Age 40 in 2013 quit law to look after their sick child for 2 years. For great flexibility, managed her family physio business, rebranded, opened a 2nd site, acquired a 3rd. Grew sales 130% in 5 years. 8 FTE to now 22 (Episode 70 - Trisha Cashmere)

In this episode, I interview Trisha Cashmere, the Managing Director of The Healthy Body Company, an allied health professional services business that focuses on supporting its clients to be healthy and active through life. In 2013, Trisha quit corporate law to look after her sick child for a couple of years. In 2015, aged 42, she took over managing her husband’s physio practice and soon after added another site and then acquired a competitor with mixed results. From her experience with that acquisition, she always advises, “Don’t agree to hire everyone. Put them through a recruitment process and have a good shareholder’s agreement in place.”

Over five years, she grew sales 130% with more than 23% compound per annum. She grew the number of full-time employees from 8 to 19, soon to be 22, and funded the business through grants, bank loans, and profits. Trisha felt she had succeeded when she recently realized that they were doing very well and absorbed that fact. She believes that the hardest thing about growing a small business is time and money and says that the one thing she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, “It’s a marathon. Not a sprint. And the to-do list will never be finished” Stay tuned to gain from Trisha’s small business ownership wisdom.

This Cast Covers:

From being a physiotherapist to retraining as a lawyer and working in a commercial law firm, then leaving that to venture into business.
Achieving a 130% income increase in their fees since 2015 and growing their full-time employees from 2 to 19.
Enjoying the success of running the business sustainably even through the pandemic.
Flexibility and lifestyle: Being able to do what she wants when she wants it, and the beauty of having financial security.
The value they’ve gotten from replicating their business model with their employees as equity partners.
Effective marketing strategies for service-based businesses.
Using SurveyMonkey as a customer satisfaction benchmarking and survey tool.
Their funding mix: Bank loans, own funds, partners with equity, and government grants.
The mistake they made when they took on all of the employees of the business they were acquiring.
Why she stopped doing physio to focus on growing the business.
Identifying the great opportunities that lie in delivering services online.
How building an email list can help grow a business by building a tribe around it.
Being terrible at delegating and how she deals with it.
Clearly articulating their values within their team to ensure everyone does their level best to deliver the best service to clients.
Choosing to invest in peer to peer mentoring groups and buying a lot of business and management books.

Additional Resources:

Quotes:

“Word of mouth referral is absolutely the most valuable tool” – Trisha Cashmere

“If you do enter into a business relationship with somebody, have a really good partnership or shareholder agreement in place” – Trisha Cashmere