Ruby.
The views, information, and opinions expressed during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent those of Into It QuickBooks or any of its cornerstone brands or employees. This podcast does not constitute financial, legal, or other professional advice or services. No assurance is given that the information is comprehensive, accurate, or free of errors,
and the information presented is for information purposes only. Into It QuickBooks does not have any responsibility for updating or revising any information presented. Listeners should verify statements before relying on them. Welcome back everyone, and welcome to all our new listeners. This is Mine the Business Small Business Success Stories, a podcast brought to you by Into It QuickBooks and
Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Jennise Torres, creator and host of the award winning personal finance podcast Yokiero di Netro and author of financially Lit, The Modern Latina's Guide to level up your de netto and become financial.
And I'm Austin Hankwitz, host of The Rich Habits podcast and co founder of with S Ventures. But you may instead recognize me for my short form videos about personal finance and investing on TikTok.
We're here for season three of the podcast, and Austin and I are quite literally hitting the ground running from where we left off last season. We're traveling all over Nashville, Tennessee, and Tampa, Florida to talk with business owners in person about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
Denise, I know you're from Tampa. You actually just bought a house right outside of Tampa. I've lived in Nashville now for the last six years, so this is going to be a lot of fun.
But Austin, before we get into that, what have you been up to since last season?
Oh my goodness, what a great question. So my dad got to celebrate his seventy ninth birthday. I celebrated a three year anniversary with my girlfriend. The Rich Habits podcast has been trending in the right direction. We launched like this private community where we do live streams. Now, what about you?
That sounds like a super packed year, and I have to say I've had one as well. I got engaged, I got pregnant, I'm running a multiple six figure business. My book came out, I went on a book tour, and that's just the beginning of it. So twenty twenty four was definitely a whirlwind.
Let's go. That sounds like we've both been up to some really exciting stuff now. I can't wait to kick off this first episode. Jennise, me either.
But before we meet our guests, Austin, do you remember what it was like when you were just starting out on your journey. Do you ever, like just look back and reflect on those days and everything that's happened in between.
I really do. The biggest lesson learned reflecting on those early days was just how important consistency is when you're starting a personal brand, when you're starting any sort of business, Just the consistency that goes into it, showing up being the best version of yourself every single day to do good business, and just thinking about that and reflecting upon that, and how important that was Deanie in the first twelve to twenty four months of my business, I say, was
the big key differentiator there.
Yeah. I think with the beginning of the year, it's natural for us to want to look back as business owners and see what worked and what didn't. I think it's incredibly helpful to look back at those major milestones and even mistakes, to remember those key lessons that you learned and changes that you made or strategies that you implemented.
That is one hundred percent correct. Your journey as a business owner is its own story, so going back and looking at how you and your business have developed from the very beginning until now can be super helpful.
Yeah. I think back to when I was first starting out considering writing a book, how it wasn't even something that was on my radar. And once I started talking to my audience and realizing that there was this hunger for some sort of resource that they could hold in their hand versus like a podcast or social media content,
I knew it was time. And so, you know, it's probably one of the hardest things I've done so far as a business owner and a content creator, but it really has paid dividends because now it allows my audience to have an even deeper connection with my expertise as a personal finance creator.
You are so inspiring, Janie, and I cannot wait to dig deeper into the book that you've published. But enough about us, let's introduce our guest, Scharise Rose of Potentia Therapeutics.
Charis has a doctorate of physical therapy after earning a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from Louisiana State University. After her education, she enjoyed working in a big hospital network, but found herself wanting something with more flexibility. She also noticed that therapy clinics tended to be overbooked and understaffed, which created conditions for many patients that she found lacking.
After a move to Tampa, she was working in a clinic that initially spoke to the more direct one on one patient therapist scheduling, but over some time things shifted and seemed to be trending in the direction of packing schedules with multiple patients at a time. Determined to make a change, Cherise took action. She bought out her former boss, became the owner and clinic director, and renamed the clinic Potentia Therapeutics.
Cherise immediately set out to improve the business and bring it up to her standards. She expanded the team from three to sixteen therapists and created a culture of exem employer patient care, and focused on better work life balance for her employees. Charis has operated Potentia for the last eight years, winning Tampa Magazine's coveted Best of South Tampa Award.
For the last six years in a row. Currently, Charise and her team of highly trained physical therapists at Potentia continue to practice evidence based physical therapy and wellness allowing for precise diagnosis and skillful management of movement dysfunction.
Cheris, We are here at Potential Therapeutics in the lovely Tampa Bay area in your clinic. Welcome to mind the business. So excited for you.
To be here. Thank you.
Now you have a very unique origin story, as you bought this business from your boss.
I sure did so tell us about that. Okay, well, I'm a physical therapist, but I believe in wellness. So my history is that I was pre med major in college, but then physical therapy drew me in more because it's more conservative and its care. It's more treatment based and wellness based. So when I became a physical therapist, I would look for clinics that yearn from that as well.
And we have a weonness based model here in Tampa.
My boss also had the same concept based out of California, So this is the first clinic outside of California that had that kind of concept, and so we wanted to create a space that allowed the patient to have WEONUS based treatments as well as PT visits. So we look at the continuum of care with the patient injury based treatment BOSS, so keeping them well for years to come, preventing injuries versus the treatment symptoms that they exist. And
so we decided to create that space here. My boss was here for four years and I ran the spot for four years as a clinic director, and we had great success here. I worked in clinics before where you're seeing a patient for a treatment session for an hour, but so maybe two patients one hour, three, an hour, four an hour sometimes, which is to me kind of outdated.
So we'd yearned for a space where could see a patient one on one patient care without being double booked, so that patient had that quality care with that therapist for an hour. We launched that here as the former clinic. And so when he wanted to fold into to the kind of issues existing with insurance based care, I want to keep the same practicing one on one care, so I decided to consider buying him out and launching my
own space. When he wanted to revert back to the old ways of doing physical therapy.
Yeah, so it sounds like there was a difference in philosophies about how to approach your client experience, and so would you say that's the main driver for wanting to go into business for yourself versus wanting to continue to work for someone else.
That's right.
I wanted to create a space that I can love and thrive in. And for so many years we didn't have a voice as therapist. We worked for big companies, hospitals, large chains that maybe you were a number to the employer, but not really a face or a name. And so I want to create a space where the therapists actually we're seen and heard and we could practice as the
clinches we wanted to be and thrive to be. And so we did that in the space and I feel like, oh, my therapists, my coworkers are my friends, They're a family to me, and we create a space where patients feel loved and cared for.
You know, I really like that whole list approach because in my own experience having physical therapy, I have felt in the past like it's kind of just like they want you in and out as quickly as possible, and there's not really this emphasis on maybe like.
Keeping you out of the office.
It's almost like they want you to keep coming back, which makes sense because you know every time you come you get paid. But also if I'm not making modifications in like how I'm taking care of myself, it's almost like you're on a hamster wheel of just continuous care where I don't necessarily want to be in pain all the time forever.
I agree with you.
I think a really interesting statistic right now is that there are about four million baby boomers that retire every single year, and a lot of these baby boomers are small business owners, and they don't really have these succession plans, and so sometimes what happens is someone who is interested in running a small business, a locally owned business, will go and they'll buy this business, right And what's wild about that is they have no idea nine times out
of ten how to run a business for themselves. So I'm curious, what were some of the specific challenges that you went through as it relates to taking over a business.
Okay, yes, I'm a clinician first business owner.
Second, so this was something I say fell into my lap and it was just luck met opportunity at the same time. But I also had a vision for this. The funny story is that the name Potentia. I met with my lawyer about four years prior to develop a LLC. I didn't know what the LC would be, but I knew the name would be Potentia at some point. And then four years later came opportunity with my former company to buy them out and change that name to Potentia.
So it was always in my mind that would create my own space in some kind of way, but I didn't know how I would do it. So fast forward to four years later, when the other company was here, I decided to buy them out. I did not know much about business, but I did have a lot of patients of mine and friends and family in the business world and finance and.
In hospital administration that can help me.
So I met with two gentlemen before designed to buy the company when was a CEO of a hospital retired for ten years, worked in the business for thirty years or more. And my husband's uncle who's a VP of a large bank. And met with both of them and talked about my ideas for the business here, and they looked at all my data, my numbers, and said it's possible. So I think one thing I took away from that situation is that knowing to have a team around you that.
Knows what they're doing, so know how to hire your team that supports you. And that's what I did well.
I think I just found people in my circle who were my champion and also believe in the concept and also gave me the truth.
So that makes a lot of sense. Now. Tactically speaking, you take over in existing business. That business has customers, it has protocol, it has existing software. Talk to me about how you adapted to some of these changes that might have been different, and then how did you keep your customers since they were so I'm sure used to something different.
Funny story is that we did have Yes, we maintained the same space. So one thing we did well was we did not move. We had the same space. We just changed the name our signage and patients who were former patients of ours for years would drive by and say, you know, I need therapy, but that name looks different, but I think I went there four years ago. And so they walk in and they become our patient again and say, that's sure. You know she was my therapist.
We had new therapists at the time, but they believed in what we did before and knew that we had quality care, and so I maintain my address, my fax numbers, my phone numbers, so if they called the same number even though it was formerly the other name, they knew it was still therapy.
And so my patients just followed us. We did not maintain some insurers.
We only kept Medicare and Tricare based on reimbursement purposes.
A lot of the insurers don't pay very well when it comes to reimbursements, so we had to make sure we were getting enough for our patient visits, to maintain a clinic space and to not fold, and so we decided to defer some insurance contracts which weren't open at the time, and kept on two contracts with that said, those people who were patients of ours who had at Neblue Crossbow Shield signa knew that we were great therapists and decided to go cash pay with us and stay
with us so they would pay higher rates for better care. A patient of mindset to me, he says, Listen, why would I go to another site and another physicallypity clinic if I'm paying for my copay for that hour, but I'm double booked to other patients, So use me for an hour. You get me better in one visit. That's one visit a week versus three busits a week somewhere else where. I'm not feeling better. So he chose to stay with us, and that's what most people do all the time with our clinic space.
Talk to me about the branding, right, I think a lot of small business owners listening right now are either trying to figure out the name or their business. Maybe they just acquired a business that exists and they want to rebrand it. How did you approach rebranding this existing business and what does the new branding mean to you? And what type of customers do you hope to attract with this branding.
Yes, I can start with the name Potentia means power in Latin. I was looking for a nice, strong name and I could draw all kinds of patients to our clinic. So I wanted patients to feel powerful in their treatments and powerful in their advocacy for their health. I think having that branding potential, just being powerful and the way they apply themselves as therapists and how we treat our patients was like builtimin Cole.
That's amazing. It really is about empowering the Yes, yes, I love that. So you're obviously working here previously as an employee. What's it feel like to get your first paycheck as an owner and how does that change? What did you have to adjust in order to make that transition?
Well, I know, launching the clinic in the first year, you know, you want to make sure you're doing well, you're staying profitable, and making sure that you have all the teas, cross eyes, dot it, and I just made sure I wanted to take care of my employees first and the business first. So like I definitely paid myself, maybe less than I would have paid myself initially, but once that first year past, I knew that we can be successful in the business and everyone would win.
And I want to make sure everyone's.
Taking care of so when the business thrives and when everyone is happy, we all thrive.
Considering. This episode is very much focused on reflecting over the last several years of the business owner. Now you've been in the space for I think you said it was eleven years and you've owned it for seven. Yes, So kind of staying on this theme of reflecting back, can you share with me as we reflect back? Call it seven years ago before this was a Sharis owned clinic. Right, You're just about to walk into this new amazing chapter of your life. What emotions were going on in your head?
How did you feel, what were you scared of? What were you excited about? Walk me through the feeling of day.
One day one.
Day one was actually pretty transitional. It was a quick turnaround. I remember closing as the previous business on a Thursday and then opening us the next business on a Tuesday. There's really no change in like the space. But I knew that I wanted it to succeed. I must say I'm a type of individual who jumps in first and think second. I assume there's going to be a yes. I never expect to know if there's a no. I try to convince someone that it should be a yes.
So I just was very optimistic in jumping in the clinic. I just thought we have the tools. I mean, in this for almost twenty years and there is no quality care, and as long as we have all the administraty of tools in place, then we can succeed. I know there's a little bit of fear, maybe a little bit of fear, but to me that drives me that means I should be attempting it, attempting to get over that fear and
try to succeed in that area. I knew that I have a family at a nine month old at the time, my son and my husband in my corner, and I knew that this is the right time to take a leap of faith. I mean it's always a challenge. I mean starting a new practice during a business. I knew that my quality care was there. I mean, I knew that we had the hands on skills, we had team in place at the time, and if everything would fall into place.
I've heard that a lot with other small business owners and entrepreneurs, this mantra of build an amazing product and your customers will come. Yes. Right, the word of mouth is going to happen. If you have a great product, people will come.
That's right.
And so it sounds like that's what you really leaned into as a small business owner. It might take, you know, a couple of weeks or a couple months, but it's eventually going to turn into a thriving business, which it has today.
That's right, I agreed.
I just that you know, having the previous business and being the clink director for that business.
I knew that the model was working.
Is the current business as it is today what you had expected it was going to turn into? Or did you have other expectations or desires for the business in the beginning, then you realized, wait a second, that was silly. We should actually do this instead.
It's so funny. This client grew fast than I thought it would grow. The biggest growth was through the pandemic. And I to tell you why. During the pandemic, I think people had to approach their life and mortality and they realized, wait, am I doing the right things of my life to be successful, to be happy, to be healthy.
We are essential workers as physical therapists, so we stayed opened in the pandemic, so we were able to work in the pandemic, and so we were like sometimes the first person someone saw all day, all week, and we made their day and we had a safe space. That's when we grew the most, honestly, is during that time, and people started thinking about their own health and being empowered by it.
So I think one of the unique things when you're buying a business is you're also buying the forensic analysis that comes with us, right, So you get to look at what's been going on with the books, procedures, what have we been doing, what services have we been selling. I'm curious, once you started kind of digging down, did you find anything that maybe raised some red flags for you or did you see some stuff that like, Okay, this is working, we should continue doing this.
Yes, I think what I learned is that as far as reimbursement, so you know, insurance drives a lot of healthcare, and so in our space, we had a hybrid based clinic. We had insurance based and cash bay clinics. So we wanted to maintain that space and make it reasonable for patients to come and see us, even that they had no insurance. Sort of fee schedule that was pretty average compared to all the other FEA schedules out there in the world, which is other pet clinics had the same
pricing point for evaluations, follow up visits. And then we had to increase that fee schedule and raise the rates you know, every year or so a little bit.
To help with inflation, of help with.
Costs of real estate here exactly, but not getting any cheaper exactly.
We doubled in size, and so we have had to make up for the double rent, and so we did raise the rates and the fee schedule. We also did make sure we maintain that patient care within those rate changes so that we don't price gout anyone out of our clinic space.
So that was important. One thing I.
Learned is that we had a billing company that was doing a great job for us, but not the best job, so there's lost revenue. Let's say you complete a patient note and there's like a mistake made that patient note, Well you can you can change that on the back end and resubmit for insurance and get that billing collected on the back end. So the billing company wasn't informing us at all times in a timely fashion when some mistakes were made. So we decided that company wasn't for us.
They weren't able to keep up with our demand. Sometimes in a month we may see seven hundred patients come through the door. So we want to make sure we can maintain that care and with our billing as well. So we changed companies and that was a big change we had to make, and we had to make sure we were not leaving any money on the table basically and not missing reversements.
Yeah, that's a great attitude to have, and I think it's important to know as a business owner, you're going to go through different growth seasons and there's just going to be some support that maybe got you to where you are, but is not going to necessarily be able to get you to that next phase. You know. It's just about kind of making sure that at the end of the day, you're getting the support that you need so you can provide the optimal experience for your clients.
That's right.
It's all that takes all of it, not just the personal care, health care, but like knowing that it's a business and if I could, I would treat everyone for free.
Would I would? But then we would not have a clinic and we wouldn't be able at a hobby.
You could treat me for fresh Yes, I'll do that any time, but you know, we would have a clinic. You know, we would have four walls and yeah, so we had to maintain some business aspects.
Coming up on mine the business small business success stories.
You live and breathe the business. It's like your baby. It's like you know, you want to protect it. You have to protect the palace at all costs. You whatever that may be. Just protect the palace. We'll be right back. Welcome back to mind the business.
So I've been an entrepreneur for going on five years now, and I've made countless mistakes. Okay, so you're going on now year seven, year eight, what are some mistakes that Reflecting back, thinking man, that was goofy right, what are the mistakes that you had made and what did you learn from them?
I think not catching the billing mistakes early was one thing I would have like, because I can't collect that money now it's gone.
How long did that go on before you guys are read on something? Maybe a few years? I think a few years.
I mean, now could we collect that money? You have a year after finding an insurance claim to like get that money. So if you see a patient, you have a year to finish that note and you get the collections. And so this is beyond a year that these things were happening, so we couldn't go back in time and collect. So you know, it is what it is at the time back and that was one mistake we made. You know, just making sure that I maintain growth and profitability as
well as take care of my employees, that's important. So if we get collect as such as we can through our fee schedules and through insurance and thinking smarter, working smarter and harder.
That that helps.
What's a strategy for balancing growth and profitability? Again, you're on year seven, year eight. I'm sure you do a great job of is it monthly? Is it quarterly? Is it annually? Sitting down with the finance team and going through the books understanding how much you're spending on marketing versus how much you're profiting per new visit new clients. Walk us through that.
Okay, So we have a monthly meeting. Michell and I and my office assistant we meet once a month to go over numbers. Sometimes you go over numbers with the company we work with the billing company, and we go over collections and you know, lost revenue and how to collect the revenue. My accountant I meet with every three months quarterly to go over our accounting numbers, like how we're doing I buy this new machine? Can I raise my fee schedule? Should I raise my fee schedule? Can
I pay my therapis a little bit more? And how much can I pay them? So these questions I asked the team so that we try to profit and not save our losses, keep them smaller than larger we have losses, and that we did see a change happened with the two hurricanes. It was unprecedented times. We had two hurricanes that was not planned. So we definitely had to pivot through those times and figure out, Okay, well, you're not seeing patience in those weeks, and so that's not money
coming in. So we had to figure out how to save for rainy day, which is a lot of rain actually a rainy day.
It sounds like an ongoing theme of the success you've experienced with this business is surrounding yourself with a good team, good partners and employees, good accountants, good mentors, good financing people. Right, everything comes around this idea of surrounding yourself with a team of people who have your back. We're going to be very honest with you and then also encourage you when you might be, you know, having a hurricane day.
So, as someone who has now been in the driver's seat of this business for seven years, you've seen a lot, You've seen a pandemic, you've seen inflation. How has the information that you've collected in the past served you going forward, because I imagine it not every year looks the same, No.
Every years looks the same. And just knowing that reimbursement can take a long time. For instance, if you file a claim with Medicare, you may not get paid for three to four weeks.
Wow, you know.
And you know, sometimes there's a mistake made, you might have to wait two or three months to get that claim. So it's it's very cyclical. It's it's kind of like up and down when collections are concerned. You know that maybe in December and January things shut down in the government, so you have this holiday kind of like schedule where you might not get a lot of response from insurance companies are from the government because they're also on vacation
and enjoying their holidays. So that means that if they're closed, we're closed. Reimbursement it depends of like they're getting to our you know, our documentation, getting to our charting and paying us in a timely manner.
So that may slow down in the first quarter.
So we learned that we have to like maybe not do big projects in the fourth court of the.
Year, maybe just like you know, hold on to like our cash.
And that makes a lot of sense, yea, And you only know that with information, right, That's why I only you can know that by being able to look back and see, ooh, this is a seasonal thing. We need to be mindful of what time of year this is, to be strategic about how we deploy cash and also just what we take on as a business. Yes, so what's the biggest surprise that you have had in this small business owner journey?
I did know growth this fast and that you have to be all in. So like my laptop is always with me vacations, it's always with me.
I traveled with it.
We went to London recently with my family and it was time for payroll, so that laptop came with me. I made sure you know to do payroll in London, and just make sure like I can take care of business when I'm away. So you still have to vacation and take time for yourselves. But also your business is always on your mind and to know that never shuts down. It's always like part of your life and you have to be all in at all times. So I think you live and breathe the business.
You know.
Someone always says it's like your baby.
It is.
It's like your baby. It's like you know you want to protect it. My coworker Meredith, she says, protect the palace. You have to protect the palace at all costs, you whatever that may be. Just protect the palace from unhappiness from the IRS.
IRAS's exactly exactly. Irs.
Protect the palace from just like you know, keep it joyful. Just protect it from hurricane. Yes, and just make sure you steer clear of things that could maybe pull you off the path of like success.
Yeah.
Well, and I can imagine that being able to run payroll from London. It's only possible in this modern era because of programs like into a quicks Oh yes, can you imagine having to like sit there and physically write and mail tracks like back in the day. I'm just like, I'm so glad I'm a business owner in this modern era.
Oh, we love into it. You use it daily and we love it.
Let's actually dig into that. As you know, Intwit QuickBooks is great for record keeping. With intwit QuickBooks, I manage my businessiness in one place. I track money in and out. I'm running payroll just like you. I make and accept payments all in one integrated platform. And the best part is it's all recorded. I can go back and look at what I spent on marketing in my first year and how much that might have positively impacted my business, and say, should I spend more this year? How is
that trending? What decisions should I make? So do you have any strategies for looking at your business's performance week by week, month by month, or year over year so that you can keep going with what's working and improve where things need to be tweaked up a little bit?
Oh yes, looking at into it quick books and the way it helps us. We look at collections on a weekly basis, daily basis to see like how well we're doing a daily, weekly, monthly and we know if there's going to be a slow month coming. We can look at previous history, last year's data compared to this year's data and see well how we do. Then we can see also growth factors like how well we've grown from
last year to this year. I know as we are a hybrid based clinic, have an insurance for Medicare and Tricare and cash pay visits as well, cash pay every day with into it right versus getting collections from insurance would be mailed to us or direct deposit too, So having that real time cash through QuickBooks so important to maintain the space and know that we're going to get that payment.
I would also imagine it helps with sort of real time understanding of cash flow, right because you mentioned and I think a lot of people listening can empathize with the fact that sometimes you send an invoice to Nison doesn't get paid for sixty days, right, So you know, having this real time visibility could be really important for someone in your shoes.
Oh yes, oh yes, and making sure we have we able to pay our vendors and making sure we're getting paid as well. Is there important to have that convenience through QuickBooks. It's been successful for us to maintain that flow. And yes, accuracy, accuracy, I think that's a key term here, right, accuracy, Yeah.
Accuracy and visibility.
Yes, yes, I agree with that.
Something we talked about earlier when you first walked into this new chapter of your life of owning this business was optimism, right, very optimist, Nick, not very fearful, just very excited about the future. Now fast forward seven eight years into the future, do you find yourself still very optimistic and how has that sort of translated in risk taking?
Do you see yourself taking big risks today were you're taking big risks in the beginning, and those risks could be anything like hiring new people, expanding into a new space, things like that.
I think I took more risk early on because we just launched the business. It was a smaller clinic path of size, less rent, and we had a therapist who are amazing, and we had to prove our products. So I think I took more over then to like kind of develop the clinic and make sure that we were providing the best lighting, are the best atmosphere, and the
best marketing. And we definitely had marketing lunches with our doctors and we're out there in the market getting people to know who we were, and yeah, that was fun. The first three four years of launching was just bring our name out there. I think I'm less risky now. I'm more trying to fine tune everything because I think there's more to lose because I have more therapists on staff.
I have family.
I think about I have coworkers who are like my family, and they have children, they have husbands, and I want them to have a stable job and a stable career and to protect our palace.
So I think I take less.
Risk now than I did before, but I'm still looking to the future. For instance, I would love to launch products. I have ideas for products, you know, maybe launch something that I think we need in the world, like an ergonomic device or something like that.
I have that on my plate in my mind. I want to write a book.
Things like that could be kind of like passive income for the clinic, but the active income is more seing patients and I want to protect that. I think one risk I took was expanding the clinic. So from four years we took the wall down and jumped across to the pandemic, so that was pretty risky. So I think that I want to make sure to grow the clinic. We continue to like change our kind of method of working and expanding our clinic space and our therapists and our team, and.
We love it.
So it sounds like in the beginning it was more of financial risks, right, pulling the rent, going out there, getting your name out there, taking people at the lunch dodent and marketings like that, where today it seems like reputational risk is what you're focused on. Yeah, right, making sure that your reputation stays five stars out of five stars, like it is right now.
Yes, we want to make sure our patients feel cared for. My coworkers are feel cared for by me and by our team. We tend to work well together and we want to maintain that as well. So we have a village we want to protect. And I feel like one thing I have at point out is that we have work life balance.
A lot of right therapists are off a day of the week or two.
Some work part time because they want to because their parents, and some want to work full time, but they work maybe four ten hour days. So I encourage a hybrid schedule as well. We have that balance. Our team is pretty much the same team we started with.
Wow, so sounds like you're really good at not only protecting the palace but protecting the village too.
That's right.
Thank you for saying that. I do love my village and I hope they know that.
But I just want to grow with them, and I see how we can be a great neighborhood clinic that people feel comfortable coming too. We have patients who come here just for coffee in the lobby, they have no patient visit. They want to come have coffee engage with us and that's amazing.
We love that.
Yeah, that is a unique uh loyalty that you've built into your client.
Because that's all.
Thank you.
What is the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself in this entrepreneurial journey.
The bigest lesson I'm going about myself is that you can't do it all. You know, you have to delegate. And I know for me, my calendar is full. So like as far as my social life, my personal life, and my professional life. You want to be balanced. So balance is important. And so in a day, I may have certain task scheduled, but I realize that's my calendar. I may from myself in my mind. No one has this calendar but me. I can change any time, so and I do.
So.
The way I kind of moved through life and with task is that I have a conveyor belt. It's a conveyor belt. If it doesn't get taken care of today, it's on the belt, right, it comes back around at some point. No need to stress, we need to worry about it. It'll happen in due time. You can do it all, but it has to be not at the same time, not at the same time, giving yourself some grace that I give yourself some grace.
That's something I certainly struggled with in the beginning as an entrepreneur. Was I saw online all these people working twenty four hours a day and seven days a week, going hard and doing all these crazy things. I'm like, that's what I have to do to be successful. And it took me a very long time to realize that is not the definition of success. Happiness is the definition
of success for me at least. And so to your point of giving yourself grace, Oh, I wasn't able to meet with this person, or I wasn't able to get this specific business task done. It's on the conveyor belt. It's going to come back around. We've got tomorrow, the week after, and the many more years to come. As it relates to being an entrepreneur, So having that balance to your point between work and life and relationships is the most important thing.
I concur I just think giving yourself grace and knowing that to take out other people, you have to take care of self and so that's not stable and important to you, then it can all fold.
I think that's a great reminder of again how important mindset is the conveyor belt gives me this reassurance that those things that are for us as entrepreneurs will wait for us until we're ready to get back to them. Cheri's this has been an incredible conversation. I am so excited to continue to follow your growth here in the Tampa Bay area. I predict multiple clinics because what you're doing here is very unique and very needed, as you can tell by the fact that you have a wait list.
So we're we're seeing lots of success here at Potential Therapeutics. And thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you guys so much.
What a cool journey that Cherise has embarked on and absolutely succeeded with. What is your biggest takeaway from our conversation, Janis.
Well, I really loved how as somebody who's buying an existing business, you actually have data to make future decisions on right. You actually have sales data, marketing data, all types of information that I didn't have as an entrepreneur when I first started because I'm starting business from scratch. So there is actually a big benefit to buying an existing business and We're also going to talk about later on in the season about how you can use this
data to make decisions. And I think us obviously is making a bunch of great decisions because she has had nothing but success in the past seven years as.
An owner, no kidding, Oh my goodness, you know. I think my biggest takeaway from our conversation, and I find myself as a small business owner kind of going through this myself right now, is this idea between financial risk, like she was taking big financial risk in the beginning as it relates to expanding, hiring, marketing, you know, meeting new people, doing these things that you can definitely burn a hole in your pocket if you're not careful, versus
now reputational risk. Right as small business owners, we want to make sure our reputation is at the very top of all of our focus and everything that we do, because at the end of the day, if your reputation suffers, your clients begin to suffer, your customers begin to suffer,
and the business suffers. And so just balancing that financial risk and now that's sort of matured into a reputational risk focused business model, I think is genius and I think a lot of people are going to take away some really really important editits around that.
There were a lot of gems dropped in this season, Opener. I cannot wait to dive into the rest of our episodes, but that's it for today. You can find me on social media at Joketothenedo podcast and you.
Can find me at Austin Hankwitz. You can follow into quick QuickBooks on all social media at QuickBooks. To get the tools you need to start, run and grow your business, head to QuickBooks dot com today.
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At the beginning, we were diying it and it just became so overwhelming with managing a food truck and also a restaurant. But actually in QuickBooks they have a marketplace where you can find a CPA final bookkeeper.
My biggest question was I, how can I grow this? How can I scale this? How can I come down on this? Like Wire supplies this this month.
If a client loves you or a customer loves you, is always the five stars.
But if they will hate you, they will just hate you everywhere and it will sting you.
AI is able to make it sound a little bit warmer because there's no body language, there's no tone when you're writing email.
They're the saying that success is when opportunity meets preparation.
So we've always been geared to grow.
I think once you're in it and it starts to become your livelihood and there are people depending on you, you're running payroll.
That's the hard part.
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