794 Amy Anthony:

Amy Anthony:

My heart is in how plant medicine is free. You can go and take your breath, you can go and harvest a plant and make a tea.  I’m forever in this battle of, “Is my pricing fair? Sliding scale? How do I make money to support my business to uphold and sustain these beliefs in helping community, but also having a business that supports itself and is interesting?” It’s a challenge, I must say. where you underprice yourself and you don’t have the confidence to give that price. And over time I realized it’s like, “Amy, you’re worth it. Everything you’re doing is worth it.”

When we’re in business to help people, it can be challenging to know how to price your services, because for renowned aromatherapist Amy Anthony plants are free – yet the knowledge she shares with her clients often delivers priceless transformation in health and well-being, so how do we arrive at a fair price in alignment with our true value?

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring mission-driven entrepreneur who is leveraging her love of plants as a certified aromatherapist to help people combat stress and heal ailments of all kinds.

Amy Anthony is the founder of NYC Aromatica, a growing private practice which offers one-on-one customized aromatherapy sessions, online class offerings, and corporate consulting.

If you’ve ever been to a spa, you know how relaxing the scent of lavender can be, or if you need an instant uplift how a whiff of lemon or citrus can be your savior. Chamomile can help you sleep; rosemary can give you clarity. There are hundreds of essential oils and blends, and many ways breathing in the scent or using them as balms can reduce stress and help heal any ailment.

Today we talk to one of America’s leading aromatherapists. Amy Anthony is the founder of a growing private practice NYC Aromatica, which offers one-on-one customized aromatherapy sessions, online class offerings, and corporate consulting. Also an aromatic gardener, herbalist, artisanal distiller, and certified master composters, Amy also hosts the Essential Aromatica podcast.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Amy Anthony and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amy, welcome to Wings.

Amy Anthony:

Melinda, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here with you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, I love aromatherapy. And it’s very stressful for any entrepreneur, so how does aromatherapy become part of our, I guess, essential oil toolkit to get ourselves out of stress and feeling good as we build our businesses?

Amy Anthony:

Yeah, it’s a great question because one of the things I loved learning as a student, now a teacher, is that aromatherapy essential oils work well with stress. As aromatherapists we can’t treat, cure, do all that medical jargon, but our first approach is always stress.

So one thing you could do is you turn to your gorgeous oils that are super concentrated and very powerful. Clary sage in front of me, and all you have to do is give yourself a pause, smell from your bottle or a cotton pad. And let’s say you need an uplift, you need a pause, you’re stressed out, you take your lemon and just sit for 30 seconds and give yourself that gift to breathe, to pause, to restart, and then the essential oils and their magic work with our neuroendocrine systems and a lot happens. But really that’s your entree.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay.

Amy Anthony:

Your step in is just breathe. Just breathe in the oil.

Melinda Wittstock:

What just three deep breaths will do for you, but if you have the assistance of the oil … So Take me through the different oils and what you really need in your toolkit for a very, very busy woman and what is good for what, when?

Amy Anthony:

I’m in my office and in front of me are at least like 150 oils, so you don’t need all that. I like to chat about essential oils are from the aromatic plants and there’s specific chemistry, and you can look at them as uppers and downers and kind of modulators.

So if you need that help calming and going to sleep, guess what? We’ve heard it. It’s kind of tired. But lavender: classic, beautiful lavender, can be helpful at the end of the day to calm the mind. You can pair that with chamomile. It’s a little expensive. A German, chamomile, Roman chamomile, really nice to have at your bedside. Maybe you put a drop on a cotton pad or near your pillow.

Modulating during the day, geranium is super balancing. Balancing on the skin, balancing on the mind. If you want that mental acuity and clarity, there’s lots of research. Even Shakespeare said it, “Rosemary for remembrance.” You’re at your desk, you’re creating a pitch, you’re super like, “I need that clarity,” inhaling some rosemary. Super beneficial.

And I can’t leave out a citrus. People love citruses. Find what you like. Bergamo, bergamot. I like to call it bergamot has lots of research for stress relief, modulating, brightness, cheerfulness. Maybe you feel like you’re in a funk, get some bergamot, bergamot, maybe a little lemon.

So I gave you a little core set there and we could talk for hours about oils, though.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, a hundred percent. So how did you get into this? What led you to become a kind of renowned aromatherapist and the work that you do?

Amy Anthony:

I’m still a three-year-old working outside in the garden with my mother. That’s still who I am. So going back to finding myself.

So fast forward. I was always gardening, always in nature, but I loved the city. I moved to New York City when I was how old? 19 years old. I was finishing college here and I got a job. I couldn’t be an herbalist. My parents wouldn’t go for that, wouldn’t go for that herbalist lifestyle. I worked in market research as a survey design, survey data analysis. Ended up working at JP Morgan, and it was a seriously fun ride but I was not happy. My soul wasn’t happy and I was always trying to find a way to connect with nature. And I quit my job. My spouse is super wonderful, super supportive in many ways.

And then the oils found me. I’m living in New York. They’re a way to connect with nature. I couldn’t tell you that at the time, but it’s what I realized. And I was just like, “I need to learn about these. What are these?” I took a workshop, I bought books, I bought more books. I was like, “I must become certified. I don’t know why, but I do.”

So I was searching for schools to become certified and, guess what? Three blocks away from me, Amy Galper opened the New York Institute of Aromatherapy. So I earned my certification and then I started teaching there. I was asked to teach. And then I was like, “I need to open a business. I need a website.” So it was like the floodgates opened and the universe is like, “Amy, this is it.” It’s nuts. It was nuts. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Melinda Wittstock:

So tell me about the work that you do and how it works, how you assist people, your clients?

Amy Anthony:

So I’m a private practitioner and an educator and forever a student. So I was a teacher at the school and the school closed. So I found myself really in my own business and practice. I always had it, but it became forefront to me.

So one thing I love doing in my heart is to have private clients and you come and you have a session with me and we talk about your stress, your sleep, hormone imbalances, life stages, and I will create a product for that person custom-made, and then I help the person incorporate it into their lives to do what it needs to do. And that’s one part which I love. I make you herbal tea. I blend it myself. You get a foot soak. It’s a whole experience I give you.

And then I’m an educator. I found teaching. I never knew I could be a teacher. I’m an introvert, believe it or not. And I never thought I could stand in front of a group of people, 80 people, and just talk away, and I could do that. I’m so surprised if we’re talking about the plants in aromatherapy. But I enjoy sharing essential oil knowledge with people because people are still fuzzy about what it is. So I find that I am an aromatherapy awareness person. That’s what my podcast journey is actually. It’s been wild.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, so interesting. And so tell me how you’ve built the business side of this, because when you’re in a sort of a private practice, the value is the time, potentially, that you’re putting into it rather than the results and there’s only one of you and that’s sort of limiting.

So talk to me about how you do that and what’s your thought on that and your journey? Because there are so many women in entrepreneurship that end up just creating jobs for themselves rather than kind of a scalable business where there’s leverage. What’s been your journey when it comes to that with a private practice?

Amy Anthony:

That’s a really cool question, and this is something I want to be really honest with you that I think a lot of us struggle with is … I’m just pausing here because my heart is in how plant medicine is free. You can go and take your breath, you can go and harvest a plant and make a tea. And I’m big on volunteer work so every Thursday for the past 10 years I volunteer at a nearby church and we make gorgeous homemade food and we have a community lunch. So I’m forever in this battle of, “Is my pricing fair? Sliding scale? How do I make money to support my business to uphold and sustain these beliefs in helping community, but also having a business that supports itself and is interesting?” It’s a challenge, I must say.

So what I do as a private practitioner, to be honest with you, and a lot of your listeners probably were in this position where you underprice yourself and you don’t have the confidence to give that price. And over time I realized it’s like, “Amy, you’re worth it. Everything you’re doing is worth it.” So put that price sticker on your consultations and then-

Melinda Wittstock:

This something that we all struggle with because I think in our society, especially the way work has been organized since the industrial revolution really is about effort in or time spent rather than the actual value created. So it can be very difficult to think about your pricing in the context of the value, The before and after and the benefit of, say, a busy woman entrepreneur who discovers aromatherapy through you and now has eliminated her stress and now can do more and now her business, as a result, very difficult to track?

Amy Anthony:

Yes. And as a private practitioner, there’s that time spent of following up, because I have to follow up with the client today. I just dropped off her ball for her heart. She has a lot going on. So I have to be like, “How is it going? Are you using it? Do you have any questions for me? What’s going on?” There’s that time spent in follow up. How do you put a price on that? So it’s a very relationship oriented business practice from where I’m sitting.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Really, really true. And so you mentioned, though, that you also have this kind of teaching component, as well. So talk to me about that side of the business.

Amy Anthony:

Teaching … And there’s another layer to the cake that I also do consulting. So I could go into a corporation, they would have a wellness day where I could be there for a one-hour workshop. So when you get those gold nuggets, that’s really driving the revenue, the bringing me money. So that’s the stuff. Because teaching, I have … See, this is where I’m a little weird. I have free and pay what you wish classes. Because it’s funny, you could go to YouTube and watch a complete crap video, if you pardon my language, that doesn’t have good content, but it’s free and a lot of us are used to free information.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Amy Anthony:

So I have my content. I’m hosting it on my website, so I feel I have control, and then I’m offering it for very small amounts of money. And it’s a business decision that I have struggled with. But, again, I value plant medicine as, basically, free medicine. And when you’re in my profession, you make money by consulting, by getting these corporate gigs, by educating others and having people pay for your workshops, et cetera, et cetera. Because this space we’re in with aromatherapy, if you’re not part of the multi-level marketing companies, it’s still aromatherapy awareness in educating people on the safety of oils, what they really are, how to work with them. So it’s interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. You raise a number of tensions really for the full range from Big Pharma that takes stuff out of the Amazon rainforest, which is free. You rub a paste from a tree on a cut. And I actually had this experience in the Amazon. I had this little kind of bite or something on my skin, and the member of the tribe that we were with just said, “Oh, okay.” And he used his big, huge knife to cut into a specific tree. I forget what it was called. And there was this sap that came out of it, he rubbed on his palm, and then he took a little bit of that and it became this kind of white paste, put it on my skin irritation, and I swear to God, it was gone. My issue was gone in about maybe 10 minutes.

Amy Anthony:

That sounds so right. And I’m wondering if it was copaiba, the gorgeous tree with a resin that’s tapped. That’s such a great story. What a great experience to share, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Because in nature, all these cures and all these things are free just like water, except now we’ve figured out in our society that people pay for water, we pay for all these different things. And in the case of big pharma, huge amounts of money. So there’s a real tension there in terms of how you support yourself with this wisdom and bring it to lots of people to make money while, at the same time, just this concept of the air and the water and all these plants, whatever, if you have the knowledge, they’re free.

Amy Anthony:

Yeah. Thanks for saying it that way because there is a tension and it’s something I’m always struggling with, and there’s no answer. So it’s like you want to respect the plants and the earth and you want to help people and you need to support your business.

So it’s funny, in my [inaudible 00:15:20] shout out to my yoga teacher, it’s like he always says, “And.” “You could do this and that.” So I like this model of I can offer free community workshops. I’m just going to do another one next week in Brooklyn with some elderly folks at the Brooklyn … Anyway, I digress. You could give these free workshops, share information, and then you get a corporate gig that helps cover your expenses. So it’s having that “and” mentality, which I really enjoy.

Melinda Wittstock:

And it’s a personal challenge too, I think, for a lot of women in business to really know our own value because you think of the investment that you put into this, right? You say you started at age three in the garden with your mom. There’s tremendous value to actually sharing that information in terms of the impact that it has in other people’s lives. And so how do you measure that, right?

Amy Anthony:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

It gets into that before and after. But I think women, we struggle sometimes with actually understanding our value. It’s not just showing up for the time that we spent sharing this information, but what is the transformation in people’s lives?

So speaking of that, take me through some of the transformations you’ve seen in people’s lives, the before’s and after’s using the aromatherapy techniques?

Amy Anthony:

That’s a really fun question because I love that word “transformation,” that when we have the oils and we work with them as instructed … So I will write instructions for someone, usage instructions, because I love speaking with you because we’re talking about this really cool topic. But I tell students and I tell clients, it’s like, “I don’t want to see you every week. My goal is to help you get to a better place. I’d love to see you again in six months. I’d love for you to refer me, but my goal is to not get you to come back to me to always buy stuff from me because this is about holistic healing and helping you get to a different place and that different place is very subtle.”

So I’m thinking of just the client that I saw this week. She’s a repeat client and she’s having a lot of illness in her family. She’s going through major upset in her life, and we made her a balm. She wants to feel like she can go and feel centered and recuperate and be like a hermit. And we made a balm for her chest that she can apply nightly. And when she sat with me and she smelled the balm that I made for the first time and we both smelled it together, we both just sat there. Now, this was two days ago. We smelled it and I remember feeling my heart center just feel very supported and centered. And then she said the same thing. So within that small moment was a transformation.

I’m thinking of a person I volunteer with. One of her daughters is a client. She’s like 12 years old. Anxiety and anger at school. We had a consultation. This is probably two months ago now. She was part of the process. She’s with me. We made a tea. I selected probably 10 oils for her and we presented them. She smelled them. We talked about it. I wanted her to feel comfortable. She helped decide we’re going to make her an aromatic inhaler. And then she was using it as directed and she felt her life was more manageable at school.

So it’s like these subtle little shifts of like, “Oh, okay. I feel just a little less X.” That’s the transformation and it’s so subtle. Aromatherapy is super freaking sneaky.

And if I could just share personally, when I work with myself, I notice if I’m working with myself with anger, it’s more anger living in New York City, if I apply my product daily, it’s about three days later I notice I don’t feel as, I call it itchy, as if. So it’s very centering. And you have to follow up with clients because they’ll forget or they’ll just be like, “Oh, I love this. It’s helping.” But you’re the one that has to follow up to be like, “How is it going?”

Melinda Wittstock:

When you walk into a lot of stores these days, they have all kinds of different blends. There’s a whole bunch of different stuff out there, just even in Whole Foods or wherever. And it’s hard to know what are the right formulations? How do I know kind of what’s right for me? What should I use when in the day? All these sorts of things.

And so just from a consumer standpoint, is there anything people should avoid? Are there products out in the market that aren’t pure? How do you know what you’re buying?

Amy Anthony:

That’s the million-dollar question for a billion … Dare I say trillion? I don’t even know … Dollar industry. So first, let me talk about personal preference first, and then let’s talk about quality of oils.

So as a private practitioner, I am a big advocate and many aromatherapists are … It’s about your personal preference. So let’s say someone tells you that eucalyptus is excellent for supporting respiratory health, getting rid of mucus, but you can’t stand eucalyptus. You have a bad experience from a bad relationship in Australia, and you’re just like, “I can’t stand it.” So you will find another oil to work with because there are many oils that support respiratory health.

So when you see a blend, it doesn’t mean that that’s the right blend for you. And many people create blends based on evidence that we know things work. But let’s say you can’t stand it, so that’s why it’s interesting to work with someone like me that can make you something incredibly individual that you just love to have in your life. So that’s a plug from private practitioners.

But from a quality standpoint, the essential oil industry is huge and we have to always remember that the oils are created in bulk and used in flavor and fragrance and aromatherapists look to work with different oils. So if you’re buying, please don’t buy off Amazon, to be frank. Please don’t buy off Etsy. Ideally, you can go with the MLM companies. They have perfectly lovely oils. Whole Foods is fine. Go to Whole Foods. I often say, “Go to a health food store.” You’ll see the Aura Cacia brand, you’ll see the Now brand. Perfectly lovely. But if you take a bottle of lavender, let’s say, from, … I’m not knocking Aura Cacia. I try to stay very impartial on brands, but take a Whole Foods lavender and compare that with a lavender you might buy from a smaller company and there will be a difference.

So you’ll have the oils that are like, wham bam, thank you, ma’am. The plant’s harvested. It’s put in a still. The stills run for 30 minutes. Bam. Next batch. Could be 60 minutes. But there’s a level of care that’s put into the harvesting distillation process, the plant itself. So you could smell that in the oil.

And I just want to share one more thing. This is important to your lovely listeners. When you smell a genuine, pure, authentic essential oil, it should smell like a poem. It should have what perfumers call a dry down. Different chemicals are in there and they evaporate at different rates. So you might smell something that’s woody, then slightly floral, and then something … It’s just a poem. It’s like a symphony. And then you shouldn’t get a headache. It shouldn’t smell flat. I feel like if you go to, I’ll say at Walmart and buy one of those oils, they smell metallic. They’re really like single, flat and there’s no poetry. And that’s a quality test of like, “What’s this oil like?” And it could be a genuine, authentic oil, but was it prepared with care?

So I could go on and on.

Melinda Wittstock:

So what is the best way, Amy, for people to find you and work with you and learn more about what you’re doing and go on their aromatherapy journey?

Amy Anthony:

Thank you. Well, as we’ve discussed how I just love sharing stuff. I do a lot of community work. I have my website, nycaromatica.com, and you could geek out with me watching my plant talk videos. I have plant articles on learning about the plant, recipe ideas. How do you make a cream? How do you make an aromatic spray? I have classes, again free, and pay what you wish. If you want to learn how to safely diffuse essential oils, I have a class for that. So definitely want to share information.

And near and dear to my heart is my very humble podcast, Essential Aromatica. It’s a bit niche. I interview other Aromatherapists, but this year I’m really pleased to share my Luna Aroma series that I’m doing. I want to make aromatherapy accessible. That’s the podcast’s origin. But what I do is taking work I did in 2020, 2021. I take you on a guided meditation, a guided experience centered around each seasonal moon time. And I pair like … Juniper Berry was in February. So I give you a guided experience to connect with an oil, connect with the earth. I sound really crunchy. That’s okay. But it’s a passion project of mine that I am excited to share with the world.

And if you tune into my work and you like my style, if I resonate with you, I offer … Speaking of entrepreneurship, I decided to offer virtual online learning sessions. So if you’re not ready to sign up for a certification, you’re sick of reading books and you want one-on-one tutoring, I offer one-hour sessions and you can work with me as much as you want. We work in hour chunks. So I’m pleased … As a business person, I just decided that I needed to do that this year. It was a big realization for me. So I’m really pleased to share that actually.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Amy Anthony:

Thank you very much for having me.