(upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- [Narrator 2] It's Your Business with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE PBS and the Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation with funding provided by the Rural Reimagined Grand Challenge.

- Fear is a major hurdle to overcome when deciding on whether or not to start your own business.

There are many people that never take the opportunity to make their dreams come true, but in this series, we speak to those who have faced their fear of failure, embarked on the journey of a lifetime, and have achieved the American dream of entrepreneurship.

Let's get started.

(upbeat music) You should never let anyone discourage you from following your passions, because you could miss out on an adventure more rewarding than you could have ever imagined.

Lisa Garcia could have played it safe, but she chose to step out, move to the other side of the country, and now owns her own business, doing what she loves, helping people achieve a healthier lifestyle.

(gentle, calming music) We're here in Cookeville, Tennessee at Cleanse Wellness Spa with owner Lisa Garcia.

Lisa, welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

- So let's get started with the basics.

Tell us a little bit about Cleanse Wellness Spa?

- We are an internal cleansing and detox spa here in the Upper Cumberland and we love serving the people here.

We find that people really need the services that we're offering.

They're popular on the west coast and on the east coast, but they're kind of a little bit new coming here.

We do colonics, colon hydrotherapy, electro lymphatic drainage therapy, far infrared sauna, and we also do ionic foot detoxes here.

- So walk us through, what does all that mean?

- Well, our bodies can get overwhelmed with toxins pretty easy and so cleaning them out and assisting our bodies are very important, that's a very important thing to do.

And so a colonic will clean out your colon with warm filtered water, and of course then the lymphatic treatment will help stimulate the lymph and drainage of the lymph in the proper places that it needs to go.

That's really important because the heart filters and pumps the blood, but people you, yourself, are your own pump for the lymph.

So if you're not getting enough activity, that can be a problem 'cause lymph and gut health affect the immune system directly.

And then the far infrared sauna, it heats your body from the inside out, lowers blood pressure and really helps with lowlying inflammation as does the foot detox.

So just important to keep your body clean.

There's a lot of outside factors these days.

- [Michael] So what kind of customers do you see coming in here?

- I see a wide range of customers, men and women, usually late 20's to 65 and beyond.

Usually they are dealing with some sort of gut issues in the beginning, so they have constipation, impaction, they have dealt with slow lymphatic systems which results in them getting sick all the time.

So they're always having that chronic health issue going on as far as they can't seem to shake the cold or every time their kid comes home from school, they're getting sick.

Those are the kind of people I see, people that want to up their game, lose the bloat, people that are just trying to clean their body and feel better.

- Now you said you moved 2200 miles, where'd you come from?

- I came from San Diego.

- [Michael] Okay.

How did you get to Cookeville, Tennessee?

- It was the closest city I could get and still be near my favorite, which is Jamestown.

We had some friends in church in San Diego that we loved very much for 12 years and they were from Jamestown, and so we moved to Jamestown for a couple years in 2015 and we really loved it.

We had like a little taco shop over there on the 1-27, and then we moved back to San Diego for about five years and now we're here to stay.

- So did you come to Cookeville with the expressed purpose of opening the wellness spa or did that just kind of organically happen?

- I knew I was going to open a wellness spa and I wanted to wait till I got to Cookeville to do it because I felt like on the west coast, I would be another colonic place, another wellness spa.

And they do amazing work over there and I feel like they're servicing the people well.

In San Diego, I could be open seven days a week, 12 hours a day and still have a wait.

Here, the business is a little bit slower in starting because I'm just getting my name out there and trying to show people the value in what this is, 'cause they know that they're not feeling good but they don't really understand what they can do about it, and proper gut health has everything to do.

Most of your serotonin is produced in your gut, so the brain-gut connection is big.

A lot of people are depressed and they're on depression medicine, but their guts out of whack, that's what's happening.

So colonics is a great addition too if you're going to see a chiropractor or a Western medical doctor and you're getting help for your gut health, colonics can be a great way to help that along.

- So coming from a big city like San Diego, what are some of the notable differences that really you've seen in addition to what we've already talked about?

- Well, like I said here, I feel like a lot of people need the services.

Where in San Diego, they've got a health journey, but they're already like yoga instructors.

It's not the more common person, it's somebody that's a marathon runner.

But here, I see that a lot of people really need the services and they're coming in and they're finding relief.

Some people just don't want to come out and say that they need colonics.

So that's kind of another little hurdle that I'm getting over here.

I try to add humor to it.

I did take some advice from Tyler Asher over at the Small Business Development Center.

I love them.

They have been really huge and helpful to me here.

I take advantage of all their services.

But anyway, he said that I needed to get people involved with me and get my name out there as the colon queen or the colon whisperer.

And I've chosen colon queen, and I try to bring humor to that and people appreciate that, because some people when they come in here, especially gentlemen, they're feeling a little bit nervous dealing with me.

They don't really know me and their wives are the ones usually that have talked them into coming in and seeing me.

A lot of times, the wife will come with the husband and sit in there with them, and they're just concerned with their health.

They know that their husbands aren't looking well, they're not feeling well, they just want their husbands to have relief.

So I'm trying to bring some humor into it even though it's a serious business, I feel like it can be taken lightly.

- So you're a board certified therapist, you're providing the therapy, but you're also running a business.

How do you make that balance?

- I don't really feel like a business owner.

I come in and I work hard just like I did for the people I worked with in San Diego.

So I come in early and I stay late and I keep the place clean, and I have kind of a high business integrity.

I've always done that and that's why my friends and my trainer in San Diego, my teacher, thought it would be a great thing for me to open my own place as well rather than work with somebody else.

So it doesn't really seem like that except for when I have to get my taxes and weird stuff done, that really freaks me out.

But see, someday, I'll be able to hire someone to take care of a lot of that stuff for me.

But for now, I just love being with the people.

I love chatting their faces off, they seem to love it and everyone that comes in, leaves here with a really big smile on their face and I've gotten some great reviews from that.

- So you've been in business for about six months now.

Well congratulations first off for that.

- Thanks.

- Second, what has been your experience so far with opening the business to six months later?

- So first of all, I have to stop comparing this to San Diego, this to San Diego, because in San Diego, there was a lot more business.

But I think that the reason we're still a little bit slow is not just because it's a new business, but it's because it's a new business, you know what I mean?

Any new business comes here and is slow.

I have people that I've become friends with through networking and different things that I'm a part of the Upper Cumberland Women's Club, and just wonderful people that I've met and any new business takes time.

And so I try to take my mind off of that and I try to pour myself, when I don't have clients, into doing things like getting your Start Up Your Startup class done at the Biz Foundry or going to different things with the Chamber of Commerce and the business after hours.

And I try to network and educate as best as I can, and so that's what I do.

- So you've mentioned the Small Business Development Center a couple times, you also mentioned the Biz Foundry.

We do a lot of work with them.

I'm willing to bet that there's been some more resources that they've provided.

- Yes, Tyler first of all, is awesome.

I contacted Tyler when I got his name from a friend of mine that used to run the Chamber of Commerce in Jamestown.

So when I moved here, it was a very comfortable landing because he put me directly in contact with the people at the chamber that I needed to meet with, and I started meeting with him.

Then he gave me over to Jodi Pitts, and Jodi Pitts has been phenomenal.

She's met with me, I don't know how many times she's talked to me about social media.

She's put me in contact and hooked me up with PJ Barnes, who is an excellent intern, helped me do a brochure that we're about to put out to the public and to medical providers hoping to get some referrals from the local medical community.

And so she has been and he has been phenomenal in hooking me up to get me to everywhere else I need to be.

- So what about the Biz Foundry?

You mentioned Start Up Your Startup.

Tell me about that?

- Yes.

So I've heard about the Biz Foundry from another friend of mine.

I've gone to a couple of Powered By Her luncheons.

I wish I could do more, but sometimes it's in the middle of the workday.

But I went to Start Up Your Startup.

I was very pleased, Jess was very helpful.

Recently went to a SEO class over there that was very helpful.

So I feel like here, the biggest difference between here and San Diego as a new business owner is that in San Diego, I'm sure that they have all those resources, but it's like a needle in the haystack trying to find them.

It's just a really competitive market, high volume, fast-paced.

It's just not for me.

I'm happy to be in a smaller environment.

- Now sometimes, small business owners may be aware of SBDC or Biz Foundry, but they're a little hesitant to take advantage of those resources.

What would you tell them?

- I would tell them, unless you're a millionaire, then you should take advantage, and even if you are a millionaire, because they can at least provide you with networking.

They make your life easier here.

If you're starting a business, you wanna give yourself every opportunity that you can to succeed, because businesses are hard to start and they're hard to keep open.

So why wouldn't you take advantage of all these programs funded by grants with professionals that are trained in their fields to help you every step of the way, from opening your business to closing your business.

It just makes sense to do that.

- So last question for you.

You've been in business for six months, there's a lot of people that watch this show that are thinking about starting a business, but they just haven't been able to cross that fence yet.

What advice would you give to them, six months in?

- Six months in, keep the faith.

Six months in, if you really wanna do it, do it.

We jumped in with two feet and we've actually surprised some of the people that would've done things differently than me.

Like for example, I didn't take out business loans.

I saved all my money that I possibly could and I paid cash for everything, right?

So if you can get away from financing certain things, for me at least, because money can be slow, do that if you can.

Also check out the local Facebook marketplace, these people in this area have wonderful things that they're selling at great prices.

Just start off small, little bites.

You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

So I wouldn't go out there and rent the biggest space, the fanciest space, buy the fanciest stuff unless you can afford it, right?

I would take your time, I would bathe it in prayer, I would get wise counsel, because in the multitude of counselors, that's when you're gonna make your best decisions to keep you safe.

And I would really just pray over your business and get educated on who your market's gonna be and try your best to focus on those people, and don't worry about the competition.

Competition drives excellence.

- Lisa, this has been a wonderful conversation.

Thanks so much for being on the show.

- Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

(upbeat music) - When you grow up in a family business, it only seems natural to one day, take the reins of that business and continue on the tradition, that's exactly what Bryan Payne decided to do.

When the opportunity arose to take over the operations of not only one but two businesses started by his father more than 30 years ago, and they continue to thrive in the Upper Cumberland today.

(cozy acoustic guitar) We're hear in Algood, Tennessee with Bryan Payne, Vice President of Operations for Industry Mart.

Bryan, a big welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

- So let's start out with the basics, what is Industry Mart?

What do you all do here?

- So here we have two companies really, it's Industry Mart and Office Mart.

Industry Mart provides industrial and warehouse equipment.

The primary product is warehouse pallet rack, which you can see behind us here.

So it's what provides shelving for warehouses, storage buildings, things like that.

We do provide a number of other industrial pieces of equipment, pallet jacks, cabinets, work benches.

Office Mart primarily provides office furniture throughout the Upper Cumberland.

- [Michael] Now I understand this is a family run business?

- [Bryan] That's correct.

Yeah, my dad started it in 1983 when we moved back from Bowling Green to here, and he ran it for 40 years and just in the last couple years, he's semi-retired and I've taken it over.

- What are some of the balances that you strike with between your parents and yourself running the business?

- We try to keep business discussions during work hours at work.

When I go see my parents, try not to discuss business during dinners and so on, 'cause you want that to be relaxing family time.

- So what has the experience been like kind of growing up with your father being a small business owner, now you're running operations, walk me through that?

- So I mean, as a kid I grew up working here, helping to clean desks, dusting chair bases and helping to do some minor assembly, and did that through high school and then in the college years.

And then I went into the military.

I was an army officer for five years and then went to grad school, worked in DC for 10 years.

So I moved back here in 2015 and kind of stepped back into this world.

So it's been very different from what 20 years of my professional career were.

But it's fun to come back to this and to come back to Cookeville and do something that's much more hands-on and kind of practical base versus policy in Washington.

- What does it mean to you and your family to own this business and be able to employ so many people?

- That's a tremendously important part of what we do.

I mean there's the product.

We are providing this service, but larger than that, I think it is we're providing this hopefully an asset to the community, and definitely to our employees.

We like to think of ourselves as a close-knit team.

And so that's a very important part of our operation.

- So tell me a little bit more about that.

I'm very interested, whenever we speak to people that have been in the military, maybe you could tell me a little bit about your experience there, but also what did you learn in the military that's really transitioned over to helping you with operations?

- So I was an infantry officer.

I led three different platoons, which is about 30 to 40 men each, and then did the staff time and so on.

And actually almost 20 years ago right now, with the Iraq invasion.

So I was there with the 101st Airborne for that.

We went in on the second day of the war.

After that experience is when I transitioned into the policy world.

And then I've spent the last 13 years in the Army reserves.

To me, the key takeaway away from the Army into the business world is the leadership side.

The Army through ROTC and all that is extremely focused on leadership development.

How do you manage, lead, and motivate people?

And that's been the the key thing that I do here every day.

- So delegation is obviously very important, you've gotta empower your employees, but how does it feel as a person that runs the operations?

Does that come easy to you or do you really have to strike a balance?

- It mostly comes easy to me.

Again, the military background always focused on delegation because one person can't do it all.

There are certainly times where I find myself trying to get involved in every little issue.

I try to not overhear all the problems that are happening on a daily basis, 'cause when you do, you have a natural inclination to want to jump in and solve it.

But overall, I think it's better to let your people, your employees and all your partners work through it and solve those issues and then come to you when they can't.

I would say that my preference is, I like to know about the issue, even if you all think you can handle it, I don't like surprises.

So it's better to let me know what it is.

If you have questions or advice, I can help provide that.

But overall, I want people to handle it themselves until it gets to a point where they feel they can't.

So I like to set the initial goals, like I said, kind of explain the why and make sure everyone has the tools to do it.

And then really, let my employees and everyone go out and make it happen with hopefully, as minimal intervention for me as possible.

- Now, you're doing this in Algood, Tennessee, you could go pretty much anywhere and relocate to a more urban market, maybe have more workforce, maybe have more profits, but you all find it important to stay here in our rural Upper Cumberland community.

Why is that?

- Well, there's a couple different reasons.

I mean, one, this is where my family has been from for the last few generations.

My grandfather moved here, he was the local director for social security for several decades here, retiring in the 1980s.

My parents went to Tech here and that's where they met.

And so after a couple years being married and all that, they came back here, this was where they decided to build their home and their business.

And so that's an important part, just the history of that.

Beyond that, I think this is a really unique area in terms of geographic location.

You mentioned the larger urban areas, but we're located right in the middle of all those, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Nashville, we have close proximity to some places in north Georgia and Alabama, and those are all some of our customer bases on the Industry Mart side.

So being here located in the Upper Cumberland allows us to reach all of those.

- What I'd like for you to do now is really kind of talk to the leadership of Algood, the Upper Cumberland.

What do leaders need to do to help small businesses like yourself?

- [Bryan] I think one of the number one things is infrastructure.

Really set the infrastructure for the future.

That's building road networks, different types of transportation.

I'm on the rail trail board and so we're really working to expand the rail trail, and increase pedestrian and bicycle footpaths, interconnected networks where people can get from businesses to parks, so we're not congested out here.

Another key piece is the workforce component, building the educational institutions or supporting them, increasing them, whether it's from K-12, and of course we have a tremendous university here at Tech and all the different assets, like the new Highlands Training Center, but these educational institutions that can develop the workforce and provide the training for employees to immediately be able to get into the workforce and contribute.

- So you've been running operations for about eight years now.

I'm willing to bet that you've learned all kinds of lessons along the way.

Would you mind sharing some of those with us?

- Accounting is super important.

I was decent at math in school, did calculus and all that, never had an issue.

Accounting is not an intuitive thing and it is extremely important to understand, to be able to operate and profitably sustain a business.

So learn accounting.

- So we've got a lot of people that watch the show and they're thinking about starting a business, but for whatever reason, they just haven't crossed that fence yet.

What advice would you give to them?

- Be passionate about what you do and what you're interested in.

That's a key.

I mean, you've gotta really enjoy what you're doing.

Two is, it's all about people, your customers, providing that service as well as your employees, empowering your people to go out and do things for themselves.

And that comes back for your business and the community.

- I understand that previously, you all had two locations, now you've consolidated them.

What are some of the experiences that you've taken away from that?

- [Bryan] That was a significant undertaking in moving a business and putting two locations into one.

So the inventory management side was huge.

Setting all of the dates, the deadlines, organizing all of the tasks that had to happen.

I mean, we had to hire temporary labor to help accomplish everything.

The other biggest part of that was the marketing in terms of getting the word out to our customers, to the broader community that we've changed addresses, this is where you can find us now.

And then the piece of that is the social media aspect, it is amazingly difficult to change your address on Google or Apple or making sure that it's done on every single system.

- How does a small local business like yourself, market and stay successful?

- We use several different advertising routes and they're different for the two businesses.

The Industry Mart side, our biggest customer base are in those larger metropolitan areas we talked about earlier, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Google AdWords has been very successful for that.

Working with another marketing company here right now to look at different display ads and geofencing technologies that can help target specific areas.

It's kind of a funny thing, but the bathroom advertising, Suzy Davis runs GO advertising here in the GO Ads, and that's one of the things that we get the most immediate response from, when people walk in and say, "Hey, I saw you in the bathroom."

Social media is a huge part of marketing today.

Whenever you think about Facebook and all those things, it's where a significant number of people are, so we have to have that presence as well.

And the biggest part though, and I think this is the most critical, is again, it goes back to your people, is having our people out in front of the customers and their interpersonal relationships and connections.

That's been key for us over the last 40 years, and I think it's still the number one marketing relationship thing we do.

- Well Bryan, I really appreciate you coming on the show.

- Thanks, I had a great time.

(cozy acoustic guitar) (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Andrea Kruszka, and I help run the Center for Rural Innovation at Tennessee Tech University.

Our mission is to facilitate economic and community development through building businesses and helping save jobs in main street America.

So we do this in a variety of ways, from interns to working in tourism branding, applied research and economic impact analyses.

So I know you've probably heard about our intern program before, if you've got some creative need for something like graphic design or photography, if you need a website built or you need content created, we can help with all sorts of creative undertakings that our students are super prepared to do, gives them experience and you get free assistance.

One of our biggest requests is applied research, which usually takes the form of an economic impact analysis.

This can help you see the full impact of what your business or organization can do, which is really helpful if you need to go to a commission, your county government or apply for a grant.

One of our largest initiatives the last few years has been rural tourism branding.

You may have seen us in Monterey and Jackson County, and we can work with you as well.

Tourism is economic development.

And our hope with this initiative, with helping you develop your own identity is that we can facilitate the growth of tourism related businesses on your main street, so your restaurants, your boutiques, even your kayak outfitters, and things like that.

So if tourism branding is something you're interested in, all you have to do is reach out.

We'll take you through the entire process, from leading a workshop on what branding really means, hint, it's not just your logo, finding out what colors you associate with your community, finding out what your assets are, what brings someone to your community, and then learning from your residents, what words you want people to associate with your community.

Those are your values and it's very important that we have those, so we can combine all these things to help create your logo, your color palette, all the things you want associated with your community to get visitors in.

Like I said, tourism is economic development, because you're bringing in visitors who are not from your community, especially in rural areas.

Every visitor you bring in contributes to your economy there, pays taxes in your community, and helps things like your schools, your police officers, your firefighters.

So getting tourism in is so important and I can't overstate the importance of it.

So if you're a main street business just getting started, a food truck trying to get off the ground, if you're a town that needs a tourism logo or if you need an economic impact analysis to see the impact of a new business coming in, reach out to us today @tntech.edu/tcri.

- Thanks for tuning in to It's Your Business.

For more information on today's topics, please visit the WCTE website.

To learn more about free small business resources and expert assistance, visit the Business Resource Collective website.

Until next time, I'm Michael Aikens.

- [Narrator 2] It's Your Business with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE PBS and the Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation with funding provided by the Rural Reimagined Grand Challenge.

- [Narrator 1] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.