(gentle upbeat music) - [Announcer] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- [Announcer] "It's Your Business" with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE PBS and the Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation, with funding provided by the Rural Reimagined Grand Challenge and the Tennessee Rural Development Fund.

- Welcome to an all-new season of "It's Your Business."

For those of you thinking about starting a new business or those trying to make a new business thrive, this series is for you.

We'll talk to entrepreneurs from around the Upper Cumberland and learn valuable tips and advice from their successes and failures as business owners.

So let's get started.

And you may find that owning your own business isn't as intimidating as it seems.

(upbeat music) Getting a haircut is not always at the top of the fun things to-do list for children, but it's necessary.

Kim Hale, owner of Youngins' Salon in Crossville, saw how troubling it can be for some children to get a haircut and decided to create a kid-friendly place where a child can still have fun even while getting their hair cut.

(bright music) We're here in Crossville, Tennessee talking with Kim Hale, owner of Youngins' Salon.

Kim, welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

- So let's start out with the basics.

Youngins' Salon, what is it all about?

- It is a salon for children with special needs or who just struggle with a haircut.

They may be afraid of a haircut.

They may just not wanna sit still.

But this salon is something that they can come in.

They can be themselves.

They're never gonna be expected to sit still or be the perfect little client.

- [Michael] So they can really just be the kids that they are.

- They can.

- So this sounds like a very niche service.

How did you come up with the idea for the Youngins' Salon?

- I had a coworker who was taking his friend's kids to the barber, and he came to work and told me about this horrible experience that he had just had with these two boys.

And one of them is autistic, and it absolutely broke my heart.

And I've done hair for 25 years, and I was not doing hair.

And I thought, "You know what?

Why not?

Why can't I create some place for these kids to go that they don't have to struggle anymore?

It doesn't have to be a bad experience.

It can be fun."

And so I went home, and I told my husband.

I said, "We're gonna open a kids' hair salon."

And he said, "Okay."

(laughs) So here we are.

- So here you are.

Well, first of all, congratulations.

- Thank you.

- Now, you opened back in June of 2024.

- Yes.

- Tell us a little bit about those few months that you've been open to, at the time of shooting, you know, we're almost in September.

What has your experience been like?

- It's been incredible.

It's been stressful.

The unknown is quite scary, but the outpour from the community has just been incredible.

The support has been amazing, and these kids love it.

You know, in theory it would work, but would it really?

And the kids come in, and just within a few minutes, you can just see how their little shoulders relax, and they're running around, and they're playing, and it's done.

Before you know it, it's done.

- And I can't help but imagine that that is also reducing the stress on the parents too.

- Absolutely, yep.

- So just talking to you, you're a very calming person.

I can already tell, but you know, when you've got a special needs person or maybe just a child that, you know, is just afraid of a haircut or whatever, you know, what are some of the techniques that you're employing to really put them at ease?

- Well, the atmosphere in here is the biggest thing.

I don't want anything that's bright and overstimulating.

I've got covers on all the lights.

It's always low lighting in here, getting them familiar with the scent.

It's always gonna be the same in here.

I'm never gonna be intimidating to the kids.

I'm gonna let 'em walk in, and I'm gonna let 'em explore.

And they can't hurt anything in here.

Everything's open to 'em.

And once I see their little shoulders relax, then I speak to 'em.

Then we get started.

If not, we play.

- So it's not just an in and out.

It's not just a haircut.

It's really a whole experience here.

- It is.

If the kid has had a bad experience or is overly fearful of a haircut, then they can come in, and they can just play for the first time.

And I have a book that I've put together, and it's, this is where I'm gonna be going.

This is who I'm gonna meet.

This is what she may be using.

And this is what I'm gonna get to do when I'm done.

And we ride the ponies, or we spin on the spinny chair.

We have snacks, and it's just a fun experience.

- [Michael] Now where do you think your internal compassion for this really comes from?

- These children are just little humans, and they deserve it.

They don't deserve to be rushed through.

They don't deserve to have unrealistic expectations of how they're supposed to act in a hair salon.

And Youngins' is, even the spelling, it belongs to them.

It's The Youngins' Salon.

They come in, and they own it.

It's done on their time.

They make the shots.

If they want a break, we take a break.

The kids are just important.

They're our future.

- [Michael] Indeed they are.

- They are.

- So let's talk a little bit more about the actual business itself.

- Okay.

- So you mentioned earlier it's stressful, and I think that's one common thing in five years of doing this show talking to entrepreneurs.

It is stressful.

How do you deal with that?

- I have a huge support system, my family, friends.

You know, they'll call me.

"Hey, do you have anybody in here?"

Bring me a cup of coffee, just sit down, and just chill out with me for a little bit.

And it's nice because I do appointments, and I can do that, and that's amazing.

And then I go home, and we have animals, and that's my sanctuary.

That's my happy place.

- So obviously one important thing about a business is having customers.

Clearly you do.

How are you getting the word out?

- It's been mostly Facebook and word of mouth.

Word of mouth works so much faster than social media, and it's just been incredible.

I mean, I go to the store, and they're like, "Hey, don't you do hair?"

Yes, I do.

(laughs) So they've already seen it, or they've already heard.

And I don't have a website and don't really have a need for one.

Facebook has been the biggest thing for me, which is ironic, because I've never had Facebook ever.

- Right.

Well, welcome to owning a business, I guess.

- Thank you.

(laughs) - So clearly you know how to cut hair.

You've been doing it for about 25 years, but cutting hair is one thing.

Owning a business is a whole other thing.

- Yes, sir.

- What preparation or training or education or whatever it may be, what has prepared you to take the leap from having cut hair in the past to now owning a business?

- I have to give all the credit to Biz Foundry.

They were absolutely incredible from day one.

Tiffany did my intake, and she was so encouraging and just the sweetest soul that you could ever meet.

And immediately they got me signed up in a class, and they walk you through every step of the business, from the business plan to the marketing to the social media.

And then, you know, they send you out to whoever you may need, whether it be tech, and they help you with social media, which I did.

And it's just been absolutely incredible.

And then they send you on to the Small Business Development Center if needed, and it's just been absolutely incredible.

I have to give them all the credit.

- Thinking about owning a business, you know, you're here in Crossville, Tennessee in a beautiful rural area.

- [Kim] Yeah.

- [Michael] Seems to me like you could probably go to a more urban area like Knoxville or Chattanooga or Nashville and maybe have a little bit more clientele.

But you've decided you're right here in Crossville and staying here.

Why is that?

- I was born and raised here, and I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and six years ago, we moved back.

It's been absolutely incredible to be back with friends and family.

And it's enabled my kids to find who they really were.

You know, they went from playing sports to now they're, you know, riding horses, and you know, we do the rodeos, and it's just been amazing.

I love being back with family.

- In thinking also about owning a business, a lot of people may be watching this show thinking, you know, "Maybe I could do this.

Maybe I couldn't."

They just really haven't crossed that fence for whatever reason.

What advice would you give to someone that's either thinking about owning a business or has just started one?

What would you tell them?

- Stop underestimating yourself.

That's the biggest thing, and it's a crutch for so many people.

It was a crutch for me.

I've been wanting to do kids' hair since 10, 15 years ago, and I thought, "There's no way I can do that.

There's just no way."

And you know, this time all it took was, this is what I'm gonna do.

It's too important not to.

So just stop underestimating yourself.

- Well, in the same light, thinking back to June, it's been a few months now, what do you know right now that you wish you knew when you were first starting in June?

- It's gonna be slower than you think, (laughs) preparing for the slow times.

And Jeff Brown at Biz Foundry has some of the best advice I've heard yet.

And one of the things I remember him saying is, I think there's even a book, "Your friends and family are gonna tell you things just because they love you."

And I kept hearing, "Kim, you're gonna be slammed, about to be strapped to a rocket ship.

It's gonna take off."

Well, it did for a little bit, but then we've got school starting, and we've got the fair going on, and we've got slow times.

And that's gonna happen, and you just have to prepare yourself for it.

- So you prepare yourself for it, okay.

In actuality, what are you doing to manage through those slow times?

- A lot of prayer, a lot of outreach on Facebook.

The community really wants this for the kids.

They do.

And you know, just getting them to share it with their friends and their family and, you know, their coworkers 'cause everybody knows a kid that's afraid of a haircut.

Everybody does.

- So, Kim, last question for you.

Where is the future of Youngins' Salon?

- If it were up to my husband, we would expand, and it would turn into a franchise.

But my hope is that I can pass it down to my daughter.

She is here with me a lot, and she absolutely loves it.

She loves the kids.

She has the passion that I have, and I hope that I can grow enough to need to hire somebody else.

But you know, in the end, I hope that she can carry this on because it's just important.

- Well, what an amazing story, what an amazing place.

Kim, thank you so much for being on the show.

- Thank you for having me.

(bright music) - It seems like technologies are advancing faster and faster every day, and one thing these technologies have in common is the need for power.

But what you may not know is how critical the quality of that power can be for not only advanced technologies but also for your own home.

Cardinal Power is a company dedicated to helping improve the power quality of not only big corporations but for personal residences as well.

(upbeat music) We're here in beautiful Byrdstown talking with Cody and Mark Shirah, owners of Cardinal Power.

Cody, Mark, welcome to the show.

- Hey, thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- So let's start out with the basics.

Cardinal Power, tell me about it.

What do you all do?

- We are a power quality engineering firm.

What makes us unique is Mark and I are two of 181 certified power quality experts in the world.

We get into a lot of the harder-to-find issues that a lot of engineering firms, number one, don't know how to investigate, number two, don't have the knowledge base or the resources.

We not only identify the issues, but we also provide the solution and the equipment to fix any issues.

Any type of event, any type of load coming on, any type of utility event, will leave a unique thumbprint on the sine wave.

We look at that thumbprint, and we tell you exactly what's going on and how to fix it.

- What are some of the types of customers that you all work with, and what are the problems that they're having that you all solve?

I understand we talked about sinusoidal waves and all of that, but break it down for the lay person.

Who are you working with, and why would they come to you all?

- Yeah, we've worked with some of the largest customers in the world, you know, your Lockheed Martin, your Northrop Grumman, Disney.

These guys, essentially, they'll have very sensitive equipment.

Any type of ripple on that sine wave, any type of distortion, will cause their lines, their drives, their logic controls to trip off.

And as I'm sure you know, time off is costing them money.

In some cases like data sites, you know, a couple seconds could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So that's when we go in, and we identify the specific issue.

The utility has hundreds of events a day, each caused by different types of equipment.

Well, which equipment is causing that specific issue that's causing your specific problem?

We go in there and essentially install some type of equipment to mitigate that.

- You know, a lot of people have asked me before, "Well, what can a half cycle event like a capacitor ring do to my equipment?

It's half cycle.

It's quicker than the blink of an eye."

That can actually cause high DC bus overvoltage across your variable frequency drives, and that's something we can depict by installing our analyzers.

We can install a power factor.

You know, what the power factor is, that's the efficiency of the power, and if you're paying a power factor penalty, we can come in and resolve that issue for you and usually save you a lot of money.

- One thing that you might be more familiar with is I'm sure you've been at home sometimes during storms, and you see a one-second blip, you know, power comes on and off.

- That happened the other day at Tech.

- Yeah, those are actually either breaker or recloser operations on the electric utility systems.

A lot of people don't know that it actually causes distortion.

It's in reaction to a fault seen on their system.

That fault sends a transient, you know, on the line and can be seen throughout your equipment inside your house, your facility, your business, causing damages.

- To most customers, it's a nuisance as far as from a residential standpoint.

To a customer like a large industrial or commercial customer, that's an outage.

It doesn't matter if it's a blank.

That equipment's gonna shut down.

And a lot of time you're gonna lose product, especially blow mold companies, bakeries.

And most of the time there's a very simple solution for that that we can help with.

- Now, so you're working with some of the largest companies in the world.

You're saving 'em hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tell me a little bit about the nature of the work, so not necessarily from the technical standpoint, but, you know, you get Company X that calls you up.

Are we talking they're in crisis mode right now, and they've gotta get your services?

Or is this something that they more work with you all to plan out?

Walk me through that.

- There's two ways that we approach it.

Number one is a proactive approach.

You know, what can we go in there to prevent, your energy savings, your energy efficiency, prevent downtime, get to those issues before they cause failure.

You know, it could be as small as a $100 fix to up to a $1 million fix.

It all depends on what we find.

For example, we just did a research hospital in Boston where the customer was losing PET CT scanning equipment.

They ended up losing around $900,000 worth of equipment in a two-year span.

There were several other engineering firms that went in there to try to find the issue, saying, "Hey, you need this $2 million piece of correctional equipment."

It ended up being a $10,000 grounding mistake.

We went in there, and you know, fixed the issue, and the customer was happy.

- Michael, I've had almost 10,000 power quality studies throughout my career, and to this day I haven't had one that we could not resolve.

- Y'all are doing such highly technical work.

I almost can't even wrap my mind around it.

But what's even more amazing to me, look at where we're at.

You all are doing business here in rural Byrdstown.

We've got ducks quacking in the background, people working on their yard.

It's beautiful and peaceful up here.

How are y'all doing that from here?

- So, our background, we came from electric utilities, from the engineering department in electric utilities.

We were both in Central Florida.

I was near central Orlando.

It got way too busy for us down there.

We had the opportunity to start our own business, and you know, we do travel a lot.

Currently right now we primarily do North America, Central America, some in the Caribbean.

We want to eventually go international, but we fly wherever we need to.

You know, it's peaceful here.

We love the atmosphere.

We love the peaceful lifestyle.

- The reason we're in Byrdstown, everybody says, "Why do you want to go to Byrdstown, Tennessee?

There's nothing there."

That's exactly why we wanted to go to Byrdstown, Tennessee.

It's the perfect scenario.

I've been trying to write a book for a long time.

I get up here in Byrdstown.

It's so peaceful.

I come outside to the picnic table or in my office upstairs.

In just a short period of time, I had finished my first book in power quality.

But it's so peaceful up here, I can write and write.

And my mom was originally born up here, just down the road a little ways.

And ever since I was a kid, I wanted to move to Byrdstown.

I love Dale Hollow Lake.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

Cody's house, actually on the same property here, actually looks over the lake.

So we love it up here.

We enjoy the ducks in the background.

We have a small pond on the property.

And my wife, Debbie, this is our 40th wedding anniversary year.

So she loves ducks, and we're just having a blast up here and helping a lot of customers.

And luckily with the internet and the way things are with the technology, we can work remotely.

And if we need to go to a customer location, we do that a lot.

We jump on a plane, and we go there.

We do our walkthroughs, and everything works out well.

- And then you're back to paradise when you're done.

- Absolutely, yes, sir.

- [Michael] So you all have backgrounds in electricity, working with utilities, all of that nature, but now you're also owning a business in addition to all this engineering things that you're doing.

What has that transition been like?

What were some of the barriers, and how did you overcome those?

- It's been very different.

There's more work put into the back end than what we initially thought, but it's not as hard as most people would thought.

I would say anyone looking to open up their own business, give it a shot.

As long as you have the will and determination to make it happen, you're willing to put in the hours, go for it.

There was an upfront investment, wasn't as much as we thought, but you know, ultimately it was the right choice, and we're glad we did it.

We'd do it a thousand times over.

The one piece of advice is if you are getting in business with partners, to keep an eye, make sure everything's kosher and- - Be very careful.

- Be very careful with who you go in business with.

- You know, we've talked about customers a couple times.

Sounds to me like, at least when you started out, there was a lot of word of mouth.

I think there's also a lot to be said about you all's reputation.

- Yes, sir.

- Moving forward, how do you find new customers?

How do you onboard them?

- Currently right now we have a marketing scheme.

You know, we are online.

We do have a website, cardinalpq.com.

We do a lot of email advertisement, newsletters.

We have blogs, training videos.

Yeah, a lot of it is word of mouth, you know, who do you know in the industry.

And thankfully we have, Mark 35, almost 40 years of experience in who he knows in the power quality industry, large industrial customers, myself with, I think I'm at 16, 17 years experience in the industry.

You know, so thankfully we do have a lot of word of mouth, and our reputation and knowledge base speaks a lot, so.

- So going back a little bit to, you're here in Byrdstown.

You're rural area, loving it.

You talked a little bit to future business owners, people that are thinking about it.

Talk to the leadership of, whether that be Byrdstown, the Upper Cumberland, the state, and the nation.

What do leaders need to know about rural businesses like yourself?

- So, right now, I mentioned earlier how we're helping customers with grant opportunities and energy-efficiency initiatives.

One of the big grants we're working with right now is the USDA.

They have a energy-efficiency grant for rural applications, businesses with less than 1,000 employees in defined rural applications.

There's a huge, huge opportunity.

I would say get the word out about that.

You know, not only that application, that grant, but there's tons of other grant opportunities.

There's tons of stuff that a lot of customers don't know about.

- Thinking back to when it all started with Cardinal Power to right now, what do you all know now that you wish you knew going in?

- I wish I would've started my own business much sooner.

It wasn't as hard as I thought it was.

You know, we have the capabilities to do it much sooner and do it by ourselves and- - Right.

- You know, it's taken off.

I wish I would've done it a lot sooner.

- I love my work at the utility, but I believe starting our own business would've been much better earlier.

But anybody out there looking to start a business, you know, just, you gotta give it a try 'cause we're loving every minute of it.

And we love meeting new customers and solving issues and seeing 'em improve their bottom line and also making a living for ourselves as well.

- Well, Cody, Mark, thank you so much for being on the show.

- Hey, thanks for having us.

- Thank you for having us.

- Yes, sir.

- It's been a pleasure.

(upbeat music) (bright music) - Hi, I am Jodi Pitts, program manager for the Business Resource Collective, or BRC for short.

The BRC is a collaborative partnership between Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation, the Small Business Development Center, the Biz Foundry, and WCTE Central Tennessee PBS.

These entrepreneurial support organizations wanted to create a no-wrong-door approach for businesses to get the help and support they need for their business to grow and succeed.

Here's a little more information on how these agencies work together to help local businesses.

Each of these organizations have specific strengths and areas of specialization.

Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation has a team of interns who can help with creative projects like graphic design, product photography, or logo creation.

The Small Business Development Center is great at providing technical assistance, financial guidance, and helping businesses find the funding they need to start, grow, or expand.

The Biz Foundry is our local business incubator, and they are fantastic with startup businesses.

The Biz Foundry offers classes, social networking opportunities, and a coworking space at locations throughout the Upper Cumberland.

There is no shortage of help available for small businesses and entrepreneurs, but knowing where to go or who to ask for help can be confusing.

That's where the BRC comes in.

Through a quick business assessment call, we will discuss what problems your business is facing and which partners have the best resources to help you.

All the services of the BRC are at no cost to you as the business owner, and even better news, our partner resources are free too.

You can get access to counseling, professional development, and even student intern workers from Tennessee Tech University at absolutely no cost to you.

The Business Resource Collective is here to guide you and connect you to ensure success for your business.

The SBDC is excited to help you on your entrepreneurial journey.

Be sure to contact us, and we'll get you started today.

Visit brcollective.org for more information or to schedule a call.

I look forward to hearing from you.

- Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope that you've learned that entrepreneurship doesn't have to be a scary venture when you have the necessary resources for success at your fingertips.

If you'd like more information on today's topics, please visit the WCTE website.

To learn more about free small business resources and expert assistance, visit the Business Resource Collective website.

Until next time, I'm Michael Aikens.

(upbeat music) (bright chiming music) - [Announcer] "It's Your Business" with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE PBS and the Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation, with funding provided by the Rural Reimagined Grand Challenge and the Tennessee Rural Development Fund.

(bright music) - [Announcer] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.