Master degree interior design

Ellen King, an accountant, had spent her life making numbers make sense.

A little over a year ago, she realized she wanted to get in touch with her inner cave painter. Or marble chipper. Or cathedral builder.

She wasn't sure which.

All she knew was she wanted to understand why she said what she said, did what she did, wondered what she wondered.

The Red Shoes fit.

Art and life

The Red Shoes isn't something dazzling to put on your feet but a center where women--many of them professional--take classes in an array of disciplines, including spirituality, art, dance, movement and psychology.

Located at 2303 Government St. in what was once a drab doctor's office, The Red Shoes was founded by Roberta Guillory in 1999 as a way for women to tap into a deeper part of themselves.

"We provide an emphasis on the interior life and creativity" Guillory says. "Everyone is so busy today that their interior is impoverished."

Classes at The Red Shoes, which range from free to $190 for weekend intensives, are meant to lead women to a deeper understanding of themselves.

If that sounds wishy-washy, it's because Guillory has purposely kept the mission of her nonprofit open-ended.

Counterintuitive, perhaps, but it's a business plan that's drawn a solid core of supporters, many of whom are businesswomen like King who want to understand themselves better.

The result, for many, is that their professional and personal lives are energized.

The first class King took was called "The Artist's Way" based on the book by Julia Cameron.

"'The Artist's Way' is a course to help you find out how to make yourself be more versatile, find out who you are and what you are interested in," King says now.

The class changed the way she perceived the day-in-day-out parts of her life.

"It made me more confident because it made me aware that I am who I am, which is not necessarily like everybody else," she says.

King, who owns her own business, says she noticed a change in how she interacted with her clients.

She found she enjoyed her work better when she engaged clients in the process of figuring tax forms.

"People have a lot of anxiety with numbers," she says. "They give their accounting papers and then they never want to hear about it again.

King found that if she took the time to explain the process to clients, they'd start to participate more. This sharing brought a new joy to King's profession.

Now, she says, she chooses not to deal with clients who want nothing to do with their financial futures. She can help her clients more when they participate.

Accounting has become a form of expression for King.

In touch

Guillory has a diverse background that includes an English degree from Tulane, a master's degree in social work from LSU and training in spiritual direction at a Benedictine monastery in Pecos, N.M.

She often senses the mystical in everyday life.

"It's almost like an idea captured us rather than having an idea," she says, recalling how her enterprise was launched.

It started quietly, in a living room, in 1997. A handful of women gathered to talk about books and their lives.

In 1999, Guillory took inheritance money she'd received and sank it into founding The Red Shoes in a retail space on Perkins Road near the I-10 overpass.

"The rent was low," she says. "The money came from an inheritance from my father. He had three daughters and would be happy the money was used to support women."

Classes filled up quickly.

Women came to figure out what their dreams meant, to learn how to build a sanctuary at home, to dance for the first time in years.

"I tend to neglect my creative side," says Martha Yancy, grants director and community development coordinator at the Arts Council of Baton Rouge and a regular at The Red Shoes.

How could someone who works in the arts get out of touch with art?

"It ends up that I mainly support others who are involved," Yancy says. Now she's able to remember why she grooves on art in the first place.

The Red Shoes attracts a lot of professional women, Yancy says, because most of the classes are held in the evenings and on weekends, when working women can make it.

Guillory says it's easier for women to devote time to their inner lives if they have made an appointment to do so.

The Red Shoes recently did its first marketing campaign and catered to working women by offering three options for its open house--breakfast, lunch or wine and cheese.

"Our best advertising is for a woman to come here, benefit from our programs and then tell all her friends," Guillory says.

Making room

The Red Shoes is in the process of setting up a rentable office space for professional women who want to conduct business for only a few hours a week.

For $10 an hour, therapists or consultants can rent an office at the center. This way, stay-at-home moms, for instance, can continue their professional development in a setting that's away from home.

"It's another way of supporting women," Guillory says. "That's what we do."

The Red Shoes moved to Government Street late last year, more than doubling their space.

The building, which was designed by A. Hays Town in the 1950s, had to be gutted and rebuilt to become the naturally lit, exposed brick space it is now.

Purchasing it was a financial leap for Guillory.

Total cost: $163,000 for the building; $100,000 for renovations, the cost of which was reduced because volunteers agreed to paint the inside walls.

Guillory financed the building by harvesting timber from a plot of land she owns outside of Jackson.

Here's the mystical part: When Guillory was churning over whether or not to harvest the timber, she opened her Bible to this verse from the book of Isaiah: "They shall be called Trees of Righteousness, planted by the Lord for his glory."

"Finding that quote at just that time is really why I decided to buy the building on Government Street," Guillory says. "I seemed to feel that there was a greater intelligence at work beyond myself and I was being asked to do my part in its service."

AMY ALEXANDER covers management, media and workplace issues. Reach her at aalexander@businessreport.com.