How many years have you been in business in the DDBIA?

Three

How many full-time employees (including yourself) work in your business or org?

Four - plus several dozen individually contracted wellness practitioners

Are your annual sales [budget] over or under $500K yearly?

Over

What do you believe makes your business or org uniquely successful?

We're certainly happy to gauge our success in the usual ways like physical expansion, increased revenue, and growth of our client base, but most satisfying of all is the positive feedback from both our practitioners and clients alike.  Having dozens of practitioners choosing us to support their individual practices and seeing so many clients successfully utilizing a multidisciplinary approach on their path to wellness is worth more than any other metric.

Regardless of how you define growth, what are the short- and long-term growth plans for your business?

Our short-term growth plans include updates to better serve both practitioners and their clients, including improvements to staff areas, expanded laundry facilities, networking upgrades, and the addition of multiple new practitioners. Our long-term goals are to continue to attract top-notch practitioners in a variety of disciplines, offer an even wider range of services, and have every room utilized to maximize our offerings and availability. Along with this will be a continued effort to spread the word and serve the needs of as many community members as we can.

What new products or processes or other actions have you taken in the past to address changing market conditions, customer expectations and or growth opportunities?

Over the last year, we've completed our expansion plan to meet increased demand, bringing us up to 32 treatment rooms and a pharmacy in over 8,000 square feet of space.  We've also hired additional admin staff, increased our front desk hours, and added more direct billing options for clients with insurance coverage. We've continued to update and improve our website and raised our advertising spend to include regular magazine/newspaper ads in addition to our billboard, on-site signage, and online efforts.

How specifically do you operationalize the idea of “Excellence” in your business?

Excellence to us comes down to the customer experience, and all the touchpoints along the way. From their first experience easily finding us online, to using our website, and initial contact by email, contact form, phone, social media, or online booking engine. Then their first impression entering our facility... convenient hours, greeted by name with a welcoming smile. Feeling comfortable in a clean, modern, spacious, and relaxing environment, with a minimal wait for their practitioner. Receiving personalized and results-based care from a range of professionals, with all their wellness needs met conveniently at one location for integrated care, and ending in a smooth and efficient transaction and planning of their next visit.

Reading your submission form balancing and supporting a large number of staff and practitioners is a large part of your business. Are there any unique challenges that come with having such a large and diverse team to manage? Do you have any advice for other downtown businesses that are expanding?

Yes, we've really grown steadily over the past three years, with around 40 practitioners now. And with a wide range of schedules, we needed to hire more administrative staff to extend our opening hours as well. With the practitioners, though, everyone is a professional and has chosen to join our group as a home for their practice. So really, we're not so much managing them as we're providing them with all the support, space, and tools they need to be successful themselves.  It's quite different than having that many people working for you -- the way I see it, we're actually working for them!

Starting completely from scratch and managing growth along the way is always challenging, and as the owner, you wear a lot of hats and need to be able to manage a lot going on at once. Balancing finances, all the business functions, and the timing of everything can certainly be tricky as you grow.  I’m really grateful to have the support staff that we do. Our operations manager (Janelle) and administrative staff (Shantelle and Rebecca) really are the hub of everything on a daily basis, and essential to ensuring everything is well-maintained and running smoothly.

My advice would be to stay positive, take one step at a time, be consistent, be true to your values, surround yourself with supportive people, and have a plan without being rigid. Adapt to what works, let go of what doesn’t, and don’t worry over things you can’t control. Be open-minded and flexible with the direction that your business takes. Let it flow and evolve over time. That’s actually one of the things I enjoy most – you never know who or what is around the next corner, and where that will lead you. The same could be said about life in general; appreciate what you have, but always aim to improve, and treat every experience or encounter as an opportunity.

Since making changes in your marketing practices such as increasing advertising, and updating your website, have you seen any notable differences? 

In terms of our marketing efforts, it's difficult to attribute growth to one particular thing over another. Honestly, they all work together to create "impressions" on potential customers, and across a variety of audiences. We're trying to hit all the bases... online via search engine traffic and social media, print via magazines and newspapers, and local traffic via billboards and building signage. We've seen a steady increase in website visitors and our client database, and each of these has played a part. We get a lot of cross-referrals as well. The more practitioners that join us, the more clients we attract, who then discover our other practitioners in different areas. We see a huge number of clients visiting multiple practitioners regularly. More important than anything, though, is offering consistently excellent service. Repeat clients, word-of-mouth, and five-star reviews are always going to matter most.