Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in health and wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Sarah Mickeler, Owner of Oona Wellness Group, located in Toronto, ON, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Oona is Canada's premier location for Fertility, Perinatal, and Pediatric Health, Wellness, and Education. We provide families with everything they need to not only get pregnant but also feel better while pregnant, have a better birth, recover postpartum, and help their little ones grow and meet their milestones. Our overall mission is to improve the landscape of fertility, pregnancy, birth, and pediatric care in Canada in our lifetime by providing exceptional, evidence-based treatments and support to all.

Tell us about yourself

I was a perinatal chiropractor for many years, working in a mostly solo practice. When I got pregnant with my son in 2014, it finally really hit home that navigating health services while pregnant was really tough for most people. I was lucky enough to know exactly who I should be seeing and when and also lucky enough to be able to get to those appointments. But it meant running all over the city for appointments, and that was exhausting and time-consuming. It just felt like it would make more sense to put everyone under one roof.

When my son was born, like many new parents, I felt very isolated and alone. We spend so much of our time preparing for the birth, but after that baby is born - that's when sh*t gets real. Hundreds of years ago, we used to do this in the community. If you were pregnant, you would be in a community of others who had been through it and could help you. During your birth, you would be surrounded by women who were experienced in birth and would help you through it. After you have your baby, you will be surrounded by others who will help you through that transition. They would show you how to breastfeed. They would teach you how to do it all. Basically, it was living in a community. We've lost that.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we move into communes together and breastfeed each other's children, but there is a lot to be learned from the past. We need one another. We can't rely only on Facebook and Instagram and Dr. Google for advice. (Protip: Dr. Google is not actually a doctor.) We need a community of experts who are there just for you to help you feel your best and thrive, and that's what we do at Oona. We are that trusted support and caregiver for our patients, helping them feel better, have better births, providing evidence-based advice where needed, and most importantly, we are bringing back the community. Knowing we do this very, very well is what motivates me to continue doing this work. We are changing lives. It's incredible.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

We've been around for just over five years now, and in that time, we've doubled our revenue almost every year. We added a second location within the first two years of business and are ready to franchise. We've experienced very rapid growth and have managed to keep up with it. I'm very proud of that. My biggest accomplishment, however, is in how we maintain our high standard of care. We have created systems and operations within the practices so that we are hiring the best of the best, training them to be even better, and maintaining standards of practice that makes us the gold standard for perinatal and pediatric health. I'm very, very proud of our high standards of care.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

There are so many things that are difficult about being a business owner, but I think that the one that is the hardest is being the one who holds all of the responsibility for everything, all of the time. There's a saying: only an entrepreneur would give up a 9-5 job for the "freedom" of working 24/7. Ha. It's true, though - especially through a pandemic, and now with a wildly fluctuating economy and workforce and hiring woes that all industries are facing, it's hard to be the one at the top. We're dealing with a wild worldwide staffing shortage (despite the fact that unemployment is at its lowest in decades!), and it means that those of us in charge are working twice as much as we used to and more than everyone else. That being said, I've been lucky to have hired incredible help over the years, and I now have a very, very solid management team that works together beautifully so that while, yes, the buck stops with me, I don't have to be responsible for everything, all of the time.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Hire a good attorney and a top-notch accountant before you get started. Know the legal and the financial ins and outs of your business before you open! This will save you so much headache in the long run. ESPECIALLY if you have employees, make sure you have an excellent employment lawyer. Most small business owners don't know that they need one, but they do. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things when you have staff, and your employment lawyer will make sure you're doing it the right way.
  2. Know your numbers. 50% of small businesses will fail in the first five years. It's a staggering number. If you are running a business and you are behind on your bookkeeping, or you have never read, and you don't understand your P&L or Cash Flow or Balance sheet, you're guaranteed to get into trouble. At the end of the day, if your business isn't profitable, you will not have a business. If you don't know your numbers (including all of the above and your profit margins), you will not know how to grow or maintain your business.
  3. Stay in your lane. It's exhausting and ridiculous to try to do everything yourself. Within my first year of running Oona, I scaled back my chiropractic practice because I was finding that I couldn't work IN the business and ON the business at the same time. I was terrified to do this because I thought the practice would implode. But revenues increased by 50% within three months of me taking a step back and actually leading, and increased a further 100% again when I hired my VP to help me grow the business. You can't know how to do everything. Identify those things that you're not good at, accept them, and hire someone to help you do those things so that your business can flourish. If you can't afford to hire help, take a million courses so that you can learn how to manage it all better. I'm particularly fond of the work that The Forum (https://www.theforum.ca/) does to help female entrepreneurs, and after being a mentee in their program, I'm now a mentor to others. It's a great program.

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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