We had the good fortune of connecting with Arturo Nicolas Del Aguila and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Arturo Nicolas, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
When we created Zenbody we had one goal in mind, help people live their most capable lives through therapeutic bodywork. My inspiration in starting my career as a massage therapist is my mother. Her motherly love made me such a mommas boy so when she began to feel ill, I knew I had to take care of her as much as she did me. In a span of around 6 years, her health slowly degraded and we had no idea why. Countless visits to all kinds of doctors and specialists, in and out of the country, no one could not figure out why her motor functions were failing. What was sure is that something was happening to her and we could not stop it. Over time, her ability to walk and talk was failing. She went from walking along walls for balance, to a cane, walker, wheelchair, until finally she lost all ability to move at all. A prisoner in her own body. As a kid it was traumatizing to see her get worse and I wanted to help in any way I could. Seeing her stuck in bed drove me crazy as I knew theres no way my mom was not meant to be in this state. I fed her everyday after school, spent all my time with her, and began massaging her. Unable to speak, she would smile after I massaged her and I just knew that it helped. Many years after her passing, I saw a commercial for school of massage therapy and it clicked. This was my calling. I could help people like I helped my mom. All my work is done in honor of her. It’s my passion being able to help people feel better physically and mentally with massage and I wish I can massage everyone. I know that’s impossible so my partner, Miguel, and I developed our own line of specialty products created for muscle recovery and pain relief. Now, not only can we help people locally but also worldwide.

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?
Zenbody is a mobile massage service dedicated to helping people live their best lives, both mentally and physically, through therapeutic bodywork. After helping hundreds of people for the last 6 years, we have fine tuned our touch and perfected our craft of massage. We work with the intention to heal, we listen carefully to our clients needs, and deliver the best massage we can give. We take pride in the work we do and our clients are able to literally physically feel that. It’s awesome looking back now when we created Zenbody years ago and how we only had a handful of clients coming to our home studio for massage and now we are entirely mobile helping people daily all over the valley. It’s our love for what we do that’s allowed us to grow in the way we have. We started this year with with a brand makeover to launch our new product line, Zenbody Elements. Our products were created to help us accomplish our mission statement, help everyone live their most capable life. We created FROZEN, an intense cooling CBD salve made for muscles and joints, ZenBD CBD oil which is amazing for sleep and recovery, Therascraper which is a muscle scraping kit paired with FROZEN, and Zenbody U which is our online “school” where we teach anyone how to do muscle scraping therapy. The original plan was to launch all our products at the same time but when the nation shut down we shut down too and it made the process of growing our brand more challenging than expected. The situation forced us to adapt and taught us how to be creative in solving problems. 2020 has no doubt been the toughest year we’ve endured, both as individuals and as a small business, but now we are more prepared and capable than ever. Despite the setbacks, we still worked our butts off to launch our products and safely massage our clients and we are happy to say we made it happen. Our products are receiving rave reviews, we are safely massaging more and more clients, and we are so excited for the future. We owe a big thanks to our loyal clients for their help in keeping us afloat during the pandemic. We couldn’t have made it with you! The goal now to continue growing Zenbody as the go-to brand for massage, recovery products, and self education. Our dreams are big and the biggest thing we want people to know is we are here and we can help you the way Art helped his mother!

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.
As you all know we are living in the COVID-19 era and right now it’s almost impossible to enjoy some of the wonderful places that our state has to offer. If a friend is visiting the state, our recommendation would be to show the natural beauty of our state by taking a hike on Camelback Mountain, driving north to Sedona or even walking around Tempe Town Lake. We also love local restaurants and 2 of our absolute favorites are Four Peaks Brewery and a small Mexican restaurant in Mesa called La Merced. Four Peaks has the best beer and the food is so good while La Merced fulfills our taste for delicious authentic Mexican food. Those options are the safest to enjoy in the situation our nation is currently in. We hope we can all get to the other side healthy so we can continue with our lives and our local businesses can bloom.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The biggest reason why we are at our level of business and mindset is due to the amazing help of our local therapist Kris Godinezat Aha Counseling. We’ve have been seeing her for years and she’s helped immensely refine our mentality. The toughest part of owning and running a business is having unbreakable confidence. We are human and there are times where doubt and uncertainty filled our lives and during these times we were taught by Kris to train our mind into replacing the voice that says “you’re not good enough” to saying “I got this”. Kris helped us shape our mindset and has helped us fill our lives with genuine happiness and success. Thank you Kris!

Website: zenbodyaz.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zenbody.massage/

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutArizona is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.