After teaching parents throughout Australia how to massage their babies, Amy Booker is now able to reach parents and babies all over the world through her online baby massage courses. Creating a loving, emotional bond through gentle touch, creates security, trust and comfort for your precious baby and supports their development. Here, Amy talks about her inspirations and her dreams for the future.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business ?
Parents are babies’ first teachers; they learn about feelings, emotions and social interactions from us, their parents. Massage is such a lovely and special way for parents to connect with their babies.
Babies crave skin contact; touch is the most developed sense at birth and parents can use it to communicate with their babies immediately. Essentially, by attending to our babies needs with gentle, loving touch, we are laying down the foundations of love, security, trust and comfort which ultimately encourages the emotional bond between you and your baby. A strong bond has been shown to help support the emotional and social development of the infant and child.
As a baby massage instructor, I am so passionate about empowering parents to positively touch and communicate with their babies, helping to create more loving and connected relationships.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
I started teaching baby massage in my local area in 2013. I offered 1:1 courses and workshops to parents in their homes as well as small group classes around the local area at yoga studios, wellness centres and local private midwifery practices.
I realised very quickly that I was the only baby massage instructor within a 2-hour drive in any direction. New parents desperately want to come along to my baby massage classes but driving a couple of hours to attend a weekly baby massage class was simply not ideal or realistic for a new mumma and babe. This is when I knew that I had to offer my baby massage courses online so that parents all over Australia – actually anywhere in the world- could have access to the course and could experience the benefits of baby massage and the incredible power of touch.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you in your business?
Offering the courses online has been the most incredible experience for parents and babies who would otherwise not have been able to attend classes. I have been offering live 1:1 and small group classes online for a couple of years now and I am just so excited to be officially launching my online baby massage course in April 2020.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
Ahh the juggle is real. I purchased my first business when I was 22 years old. This was my baby before I had babies. I have ridden the rollercoaster of small business now for over 10 years and learnt a lot of lessons along the way. I had two babies under two; it was incredible, and amazing, and overwhelmingly stressful. To begin with, I really struggled to find the balance, actually there was no balance at all. I was managing a wellness centre, massaging 8+ clients a day, 4-5 days a week, running baby massage and group fitness classes and looking after two tiny humans who didn’t sleep! I was running purely on adrenaline and caffeine…..
I was giving everything I had to everyone else until I had nothing left to give and completely burnt out at the beginning of 2016. It was a big wake-up call to pivot the direction of the business and as cliche as it may sound….. look after myself.
You really can not pour from an empty cup! It’s as simple as that. We need to look after ourselves so that we can give from the overflow – to our babies, our loved ones, and our businesses.
