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Are you a business owner? Or are you on the verge of taking that side hustle to the next level? Or curious about the world of entrepreneurship? Join Vivian Kvam, Co-Owner of Tandem Works, each week for a behind-the-scenes at small businesses and what it takes to succeed.
Each episode is full of inspiration, education, tips, and great conversation with people like you, people who are figuring it out. Take your business to the next level with insight from expert guests in business, leadership, and marketing.
00:00:03
Welcome to Riding Tandem Works, a podcast about building businesses, leadership and creating positive impact for our communities. I'm your host, Vivian Kvam, and I invite you to Ride Tandem Works with me as I have candid conversations with inspiring business owners, leaders and experts who are building on their dreams and creating impact. Get ready to be encouraged and learn practical tactics to help us build successful businesses, become incredible leaders and have positive ripple effects. Let's go. Hi, everyone.
00:00:36
Welcome back to writing Tandem Works. Interesting topic today to dive into. And as a multi passionate entrepreneur myself, I'm excited to be diving into this because as a multipassionate entrepreneur, there can be unique worries and challenges that arise just due to the nature of pursuing multiple business ventures or wanting to. And I know some of you out there also can identify as a multipassion entrepreneur and we can find ourselves exploring multiple business ideas all at the Kvame time and even launching more than one at a time or launching multiple products at a time. And my guest today is one of these multipassionate entrepreneurs on, I would almost say on steroids.
00:01:22
I actually just learned before we hopped on here, I thought she had three businesses. She has four. So surprise, surprise, but not surprised. So she has started a number of business already. She has dreams of another and so we're going to talk about that today.
00:01:36
But as a multi passionate entrepreneur, there can be unique worries and challenges that arise because you're pursuing multiple business ventures all at the Kvame time. So we're going to explore that a bit today with Julie Wyssman, and she's navigating through that right now and has been over the past few years. So she has lots of wisdom to share, plus she's in the middle of it. So I think this is going to be a fun conversation for sure. And I'm excited just to explore the opportunities that there are out there when you are multi passionate to leverage diverse skills and interest and bring fresh perspectives to your businesses, but also how do you navigate through just the obvious challenges that arise.
00:02:13
So welcome today, Julie. She calls herself a serial helper, which I think is fun because we often hear serial entrepreneur, but she calls herself a serial helper. You're going to understand why here really soon, but she is an RN, has an RN background. She loves to connect people and help everyone be successful in all that they do. And there are so many great things to talk about today.
00:02:35
And I know you're going to get so much inspiration, especially again from my multi passionate friends out there, which there are many, who are just trying to figure this all out as you're just pursuing your dreams. And so, Julie, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
00:02:51
I listen to your podcast every time you release it, so I'm very appreciative of all your education and the content that you're bringing because people like me really appreciate it. I'm so glad. Okay, so right before we hopped on here, too, you have a podcast as well. So before we get further downline, give yourself a little bit of a plug. Tell us a bit about your podcast.
00:03:10
Yeah, so I'm part of a collective of four people, and we put together Wellness you like the letter U, like University, and we are four different backgrounds. We have a chiropractor. We have a nutritionist. We have Carrie McDonald from First Row Fitness, bambi, Wilson, TJ, Auger and myself. So we have four different very perspectives of great content, and we come at things very differently in our thought processes, and we're looking for ways to help empower people with knowledge of alternative things, other things we can be doing that we should be doing, and just highlighting some content that maybe we don't talk about enough.
00:03:51
Like, I talk a lot about mental health and other people's perspectives, sometimes very deep and sometimes very jovial. So it's been really fun, and it's a new experience for me. So I'm learning something every day. Yeah, I'm excited that's off the ground. I remember hearing that it was coming.
00:04:11
Didn't realize it had gone live. And it went live in February, so there's a number of episodes people can catch up on. Is that right? Yeah. I want to say we have 16 out there.
00:04:18
Oh, awesome. So we try to put something out every week, and one of us puts something out every week, and there's a schedule, so I feel like I'm in here every couple of weeks recording and stuff like that, but it's been super fun. Awesome. Yeah, it is fun. It's fun to be able to get on and share in a format like this.
00:04:35
Yeah, I enjoy it quite a bit. Okay, noted. Going to check it out. And as always, we'll put links to that podcast and any other resources we talk about in the show notes, so be sure to go grab those, check it out. All right, so, Julie, let's start where I think the beginning is.
00:04:51
But if there's more of a beginning, you tell me to give us a good foundation for today's conversation. Talk to me about your first step into your own business. And did that start with my nurse? Yeah, I've been a nurse. I think I'm in my 23rd, 24th year, and I've done all different kinds of nursing er, ICU, I did dialysis.
00:05:17
I was director of hospice Operations for a hospice company. Did everything utilization, management, just really couldn't find what I loved. And I took a quality position in a home healthcare company, and I call it my six month tour of duty because I loved the job, but I hated the company. So I thought, I can do this more fiscally responsible for a patient, and I can do it with better quality. And I've never done home health in my career, nor did I ever think that I would be interested in doing that.
00:05:55
But I decided that I wanted to kind of be a case manager, and I started looking at what a case manager in home health does, and it wasn't enough. So I decided that I didn't make it up. But I don't know of any other one in our area, but I'm a nurse navigator, and it's pretty much a fancy term for a case manager. Okay. And what I do is I go into homes wherever their home is, and I help mainstream their I do air traffic control, I think is the best.
00:06:29
So we have people with very complex disease processes that don't always have nurses that are in their families. And I can come in and say, okay, this is what they're going to say. Let's do this, this or this, or let me ask the questions to the physicians and our partners and say, I'll bring that back to you and you can make your decision. And I go to appointments with them, and I'm there when they start radiation, or I'm there when they come out of surgery. And then I can help coordinate what's going to happen at home when we go home.
00:07:00
Because a lot of times you'll go into your physician office and your physician will say, you know, you've got diabetes. Now here's a glucometer, here is your insulin, here is a new diet nutrition plan. Go on home. And there's no follow through because there's only so much a doctor's office can do. Well, we are on the other end of that, and we can help make sure everything that your physician and the extenders are ordering is fully executed.
00:07:27
That we teach you about the glucometer, we teach you about how to dose your insulin properly. We teach you how to control your neuropathy, all those things so we can help on the other end to make sure that you're staying home safely with a quality of life as long as possible. And then I started going out into homes. That was in 2015. And I started seeing the need for home health aid assistance, people needing to hop in the shower, needing have somebody there when they're walking or they're going to do groceries and errands and stuff like that.
00:08:04
And I thought it really wasn't my intent to grow that way. I was thinking this could be something like a one woman show. I see. That's what it was at that point. Absolutely.
00:08:15
For a year. And then I hired my first employee in 16. Okay. And then 17, I hired eight more. Wow.
00:08:24
And I still actually have my first employee. She's still with me. Yeah. So what was only supposed to be myself turned into now we have about 40 employees, and we have two agencies. We have an agency in Shenando, Iowa.
00:08:39
We have an agency up here. We serve patients all the way out to McCook, Nebraska, Des Moines. We go wherever the patients need us. When you look back right now on that experience where you thought, okay, this is just going to be a one woman show, it's a business for me, and now you're talking 40 employees, two locations, what do you kind of reflect back on when you think about that? What does that look like to you now?
00:09:02
When you think about it, it's surreal because it still feels like I'm brand new. We have our eigth anniversary on June 15, but it still feels like I'm in the very beginning of everything. Even though we've quadrupled our growth and the patients that we're serving and all the different scenarios that we serve patients in is so different. But, yeah, it's been really surreal and it's grown just beautifully, and I couldn't have ever even dreamt that it would be this today. Okay, so business number one, I'm sure we'll come back and explore more about that.
00:09:39
Business number two, how did that come about? Yeah, so business number one had a baby, and all of our team kind of came together, and we were like, we're serving so many people who lack a quality of life, and that's dementia patients, that's people with special needs adults and children. And we thought, what about a community center of sorts? So we brainstorm for probably two years first before we ever even said anything out loud to outside of our organization. And we decided we were going to start forming a multigenerational daycare program, and we're going to serve special needs kiddos, special needs adults, and typically developing kids as well, and then factoring in some of our folks that have dementia symptoms when appropriate.
00:10:38
So it'll be a daycare center, but we're not calling it that because that's not very dignified for adults, but we're going to call it a day program. So parents of these special needs kiddos have a place to safely drop their kids off with medical staff, with people that are trained to take care of children, and they can go to work, they can go shopping, they can go to a doctor's appointment themselves. They can have that respite. And then the Kvame thing with the dementia patients. They can be dropped off for the day and have some enrichment activities and do art with the kiddos, have lunch with the kiddos, read to the kiddos, be read to by the kiddos.
00:11:23
That's where the multigenerational part comes in, because I think COVID didn't do us well and didn't do our children well because we were all so isolated for so long that we weren't getting our kids out to see grandparents and our elders and we weren't getting our kids in to see people in the nursing homes and the long term care facilities. And we know we can slow disease process a little bit by keeping people with dementia and dementia symptoms, just thinking about things, keeping their brain sharp. We know we can do that a little bit we know it's not curative, but we know we can slow some of those disease processes down. So why not create some enrichment activities for all these people involved? I have a daughter who has epilepsy, and so I know what it's like not always being able to let her go to certain scenarios, because maybe somebody doesn't know about epilepsy, or maybe somebody doesn't know about how to care for someone who has a seizure.
00:12:28
And I would have loved somewhere for her to go and play with other kids and be in a safe environment. And the Kvame thing goes for parents of the typically developing kids. I think it's a great humbling experience that if you don't have challenges at home to realize what some people do have going on at home. Some people just need grace. And sometimes when you get snapped at in the grocery store, it's not because of you and it has nothing to do with you, but it has something to do with what the life looks like at home.
00:13:02
So we just thought this would just be a great all around experience for a lot of people to kind of come together. And of course, my entrepreneur brain is like, okay, we can get therapy companies involved. I want to have a hair salon in there. I want to have a barber. I want to have a massage therapist.
00:13:20
I want to have a coffee shop and a bakery. Hence my grandbaby was born, which is Jay's Coffee and donuts, because we thought that's a way that we can kind of fund some capital. I'm going to buy a trailer. I'm going to renovate it, and we're going to take it around to these small communities who don't have coffee shops and don't have little mini state fair donuts. And we're just going to spread some sunshine and save some capital to buy a building.
00:13:47
And the first weekend out, we were in Crescent, Iowa. We took our trailer out, and Crescent's our people, they have stood up and supported us like it's nobody's business, but we were at Crescent Park there, and we'd done a lot of hype that week, so people knew it was our first day out. They were excited. They showed up in force. We had a line, and we had a gentleman come up in our line, and he was very dressed, very well, and it's 07:00 in the morning, and it's a bunch of women in shorts and yoga pants.
00:14:23
And then this guy, he just stood out, and he comes up to the window, and I'm there and he says, well, tell me the brainchild for this, because somebody back in the line said, you're a nurse? I said, yeah, I'm a nurse, and I own a home healthcare company. And he goes, well, what is this? And I said, well, we want to put together a multigenerational day program. And I said we wanted a coffee shop and a bakery in there for people to come in and meet and have fellowship and maybe a dementia patient who can't any longer drive can meet the guys and have coffee.
00:14:56
And BS and have a good time. And the little ladies can come to the coffee shop and meet together and do things like they used to do. And he goes, I love that idea. He says, I actually am a director at Lawrence and Gardens and I would love it if you'd put your coffee shop in Lawrence and Gardens. And I was like, oh, day one, let me think about this.
00:15:19
And I was like, well, I'm open to the conversation. Once again, I didn't think this was going to be any bigger than a one trailer show. And now we celebrated our one year anniversary at Lawrence and Gardens on February 6 of this year. And they are the most wonderful part of our Jay's family. They're so supportive and so excited to have us there and we are so excited to be there.
00:15:46
And I got to tell you that when you walk in in the morning to open that coffee shop, you go, I have the best job ever. It's silent and it's beautiful and you hear the birds and you have the plants and the flowers because we're up in the Marjorie Dougherty Conservatory Building so it looks like the big greenhouse when you're driving on 29. We're up in the corner of it so we have the best view and it's just the best location and we love it. We could have just never imagined, but it's the law of attraction and putting out there good things means we're going to get good things. And that's what my entire teams always strive for is that we're going to do good things when no one's looking because it's going to come back to us.
00:16:32
We're at Lawrence and Gardens and we have a location here on the 100 block. We'll celebrate our one year anniversary there, the end of July and we have two trailers now. And then we're also in the Vitera building downtown on 13th and Capitol. It is MetLife and Vitera and we're in there four days a week and to serve their employees and we're having a blast. It's great.
00:17:00
That's awesome. Okay, I got to back up because a little bit like the fellow who walked know, suited up and kind of goes, what is going on here? Hearing your story, I'm like, okay, I can kind of make the connection, but there's still a piece of me and I know others are thinking, okay, Julie, but running a healthcare related business and running a coffee food industry business, those are night and day different. So how are you doing that? Well, we did lots of education before we did anything and we did lots of R and D for first.
00:17:36
What kind of coffee? Where are we going to buy our beans? Are we going to roast our own beans all the science of coffee. We did a ton of research on and took classes, and we actually do a niche coffee. We actually cold brew steep all of our coffee.
00:17:54
We do not do any espresso, and I did that for a reason. It's easily replicable. So when you go to Loretson, when you go to the trailers, when you go to Vitera or the 100 block, you're getting the Kvame exact coffee. We use the Kvame recipe for everything. So we have all these big brewers and all of our coffee steeps for 24 hours, and then it gets run through two filters, and that's a concentrate, and then that concentrate is good for two weeks.
00:18:25
And we either package it, sell it to other coffee shops, or we bring it to our coffee shops and use and we can heat it or ice it, whichever.
00:18:40
It's been pretty genius for us. A lot of people have a hard not a lot of people. There were some people that did have a hard time with, oh, you don't have espresso, but they wouldn't even say espresso. They'll call it espresso. And I was like, well, no, we don't serve espresso.
00:18:59
And if you don't know how to say it, you probably don't really care. But people just like the name brand. We make fun of how you carry your coffee cup, but we have a great return rate. So we're doing something that people like. Espresso actually has.
00:19:19
The caffeine in cold brew is better than the caffeine in espresso because I've heard that espresso is only good for 15 minutes or so after it hits ice or milk. And people really like nitro for similar reasons. Is that right? Well, nitro is fancy, and they say it has more caffeine, more potent. I don't know.
00:19:42
I mean, if you do the real research and read into it, I don't. Know, which I have not, but this whole conversation kind of reminds me of where people will say, let's take raising canes as a for example. They do one thing really and do it really well. They do it really well. And you can go in and be like, well, but I want a chicken, this, this, that.
00:20:02
Okay, well, you can go somewhere else. But they do their one thing really well, and there's other businesses, models out there like that where they go, yes, we could do everything. But I'm wondering I'm like this almost seems like an interesting tip for somebody who's multi passionate of you're doing two very different things, but you're not doing all of it. Does that make sense? You didn't dive into the entire coffee and all the teas and doing the espresso and having every single option.
00:20:28
You kind of chose your lane within a very different lane from healthcare, for sure. And I look at things I'm not cheap, but I'm very thoughtful about money because my husband and I work very hard, but we don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to do startups, and I don't have loans. We've started everything without debt. Intentionally. Intentionally.
00:20:55
Tell me more about that. I do a lot of research and listen to my husband's jokes because I'm a YouTube nerd. And then I find programs that I can go listen to and I reach out directly to other entrepreneurs and say, hey, I'm in Iowa. Help me. Tell me what not to do.
00:21:14
So I don't make the Kvame mistakes. And people really appreciate that. And I believe, as far know, we're all consumers, we all have choices. We can go anywhere we want. There is a lot of business out there, not just for minors healthcare, not just for Jay's Coffee.
00:21:33
There is a lot of business out there that competitors don't need to be competitors. I don't feel I have any competitors, and it's not because I'm cocky. It's because I feel that my product, my brand, is a direct reflection of me. So if I go out there and I'm a good person and I'm a good nurse and I'm a good barista, that those connections I'm making are what's going to be my success. So I love to support all my friends that have small business, small coffee shops.
00:22:06
I mean, I'm going to say this here, and it could be controversial, but I try to stay away from the big boxes and I try to hit up the indie coffee shops because we have an indie coffee shop and we love when people support local, so we try to support a lot of the other smaller businesses. And I do the Kvame thing when we have too many referrals for minors healthcare. I look for the small, independently owned home care agencies to refer to. But I think you can do anything you want to do, even if you're broke. Yeah, I love that.
00:22:40
And there's so many. I've been there. I remember with my first business and we're just looking at our finances and we were like, we can't afford Netflix right now. And I think it was like 799 a month. And so we're like, let's go get a red box.
00:22:55
Because that was a thing. And so many people do have that pressure on themselves of, I have to have all this money before I can start, or I have to find funders or a misconception, right. That people who own businesses have stacks of cash that they're sitting on or tons of back. If you find that, can you share with me? I know right there is, that for sure.
00:23:19
So I love that encouragement that you can start a business, you can bootstrap it, which is what you're doing if you choose to, and you don't have to go into debt or you don't have to go into massive debt to do it. Do you feel like that has slowed your growth down or not? And are you okay with it? Talk to me a little bit about that because people will talk about that like, okay, but if you do it that way, it's going to be slower, is what a lot of people say. I think slow and steady wins the race.
00:23:46
Yeah, I think it did slow me down. I was thoughtful about that when I started my timeline, so I reflected that. So I've hit all my timeline goals that I had set out originally. I've been before them, even. But it's been about what I thought for two years for this, three years for this.
00:24:05
And we still don't have the day programs launched, but we're just looking for a building that is in our price range because I'm not going into debt to I don't know, I just think that there's so many things we can do much more thoughtfully. And yeah, we might not have had the best decorations in our coffee shop when we first started, but as time goes on and we get a little bit of extra money in our bank, then we get nicer tables, we get nicer things, people give us things and we redo, we repurpose, we reuse. No, we didn't have the fanciest branding for anything when we first started, but we're sure as getting so I love that. I think I've told this story in here before, but it does make me think again back to and even now, I mean, Michaela and I, we have converted over. It was a sink, and we have two sinks in our space.
00:25:02
It used to be a paint and sip kind of place. And so there's two sinks. There's one that where you would wash the brushes. There's one where they would do, like, the wine and cheese and stuff. My desk is actually a sink, and so it's on like, a countertop.
00:25:15
And we took the sink out and we put a piece of it's, just a piece of wood sitting over it. And then I have sort of built a stand up desk of sorts there, and it's like propped up on a thing. On a thing? On a thing. We didn't buy a $200 stand up desk.
00:25:30
Michaela's stand up desk was repurposed and found from somewhere else, cost very little. We took the pipes out from underneath where the desk is, and people walk in, they love our space. They think the space is great. I sometimes am like I have to chuckle a little bit because I'm like, do they know that I'm like standing at a sink? And then our zoom room we call is actually the men's bathroom.
00:25:50
And so we have two bathrooms right now. We are all female who work there, and on the occasion that we have a business guest in, we just direct them to the one bathroom. We do have two, but we've put, again, a piece of wood over the sink. We have a chair in there. So if you join me on a zoom call.
00:26:08
At first, I think I would have been a little bit hesitant to tell people that. And now I'm like, no, this is great. Own it a great opportunity to tell people, if you don't have a space, make a space. And we still book work, and people still respect what we do because we're good at what we do. It doesn't necessarily matter where I'm sitting when I have my Zoom call.
00:26:27
It is a little bit funny, though. It's always interesting what I hear, because I do some coaching for some smaller businesses, startups and stuff, and they're like, Well, I need $20,000 to be able to put this brand together. And I'm like, what? No, let's get creative. Let's look at what are the color schemes you like, and then just start watching, just start looking out and reading the room.
00:26:50
But people don't need to. And I know the lenders out there are going to be like, what are you talking about? But you don't have to do that. You can certainly do that, and it may make your success faster, may not. But I think being able to say our Zoom Room is a men's room is so cool and shows your creativeness.
00:27:16
Yeah. Okay, so we've talked through three businesses. Two that are in operation right now. One, you're looking for a building, but it sounds like you have a lot of the plan together, excited for that, and you're using the coffee business to help fund get the capital for that one. What's this fourth one?
00:27:33
So, back to Jay's, though, in a perfect world, we thought we'll take the trailer out, we will save capital. Well, when you grow, that savings goes to payroll, right? So we're saving a lot less than what I anticipated us to do. We've added about twelve people to our team, and so with that comes a slower savings rate. But moving towards getting the building, that's when we have to look at, are we leasing?
00:28:07
Are we buying? And my thought process for no debt, it's very tough to swallow to have some kind of a big debt like that, because I'm always trying to be very thoughtful with every dollar. So the savings plan has been a little bit slower there. So let me put a pin in that then, and let's pause there for a second. Why have you chosen to expand the coffee shop then?
00:28:33
If it was originally to help cash flow the new building and you're realizing that scaling it is slowing down that goal, how did you evaluate and why did you decide to grow? Because theoretically, you could have said, we're not going to grow that so that it continues to be the cash revenue generator. Talk me through that. So in my mind, I think more is more as we do in our generation with TV and social media. If I have more spaces that can get us closer to our goal of helping all those people faster.
00:29:07
And it was one place that I really didn't think. Through very well because we've had I mean, we opened in May of 2021, so we're sitting at two years right now, and our first brick and mortar came February of 2022. So at that point we were just juggling one brick and mortar and a one trailer. So we're like, this is great. And then so many people came out and said, could you put your coffee shop here?
00:29:36
Could you put your coffee shop here? Let's do a drive through. Let's do this. And I'm just like, yes to all this. That sounds fantastic because in my head, we're getting closer to taking care of the people who need to be cared for.
00:29:49
And I'm just seeing growth. I'm seeing exposure. I'm seeing how can we dig in and grow our Council Bluffs community a little bit more? And how can we have this multi generational day program here where there isn't one successfully? I have to go to Oregon for a mentor unless somebody knows of one that has all three of these generations and groups of folks, I don't know that this has been done successfully.
00:30:20
So I really want to get this done, and I'm looking for any way to get it done. So growth, we grew so exponentially that I couldn't keep up with it. I'm still working a little bit in that business, especially the trailer gigs and stuff like that, because there's only a handful of us that drive the truck and the trailer. Ideally, the more I can step away from being a barista and have somebody else do that, the more I can kind of focus on some of the other things that I need to focus on. But does that answer your question?
00:30:55
I think so. And to follow along with it, it sounds like you're kind of in process figuring this out a bit. Do you imagine at this point that you may say, we're not going to take on new trailers or new locations? Or do you think you're like, okay, I wasn't expecting this. It has changed my plan, but I'm going to keep blowing this out.
00:31:16
I want to keep it growing because I guess what I'm kind of getting at a little bit here is sometimes we get a plan in our head, the plan changes, and then we go, oh, I did it wrong. Do you feel like you're doing it wrong, or are you just navigating in a different way? Will you continue to do it this way? I just know so many people are in the middle of decisions like this themselves. Yeah, it's hard to say no.
00:31:37
I've said no several times to other places. One big notorious place has asked us to come in there and be their coffee shop. And I did say no because it wouldn't be the right business move for the amount of staff we have and stuff like that. But we do get asked quite a bit to come to small towns or put a shop in here. We are holding out, and we are putting a drive through in here in Council Bluffs.
00:32:04
That's really what we want, but otherwise, we're not taking on any new locations, for sure. That's an interesting thing to run into of. You can have so much success and then realize, am I having success? Is this truly the way I wanted to be going? I know I've had those moments throughout our business journey where I've had to stop for a second and be like, wow, everything's going amazing.
00:32:27
Is this what I wanted? Which sounds kind of crazy to say, but when you have so many different passions, I feel like you have to take those moments and stop every once in a while and go, yes, everything looks amazing and is going amazing. Is this still what I want? And so that's been a challenge for me to have to stop and do that sometimes and go, Why am I questioning this right now? Like, I'm not questioning it.
00:32:51
I just need to stop for a moment, make sure that I'm still feeling centered on this. Yeah, we call it Stop, drop reassess. And we do have to do that and remind ourselves because it's like everywhere we go with the trailer, somebody's like, this is such a great mission. I heard on your podcast or on something that this is what you're doing, and we want to support this. And my cousin has a building in this town, and we could get you in there.
00:33:19
And I'm like, oh, I'm so thankful that you're thinking about us this way. But now we're kind of at the point where we've grown to the max that we can grow, and now we need to kind of work on the plan, the plan itself. Okay, so how does this fourth business that you were telling me about before we hopped on here, how does it play in with everything going on? Yeah, so a couple ladies and I came together. There's four of us, and we are starting a mobile IV hydration.
00:33:46
It ties into a lot of our like, we're all entrepreneurs. One is an accountant, and three of us are nurses. And so we all have other businesses. But this was something that we felt would be of value to maybe a lot of the rural towns where they don't have the brick and mortar IV hydration places. And this is something that we can take to them.
00:34:14
We can come to you wherever you are. If you're in an airbnb visiting here for CWS. If you're working out at your gym and you're training for your next marathon, and maybe you've got, like me right now, getting over some allergies and some cold, and you need a little bit of a vitamin boost that we can come to you in your yoga pants in your bedroom, and you don't have to leave your house. And, yes, the IV places always tout the hangover cures and stuff like that. We can do that.
00:34:55
That's not our mission. Our mission is more of a health and wellness space like that focus. But it's been amazing and hopefully we are on track to launch July 1 and we are so excited. In Miners Healthcare we've come across so many things that could have been helped by hydration. And sometimes depending on disease processes, a bag of saline, either a 500 ML bag or 1000 milliliter bag can make the night and day difference to a patient.
00:35:32
Our senior population can get very dehydrated very easily. And what happens when we go to Ers? Well, we sit for hours if we're not acute because Ers are for acute sick people. And if you're just dehydrated, that is not generally a need for an emergency room. But you're going to spend a lot less money having someone come to your house to do an infusion than you will sitting for hours and hours in an Er just to decide that you need a little hydration.
00:36:13
And they give you that bag of fluids and you're on your way. And you're back home and you're feeling good again. Whereas what if we looked at it from more of a preventative and proactive site versus reactive because everything costs more when it's reactive for sure. Whereas when we watch what we're putting in our bodies and we're moving our bodies and exercising and doing all having great sleep hygiene, we can think about things more on a preventative measure versus I'm working crazy hours, I'm not eating well, I'm hitting the drive through, I'm not drinking my water like I should, and now I feel like crap. So now I'm going to treat it.
00:36:58
So there's just so many things. I love the words proactive and I love the words wellness and I try to put those into all the businesses. And sometimes if you see some branding on our social media for Jays and you're like where the hell does that come from? It's just like I don't know, it's kind of all together. We can have the nice things, we can have the coffee and we can have the small donuts and we can have scones and we can have the yummy things but they all have to be in such measured partnership with everything else we do.
00:37:32
So preventative measures I think is what drew us to the vitality IV hydration. I find it just so interesting. A couple of things stick out to me as you're talking. One, you seem so very passionate about every single one of these four different entities. They are very different and yet you can also start to see the overlap in the weave as well as you're talking through the stories.
00:37:56
My question is how you're talking actually right now about kind of that wellness and not being overtaxed and staying hydrated and taking care of yourself and not being stretched too thin. I think for a lot of people to hear your story, they're like, Julie, are you hooked up to an IV bag every day? How do you practically balance or manage while keeping the Kvame passion for very different entities and maintain your sanity at the Kvame time? That's an excellent question. And I have a little funny story.
00:38:34
It's a little off color, but I get asked this all the time. How do you sleep? Right. How do you do this? And my first and this is so bad, my first reaction is always, well, it's the methamphetamines.
00:38:50
And of course, I don't because I'm a very healthy girl. As you can it's the coffee, the hydration. Yeah, a little bit on the side. Yeah. So no methamphetamines, I promise.
00:39:01
You know what I do? I do believe in the law of attraction. And I surround myself with wonderful humans. And I have excellent people on my leadership teams that support me beautifully in all these businesses. And then my business partners are angels as well.
00:39:21
So I am one of four business partners with the hydration. And we are all strong, independent business women who just want to lift each other up. And Miners Healthcare has a very great leadership team. Jay's Coffee has a great leadership team. And I couldn't do it without any of them.
00:39:41
And they all keep me honest. Sometimes if I'm a little ally, they'll be like, it's time for time out. Were those like, strategic hires absolutely early on, or did you realize it partway through? Were those like, first hires? Were they 2nd, 3rd?
00:39:57
How did that work? No, they are all very strategic. And I had a plan in place and job descriptions and wants for me. You call it your manager file, which is what managers see and nobody else gets to see. I had a person skill set that I wanted each of these people to have.
00:40:18
And I vetted them and some of them came to me as employees first, and then I just watched. And I would test them. I would give them not like stump the chump kind of stuff, but put them on a special project team and watch them flourish. And I'm like, what a rock star you are. We work really hard with our retention.
00:40:47
Our leadership team has contacts with all of our team every single week because in home health, we are all everywhere. So we're never all together very often. We do team dinners every couple of months and we kind of morph a nice, fun family dinner with some topics of discussion, things that we all need to talk about together. But for the most part, we're all spread out taking care of people all over the place so we don't see each other. So our leadership team sends out messages, makes phone calls, touches base.
00:41:21
Not even professional, but personal. Hey, how was Sarah's soccer game last know when you took your kids to wrestling? When you did know, how was that? And just having those conversations, keeping people invested and growing and yeah, so they were definitely strategic. And we meet every Monday morning.
00:41:40
We have Monday morning meetings and we have a quick homeroom meeting and we talk about what are we going to kill it with this week, what's our goals and what do we need to support each other on? They were definitely strategic and you have to surround yourself with like minded people. I think that's huge. And it's interesting you bring up that about how your team is in many ways very remote because they're moving around. We also have a remote team and that is one of the things we found, not surprisingly, that it is the reach outs in between.
00:42:16
Like, we have team meetings together and that but I really enjoy getting to know them. And it was actually a number of months before we ever actually met in person. And it was this kind of strange thing where it's like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I know you, but here you are in person. It was crazy. I was like, I could see you from the side and from the back.
00:42:37
This is so weird. But one of the things that we have done is beyond the, of course, like, reaching out map, we actually have pictures of each team member in our office and we have BIOS under them and interests and the clients, they were gone and just like a sheet up because we don't get to see them in the office. So it gives us a little bit of a way of being like, oh, yeah, how is she doing? I remember she was saying about this, I'm going to reach out. And so it gives us a little bit of a visual reminder of our remote team as well, which I think is really important to be able to have.
00:43:08
Well, we're human connectors and we need that piece to feel connected to. You know, like I said, COVID didn't do us well back then when we were all remote, mostly, most of us. I mean, thank goodness my business is COVID proof, right? And we made it through the real hotspot of COVID without a single teammate and a single patient getting COVID. That's amazing.
00:43:35
We locked everything down. We weren't going out to restaurants, we weren't going out to places. So we were able to keep our patients safe and we kept very small teams for each patient, so we were very lucky. Okay, another question for you that I've actually had this conversation with a couple of friends again, multi, passionate people, entrepreneurs. And one of the things that you were starting to touch on this little bit is the branding piece, and I hear it come up.
00:44:03
So do I should I have a Facebook page for everything? Do I need a website for everything? But should I talk about this on this page and on this page? How do I share my content? Is it okay that I talk about my wellness as also on my coffee page, et cetera.
00:44:19
How have you been navigating that? Have you made intentional choices or have you more just sort of let things just happen naturally with your marketing? Especially thinking across social media channels, I think is where one of the big questions comes up for people how much to share where and does it start to become confusing for people because we hear all the time, pick your one thing and do your one thing and only talk about your one thing. Talk to me about that. So yeah, I don't follow the rule of the one thing.
00:44:49
I think it's more confusing for us running the social media channels and I have a Kvam and Kvam is amazing at our social media and our event planning and we call her Jack a lot because she's kind of the jack of all trades. But I think it's more confusing for know navigating between all the different pages than it is for our viewers because there are viewers and followers for minors healthcare that are not followers for Jay's Coffee. But we do support each of the channels on the just did. We just had a nutritionist come and give a free. It was amazing.
00:45:31
Two hour class on hot topics and health and Miners Healthcare sponsored it. We did it at Jay's because we had the seating there and it was you know, in that instance, the Jays will support its sister company and say, hey guys, come out free, class going to be here. Have we don't just talk about coffee and fun stuff on the Jays page. We do share education pieces on health and wellness as well. It's not as heavy, obviously, as it is for minors healthcare, but we do support each of the companies and try to because maybe if we have a follower for Jays, that is like, I'm really on a better plan.
00:46:17
To live a healthier life that maybe I need a nurse navigator and they find us from jays and then they come over and cross over to the minor's healthcare side and then they end up signing up services with one of our navigators. That's fantastic for me. I mean, we're pulling lateral followers in from different things and we try to keep things lighter on the J side, but we do a lot of give backs. So when we go to schools and we're invited to bring the trailer for parent teacher conferences or first day of school, last day of school, stuff like that, we always give back a certain percentage to their PTO, to their Tandem Works, to those things, especially the nonprofits, we always give back, give back, give back. So people find us in lots of different ways that it's unreal.
00:47:09
Social media has a lot of tendrils. For sure and I love that too of just the reminder. Your audiences aren't always crossing over. They're less confused than you are, which I think is true. We get way more confused about our own businesses than other people often, and that you can have that share.
00:47:28
Like, we as humans don't live in channels and boxes. And I think social media has confused us sometimes of like, oh, well, I only like this this no, I like all kinds of things and I want to see all kinds of things. So I think that's a good reminder. And it's something we've talked a lot about, like I said, with friends. And that's kind of where we will end up.
00:47:48
And yet there's still the hesitation. So I love that encouragement of go ahead and post on both. And if someone's giving you feedback that you're confusing them, then reevaluate. But why are we assuming we're saying they're confused when they haven't even told us they're confused? Okay, man, we have so much more to talk about, so you're going to have to come back.
00:48:08
I do have to probably start wrapping us up because I'm like, man, there's so many different ways we could go. But if you were, in summary, looking back on this conversation, talking to someone else, multiple passions, seemingly unrelated, are there like three to five ish things that you would want to impart to them and say, look, you have all these different interests. Here's my quick pieces of advice for you. What do you feel like? Those might be low and slow.
00:48:36
I think, like I said, you can do anything you want. Even if you have $10 in your bank, there's lots of ways you carry in your pocket a computer every single day. And don't get me wrong, your time is worth money. But for you to budget an hour a day to listen to, like, I listen to a podcast 30 minutes a day. I pick a new podcast and listen to 30 minutes just to experience something that my brain isn't already going through with one of the businesses.
00:49:08
But if you dedicate yourself to my team jokes, because I always am looking for free education. We support a lot of the community colleges and we go to lunch and learns and we invest in a lot of our local resources like Sue Pitts at SBDC and, I mean, just so many great organizations. But there are so many resources out there for free for you to learn the basics of business, the basics of accounting, the basics of business, startups, stuff like that, that are free. You can do it and you can do anything you want to do. Whereas the do one thing and do it well may work for some things.
00:49:51
I mean, I'm proof that it's working for me so far, that I'm not just doing one thing. So I think if you're methodical, tactical, accountable, that you can do anything you want to do on a very tiny little budget and everything else will come. You do the right thing the first time around and people are going to come back to seek out your opinion, your services, your coffee, whatever it is, and they're going to know that you're genuinely looking out for other humans around you. And so I think, do good things, be good to people, be kind, give grace, and everybody's going to seek you out. I love that.
00:50:35
Okay, I have some rapid fire questions for you. Oh, Lord. Are we ready? Okay. What do you think is the biggest misconception about owning a business?
00:50:46
And in your case, multiple businesses that. I can come and go as I please. I have a lot of free time. Do people think that with you running that many businesses? Well, I think sometimes if I were to look at my phone right now, I have 65 text messages and 234 emails that I had cleared out before I came in here.
00:51:10
Wow. And so I think when people call, they always think, like, I'm not doing anything else that I need to take care of. And that's just part of being a business person. But, yeah, I think people don't understand how much work and time it takes to own any business at all. So, yeah, I don't have a lot of free time.
00:51:28
Okay. I'm really curious about this one. Just with everything that you're doing, what is your favorite kickback and relax beverage? I'm like, man, this could go hydration. This could go way off the wall.
00:51:39
We have no idea. It could be coffee. I am really curious. You know, it kind of waxes and wanes. If I'm going to head to the alcohol side, I think I'm really enjoying the trulies and the Budweiser Seltzers, those hard whatever, they're so good.
00:52:00
But mostly I'm a water girl. But, yeah, staying hydrated. Yeah. Is there a song, a book or a podcast that's just really inspiring you right now? Dave Cattral wrote a set of books that love, love, love.
00:52:17
Coaching conversations, monday morning meetings and leadership books. They're small, quick reads, but I believe everybody who's going to lead people needs to read. All right, good. Noted. I love adding to my reading list.
00:52:31
They're easy reads, they're light reads. But we actually do every year, I put my leadership team we do during our Monday morning meetings, which is where I got Dave Cattrell's idea. We do a chapter a week in one of his books so we can all kind of learn together. So it's like a book club for us where we just dedicate, like, 15 minutes of our morning meeting and talk about what we read, what we took from it, what we did or didn't like from it. Cool.
00:52:57
I like that we have done that a little bit, but not that regularly, where we've picked a book and all read it together. It's been really fun. And Michaela loves my business partner. She loves book clubs, and that's awesome, all of that. We want to put one together for the coffee shop.
00:53:11
All right, let's talk about it, because I think people need that break. I know I do. Yeah. Cool. More ideas happening.
00:53:19
Okay. What excites you the most about the future? I want to see the doors open to our multigenerational day program. And I want to see three different generations walking in, and I want to see smiles and just people taking away pieces of growth for themselves and just knowing that somebody who was a senior who was sitting in their couch, eating their TV dinner, watching the Kvame TV show all day. Now is out getting their hair cut and having lunch with their friend from 50 years ago from high school.
00:53:55
Cool. I like that picture. What is something that people often get wrong about you? If you don't know me and know that I'm always kind of on, I think that people think I might have a resting bitch face. So it's usually because I'm focused, and I'm just on a mission to do something, whether I'm headed to work on something for this business or I'm taking supplies to Loretzen or I'm just kind of in the moment.
00:54:21
And I think sometimes people think I'm maybe I don't know. I mean, I'm always smiling. It takes me a long time to get mad ever. But I think sometimes I'm always kind of in the zone and on a mission, and I don't see a lot going on around me a lot because I'm so focused on my task at hand. So it's not at all what I am.
00:54:43
But I guess if you ask my husband, he might say something different. You're like, I'm really quite happy and kind in here. Yeah. All right. What do you think business owners could do to make the world a better place?
00:54:54
Oh, lift each other up, help each other out. Don't sit back and be caddy. And I've had times where I've reached out to another business owner and said, hey, I'm sitting in your lobby, and I'm listening to this conversation happen, and I just wanted to let you know. And they fired back very crabby at me. And I'm like, I didn't have to tell you, but I would want somebody to tell me if that was going on so I could have that conversation, because if I heard it, the other four people that were in the lobby heard it, too.
00:55:29
So I think, do what's right for each other, because, like I said, there's enough business out there for everybody. The biggest red flag I have is when somebody is so closed off and rude, and I'm just like that just sends out flags. Just lift each other up. I love that. Well, speaking of lifting each other up, thanks for doing that with us today.
00:55:49
Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate having other entrepreneurs to listen to, especially local ones that I can walk across the street and knock on your door. And I appreciate having that conversation because my husband's good but it's so nice to talk shop with people who understand. I agree. Being able to do this podcast is a huge blessing.
00:56:14
People ask all the time, Why are you doing it? Is it a money generating thing? I'm like, no, it definitely is not generating any money. Back to question one misconceptions, right? Yes.
00:56:24
But I just love the conversations and I grow and I learn and I take notes and I go, that's a good reminder. I want to re implement that, or I've never implemented that. And so I agree. Just being able to have those conversations is huge and it really does lift people up. And that's really what we're here to do.
00:56:39
That's what Michaela and I are all about. And we love having people like yourself, like you said, locally and across the nation, it's been fun to interview people all over. Absolutely. And we have so much to learn from each mean, not even the things that they made mistakes on. And that's a growth piece for us, but just how we're doing things and how we can treat people and what else can we do for people so good.
00:57:04
Yeah. Well, thank you again. Blessed to have you. Thank you. Thank you.
00:57:07
Appreciate it. Appreciate it.