7 - Essential Oils, Chakras, and Aura Healing with the Founder of Auratherapy Laura McCann

In this episode of the Wellness in Asheville Podcast, we dive into the world of scent-based healing, chakra alignment, and aura cleansing with visionary entrepreneur Laura McCann, founder and CEO of Auratherapy
.

After a high-powered career in fashion, retail, and tech in NYC, Laura turned to aromatherapy to heal her own chronic health challenges—sparking a transformation that led her to create Auratherapy, a brand blending ancient wisdom with modern innovation. Today, she helps thousands reconnect with their inner energy through custom aura readings, essential oils, and immersive experiences.

Listeners also get an exclusive offer: 15% off at auratherapylife.com with code AVLwellness15.

🌿 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How scent and essential oils can balance chakras and support energy healing
• The science and experience behind aura readings and real-time chakra feedback
• Laura’s entrepreneurial journey from fashion to wellness in Asheville and Miami
• The creation of the Aura Sanctuary, a new community wellness hub in Woodfin
• Why Gen Z and Millennials are leading a shift toward self-discovery and conscious living

🕒 Episode Timestamps

00:00 – Welcome + introduction
 01:00 – Laura’s journey from NYC fashion to Asheville wellness
 06:00 – The power of essential oils and aura readings
 13:00 – Building a wellness brand with a partner
 22:00 – Clean beauty, chemicals, and conscious consumerism
 34:00 – Experiential retail and Auratherapy’s Sanctuary project
 47:00 – What’s next for Auratherapy: book launch + community growth
 50:00 – Special listener discount and closing thoughts

🔗 Resources & Links

• Auratherapy Website: AuratherapyLife.com
  (use code AVLwellness15 for 15% off)
• Auratherapy Instagram: @auratherapylife
  
  
• Be Well Asheville: bewellavl.com
  
  
• Rate & Review: Apple Podcasts + Spotify

The Wellness in Asheville podcast is produced by Be Well Asheville, your local news source covering health + wellness news + events in Asheville. Get the latest at bewellasheville.com or follow @bewellasheville.

Transcript

Episode 7: Scented Healing & Chakras | Auratherapy with Laura McCann

[00:00:00] 

Okay.

Speaker: Welcome to the Wellness in Asheville Podcast, where we shine a light on the people practices, and places that make this city one of the most inspiring wellness communities in the country. I'm your host, Travis Richardson, founder of Be Well Asheville, your local news source for health, wellness, and community events.

Today we're diving into the transformative world of scent based healing, where aromatherapy meets chakra alignment and aura cleansing. Our guest, Laura McCann, is the Visionary founder and CEO of Aura Therapy, a wellness brand rooted in breath and tension and energy healing. After a high powered career in fashion, retail and tech in New York City, Laura turned to aromatherapy to heal her own chronic health challenges, sparking a profound personal transformation.

Now based in Asheville and [00:01:00] Miami, she blends ancient wisdom with modern innovation, creating all natural fragrances and immersive experiences to help others balance their energy and reconnect with their inner selves. She's also the author of Aura Therapy, A Guide to Adoring Yourself, your Chakras, and Your Aura.

Now, now, personally, I got to experience Aura Therapy firsthand. I had my Aura read and I actually got to find out what kind of. Dominant color I was, and I actually got some numbers to go along with my aura reading that showed me where I was weak. What I thought was cool was how I was able to get some essential oils to target those weaknesses.

This whole idea of becoming more aware of how and what's going on with us is trending. So get this, I actually saw a survey showing that 80% get this, 80% of millennials and Gen Z report prioritizing. Personal growth and salt discovery over material success. Wow. That [00:02:00] is a trend in the positive direction.

So now with these kinds of emerging technologies and tools like what Ora Therapy is bringing to the table, because we actually have devices today that can, can you real time feedback on your chakras and energy systems, and that does bring ancient wisdom into modern science in some really interesting ways.

So. Without further ado, let's dive right in. Okay. So we've got Laura McCann here with Aura Therapy to talk about Scent chakras, auras, and building a wellness brand that's redefining the industry. Welcome to the show, Laura. Hey Travis. Nice to be here. How are you? I'm wonderful. Especially after yesterday's visit to the store here in Nashville.

I had a great time, uh, getting my, my aura red and, and, and exploring the. Yummy essential oils that you have there. I was really, thank you for that, uh, offering. It was awesome. That's awesome. I, I don't know what your colors are. What, who are you? Yes. Well, [00:03:00] let me, let me share that. I mean, the, the listeners can't see, but what I have here in front of me, I don't know if you can see this is I've got your.

Your card. And so for the listeners, what you, you get when you go, uh, get a scan is a little business card and it, and it's got like my colors and my, my numbers. Uh, it's basically telling me who I am, which is interesting 'cause I just, before the call I was looking up, um, where I'm a little bit low and I'm a little bit low on like.

The heart chakra and a little low on the, um, I think it was the, over the head chakra. That, the top chakra, that one I think it showed your sacral chakra. Yeah. From what? Yeah. No orange, oh, excuse me. Orange and green. I'm low orange. Green. Green. I'm low. And I'm yellow centered. And I'm yellow centered. That's, I, I know exactly what's going on.

Yeah. What do you mean? You've done more than one of these before? Yeah. It, uh, you also have your 14 page report, which was emailed to you. So what were the other colors? Green, I'm assuming, did you have some blue or It was mostly just a yellow center. I was fives [00:04:00] across the board except for, pretty much except for those two.

You know what that is? Low Uhuh. That's the startup. The startup is you're, you're in podcast launch, business launch, and you're, uh, yellow, which is a super analytical, mentally focused person. Mm-hmm. And it's showing. Not enough self care and a lot of putting pressure on yourself and asking a lot of yourself and the voices that are saying like, is it enough?

Speaker 3: It's never enough. And so, mm-hmm. Yeah. So after this, you, your prescription is more, more fun and more time for you. Yeah. I love that. You know, it's, it's funny you say that because just the last. Expert that I was interacting with in, in the capacity of self-care was your neighbor over at, uh, wake Foot Sanctuary.

Speaker: And I was like, and I was over there, you know, just like, oh my God, I need more of this in my life. Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, you're already, you're intuitive. You have the big third eye. You already knew what to do. But yeah, a lot of times what we do with our energy is we move it to do the tasks at hand. [00:05:00] We have to also understand who we are.

Speaker 3: So actually for you, it probably feels really comfortable to be that way, but over time it'll burn you out and you'll also feel depleted. So you gotta, as a person who also has a very high spiritual piece, 'cause you have those high balance, other chakras, it won't work long term. So yeah, it's like, okay, now tune in and, and make some adjustments.

Little tweaks are often all you need, like breathing. So hopefully you got some good product too, and you can start doing those little breath work sessions at your desk and clearing energy and all the good stuff. Yeah, totally. Thanks for that. Yeah, I've got a little baggy. I think I was gonna go through a little walkthrough of all the things I got, uh, at some point.

Speaker: It's been fun. I've made a couple Instagram reels already of my experience really, and I think one's gonna come out. I think I'm like excited about it, but we'll see how other people, um, respond. But it's kind of fun making those. That's great. Let's get into you. I have a lot of, there's like a bunch of topics 'cause this kind of intersects a lot of things actually.

I mean, for me personally, I, I studied essential oils back. One of the earliest things when [00:06:00] I was like 20. Years old or some, something like that. I started getting into all kinds of alternative things. I mean, whether, whether it was aliens or, I mean, just I, I'm not putting essential oil in the category of aliens, but I'm just, well, Matt, let's do that.

Speaker 3: I'll have Jim, that's Jim's department. Well, let's just say I was highly, very, very exploratory and I was really looking into lots of things. Essential oils are something that I found as I looked more and more into them. They're really the lifeblood of plants and they just are so, so, so powerful, uh, and so healing.

Speaker: And I, I guess, and then you added, so you've got the essential oils within Jim. And I know, I know I saw on a recent, uh, Instagram live, I believe that you did with Jim, is that you, he brought in this whole aura scanning thing. This whole, this whole technology. I'm curious about two things. One, if you could [00:07:00] tell the listeners what is it exactly what, and two, like, what's that?

Like having a life partner, um, be a business partner because I, I would find that challenging with my life partner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that's on the list of things not to do for sure. Um, yeah, so, you know, this business is, is a wellness business, but it's incarnated. Wellness, then it wanted to be a beauty business.

Speaker 3: Then interestingly enough, beauty swinging towards wellness, which is like, it took 10 years for that to happen. Um, but why wellness 10 years ago wasn't the story is because of distribution channels around where this kind of thing can live, which is essential oils or aromatherapy. So when you were introduced to it, it might have been in the decade where everybody you knew was a doTERRA or a young Living affiliate and everybody's trying to sell, sell you single oil oils that you can put in a diffuser drink, you know, cure cancer, you know, but billion, multi-billion [00:08:00] dollar industry that grew really fast because a lot of good marketing concepts that MLMs bring to it.

What was lost in that is the power of aromatherapy as a, I mean, obviously it was a healing story, but like if it doesn't live within the paradigm of the culture and the culture today is MLMs are out and what's in is influencers and beauty and talkers and all that stuff, then you know you can't really build a business around it.

Um, aromatherapy to me is a functional fragrance opportunity and building a brand in, now let's call it wellness slash beauty, is really saying that if you are doing a wellness lifestyle and you have still been using. Perfume, which is made with alcohol and fragrance oils and is purely a petrochemical story.

And you're not doing wellness, and I don't care if you wanna say wound boosting or it's blah, blah, blah. It's chemicals. [00:09:00] So in a wellness story, and if you eat healthy, you know, yeah, you can do things where you can play with, you know, chemical compounds for more protein, less calories. You know, you can. Do ozempic instead of eating well and losing weight on your own and learning how to intermittent fast.

But in the world that I live in, which is like we're really, really trying to create healing and balance in the body energetically through frequency and the frequencies that are out there may not be easily helping us be where we wanna be. Aromatherapy and taking a breath is like a key and it unlocks lots of value.

And then how you package that out as a brand owner and a wellness business is like a whole other. Challenging thing because you gotta do that well, if you want anybody to buy it. So the aroma therapy started, we always had a shocker line, and then Jim and I as partners were not working together during COVID.

We had an opportunity to rethink what he was gonna do as his next chapter. And we had [00:10:00] had this experience where we had, or readings in Chinatown, it was a photo, and Jim is not, you know, he's an engineer, kind of like you. And it wasn't really something he felt comfortable being an intuitive or taking a picture.

So he found a version of that type of technology that had a chakra story. It was software based. It had a lot of data and if he learned how to to talk through it, and he was doing reiki so he understood like what and how this could be used. It was like something he felt he could do. So we didn't know we tried and as he built it, and of course he's not a marketing person, so I kind of built that for the business and for him, we saw how it transformed our ability to tell the story.

And so yes, one plus one in this case made three. And then the beauty of it is, at this point in our lives, why we do this isn't just purely to go make, you know, a killing. It's really to give back. In lots of ways, this demands way more from us [00:11:00] than maybe we have at this point. But the mission is to really help people and in the way that we're helping people, we can also, hopefully karmically help ourselves.

But, um, it's way more upfront of giving than receiving, and so doing it together makes it better. Mm-hmm. Because we can then grow together. Spend time together. Um, and otherwise it would be a very lonely pursuit. And I've done that before. 'cause I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years and yeah, that pursuit's not always great for relationships.

Speaker: Yeah. I have to ask, I wanna go at least one more on the relationship, uh, side of things with how you guys work together. I, I'm curious, uh, because I maybe see a path down the road where my partner might be wanting to join what I'm doing. We'll see. But we, we feel that it would be really challenging to, uh, figure out how we separate the roles so that we don't like cross.

Yeah. Or do you, have you figured that out, or do you, do you Yeah, that's, that's the key. The key is I've had other partners who [00:12:00] were best friends and, you know, I've had a partner in another business where we were, you know, dating and became business partners. We weren't like a couple. Mm-hmm. We became a couple.

Speaker 3: I brought him into a business, and so I've, I've seen all the ways it can fail or it, it, or it can succeed in most cases. It's super challenging. I think it's important to be at a place in your life where if this is where you sustain yourselves as a couple, it's a lot of pressure because both people are now maybe not making money.

So that's a big consideration. It's better to be in a position where it's more like, you know. You're not putting everything at risk, right. That is an untenable, stressful thing for couples to manage. You know, the second thing is finding your lanes and having very unique lanes. And I think in this case, I'm definitely more the entrepreneur, founder, and Jim is more like the subject matter expert founder, and he stays in his lane.

Mm-hmm. And then my job is to also fold the platform up for him. And you have to [00:13:00] have. Little egos can't have big egos. Um, you know, a lot of people think being the CEO requires a big ego. It cre it, it requires confidence, expertise, and an, and a desire to micromanage every little detail. And that's not a great person to be when you're doing that to your partner.

So you really have to build it so that that person isn't. You in that way. So yeah, lots of, lots of things to unpack there. Yeah. I don't know if I can tell you that it's the perfect solution. It may not be the forever, but in in this phase, it's, I couldn't do it alone. And you know, they always want you to have a co-founder, and I've often had co-founders where we weren't really on the same page in terms of.

Really being together, that's very hard because, you know, I always say, you know, you need a prenup with your co-founder, maybe in, you already figured that stuff out. But yeah, co-founding is, is a tough road, right? Yeah, it is very [00:14:00] interesting. I owned a, a gym business with a co-founder and I was really thankful for him.

Speaker: And also, uh, Travis, Travis Lee, uh, back in Iowa. We started, uh, a gym together and it was so nice to have somebody to bounce ideas off of. And luckily we had like two sides of the. Of a, of a coin that worked really well. But let's, um, so you mentioned, um, you don't wanna make a killing, but here's the thing.

I would love it if you made a killing, and here's why. I feel like there's so much, uh, uh, energy out there, money that could be spent in other more beneficial ways. Mm-hmm. And so when a wellness brand makes a killing, what that does, it actually lifts all other wellness brands because it starts to shift attention to wellness.

I'm, I'm for shifting money away from McDonald's. Sorry, McDonald's. Uh, I am and, and such. And I, so, and, and getting to that point, I also, I loved, I enjoyed doing some research on you, uh, especially this morning and we, I saw [00:15:00] another, actually, I was looking at your LinkedIn and I was like, so I looked, it was funny because, you know, as a, a developer of, of a brand, you have such different.

You need to be able to speak the language differently on different platforms and channels. Yeah. And of course, um, your brand. You know, I went into the story yesterday and there were some young girls in there, and then if you look on your Instagram, it definitely is appealing to that, that younger generation.

It's also appealing to an older generation and you have different formats, and I'm being long-winded here, but I guess, um, the article on LinkedIn was that there was a piece on Gen Z. How they're putting wellness first and something, I don't know what this is called, the sister-in-law index. So tell me all about that.

'cause I think that's super compelling. Well, so if you follow me or anybody who looks at what I do, I'm, I'm, I love content and I love reading. So like I always start my morning reading all my trades and all my stuff and my social media feeds, which include LinkedIn. [00:16:00] If I see an article that I like and I learn how to do this way back when LinkedIn started, and that's why I have such a big following on LinkedIn and why I've learned to translate, you know, sort of like marketing into how I do my business piece.

Speaker 3: Um, I take something that interests me and I turn it into content and I get to talk about it. It's like journaling and I, I find it really interesting because. As an entrepreneur, I don't really have time for conversations, so this is a way to express myself and, and it, it's nice as long as, you know, you don't get the hate back.

But in this particular article, I had never heard of the, uh, Sister-in-Law Index, but it was a guy who uses his, um, his Gen X, gen Z. Uh, young, you know, family to ask about things that have to do with like, all things direct to consumer and they love answering the questions and they tell him. And so he then answered some of the questions and shared that and there was a whole piece on wellness and how wellness for them is a trend and that they will spend [00:17:00] their money and they will.

Do the Pilates and the yoga and they will follow the brands and they will buy the stuff and they will be doing that as long as they feel like it fits into the desire that they have for like that identity. And they do it in beauty and they do it in other things too. It's fa kind of fascinating because like I think if you are my age and I'm 60 plus, um, culturally I'm irrelevant.

And what do I know about all this? So how do you have these customers that encompass someone my age all the way to someone that age? And you know, I've been in product development and design and trend a lot of my career. 'cause I came out of fashion. So I'm always looking for like what and how do you talk to those audiences.

So in this case we have some new product lines that are coming out that are more specifically designed for those audiences. But I found that also fascinating, which is why I shared it on LinkedIn. Which is, you know, where, where do you really get to understand who the customer is? And [00:18:00] by the way, being in the store, and you saw that, you know, I lived in Asheville for about eight years now.

I moved here from New York until I had a store as somebody who was a New Yorker who came to Asheville. I really didn't understand Asheville. I, I understood it as a tourist almost who moved here. Then when I spent four years at the Grove Arcade, seven days a week for a long time, I understood who everybody else was, who was coming here.

And that really informed me on understanding like the demographics of Asheville, but also my business. What I found is our product lands with young people and old people. That's a hard story to tell and you know, um, I'm just learning how to tell it all different kinds of ways, the business way on LinkedIn and then on social media, the other ways.

Speaker: Okay. So one of the things I also was curious about was this whole concept of, uh, neuro cosmetics. This is also another term, and I, I, I don't, I didn't know if you knew I was gonna throw all these things at you today, [00:19:00] and I don't expect you to be like, you know, um, PhD level on this, but, 'cause that sounds like.

Timmy's super sciencey. Yeah, but what in the heck? What in the world is neuro cosmetic? I didn't know. I went and I took that and I was like, what is this? Why I was intrigued by it is because I was, what I was understanding is that there's this whole trend of making, uh, cosmetics and body care that are mood altering.

Speaker 3: And I was like, Ooh, I love everything related to mood. That's one of my keywords that, that triggers me. So like, what is it? And then what I understood is it was. Chemicals that trick your body into doing things with peptides and endorphins, all the things that you want. But it's a trick through chemistry, which again, maybe that's good, but are your cosmetics supposed to do that?

Is your lotion supposed to do that? I get with CBD, like that's probably a functional [00:20:00] ingredient thing, but to do it with chemicals is like, to me like. Is it, and they call it neuroscience. So like I was triggered by that and I was like, I wanna go down that rabbit hole and figure out like what that means to me.

And you know, in my exploration of that, I go back to say like, why do we wanna mess around with what nature gave us? And in this case, nature gave us essential oils and they're really great 'cause they are plant-based. There can be all different qualities of course of them, but they are, you know, vegan, they're natural many times.

They can be organic, they can be wildcrafted. You could have sustainable ones. It's like, can we do that? And then talk about all the ways we wanna alter how we feel. I always still say that the person is the main ingredient, and so if what you're trying to do is hack yourself, but you're not gonna do any work.

I'm sorry, that's not really like. A sustainable method. I get that. We want shortcuts. So [00:21:00] I am always curious myself, but I don't think the shortcuts work. And so in this case, to me that was like, I guess they call it greenwashing. That was neuro washing, sodo science. Totally washing, right? Yeah. And it's like got congrats.

If they wanna spend gazillion dollars marketing those concepts and pushing their products with that angle and they need differentiation. I would pause and say like, if you need that much differentiation, then maybe your products don't really do anything. Right. Or it should do better. I don't know. Right.

Speaker: Well, what I see happening is most products are attempting to try to replicate nature, but they're really bad replicators of nature. They literally go out, they find the, the thing in nature and what it does, they study it and they say, shoot. Now how can we, how can we like make a chemical that does that same thing and then they can't do it, but they get.

They kind of try and then it causes all kinds of downstream negative effects. So it's, it's like, gosh, guys, can we just do the real thing? Well that, [00:22:00] and you then loop that back with like the young people, right? Like I, some, I got, I got a free lip gloss in something and I use it and it, it tastes like strawberries and it's so disgusting.

Speaker 3: But like, I didn't have anything else to put on. And I was like, but young people love all these things that taste like things and smell like things, and they have no idea what it is. Actually today I am going to the store and it's so cute. I have a a 10-year-old girl and her mom coming who I met at the Love Shine Play Festival, and I would say, you know, she's probably been brought up with more of a spirituality, Asheville, you know, hippie kind of parenting.

I think she has kind of the both sides, the engineering and the hippie. Uh, she can communicate really clearly what she thinks of all these things. And I was like so impressed with her. When I met her, she was talking to Matthew, one of our ora therapists for like over an hour and I'm, I was like, could you come to the store?

I would love to have you like do an aura reading. I'm so curious. Are you what I call an indigo child? Who are these new kids that are [00:23:00] coming in with these like mm-hmm. Super spiritually advanced gifts. And I also wanted to be like, I want you to smell and see things, and I wanna hear what you think because.

I do feel like we are doing a massive disservice to our teenagers and younger by not bringing them into these wellness stories as soon as they can. And we give them some of the elements, but not all of them. So like again, if your daughter's into Pilates and yoga and she's trying to eat well and she wants to be healthy, then there are other choices she may not be making across other choices around consuming.

We'd love for you to maybe you don't know. So like, how do we get you then? And it's not so much that, again, we're trying to market and monetize everything. It's really more like, I wish I had known, right? Mm-hmm. Like, teach me. So yeah, we'll see what happens with that. Um, but I, I do think that this fake stuff is like, I don't want it in my food.

Why do I want it in my nose? Right. Right. Skin. Yeah. That's just, [00:24:00] well, my, an example of that, my daughter just turned 22, but she's having now like some eczema stuff come up and it's, it's like, my gosh. And so one of the things we found is that there's this SLS, okay, so SLS is a. A chemical and it's often in toothpaste.

Speaker: Well, she was getting these like tanker sores. So we remove the toothpaste thinking, 'cause we read about it. We asked good old chat. GPT used, it says remove teeth. Okay, remove. Okay. They go away. Uh, she tries it again, they come back, we take it away. Goes away. Right. Okay. But now we find, so then we're like, so then she's gets this breakout on her hands and arms and we, we look at the product.

Guess what SLS is in there. God dang it, man. Are you kidding me? Why? Why is it in there? What is this? Why, what is the purpose? Yeah. What is it and why is it in there? Does it need to be in there? And it's so frustrating because how many, uh, people go [00:25:00] for decades sometimes, maybe their whole life suffering, all because some untested chemical is in their product.

And even these, you and you probably know much better than I do about, uh, beauty products that I, okay, this is. I was in massage therapy. I'm on a rant right now, so just bear with me here. I'm getting ready. I've got goosebumps. Um, so I was in massage therapy. I was a licensed massage therapist around 10, 10 years ago, I wanna say.

And in my massage therapy class, I learned that an average woman over the course of her lifetime. Absorbs. I believe it was something like five. This sounds ridiculous, and I hope I'm not wrong here. I hope the AI doesn't prove me wrong. If somebody looks this up, that average woman absorbs around five pounds of chemicals in her lifetime.

This is insane. Like I, I, I can't believe that that's, and I, I say that and I hear myself. I like, no way. But that's what I remember reading and [00:26:00] being taught in massage therapy. This is insane. No, it's, it's so. So many, so many things to unpack there. The first thing is I came out of the fashion industry. I remember the first time I went to like my first sort of like, uh, call it holy granola event, which was the Social Venture network, which was a thing back then.

Speaker 3: These were all the hippies, the Ben and Jerry's people. This is before there were B Corps, right? Mm-hmm. And I remember somebody turning to me and they were like, what kind of apparel company are you? Like, are you polluting the plant? Like I was like. I was like, I had no idea I was evil. I just thought I was making fashion products.

Yeah. A lot of the fashion products that my company made were for the mass market, and many of them included polyester and Lycra, and they weren't cotton and they weren't elevated fabrics. They were mass fabrics, and they sold gazillions of them. So I felt a little bit ostracized and you know, it didn't really change anything I did, but like it was in the back of my head, like, if I ever did a [00:27:00] business again or if I did a different kind of business, how could I do that kind of business?

It is very hard to do like a business where you're respecting the planet, especially in fashion, and I think a lot of people now know that, and there's plenty of stories about that. It's the last 10 years has been incredibly difficult to build fashion brands without having to deal with that. You know, issue, but the beauty industry has just started to clean up.

And it is a tough one because the people who are the biggest and have the most money and can lobby and who have the biggest spends and the biggest, they're all doing chemical based stuff. Like there has been some improvement with clean beauty and this and that, but there's always these conversations like, if you take all this stuff out that maybe you want, that's chemical, is it still active?

Listen, we're never gonna win these conversations. So all I can say is for myself, I decided when I did this business, what I really loved about it is when we made the cleanest product ever, I never had to think [00:28:00] about that. And the cleaner my products could be the happier I am because that's the conversation that I don't wanna have.

So we have degrees of super clean, like we have perfume oils that are just organic, jojoba and essential oils, cleanest of the clean. We have water-based products. When you mix water and oil, you do need a preservative. Okay? We'll use the cleanest one we can find. It's like a citric acid. You need an emulsifier because you need the oils in the water to blend.

Let's find one that's really clean, okay? When you spray these things and you aerosolize them, it's gonna go into your body differently than if you put it on your skin. We wanted to make a candle. We tried making a candle with essential oils. You cannot do that and have it throw. So we make a soy candle.

It has a cotton wick. You know, we try to do certain things to make it better, but it has fragrance oils. Many people love that lately. Backlash on candles. Candles are toxic. Okay. Yeah, they are pretty much, but you know, people love them. So do you stop making them? Is there a way to do a candle that's less toxic?

Probably. Do we make that [00:29:00] candle? Yes. But, you know, don't want candles, don't buy candles. But a lot of these other products that we have for our beauty, but we are not given choices about that. So you have to be an advocate for yourself. You have to look at the ingredients. You have to be educated and decide what you want and where, where you, the buck stops.

And when you do start having health issues, that's usually when you mm-hmm. Start to pay attention. Or when you have a baby or you're immunosuppressed, whatever, that's when you look for maybe the first time. Yeah, that's the, that is unfortunately so many of our, uh, circumstances, we, we wait till we're sick or our loved one is sick.

Speaker: I think things are changing a little now because we are all so sick and it's like we, you know, it's, it used to be able to be a little bit more hidden, but now, I mean, it's like affecting, it's affecting like business's bottom line. So I think it's starting to become pretty apparent, especially. I think as of late, just this, I mean, I, I, I've got this wellness [00:30:00] brand I'm building.

Why is that? Why is, why do I think it's time to build a wellness brand is because the, it's the iron is hot. It's time to strike. Yeah. Everybody is looking for something. I mean, we're all so deprived of good, healthy products and nutrition and experiences and social wellness. There's all these trends are coming to the forefront.

One of the things. I really liked in observing your product, and as I researched what Aura Therapy is doing, you, you've got the full vertical, I mean, you've got a warehouse in, in Weaverville. I think that's right. Like that's pretty, pretty cool. Not everybody does that. It's easy to just source some stuff from somewhere and then throw your brand on it.

And that's, and nobody knows the difference. Nobody knows that's your, uh, that you didn't, you didn't actually Yeah, you didn't bottle it yourself. Yeah. They think you did, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, that's a thank you for that question. So. When I grew up in the fashion industry, I had a business and we did sourcing and what you call [00:31:00] private labels.

Speaker 3: So we made products for other brands and we manufactured it for them under their label. So these are all the brands that used to be in the mall that everybody knows, like Express and Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body. And in the eighties and nineties this was a big thing. They call it vertical retail.

You're, you're manufacturing your own products with your own label, and you're selling them in your own stores. So over the years, direct to consumer and all the website stuff started happening and many of them didn't make the product. Sometimes they did, but the distribution channel changed. And then as you started to build those kinds of businesses, what would happen is you needed to be so good at marketing that a lot of companies just said, we could be a really good marketing and sales company and we'll just go buy the product.

And beauty, it's really complicated because. If you don't own the formulations and the recipes, you really don't have like intellectual property to protect, but it's very expensive to build your own ip. So, and then you have issues like, will the factory make it, do they have [00:32:00] a minimum? You know, what if I need it tomorrow and I get the order, and like, how much do I have to have sitting here?

Like, what will they make? Super complex things. So when I got involved in this business early on. I wanted to be vertical. I wasn't sure how to, but then over time I just basically decided we're gonna make everything for margin reasons, for control reasons, but also I love making stuff and I wanted to, to really have that control because I knew I could never grow and have control over my supply chain if I gave it away.

So that is one of the differentiators I'd say between us and as a small brand. It's not easy to do, but we do it and we do it really well because I have that expertise. But we do everything from the sourcing, the design, the product development, the bottling, the formulating, the filling to the fulfillment.

And then we have two stores right now. We hope to have more. We sell it online on our website. [00:33:00] We also sell it wholesale to fancy spas and other retailers. So we have a very complex business for a little kind of fun mom and pop business because to grow it and be profitable, it felt like we needed to do that.

The harder part, which is where we have to learn and we keep getting better at it, is the marketing part, right? Like and, and learning how to do everything related to the tech and the digital marketing and the content. And that's been fascinating because even in the last six or seven years, the whole landscape there has changed.

So you see it now as a. Tech person, like marketing. Even with ai, everything's changed in the last five months. Right? So, so that's really where the learning is still for us as a business, but we really love that we have the rest of it. So this is gonna be a good segue, um, because AI and technology is, is definitely changing things, uh, I think.

Speaker: There's [00:34:00] gonna be a lot of things that, that go away. I mean, everyone knows that jobs are at risk and especially, especially jobs that have to do with, um, you know, even with marketing, a lot of these things are just gonna get replaced. Here's one thing that, that probably will not get replaced anytime soon, and that is social connection.

So we see a lot of, I think, brands pivoting to try to figure out. How they can create staying power over the next 10, 20 years, because nobody's building a brand that want that, that's trying to die in two. So one thing that you're doing is, uh, I see I, I've seen some events that, that you've done, that you've co-created.

You've also got this Aura Sanctuary. Yeah. I don't know what that is. It's, it sounds like a cool project, but it sounds like it's possible. In alignment with trying to create experiences that are, um, and even, I guess I would say even I'd say your in store experience of somebody bringing some friends in and [00:35:00] having the experience of getting their aura red and having somebody tell them about them and smell.

So that's different from just marketing a product and, and then shipping it out. And I, I really love this is, um, experiential retail, right? So I think everybody figured this out during COVID when you couldn't go anywhere. Sure you could sell products online if you happen to be in our business, which is you're doing a scented product, that's not that easy.

Speaker 3: So, you know, people do wanna smell it. What we did when we made the experience lead is we thought of it like the prescription, and then you buy, you know, the doctor says, here's, here's what's wrong with you. There's an assessment. In this case we do an order reading. It's very data driven. We help you understand what the data says, and then we can give you solutions for it.

And that may include a product or you doing whatever you're gonna do to, to, to balance your chakras, feel better, make affirmations, take a deep breath. Like we just want you to be your own healer and we have some tools by them. Do it our way. Do it your [00:36:00] way. It's all good. Um, and so based on that sort of like.

Experience. Then they also feel like they know what to buy. Because the hardest thing for me when I was a consumer of aromatherapy and essential oils is what do I need? I don't know what I need. I, I, okay, maybe I need lemon, maybe I need lavender. Maybe I need this. Do I need something to feel calmer, something to feel more excited, something to feel more loving like, yeah, all those things are great.

So what we try to do is. Not only distill all that knowledge into what the products are called and what they do, but to give you your customized prescription. And why I love that model is because you can go to a group yoga class and take a class and it's 90 minutes, or you can go and do an order reading and it's a 15 minute one-on-one completely customized service, and you walk away knowing you.

And that's very hard to do at scale in a retail setting, and then also tie in a product. And I love customization, except customization on the [00:37:00] product side is really hard. So instead what we do is we have an experience that's one-on-one where the customization is then, then you get the stuff you need.

And I think that is like the, the razor. The razor blade. So as an entrepreneur, I love that stuff. I think that's smart and cool. And so what we're growing is that, and it does require doing it in person. And then the community piece is because. Why does anybody care about you if you don't care about them?

And so where do you meet them to have these conversations? That's in community and often those community things are marketing driven and they're things you give away and experiences you create. Sometimes you can monetize them, but a lot of times it's more about like, what can you, can you see my brand in the real world and how it lives and breathes the people, the, the ideas.

So, yeah, I think you're right. All the brands are trying to figure out how to do that, and it's not easy to do if you have nothing to talk about. So yeah, most of them have to go get a, A person with a sound bowl, a [00:38:00] tarot reader. Add it to their thing. So their thing is interesting. And in our case, the thing is our thing and we call those AA days.

And then aa day is like our experience anywhere outside of our store, or it could be in our store where you're having a full experience of what it is to have an AA reading chakra balancing experience. The products, do some rituals. Play with crystals, whatever it is. Yeah. Well, it's perfect for, for Asheville and I know you've got a Miami location too.

Speaker: It's pretty, pretty cool, uh, to see, to see that growth. And um, I think, you know, you've got, like, when I look at the, the business model, it's, you know, you're people, people have existing. I think people are really looking for answers, especially the more confusing society gets, the faster pace we become and, and, and we, we can use technology to bring clarity and can use technology in a positive way.

I'm not so doom and gloom on ai. I I think [00:39:00] there's Yeah. Neither lot of potential. Yeah. And so, but we gotta use it the, the right way and I'm all for using it the right way. So long as it solves problems that people want to have solved. So people come into your. Place of business. They find out, uh, some things like, you know, I found out that I need to make sure I'm managing self-care and that's valuable to me.

And so, and then if I can have someone teach me in a couple minutes something that can help me, you got a solution for me. Uh, and then maybe just. You know, couple take coach me on how to take a couple nice breaths and, and just like, okay, well shoot, I just, and you've done that, you've done that in all like, you know, 15, 20 minutes.

I just think that's, there's a lot of value to that outside of, beyond, uh, the purchase of a, of a bottle of CI oil. Yeah. And so some people come through our customer journey and they don't buy a product and it's totally fine by us. Often we give them a sample 'cause we want them to still have something.

Speaker 3: And you know, maybe they have [00:40:00] oils at home, maybe they don't like oils, maybe they're just not sure what to get yet and they're analytical and they wanna go back and look on the website. But we want them to have the full experience. And then sometimes people come in and buy a product and they don't do an aura reading.

And if they do both, I think they really enjoy the idea of what it is. You know, I don't know if you do yoga, but like if you do yoga and you're doing a pose and you go and take a class, what you get outta the class is the teacher might come over and show you. Your toes are turning that way and you need to breathe in this way, or your back is arched.

And those little tweaks are the difference between like holding the pose in the right way and it really being effective. You can't see yourself, you're doing the thing. And that's what we do with this. We're just showing you in this moment in time what you're doing. We explain it to you and then you can take that and do what you want with it.

But often you could never figure this out on your own because it is data coming from a hand scanner that's pulling in your biometric information and it's translating it into all these graphics and charts and yeah, a [00:41:00] psychic could maybe tell you, I think you're yellow and I think your chakras are balanced.

Would you know? And if you went and had reiki or a healing session and they said, oh, you're blocked. Well, yeah, it's kind of like, I don't know, is it true? Are you are? Do I know? Like I trust you. Right? And there's a lot of trust issues that we have. So I love this method. I think it's really cool. I wish we could do Aura readings online and everybody could figure out what their aura and chakras are and they didn't have to come in the store and put their hand on a scanner, but at the same time.

Coming in and having that connection is also part of why we call it therapy or a therapy is being in relationship to have that conversation is part of the experience. Tell me, tell me more about this Aura, aura, sanctuary. I find that, yeah, really interesting. So right before the hurricane, which was in September of last year, uh, we had outgrown our space.

So we were in Woodfin in a, a really cool area that has like light industrial. [00:42:00] Buildings where you can set up a small business in there. And we've been there for many years and right now, you know, we're, we grew out of it. So when we grew out of it, we put a lot of our, um, inventory into storage and we were at the ghost storage on Riverside.

So like many people, when Hurricane Helene, Helene hit Asheville, our factory was okay. Our homes were okay. Our store did close because, you know, everything closed and the Grove Arcade closed. We completely forgot that we had these storage units because everybody was like just figuring it out. And like about four days later when I saw water going past French, broad chocolate over there on Riverside, I was like, wait, our storage spaces are right there.

And then we were like, oh my gosh, I think we must have gotten flooded. And so sure enough, we lost. Three gigantic units with all of our inventory. And so that was really, really challenging. So we were already [00:43:00] looking at expanding and we had found a space we liked, but it was like, oh my gosh, what do we do?

Like, is Asheville done? Is Asheville coming back? Should we buy a piece of real estate and fix something up? I had to really go deep and listen in. But um, in the end it was a yes. And what happened is we purchased a church in Woodfin. That was for sale and it was no longer a church for many years. Um, and our goal there was to renovate it and turn it into our headquarters, our factory, and then the community space where we could do events and also partner with the community to provide space for other people's events.

So we broke ground about, um, I'd say six weeks ago, and hopefully by next year, sometime early spring, we'll have this Aura Sanctuary, which is our physical incarnation of our brand in a place that we can continue to expand on this. Community approach and also have better [00:44:00] digs for ourself and then never put anything in storage again.

That was traumatic. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Well, I live, that'll be right in my backyard here. I live up near, uh, Weaverville, so, um, perfect. Nice to have. I see there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of movement up toward, toward this way. I mean, we've got the hospital coming in. Uh, what was it? We've got a, that cinema, I forget the name of it, that was in the river arts area, is moving, moving in up here, I thought.

Speaker: And then even, yeah, so there's a lot of movement. North northward, I guess north. Yeah. And I live north, so you know, after commuting for 30 years, New York, New Jersey, and doing that life, I have a seven minute commute and I love it. And it fits into my lifestyle. And so also I love real estate and.

Speaker 3: Decorating and development. So this is a fun project to restore a church and see how to do that. And, um, yeah, we're just, just super excited about it. Well, that's really cool. I think the community definitely is supportive [00:45:00] of new businesses coming in and fixing things up and making, making things, uh, better.

Speaker: So I think, yeah. Great. That's not a brewery. It's funny, we, yeah, I know. Even, even like Weaverville is now like saturated with, with brew breweries. It seems like. I like them all, by the way, I love our brew, I love our breweries, so nothing seeing bad there, but, um, we do have a quite, quite a few I guess. Yes, yes.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, great. Well, what other, uh, what other things for 2025 or are you excited about? Any other, any other plans? Yeah. Uh, you got going on, it's been a big year, you know, because the, you know, we had to. Pivot. We did a rebrand when we booted back up in 2025. The rebrand went really, really well. You know, we had to navigate the whole tariff issue, kind of knew it was coming.

Speaker 3: And so when we lost all our inventory, we repositioned it, did the rebrand. And I have to say, you know, I feel like I got my CEO stripes because I feel like we executed that really well. So [00:46:00] we're in a really great position. Growing wholesale, which was something we didn't really want to do initially. We really wanted to build more retail stores, but.

We opened the store in Miami and that kicked my butt living in Miami half the year. Figuring out how to have a second store, that's a big learning curve for our business. Um, you know, figuring out how to have a team that I'm not always there to, to work with in Asheville. I'm, I gotta say, they've been spectacular.

We kept everybody that we had in Asheville. That was a big commitment I made. Ooh, wonderful. Stay on board. We did get some grants. Obviously that doesn't cover all the losses, but you know, we just doubled down on Asheville and we continue to do that. We have a book coming out this fall. So Jim and I, after doing about five, 6,000 Aura readings, we said, should we write a book?

And he started writing and then I started, you know, taking what he was writing and trying to figure out what made sense. We sent it to the printer this week, and I hope to have. A book launch next [00:47:00] year that we're early fall, you know, to, to talk about our experience. I think we've almost done 10,000 aura readings Travis.

So, oh my gosh. It's been quite, uh, a journey and we've met a lot of people's energy and we see what everybody's kind of doing with their energy and we wanted to share with people the lessons that we learned. Uh, you know, I think being an author. CEO might be helpful also for building the platform. So I'm in for all the, all the things and yeah, 2026, the sanctuary and hopefully more events to bring to Asheville.

'cause we'll be more anchoring back into Asheville. And uh, feels like that was a lot in one year. So, you know, the vision is just to continue growing and, you know, the big, the big learning here and continues to be. And I think you see that is. I envision that in some ways, content and being more media driven and content driven is the key that unlocks the engagement and the interest in the brand.

So we're [00:48:00] gonna continue to figure out how to make more content, do more on more platforms. Yeah. Get really, really good at it and how to, how to turn that into entertainment. So that's awesome. That's, it's ambitious. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm excited for you and I can't wait to promote your book and your work and, uh, I, I know that we're gonna have many future collaborations together.

Speaker: I, I feel like it, your, uh, your brand is, is doing such great things and, uh, I think expanding here in Nashville and just getting the word out even more, I think is, is definitely what I see in your future is I think it's awesome. So, and we're excited about what you're doing because as I've told you. You know, when you're an entrepreneur in Asheville and you go to all the things, there's a lot of tracks in the entrepreneurial community that are around, like outdoor stuff and food and beverage and CPG, you know, popcorn, and you know, cookies and chocolate.

Speaker 3: And there are very few tracks that are for the wellness entrepreneur, and yet Asheville is. Renowned for being [00:49:00] a wellness destination. So I am hoping that you shine the light on this and that people understand what a incredible community we have here of healers and, you know, all the people I recently found out that you and, uh, my favorite massage therapist Kimberly, are colleagues and that you know each other and, uh, we are moving into more of that kind of massage and spa space too.

So. It's fun. Asheville is small, and hopefully, you know, we can all be in community together and anything we can do to help anybody else in the community, we are here for that. You know, we build it together and they will come. Absolutely. Well, my goal is to put Asheville very much on the map as a national destination for healing and wellness.

Speaker: And I've got, I've got plans that, that span beyond, uh, five years even. So I'm building, building it slow, brick by brick, and, uh, it. I'm excited for, yeah. Everything to come here. Super excited. So now your website's ora therapy life.com [00:50:00] and you've got a, uh, a, a discount code, I think, uh, for 15% off. Is that right?

For, yeah. If you sign up on the website, you get into one of those fancy flows where you get discounts. Um, also if you go on our Instagram page or therapy life pinned at the top, there's uh, a post that. It says deal and you'll get other information and if you really kind of wanna go through like what's going on on the site, that that flow, which is a super cool flow, we just implemented, we'll help you and kind of be like a AI chat bot that's gonna walk you through a lot of choices and a lot of things and give you discount codes.

Speaker 3: So yeah, we hope you come and visit and if you ever wanna visit us here in Asheville, come by the store. I'm not there very much. If you wanna reach out to me, you can do that on our socials or on LinkedIn. And I'm always, uh, here to have a conversation about all the things I, entrepreneurship, wellness, spirituality, aliens.[00:51:00] 

Favorite topic. Yes, Chris goals. We can go woo or woo woo. Or just wellness. I love it. Great. All right. Well thank you for your time, Laura. I look forward to future collaborations, like I said. And, uh, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you, Travis. You too. Bye-bye.

Speaker: Thanks for joining us on The Wellness in Nashville Podcast, where we explored the transformative power of scent chakras and Aura healing with the incredible Laura McCann of Aura Therapy. And don't forget, get 15% off@auratherapylife.com using the code avl. 15. It's the perfect way to experience Laura's blends for yourself, or even grab her book and dive deeper into her mission.

For more local wellness gyms, head over to be well avl.com and follow along for fresh episodes every week. Thank you for listening. To learn more about Be Well Asheville, visit be well aav l.com. And don't forget to follow this podcast. You can catch the next episode and bring us along on your way to yoga at [00:52:00] Carrier Park or wandering through the Biltmore Estate Card.

This. If you loved what you heard, please rate and review this show. Your review helps others discover and grow our wellness community. You can check out Asheville Wellness News events and our newsletter@bewellabl.com. Thank you for being the best part of our wellness community, and until next time, be well.

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