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The Highland Dog

July 28, 2015 By Dave

By Lauren Roebuck

Creating a high-touch experience for clients and their people

Kelly Drescher, the owner of The Highland Dog says the best compliment she can hear from Screen Shot 2015-07-31 at 3.45.30 PMa client is fear that their dog may not want to come back home after staying at her bed and breakfast for dogs. “The dogs have so much fun here, their owners worry that they won’t want to come home,” Drescher says. “That’s good, though, it means I am doing what I set out to do.”

In 2012, Drescher opened The Highland Dog in a four-bedroom converted home in the Highlands. She saw an opportunity to cater to clients who love dogs who hate kennels. Drescher’s own dog had experienced a fear of staying in kennels and she wanted to create a place that dogs could be comfortable and the owners would be able to leave home and not worry about their pet. “It’s like a dog staying in their own home,” Drescher says of the eight suites at The Highland Dog. “They move around and do their own thing.” Drescher lives nearby and cares for the clients in the mornings and evenings. During the day, she has a part-time employee to stay with the dogs and run the retail portion of the business.

The Highland Dog sells organic dog food, toys and other pet care products. At first, she began carrying the toys because people might forget to pack their own, but now she has seen an opportunity to sell to her clients who see their pet playing with a toy at the bed and breakfast and want to take it home.

Drescher’s business model is one of high-touch as she caters to the needs of not only the dogs, but the owners too. “These people love their dogs and hate to leave them,” she says. “They want to know how they are doing and that they are OK.” There are cameras installed throughout the house and Kelly can watch the dogs on her phone at any time.

She and her employee take photos of the dogs playing and resting throughout the day and post them on their Facebook page. “While they are on vacation or out of town on business, they can open up Facebook and see that their dog is lounging around, looking out the window or enjoying play time in the yard,” says Drescher. “This benefit is what my customers enjoy most about staying here. It’s like their dog is on vacation too.”

Drescher has learned a lot about opening a small business in a neighborhood in the last year. She purchased the house that was previously a church parsonage and had to go through the process of getting a kennel permit which required a public hearing. Several people in the neighborhood were opposed to the kennel, so the neighborhood association and council man got involved. “I had never run a small business before; I didn’t know what I was doing!” Drescher said. Drescher sought the help of a local attorney who gave her some free advice and helped her put together a presentation for the public hearing, which went well. She has had no problems with the neighbors since the opening. In fact, several members of the neighborhood association are now clients. She says the publicity over the public hearing actually helped her business because the newspaper covered the story and did a follow-up story on the business opening.

Drescher took classes at the Small Business Development Center where she says she received great advice and counseling on sales, inventory, pricing her services increasing productivity and preparing financial reports and taxes. “The hardest part of being a small business owner is taking on too much yourself,” said Drescher, who also works full time for the Kentucky Air National Guard as a pilot.

One early struggle with getting her business off the ground was finding a small business loan. “It was hard to get started with big banks,” said Drescher. She ended up working with Wilson & Muir, a small, local bank. “I have learned that there are so many good people here in Louisville,” said Drescher. “If you just continue to call and be tenacious, you will get to the right people who will help you.”

Since The Highland Dog opened, it has been booked solid. The company used to offer day care for dog owners who worked a lot or who were having work done at their house or having a party, but they have had no room for extra guests. Her customers come from all over town and even Southern Indiana. She credits her location close to the airport for bringing in clients from a large area. Most of their business is repeat clients and referrals. They are doing a steady business with a database of 110 clients, relying mostly on Google Ad Words and social media for their advertising. The Highland Dog currently offers baths for their clients at an additional cost but the plan is to add a full service groomer in the immediate future. Drescher says she does dream of opening a chain to include The Downtown Dog and other areas of town.

 

Filed Under: News, Profiles

Keeping Eyes on Your Newborn

April 16, 2013 By Drake

Keeping_eyesPresident, Blake Rutherford and CTO, Dominic Foster of Healthcare Observation Systems, LLC sat down in their Baxter Avenue office space to talk with LouPreneur about the success of their company and innovative product, NICVIEW.

NICVIEW, a play on words for NICUs, or Neonatal Intensive Care Units, is a webcam system designed to provide parents, families and caretakers the option of having real time web access to monitor their newborn infants admitted into NICUs. These specialized neonatal facilities are important for infants who are born prematurely or with life-threatening health issues but are not available in every hospital, therefore children with needs that require NICU admission are often far from home in a regional facility, instead of a local one. [Read more…]

Filed Under: News, Profiles Tagged With: Foster of Healthcare Observation Systems, Healthcare, infant surveillance, infants, Kentucky, Louisville, surveillance, surveillance systems, technology, webcam

Music in the Clouds

April 16, 2013 By Drake

IMG_0038Local entrepreneurs, Ron Karroll and Aaron Stack sat down at GLI to talk with LouPreneur about Collabra Music, a product where one can make and listen to music with the crowd…in the cloud!

Having loved music from a very young age, one thing that always inspires me is when various musicians cross paths or collaborate on songs that they normally wouldn’t. One of the best examples when that happens is at the end of awards shows. For example, at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Inductee Ceremony there is always an incredible ‘final’ jam consisting of various musicians, from various bands, belting out a classic tune that is usually one of the inductees’. Another would be during live shows when perhaps a member of the opening act joins the headliner for an impromptu on-stage collaboration. Either way, it is always very exciting to see and hear such moments.
To further understand the possibility of musical collaboration, another prime example would obviously be on the studio level. Whether an artist choses to invite ‘special guests’ to play on their recordings, do covers of other people’s songs, or even in cases of ‘tribute albums’ there are numerous ways in which various artists can come together using music as their outlet for artistic expression. [Read more…]

Filed Under: News, Profiles, Software Tagged With: cloud, Collabra Music, file sharing, Kentucky, Louisville, music, technology

Finding the Supply for Demand

April 16, 2013 By Drake

IMG_0077 Loupreneur sat down with Jermaine Watkins, the President and CEO of Supply Ark, a Louisville business that provides distribution channels and seamless fulfillment strategies for military and government contracts as well as commercial bids. Since 2009, Supply Ark’s team of three has had an innovative focus on strategically winning contracts from the Defense Logistics Agency bid process. Watkins crafted a proprietary system that automates the bid process for the military’s miscellaneous items requests.

Success for Watkins comes from combining a tech background as a former employee of the US Army Corps of Engineers and as a website developer for Borders Unlimited Inc., a wholesale distributor of wallpaper borders for a company in Shelbyville, KY. Supply Ark grew out of his desire to be a self-motivator and from his childhood in which he was raised by entrepreneurs. “I got tired of working for a company and paying my own salary. I thought, ‘this is ridiculous, I can do this from home.’ I realized that if I can sell almost a million dollars in wallpaper borders, then I can make my own money doing something else,” jokes Watkins. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Government, News, Profiles Tagged With: contracts, Kentucky, logistics, Louisville, military, Supply Ark

Making a Life in HR

April 16, 2013 By Drake

IMG_0253

By NIKI KING

If Amy Newbanks Letke had her own reality show, it would be called “Say Yes to the Success” in human resources.

She’s made a career of saying “yes” to opportunities that have presented themselves in her respective field, including a decision to become an entrepreneur. In 2007, she founded IntegrityHR, Inc., a Louisville-based human resources consulting and outsourcing firm for small to medium-sized businesses. Since then, it’s grown to 11 employees offering a range of human resource services to clients around the country.

Her business motto is rooted in the same affirmative approach that motivates her. She wants to help other business leaders say ‘yes,’ too, and also “share, in a positive way, the consequences,” she said. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Human Resources, News, Profiles, Service Tagged With: consulting, HR, human resources, IntegrityHR, Kentucky, Louisville, outsourcing

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