Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Murphy.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Erin. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
A few years ago, I was a full time Lymphatic Therapist working in a Lymphedema clinic.
I truly loved the work, but the laws changed. I was not able to continue my work with Medicare patients or any patient that used health insurance patients. I was able to guide and train the new staff members, but it was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to work directly with patients and help them through their medical complications.
I left the company and started to dabble in spa therapy. I was not happy working for other day spas or with chiropractors. This was a time of me just wondering around trying to find where I belonged in the health field.
This is how and why I opened The Local Healing Room. I wanted to combined both spa like treatments (low lights, soft music, cozy sheets) while addressing my client’s medical needs.
I am a bit complex so I need a company that can reflect my interest in spiritual work and scientific evidence. I believe in a balanced, and responsible approach to health and wellness. I have my doctorates in Oriental Medicine (Acupuncture and Herbal Therapy), I am involved with research and discovering if treatments are effective, and I am a reverend with a minor in theology. Our spiritual being and our physical being should be able to seek therapy through herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, movement therapy and sound therapy.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road to running a business has been very challenging. Sadly, each year I face closing down. I was blessed to have free living rent for the first three years of owning the business. The second two years, I used student loans to keep the doors open and continued to grow my business. This year has not been a success. I have more clients than ever before, but bills have rocked my finances. I have closed down all savings account and faced with heavy taxes, considering bankruptcy, or simply leaving. Leaving Florida is not something I can really accept. I was born in this town. Over the past few years we have seen illegal businesses blossom with unlicensed workers. We have seen the members in our field go from an average of 35.00 per hour to only 13.00 per hour. While our income decrease, our bills increase.
Last year I faced the hardest challenge of my entire life. I was sharing space with another massage therapist and she offered for me to move into one of her properties.
She owned several homes and one of them was available. We got along great so I thought it was a good idea.
Until the day I moved in and discovered she had shown me the wrong house and this house was covered in roaches. (I have a video of me counting up to 61 roaches in less them two minutes) A few days later she presented me with a 300.00 water bill that she expected me to pay for the previous renters. Things got bad – real fast. She attempted to hit me a few times, tried to poison my dog, stole checks from the mail, put a nail in the side of my tire, and this was not the worst of it. She called the Department of Health and told them I was working with invasive and illegal techniques.
She also put my business name in the Board of Massage and listed herself as the owner. She took that paperwork to my bank and tried to withdraw the funds by telling them I had been arrested and she owned my business. The bank looked up the state documents and noticed I was the legal owner of the company.
Since I never did anything illegal – and I did own the DBA and EIN for the Local Healing Room, she could not get me arrested, as she was attempting to do. Her entire goal was to force me to leave the state because I had nowhere to live and nowhere to work. I thank God every day I had the loan money to get me through it.
With all the evil things she did, my life did get better.
I opened my new business within a short period of time, only 1000 feet down the road. I moved into a bigger, nicer house (and I do Airbnb as a second business). I have more space in my office to treat clients and a loving environment. We painted the walls and put in wood floors. I work with two other ladies and one fellow. We are all happy and enjoy plenty of jokes, and love for each other.
As far as her performing a bunch of illegal activities – well, justice is for those who can afford it. I spend nearly all of my student loans with finding a place to work and live.
FYI – my doggie survived.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I love the fact that we are truly a local small business. We do not push sales or contracts.
We keep things simple. There is no rotating staff or strangers that answer the phone. I book all of the appointments and I see that each person that comes to the office is treated as an individual and we customize their treatment plan according to their needs or goals. I do not up-sale services. It is one price according to the time it takes. If we need more time to reach our therapeutic goals, we don’t charge more.
Since I have a wealth of experience with lymphedema, I am great at manual lymphatic therapy. I have people that travel from all over the world to get treatments. I have had the pleasure of working with some of the richest, most powerful families in the world – and I treat them just like everyone else. No silly games of charging different prices. When you come to my office, I care about you.
I am very proud that we can offer diverse services. Some places are limited to an idea or a single concept, such as discounted services. We have the ability to offer more because we pay the staff a much higher rate. Let’s say, for example, we have a 34-year-old lady that is suffering from headaches and stress from a divorce.
Massage can always be a great place to start, but we also have the acupuncture, herbal therapy, and spiritual care.
All licensed Acupuncturist in the state of Florida are considered Primary Care.
Sometimes, a headache is far more serious and medical intervention is required. We are trained to see the difference.
We also accept all health insurance. As a trusted member of the medical community, we have a higher standard of care.
What were you like growing up?
I was such a rebel when growing up! I was an athletic goth child that sold illegal candy to other students- – let’s talk about a perfect example of my complexity. I loved the X-Files and exploiting school policy on the candy band. Our school would not allow any gum based candy so I had my mom pick up bulk packs of blow pops and I would sell them on the bus. I would save up the money throughout the year and then have extra money to send in the summer.
I grew up being told that I was not smart enough to go to high school. I did not understand as a third grader why I was “stupid”. I was actually dyslexic. I did just fine in high school and took a bunch of honor classes, but I still thought I was “stupid”. I spent more time with sports then I did with school. But I really loved history, medical mysteries, or mysteries in general. I was thrilled with science and I wanted to know how everything worked. I wanted to explore the world and learn as much as possible. That’s may be why I have been in college for 12 years and most of it studying how acupuncture and herbal therapy work.
When I turned 27, I told my parents that I was going to go to college. My mom said I would not survive.
Everyone was like, “your too old”. Girllllllllll let me tell you……. I ended up with a 3.3, the president of a sorority, a ton of honor induction, and winning a ton of awards. I discovered my intelligence was way beyond my expectations. I was able to thrive with academic challenges. I even ended up lying about my educational background to get into hard classes like Physics – and pass with an A, despite never taking any of the required math classes.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that age is a limitation for any goal.
Contact Info:
- Address: 233 N. Federal Highway #45, Dania Beach, Fl 33004
- Website: www.TheLocalHealingRoom.com
- Phone: 954-744-0018
- Email: office@TheLocalHealingRoom.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_local_healing_room/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheLocalHealingRoom/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TLHR4
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-local-healing-room-dania-beach
Image Credit:
Erin T Murphy
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