The Fall of Healing House and the Rise of Walk Your Zen

Hello! My name is Muki DeLay Ramsey, and I am an acupuncturist and meditation coach, and the founder of Healing House in Scottsdale. When I started Healing House in 2016, I envisioned a one-stop shop for holistic healing, with acupuncture, massage, bioenergetics, meditation training, and skincare as our core service offerings. We would allow clients to access these services at an incredibly affordable price through our membership subscription. They could earn two credits by paying just $99/month, which could be used on any of these services. What a great deal! I was excited to offer such an amazing price for truly excellent care. I really wasn’t concerned about making a ton of money – I just wanted to make a difference and get by.

Despite my super-low price point, the business did very well, and our clients loved our dedication to their well-being. We saved a bit of money, and towards the end of 2019, I decided to hire additional staff and expand our operations. We hired a nurse practitioner, a chiropractor, another acupuncturist, and a psychologist, as well as several other clinicians, and we expanded the clinic into the suite across the hall. We threw a big party at the beginning of February of 2020 to launch our new and improved healing center. We were so excited!

And then COVID-19 hit Arizona about two weeks later.

In business, timing is everything, and the timing of our launch could not have been worse. But there was a silver lining, in that our monthly membership subscription generated enough consistent income to keep us from having to immediately shut our doors. We stayed open, and we pushed through that first year of Covid, but we only survived by borrowing a lot of money.

And then 2021 rolled along, and we slowly righted the ship, and we started getting busy again. We hired two more counselors, and we hired a nurse to administer IVs. But even though we were getting busier, our costs kept rising due to inflation. We still weren’t making any money. But it was just a matter of time, and the worst of COVID seemed to have passed. Finally, towards the end of 2022, we started seeing a profit again. We were going to make it!

And then the unthinkable happened. Between December of 2022 and October of 2023, Healing House lost 80% of its staff, including its medical director, chiropractor, the entire counseling team, several massage therapists, two office managers, and several other support staff members.

Why did they all leave at once? It was a mix of reasons, but most of them told me they were leaving to go work for themselves. Since many of them started together in 2020, I managed to get many of them busy at roughly the same time through my marketing efforts, which cost me a small fortune. When they got busy, they decided to take their book of clients with them and start their own clinics. So they did.

As you can imagine, this was cataclysmic for Healing House. Efforts to rehire staff failed due to the COVID-related job market crisis, which was severe at the time. We even hired three different naturopathic doctors through the summer of 2023, but each one left for better opportunities within a couple weeks of accepting a position with us.

We also just ran into bad luck. At one point, we hired three nurses to do mobile IV, but right before they were about to start, one of them was actually shot five times while on a job with his previous employer. He took three bullets to the head and two to the body. Miraculously, he survived – thank goodness! But our hopes for a successful mobile IV service did not.

As a result of this sudden loss of staff and failed efforts to rehire in 2023, we were forced to cancel our membership program in October of that year. We had just lost our medical director, so we could not continue offering medical services, including primary care, IVs, and the like. And we no longer had chiropractic or couseling services, either. How could we charge clients in advance for services that we could no longer offer? We knew it would be unethical to do so – our choice was clear.

But without a membership program, we also knew we could not afford to keep our clinic open. We were in a really bad spot! At the time, I was told by my financial advisor that I should close my business and declare bankruptcy, as I had taken on almost $200K in debt to survive the worst of the COVID economic collapse and subsequent inflation, and without the monthly credit subscription, the clinic would now have no ongoing source of consistent revenue.

However, I really did not wish to cancel all of those credits that were purchased by members! I felt terrible for them. So, instead of closing the clinic and canceling all credits, I proposed giving all credits their cash value at the time of purchase – if they bought a $50 credit, it was now worth $50. And they could then deduct that value from our current prices. If they spent $50 on a credit, they could deduct that value from the cost of a 1-credit service, such as acupuncture or massage, which was now priced at $125, (or just $87.50 with our new membership pricing). This way, we could at least honor credits to some degree while raising enough new revenue to keep the business afloat, even though it meant the clinic would earn about 50-70% less than we normally would. But I was going to find a way to make it work, just so that clients could get some value for their credits versus none at all.

We therefore notified all clients in October 2023 that, to avoid bankruptcy and business closure, we would be ending their credit subscription and assigning cash value only to any remaining membership credits.

Unfortunately, many clients were not happy with this decision. Rather than see this as the best of two bad choices, they did not like the idea of paying more to use their credits. We completely understood—of course they wanted their credits to cover the full cost of service! That’s why they bought them at that price. But we did our best to explain the situation—that this was the best choice we could make. The alternative was the end of Healing House, and all credits would be rendered worthless.

But it was a tough sell, and in the end, we just couldn’t convince most of our members to pay the difference to keep the business afloat and their credits from disappearing completely. As a result, between November of 2023 and February of 2024, client volume dropped to as low as 30%. With so few clients coming in, we lost our other acupuncturist and another massage therapist, too. We were a skeleton crew of just me, one other full-time massage therapist (Tony), and an aesthetician. And we were still earning about 40% of our normal price, since we were honoring the cash value of credits. With so few clients and so little revenue, we were really struggling to make rent and pay our bills. Sadly, our best option at that point was to close the business and declare bankruptcy.

I did my best—I really tried! But sometimes, disasters like COVID-19 cause irreversible financial and staffing damage to companies, especially to small businesses… mine included.

So we gave clients three months, from March 1st until the end of May of 2024, to use up their credits. That three-month period has passed. We are no longer accepting Healing House credits, and we cannot make exceptions.

We are now actively closing down Healing House as a business entity and declaring bankruptcy. I will still offer my services under a different company structure in the suite across the hall from the original clinic. Tony is still working with me, too, which is wonderful. But that’s it — we are no longer trying to create a one-stop healing center with more than a dozen clinicians. That time has passed. And who knows… maybe we’ll bring on another clinician or a life coach, but it will be a much smaller practice going forward.

If you wish to come see me and Tony at the new clinic, “Walk Your Zen,” we would be very grateful for your ongoing patronage. We certainly understand that our clients might not feel too happy with this business closure and the loss of their credits. We absolutely get that, and we promise you, this is not what we intended.

But what we can also promise is that going forward, our intention will be totally focused on taking excellent care of our clients. No more aspirations of expansion or hiring a massive team of healers. We will stick to the basics and offer the best acupuncture, meditation, massage, and holistic healthcare in town. I’ve been named the best acupuncturist and meditation coach in Arizona by TopDoc Magazine for the last three years running, and I fully intend to keep that title for as long as you keep coming to see me at Walk Your Zen.

And we are so excited about what’s coming next! Walk Your Zen is already a wonderful clinic, with much larger acupuncture and massage rooms than Healing House ever had. The entire space is enfused with soft lighting, relaxing music, and aromatherapy for a truly upscale experience. Each treatment table has grounding mats to connect clients directly to the energy of the Earth – a proven remedy for pain and inflammation. All our linens are brand new and silky soft. And each acupuncture room has double heat lamps with infrared light therapy to keep clients warm and allow for increased healing and circulation.

But the biggest difference between Healing House and Walk Your Zen will be our new focus on web and app-based classes, podcasting, and workshops. We will be bringing humor and insight to you each week on how to heal every part of your being – mind, body, and soul. And my meditation training is second to none – you will learn the art of enlightenment, mastery, and awakening, so that you can experience lasting happiness in this world. So stay tuned for more announcements from muki@walkyourzen.com! You can sign up for our Instagram posts, Facebook feed, and other social media by clicking the icons below.

And please keep coming to see us! We love and care for every one of our clients. We thank each of you for your understanding throughout these struggles. Above all else, we sincerely wish you well on your healing journey.