Tanya Keefe is the owner of Sense-sational Therapy, a company in Fort Gratiot, Michigan that provides pediatric speech and occupational therapy to children with disabilities. This includes teaching clients the important skills they need in their daily lives like self-dressing, postural control, eating and toileting.
While Keefe feels immensely grateful that her business has made a significant impact in the lives of local families, she is candid about her turbulent experience as an entrepreneur. Keefe recently spoke with us about the hurdles she’s jumped as a new business owner, from embezzlement by a business partner to staffing challenges.
The Start
How did you start your business?
I am a parent of six children. Out of my six, I’ve had three children go through speech therapy, I have one boy with autism, I have another boy who is diagnosed childhood ADHD bi-polar, and three of my kids have strong sensory issues. So, between my own experience with these things and my husband and I doing a lot of work in the community, we know a lot of other parents and saw that there was a really big need that was not being met for the kids with disabilities in our area. There weren’t any other businesses doing what we do. We wanted to bring these important services to children in our area because we had seen firsthand what a difference access to that type of therapy could make.
I had an opportunity to invest a little bit of money in something after I had a family member pass away and they left me not a lot, but a little bit. I had management experience and I had organizing experience, and I’d done work in the graphic design industry and the marketing industry. I had a background that had touched in a lot of different areas, so I just decided to go for it. I thought, it’s such an important thing and if I don’t do it, how long are kids in the area going to have to wait until somebody else thinks it’s a good idea and does it?
How did you fund your business?
In the beginning, it was through personal savings from an inheritance. Then, my husband unfortunately lost a family member who left him a little bit of money. So, that was able to keep us going a little bit longer.
Funding has been our biggest issue, which I’m sure it is for most small businesses. It takes a while to get started. I recently took out an accounts-receivable-type loan, because we have a couple lean months coming up, so I needed to keep our cash flow moving.
Running the Business
How did you learn to run your business?
I have a lot of family members who have been successful small business owners. While I didn’t sit down and pick their brains specifically when I was starting the business, knowing that they had done it gave me that, “I can do it!” feeling.
I did a ton of research. I read extensively, everything from the Small Business Association page and their resources. I was reading every business book I could get my hands on that I thought might apply to the field I was going into. I tried to do market research by talking to owners of similar businesses. I sent questionnaires to owners of other businesses who do what I do but were not in an area where we’d be competing.
Who was your first customer?
My very first customer was a young lady who had been in a terrible car accident several years before. She had a traumatic brain injury. She was still having speech difficulty.
As soon as I booked our first client, I called my business partner and was just ecstatic. It was really an “OK, we’re doing this” kind of moment. It was planning, planning, planning and then preparing, preparing, preparing, and then once we got that first client, it really became official.
What’s the biggest mistake you made in the first year?
I made several huge mistakes in the beginning. I think the first year of any business is probably more about mistakes and what you’re learning from them than about your successes.
I think one of my biggest mistakes was that I committed to a lease that was long-term and really more than we could comfortably afford as a business.
Secondly, I had a business partner. We had discussed our agreement, but we didn’t have it on paper and signed before we opened. I just didn’t see a need. She had been my best friend for 15 years, we had never even had a disagreement, so we thought it would be fine. But, unfortunately, running a business is both stressful and very expensive. That business relationship didn’t work out.
Just a few months in, there was embezzling going on, she stopped coming in to work, and I had nothing in place to protect myself. We were a 50/50 partnership, so I was really deadlocked. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t ask her to leave, because I didn’t have a majority. I couldn’t make important decisions without her. We just had no legal precedent on paper for anything.
In the end, after months of attempting to negotiate some kind of a solution, she did resign and her shares reverted back to the company in exchange for not pursuing her legally. It seemed like a great situation – She was my best friend and she knew a lot about the industry. I didn’t see it coming at all. What you imagine business ownership to be and what it is actually like are two very different things.
What’s the smartest thing you did in the first year?
One of the smartest things I did was to set up a good information system flow. I know it seems like maybe a small thing because it’s not really bringing in sales, but it does help us to really keep track of our information.
I think as a small business owner, being able to be on top of your information – being able to look at your key metrics and draw some meaning from those numbers – is essential. If something’s going wrong, you need to know where to go in the process and what you can change to fix things, to find a good solution. Having a good workflow planned and documented not only helps you to know where to go to fix a problem, but it helps you to solve those problems early on because you’re on top of your data.
What’s the most rewarding thing about running your own business?
For me, because of the type of work I’m in, I’m extremely grateful that I’m able to play a part in bettering the lives of these kids that we serve. We help five-year-old children take their first steps. It’s really rewarding to watch. Or, for that non-verbal child who’s been using grunts to communicate, to hear them walk in and say “hello” to you and then tell you part of a sentence, it’s great. I love watching the difference our business is able to make in the lives of our clients.
What’s the most challenging thing about running your own business?
The time and stress involved. There’s so much. As a small business owner, you wear a lot of hats. I feel a lot like a juggler sometimes. I have all these balls in the air and I’m trying to keep them from hitting the ground. It really requires your attention. It’s a lot like having an infant. If your business needs you at 2 a.m., however you feel, you have to get up and go attend to your business. I’ve put in 70-hour workweeks. It’s difficult, and you have to be prepared to make that commitment.
I’ve been very lucky that I’ve found ways to include my family since it is my business. We have some extra space here at the office, so I’ve been able to turn that into a little area where my kids can come hang out if I have to come into the office at a weird hour or stay late, or if somebody’s sick and they have to stay home from school. That’s been, for me, a great workaround to be able to do that.
Another thing I’ve been working on locally is networking. You don’t know what you don’t know until you find out about it. Networking is extremely valuable because if you don’t do it, you won’t know what’s out there that you might be missing.
What’s the most surprising thing about running your own business?
A lot of things are surprising! Every day is a surprise! The most surprising thing is just how much is really involved in it. Because every day when I come to work, I think, “Wow! Who knew?!” It’s like it’s a constant education every day.
I decided brilliantly, with no training or experience, to open a medical business where a period in the wrong place can literally cost you $200. I’ve had that happen. There’s a lot of education that goes on. You need to keep up on industry trends, employment trends, any laws that are changing, what’s going on in your community … I think just how much research is a part of business ownership is surprising.
What business owner or entrepreneur do you admire most?
For me, the people who I’ve found the most value from have been people who I don’t necessarily even know. I do a lot of listening to business podcasts and audio books in the background while I’m working on my day-to-day kind of things. I really enjoy listening to the stories of other entrepreneurs and where they’ve been. Especially when they talk about their worst moment, how they recovered from that, and where they are now.
What I’ve Learned
What do you wish you had known before you had started your business?
I wish I had understood that one of our biggest drawbacks would be lack of qualified staff. I wish I knew before I opened the business just how important it is to have a good staff right from the beginning. I’ve used interns and others who I thought were “fair,” but I didn’t know just how important staff would be.
We hire specialty employees who have to be licensed through the state to provide occupational or speech therapy services, but our area doesn’t have that type of training. So, I have to convince people to drive an hour or more to come work at my facility when there are other jobs closer to home that can maybe offer more benefits because they’re a more established company. When you’re doing your research, don’t neglect the issue of attracting available talent.
What advice do you have for others starting their own business?
Research, research, research. Develop a worst-case-scenario plan. In fact, develop your whole business plan around the worst-case scenario because, if it goes better than that, great. But if it doesn’t, you’re realistically prepared for whatever happens. When your business faces a crisis – and it will because every business does – you’re not going to waste precious time researching a solution. You’re going to be able to go to your plan and find your solution instead of working on it. Time is money. If you plan for those things ahead of time, you can save yourself a lot of gold.
For example, if I planned for the worst-case scenario, that partnership agreement would have been signed. When that partnership began to crumble, I would have had an actionable plan in place, and it wouldn’t have been a months-long process.
About the Author — Ashley Sweren is a freelance marketing writer and editor. She owns her own small business, Firework Writing, located in San Jose, California.
This article was originally written on January 19, 2015 and updated on July 21, 2016.
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