Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam and Ashley Elenbaas.
Hi Adam and Ashley, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
My wife Ashley and I met in 2010 and began working together in 2011, opening our business in 2011. We started as a home-based yoga studio in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. Our studio began as a fusion of yoga, herbal medicine, and astrology classes and individual services.
Over the years, although our love for yoga remained, our online courses in herbalism and astrology developed a very strong following, and we ended up closing our yoga studio in 2019, just a few months before the pandemic occurred, to handle over 1500 students per year that were starting to come through our online training programs. It was at this point that we moved from DC back home to Minnesota, where we are both from.
Since 2019, we have been continuing to teach and train herbalists and astrologers through our online training programs. We also both create regular podcasts on the topics of herbalism and astrology, which are hosted on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
When we opened our business in 2011, we would have maybe a handful of people attending our astrology and herbalism courses in our yoga studio. But we just kept teaching the classes because for us these are topics we are absolutely in love with. Over the years, I guess our enthusiasm was contagious because we now have thousands of people who take our various online courses each year and tens of thousands of people who tune in regularly to our podcasts.
We just never would have guessed that we could make a career, a really good career, out of teaching astrology and herbal medicine. But here we are, and we hope to keep doing it for as long as destiny allows!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We started our business in our early 30s and are now in our 40s. So getting married, having kids, and learning how to manage and rapidly growing business has provided us with a lot of opportunities for personal and professional growth. But we feel lucky because we get to do the things we love, we get to work together, and mostly that has been a great thing for us, and working online also afforded us the opportunity to move home, which for us is here in Minnesota!
One challenge we face here in Minnesota is the challenge of developing new community connections. Even though most of our work is online, because we moved here during the pandemic, we are still looking to make more meaningful connections with people and other businesses in the area who are into the same, mystical stuff that we love!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a professional astrologer. I practice and teach ancient, Greek astrology. Ashley practices herbal medicine. We are both known for how we weave the topics of divination and plant medicine together spiritually and philosophically on our podcasts and through our work with clients and students.
I am also known for the book I wrote about Ayahuasca shamanism. It was called “Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest,” and it was published in 2010 by Tarcher/Penguin. It was chosen as one of Publisher’s Weekly’s best books of 2010, in the religion genre.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Spiritual and intellectual curiosity and integrity.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nightlightastrology.com and www.skyhouseherbs.com
- Instagram: @nightlightastrology and @skyhouseherbs
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@Adam-Elenbaas and https://youtube.com/@skyhouseherbs
