We didn’t realize business required more than talent

When my business partner, Michael Windisch, and I decided to open our wellness center business we were confident that we would be successful.

Having been a massage therapist for 11 years, the last three in a chiropractor’s office, I had a strong client base and significant management experience, including participating in the development and marketing of the chiropractic office. And Michael had just earned his MBA, honing his ability to watch the cash flow. We believed ourselves to be a formidable team.

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Working on staff in other locations allowed me to observe many mistakes. While keeping track of daily routines and operations, I took note of things that I would or would not allow or do in my own business. I was intent on never making the same mistakes as the ones I was observing, which would ultimately make me a successful business owner.

Name: Rick Hayhurst

Title: President

Company: Body Biz

Location: 2727 N. Lehman Ct., Chicago

Company type: Wellness center

Founded: 2002

Employees: Five

Web: http://www.bodybizinc.com

I knew we could create a market and maintain a loyal clientele. In my mind, that was 95 percent of what we needed to do to be successful. We crunched the numbers and found we could easily cover our overhead. On paper, it looked quite feasible.

Of course, what neither of us realized was that running a business is a lot more than providing clients with great service. There is an infrastructure to a business that as a member of staff I never saw–let alone appreciated.

Our biggest mistake was not realizing that running a business–even a very small business–requires a lot of resources beyond our own talent.

Our first wake-up call came before we even opened our doors for business. We were suddenly confronted with a legal issue and desperately needed advice in order to open for business as planned.

It was not an area of expertise for our attorney. So, it was only after we joined the Chamber of Commerce and talked with the president that we were able to begin creating solutions.

Had we not made the connection with the Chamber of Commerce when we did, the opening of our business could have been delayed by months and could have cost us thousands of dollars in lost appointments.

While we were grateful for the help we received, we still had not learned our lesson–completely. We were still working under the assumption that we could do all the work, from creating our own business and marketing plan, handling the entire financial side of the business without any outside help, and managing any and all employee issues.

We naively thought that being a small business meant that we could handle all aspects of the business. What we didn’t realize is the amount of time it takes to do all of these jobs well.

While we desperately needed a marketing plan, it was easy to push it off because we had clients to take care of who were already coming in the doors without us having done any substantial marketing and advertising.

The marketing and business plan continued to be overlooked. There was never a good time to do it. Our time and energy were being wasted doing time-consuming tasks such as payroll and store maintenance.

It finally dawned on us that, if we were going to be successful, we needed help. Asking a professional to take over a task such as payroll was not admitting defeat, but rather being clever in letting the experts do the work they specialize in.

Since then, we’ve begun to outsource key aspects of the business–from marketing to payroll. This allowed us to compose a list of resources, from friends to business individuals and business groups, who we could call on to help us in various aspects of business.

Our list includes consultants and services that we are currently using as well as people and services we may need in the future. It gives us confidence that we will be able to avoid a lot of mistakes that we would have made had we attempted to muddle through on our own.

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