We recently connected with Holly Ross and have shared our conversation below.

Holly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

There are many factors to being successful. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be sharing 4 key principles that I have found to be great qualities in being a business owner. First off, innovation is a key quality that I feel every entrepreneur should have to be successful. Whether inventing something new or reimaging access to a known service or product, owners must be able to innovate. I don’t mean simply to change something’s color or shape and call it new, but to think of truly unique and out-of-the-box ideas that could reshape a community or population. For the purposes of my business, I always look to innovate in ways that will benefit my local communities long-term. The second principle I feel is critical in business ownership is adaptability. Sometimes, small businesses fail, and this could be for many reasons, however I feel in my time as a small business owner, lack or adaptability or rigidity causes business failures. I always have to be ready to pivot, make quick but thoughtful decisions, and change my approach to a problem. I’ve done plenty of trial-and-error learning in regards to owning a business and sometimes if I get stuck on an idea, I could miss opportunities for growth. Third, having community partnerships is vital for growth in the general community. I’m sure you’re not planning on starting, running, and maintaining growth without support from the outside. Cultivating relationships with other small business in your area offers ways to get referrals for new clients, free marketing back and forth on social media, and potential partnerships with different projects. Lastly, collecting resources is HUGE! At least, in mine line of work, families are always looking for other businesses, community events, and items that they can attend with their disabled children. Now, other owners may do this differently, but I connect and sometimes help start up intakes with families who aren’t even my clients. Why would I do this for free? Well, people need help and resources, and if they require my services obviously that would be paid, but simply to refer or help set up with another company that offers a better fit for that family or client. I am happy to do that. Not only does collecting resources benefit families that work with or chat to me directly, but it continues to build community partnerships with other businesses. Also, while your sharing resources with your community partners, you’re also coming up with ways you can innovate together to help the people around you. And while doing all that you’re constantly pivoting to make things work more efficiently. These 4 principles could be easily integrated all at the same time throughout the day to help a business owner succeed.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Okay to start at the beginning, my name is Holly Ross. I am an entrepreneur, a licensed and practicing occupational therapist in CO and MI, water safety instructor, and licensed training provider with the American Red Cross. That’s definitely a mouthful but all my licenses and experience allow me to offer a unique and customizable experience for all my clients in the disabled community. My business CANOE®, offers occupational therapy services in the area of outpatient/community, aquatic therapy, learn to swim, home modification evaluations, and general education. While CANOE® is a for-profit business, I provide free educational resources to all through my blog, Instagram, and Facebook pages. I try my best to meet clients where they are at an provide a wholesome therapy experience that allows the person to grow and participate in their daily occupations in the ways that they see best works for them. I think what sets me apart from other providers is that I am relational and focus on providing the best quality of care I can for families and clients. In the healthcare community, there is a lot of education and telling people what to do, but often helping implement that education is dropped. I help families and clients do 1:1 training, offering online resources in-between visits, follow up with caseworkers for additional resources, writing letters for therapy equipment, advocacy, and much more. My quality of care is in my opinion what sets me apart from other providers. If I had to decide what I wanted fans or the community to know about me is that I truly want to help the disability community thrive as a whole. Although I need to put food on my table and pay my bills, I try to offer affordable services that can be accessed by many. And in my specialty of aquatics, if I can prevent as many as possible drowning incidents and hospitalizations in the disability community, well then, I’m there.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Oh, I love telling this story. So back in 2019 I was learning that the employment route was no longer for me. That was a not so fun lesson to learn at the time, but I am glad I switched to ownership. Before the inception of my business in February 2020, I saved extra paycheck money until I had about 3 months’ worth of my personal bills in case my business needed some time to become profitable. During that time, I also saved money for the start-up of my business-like paperwork fees, mailbox fees, etc. Once I had enough money saved, I put in my two weeks’ notice and then filed my LLC. At that time (February 2020) things in the world were coming that we weren’t ready for, obviously you all know I’m referring to the COVID pandemic. After I filed, I began accumulating clients to see and work with. Then, the world stopped in March for shutdown here in Colorado. Conveniently, I already had all that money put away. I guess God works in mysterious ways sometimes. I was able to survive with the money I saved while building my clients through shutdown, and then becoming profitable upon reopening of the world towards the end of 2020. At the time, I found this part of my journey stressful and overwhelming, but as I look back, this was a fortunate start to my business because many other small business owners failed so quickly, I am thankful that I was able to survive and flourish post pandemic.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

As far as building my social media, this took some time. I actually did some side work with an MLM for about a year. This was actually really helpful, because they taught me about social media algorithms, how to use hashtags, certain platforms, and many other tips. I also sought out webinars for how to build an efficient and well working website. Lastly, I found free apps to use to design better and create more quality posts and sharing on social media. I would say it took me about 8 months to be proficient with marketing, stories, posts, and reels on my social media. I am getting better everyday and you can definitely tell the quality difference from posts in the beginning of my business versus now. If I had any advice for building on social media, I would say be consistent. Sometimes it’s not about just sharing the highlight reel, sometimes it’s about sharing how stressed out you may be as an owner and showing people that you are not perfect, just human like everyone else.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.canoecommunity.org
• Instagram: @canoe.community
• Facebook: @Community Aquatics n’ Occupational Engagement
• Linkedin: Holly Ross

Image Credits
Image credits to Holly Ross, JR Calderon, and Omar Suarez.