(upbeat music) - [Woman] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
(upbeat music) - [Man] It's Your Business with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE PBS and the Center for Rural Innovation with funding provided by The Economic Development Administration through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Stability Act.
This series was produced under an agreement with Tennessee Tech University Center for Rural Innovation through The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Stability Act.
- Welcome to It's Your Business, an exploration of all things small business and entrepreneurship here in the Upper Cumberland, I'm your host, Michael Aikens.
Here at the show, we consistently attempt to make our audience aware of the entrepreneurship and small businesses all around us.
And today's episode is no exception.
Entrepreneurship is everywhere from your local gym to the urgent care center when you're sick.
Today, we'll be speaking with two entrepreneurs who specialize in the business of healthy living, and we'll hear about their journeys into entrepreneurship.
So let's get started.
(upbeat music) - Rich Froning is a father, husband, eight time CrossFit champion and held the title of Fittest Man on Earth for four years.
While he's widely known for his athletic prowess and fitness empire and CrossFit Mayhem, his gym and training grounds at Cookeville.
Froning is also known for his entrepreneurship, like his illustrious title, his entrepreneurial endeavors took time, effort and hard work, something both entrepreneurs and athletes are more than familiar with.
(upbeat music) Rich, thank you so much for being on the show and welcome to It's Your Business.
- Yeah, thanks for having me, looking forward to it.
- So, you are known as the World's Fittest Man.
You've won multiple CrossFit Championships.
You're also a very successful entrepreneur.
Could you tell us a little bit about your businesses?
- Well man, which one?
(chuckles) Yeah, we were just talking about it before we started.
You know, we have CrossFit Mayhem here.
We have the gym, that's the actual physical location.
We have Froning Farms that's kind of out of here at out house and then mayhemnation.tv which is a ton of workout videos and our Mayhem Athlete stuff.
So we have a bunch of virtual clients I guess you could say.
And then my wife owns a 31TwentyFive which is a boutique here in town.
So, (chuckles) we, a lot of irons in the fire and we have a coffee shop up front too so, Buffalo Brew, so.
- Well, so you're world famous, successful athlete.
You could become this entrepreneur.
Why did you decide to go into the world of entrepreneurship?
- You know, I know I can compete for, you know a certain amount of time and there's one thing that's undefeated and that's time.
You know, I'm not gonna be able to compete for forever.
So I'm like, how can I set up my family?
That's when it all comes down to is, how can I set up my family for success in the future?
So from there, things just kind of morphed in.
So, the online stuff came from there.
I'm already doing the training.
So, let's do some stuff online where we can have the people that physically can't come to Cookeville and train at Cookeville, we can help them online.
And so that's kind of where Mayhem Athlete started or Mayhem Nation whatever you want to call that.
As more from there, we have this physical location, so we the had space up front.
So hey, coffee shop, let's do that.
And the way we were talking kinda off air, we had land at the house, you know, had 60, 70 acres, now 150 acres and me and my best friend growing up, Matt Billings who also owns a business in town decided to put some bison out there, you know.
- Well, that's really cool and you know, obviously, like you said, you've got a lot of irons in the fire, you know, it takes so much to be an athlete, especially at your level but just an athlete in general and it takes so much to be an entrepreneur.
How are you balancing these two and also having time for family?
- Yeah it's, you know, some days I do some things really well and other days you know, it's a constant battle.
It's, you've gotta be a little bit self-critical and hey how are you managing your time?
Are certain things falling along the wayside?
You know, my family is number one.
Like that's why I stepped away from individual competition when we had our first daughter.
I knew the obsession and the commitment that it took to be an individual athlete and I wasn't willing to do that anymore.
Wouldn't say that I'm proud of the things I had to do.
You know, like there was relationships that I sacrificed early on, even with my wife and time where I was just so consumed with competing and I knew I couldn't do that anymore.
So, but having that hypercritical and being able to kind of step back and having good people in my corner, one that I appreciate their point of view and they'll hold me accountable and I'm willing to take that has been really good.
- You know, there's a lot of parallels of course, between athletes and entrepreneurs and we talk about traits of an entrepreneur and traits of an athlete.
What would you say some of the common traits are between the two?
- For me, I think, you know being on a team, there's so many different things, 'cause you gotta learn how different people are motivated in different ways.
People, you gotta handle different people in different ways.
As an individual, when I was competing as an individual, like I said, it was one track mind but there's just so many things in sport that I learned, you know, I'm more of a lead by example or I'm gonna get in there and work with you type.
I'm not a rah-rah, like give you a speech and like let's go.
That type of thing I'm like, hey, I wouldn't ask you to do anything that I'm not gonna do or I'm not gonna work just as hard.
So I think for most people that does a lot, it says a lot.
- Taking it in a little bit different direction.
One thing that I'm interested in and I'm sure our viewers will be too.
Froning Farms, it's kind of a new endeavor for you.
I'm really interested.
Well first, what is Froning farms and how does the role of local agriculture play into that?
- It was kind of just a two real good friends talking of best friends, talking about, hey, let's use this land and you know, we're actually, when we talked about it, we had this idea of, hey, let's have a farm.
Something really just for our kids and to do something family together.
Everything is so technical and so, you know, device driven that we were like, hey, let's get something that like, we can all go outside.
We can hang out together and have the kids have some responsibility, some chores you know, things that I hated as a kid where I'm like, man if we didn't have this, you know, whatever to take care of, we could go do this and this and this but I want my kids to have that.
And now, you know, at the time I was so frustrated and so just like, what're we doing?
But, so that's what started out as you know, Froning Farms was that and now it's kind of, like I said, it's blown up into kind of an apparel company, I guess, you know we have a lot of merchandise but then also we have steaks and bars and it's been fun.
It's been really cool and it's a completely different.
What I like honestly, is it doesn't depend on my physical performance in CrossFit.
It's been, it's kind of its own stand-alone business.
It's one of our only businesses that is not like, you know dependent on 100%, you know, on fitness.
So it's pretty cool.
- So your businesses have been very successful right here in Cookeville and in Upper Cumberland, you know you could be anywhere in the nation.
Why do they work so well here?
And why are you here?
- Man, Cookeville is home for us.
You know, I've literally been around the world.
We were in China two years.
We were just talking about the other day we were in china two years ago at this exact time.
All over the country, this is home.
Like Cookeville is home for us.
I wasn't born here, moved here when I was four.
But you know, Michigan is where my family is you know, extended family but Cookeville is home for us.
You know, that's where my parents live.
It's where we live.
You know, up on Pfeiffer mountain is home for us.
So yeah, you know, what I kinda like about it is, you know, I go other places and will get recognized and stuff like that, here it's like, I'm Janice's son or Rich's son.
You know, like my mom worked in restaurants here for 20 years and so everybody knows my mom.
And so it's home, you know, it's the only real way to put it.
You know, it's incredible people, incredibly supportive.
- Well, what do you know now that you wish you had known when you were first starting out as an entrepreneur?
- Yeah, not every idea is a great idea.
(chuckles) Like I said, that's where it comes in.
You know, having multiple people and having, and that's one thing, is having people that aren't afraid to tell you no, even if you're the one in charge or the boss it's, you want people that, who aren't gonna hold you accountable.
But also like we've got some people here that I'll say something like, nah, it's too much, you know.
And so it's good.
You know, I need that 'cause you know you start getting, start chasing too many things.
Like it happens at times, we're like, oh we need to do this and this and this.
And then you're like, why don't we just do something, one thing really well?
And then that's what we're trying to like before we were trying to branch out too much.
We're like, hey, let's simplify it and let's do that really well and it kind of takes off from there and it's been really good.
- You know, maybe we've got some viewers that are home watching you, they're inspired by you and they maybe they've got a hobby or a passion.
And they're thinking about turning it into a business but they're really not just ready yet.
What would you say to them?
- If you think it's gonna work, let's go for it and you obviously, you wanna love what you do.
Like, I wake up and I love what I do.
I get to work out for a living, but there's gonna be days when you don't wanna do those things.
Like there's days where I'm like, man, I would like to work out 'cause it's fun not because (chuckles) I have to.
And so, you know, just make sure you're ready for that.
You know, like you can run your, I guess your prosperity but you can also run your demise, you know?
So just make sure you know what you're doing before you step into it and like I said, team, team is the biggest thing for me, like I said.
I've come back to it multiple times, accountability and then people that are better than you but you know, you'll need some help.
- Well, we talk on the show a lot about the pandemic clearly COVID-19 has affected gyms and-- - Yeah other fitness centers.
- Probably one of the first things that was affected by it.
- Yeah for sure.
- What is your experience been like through this?
- Yeah, for us luckily, you know, we were kind of got out in front of it.
We knew something was gonna happen with closing gyms.
We changed all of our programming to include either a dumbbell or a plate.
We took everybody's membership down to what we call it an online membership.
So, almost in half for most of them and then we did a zoom class every morning and every night, those were recorded so they could watch them at any point.
And we did that for the three, maybe four weeks whatever it was when the actual gym locations were closed.
That was huge, we didn't really lose any physical members or if we did, they said, hey, we'll come back as soon as it's back, I should have time.
I can't do it at the house, whatever.
We had a lot of people once we decrease the membership, they're like, oh, okay, so I'll come back.
Well, the deal was as if you didn't bring that piece of equipment back, you were charged for that piece of equipment.
So you'll just checking it out.
For the online programming, what we did was we made what we call M30.
So it's all at home body weight workouts free for a month.
And so we would do a YouTube live stream every day usually in the afternoon.
And that jumped our online programming.
We lost all that income for a month or two but when it closed and people stayed on and saw the benefit of doing it, it basically doubled that.
- Well, clearly you're innovating through all this.
Last question I have for you is moving forward.
What's the future look like for your enterprise?
- Yeah, I think for us keep doing the things that we do.
Like I said, concentrate on those things.
Maybe try to narrow down our scope in each of the areas that we're doing and just try to do those things really well.
You know, like faith, our faith is a huge part of why we do what we do.
Our family is why we do it.
Fitness obviously, we're at a fitness location and service you know, that's big to us.
We wanna, through our faith we serve and so that's a, that's a huge part of why.
- Well, Rich, Fittest Man in the World, super entrepreneur, thank you so much for being on the show.
- Yes, it's been awesome.
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
(upbeat music) - Urgent Care, Family Practice, Women's Center, pharmacy and more, all of these services are under one roof at Infinity Family Medical Center.
I spoke to Dr. Michael Casal and his wife Gladys, the founders of Infinity, right here in Cookeville about their entrepreneurial journey, the business of the medical field and the opportunities that their practice is providing to Cookeville.
(gentle music) Dr. Casal thank you so much for being on the show.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your practice.
- I'm an OB-GYN I'm board certified in the field of OB obstetrics and gynecology and I have been here in this town for about last 20 years and I own the Infinity building and I'm the CEO of Women's Health Services.
I'm also the owner of Infinity Family Practice.
I'm a co-owner with my wife with the Infinity Daycare Services.
And so I love this community, I love serving this community and I've been here for the last 25 something years.
- Now, you started out I believe in California worked in Las Vegas.
How did you make the transition from there to the Upper Cumberland?
- So we immigrated from the Philippines and lived in California for most of my high school and college years.
I went to school in UC Davis, The School of Medicine, did my training in White Memorial Medical Center which is an affiliate of Loma Linda hospital.
When I finished my Residency Program.
I didn't really know how to, you know set up a business in medical practice.
I was just learning, I was just trying to go and make some money and pay my debts.
And I was in a practice for about two years in Las Vegas.
And I was in a group of 20 people.
I loved my colleagues in there, but you know in the process of gaining some experience and delivering some babies, I knew that something was missing and I felt that they needed a little bit more connection with my patients 'cause I would deliver 20 babies in a day and I did not know any of my patients.
So I felt like I needed a more close relationships with my patients and so I decided that I needed to look for more of a smaller group practice or even a solo practice and one of my partners, God, rest his soul, Dr. Terry had recruited me.
He was working in Livingstone and he needed a partner to work here in Cookeville and so the rest is history.
- So we talk a lot about entrepreneurship on the show you know, clearly you're a medical doctor.
Did you get any training or how did you become an entrepreneur?
- I really feel that being an entrepreneur is something that you're born with.
I'm not really sure that it's something that someone can teach you.
I think that if you are someone that is driven, someone that is willing to learn, not only from the people that you know but you seek that knowledge from other people that have done it before.
I think then that reinforces your desire to say, hey you know, this is something that I think I can do or in some people they say, you know that's just too much risk for me.
And I would rather just be an employee and I just felt that over time I've really had some good mentors.
Some people that I really trusted their advice and I felt that that really was something that was consistent with my personality and I felt that this was something that I wanted to do for my family.
- So, how do you balance the daily tasks and requirements of being a medical doctor and an entrepreneur?
- It almost goes hand in hand.
I mean, if I don't provide a good service for my patients as a clinician, then all of this will fall apart.
Okay, I mean, you can build the building.
You can have the LLC companies and you can have all these people working for you.
But if I don't do a good job, if the people that are that I hire whether it'd be my midwives, my nurse practitioners my physicians that I hire don't do a good job then it will not work out.
And so I think it's important that it starts off with having a good business plan but then you also have to make sure that your patients are the number one priority.
And if you provide a good service, you got good outcomes and you have a good relationship with your patients.
I think that builds the business.
- So you've been here for 20 years clearly you've got a successful practice, then the pandemic comes along.
How has that affected you and how did you innovate through it?
- Well, you know, for one, I have my businesses here in Tennessee but I'm also heavily involved in a very large practice in Nevada.
Actually I have medical clinics in Reno.
I have medical clinics in Las Vegas and this is something that I run through with my brothers.
One of my brothers is the CEO of the company and this Health Care Group.
And then my other brother is the Chief Financial Officer and I'm the Chief Medical Officer.
And what we have found was that we were providing a service that was lacking in the community.
There was gaps of services that was not taking care of the people that were probably the one that needed the medical services the most and which is the behavioral health population and the homeless people.
And so what we've developed is a service which was more of a holistic approach to the entire individual whereby not only do we provide the medical services, we provide the psychiatric services for people that are very at risk, we provide the drug addiction, counseling rehab services.
But most importantly, we took our patients from being in the streets and surviving and having a hustle out in the streets and providing them housing and providing them transportation.
Because if I can take care of those two needs, their housing and their transportation then I can start worrying about their diabetes.
I can start worrying about their drug addiction.
I can start worrying about their hypertension and all these medical conditions step only increase the emergency healthcare costs because they're just going to the emergency room whenever they can.
Like now here in Tennessee, we've actually seen a boom with deliveries.
And the reason is when people are quarantined, you know, you would expect that probably nine months later we're going to go and have an increase in babies being born.
So, what we've seen now is that since March, February of last year, we've consistently seen an increase in the amount of psychiatric patients.
- Well, Dr. Casal, thank you so much for your time on the show.
Now you've mentioned Gladys, your wife who's also your business partner.
We'll go talk to her about the day-to-day operations at Infinity.
(gentle music) So Gladys, you're the owner of the Infinity Medical Building here in Cookeville Tennessee, there's a lot of services here.
Tell us, what is this business and what do you all provide?
- First and foremost, on the first floor we have the pharmacy, Infinity Pharmacy and we also have a Hearing Center.
We also have Infinity Urgent Care and Infinity Family Practice.
On the second floor, we have LabCorp where a lot of people come and get their blood drawn, the drug testing for new jobs and things like that.
And then we have my husband's practice which is Women's Health Services and then on the third floor we have Avalon which is a hospice care.
- So when you all started this, you know, did you start with one, was the goal to kind of be at the jack of all trades or how did this happen?
- We moved here more than 20 years ago, and my husband started his own practice Women's Health Services.
And we thought we would, instead of renting our space, we thought we would own our space.
Of course, our goal was to build this building and rent it out to other medical facilities.
- Why did you come to the Upper Cumberland of all the places you could have been?
- Well, actually, I'm really glad that we made that decision to move out here.
He had a friend of his that already lived here and recommended that we come out here and we look at the area and see what we can do.
'Cause here, you know private practices were still very strong, so we liked it and we moved here and I'm so glad we did, I love raising my kids here.
I wouldn't have wanted to raise my kids anywhere else.
- So on the show, we talk about the pandemic quite a bit.
You know, obviously it's affected businesses it's affected families but you're in a very unique position as a healthcare provider.
Tell us a little bit about how COVID has affected you all as a business - Our medical businesses can't shut down.
So we still, we remained open during the quarantine.
Babies are still gonna be born and they still need to be seen and followed during their pregnancy.
People are still gonna get sick.
It did affect us in some way where a lot of the elective things that we could not do well checks, well baby visits and things like that.
We couldn't do for a while during the quarantine, but we had to stay open.
We do have COVID patients that come and test at the Urgent Care but we, you know, we have to take extra precautions to protect our employees and our patients.
We still had to stay open through the quarantine, which was, you know, it was a blessing also to still be able to provide our services.
We did have a reduction of course, in the patients that were coming in.
So yeah, I'm sure like with any other business it has impacted us financially.
Luckily we were still able to continue our business and stay open (gentle music) (upbeat music) - I'm Mandy Eller with the Upper Cumberland Development District and you might wonder what the Upper Cumberland Development District does.
Basically, we look out for the health and vitality for all businesses and citizens in our community.
I am specifically in the Planning and Community Development Department and so as part of the CARES Act, we are working on economic recovery specifically in tourism.
And what we're doing in that is working on marketing strategies and so what we've kind of come up with is assessing through our regional and state partners, where there might be some gaps.
And seeing as I come from a Chamber of Commerce, I really wanted to flesh out some day trips.
I know that that's something that our communities could really benefit from and so there's curated day trips by interest by season.
And so we're developing those with story maps.
So we're putting them into a digital format that can then be shared on websites across the region.
On these story maps, there is an actual GIS map thanks to Chuck Sutherland at UCDD.
He integrated this map so that people can actually follow along with the itinerary on their phones and actually visit the places.
So they can visit the businesses, really our end goal with this whole project is to drive revenue to those small businesses.
These story maps are going to live on chamber websites, city, and county websites and we're doing this across the region.
And so we've already, we piloted with a couple of counties, Jackson County and white County and we've developed these based on interest.
So there's an artisan one in Sparta.
So you have Calfkiller beer, you have fragrant mushrooms.
So, what we're trying to find is how each community feels and what creates that feel is the entrepreneurs, the small businesses in those communities.
I'm also happy to announce that leadership at UCDD and WCTE, saw this as a perfect opportunity to collaborate.
And so we're taking this story map idea and day trip ideas and pushing those out through all the existing channels of WCTE and if you didn't know, WCTE has a 1.3 million person reach throughout central Tennessee.
And part of that is in Nashville and Murfreesboro market which are prime target markets for this region.
And with you being a small business owner, you should know you always have a resource in the Business Resource Collective and that is made up of The Biz Foundry, WCTE, UCDD, and TTU.
So you can always depend on them to send you to the right place for the information you need.
Being an economic development, our end goal with this is to drive revenue to those small businesses to support the businesses that we already have and then also to entice investment from outside this region.
So the end result we want to see from this project is your businesses thriving, our entire region thriving through not only this pandemic, but much further beyond.
So know that you have an entire support system here for you in the Business Resource Collective.
Please visit that website for the information that you need.
(upbeat music) - Thanks for tuning in to It's Your Business.
For more information on today's topics, Small Business Resources and extended interviews, please visit the WCTE website.
Until next time, I'm Michael Aikens.
(upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Man] It's Your Business with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE PBS.
And The Center for Rural Innovation with funding provided by The Economic Development Administration through the coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Stability Act.
This series was produced under an agreement with Tennessee Tech University Center for Rural Innovation through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Stability Act.
(upbeat music) - [Woman] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.