What I've Been Up To: My OTHER Business

Some of you many already know this, but MoKoPo is just one of the two businesses I currently own. For the past 2 years I've been working solo as a Licensed Massage Therapist out of a studio in my home. These two career choices merge very well as both allow a lot of flexibility and control over my own schedule.

Last year, when I moved out of my duplex apartment and in with Kyle, my old residence suddenly seemed huge-- and vacant! I decided to move my massage room from the top floor to the main floor and even then I had SO MUCH room. My dear friend, Kimberly, is also a massage therapist so I got in touch with her to discuss teaming up and relaunching our business together. Fortunately, she was totally on board and the past 4 months or so has been spent making marketing plans, creating logos and websites, gathering supplies, and gearing up for our Grand Opening Open House which we held last Saturday.

Being relatively new small business owners and having a tight budget to work with, we did most of the work ourselves (with a little help from our handy family members!) This was not too difficult to do, with my craftiness and her adventurous spirit mixed with some serious Pinterest inspiration. We were so pleased with the overall look and feel of our studio and our Open House was a huge success!

Here are just a few of the crafty details in our new place:

Painted flower boxes hide an ugly old doorbell fixture

We bought inexpensive canvases and stapled different kinds of fabric to them as part of a quick and budget-friendly gallery wall in our entryway

We used some of the leftover fabric to tie the hallway collage in with our living room by whipping up some new pillow cases (thanks, Mom!)

Branding was very important to us so we plastered our logo on everything we could including:

Mini body scrub samples we gave out to our open house guests as a little "Thank You" for coming

and water bottle labels we printed ourselves!

Our fireplace was also in desperate need of an update. Who decided to put peach seashell tiles in a living room fireplace in the first place?? Tacky. But, with a little oil-based metallic silver paint, we snazzed it right up!

And last but certainly not least, we took a huge risk and ran with it by painting an ENTIRE wall in our waiting room with chalkboard paint! Our first thought was to paint a small rectangle in the center of the room, but as a way to avoid tedious measuring and taping off perfect right angles, we scrapped the rectangle idea and went with the whole wall. We are SO happy with how it turned out because it serves as both a functional memo board with our specials and prices, and also as a statement piece that makes a huge impact. LOVE.

Phew! Looking back at all the work we did makes me exhausted all over again, but we could not be more pleased with having things up and running. We've gotten nothing but good response from our customers and friends and we are so excited to see how things develop for us in the future.

What is your favorite of the projects we completed? Do you have any DIY ideas for a small business workspace? We'd love to hear them!

Let the rubbing begin!

After a grueling year of class, exams, studying, cramming, clinic hours, and MORE exams, I am officially a Licensed Massage Therapist! My license arrived in the mail along with my board exam scores (a 97% in Anatomy, a 91% in Massage, woo!) I plan to start out on my own, building my clientele via word-of-mouth and working in my studio (located on the 3rd floor of my house). I have my own table and chair and I'm really excited to get things going! Check out the new website I created here: www.MeganPetersLMT.com

I Graduated!

WOOHOO!! Well, after a long, hard year of studying, classes, clinicals, and more studying, I am officially a graduate from the Cincinnati School of Medical Massage!! Yesterday was our graduation ceremony, held at the Holiday Inn in Sharonville (classy! hehe). It was nice to hear our teachers and administrators say nice and inspirational words at the ceremony. My always supportive aunt, Rose, and my wonderful boyfriend, Kyle were my two guests at the ceremony. It's kind of sad to know that it was the last time I'll ever see some of the people in my class but I also know that resources like Facebook will keep us connected.

Two surprises that came from the graduation ceremony were:
#1. I had the highest grade in my class! I knew I had done well but I didn't know they were going to announce some of our grades and recognize us for our achievement. I ended the year with a 98%! Woo!
#2. There's another incentive to do well! The director of the school made a promise that whoever earns a100% on the Ohio Medical Board Exam in either section (Massage or Anatomy) will get a dinner for two on him at any restaurant in the city. I would LOVE to take my sweetie to the Precinct so I guess I better get to studying! :)

"What's Next?" you ask!? Well, I take my board exam on June 15th so until them, I'm focusing on studying. After that, and a short vacation to celebrate, I plan to look for part-time work in a spa or salon while getting back into the swing of things with creating more artwork! Keep you posted on my progress!

My Diploma!

Me receiving my diploma

Getting a hug from Bill- AWESOME teacher!

Me and my peeps! L to R: Aaron, Kimberly, Me, Todd

Rose and Me

Me and Kyle <3

Summer Break 2009!!

I'm on summer break at the moment, which totally cracks me up, seeing as how I just started class about 3 weeks ago. I'm taking a year-long accelerated course in Medical Massage and will (hopefully) get my massage license by next June. So far, I really like it! It only takes up my Mondays and Wednesdays and, although they're looooong days (8am-5:30pm) I love that I have the rest of the week to work on my Etsy Shop. It's more challenging than I ever imagined, mostly because there is SO MUCH anatomy to learn in just one week; we have chapter tests every Monday. In the A.M. from 8am until 12:30pm we have an Anatomy and Physiology class taught by a funny, laid-back, California-esque chiropractic doctor. He teaches us your basic A&P course with some of his own anecdotes about natural healing and nutrition (which I find to be pretty fascinating). Then we break for lunch, and from 1pm-5:30pm we have massage class which is usually half lecture on muscles and theories of massage and half hands-on. We partner up, get naked (haha, completely draped and covered of course) and rub each other down. BEST. CLASS. EVER. Who wouldn't love to get 2 massages a week?!

The Mondays/Wednesdays schedule has been amazing so far as it's allowed me to finally focus and get down to business on the things I've neglected for a while when I had my full-time job. I go to the gym and workout pretty much everyday except class days and already I feel a MILLION times better. I've also been cooking a lot more (something I love to do) and I'm starting to get back in the swing of painting a little bit everyday and building up inventory in my MoKoPo Creations shop online. The item at the top of my to-do list, that always seems to be pushed aside for one reason or another, is that I want to get prints made of my canvas paintings. I've gotten a number of comments from people who are fans of my work and are interested in owning something of mine, but cannot afford the original (understandable these days). So! I'm hoping that once I pay the money to get my work professionally scanned and printed it will be worth the investment and hopefully I'll be able to make more of a name for myself in the Etsy community...

Enough rambling for now, BACK TO WORK! :)