How we've helped Heather Venables Soft Tissue Therapy

This type of therapy can benefit a wide range of people and ailments, working with the soft tissue of the body, including fascia, muscles, ligaments and tendons. Heather uses a combination of advanced massage and manual therapy techniques, such as muscle energy techniques, in treatments at the clinic she shares with a physiotherapist, osteopaths and a chiropractor.  She also gives patients individualised exercise plans to work on at home.

Heather’s customers are self-referred and can be anyone from people recovering from an acute injury, to those who are managing a chronic health problem, to athletes looking to keep musculoskeletal health and achieve high performance.

Heather explains it is the range of people that she sees, and transforming people’s lives by easing or eliminating her client’s pain that makes her business a joy to run.

“A lot of people think that it's just normal to live with pain, such as back pain, but there are things you can do to treat it and reduce the pain, such as getting moving, especially if they have kinesiophobia and are scared to move because they're worried about hurting themselves. You don't have to suffer with pain.”

Heather met with Connector Christina in September 2020 just as she started the business and taking on customers as a Trainee Soft Tissue Therapist. They discussed the basics of starting a business, finance and marketing. Christina introduced her to Access to Finance support. This helped Heather to create a business plan looking at pricing, cash flow and expected turnover.

From talking to the team at Access to Finance, she decided that the best plan for her new company was to slowly build her trading and customer base without taking on external finance and invest her profits into the business for the first year. She is now in a great position to grow despite the lockdown where she was not able to operate. The next steps for Heather are to launch her new website and increase her marketing to attract new customers.

The Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Growth Hub from May 2016 -  June 2023 was part funded by the European Regional Development Fund and match funded by Cornwall Council, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership.  The project received £2,848,591.49 of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.