CO.STARTERS Spotlight: The Restorative Willow
“I was trying to heal myself, rediscover myself, recreate myself, my friend Ray and I would spend a lot of time hiking and just like being out in the forest. And we were out there talking one day and we just thought, this is so healing, if only we could share this with others”
If you’ve ever been around Nicci Gano, of The Restorative Willow you know how pleasant and relaxing her presence is. It makes sense that she is a forest therapy guide. “The forest is the therapist and as a guide, I just open the doors,” she explains. “It's really just a very slow walk through the forest with open-end sensory invitations.” Which really almost oversimplifies what a wonderful service forest therapy is. Almost everyone walks away feeling more grounded and restored.
The other half of Restorative Willow comes in the form of macrame art, which Nicci found herself falling in love with because of the endless possibilities there are to create. “There is no end in sight to what you can do.”
Nicci had been aware of theCO and the CO.STARTERS program for a while, it just so happened that her move back to Tennessee from Denver was coinciding with the beginning of the annual CO.STARTERS course. “In my mind, I thought, well, at the very least I will meet important people in this class. And I did, I knew the first night when people were introducing themselves, that we were a group of very important people doing really awesome things in West Tennessee. And I was like, okay, well I've already achieved what I thought I came here for.” It was that first night in CO.STARTERS that Nicci met Joanna, (Everyday Green with Jo) and since, the two have developed a symbiotic relationship with their businesses. “We were clearly meant to be in that class together.” They often can be seen together at various pop-up shops locally, selling macrame plant hangers and plants together. Any macrame class that Nicci teaches Joanna is there -greenhouse in tow- to offer different plant options to hang in their new macrame hangers.
Beyond connections with fellow entrepreneurs, Nicci also felt like CO.STARTERS acted as a mirror to herself and her business, reflecting back and showing her where she needed growth, where she needed to buckle down and figure things out.
The class being led by an experienced entrepreneur brought a special kind of perspective, “It kept blowing my mind that Lisa Garner was so chill about everything because she is one of us, she's literally out there being an entrepreneur and doing this stuff and she has her own business that she's built from the ground up.” Having that kind of guidance was crucial, many entrepreneurs feel themselves struggling along, unable to find community or advice in the early stages of business. CO.STARTERS brings together a catalog of experts from CPAs, attorneys and fellow business owners to the table. Education is your biggest tool when you begin charting the unknown journey of owning your own business.
For the future of The Restorative Willow, Nicci would like to eventually have a co-op style space in Jackson for other artists, makers, etc to have a place to go. As of late, she’s created a Facebook group for local artists called the West TN Creatives Collective where fellow creators have a space to chat, do events together and have a sense of community. Whatever journey Nicci and the Restorative Willow embark on, she’ll undoubtedly take all that she’s learned through CO.STARTERS with her, from real-life enterpernial examples she got to meet and ask questions to or her own experiences she’s cultivated since the programs end.