Good Neighbor Podcast: South of the River
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South of the River
Good Neighbor Podcast: South of the River
EP #108 Marisarah Larvick: Redefining Wellness and Balancing Family Life
Discover the transformative journey of Marisarah Larvick, the dynamic founder behind MNIV and Beem Light Sauna. She unveils how she transitioned from a demanding nursing career to launching two innovative wellness ventures. Tune in to uncover the real truth about IV hydration therapy and infrared saunas as Marisarah dispels myths and emphasizes their powerful health benefits. From the convenience of at-home treatments in the Twin Cities to creating a sanctuary for self-care in Minnesota, learn how she’s redefining wellness and helping communities thrive.
Join us as we explore the art of balancing entrepreneurship with family, delving into the flexibility and challenges Marisarah faces as a business owner. Her inspiring story illustrates the importance of family values and resilience, as she shares how she stays involved in her children’s lives while fostering a legacy. Listen to her experiences of overcoming setbacks and her excitement for future family adventures. This episode paints a vivid picture of how Marisarah not only manages to build successful businesses but also instills valuable life lessons for future generations.
Beem Light Sauna - Savage
Marisarah Larvick
8160 County Road 42, Ste 400
Savage, MN 55378
952-641-0001
www.beemlightsauna.com/savage
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mark Bratton.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbors Podcast, episode number 108. And with me today is a very amazing friend who has some products and services to keep us all feeling and running at peak performance. So with that, I'm proud to introduce Mary Sarah Larvik, the founder of MNIV and now opening of being Light Sauna. Welcome, Mary Sarah.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Mark. I appreciate you having me today.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think we're going to have some fun, and I know all the people south of the river are going to enjoy it as well, and hopefully they'll get you all booked up over there at your new location. So I'm excited to hear about that. So let's start with just a little bit. Why don't you go ahead and tell us all a little bit about your businesses and the everyday journey you've had?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so well, I'm a nurse by trade. I have a nursing degree from Minnesota State University of Mankato and worked in busy emergency rooms for 13 plus years and, through the pandemic and having a young family, kind of like, I don't want to work these crazy hours, shift work anymore and my husband, cody, challenged me to start a business, and so we we started a small home care agency back in 2019, which kind of dipped our toes into what entrepreneurship looked like, but knew deep down in my heart heart that wasn't really the area of nursing and kind of the avenue I wanted to go, so we chose not to continue on that journey. But then I I love IVs and IV fluid and all the things that come with helping people feel better on their worst days, and so that inspired me to start my IV hydration business called MNIV, and we service mobily throughout the twin cities, mankato and Rochester, have a team of nurses that we come directly to your home and administer IV treatments to help you feel better. And then, most recently, as we continue to build um our entrepreneur folder um one, of course, was just not enough we decided we really resonated with the brand Beam Light Sauna, which is a franchise brand out of North Carolina and it's a wellness brand, focuses on light therapy, but it is.
Speaker 3:Beam Light Sauna is a sauna studio, so we are bringing one to Savage Minnesota, which we are super excited about, and we will have seven private rooms that will have infrared saunas in them and then we will have two full body medical grade red light therapy beds. The red light therapy sessions will be 15 minutes in length and the infrared sauna sessions will be 40 minutes in length. But both of these services really can help heal your body, detox your body can help heal your body, detox your body, decrease stress, renew your skin, remove toxins, decrease pain and improve your sleep and really just your overall longevity to your life and help you live a healthier, stronger and longer life.
Speaker 2:Wow, Wow. I can see so much and I know we can all hear the passion coming right out of nursing into serving the inside of the body and now the outside. Oh my God, that's so great. I'm guessing we're going to spend lots of time with you.
Speaker 3:That's awesome about helping people live their best life and also just being in control of their life and what what they do to help better it um where us uh with beam. Our hope is that people will choose us as like, as like their self-care oasis, a place that they come and feel safe but yet also able to, um just relax and restore and repair and heal their body um kind of in one place.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that it's healing versus just putting a little suntan on your skin, because I once upon a time owned a racquetball club and we had tanning beds and the only value you got out of that is you got a sunburn or you just got some fake tan before you went on vacation, but it's healthy.
Speaker 3:The vitamin D, though that is something that you maybe one of the most beneficial things of a tanning bed that people might still go use that service for is the ability to increase your vitamin D levels, um, which is super important to overall health, um, and your wellness, but the UV lights and things like that can really not benefit your skin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they've changed. And it actually moves me into a question I love to ask with everybody, because in all of our businesses and all the industries we have, there's always those myths and misconceptions about a name, something you do, whatever it is, and your business? I mean you're doing IDs and and, like we just talked about the light, what kind of light is going on in you? What are the misconceptions or myths that you can share that obviously you've comforted your customers by telling them no, that's really just a myth, it's not true.
Speaker 3:Do you want me to elaborate on both the IV side and the light therapy side?
Speaker 2:Tell everybody Go for it.
Speaker 3:So I guess from the IV standpoint there's a big misconception that it's just when you infuse the IV with the vitamins. People will say that it's just really expensive pee. And what they mean by that is you're just infusing the fluid into your bloodstream and then you just pee it all out and so you're just paying for expensive pee. That is a total white lie. Yes, well, will your urine maybe be a little more vitamin E after an infusion? Yes, but the ability to infuse the vitamins and IV fluid and the sodium and all of that goodness into your bloodstream helps you feel better and it helps repair your cells and improve, improve how you feel and your sleep and even if you're sick, can help you feel better from that. So that is one debunked myth that you may hear. In the IV space, as far as the light therapy goes, people as far as the light, the infrared sauna space, people they I'm trying to think what. I had it on the top of my head before I answered that IV question Well, it's a new product, if you will.
Speaker 3:It's hard to debunk because, oh, a lot of people don't want to use a sauna because they think that it's too hot and they're not going to be able to breathe in there. And it's just, it's too incredibly hot. And the beauty about beam light sauna versus a traditional sauna is we are going to have infrared saunas and the beauty there is that an infrared sauna it does not have to get as hot, so you're actually able to control how warm you program the sauna temperature to. We recommend around 135 degrees, but you don't you don't have to go as high of that high, up to that high. You can start at 100 degrees and still really be. Your body will still take advantage of those six core benefits and then you can slowly move up to hotter if your body is able to tolerate it. So with the infrared light it's brought you more benefit to utilizing a sauna, but not at such high, extreme temperatures.
Speaker 2:Man, I love technology. Mary, I just love technology. It's so cool, although once upon a time ago, I did like the water sauna. You dip the water, yeah, it's all good. That was before I got on the racquet. Son, I dipped the water, yeah, it's all good. Yeah, that was before I got on the racquetball court and tried to kill myself. So it's all good, I'm impressed. That's great. I know for a fact that I'm going to be excited to try that and give it a shot and see what it is all about.
Speaker 3:We can't wait to have you in.
Speaker 2:I know my daughter is just. She bugs me every day and I keep telling her Christmas is coming. We're going to get her in before that she's knocking it down. She's a nurse like yourself, so I'm very excited for you to see her. I think you've met her, if I'm not mistaken right, yeah, yep, I've met her.
Speaker 3:I can't remember what event.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I have met your daughter so well, we already know about that stuff. But now, after those misconceptions, I know one thing about you that I guess I'm always, always amazed you have like this abundance of free time available when you're not working and I'm joking, Are you sure? You have all kinds of things going on. Just share what those awesome things. I know you're so into it. You're full of joy when you talk about your kids and family and sports and travel.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why don't you tell us a little bit about your?
Speaker 3:free time? Yeah Well, I don't know what you would call free time, but, um, and once you're, once you make the decision to become a business owner, um, you, what you do, work all the time, or you know, you choose to, um, do something to push your business forward every single day. Um, I think, if anything, owning a business has allowed me more flexibility to be able to spend time with my kids and not miss, you know, their sporting events and activities and be able to go do things at school for them. But, yeah, so Cody and I live, raise our family in Lakeville, minnesota, and we have a 10-year-old, vincent, we have an eight-year-old daughter, veda, and we have a six-year-old little boy named Wyatt, and they are the light of our life. They are a Y Cody and I came from a wonderful upbringing.
Speaker 3:We have wonderful parents that really instilled some really great values in us, but we didn't come from a lot besides being really loved and showing that you've got to work for everything that you have in your life, and so we're kind of out on that journey, trying to pave the way for ourselves and build a legacy and really build something wonderful. Not that we want to be able to hand it over to our children but have them be part of, you know, our businesses in the future and the things that we're working so hard for. We're doing it for our kids and our legacy and our families. And have we failed? Yes, we fail, probably at something every day, but I feel like those failures are what builds you up to make you better and push you forward. You know I guess I got off track on this question, but my kids play hockey, so that really dominates our life in the winter. Well, really all year round. Hockey is all year.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And then my daughter is a very good fast pitch player and my boys like to dabble in baseball and golf and all of those things we do love to travel. You know we're trying to plan a big family trip out west where we're able to take about a month and just go, you know, enjoy, you know Montana and Wyoming and Utah and all those California and um, and just do like one big, huge road trip. So when we finally are able to do that, that will kind of be your sign that we've really um hit a milestone within our businesses and building our businesses because, um, in order, yeah, so we're hopeful that we'll be able to take that trip in the next um one to two years.
Speaker 2:So I absolutely, a hundred percent, love that. I uh, uh, my wife and I, we talk about, uh people and we've talked about you looking at Facebook and how you and Cody just, uh, just embrace each other, embrace. The kids show everything off.
Speaker 3:It's so fun, it's it's, it's, it's you're right, and they're and they're so, um, they're so proud, um, you know they, they see what we're doing and we talk to them about it. You know they've been over to beam and seen the construction progress and they ask to see pictures all the time and what's being look like. And you know we my daughter can't wait to work there and help fold towels and you know, do different things. And Cody owns his own business as well a golf simulator, lakeville Links, and she likes to wash dishes and you know she's she's super excited to go and be part of that. And but you know that's what it's really all about is we're family owned business. Our kids will be around and be part of what we're doing and we only want that to be in a positive light and just to set really great examples for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and for them to see the adversity too. I mean the adversity and tenacity it takes to be a business owner and to fail and to get to pick yourself back up and be like yep, yesterday, today was a really bad day, but you know what, tomorrow we're going to get it Like, we'll get it right tomorrow, and just not, don't ever give up.
Speaker 2:You will get that joy. I get it now with my two kids and five grandkids and you will see the fruits of all those times you've fallen and gotten in years. And, cody, what are we doing? And then, well, we just kind of went through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we just kind of went through that with our oldest boy, vincent. He just went through his first he's a first year squirt for hockey here in Lakeville and we just went through the seven day long tryout process. They had five skates and you know parents can't watch and they post the scores after. You know the numbers of when you skate the next day and it was really grueling.
Speaker 3:I think it was more nerve wracking on the parents but, um, you know, my, our son, had a goal and you know I didn't know if he, I didn't know if he would hit it, but I supported it a hundred percent and I'll be darn, he did it and he made the team and he made the team he wanted to make and it he did it on his own. I mean we supported him, we encouraged him, we teach him about hard work and practice and he did it. And as a parent I mean that is like there's no better gift than it doesn't have to be athletics. You know, watching your kid work hard, stick with something and accomplishing it, I mean there's no greater gift as a parent is to see that happen. So today has been a really great day for us in supporting our son, vincent, and finding out that he made that team so, really proud of him.
Speaker 2:Here we are the good neighbors. It's awesome. I love that. It made me think of a song We've Only Just Begun. It's like those moments they make the team and get an A on the test. They move on. It's only just begun. We got more, I know, I know. So, as we get closing, this is perfect, god. What a great time here. But as we get close to ending here, what is there? One thing, just one thing, that you want everyone to go away with after listening to this podcast.
Speaker 3:Tough one. I, I think don't talk about it. Be about it. You know what I mean. Like people sit around all day and they talk about all the things they want to do, and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that and watch me do this, but they don't ever do it.
Speaker 3:Do it just. It doesn't have to be perfect. Your website doesn't have to be perfect. Your branding doesn't have to be perfect. Your social media doesn't have to be perfect. Like, if you have a dream, an aspiration, a desire whatever, whether it's business or personal, like just start and then you, just you just start, because once you start and like, dip your toes in and like then you just go, so just stop talking about it and be about it. And I'm stealing that quote from a dear friend of mine who's no longer with us Um, but that was really his motto in life was to just to do it. And um, that's what we've been doing and we're really happy we have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah've, uh, yeah, I agree, I totally agree. You've uh shared a few things with me that I've used, so I've stolen a couple of your, your conversations, especially when we're over there the golf place, when I'm hitting the houses like 17 times, yeah, so, um, how does everybody get a hold of?
Speaker 3:you, yeah, so regarding Beam Light Sauna, we are going to be located in Savage at 8160 County Road 42, suite number 400. We are going to be located right next to Cole Salon and the Pure Bar Studio, on the subway side of the shopping center there. You can call, call us at 952-641-0001, or you can email us at savage at beamlightsanacom, or you can reach out to us on social media. We're on Instagram and on Facebook. We're on Instagram and on Facebook.
Speaker 2:Yes, for sure, for sure. Wow, what a great time. I truly, truly appreciate you and I guarantee you this is going to be a good one, one of our best. So with that we're going to close out episode number 108. And I hope everybody goes and gets some sunshine in their life. Thanks, mary Sarah.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Mark.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast South of the River. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthoftherivercom. That's GNPSouthoftherivercom, or call 952-592-3737.