Business partners build unlikely success at Soothe

Editor’s Note: Final in a three-part series.

ALBANY — You want DIY? Tyler Johnson offers his version, but it’s more of a cautionary tale.

“We were looking to buy a float tank, but we had no idea where to buy one,” Johnson, a partner in the Soothe Holistic Wellness Lounge with T.J. Barlow, said. “We discovered a chat board and started searching. We found one that was a great deal, but it came with a timetable. We had to get it ourselves, and we had to get it over a weekend. Which might have been fine except for the fact it was in Houston, Texas.

“Both T.J. and I were working full-time, but we took off that Friday and drove straight through to Houston, stopping only for gas. We got there around 9:30 the next morning — 12 hours after we left — loaded the tank on my truck, and then headed back to Albany. We got here about 1:30 on Sunday morning. Of course I’d never ridden with T.J. before, and let’s just say it was an adventure. Every time he’d swerve a little or hit a bump, I’d pop wide awake. After that adventure, I decided: Never again.”

Such are the rigors when you decide on a well-calculated whim — but a whim nonetheless — to open a one-of-a-kind business in a community where you’re not really sure what kind of response you’ll get. But with Barlow, a man who’d overcome several bouts with death, depression and gods who appeared to have it in for him to become one of the most highly-regarded message therapists in the region, sporting a newfound belief in both himself and the positive powers of the universe, there was no way these two partners were going to let Soothe be anything but a success.

Now, offering types of holistic therapy and message the average person has never heard of — hot stone, deep tissue, myofascial, craniosacral, hot foot bath, Swedish relaxation — float therapy (in the aforementioned tank), sauna treatment, meditation, herbal teas, CBD oil and custom herbal therapy based on individual research — Soothe has become a haven for a growing number of southwest Georgians seeking mind/body harmony and more than a touch of enlightenment.

That Barlow, who lost his right leg from the knee-down and endured painful and dramatic cranial, left-leg, back and other surgeries after a horrific car crash in November of 2014 and harassment from government agencies that declared he wasn’t disabled enough to collect financial support, has become an in-demand massage therapist is nothing short of a miracle. That he and Johnson connected and started Soothe is one of those feel-good stories that you’d only expect Hollywood to come up with.

“Two of Dr. Chad Lawson’s sons — Mason and Devon — saved me from having back surgery for five years,” Barlow said. “They gave me massage treatment after my accident, and that was when I started to realize the restorative power of massage. But after they left and I eventually ended up having spinal surgery, I never forgot how they’d helped me get closer to a functional lifestyle. That would influence me later in life.”

With the encouragement of friends on whom he’d practiced his massage arts, Barlow eventually got a job with local chiropractor David Wren and later at Wil Power, growing stronger by the day and ever more proficient at his craft.

“Dr. Wren actually got me started thinking about massage therapy as a career,” Barlow said. “He told me, ‘You know, if you ever decided to go out on your own and do this, you’d kill it.’”

Johnson, who’d met Barlow when the two were students in the Lee County School System, said he “kept running into T.J.,” and the pair reconnected and started hanging out. One day during a race the two attended at the Albany Speedway, one in which Johnson planned to participate but wrecked his car early and joined his friend in the stands as a spectator, they started talking about the possibility of opening a business that centered around massage therapy and other holistic practices.

“I told T.J. that this was something I wanted to do, that I didn’t need to be talked into, but I also wanted to run the idea by my dad,” Johnson said. “He’d had his own business, and I figured he would be the one person who would tell me if he thought it was a dumb idea. But he never said anything bad about it, so I took that as a blessing.”

The pair sought and located an office building at 2925 Ledo Road suited to their business plan. They got the building in October of 2020, worked on it “when we could” for a while, then dedicated their full attention to rehabbing the site to fit their purposes.

“We wanted to open before Christmas, which made sense from a business perspective,” Johnson said. “We figured if we met that deadline, we could sell some gift certificates. But we were both working full-time jobs, and we only were able to work a little at a time.

“We were doing all the work ourselves, from the flooring up, so finally we stopped working at our jobs to focus on getting the business open. We opened the doors in January of 2021.”

There were days early on, Johnson said, when the partners would “look at each other and say, ‘hey, we only had a couple of people come in this week,’” but both partners said there was never a time they thought things wouldn’t work out.

Eventually, with several of Barlow’s past customers finally “finding us,” and through word of mouth, the business took off. And Johnson, who handles the administrative chores, said the response has been “beyond what we’d hoped for.”

Barlow, meanwhile, who said he turned his life around when he “quit drinking and finally rehabbed my body myself without medication,” said he’s encountered a clear path to business success through his deep connection with his inner self and with the divine.

“I didn’t see this success happening in my life until I quit drinking and got into the universal laws,” he said. “When your goal is to help humanity and you get up every day and pursue that goal, the universe will reward you

“Everything that’s happening in my life now, I feel, is what is supposed to have happened. I see it now as a calling from God.”

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