Organic Growth

When Sharon Bruckman became certified as a hypnotherapist in the early 1990s, she wondered how she'd find new customers.

Advertising in the daily newspaper in her hometown of Naples was too expensive. Besides, it wasn't targeted to the kinds of alternative health care customers who might need her services.

Bruckman thought there should be a better way to advertise than to drop cards and flyers in health food stores, so she created a magazine called Natural Awakenings that would appeal to health-conscious people and the businesses that cater to them. “We needed a resource to bring everybody together,” she recalls.