Slow Down and Prepare To Succeed

Everything around us is built for speed. Faster shipping. Faster answers. Business itself is a speed game. Time is money is a cliche for a reason. So it might seem counterintuitive to build a business around slowing down. But plenty of people are looking for opportunities to connect. They want personal experiences. They want someone to care what they think. They want space to have a conversation.

For a lot of people, moving through life can feel like a rush, and not in a good way. How often do you go to the doctor and think: “I wish they would just slow down and listen.”

Abagail Meche Frederick will tell you her career started with listening to her own body. She grew up in Arnaudville in a family that kept herbal remedies in the cabinet next to the aspirin. After high school, she was diagnosed with PCOS and later struggled with infertility — and came away feeling like she’d gotten answers without ever getting the reasoning behind them.

Abagail Meche Frederick runs her boutique wellness consultancy Little House Holistics out of Nature’s Link Wellness in downtown Breaux Bridge

Abagail taught school for three years. Ran an in-home daycare for three more. Along the way, she noticed she was spending most of her free time talking to people about nutrition and wellness. Her mentor finally asked the obvious question: if you’re making time for this anyway, why not make it the job?

She did.

In 2020 Abagail started seeing clients virtually, and today she runs Little House Holistics out of Nature’s Link Wellness in downtown Breaux Bridge, where she focuses on hormones, digestion, thyroid issues and fertility. It’s a small practice intentionally. She caps her practice at about ten clients a week — And she’s still booked four to six weeks out.

If you want to get the most out of an herbal tea, time is of the essence. You’ve got to let it steep.

A tea shop is a great place to slow down. And if you’re looking for one to be your third space, you might visit Julia Bonaventure at Sojourn Tea & Goods in Downtown Lafayette.

Julia Bonaventure promotes an oasis of calm at her Sojourn Tea & Goods in Downtown Lafayette. You don’t need to ask her for the wifi password, because there is no wifi.

Julia Bonaventure spent a college summer on an herb farm in Vermont, growing plants that turned into things people could enjoy. That led to tea houses in the Northeast, a favorite shop in Austin, and a slow-burning fascination she carried home to Louisiana — where she went to work for a technology company.

Life forced her to slow down. She was laid off. A week later, there was a death in the family. She applied for more than a hundred and fifty jobs and got one interview. It was a sign. Sojourn Tea & Goods opened its doors in downtown Lafayette on April 1st 2026.

The refuge from the hustle offers more than 40 teas, and there’s no printed menu — just sample jars you smell your way through. The shop hosts book clubs, chess nights and afternoon teas. It’s a third space, designed for conversation rather than laptops.

Christiaan Mader, Audio Engineer Dylan Babineaux, Abagail Meche Frederick, Julia Bonaventure, Associate Producer Lea Urdiales, Out to Lunch at Gravy in Downtown Lafayette

In general English conversation we use words like “antithetical” and “counter-intuitive” but there doesn’t seem to be a business equivalent of theses terms: a condition in which success is measured by not growing bigger. Both Abagail and Julia’s businesses make the argument, successfully, that it might be about time for economists to catch up and coin that term.