Accidental Entrepreneur

Accidental Entrepreneur

JoDell Anderson arrived at church one night six years ago to sing Christmas carols. When she left, she'd agreed to be part owner of a day spa. Now she's sole owner of the business, growing it into $1 million-plus in annual revenues.

SMALL BUSINESS by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

As a budding entrepreneur, JoDell Anderson quickly learned even the smallest decisions can have big consequences, particularly when those decisions involve an investment of nearly $1 million - from personal savings.

"I found out," she says, "people just make different decisions when it's their money."

So three years ago, Anderson went from being a stay-at-home mom who was a silent partner in a Sarasota day spa to an active decision-maker. She ponied up another $150,000, on top of the $750,000 she had already put into the venture. Soon after, the original owner who brought her into the business moved out of state, selling Anderson his share.

Anderson, 47, is now the sole owner of the Body & Spirit Day Spa, nestled behind the Westfield Shoppingtown Southgate mall, a few miles south of downtown Sarasota.

Her move from the background to the forefront has paid off. Anderson now runs one of the fastest growing day spas in Southwest Florida.

Monthly revenues over the last year have grown 25%, an unusually high number for the industry. The company now has annual revenues of nearly $1.5 million, with sales of at least $100,000 per month, even in the traditionally slow summer months. The company was growing a more pedestrian 10% annually in the years prior to Anderson taking a more active role.

The spa, with a staff of 40 full-time and part-time employees, has grown into one of the Sarasota area's most recognized and trendy spas, winning numerous "best of" awards from local publications.

Anderson is polite, soft-spoken and an attentive listener. Little surprise, then, that she was an ICU nurse for eight years, both in her native Wisconsin and in the Key Largo area, before relocating to Sarasota with her husband and two children in 1996. "I've always enjoyed helping people," says Anderson in typical Midwestern understatement.

And she has taken to entrepreneurship, showing true signs of her second calling. She has tackled such difficult small business issues as taking the plunge into providing health-care coverage for full-time employees. She follows a top rule of management - hire people smarter than yourself. And she struggles with how to balance life and work, a battle most small business owners face.

The struggles and triumphs Anderson went through to establish and grow her business are a road map for other entrepreneurs. She has focused on continually improving customer service and employee retention, issues facing just about every small business owner, no matter the business.

A tomboy-run spa

The spa technically isn't Anderson's first business venture, but it's the first time she's taken the steps - both financially and emotionally - to run her own business. She's also been a silent partner in a small Chicago-based marketing and media operation since 1999.

Still, running a business was the furthest thing on her mind one night late in 2000 when she arrived at her church's Christmas choir practice. She chatted with her friend Gary Herbek, who at the time owned the day spa in another location in Sarasota. He was seeking to bring in some partners to share the burden, as the business hadn't grown as fast as he thought it would.

Anderson had stopped working as a nurse and was raising her children while volunteering for school and church activities. She wasn't looking to give that up, but was thinking ahead, too, to a time when the kids would be out of the house.

But a day spa? Anderson balked at first. The self-proclaimed tomboy while growing up had never even been to a day spa before. The idea grew on her, though, as she decided the business was the other end of the health care spectrum: caring for people before they got sick.

She liked the concept so much that in 2003, when Herbek moved to Virginia, she bought his share of the business. She also didn't want to put more money into it without having a bigger say into how things were spent.

The first year as the boss, Anderson admits, was full of "what did I get yourself into" moments. People, from customers to employees, were bombarding her with questions, from day-off requests to the types of ingredients in the hair products.

She worked long days, and nights, trying to figure out the business. Anderson's husband, Mitch, asked repeatedly in the first few weeks if she wanted to keep going.

"When you want something bad enough," Anderson says, "you dig your heels in and do what you need to do."

At first, that meant doing a little bit of all the jobs at the spa. "I needed to be involved with everything," she says, "until I became comfortable with everyone's capabilities. When you go to nursing school, you don't think one day you'll be running a business."

To further her education, both when she started and even now, Anderson reads how-to business books and industry-related magazine articles. She attends spa conferences and befriends other spa owners to get ideas. (The conferences are especially helpful, Anderson says, as peers "spill their guts out" about problems and solutions). And she listens to the suggestions, and complaints, of employees.

Stale ice cubes

Anderson's continuing education included hiring people for leadership roles with more industry experience than she has, as well as outsourcing jobs she couldn't do on her own. One of her best moves, she says, was hiring Mary Winter as the general manager of the spa. Winter had been traveling the country for several years, consulting with spa owners about how to grow their operations.

One step Winter and Anderson took early on was to institute a comment cards system for clients, and then make a point to read the responses and change things whenever feasible. Winter says she calls each client with a negative response, no matter how small. One time, Anderson received a complaint that the ice cubes were stale. "While not a big thing," Anderson says, you have to take the approach that "everything matters."

Winter says she and Anderson also made a priority of perfecting the tiny details of customer service. The staff hands out bottled water and mints with the Body & Sprit logo, for example. And Anderson sends each regular client a birthday card with a discount for future services.

Employees have their version of comment cards, too, as Anderson says maintaining a positive work environment is a priority, given the upper hand employees have in Sarasota's phenomenally tight job market. Employees are tracked by their customer-retention rate, and the ones who go "above and beyond" each month get a plaque with their names on the wall. Anderson also implemented a "body bucks" program, where all employees get $80 a month to spend on products.

Another step Anderson recently took toward improving employee retention was to provide health care options for all 16 full-time employees; a dozen have signed up so far.

One challenge Anderson is grappling with is how to factor in the expected growth in customers and staff with the already tightly packed facility. As it is, Anderson works out of her cell phone or an off-site office. When she's at the spa, she greets visitors in Winter's closet-sized cubicle. What's more, in peak months, Anderson says the spa is 100% booked, but only 60% staffed.

Anderson is also worried about increased competition, especially in the rapidly changing spa industry. The latest concept is med-spas, which offer some similar services, as well some medical-based procedures. "I have to keep up with the trends," Anderson says, "so people don't leave us."

Top Businesswoman

JoDell Anderson can lay claim to being the Florida Businesswoman of the Year.

A lofty title, yet Anderson, in a half-false modest, half-sincere way, says she doesn't know how or why she won the prize. The Small Business Advisory Council, an offshoot of the National Republican Congressional Committee, presented her the award in March. Anderson has been active in local Republican Party politics and fundraising in the past, but she says she doesn't know why she was nominated for this specific award.

A spokesman for the NRCC says the group seeks to reward individuals who help support Republican causes, as well as those who support pro-business agendas.

Either way, Anderson enjoyed the perks. She flew to Washington D.C for a two-day conference that included dinner with Karl Rove, a top advisor to President Bush. She also spoke on a panel supporting tax and energy reforms.

But the hobnobbing with political bigwigs turned out to be a secondary perk: Anderson stayed at the famous Mandarin Oriental hotel in the nation's capital. And of course, she made time to check out the spa.

Tips

JoDell Anderson offers these suggestions on how to succeed as a new entrepreneur:

•Create a mission statement, and build the business around it, "from the staff you hire, to the Web site you create, to the clients you attract."

•Read books on successful business strategies. The books most helpful to Anderson are by Max Lucado and John C. Maxwell, which combine advice with a spiritual background.

•Plan to spend most of your waking hours working or on-call in the first few years, until you get an opportunity to build a strong team.

•Mistakes will happen, but it is through mistakes that you will learn and grow.