Interview with Seth Fraz about starting his business Urban Brain & Body.
This is part four of the ten part series. Follow the Starting a Business as a Young Entrepreneur interview series and don’t miss an interview!
Interview Series Sponsored by Hiscox Small Business Insurance. Hiscox specializes in protecting IT/technology, marketing, consulting, health and beauty, photography and many other professional services businesses, tailoring coverage to the specific risks in your industry.
The word ‘lawsuit’ is scary enough to give any entrepreneur a panic attack. Although young entrepreneur Seth Franz was notified that he was being sued by a recently terminated employee, he didn’t have a panic attack or act irrationally. It was his “most difficult day of being an entrepreneur,” and came within a year of taking ownership of a family owned health and wellness center. Seth handled the situation by calmly researching his options and calling the Department of Health and Human Services. He carefully plotted out his next steps to protect himself, and was able to avoid what could have been a damaging loss for his business.
Q: What’s the best way you can protect your business?
A: “You have to have structure and a plan. You can have the best intentions, you can have passion, but unless you have that framework and unless you know how to handle different hurdles – you’re going to be in way over your head.”
Seth comes from a strong business background that helped him to see problems on the business side of his family’s clinic. Even while being business minded and entrepreneurial, he didn’t go into college knowing that he wanted to work for himself. “I’ve always been entrepreneurial, but I never wanted to pursue that right outside of college because I didn’t know how.” Instead of starting a business from day one, Seth got experience through working at a bank and then running a family owned clinic. At the clinic that his mother had previously operated, Seth was able to increase collections, put standards in place, create a procedural handbook, and improve the billing process from taking two days down to just two hours.
After finding his calling and strengthening his skill set through his family’s offices, Seth started Urban Brain & Body in Chicago.
Urban Brain & Body (UBB) provides services to health and wellness care providers through several business components. The three components of UBB include a wellness clinic, a holistic network, and a business strategy component, to help potential and established wellness businesses understand specific aspects of running a successful business. Among the three components, UBB has found a valuable niche with their holistic network, which places wellness providers in wealthy high-rise complexes and workplaces. The providers are able to gain new business through residents and employees within the building they are located in.
Seth gave four main keys to his success and growth:
- Networking: “Talk to any and everybody. Go to networking groups.” Seth has been able to make a significant impact on his business through aggressively networking, and has taught care providers to do the same. He shared a story about a therapist who opened up about what she did for a living at the bank, and gained a new customer out of the exchange.
- Passion: “Ask, are you still passionate about it?” Every time that Seth gets down or when time gets rough, Seth asks this question and the answer has always been yes.
- Tenacity: “You are going to hear ‘no’ a lot.” Seth has used his tenacity to quickly recover from disappointments and tough times.
- Constantly adapt: “Figure out reasons for no’s, change to adapt to serve the client.” “Make sure you can adapt to what your clients want.”
Even after having a successful first year of business, Seth has a lot he wants to accomplish, and not all of it is strictly business related. Asked what’s something in his career he would still like to accomplish but hasn’t yet, Seth said, “I would love to inspire others and let them know that being an entrepreneur is really easier than they think. It’s rewarding. It’s hard work, but it’s totally worth it. If I could inspire just a handful of people to go out there and start their own business and really enjoy it and really be passionate about it – I’ve done what I wanted to accomplish and what I wanted to do.”
Want to be inspired? Listen to the full interview! Complete audio is located below.
Interview Highlights
– The advantages and disadvantages of being a young entrepreneur.
– 2 major challenges as a young entrepreneur that he has faced:
– Focus: “Entrepreneurs have a thousand thoughts a day. Focus is hard to reign in. Possibilities are endless. You can get over your head even with the best intentions.”
– Everything he knew didn’t mean anything in the wellness world. The people who he is working with don’t understand certain aspects of business in the same way. Seth had get a better picture of how his clients viewed the business world.
– Details of Seth’s hardest day as an entrepreneur.
– Best piece of advice for people under 30: “Don’t be afraid to try something new.”
Listen to the full interview here:
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