things started to pick up that’s when Covid hit & just like that I got shut down temporarily for 3 months. During that time I was devastated. I didn’t know if my business was gonna survive & I remember beating myself up for quitting my banking job. For 3 months I had no income & things were really tight for me. Not to mention I was a single mom with a mortgage & bills to pay. Finally at the end of May 2020 was when spa’s & salons were able to open back up. Once I reopened I was very nervous thinking that nobody would want to come back for my services out of fear of the virus. Surprisingly everyone came back right away in need of stress relief from the pandemic. As my business was going well, unfortunately the owner of the building that I was renting my space from could not survive after the pandemic & ended up closing permanently 6 months later, causing my business to shutdown once again. For the next 90 days I spent everyday looking for a new location for my business while trying not to lose the clients that I had. It was a very difficult time for me but I guess the saying is true.. when one door closes a better one opens. I found a bigger & better location in a better neighborhood & business got better & better.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social Media is very important for advertising & marketing. I can honestly say 75 percent of my clientele comes from social media. It took awhile to gain followers. Let’s face it most people are on social media just to watch & not support. They will watch everything you do but won’t like it or share it. I can remember posting some really good pictures & content but would only get like 10 likes. The key is consistency! Don’t get discouraged. Post your content everyday & don’t worry about who’s liking it & who’s not liking it because the truth is they see you! And somebody is telling somebody else how dope you are. I’m have over 12k followers now but it took me 8 years to get there. Even with having 12k followers sometimes I still only get a few likes on certain post. Somedays I’ll get a thousand likes on a post, the next day I might only get 20. But no matter what I stay consistent & believe in my brand.     

Contact Info:

• Website: www.relaxationloft.com
• Instagram: im_kisharay
• Facebook: Relaxation Loft LLC
• Other: rayofbeautyapparel.myshopify.com