Today we’d like to introduce you to Shane Carpenter.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
In 1998, I packed up all my belongings and moved to San Diego from a small island off the coast of Maine. My mom actually helped drive me here. She’s a truck driver and gave me the encouragement that I needed to follow my heart and dreams. We packed up all my stuff, and my motorcycle because I couldn’t bring my car, put it on the end of her flatbed trailer, and took freight across the United States until I arrived in Ocean Beach, San Diego. Initially, I was living on the couch at my friend’s house with a bunch of professional skateboarders while I was pursuing my certification in massage therapy at Mueller College of Holistic Studies.
I worked in California bouncing around different places doing massage therapy when I landed a job as an aide in a physical therapy practice and realized that I wanted to take my education further. Having been a college dropout, I had to start from scratch and completed my undergraduate education going to school part-time and working, also managing three surgeries on my knee during that time. In between undergraduate school and my grad work, I spent a couple of years in Costa Rica, learning Spanish, teaching surfing and really just trying to get grounded for the next steps that lay ahead.
I knew I wanted to be a physical therapist because I knew I wanted to dive in more to learn about the human body. I think there was something in me wanting more education at the time than my massage therapy certification. Although now I would have to say that my belief that healing is more of “an inside job’, and I am seeing my practice circle back more towards some of the Eastern philosophies that I initially learned in my massage therapy career.
So with nearly 20 years of body-work experience, either as a massage therapist or physical therapist, I’ve seen one thing that’s pretty consistent: the inner is the outer. If you have longterm emotional turmoil, it’s nearly impossible to get through the chronic pain that many people endure. So with this in mind, I decided to write a book, sharing some stories about my journey, with the vision to create an illustrated and guided journaling tool that could help my patients.
The book is self-published and it’s been a process just trying to learn the in’s and out’s of editing, formatting, publishing, and now promoting the book. I coined the pen name Arial Starr as I want to encourage women and entrepreneurs to reach for the stars and grow.
It’s been fun creating a new business vision, expanding on my existing private PT practice Surfer’s Edge Physical Therapy with my new business entity Arial Starr. It’s not necessarily aligned with traditional physical therapy, but it is my labor of love and I see the multidimensional healing that can come from connecting journaling, art, healthy eating, essential oils, AND the bodywork component that I have been used to.
I am currently writing a new program that combines functional movement analysis with the alignment of the chakra and energetic systems and tools for balancing, rebalancing these chakras and hope to have the course up this spring. In the meantime, I continue to practice my private practice working with surfers here in San Diego helping them stay connected to the ocean as I believe that the ocean can heal just about anything as well.
I’m excited to take these next steps in my journey as I believe it’s culminating in my experiences as I believe it’s a cumulative growth of my experiences over the last 20 years in my profession and field.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Oh yeah… yes, of course. Like any entrepreneur so many hardships, so many difficulties, and some days are easier than others. There are always technical hardships such as learning how to create websites and do social media marketing and trying to juggle having a ‘day job’ to help support my family while creating my vision… all the things that most entrepreneurs feel I would imagine.
Out of the gate, one of the biggest difficulties has truly been managing my own back injury while growing a business and being a physical therapist. Initially, I started my private physical therapy practice, Surfer’s Edge Physical Therapy, in 2013 while recovering from a back injury and surgery. Starting a business with no money and a significant injury probably was not the wisest decision, but I had a ton of time to help process and grow my vision. Recently I reinjured my back, and have had to really take my own words of advise and expertise to the heart in order to help heal.
A second challenge has been juggling finances, although that has shifted significantly in the last few months. I feel like it can be so difficult to trust that what you’re doing and offering the world IS the right path, especially when your bank account doesn’t always reflect it. We can get trapped sometimes comparing our progress to others, or feeling like we aren’t ‘far enough along’ yet. Sometimes I get wrapped up in feeling like I need to be running faster on the hamster wheel to feel validated in my efforts..when in reality, some of my most productive work comes from getting truly quiet and removing all distractions.
The third biggest challenge has been permitting myself to trust my gut and intuition. Trusting in your gut that what your intuition is telling you to do IS the right answer can get clouded by self-doubt at times. Lately, I’ve been really tuning in to really feels in integrity with my mind and body, having some self-love and compassion, and having empathy to take the time on this journey.
Arial Starr Inc – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Arial Starr is a creative and inspirational media company producing printed and online books, courses, and support. Arial Starr is focused on supporting women and entrepreneurs along their journies. I use the content and lessons from Arial Starr to help inspire others to share their stories through guided journaling and creative flow.
As a physical therapist, I use Arial Starr’s content in adjunct with my private physical therapy practice Surfer’s Edge Physical Therapy to teach about healthy living from the inside-out, emphasizing the mind-body connection. I pride myself on taking my time with my clients, giving them the attention that they need, and offering physical therapy and wellness services in a less traditional way- whether that be encouraging creative flow via story, journaling, surfing, or movement.
I used to say that the main differentiating part of my work was that I have dedicated my work towards helping surfers stay in the water… BUT, as I release this book, I feel I have set myself apart from many others by looking at what bigger life challenges people are facing, seeking out non-traditional tools for managing pain, and melding functional movement philosophies of physical therapy with eastern theories learned in my holistic massage certification. My vision is to help create a 3d mind-body-soul plan to help guide my clients along their way.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I define success as living an abundant and sustainable life, created by work that is founded in integrity and resonates with your body, mind, and soul. The markers I use to look out for come from an integrity business vision board process that I do quarterly.
In this process, I focus on my inner ‘Compass’, guided by integrity (North), Empathy (East), Self-Love (South), and Inner Wisdom (West). I then focus on my ‘Stars’ which are the emotions or feelings I want to have every morning when I wake up when I am at work, and when I go to sleep.
I represent these by pictures or doodles that I draw, cut out, and put on my vision board.
Then, I look at the tangible goals I want to achieve, write them down or draw them.
Finally, I do a massive spreadsheet that breaks down my goals into week/monthly/ yearly financial goals. That way, those numbers, when I look at them, have a LOT of meaning from the ground up. I can use the numbers as benchmarks, but, if I miss a goal, I take time to retrace the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the goal, and get a better understanding of why I may have missed the mark.
Pricing:
- Dream Big, Live Large, Love More- 15 Lessons Learned, Memoirs From a Truck Driver’s Daughter- $29.95
- Arial Starr Session- Including wellness coaching, energy and body balancing work $225.00
- Surfer’s Edge Physical Therapy Session – $125.00
Contact Info:
- Address: 2033 San Elijo Ave. #111 Cardiff, CA 92007
- Website: www.arialstarr.com
- Phone: 7605570760
- Email: info@arialstarr.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/arialstarr
- Other: www.surfersedgetherapy.com
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