Success Stories

Sisu Therapies

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Sisu Therapies was founded by married couple Laura Simenson, DPT, and Joe Schroeder, DPT in January 2020. For 15 years, the couple had a long-standing goal of starting a therapy and wellness practice together that offers a dynamic and holistic pathway leading to healthier lifestyles. When the space at 1230 W. Ash Street became available in December 2019, it finally seemed that all the pieces were starting to fall into place.

Working with East CO

Although Joe and Laura have over 30+ years of clinical and managerial experience in various therapy departments, they knew they were going to need some additional help to get their business up and running. They had started working with representatives from Larimer and Weld County SBDCs. Ultimately, because their business would be based out of Windsor (Weld County location), they connected with Kyla Benson, Associate Director and Consultant with the East Colorado SBDC. Working with Kyla has been one of the best connections that the owners of Sisu Therapies have made. Kyla has been a wealth of information from formulating a solid business plan, to financial and legal contacts, to help in promoting their business. Her experience, knowledge, and passion to help small businesses thrive is indomitable. The relationship started in 2019 and they still know that she is there for them when they may need additional advice regarding their business.

Opening amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Although Sisu Therapies was formed in June 2019, it did not officially open its doors to the public until April 27th, 2020. Opening a small business certainly has its challenges on a normal basis, and to do so during a worldwide pandemic was the softest and slowest start that a business could ever go through. The challenges were insurmountable. Commercial insurance credentialing was delayed between 6-13 months, equipment and office furniture were delayed, and hygiene supplies were back-ordered or out of stock. Potential clients concerned (rightfully so) about their well-being or those they care for, were avoiding close contact with others. It was a recipe for a disastrous outcome for any new small business starting out.

Celebrating a Year in Business

Approaching its one-year anniversary, Sisu Therapies continues to push forward.

Starting out with two Physical Therapists and a front desk coordinator, they’ve added 6 employees to their team over the past year. This included two of the most experienced therapists in the Greeley-Windsor-Fort Collins area: a full-time Certified Hand and Shoulder Specialist and a Medical Massage Therapist. To strengthen the team further, four Wellness Specialists with advanced training in working with individuals of all ages provide strength, conditioning, and nutrition services to clients. Sisu Therapies has also teamed up with a local Ambulatory Surgical Center to provide post-acute therapy care to the patients during their stay. Lastly, the physical therapy-focused practice aims to give back to the community and has served in events and programs around the communities to achieve this goal including volunteering at the Weld County Food Bank, adopting a trail with Windsor Parks and Recreation, and sponsoring a local running race.

Sisu Therapies is growing and adapting every week to meet the demands of the communities. The clientele is building as individuals learn about the therapy, wellness services, and committed care that is offered. As Windsor and the surrounding areas continue to expand, Sisu Therapies will be ready to support Physical Therapy and Wellness needs. SISU!

Parker Garage and Foraged Restaurants

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We’ve been invited to share our success story with the history of our company, dating back to the purchase of our original location in Parker, Colorado “The Parker Garage“.

Parker Garage and Foraged Restaurants - Boom to Shutdown

We took on this project as re-hab of an old building on Mainstreet in Parker in 2014. We bought an older rundown business called the Warhorse that had been in business for many years and had the test of time wear on it. We were inspired by the history of the building and the effort to bring it back to its original historic appearance. When we took possession of the building and we had budgeted $500,000 to bring it back to life, we ended up spending $1.1 Million as the condition of the space was too dilapidated. Parker Garage opened after 9 months of construction began in October of 2014 and had many years of increased sales and success. Since 2014, the annual sales increased yearly and by end 2019, we were doing over 2.5 million in annual sales, and growing rapidly.

This motivated us to pursue another location in Denver at 1825 Blake St. in a development called the Dairy Block. We formed a new entity called Foraged Restaurant that is a play on words of Japanese knife making and the creative pursuit of products from around the world. We were only open for (3) three months when the Pandemic struck the world and forced us to shut down both locations and only able to do take-out food service, for a few months during both closures.

Navigating COVID Relief with the SBDC

East Colorado Small Business Development Center’s, Craig Curl, has been a reliable resource for years. He was instrumental in helping us navigate through all the options for PPP loans and EIDL applications, which helped us survive this challenging year.

Needless to say, his efforts and resources that he deployed to aid us was such a guiding light in a very tricky and at many times overwhelming situation. Without his help I am sure we would have struggled to survive and potentially would have lost all of our investment and employees. Mr. Curl stayed in constant contact and updated me sometimes hourly on the ongoing changes that were occurring to ensure we understood how to appropriate the funds and keep our employees engaged while working through the recovery of both businesses.

I am proud to say we have come out on the other side so far and are striving to secure another wave of funding so we can continue to employee 30 people and grow back the base of customers as the world recovers as well. Many thanks to Craig and the SBDC team as they should be honored and acknowledged for their efforts to so many businesses that I am sure would all sing the same praises.

Brent Walker, Owner of Parker Garage Restaurant and Foraged Restaurant

PICTURE IT STUDIOS, INC

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Navigating COVID Relief with the SBDC

During the COVID lockdown, Craig provided information and guidance about the PPP and the EIDL programs that might stabilize the Studio once we were able to re-open. At that point most of my capital had been spent on rent and utilities during the 2.5 months we were forced to close.

Without that support we would have had to permanently close. Thankfully we were approved for both types of assistance and completed 2020 better than expected. Our three part time employees were thrilled.

Grider Lee

Working with the SBDC

Who would have guessed a chance 2010 meeting of an East Colorado SBDC representative would have such a dramatic and important impact on my fledgling photography career over the next 10 years? Craig Curl, an East CO SBDC Business Consultant, was making a presentation to the Eastern I-70 Corridor REAP members during a Noon luncheon at Front Range Airport. At the time I was serving as a Bennett Town Board Trustee and managing a photography Co-op, located upstairs above the Main Street retail shops in the Southlands Shopping Center near E-470 & Smoky Hill Rd.

I was intrigued that Colorado was making such an important investment in helping small businesses across Colorado, so afterwards I asked Craig Curl SBDC Business Consultant to schedule a meeting. I wanted to find out more about the SBDC ‘s actual range of services.

Upon meeting Craig Curl at the Co-op, I was surprised at his depth of personal experience in businesses of all kinds. This guy was no standard government egg-head who have never experienced or owned a real business. This man has endured the ups and downs of businesses he had owned or developed. He was definitely someone to listen to, who stressed the importance of being ready to pounce on “opportunity” whenever it presented itself. At the time I was photographing weddings and High School Seniors as well as managing the photography co-op. It was an expense sharing, sort of a business executive center for photographers.

About 15 months later, Southlands Mall Management brought me in to discuss the possibility of me taking over their Santa Claus and Easter Bunny seasonal photography. After doing research on the equipment and software we thought would be necessary, we said yes. Craig Curl was right – If you see an opportunity, be bold and grab it. And that’s what happened.

Engaging the Curl Method

Along the way to opening this new venture, I had many “lucky” breaks, such as one of my Co-op members was a “between assignments,” really talented IT person. He helped develop a system that allowed us to show and print the just-taken Santa pictures to two moms simultaneously. This major improvement essentially doubled our capacity to process more people, faster. That meant much shorter “wait” lines and happier kiddos because they could now see and talk with Santa sooner.

Southland management was a big help too with various tips about problems that previous photographers suffered. Since then, Mall management had thought through the issue and shared their solutions with us. While we discovered many new problems with our “Client Server” computer system, by the third week of the season we were operating smoothly. I knew when the coming “Easter Bunny” photo season began, we would have all the initial “bugs” worked out further reducing the wait time to see the Easter Bunny.

Once the 2012 Easter Bunny Season was over, I knew we could easily handle more business because we had learned how to get the most from our computer, photo processing, and printing equipment. We would expand the system to allow three moms to choose their “photo-favs” simultaneously before the Santa Season began. That’s when Craig Curl suggested that since we had more capacity, we should do Christmas & Easter marketing in the Southlands. In the fall of 2012, we begin that program.

Our revised marketing consisted of walking the Southlands streets with Santa during the 10 days before opening, visiting all retail shops and offices. We left advertising pieces containing discounts at each location and allow folks to take photos of Santa with their cell phones; a practice we prohibited once commercial activity began. Thankfully, Craig’s suggestion resulted in a 25% annual increase in sales in 2012. We continued that practice throughout the remainder of our contract, resulting in a consistent 25% annual increase in sales.

Our Growing Business

A few days into the 2012 Santa Season, Mall management asked for another meeting. In that meeting I learned the owners of a retail photo studio located in the Southlands, having opened along with the Mall in 2006, were planning to close that business. Mall management put me in touch with the owners and following Craig’s advice of “never turn your back on an opportunity;” I purchased that business in mid–February 2013.

I knew from managing the nearby photography co-op that photographers offering higher quality and higher service photography generated larger revenues per sale. The previous owners had followed a classic “volume” based photography business plan, of fast but limited service. Walmart and JC Penny’s were nearby in the Shopping Center and followed the same plan. I wanted to move this new portrait company in a different direction, meaning higher quality and better service. This meant reinventing this portrait studio with different products and staff with a background with previous training in photography or art. I discussed those thoughts with Craig and he agreed.

Reinventing a successful company can be dangerous, but records showed studio sales had been declining since 2009. Continuing to compete with Walmart & JC Penny just didn’t make sense, so change began in June 2013.

New “portrait package” pricing, which included the cost of photography and time & materials (prints), was introduced to replace “sheet” pricing. Several portrait packages were offered to max out around $400, with a starting package price just above the 2012 average purchase of $89. In addition, the Website was redesigned and expanded from 4 to 20 pages. Lots of text was included to improve our Google, Yahoo, and Bing internet search ranking. By the end of 2013, we had reversed the annual “sales decline, showing an increase of 15% over 2012. Everything looked pretty rosy going into 2014, but it turned out all was not as it seemed” on the surface.

A closer examination of the studio’s existing customer database revealed during the summer of 2013 there was only meager information available per customer. No home, email address, or cell telephone number existed. The only access to 4000 existing customers was their home telephone number, an almost impossible task to accomplish for a small company.

Craig recommended that we enact a policy of collecting complete information about each customer as we had with our Santa and Easter Bunny customers so they could be more easily invited back to the studio going forward. In the spring of 2014, we learned that much of the existing customer base actually enjoyed having low-priced photography and weren’t too keen on our new package pricing system. Actual confrontations about the pricing change occurred between existing customers with our young staff.

That spring, Craig inviting me to an upcoming I-70 Corridor REAP meeting where a representative of the local Bennett Post Office would present information about a new low-cost business mailing program known as EDDM or Every Door Direct Mail. This mailing system provided extensive demographic information about each “Carrier Route.” Carrier Routes typically are sized from 300 to 700 households, allowing mail to be “targeted” by us into any carrier route whose residents equaled higher income at the then price of 17 cents each.

Finally, we now had a way to advertise directly to prospective customers who had a better chance of being attracted to more upscale photography, and many neighborhoods near the Southlands were definitely upscale. This mailing program resulted in a slow improvement of our per transaction sale from the original 2012 average of $89 to $200 by the fall of 2015. We were now beginning to attract our ideal client.
I remained unhappy we were unable to quickly reach out to most of the original 4000 customers which were part of the studio acquisition. A colleague from my Church was known to do telephone cold-calling to uncover qualified real estate buyers, so I approached him to learn more about what he was doing.

He and his staff subscribed to an automated dialing system, which incorporated an automated voice mail message. This automated system allowed contact with over 60 customers an hour, which stood in strong contrast to our manual methods of 15 contacts hourly. This system added an important new element to our marketing. Going forward we would use EDDM to reach out to prospective customers and automated dialing assistance would be an affordable way to contact the existing customer base.

In the meantime, ongoing improvements in camera room lighting, improved backdrops, and better photo editing techniques were deployed. We were now producing more consistent, customer-pleasing outcomes and sales were slowing climbing.

Amanda’s Custom Meat Processing

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Amanda’s Custom Meat Processing is a custom butcher shop, that processes beef and wild game. Our business is owned and operated by my husband Brad and I. For now it is just the two of us with two other employees.

Working with the SBDC

This shop has been a dream of ours for a long time. We were always out in our shop planning ways to make our perfect butcher shop. We finally decided to make it happen but we weren’t sure how to start. When I found East Colorado SBDC and heard from Merle Rhoades I was so excited.

Merle helped me get started on a business plan and gave me his contacts to help get a loan. I worked for what seemed like a very long time on my business plan and he always made sure he was available to help. With COVID being in the mix when we got started, it made our meetings hard to make. We got very good at our google hangout meetings! Once he helped me finish my business plan he turned me over to Northeast Colorado Revolving Loan Fund. Once we spoke to Valerie at the Revolving Loan Fund things went incredibly fast!!

We got our loan in no time and the construction begun. We had some pretty big road blocks in the construction of the shop, like damaging winds to our new walls, flooding that destroyed a lot of the new stuff that we had just purchased for the shop, and COVID slowed down our contractors and the supply that we needed to get our jobs done. Even with all the bad things that we went through getting the business off the ground we are so happy to have this business.

Opening Our Doors

Since we opened our doors in October we have been blessed with amazing success. We are booked way out on beef and we are getting tons of wild game. Brad and I couldn’t be happier with the decision we made to start the butcher shop. We hope to get more known in our community and we will continue to learn the ins and outs of this business.

We owe our success to Merle Rhoades and East Colorado SBDC. Thank you

Amanda Whipple Owner

Elaine’s Place

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Our goal at Elaine’s Place is to provide fresh traditional meals, making our customers feel like they are eating at their own dining room table all for a reasonable price!

Working with the SBDC

Merle Rhoades at East CO SBDC helped us in obtaining a grant from Morgan County Safe Open. This COVID grant will help keep me in business for at least another year and keep the employees I have employed.

I told Merle I wish I would have met him 10 years ago. I am sure that my business would have been much greater than it is today.