Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to ‘Erica Padilla. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, ‘Erica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
Business culture is my key focus. Building work environment that my staff loves to be at created retention, internal referrals of future employees and the happiness spilling onto our clients wanting to support a business that treats their employees great!
Systems and apps! creating systems and apps to facilitate the protocols to streamline our business allowed for fast growth!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am Erica Padilla, a small town girl from Prunedale, California turned Las Vegas local. I am a Latina business owner of two wellness spas, IMR Massage and IMR Float located in the Las Vegas area. My passion for holistic health & undeniable desire to create a leadership style that people want to be a part of has created an environment at IMR that I am grateful to be able to provide to our clients and most importantly my staff. At IMR Massage our mission statement is “Changing the way you think about massage” which is exactly what we as a collaborative team strive to implement every day one client at a time. We offer services such as but not limited to cupping therapy, sport massage, infrared saunas, signature facials and much more!
At IMR Float our mission statement is “Mind Body Awakening” joining our 3 counterparts into one. Practicing mindfulness in our sensory deprivation epsom salt tanks allows a unique connection with mind and body to unify into an elevated state. At our float center we offer float therapy, infrared saunas and contrast therapy which incorporates cold plunge & sauna into one session. We know wellness is not a one size fits all and our receptionists & practitioners are all committed to customizing your wellness routine to your lifestyle with a variety of modalities.
My motivation is to leave a footprint in our wellness community, change the dynamic of the work culture to be a place of peace while building a legacy for future girl bosses like my two daughters.
Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?
I recently just did this yesterday! I was co-owner of both brands, IMR Float & IMR Massage until yesterday where I bought out my business partner and now own 100%! The process started out bumpy with unclear expectations of how the process really goes, difference of opinions arose but as we got definitive on what each of our future goals were it became more clear how to navigate the buy-out. In my case my business owner lost passion of working in the industries we started. He loved the wellness community but not the business side of things. His goals was to venture off and explore the world while mine remained grounded in the businesses that I enjoyed running. Once our goals were clear we started the process. First step was to evaluate the business. We used certified appraiser first business and broker for the second business. honestly the evaluations were within 15k of each other, appraiser was a fee of $2500, broker free. We ended up agreeing to a number so that saved us 15% of the purchase cost fees. Once agreed #’s were met the rest was smooth, business lawyers drafted up what we wanted, put in protection for us both that we agreed to. Our CPA played a vital role to help us both agree to terms of buyout to save us both in taxes as well as organizing umbrella companies to put the transitions through. Filling with the state and IRS was handled by our lawyers & CPA. In summary define what each partner wants out of the deal to help reach the common ground, find a way to agree & compromise it will save LOTS of money to keep the buyout # favorable for both partners.
Any advice for managing a team?
Business culture is where I found much success in running a happy & successful business. Our reputation is IMR is the place you want to work! Our team truly loves coming to work because they are treated with kindness, their opinion matters many of our protocols, menu options & social media marketing is a collective of team input and passion. We spend time nurturing our team with frequent team building events with wellness partners at gyms, holistic wellness spas & meal preps. We take hikes and celebrate with annual tattoo parties! Our HR department focuses on building perks that the whole team would love like free massages/facials/saunas/floats each month, paid health insurance and now getting ready to launch 401k just cause we are a small company doesn’t mean we can’t offer the corporate perks without the corporate vibes, at IMR we are family and we all contribute to nurturing the common goal-serving our community through wellness!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.IMRmassage.com & www.IMRfloat.com
- Instagram: @IMRmassage @IMRfloat
- Facebook: @IMRmassage @IMRfloat
- Linkedin: IMR Massage
- Twitter: IMR Massage IMR Float
- Youtube: IMR Massage IMR Float
- Yelp: IMR Massage Eastern, IMR Massage Rainbow & IMR Float
- Other: linktr.ee/imrmassage linktr.ee/imrfloat
Image Credits
Empower Photos & Meo Baaklini