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I'm
a CPA with twenty-some-odd years of senior management
experience in roles like chief financial officer and
chief operating officer plus a master's degree in
accounting and business from DePaul University, so
that's given me an extremely broad perspective on what
makes businesses work.
Looking back on it, what's been most
helpful is having had lots of hands-on experience in
professional services and technical services companies
in just about every business area you can imagine -
sales, marketing, operations, finance, human resources,
and strategy. I've been responsible for tiny teams
and over 1000 employees.
So
it's never been dull! And
truthfully, there's not much I haven't seen before.
I hate to see businesses reinvent the wheel and learn
every lesson the hard way, so that experience really
pays off in helping clients do smart things right the
first time.
Personally, I split my time between
leading seminars and workshops and coaching individual
clients (with a healthy dose of speaking mixed in!).
Part of what we try to do at Radial is make our know-how
available regardless of budget. So I enjoy
seminars because it's a way to help a lot of people at
once for a smaller investment. And I enjoy
coaching because you can really tailor your advice for a
specific client and their unique opportunities and
needs.
Some of the most interesting work I've
done has been helping businesses fix really serious
profitability problems. One thing that I tell
clients over and over again is that you have to build a
sustainable business if you want to be around to help
people, so helping businesses figure out their special
niche, get
financing and grow always makes me feel like I'm helping
them make
a difference.
Many of our clients and customers aren't
used to thinking about what makes their wellness business special
- and how to tell the world about it! So helping them do
that really does make me
feel like I'm walking on air.
Seeing it all come together - happy
customers, owners and managers who enjoy coming to work
every day, and healthy financials - is a wonderful
privilege, actually.
Q&A
What's your philosophy about
business in general?
I've never really boiled it down into
a "philosophy", but here are the things that I always
seem to come back to:
1) Truth is good. Be straight
with customers, with staff, with yourself. It
makes life much easier and lets you spend your energies
on things that will move your business forward.
You'd be amazed at how much time can be wasted trying to
figure out how to dress up a bad situation rather than
just acknowledging it and then working on fixing it.
2) If it feels like you're pushing
string, stop. When business projects are
incredibly difficult to move forward, and they aren't
getting easier, you need to stop and revisit what you're
doing. Maybe you need to table that idea for
awhile, or completely rethink how you're tackling it.
3) Successful entrepreneurs are
marathoners, not sprinters. You've got to take a
longer-term view or you'll burn out. Plus, if you
only think in terms of months - and never years - you'll
make short-term decisions that actually undermine your
long-term success. One of the best (or worst?)
examples of this is the tendency of new wellness
businesses to want to set their prices too low to get
customers quickly.
What attracted you to health and
wellness?
Initially, it was because I had really
been sensitized to issues of work/life balance after
spending many years as an executive for large companies.
Plus, it was easy to see the payoff for businesses and
employees when you invest in staying healthy vs trying
to fix things once people are sick or have chronic
problems. It was an easy jump from corporate
wellness to a broader focus on wellness businesses for
consumers, too.
Plus, my husband is a Type 1 diabetic.
He's extremely active - runs in endurance events and so
forth - but has been really frustrated by his
experiences with personal trainers, physicians,
dietitians and so on. He's a reminder of
both the market opportunity for innovative health and
wellness businesses and a case study on what we as an
industry don't do well to serve consumers with specific
needs. So I've got personal reasons for wanting to
help health and wellness businesses succeed as well.
Why did you start up Radial?
In several companies I had responsibility for human
resources. Some really interesting corporate
wellness firms approached us about offering certain
programs in-house. It was clear, though, that they
knew more about health and wellness than they did about
how to run their own businesses most effectively.
We created Radial to fill that gap of business know-how,
so that health and wellness businesses could grow and
succeed, whether they were selling to consumers or to
employers.
What do you love and hate about being a small business
owner yourself?
Oh, this one's easy. I love working directly with
clients - I can spend all day on the phone or leading a
workshop and still be ready to keep going! It
totally energizes me. Plus, I feel so lucky to
work with clients who really love what they do.
Sure, they have bad days sometimes, but there's never
any doubt that they're making a difference for their
customers. I can't think of any other industry
where that's true.
On the other hand, I was spoiled when I started my
career in large companies. We had whole
departments of people doing things that in a small
business you either figure out how to do yourself or you
hire a part-timer or another small business to handle.
The one thing that frustrates me is that sometimes you
don't get the quality or commitment from small
businesses because they're spread too thin. And it
takes up even more time to replace them with a stronger
firm.
Anything else we should know about
you?
No one believes this, because I don't
have a Southern accent, but I grew up in Mississippi.
I've been amazed at how helpful that's turned
out to be, because growing up in a rural area really
clues you in to the challenges that wellness businesses in
really small communities face.
And on a personal note: see the photo in
the upper right corner? That's one of my proudest
possessions: my gold finisher's medal from
the Race For The Taste 10K at Walt Disney World last
year. It's a chef's hat with knife, fork and spoon
charms dangling off the bottom.
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