We were lucky to catch up with Jennifer McCleary recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jennifer, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start on the operational side – do you spend more of your time/focus/energy on growing revenue or cutting costs?

In my experience, you are never going to save your way to success. While it is always important to make sure that you are being responsible with your money and being good stewards, the age-old adage of “you have to spend money to make money” has always proved to be true in my experience.

My main focus, in my companies, is to be “productive”. Not from a sense of getting tasks done, but in a financial sense of figuring out ways to bring in more revenue. My husband fills the CFO seat for our companies and he keeps track of using our money in the most efficient way possible.

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

I am a mom of 4, and I started my career life as an elementary art teacher. It was a great “job”, but I knew I wanted more. I wanted more flexibility, growth opportunity, and the opportunity to create my own path. I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset (even before I realized what that was) and when we were starting our family I knew it was now or never. I jumped into my first business ownership role as a nutrition coach paired iwth my husband’s personal training business. Shortly after that, we opened a gym, which then led to our event company, and then to where we are today. My husband and I have built an investment company out of our entrepreneurial endeavors and it is exactly where I want to be! Every day is different and there are lots of things going on constantly, but it gives me the perfect opportunity to be challenged, uses my creativity, and help people be the most successful versions of themselves!

We own 5 businesses.

*Bodies Race Company (Event production and management for endurance events in Kansas City and all over the country.)

*Horsepower Apparel & Awards (screen printing, apparel, and awards)

*The Lovett Coffeehouse & Eatery (exceptional coffee, food, and atmosphere in a 100-year-old farmhouse in the heart of Lone Jack, MO)

*The Schiller Suites (a special vacation experience in a historical German settlement town on the banks of the Missouri River in Hermann, MO)

*The Bank Bar & Bistro (re-opening soon, exceptional coffee, food, and cocktails in an 1800’s bank building in Hermann, MO)

*We also own a few rental properties as well.

All of our businesses deal with hospitality. Whether it’s creating an awesome event experience, an amazing dining experience, or a special vacation experience we are all about “The Experience”.

In any of our companies, we want people to remember how they were treated and how the experience made them feel. We love creating a community where anyone can feel welcome, that they belong, and that we care about them!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

There are many ways that we have secured funding for different periods of our businesses.

The initial funding of our very first business actually came out of cashing in my retirement that I had earned from my short teaching career! I was able to cash out $10,000 and that, put with what we were able to save is how we purchased our first batch of equipment to start our personal training business.

We’ve always scrapped together what we needed by selling, saving, and getting creative! When we opened our gym we bought what equipment we could afford and then kept looking for opportunities to upgrade and expand. Every time we found something we wanted to add or upgrade we would utilize financing (preferable zero interest) and buy the new equipment and then sell the old equipment or have a strategy on how the new equipment could help pay for itself over the term of the loan.

Throughout our history of businesses, we have used a variety of methods for expanding and/or buying new businesses. My husband is super crafty when it comes to finances. We’ve been able to utilize personal loans, bank loans, SBA loans, equipment financing, etc. We always had a plan on how the investment was going to help us earn more revenue. In business, debt can be a very slippery slope so just make sure that when you are taking out loans it is in an effort to take your business to a new level and not just to fill the gap in operational expenses.

The most important thing you can do as a small business is to have accurate, up-to-date bookkeeping/financial statements so you can prove your income/potential. That way when it is time to secure the capital you have something to show! I have the benefit of having a mom that is an accountant and spent the majority of her career working for banks, so she was able to let us know what lenders are typically looking for when we were applying for business loans. Our relationships in our community, and well-thought-out/researched business plans have always been crucial as well.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’m sure most people have a story about how they had to pivot due to the pandemic, and I am no different!

Our only business at the beginning of 2020 was Bodies Race Franchise. This was our endurance event company. We had 15 employees at our home office in Kansas City, 12 additional franchise locations across the country, and we were getting ready to launch 8 more locations in March of 2020.

Since the nature of our business was large group gatherings, we were basically shut down overnight. We had our last live events on Sat March 14th. Then on Monday, March 16th, we had to make the difficult decision to furlough 13 of our 15 employees. It was the worst day of my business-owner life.

We quickly had to figure out how to pivot in every aspect of our lives. My four school-age kids were now effectively homeschooling, we had live events scheduled out every weekend for the entire year, many with pre-sold tickets, franchisees that needed a plan and direction, and inventory to figure out how to utilize. On top of that, I was missing over 2/3 of my staff (including my finance director) and my two team members that were left needing to figure out how to effectively work remotely.

While it seemed like everyone around me was talking about how bored they were, I had never worked more in my entire life! During the day I was trying to balance keeping my children set up for virtual school, figuring out how to lead and encourage my team, all the while strategizing with my husband on how to pivot our business to still provide for us financially since it was both his and my only source of income for our family. Then my nights consisted of keeping all of our books and accounts up to date, making sure we able to survive how ever long this was going to take!

By acting quickly and dramatically we were able to stay afloat. We switched all of our live events to virtual events and we were blessed by a lot of support from our customer base.

Going through this dramatic shake-up made us really evaluate where we were as business owners. We looked at everything we were doing and identified what we felt was successful, what we enjoyed, and what we needed to change.

We decided that it was important for us to diversify our streams of revenue and simplify our processes so that we could be highly effective with limited amounts of employees.

Personally, we recognized that our true passions are building business and helping people. We looked at other business opportunities that would allow us to do both of those things! That is how we ended up with our investment company. Over the past two years, we have opened and/or acquired 3 additional businesses as well as rebranding and growing our screenprinting company (Lovett Coffeehouse & Eatery, Old Drum Coffeehouse, and Bank Bar & Bistro, as well as rebranding Horsepower Apparel & Awards). We have already transitioned Old Drum to one of our employees, which has been awesome!

We are now working to move into the coaching/consulting and investing space, helping small business owners build and scale their business and brand!

Contact Info:

• Website: bodiesracecompany.com, lovettlj.com, hermannlodging.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/lovettcoffeehouse/, instagram.com/bodiesracecompany/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BodiesRaceCo, https://www.facebook.com/LovettCoffeehouse

Image Credits
They are my photos