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We’re back again this week with another exciting interview. Today I’m talking with Maika Endo, founder of MaikaEndo.co (formerly Wellnesspreneur.co) and creator of an award-winning business in Beijing.

Maika lives in Istanbul and remotely runs Kocoon Spa in Beijing. (How cool is that?!) She was originally born in Japan but has lived all over the globe and speaks multiple languages.

I stumbled across her website for wellness entrepreneurs recently (MaikaEndo.co) and pretty much everything she teaches about growing a business resonated with me. Her marketing philosophy is so similar to what I teach and it’s incredibly powerful to hear that the same marketing basics work to successfully build small businesses that are literally halfway around the world. 🙌

I’m so grateful Maika took the time to interview with me and share her knowledge. We talk about everything under the sun, including her stress and exhaustion-induced illness years ago (from overwork!) that put her in hospital.

Maika explains how this was a huge turning point for the way she ran her business, and it’s something she sees entrepreneurs suffer from all the time – an addiction to work out of both passion for your craft AND fear that you could fail.

I love her honesty and her solid approach to marketing based on relationship building. I think you’re going to love her too!

Plus Maika has a free worksheet for you if you visit her website! >> 33 Easy Ways to Grow Your Business (Even on a Tight Budget)

Maika and I discuss:

• How she runs an award-winning business from 4300 miles away
• What it took to grow that business from the ground up
• How creating a relationship with clients is essential for long-term success
• Why knowing your target market (aka, your ideal patient) is so important in marketing effectively
• Why you must learn to take care of yourself as an entrepreneur, and how this makes you a better business owner and boss
• And much, much more!

Let’s dive in!

You are French-Japanese, living in Istanbul, running an award-winning spa in Beijing called Kocoon. Can you tell us a bit about that? Do you mind sharing how you ended up in Beijing, and then Istanbul?

I was born in Japan (Sendai), and at the age of 4, my mother and father separated and I moved to France with my mother who married my French stepfather. He worked in the airlines, so we travelled to exotic destinations on holidays.

French was their common language, and I started picking up on the language faster than Japanese. When they realized this, my stepfather and I made a deal. I promised to help him learn Japanese and he promised me to help me learn English. So at 4.5 years old, he sent me to Alaska and I stayed four months in a host family. And when I came back, English became our language at home. From that time, I spent a few more extended stays with my Alaskan family, with another family in Tacoma, and then in Germany to learn German. So to answer your question, my stepfather used his connections to help me travel and spend extended time abroad.

After high school I studied at an international business school for four years. Three of my friends were taking Chinese classes for a few years and they were about to go to Beijing for a 4.5 month exchange program. That sounded fun so I did everything I could to go with them. I fell in love with the city, the culture, and learning Chinese characters. I knew I had to come back and live there. It took some time back and fourth. My stepfather had cancer, and passed away. When I came back to France I thought I was back for good. But a few months later, China was calling me and I had to go back. I made it back for good in 2003.

And then I met my soulmate in Beijing and two years ago, I left Beijing to come to Istanbul.

Wow! That’s a LOT of traveling for a very young person!

You run MaikaEndo.co, a website created to teach wellness business owners the skills they need to improve their marketing and build their businesses. And you have some pretty serious street cred for why you’re qualified to teach others: you started an award-winning spa in Beijing which you now run all the way from Istanbul.

Before we talk about MaikaEndo.co, let’s talk about this award-winning business, Kocoon Spa in Beijing, that you built from the ground up. What inspired you to start Kocoon?

When my stepfather got his cancer (an advanced stage of melanoma), I had no idea about alternative therapies, and we were introduced to it by a distant friend of my mother. Exploring energy therapy, and then later, aromatherapy through another friend of hers, helped us take more ownership of the healing process of my stepfather. Although this did not cure him, I use the word “healing” because it was the only thing that seemed to provide relief to everyone, including him.

The trigger that started Kocoon: I was the marketing and event manager in an English media company in Beijing for almost three years. I knew that something else was calling me but I didn’t know what. I had to leave everything and went to Thailand on a spontaneous backpacking trip. I was there for the first time, and I was mesmerized by the hospitality and natural grace of the Thai people. The spas were everywhere and done so well. When I came back, I had lost my job. I started an event organization with a couple friends. Our goal was to “shape the music scene” in the city, we worked with Scandinavian embassies and organized music festivals.

Meanwhile, I started to brainstorm with my mother the idea of a joint project, and we pretty quickly came to the idea of a spa and wellness center, because we were both very interested in health and wellness at that stage.

Together we went to Japan to learn Shiatsu with a Japanese master, and then I took my reiki first level there as well. We flew to Toronto to take a spa set up training. In Paris, a renowned researcher in aromatherapy, Pierre Franchomme, was giving a seminar about aromatherapy and its therapeutic use, so I also dived into that.

How do you run Kocoon from Istanbul?

I have a weekly video call session with our spa manager, and she has daily reports and weekly reports to email me. She can share questions or where she is stuck, and then I send her back my feedback or I keep it for our weekly call.

I have “mystery shoppers” and also “inspectors” who go there, with a specific questionnaire.

I set up an automated system where clients receive a feedback form after their visit, so I read each one of them, and follow up with the manager if necessary.

I am close to some clients so I always ask for their feedback as well.

And then we have our WeChat group where we communicate.

The team is on the operation side, and I am mostly controlling the finance side (budget, payroll, cash-flow, targets), and the marketing side (social media, newsletter, website, monthly specials, cross promotions, marketing material etc.).

I try to not micro manage, but I also keep a close eye, and show that I am there when needed. It’s like being a stalker, without being seen!

I love that, “like being a stalker” 🤣 In the best way possible.

How did you begin Kocoon spa? Did you start very small and expand your services as it grew, or did you open it in its current format?

We started way too big to match our dreams. This was a mistake. The rent was too expensive, the location was risky (new building), the space was too large, and we started with too many services and product inventory (e.g. five kinds of body wraps, three kinds of body scrubs etc.). The non-revenue generating space was disproportionally too large compared to the revenue-generating space.

We started more as nail lounge and spa, and the customers were more spa. So we had to add more treatment rooms and decrease the lounge area. For a year, I also experimented with a tea bar and retail, but then realized it was too many things to manage at once, and I decided in the end that it would be wiser to stay focused on the core business and do just that part well.

Our current location is half the size we had when we started in 2008, but we use the space so much better, we have more treatment rooms, and no nail area.

You have so many awards for your business – I know many of my readers would love to be recognized as outstanding businesses in the cities where they’re located. What advice do you have for them to get noticed?

Our business has been there for 10 years and our brand has a solid reputation. Our team goes the extra mile and makes sure to WOW every customer that comes in. Some have become friends over the years, some will over time introduce their partner, friends, and relatives. Having this kind of strong relationship with customers is key to having lifelong repeat clients.

I believe that the key to being noticed is to do things with love, full presence, and with authenticity. There are so many places that offer the massages and facials, but what is priceless is to have the full presence of the therapist. I think in the first few seconds you know if you’re going to have a great treatment or not.

And then treat your patients, as a friend. You would care about your friend beyond the treatment, for their general well being and health. You would provide resources to support them on their journey, wish them well on their birthday, celebrate every year of a relationship, wish them a Happy New Year, send them a thank you card, and so on.

To illustrate the above, there is this beautiful quote:

“People may forget what you said or did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

What did we do for the Best Spa Award? We didn’t focus on winning an award but keeping our customers always satisfied year after year, and this has always been our top priority. When people are presented with several choices of spas to vote for, they will choose the one that wins their heart.

What marketing has worked best for you in building Kocoon? 

We do a lot of cross-promotions to promote our business. But surprisingly, when we did a survey last year, the top two channels for bringing new customers were clients referrals and Google search.

After finding this out, we started offering referral cards to clients when they check out (we put it in their new customer welcome envelop), so that what was happening already organically could happen more often by making it intentional.

I love this. Assessing your marketing efforts (i.e., where your customers are coming from) is critical for the reason you just mentioned – once you know what marketing is working, you can double down on those efforts to get a better ROI over all.

Any marketing efforts that fell flat / seemed like a waste of time or money? 

Buying ads for print media was a waste of money. Although we bartered half of the value, we still paid half in cash. I learned that you should only pay for things if you can measure the return on investment in a tangible and accurate way.

Groupon kind of promotion: We did this in our first year and it was a total disaster. People were only interested in discounted massages and it burned out the therapists. It also brought the wrong audience. We got only a couple good clients out of it; those that would  understand and value what we do and come back and pay the right price.

The cash flow you get from Groupon is not worth it, and it’s also not building your business for the long term. It’s like taking a pill to decrease the symptoms, but it’s not providing any solution to the problem and it’s not making you stronger.

We moved on to more viable ways to promote our business. I learned that you should only make efforts to target your “ideal” customers.

Yes! I had the same experience. I did Groupon once and felt like I was burnt out treating so many patients for almost no revenue, and, just like you said, they ended up not being the right patients for my clinic. They weren’t there to promote their health and they certainly weren’t ready to invest in it. They were only there for the discount.

Your success in running Kocoon led you to start MaikaEndo.co, your website to help wellness practitioners of all kinds (including acupuncturists) grow their businesses, find more clients, and increase revenue. What sparked your desire to work with other wellness-oriented business owners?

During my time in Beijing running the spa, I collaborated with many visiting practitioners from around the world (Kocoon spa would be their Beijing platform) and also many local practitioners who needed a space to treat their clients (we have sublet our space to a resident acupuncture and Chinese medicine practitioner for years). The disciplines were very eclectic; Past Life Regression, Intuitive Body Pulsing, Thai Yoga Massage, Tarot Card Reading, Pendulum, Crystal Healing, Chinese Medicine, Qi Gong, Reiki etc.

I learned how to build awareness of a therapy when nobody had heard about it, and how to build a community of followers around the practitioner.

I love working with therapists and wellness professionals. I feel like I learn a lot from them in areas that I find fascinating and yet familiar, and I respect and admire their dedication in improving their patients’ lives. I also see where they struggle for things such as managing a client profile database, creating their brochure, launching their website etc. I noticed where they struggled between the therapeutic role and the business operator role. And so naturally, I started bartering services, for treatment/sessions against marketing tips and tools.

When I moved to Istanbul, I searched for my purpose for a year, and thought about for a long time. And then it came like an epiphany: I want to serve those who serve.

In your “About” page, you mention that you literally worked yourself so hard building Kocoon that you became ill. And after a visit to the emergency room, you realized that something had to shift if you were going to be able to continue running Kocoon. This experience is an important factor in how you approach the advice you give on your website. Can you tell us more about what happened?

I was at the spa from the morning until as late as they would be clients, and we would be open 7 days a week. Although we close at 9:30 pm, if a client came in at 9:15 pm, we would take them to sustain the business. We would never refuse a client because it may have been one of the only three clients of the day!

I was running the spa; taking the phone calls, serving tea to the customers, greeting, farewell, cleaning etc… I would skip lunch and then eat dinner very late. There was a period where it was tight on cash flow and when had to tell the team that the salaries would be paid later; it was such as burden for me. I felt really bad about it, and every pay day was causing a lot of anxiety and migraines (which became chronic). I was so skinny a friend thought I was anorexic.

I was also becoming a vegetarian, and my body started to be very weak, and I was sick every single month for almost a year- but one particular week, I started to feel bad and things got out of hand. I was having more and more fever, was vomiting all the time, I would get hives after eating something, and I barely ate for a week. I could only drink water from a glass bottle. My kidney was not functioning anymore, and at last, I was transported to the emergency in the middle of the night.

I understood that things are not going to change in my favor unless I decide to make changes. I made my own health a priority, and I read many books. I stopped being vegetarian (I still favor a plant-based diet today). I learned that I am not the business, and I had to separate myself from the business, and be conscious that they were two different entities. That was a huge shift in my mindset.

I started to take time off to work “on” the business and not “in” the business. I changed our business hours to 8:30 pm for closing time, and closed the business on Mondays. We became more strict on late arrivals and cancellation policies.

And finally, I let go of our fancy accounting service provider, and we closed one location. It was better to keep it manageable rather than having a “nice address.”

I try to share this experience with people I work with. We are overwhelmed because we choose to be, and sometimes, we don’t make the changes that we need to make because it’s easier to settle for something that we know rather than taking risks and going for the unknown. I learned to streamline the business to keep things manageable, and prioritize peace of mind.

I believe that being a business owner means learning to juggle many roles a time. We can’t just be good at one thing. You have to work proactively and be disciplined with yourself in order to not let external factors affect our mood and take over your personal life. That is why I’m so attached to my rituals!

That it is almost a responsibility as a leader, to take the time to work on oneself. This means constantly improving our skills and knowledge, personal development, and taking time off to nurture ourselves, play, relax, travel. Being a happier and more balanced self makes us better leaders and business owners.

A healthy business needs a healthy you!

I’m doing a little happy dance in my head to hear you say all of this 💃🏻 We have to prioritize ourselves and our well-being in order to be the most effective business owners we can be. We also can’t expect to be good at everything, even though there’s so much pressure sometimes. There’s always something we can change or someone we can ask for help. We don’t have to do it alone.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received about running a business?

“If you feel tired and feel like quitting, maybe all you need is help.”  Dalida Turkovic as she was coaching me.

What advice do you have for acupuncture students? How can they start building their future businesses while they’re still in school?

I would recommend to get in the business owner mindset from today. Rather than learning by doing when you start your practice, you’ll avoid costly mistakes simply by taking the time to prepare and develop your entrepreneurial muscle.

1- Research everything you can to gain business expertise, such as taking business trainings, listening to podcasts, and reading books. You can learn a lot from other industries as well, in terms of small business ownership, and there are so many good resources available.

2- Collect material from your competitors and also from other countries for inspiration. And then create your business identity, branding, marketing calendar, set up cost and revenue projections. That way when you graduate you have a road map to follow.

I bought every book available about spas, and started a booklet with photos of nice spas, design ideas, logo and name ideas, an “ideal” menu, and my marketing calendar, two years before I started Kocoon Spa. A friend even sent me a package one day, with the printed menus of all the spas in San Francisco!

=>Start your business and marketing plan today, and keep on editing it until the day you start your practice.

Yes, yes, yes. You’re reading my mind. I’m always encouraging students to read up as much as possible on marketing and business planning before they graduate school. It takes time and sometimes multiple revisions to visualize what you want for your future business and how you plan to go about creating it. The sooner students start thinking about it, the better.

In your free download, 33 Easy Ways to Grow Your Business (which everyone can find here), you start off by asking the business owner to identify who they’re speaking to, in other words, defining their target market. Why is this important before beginning marketing?

• Are you targeting white collar workers?
• Are you specialized in fertility and pregnancy?
• Are you offering cosmetic acupuncture and Qi Gong for women who want to age gracefully?

Knowing your target is essential to pick the right venue/location, the right marketing material and channel, and design the right content. It will also determine which partnerships to develop, and where to focus all your marketing efforts to grow your client database.

It’s not that simple to define our target market accurately when we’re just starting out. If you are not sure but have a specific location in mind (a city, a town), you should definitely conduct an extensive market study to see what kind of traffic and demographics exist there and spend some time in the neighborhood businesses.

Once you’ve nailed down your target, you can study where they hang out (place some flyers or business cards), what they read (get some reviews), where they eat and socialize (co-host some workshops or go there to socialize!), where they spend time (targeted Facebook ads). You have to become a stalker!

I do believe that the target may change (it’s not irreversible!) as the business develops and also as your connection to a specific type of audience becomes clear.

Agreed. A lot of acupuncturists are initially afraid to specialize and really get specific with their target market because they’re afraid of excluding other patients. But I always remind them of the same thing: they can course correct and change their target market as their business progresses. We’re all always learning and improving. This applies to your target market as well. There’s nothing wrong with that!

If our readers wanted to get more patients on their schedule this week, what would you recommend they do right now to make that happen?

Chinese medicine is great to promote in synchronicity with the seasons and traditions. There are so many marketing opportunities!

For example: Spring is here, so you could promote a Welcome Spring Package with acupuncture and cupping for liver detox, or reflexology, and a cup of mint/honey tea. You can focus your communication on why the clients needs that right now, and why it would be the best time to book their treatment to get the most out of it now.

I know that feeling when the schedule is empty, we tend to react immediately and discount our services. It would be best to promote a special at least a week before so you have time to educate and tease. And if you create a package, it doesn’t feel like something is discounted, but rather that you are offering a sampling of services.

In winter, we make red date and ginger tea as the welcome tea for our customers, and they love it and always ask about it. It gives a great window to talk about Chinese medicine and educate our clients in a non-invasive way.

You have some great interviews with wellness business owners on your website – the “Mindful Coffee” interviews. So I have to ask a few of the fun questions that you also ask:

How do you take your coffee?

When at home, I make chemex coffee or Nespresso vanilla. When outside, I have a cortado.

OMG, Nespresso vanilla sounds amazing 😍☕ What do you have for breakfast on good days?

I change it all the time, but this week, it’s a runny sunny side up egg on a slice of sourdough bread, or one raw egg in a rice porridge, mixed with a tea spoon of soy sauce (Japanese recipe).

What are you grateful for? 

The freedom to be able to pursue what I love to do and to choose the people I work with.

Thank you so much, Maika! It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Follow Maika online:

• Instagram:  @maika.endo
• Website:  http://www.MaikaEndo.co
• Send Maika an email at maika@maikaendo.co
• Sign up for her newsletter, Sweet Words, and receive occasional emails from Maika with thoughtfully curated updates, free self-coaching tools, and resources to turn the business chaos into calm.