We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mary Le-Maldonado. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mary below.
Hi Mary, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.
By far, the biggest step in setting up my own practice was deciding to do it! Over this past year of being open, countless friends, family, and clients have expressed their own personal desire to start a business. Many have great ideas I believe would be successful, but the greatest challenge they face is getting over the fear of possible failure. It’s no secret that many new businesses fail within the first year, a fact that scares people away from giving it a shot. Having an established support structure will definitely help push you toward making that decision; my husband and family cheering, “You can do it!” was a major driving factor for me.
There’s obviously a lot that goes into getting started, but my advice for someone attempting to do the same thing is just take your time and knock things out one by one. Depending on what type of business you’re starting and the area, there’s likely quite a few different licenses, permits, certifications, etc. you’d have to get sorted before you can ever take a client. It can appear daunting looking at everything altogether, but pick one to focus on at a time. Take your time, research how to fill out the form properly, and once it’s sent in, get started on the next one. Compartmentalizing the climb up the mountain into individual steps instead of looking at the entire thing makes the process significantly less stressful and more manageable.
As far as what I would have done differently, there’s quite a bit. I don’t come from a family of business owners nor did I network with many before this endeavor, so everything was a trial by error process from day one. I’d say the main thing I would do differently is expand to meet current demand instead of expanding to meet the demand I wanted. We made the mistake of over-hiring from the get-go because we envisioned being slammed and busy from day one, something I imagine is every business starter’s dream. While business started off well, it wasn’t to the level we had hired to and I ended up having to go through a stressful personnel management situation early on. I learned, while it isn’t ideal either way, it definitely feels better having to turn people away because we’re too busy than it does to be paying employees who don’t have anything to do!
Mary, 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 licensed Master Esthetician in Washington and California, and a licensed Massage Therapist in California. My professional life actually started in the corporate environment conducting HR for a major cybersecurity firm. Human Resources was the focus of my degree and first attempted avenue for success because I’ve always wanted to help people and make their lives better. Corporate HR ended up not being what I thought it would, involving more presentations and paperwork than actually helping employees. So, I completely changed directions with a huge leap of faith and found my true calling in esthetics/massage. My years of corporate HR were not in vain, as I was able to leverage what I learned during them to launch myself into opening up Balboa Oasis Spa significantly earlier than most practicing estheticians move out on their own.
Our small team at BOS provides a fairly large number of day-spa related facial and massage services. Whether you just want to relax/take a nap to get away from life for a bit, your back is sore from pulling weeds all day yesterday, or you’re supposed to be a bridesmaid at a wedding in a few weeks and you want glowing skin that makes you stand out in all the pictures, we are here for you! We also have a cutting edge Infrared Sauna many use for fitness and weight loss. What really sets us apart at BOS is the way we interact with and treat our clients. It seems like many day spas are more like service factories, clients come in, are hurried into service rooms, then hurried right out the door when it’s over so they can get the next client in. Our goal at BOS is to slow that process down and really take the time to try and get to know our clients. We offer freshly squeezed grapefruit water at the end of every service not just as a cherry on top, but as a way to slow people down and engage in a few minutes of conversation. It has been a great experience over the past year to really get to know some of our clientele to the point of being in the loop with their daily lives and major life events, being there to restore hope and uplift their spirits when they’re with us.
We love being an independent business and not part of a major chain, it has allowed us to create all kinds of partnerships! My husband is an avid motorcycle enthusiast, so Balboa Oasis Spa officially sponsors a national-level professional superbike racer. We also sponsor a local amateur boxer, as many of our infrared sauna clientele are martial arts athletes. Recently, we partnered with Club Pilates down the road from us here in Banker’s Hill, and are working with the DoD’s SkillBridge program to help assist current military servicemembers in their reintegration with the civilian population. We have a strong desire to utilize our success toward helping others achieve theirs.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
It might be a little cliche nowadays, but our resilience was tested from the get-go as we opened right in the middle of the whole COVID-19 pandemic. People thought we were crazy opening a health and wellness business during the middle of an event that absolutely crushed the health and wellness sector, and they were probably right to an extent. It was a long and slow burn to build the trust of local clientele, not just as an individual business, but as an entire sector. Even when numbers curtailed and the political atmosphere moved away from talking about it all the time, people were rightfully slow and hesitant to get right back into receiving massages and facials. We had to stay resilient and come up with creative ways to get customers through our door.
It all paid off though! Our toughness allowed us to weather the storm in a way many similar businesses were not able to. It was sad to see local spas and business close down, but we never allowed that option to cross our minds. Because of our determination, now that people are getting out and things are returning to normal (mostly), we are enjoying the fruit of our labor since not as many of our former competitors exist anymore.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Marketing, marketing, marketing!
It isn’t enough these days to cook up some google/facebook ads, run them, and call it a day. The reality is, many established businesses will have larger budgets and will outperform you when it comes to ads. If you select to pay 10 dollars a day for google ads, they will just up theirs to 11 so it shows up first. Instead of overextending yourself and your budget, you might find success approaching advertising in other ways. When I first got started, I had our team head to every East Village Night Market we could to set up a booth and get our name out there. I’ve made partnerships with other local businesses, contacted social media influencers to run promotions for us, sponsored a professional motorcycle racer to put our logo on his bike, and even have our logo on a local boxer’s fighting shorts. There’s so many ways to get your name out there into the minds of potential clients than just run-of-the-mill online advertising on major social media platforms. If you can’t outpay your competition, outwork them! Another plus to getting out there physically is clients will see how passionate you are about your business; an owner who makes a strong effort to directly engage with potential customers makes them feel like you’re going to deliver them the best product or service you possibly can.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.balboaoasisspa.com
- Instagram: balboaoasis
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/balboaoasis
- Other: We are on Classpass as well!