Husband-wife team returns to Quincy, plans to open health and wellness spa in early August

QUINCY — Nathan Oshner and Katy Claus have welcomed their first child and moved from Nebraska back to Quincy in the past year.

Why not start a business while they’re at it?

“What better time to do it? Just do it all at once,” Oshner said.

The husband and wife entrepreneurs will open The Luxe Health and Wellness Spa, 609 S. 12th in Quincy, on Aug. 2.

“We’ve always wanted to start a business, but life happens,” Oshner said. “You start moving up in your careers, and it gets harder and harder to leave your job until one day you’re like ‘Well, if I don’t do it now, I never will.’”

The couple moved from Quincy to Omaha, Neb., in 2019, where they lived until January 2024. While working as a family nurse practitioner for Think Whole Person Healthcare in Omaha, Claus helped kickstart the practice’s aesthetics program.

“What gave us a little more confidence to be able to move into this space here was that I helped research different products and helped on the backend helping them build that up,” Claus said. “When I got pregnant and we decided to move back here to be closer to family, we thought ‘Well, we can bring this here.’”

Claus called it “the fun side of medicine.”

“With this, I don’t see sick people all day every day,” she said. “They leave with a smile on their face, not with a fever and an antibiotic.”

Claus wants patients to feel at ease when coming to the Luxe.

“We were wanting to bring a more relaxed style to it, like to where you don’t necessarily feel like you’re going to the doctor when you go in to have a procedure done, if you will,” Claus said.

The environment will be relaxed once the practice opens.

The process of starting the business has been anything but relaxing.

“It feels like there’s a roadblock every day, whether it’s a really big one or a small one,” Claus said. “Some days you’re like, ‘What is happening?’ You’re in so deep that sometimes it feels like there’s no way up and out, and then literally the next day, you could feel like you’re on top of the world. You’re like, ‘This is really going to work. This is going really well.’ We’re high-fiving and having a glass of champagne, and then the next day, we’re like ‘We’re going to be homeless.’”

Oshner and Claus work three days a week at their other jobs — Oshner as an electrician for his friend’s business, Claus as a family nurse practitioner for Premise Health. They spend the other days grinding away at their business.

“There’s always something to work on,” Oshner said. “That’s the fun part, but it’s also really stressful.”

They really didn’t know what to expect.

“It’s been a lot of learning,” Claus said. “I think we totally underestimated how much work it was going to be. I thought, ‘You know, I’m already a provider, I’ve already been doing these things.’ I thought that we would just bebop right into it. We have a whole new level of respect for people who start their own business because it has been a wild ride.”

“We’re working at our other jobs, so we can only be at the office Tuesdays and Fridays, so if UPS missed the day they were supposed to deliver, then we’d have to wait three more days to get our stuff,” Oshner said. “It’s a medical office, so you have to be there to sign for the packages. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

Their personal lives have been put on hold for now.

“I love golfing, and I used to play three or four times a week, and this year I’ve played four times in total,” Oshner said. “We’re just in one of those periods where you have to grind it out until you get to the finish line.”

All that hard work will come to fruition soon.

“When you have dreams and goals that you’re working towards, it really does make it easier,” Oshner said. “We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

The Luxe will offer Botox, fillers and chemical peels. Other services are in the works, though Claus did not wish to reveal those now. At their Aug. 2 soft opening, they will welcome those who have been making appointments for the last month.

Claus said a major reason for not having a grand opening on that day is construction that has closed off portions of 12th Street.

“Eventually we’ll do a launch event, and we’ve got some big things planned in terms of working with other small businesses in Quincy and the surrounding area, but I’m waiting until the street opens back up so we can utilize the front of the building a little bit better instead of trying to get everybody up the back alley,” Claus said.

It’s just another obstacle the couple will have to overcome.

What’s another one when they’ve made it to this point?