 Location: Santa Barbara
Established: March 2005
Number of Employees: 3
After completing chiropractic college together, Drs. Neal and Nicole Barry returned to Santa Barbara and established Barry Family Chiropractic in March 2005. Both avid runners themselves, they could empathize with and understand the aches and pains of athletes. WEV’s Self-Employment Training course helped the couple augment their chiropractic expertise by demystifying the operation of a business. The phrases “cash flow” and “Profit and Loss” now come just as easily as “adjustments” and “subluxation.” Drs. Neal and Nicole cherish helping athletes and families achieve stronger bodies and lead improved, pain-free lives.
www.sbchiropractic.com
What prompted you to go into business for yourself?
The freedom to make business decisions as well as patient treatment decisions autonomously. I feel that it’s important to offer patients our full opinion and not exist within the realm of other insurance companies and/or other practices’ rules. Sometimes that’s a challenging thing to offer people but it is very important.
What has been your biggest business challenge?
Our biggest challenge has been understanding how a business operates. We spent our entire educations learning about health and physiology, not cash flow and Profit & Loss statements.
What has been your biggest business success?
Honestly, every day is a reward. Helping people become stronger and more stable after having to undergo a serious surgery is very rewarding. To be able to do that for yourself, and not under someone else’s watch, is ultimately rewarding and a sign of success.
Who is your ideal customer?
Anyone with a spine, but really women ages 30-55, because we all know that moms control the health care decisions.
What has been the biggest surprise about owning a business?
Keeping up to date on all facets of business and having employees.
How do you juggle all the pieces of your life (family/work/self/volunteering) to make it all come together?
There’s the $64,000 dollar question. It’s nice to work together (as husband and wife), and we tend to volunteer together, but spare time is a rarity.
What advice do you offer other women who might want to start their own company?
You have to have a strong game-plan and be willing to pay the sacrifice upfront for all of the wonders that will follow in the long run.
What advice do you offer other couples who want to start a company together?
The most important thing is to make sure you can work together on a business spectrum while maintaining your personal relationship. Because, while you’ll always have feelings of love or disappointment for the other person at home, you need to separate that while you are at work or talking about the business, and vice versa. Making sure you can work together is probably the first thing to figure out. Create a strong business plan that both of you agree with. Separate your duties so you don’t step on each other’s toes. Have a lot of passion for the business you choose to go into. Do what you love. Love what you do, with the ones you love.
How did WEV help you to achieve your goal or dream?
WEV helped us to broaden our understanding of the business world and the economics of running a business.
Is there something you learned from WEV that you use every day?
There’s always someone to ask when you have a question.
What does ‘success’ mean to you?
Success means getting up every morning excited to go to work, and balancing work energy with personal energy.
What is the biggest reward you get from your business? What makes it all worthwhile?
Smiling faces, people no longer in pain, families accomplishing things/activities that they weren’t able to do before. We’ve seen our business grow from being nothing in the beginning to being a very busy practice with patients who are involved in our lives and us in theirs. We know their pets’ names and their anniversaries and their birthdays. It makes coming to work a joy every day. And then also being able to help people regain and maintain their health is a very rewarding job in and of itself.
How do you picture you and your business in: one year? Five years? Ten years?
We are looking into expanding our office to a larger location, adding another doctor to the practice, and incorporating other health care practitioners under one roof. In five to ten years, the practice should pretty much run itself. There will be systems in place that mean that we don’t have to look over every nuance of what is going on outside of the treatment rooms.
If your business is being affected by the economy right now, how? And what are you doing to deal with this challenge?
We just keep providing a vital service and going above and beyond what is expected.
Photography courtesy of Liz G Photography: www.lizgphotography.com |
