“Always do pictures first,” said Rachel Virden, owner of be.dynamic. “You cannot bring this group of women together and do pictures after.”
Two months ago, on a day revitalized with the warmth and clarity of spring, I met with three Northwest Arkansas business owners who have turned a shared corner of our community into a destination for wellness. Alongside Rachel were Erin Werner, owner of Activate IV and Cryotherapy, and Roni Dickerscheid, owner of Burn Boot Camp. While their storefronts sit at the intersection of Tontitown and Springdale, their missions are seamlessly woven together.
Rachel’s exhortation at the beginning of the interview was not reproachful but cautionary, suggesting the good-natured volatility that comes with true emotional connection. Silence from Erin and Roni confirmed their agreement. My thought as a lifestyle editor was that finding three female business owners with such an unshakeable mutual appreciation was comparable to striking gold.
Like the rest of us, Erin, Roni, and Rachel each have their own stories. But uniting them is a harmony of perspective that emboldens each of them individually. The significance here is not in what they’ve overcome themselves, but in what they’ve done for others given what they’ve overcome—and especially what they’ve overcome together.
Erin worked as an ER nurse for almost fifteen years. Facing burnout and disillusionment with her initial career, she began to question a long-held skepticism toward functional medicine. The more she applied its principles to her own life, the more she came to believe in them. This ultimately led to her opening the wellness and recovery clinic known as Activate IV.
“I loved it until I didn’t,” Erin said, relating back to her career as an ER nurse. “Then the Lord opened the doors I walked through to start this wellness space.”
Activate IV offers hydration therapy, cryotherapy, and advanced recovery services for athletes and individuals seeking improved health, energy, and recovery.
Meanwhile, Roni began her professional career at Walmart but decided corporate life was incongruent with the one she desired. Her decision to leave followed a high-risk pregnancy and limited maternity leave, a period filled with uncertainty and fear. It was then that she discovered Burn Boot Camp, a gym offering 45-minute high-intensity interval training workouts for all fitness levels. Since then, she has started her own Burn location in Springdale and supervises two others in Northwest Arkansas.
“I left corporate buying, followed a calling, and opened Burn to create a community,” Roni said. “Springdale felt like the last hometown with real, diverse connections.”
As for Rachel, who graduated from physical therapy school in 2010, she felt certain conventions in the field could use a novel approach. After working at other clinics, she started her own. At b.dynamic, she shifted toward prevention and a cash-pay, community-centered model.
“If physical therapists are the movement experts, why are we not in the prevention space?” Rachel asked. “You don’t have to settle for disconnected care when you surround yourself with the right people.”
Each of these stories represents how they’ve faced unique challenges and overcome them. But there are many others they share. Every day brings families to care for, unpredictable situations to handle, and businesses to run. That’s not even to mention the hardships they faced when “coronavirus” was metamorphosing into all-caps “COVID,” and they were still trying to get their businesses off the ground.
What’s truly remarkable is how they continually overcome new challenges together. When two tires from an eighteen-wheeler recently smashed through the front windows of be.dynamic, Erin and Roni opened their doors so Rachel and her staff didn’t miss a day of work. These women illustrate the analogy that kites fly against the wind, not with it.
Between such challenges, a unified perspective has been established. That perspective is defined by helping others overcome their own challenges and grows from a steady optimism that anything is possible through faith.
“Like Erin said, it’s the Lord’s work when door after door starts to open in ways you don’t anticipate,” Roni said. “When you have faith, sit still, and listen, the right things always come.”
Most of all is how they’ve integrated their successes. As a power of three, these women have created a holistic haven of health in our community, operating a threefold approach to wellness through recovery, exercise, and physical therapy. At the intersection of Tontitown and Springdale, three parts have come together.
With a shared clientele and mutual support system, Erin, Roni, and Rachel help others on the basis that challenges are best faced in teams. In choosing collaboration over competition, they show that success comes in unison, or sometimes threes.
While their storefronts sit at the intersection of Tontitown and Springdale, their missions are seamlessly woven together.
The significance here is not in what they’ve overcome themselves, but in what they’ve done for others given what they’ve overcome—and especially what they’ve overcome together.
As a power of three, these women have created a holistic haven of health in our community, operating a threefold approach to wellness through recovery, exercise, and physical therapy.