Bank Loans, Creating Value and The Importance of Your “Why”
Where can you find the Williams?
Dr. Tom
Instagram: @drtomwilliams
Lauren
Instagram: @growingmay or @growingmayessentials
Roots Family Chiropractic
Instagram: @rootsfamilychiro
Website: www.rootsfamilychiro.com
You’re listening to Episode 5 of The Business Family! Today we’re talking with Dr. Tom, who happens to be Mike’s brother, and Lauren Williams of Roots Family Chiropractic. We had a front row seat to this rollercoaster of a story and now you are along for the ride. In today’s episode Dr. Tom talks about the ins and out of a business plan and getting a bank loan, we talk about how to create value for your clients and just how important your “why” is. So let’s jump on in!
Tom and Lauren met in college and got married while they were both still in grad school. They literally went back to school and work the Monday after they got married! Tom and Lauren opened up Roots Family Chiropractic right after Tom graduated. Dr. Tom was the chiropractor and Lauren was the office manager. A month after the office opened they found out they were pregnant with their son, Oliver! Oliver started coming with them to the office after Lauren was home for 2 weeks. Tom was able to be flexible with his schedule in order to be home with Lauren and Oliver. Lauren actually was in labor at their office!
The reason they opened Roots Family Chiro together in Chicago was because they wanted to live in Chicago and they wanted to take care of families in a unique way - especially kids with unique sensory challenges.
Tom was dubbed “Dr. Dad” aka The Baby Wearing Chiropractor for wearing Oliver in the office while they worked and was featured on National News! Because they had no other employees, they really didn’t have a choice so Oliver came along! They wanted to really take advantage of that 4th trimester for bonding.
When Oliver started to become more active and have more wants and needs they realized that they needed to make a transition in order to let Lauren be fully present at their office. Once the “stranger danger” development stage hit Oliver wanted only Tom or Lauren and it wasn’t becoming feasible to keep him in the office.
Dr. Tom originally wanted to work as an associate doctor for the chiropractors that inspired him to go to chiropractic school. But once he got to school he saw a whole different side of chiropractic. Dr. Tom was torn because he didn’t want to open his own practice. He felt lost and alone and which left him feeling anxious and depressed. One guest speaker changed his mind and from then on he knew he had to open up his own practice in order to see his new vision come to life.
Dr. Tom and Lauren didn’t get the skill set needed in order to open a successful chiropractic office. Their school provided a few business classes ran by professors who no longer had a business and never really had a thriving business to begin with. So Tom gathered as much information about business plans that he could get from other chiropractors before him and built his own business plan.
If you’ve never seen a business plan or had to write one in order to pitch it to investors or banks, let me tell you, they are a beast! It includes everything from your target marketing to marketing strategy to initial overhead needs and more. This document, that was over 50 pages long, was what Dr. Tom took with him to the banks (printed off and bound)!
When you open up an actual office you need cash! So it was time to secure funding. Dr. Tom talked to 13-15 banks and tried to originally secure a $150,000 loan (very conservative in tersm of business loans) and they all said no. The banks just didn’t see how the numbers would add up with zero assets, zero experience and zero clients that Roots Family was already seeing. So Dr. Tom decided to go bare bones and whittled his business plan down to $50,000. The banks still said no because Dr. Tom had no assets.
He ended up getting an SBA loan that is backed by the government and the bank is only on the hook for 10-15%. He was introduced to a bank in Florida who had lent to chiropractors before and they were able to secure a $75,000 loan.
Even with cutting corners to make things more affordable, the money ran out fast. In hindsight, Dr. Tom realizes that the was willing to put too much on the line in order to open his practice and if he had to do it again he would have been more risk adverse and tried to do things to decrease overhead.
At this point, Roots Family Chiropractic is their life. There is no backup plan. And Tom and Lauren know that they not only have to make this business work for their own lives but also for all the lives that they are impacting. This clarity into their “why” lead them through all of the struggle and hardships that they’ve endured to open up their practice and gets them through the hard time still! It’s such a testament to the importance of knowing your why.
One of the things that Tom and Lauren do a great job is showing their value. They don’t just tell people what their value is they actually help them to discover that value for themselves.
If they each had to give one piece of advice Dr. Tom would say that he would be more risk adverse and Lauren would say to be honest with yourself what you want your business or your role in it to look like.
