Hi, I’m Kim!  Welcome to our site!  We are so glad that you found us 😊  Lindsay and I both love to be behind the scenes making scents, but we figured we should probably introduce ourselves and give you some history on why we started Harmony Naturals, so without further ado…

Harmony Naturals is my passion project.  It marinated in my brain for the better part of a decade – the kind of thing that I would contemplate in those hours in the night when sleep escapes me.  I first learned a bit about essential oils when I was in massage therapy school in Iowa back in 2006.  I thought they were cool and knew that I wanted to incorporate them into my routine once I became a Licensed Massage Therapist.  So I did that, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.  Then I decided that I was going to make products out of essential oils and sell them so, I did that too.  But, I didn’t really know what I was doing.  Of course, I was not wildly successful in my first attempt to bring essential oil goodness to my patients, but I always thought I would come back to it…

I started massage therapy school when my son was just nine months old and shortly after splitting up with my husband and moving back to Iowa from Illinois.  I should mention, this is also where the aforementioned Lindsay fits in the story.  When I moved back to Iowa, I worked as a trainer at a local Mexican/Irish restaurant (yes, I know that doesn’t make sense) while I went to school and then during my initial attempt to build a massage therapy practice.  Lindsay started at the same restaurant in the summer of ’07 and a life-long friendship was created over our love of tacos!  The next ten years were a whirlwind!  About two years into being a LMT, I went back to school for a nursing degree and I got back together with my husband (15 years and going strong!).  A year after that, I moved back to Illinois with my husband and our son.  Then my husband lost his job and we moved back to Iowa.  Then my husband found a job in Michigan, so we moved again.

So, in other words, our son could load a U-Haul before he knew how to tie his shoes!  In late 2011, I somehow lucked into starting my own massage therapy business after only three months in Lansing.  Originally, it was just me and I was still working on my nursing degree.  Four years, three schools and a lot student loans later, I decided that I really didn’t want to be a nurse; I was already doing what I love, so I set my sites on building a massage therapy practice.  I hired my first therapist in July of 2013 and have been building ever since.

Once I started to grow my massage therapy business, I turned my sights back to essential oils.  I never lost my interest and had always intended to come back to incorporating them into massages as well as my idea of creating products to go along with massages, but I wanted to actually know what I was doing this time around.  I began buying books, studying and learning more about all the great ways to use essential oils, along with developing a pretty voracious Pinterest addiction.  In the meantime, my best friend Lindsay (remember her from the beginning of this story?) was really starting to get interested in essential oils too.  We began sharing recipes and ideas with each other on how we were using them to clean our houses and our hair, etc.  We started talking about how cool it would be to start a business and really doing this thing.  But, our talks were just talks – “maybe someday” daydreams of two best friends who really like essential oils, but also lived nearly 500 miles apart.  And then some crazy things were set in motion.  I moved my massage therapy office out of the chiropractic office where we had been located for five years and opened my own office.  I was finally going to have my own space and could sell my own products!  I started creating some oil blends and packaging them and putting them on my shelves!  I had about six blends and I thought I was big time!  And then I kind of hit a brick wall with the realization that managing more staff (and my own office) in addition to being a full-time massage therapist perhaps would not allow me enough time to really pursue this side-dream.  In February 2017, I received a phone call from Lindsay.  I tried to make that sound super dramatic, but Lindsay and I talked on the phone nearly every day.  But this call was different.  This was the call where she told me she was going to quit her job, move to Michigan and we really were going to do this thing!  And she actually did it!

So here we are, just a couple of Iowans in the heart of Michigan, loving life and pursing some big dreams.  It has been a slow and somewhat frustrating journey… and it has been worth every minute of it!

We have put in a ton of blood, sweat and tears (not into the products, just into the effort) into creating an essential oil company that encompasses our vision of value and versatility and we are thrilled to finally be ready to release our dream into the world!  So welcome to our journey!  We’re glad you found us and excited about what is to come <3

Also, Go Hawks!  I just added that because I know Lindsay couldn’t believe I didn’t slip that in somewhere else.  But for real, GO HAWKS!

Essentially yours,