Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Brooke James.
Ashley Brooke, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up in Knoxville, TN as the youngest sibling to two older brothers––which naturally made me very competitive. I played many different sports growing up and was involved in every organization from Student Government to Concert Choir. I knew very early that I loved working in groups and noticed it was natural for me to take the lead role or be the person who spoke on behalf of the group.
When I was in college, I had my first entrepreneurial idea. I started a babysitting club called Sitters, Inc. At the time, I was babysitting for some of the most powerful businesspeople in the Murfreesboro area. I started babysitting for multiple families and eventually found myself getting so overbooked that I turned to my roommates and other classmates to get them involved. I was excited and really wanted to take this business idea of mine and make it real. I spoke with my parents and, although they supported my idea and knew the money I was bringing in for myself as a college student was great, they encouraged me to stay focused on my degree. If I was still interested after graduation, they would help make my dream come true. But, of course, as many college students do––I changed my major and wanted to take my career in another direction after graduation.
For ten years, I was in sales roles. I did consumer sales for Dell Computers and then went into Healthcare IT recruiting and Account Management. I learned so much and I finally found my calling. Sales. I love to talk and I’d consider myself quite the charmer so it was a perfect match. I managed large healthcare accounts and traveled the southeast regularly (often finding myself in Atlanta). Eventually, I began to notice my health was deteriorating. I developed chronic migraines that lingered for months at a time. My hair was breaking off and I was getting little to no sleep. I needed an out.
In 2012, I found yoga. By that point, my migraines had gotten so painful that the medicines I was prescribed made me feel worse. I needed a natural solution and yoga offered that to me. I had gone to yoga occasionally with friends but found myself going back. Alone. Each time I was alone in this space but it felt good. In the studio, doing yoga took me a place of clarity and I craved it more and more. Because I was still traveling a lot with my job, I would find different studios in each city I visited because I loved it so much.
What I did notice when traveling back and forth from Nashville to Atlanta (and other cities) was that I was often the only black student in the class. It didn’t bother me that I was the only one––what bothered me was the lack of representation of black and brown people in the yoga space. This is a tool we can use as a minority community to help us heal. Class after class, I was seeing little to no representation and certainly no black yoga instructors, so I made the decision to get my first certification. It was a way for me to let the black community know: “Here I am. Come join me.”
In 2018, I left my corporate job to take on wellness full time. During that time, I received my second yoga certification and met my future business partner, Elizabeth Moore. In the summer of 2019, Elizabeth asked me to join a program at our local Entrepreneur center called Preflight designed to help businesses launch their businesses. In September 2019, we launched TRILUNA Wellness.
At TRILUNA, we combine our three core services—movement, cooking classes, and health coaching—to build healthier communities by creating events that focus on basic wellness practices and techniques.
Today, TRILUNA is a local leader in solving how wellness and work can live in harmony and you’ll often find Elizabeth and I leading workshops, hosting festivals, speaking at conferences, and executing panels on everything from diversity and inclusion to meditation for stress management.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The ride has not been smooth AT ALL. We started thinking our business would be one thing (like a brick and mortar spa) but were fully a concierge business model by the time we launched. We started out thinking we would serve the community by doing in-home wellness parties and quickly found out that our services and stories serve better in Corporate America. We’ve worked through many hardships, worked very long hours, and made big sacrifices with no income.
We’ve struggled with being responsible for every aspect of the business…and wearing ourselves out very quickly in the process. We’ve mismanaged money and our team.
We are currently in the middle of a global pandemic that has affected us in every way and we’ve made multiple pivots. We are wellness providers, which means we naturally take care of others, but finding balance and taking care of ourselves has proven more difficult.
But, we always return to our why and what problem we set out to solve in the very beginning which often allows us to return to a place of grounding.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about TRILUNA, LLC – what should we know?
We started TRILUNA for multiple reasons. We saw little to no representation––not only in race but also in body types and experience levels. We observed that people often confused about wellness and fitness and we wanted to change that. We do not believe that they are the same. You can be fit and unwell. You can be well and not look like the magazine picture of fitness. True wellness is so much deeper than appearance.
TRILUNA is a 100% female-owned company based in Nashville, TN on a mission to make wellness accessible and enjoyable. For everyone. We specialize in getting back to the basics so our classes are designed to cater to all levels of experience and fitness. Our goal is to increase access to sustainable wellness, build supportive communities, and create everyday magic.
Our services include corporate curriculum, large scale community events, retreats, memberships, and more. We believe health should be accessible, sustainable, and tinged with just a bit of magic.
Watching our vision come to life has been a true honor! We are proud of ourselves because within the first year of our business we held two private retreats, a festival with 500 attendees, had the opportunity to lead workshops, speak on panels for Fortune 500 companies––and do it all while staying debt-free.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Where we see it going and where we hope it goes are two different things. We recently wrote a letter to the fitness community in our hometown of Nashville that was….a bit scathing. The pandemic has brought out the worst in our industry, but it has also brought out the best in some. It has been eye-opening, to say the least. In the beginning, we saw a lot of “don’t gain the quarantine 15” or “make sure you work out every day, no excuses” which we just think is ridiculous. Now is the time to focus on your mental health. Find a movement that feels good in your body. Explore your own inner landscape. Lean on your community for support. Rest.
Our hope, and what we see more often now, is a version of a fitness culture that is beginning to incorporate mental health. We always say, “all the kale in the world won’t save you if you have an insane amount of stress in your life.” Shame is traumatizing and it has no place in an industry that claims to be trying to help people. It’s so important that we take care of ourselves in ways that consider more than our physical appearance.
Our dream future wouldn’t have unnecessary diets. There wouldn’t be fat-shaming or a “no excuses” culture around exercise; There would be an emphasis on whole-body health; On movement that makes you feel good and is a celebration of your body. Everyone would find themselves represented and cared for so they could explore new ways of caring for themselves.
We’re a long way off from that, but there is a ground swell of companies that realize the importance of this and are working to help the wellness industry course correct. We are hopeful that that future is closer than we think.
Contact Info:
- Website: trilunawellness.com
- Phone: (615)427-0129
- Email: ashley@trilunawellness.com Hello@TRILUNAwellness.com
- Instagram: @TRILUNA_wellness @ab_the_yogi
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-brooke-james-0a394120/
Image Credits:
Headshot by Kathy Thomas
Individual yoga photos by Drae Brown Photography
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