We recently connected with Beret Loncar and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Beret, thanks for joining us today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

Before I owned my massage practice, I was co-owner of a cheese store in Ontario, Canada. Being part of that is the only reason I can run my company today. I am disabled. At the time, I thought that I was dyslexic, but I now know that I am additionally Autistic (ASD). As a child, I struggled in school, not just with spelling and math but with understanding the meaning behind things. I was also very gifted in some areas as well. In some ways, it was very difficult to be in gifted classes in one area and deficient in others. I would also go through these giant leaps of understanding, where I would figure out how things worked together, and then it would suddenly click, and I would be advanced. I did not, for example, read until much later than expected, but once I figured out how it all worked together, I started reading at an advanced level. It was challenging for my teachers to understand.

Throughout my education, I was told to avoid technically minded things. It was suggested I stick to the arts and creating things since it was one of the areas I was gifted in. I was not in love with the arts, though. For years post-college I worked a series of jobs I hated, trying to pay the bills.

Then I met a long-term boyfriend, and he wanted to open a cheese store. It started out as his project, but early on in the beginning, it became apparent he needed help. I started working on the more artistic elements of the project, from designing the space to marketing. I stayed away from the business side because I had always been told I would be ill-suited to business and numbers. About a year into the project, I started to get nervous about our accounting…as there was none. We had this huge drawer of receipts that kept me up at night when I thought about them. We had no idea what we were selling or how much we were making. One day I started to go through it all, sorting them out by month and type of expenses. I was stunned to find out we had purchased 30k in cheese one month…30k was a lot of money!

From then on, I started doing the business side and loved it. I loved bringing something messy into order and ticking tasks off my list. I loved the numbers. I had avoided something my whole life based on what other people had said, and it just was not true. If my boyfriend had been better at organizing, I would have never found out that business was what I was good at! It shows that you don’t know what you’re good at until you try. I now have my own business with 16 employees.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After years of working in Ontario, Canada as a massage therapist, I returned home to New York. At the time, I did not realize that my massage training had been very different from what is taught in NY. There were not a lot of employment options for me in the big apple, which I found challenging. I originally opened my company as I was not doing the kind of work I was interested in doing and had been trained to do. There were not a lot of medical massage establishments at the time here, and I really did not want to work in a spa, so I opened Body Mechanics Orthopedic Massage so that I could attract the kind of people and medical issues that I was familiar with working with. We now provide- TMD intra-oral massage, post-mastectomy massage, lymphatic drainage, medical massage and massage for sports injuries. Although originally, my company served as a job for me, what it turned into is a place for therapists to come and learn to do the kind of things that I do. Many of the programs that we advertise are actually what staff wanted to work with. We are a W2 employer but we very much operate as a collective, putting our employees first and letting them take part in the company decisions when possible. It has become very much about providing a career not a job. Every day we help our patients and our staff get where they need to go, and that is very fulfilling.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

In running my business, having compassion and patience have become important characteristics for success. Moving forward is not always a linear path. I am extremely goal oriented but if you focus too much on short-term goals, my experience has been it is actually harder to succeed. It cannot be about making money but has to be about doing the right thing, and that often means you are doing a little dance rather than just moving toward profitability. We try very hard to keep our eyes on the long-term prize, which means putting our values first.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Simply being a woman in business in NY is challenging. Being in NY carries a lot of extra things that many business owners do not have to manage in other areas. I almost did not open at all as I went to a free advising session provided by NY state as part of their SCORE office. The gentleman that was assigned to my booking not only did not know how to answer my questions about building code, he told me flat out, ” Being in business in New York is hard. Why don’t you open in New Jersey or just go work for a doctor like all the other massage therapists.”. I left that office with angry tears. This kind of systemic misogyny keeps women from reaching their full potential. Sometimes it is really clear it is happening, and sometimes it is a slow, invisible drip. It makes being open in places like New York City, where the bar is harder, much more difficult. Fortunately, I find being told no makes me much more stubborn, so it worked out in my favor. We are a women-owned company, we have a female management staff and I employ a lot of women.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bodymechanicsnyc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bodymechanicsnyc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BodyMechanicsNYC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beret-loncar-37196866/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Bodymechanicsnyc-massage
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/body-mechanics-orthopedic-massage-new-york-4

Image Credits
Photo credits Adam Ninyo and also https://www.sdf-media.com/ (you can ask me which ones are which if you like