We were lucky to catch up with Sharayah Renee recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sharayah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

I believe that if any business owner is truly honest, we have a lot of failure moments. It’s funny how we have been conditioned to believe every failure is a ship sinker and a life ruining stain upon our reputations. The thing is, how else do we learn if we don’t try and try again. I think its really unhealthy to expect that every single thing we do will result in a positive outcome and yet there is a lot of pressures to not display what doesn’t go right. I started one other business before this one and it failed. It was an herbal supply company for postpartum women providing curated items need for personal care. It was a serious effort with me investing time, energy and resources and it completely falling flat. At the time, I couldn’t help but feel let down that it didn’t gain traction and all of the samples I had provided, research I had done, and products I had made eventually were given away for free to friends and midwives who had pregnant clients. When I started my current business it was done in a rush. I was in the middle of a divorce and I knew I had to get off the ground running if I had a chance of succeeding. In the beginning, I made a ton of mistakes, mostly administrative, and a year later, I had to go back to redo some things that I had not taken into account, pun intended. It took a considerable amount of time and energy that could have been better spent (yes bookkeeping I’m looking at you!) to catch up. While these aren’t monumental failures as such, if I hadn’t been willing to face the fact that I needed to attend to my neglected duties, it would have possibly resulted in my business sinking later on.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my Reiki Practice in June of 2021 and one of my greatest passions is to provide a space that people can just be themselves. Reiki is a Japanese origin healing art that was started in 1922 and at its essence, it the use of hands on healing energy as a way to provide comfort in times of stress, parasympathetic relaxation, and relief from pain, illness, and conditioned psycho-emotional patterning. This is not massage as so many mistake it for but I would compare it to acupuncture but without the needles! Sol integrative healing is the name of my business and it speaks to how in the space of love, we can truly integrate into a more accepting and loving version of ourselves.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

In my world the most effective strategy is one that takes time, patience, and perseverance and it is building person to person relationships. This has been a difficult lesson for me to learn overall. We live in a fast paced, greed centered culture and to run a business where every single message out there is tell me I need to be at this place of growth, at this time, at this dollar amount is soul shrinking. I feel often that I’m a fish swimming upstream because the current business strategies and marketing tactics really focus on numbers, numbers, numbers. While money is definitely important, at the end of the day it cannot take place of making genuine human connections. To run my business as such, takes a tremendous amount of inner strength, belief in myself and the willingness to go with a different flow. This means, I have no social media, a super simple website and all my time and focus goes to providing supportive Reiki sessions to each client that comes into my office. Thus far this seems to be the best way for me to grow and thrive as a business owner.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients has been word of mouth and networking events.

Contact Info:

• Website: solintegrativehealing.com

Image Credits
Kenna Johnson