ShoutoutHTX Magazine Local Stories: Meet Bailey Mier-Nava

Interstellar Massage and our Founder, Bailey Mier-Nava, LMT, were featured on 1/22/2025 in ShoutoutHTX Magazine introducing inspiring local entrepreneurs in the Houston area. You can read the contents of the article below:

“ Hi Bailey, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Well, I have been an aspiring entrepreneur my whole life, and along the way I also realized that I have a tremendous passion for helping people. Eventually, after exploring and ultimately tabling many different business endeavors, I became a Licensed Massage Therapist. I found that I had a natural talent for doing this kind of work, and a built-in passion for therapeutic massage specifically due to its ability to reduce chronic pain and make a positive impact on people’s quality of life.

Once I became licensed, however, I went to work in the corporate spa setting (which of course is only one aspect of work options in our industry) and I had some pretty gnarly experiences. The clients were always absolutely phenomenal and I loved working with them no matter the setting, however there were a lot of really absurdly unprofessional experiences I went through with owners/management within spa settings. This is due in part (I believe) to a massive detachment between the “business oriented” people on the administrative side, and the “healing oriented” therapists on the treatment side.

I also quickly realized that due to the physical nature of our work in this industry, we aren’t able to work 40-hour (or more) work weeks like other industries can without a high risk of injury. When you consider this information up against the typical pay rates and compensation models of these spa places, which are very low across the board and only for what we call “hands-on” service hours, I realized it would be almost impossible for anybody to survive working exclusively in the corporate spa setting. We would be always forced to have multiple jobs to try to survive. Between time spent unbooked/required to be present and waiting for appointments, and being forced to pace yourself physically week to week so you don’t hurt your body, the pay averages out to be something close to minimum wage in most instances.

That really sparked a fire in me because I have met a lot of really amazing people in this industry so far, and they are very talented therapists who help people with sometimes severe pain in ways other health professionals have never helped them. I don’t think it is appropriate for any of us to be struggling to pay our bills every month with the kind of tremendous value we offer the world on a daily basis.

The thing that really frustrated me the most was hearing story after story from my clients in those spa settings how they had never known there was more to massage than just relaxation, or that therapeutic massage was “even a thing.” They would explain to me that they would come to the spa hoping to get some kind of relief that lasts longer than just a few days at a time, but that they just didn’t think this was even possible. Most corporate spa settings emphasize the importance of providing relaxation (Swedish) massage with light, medium, or firm pressure. That’s about it. So using the many different advanced therapeutic modalities available in our industry is generally discouraged in the spa setting.

All of this combined creates this inherent problem where therapists are burned out quickly trying to work as much as possible to pay their bills, and spa clients are frustrated and grumpy because they spend so much money trying to feel better. With that frustration mounting… when any spa employees make even a small mistake, something that would be totally natural and usually not a big deal, the client’s frustration is so compounded that it is a disaster waiting to go off. Morale is low, employees are frustrated, therapists are burning out fast, clients are losing faith in the power that massage therapy can truly have in someone’s life…

Basically the entire corporate franchise spa business model as it is now in the industry doesn’t make ANY sense to me for wanting to help clients, value therapists, OR make long term sustainable revenue as a business. These places seem to be about quantity versus quality, corporate branding versus showcasing the therapist’s individual skills that could help a specific client, and repetition versus client-centered treatment unique to their individual needs.

Being an entrepreneur, if you are any good at being one, then if you find out that you are really good at something AND the great idea you have does not exist yet in the world, then you go out and create it. You create solutions out of thin air, you make a tangible “something” out of a present “nothing” to solve problems in the world.

I want to create something that helps clients in pain feel better AND that fixes the broken systems that I struggled to navigate after I became a licensed therapist. I want to see everyone winning in this industry, not just a corporate brand name. I want to elevate the client experience, elevate the individual therapists that these franchise businesses rely on to even exist, and absolutely challenge the corporate spa business model that is frankly offensive to many of the people working within it and interacting with it.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I am working on creating a business that addresses many of the pain points I have just explained. We have a plan to eventually grow it as far and wide as possible, slowly and with carefully calculated requirements, so that our values, mission, process, and client experience are preserved at each and every step that we take when growing. This is something that of course takes a lot of time, effort, and a whole bunch of really awesome people coming together to make it happen, and a few other ingredients in the “secret sauce,” but we are in the midst of taking those baby steps forward every day to help solve these problems and offer the market something completely different than what is available right now. We are passionate about what we do here and the positive impact it can have for all of the amazing clients that we serve, and we are ready to do our best to absolutely disrupt this stagnating part of our industry to inspire change and better conditions for both the clients and the therapists.

We know that we can’t help everyone, but we are working on building this company up to be able to help as many people as possible. That is something worth paying attention to, following along with, and cheering for us about! I’ve heard from a few people so far (that, interestingly, hold positions within the actual corporate franchise models I’ve been talking about) that we “can’t ever be successful” with the plans I have in mind for Interstellar Massage.

I’d like to tell them all… Watch me. Remember me, remember my team, remember our names. We are small, but together we are MIGHTY. We are the underdogs, we’re aiming to be the best of the best, and we are gonna do our absolute best to make it happen and help people in some truly amazing ways. We have a LOT of supporters who are getting to know us, cheering us on, and teaching us different things along the way to help us succeed even faster and better than we ever imagined, so… Dear “Corporate Spa Franchise Business Model” — we are coming for you! Lol.

If you are reading this and you now feel as passionately as we do about these issues in our industry, and you feel like you would like to help support our clinic and our effort to disrupt our industry even if you are too far away to be a client… you can support us by visiting our website and rocking some of our new branded merchandise that we just launched over the holidays! We came out with some cool stuff for people to wear to the gym or athletic events that can help get the conversation going about who we are and what we are doing.

Getting our brand recognized and getting us talked about will help us continue to become familiar with people out in our community, and it will DIRECTLY help us to do all of the cool things we have discussed today! Also liking, following, sharing, and commenting on our content that we post on our socials helps a LOT as we work to overcome social media algorithms and spread our mission and our vision to others. We appreciate everyone’s support very much, and we are working hard to make these goals reality!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Oh I would definitely take them on a food tour! I am a “foodie” at heart, through and through. Some of my absolute personal favorites are Gordo Niños, Frenchies Italian Cuisine, Cafe Petra in League City, Pappasitos, Pappadeux’s, the Burn’s BBQ original location up on the Northside, and Las Fuentes Taqueria up on the Northside. There are so many amazing restaurants to try all over the city, even ones that I can’t remember off the top of my head that truly blew my mind! That’s probably my favorite thing about the Houston area is how diverse and creative our food scene is! So my friends who do come to visit me here in the city… we EAT!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I want to give a shoutout to all of the instructors at my massage therapy school, Texas School of Massage (TSOM). I was taught by the director Dr. James Wray, Ms. Tammy Krogman, Mr. Rick Markland, and Mr. Tony Le Cara Jr. They helped me become an AMAZING massage therapist, and literally none of this would be possible without the care and skill they poured into me. At one point here recently, I was described as one of the top 5% of therapists that a former massage therapy instructor and program director from another school had personally experienced to date, which was the most humbling compliment I have ever received so far. I 1000% owe it to the instructors at my school for helping me become all that I am in this profession.

All of my instructors were so patient with me and all of my questions, they helped me in ways that went truly above and beyond several times, they taught me so much about this industry and the human body, and they continue to mentor me whenever I stop in and have questions or contact them and want their professional opinions on things I am working on. Mr. Tony Le Cara continues mentoring me and teaching me advanced massage techniques regularly and has helped me become highly skilled already in a very short amount of time (though of course I will be working on mastering these skills over my lifetime). My clients and my staff ALL benefit greatly from his time investment into my continued education as a licensed therapist. All of their devotion to educating and the effort they put into teaching me LITERALLY has made my dreams start to become a reality in this industry, and I am working to lift other TSOM students up with me as well as I continue to grow. So they all absolutely deserve a shoutout for sure, and I will forever be thankful to all of them.“

You can read the original article on the ShoutoutHTX Magazine website here: https://shoutouthtx.com/meet-bailey-mier-nava-n-a/