Deborah McBride and Lisa Ashton RN are the founders/owners of Northern Lights Holistic and bring over 30 years of spiritual and holistic experience to this venture. They have developed a collaborative team of 22 practitioners who specialize in so many areas that will greatly help our clients. We are all passionate about what we do and want to share our special gifts with all of you. We can’t wait to meet you in person and see how we can best help you holistically and spiritually on your life’s path.
OUR CONTRIBUTOR KIMBERLY DEZIREE MEETS LISA AND DEBBIE
Being that this is a Spiritual Business Magazine, I was especially thrilled to write this article and introduce our readers to Lisa Ashton and Debbie McBride of Northern Lights Holistic Center. This is a new Spiritual Business that just opened in July of 2017 in the Southern Rhode Island area, showing the potential to change the way the Spiritual businesses are run. From my own experience of being a long-time business owner, I know that it takes a great deal of effort and a large client base to be successful in running a service based business.
In order to create a client base, one must have a starting point, where they can find a job in their field working for someone else while gaining experience and building a clientele. The problem is, there is a small majority of holistic/metaphysical centers that have been successful, so it’s almost impossible to get yourself on their calendar to work or teach. If you are lucky enough to get your foot in the door, you will not have enough availability on their schedule to create an income to survive.
For those who have stuck it out and built somewhat of a clientele, it’s difficult to open their own business due to the overhead costs of running a full-blown business. With so many going out of business it is discouraging to a lot of spiritual healers/teachers who wish to take the leap from getting out of the job they don’t like and into a career that feeds their soul. With this in mind, I was excited when I learned about Lisa and Debbie’s new business concept. They too have had the same experience of wanting to shift out of a job and work full time doing what they’re passionate about.
Lisa and Debbie have come up with a business plan that’s a win-win for all involved including the practitioners, the clients and the owners who are on the hook for bricks and mortar. Everyone benefits from their carefully planned business concept. Normally when a center hosts events, classes or workshops it’s a 60/40 split with the center taking 40 and the rest going to the practitioner. Most of the time the practitioner is only on the schedule an hour here or there throughout the week and most of the advertising is done through the host and is minimal at best. This is no way to build a clientele and make enough to survive. For clients who are looking for services, they are usually limited to the hours and availability of services at these centers.
The creation of Northern Lights Holistic Center has solved this problem. What these ladies have done is to take the concept of holistic centers in a different direction by changing the way they run the business. Unlike most centers, they are open 7 days a week from 9 AM to 9 PM. Additionally, what is also different is they offer blocks of time for the practitioners to rent space to run their businesses or conduct their services with the clientele that they (the practitioners) bring as well as the walk-ins. These blocks of time are paid for at a set price and anything above the rental belong entirely to the practitioners.
They offer a wide variety of services on their website where a client can see who is on and available on any given day. Clients can book online, call in or they have a walk-in service (which is unheard of for this particular business, but a fantastic idea). When a client schedules with a practitioner from the website, Northern Lights only charges a 10% booking fee to cover website maintenance costs. What’s great for the practitioners is that they are only paying a partial rent with utilities included, they are on the Northern Lights website getting promoted and have access to walk-ins.
As for Lisa and Debbie, they are bringing in enough rent to cover the overhead to run their business in an effective and profitable manner. By having over 20 practitioners renting blocks of time they have a guaranteed income which takes the stress off of them from worrying about how to pay the overhead. This leaves them time to promote and manage the business as well as to continue to teach and conduct workshops of their own.
The services at Northern Lights Holistic Center range from Akashic Records studies, Energy Healing, Mediumship and Psychic Development classes and so much more. While speaking with Lisa I found that she and Debbie were very passionate about creating this business in order to make it easier for practitioners to offer their services to the public for the benefit of all in need of healing. To find out more about this fantastic new business check out their website at www.NorthernLights.one. Or if you are in the Portsmouth Rhode Island area, feel free to stop in and check them out.
