Stephanie Carter was already in the business of helping people by the time she launched Breath of Life Training, a healthcare training facility in Evans, seven years ago.
“I’ve always had a passion for helping,” said Carter. “I’m a helper and a fixer. That’s what I do.”
Before starting an LLC, the Columbia County native was working as a CPR instructor. As a struggling single mother, she had taken to offering adjacent services to make ends meet, from first aid training to fingerprinting to assisting people with finding work.
This garnered contracts from various agencies for healthcare instruction, and Carter eventually concluded she had found her vocation.
“I’ve gotten ‘no’ many times,” she said about her initial attempts to open her own training school. “‘No’ means go faster, go harder.”
Breath of Life now offers training and certifications for nursing assistants, medical assistants, EKG technicians, phlebotomists and more.
Breath of Life, Carter notes, boasts a more welcoming environment than one might expect from a medical training school. She encourages positivity and professionalism as much frankness and friendliness, all for the sake of motivating and encouraging her students.
“Anything you could think about, I’ve been through,” said Mely Roman, a nurse and former EMT from Philadelphia who’s now an instructor at Breath of Life. “I went through it all during nursing school, and those were things that were meant to knock me down. So if that didn’t knock me off my pedestal, please don’t allow it to you.”
Many of Breath of Life’s students are single mothers or are otherwise young women seeking to start their careers. Many of them have, or are going through, tough times.
“It’s not that I don’t want to hear your story,” said Roman about the compassionate, tough love approach she and Carter apply to supporting students. “I want to hear your story. But I don’t want it to be an excuse for you not doing what you need to do or not achieving what you’re supposed to be achieving.”
Carter’s enthusiasm for offering healing was the impetus for her second business, Purple Bloomz, which opened early last month.
The storefront houses a CBD store, complete with a “bud bar,” (the only one in Columbia County), and in the back is an alternative wellness center, selling essential oils, candles, crystals, jewelry and novelties related to holistic healing. Carter aims for the shop to have a more relaxed environment than most CBD stores.
“I’m a spiritual person,” said Carter. “It’s still wellness, not, per se, a CBD shop.”
While juggling two businesses can be overwhelming, she said, things work most days because of the support system in place, from family and friends working at both businesses. An outpour of that kind of support and encouragement, she said, it what maintained her faith in her entrepreneurial endeavors, and what she tries to extend to her students.
“I can’t even put a a price tag on it,” said Carter. “When a student walks in this door, and I know that they were at the lowest point in their life, and they tell me, ‘I got off food stamps, I got off Medicaid, I’m standing on my own with your help.’ And I’m looking, I say, ‘all I did was push you.’”
Breath of Life Training is located at 124 Commercial Blvd. in Evans. Purple Bloomz is located at 4158 Washington Rd Suite 3. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/breathoflifetraining or https://www.facebook.com/purplebloomz.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
