My husband and I were ready to invest in something that was going to allow us to have financial freedom and figure out what work-life balance could look like for us .

Pulse : Were there lessons that you learned from the corporate environment that translated into the spa industry ? DM : I was in information technology . I managed teams , did project management and did a lot of recruiting . All those things translate to the spa industry .

Pulse : You mention recruiting . Are there some best practices you learned in your corporate job that you ’ ve been able to apply ? DM : I developed relationships with local schools right

Dawn Matkovic checks on the spa ’ s retail space .

PHOTOS OF DAWN MATKOVIC , CREDIT : MELISSA ROCK PHOTOGRAPHY after we opened . Continuing to nurture those relationships when we are recruiting people has been important . I also think it ’ s critical to remember you can recruit people , but you also have to retain them . When I was a nail technician , I was lucky to have benefits available to me , but most people don ’ t . We offer medical , dental , long-term disability , short-term disability , cancer care , life insurance , so that the employees know we really do care about them , and we want them to have quality of life .

I lived to work at one point in my life and that ’ s not healthy . I tell all my team members : “ I want you all to work to live , not live to work .” We all work hard , and we ’ re there to provide an extraordinary experience for the guests , but we really need to work together as a team . I ’ m there doing laundry , I ’ m flipping the rooms for therapists , so they really see me there and get that I would never ask them to do anything I ’ m not willing to do .

We also focused on compensating our staff well and we saw that hiring and retaining really did become less of a challenge for us . We ’ ve been lucky with our first location to be fully staffed , and to keep staff with us for the whole time we ’ ve been open . I think those things are hard to look at because you ’ re trying to make sure you ’ re balancing the profitability of the business with making sure we ’ re keeping our staff in mind . But for me , it also creates a better quality of life for us . Because we retained our staff and we didn ’ t see high turnover , it made it easier for us to open a second location .

Pulse : There are also huge financial implications of a revolving door . DM : Yes . Just in the cost of training alone . You ’ re paying that person , and then you ’ re also paying the person who ’ s training them . We constantly look at our onboarding processes to see if there ’ s something we could do differently . We are always looking in the mirror to make sure what

— DAWN MATKOVIC

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2023 n PULSE 45