Jennifer Burns, proprietor of Healing Hands Massage and Wellness Center, career in massage started in the early 1990’s.  Her original plan was to study physical therapy. She was looking for something to do over summer break when her uncle recommended that she take a massage therapy class with him. “As soon as I placed my hands on someone, I knew this was what I wanted to devote my life to,” she says. She ditched her plans to become a physical therapist and never looked back.

 

Upon graduation, Jennifer was employed for two years by someone she describes as “to this day, the best massage therapist I’ve ever known.” When that business closed, Burns worked wherever she could, “in a clinic, in people’s homes, in my grandmother’s attic” until her brother-in-law encouraged her to rent her own space. Only 22 years old at the time, Jennifer decided to go for it, and to figure it out as she went along, a strategy that continues to serve her to this day. She found basement space in the building her business still occupies, only now she’s the owner. Back then, it required a big leap of faith, along with a loan from her grandmother and the help of her then-boyfriend who, as luck would have it, was a construction foreman. She signed a lease, designed the space and began renovations. Though Jennifer admits to learning much from trial-and-error over the years, she was committed to the customer experience even then, choosing to divide the space into two larger, luxurious treatment rooms instead of four smaller ones. “I wanted both clients and therapists to be happy in the space,” she says, noting that “everything is in the details.”

 

Her business soon grew enough to warrant hiring two massage therapists to keep up with demand, and eventually expanded to include the building’s entire basement and upper level. When the main level of the building became available, Jennifer's brother suggested she consider buying it. In October 2016, she completed the sale “against all odds” and immediately began renovations on the main level to accommodate the expansion of services.

 

Jennifer attributes much of her success to “hiring people who are better than me,” along with the wisdom of several female mentors - the dean of a nursing school, a successful chiropractor, and her former boss.

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