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Innate Healing Company is Offering a Helping hand to babies and their parents

Passionate about caring for others and with a desire to support people’s mental and physical well-being, Trixie Gorman pursued a career as a pediatric nurse. After gaining training and experience across multidisciplinary teams in the healthcare system, Trixie found herself moving away from the frontline, but her heart remained dedicated to wanting to help others.

After 7 years in the system, Trixie decided to follow her heart and started her own company, providing mobile and clinic-based reflexology and baby reflexology classes to help those in need.

We chatted with Trixie about her ongoing journey of becoming a self-employed reflexologist and how Start Up Vision supported her along the way.

What has inspired you to start your own clinical reflexology business?

I have always been enthusiastic about caring for people’s health, both physically and mentally, especially for babies and young people, which is my motivation to pursue a career as a pediatric nurse. Through professional training and self-taught, I started to contact with reflexology, which can provide an alternative way to help people reduce stress and anxiety, body pain and improve general well-being. As it is not a well-known method, I decided to start my clinic, Innate Healing Company, to provide mobile and clinic-based reflexology services.

What has motivated you to expand into pediatric reflexology?

Reflexology can be effective in helping babies to regulate and strengthen their digestive and respiratory systems, stimulate their circulatory and nervous systems, alleviate trapped wind, soothe colic, ease teething issues, and alleviate constipation. Many mums have babies suffering from reflex and colic who might be crying all night, and they have been to the doctors and don’t know where to turn, and reflexology can really help.

During the pandemic, quite a lot of new parents faced with similar problems are feeling so isolated in the lockdown, so once conditions are allowed, I decided to launch group classes for baby reflexology. I am looking to bring new mums in the community together. The effects of COVID are still unravelling; we all need to socialise, and being a new mum can be pretty lonely.

With the group class on baby reflexology, parents can come to the classes and meet others in the same boat or with similar experiences, talk about it, and get it off their chest. It also gives me a chance to teach them some techniques and help with the care of their babies, allowing me to apply those skill sets and experience I have acquired in my pediatric nurse’s training to improve their condition, which is an encouraging development of my career as a professional reflexologist.

It can be difficult for one to start their own business in such a challenging business environment. What kind of hurdles have you encountered in the process? How did you come to know about the Start Up Vision programme?

With so many crucial areas, including marketing, finance, legality, etc., that are uncharted, It can be scary and lonely to start a business, especially for one like me who never had this experience. Faced with multiple issues, I really wanted to have someone to ensure I was doing it properly before moving forward.

Lucky for me, I joined the Oldham Expo, contacted experts from BGH, and learned about the Start Up Vision programme, a free supporting programme offered by BGH specially designed for self-employed start-ups. I am eager to join the programme as I am desperate to obtain help and guidance from experts on social media marketing at that time.

What kind of service and support has the BGH provided you through the Start Up Vision programme? 

Through the Start Up Vision programme, the business advisor of BGH had a holistic discussion with me on the marketing strategy. They helped to identify the target market of my service and provided an analysis of the demographic location. Based on the findings, the advisor also helped determine the route to market and formulate the key message for my marketing strategy. With all that in place, we created the website for the business. In addition, based on the target audience for my marketing strategy, young mums, who is very active on social media, the advisor suggested using TikTok as the marketing vehicle, which proved to be extremely important for its extensive reach to the target audience.

Any example of the support from the business advisor that helps you overcome a challenge in your journey?

I still remember an incident where another company with a similar name and logo to my business threat to take legal action against me, which suddenly drove me into panic mode. I ran to my business advisor immediately, and he reassured me, “Don’t worry. Everything is fine.” The advisor has offered legal support by bringing in resources from IPO and BIPC, offering suggestions to protect my business. Besides those business advice, one of the important aspects of the support offered by the advisor is providing soft support for my emotions and boosting my confidence, which is of tremendous help for me to move forward.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without Start Up Vision. They have continued to give me advice, guidance and training that I would never have known how to access or access without them. My business is growing from strength to strength, and it is all thanks to them. Starting a business can be very lonely and scary, but I always feel there is someone I can turn to if needed. I want to say a huge thank you for everything the programme has done for me.”

Trixie Gorman

You can find out more about Trixie and her reflexology services here: 

Website: https://innatehealingcompany.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/innatehealingco

We provide fully funded support to self-employed and gig economy workers across Greater Manchester. If you would like to find out more about Start Up vision, contact us now.

More information about the Start Up Vision programme can be found here.

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