Local Market Monopoly

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Melissa Struttmann: It's hard to be patient when you really want something, but our situation worked out perfectly and don't think everything will work out. Everything will work itself out because you have a dream, because sometimes that dream can turn into a nightmare.

Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I'm so glad you made it. It's Clarence Fisher, your host. Of course she knew that. Listen, today we're talking with Melissa Struttmann, who is no ordinary entrepreneur. She's a wife, mother of 10, who managed to turn her love for quilting into a successful thriving retreat business. How did she do it? Well, in this episode, Melissa reveals the single mindset shift that transformed her quilting hobby into a business and how you can use it to launch your own venture today. But it's not just about passion. There's a key detail that most aspiring entrepreneurs overlook and ignoring it could cost you profits. Before you even get started, Melissa explains exactly what that is and how she turned it into her secret weapon for success. Plus, you'll discover the surprising detail that Melissa pays attention to that other business owners completely miss, including myself.
Well, not completely, but I miss it more than she does. Definitely it inspired me. And why this small tweak has helped her rebook retreats time and time again, meaning the people that show up rebook and they rebook and they rebook. If you've been dreaming about turning your passion into a profitable business, this episode is packed with practical insights that can help you make it happen. You are listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local market and own the block
Hey, hey, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly, and it's Clarence and Melissa. So could you share a little bit about what you do with the retreat center there?

Melissa Struttmann: Absolutely. My husband and I own Osage Hills Retreat. It's a craft retreat center located in Osage County, Oklahoma. So obviously, but your listeners might not know, we're just outside of Tulsa. We offer our clients a place to bring their quilting, sewing, and scrapbooking projects and connect with their friends. So if you're not familiar with the place, you'll come for a couple of days. You eat, sleep, everything here. And then I have a group that is coming in today, Wednesday, and then they'll be here through Sunday afternoon. There's eight ladies and they share the meals, the menus. One person will cook dinner tonight, someone will cook lunch tomorrow, so on. And they all have, when retreats can be done different ways here, they'll just bring their projects and work on their projects independently. But it's that camaraderie of being with your friends, people you haven't seen in a while. We have a couple girls coming in from Nebraska and then in the Tulsa area, so there'll be eight of them here today.

Clarence Fisher: Wow. One of the things that stood out to me, my wife used to go with a group of ladies to a retreat, and since hadn't done it in, I don't know, four or five years, which got me excited as well because I can share with her that, Hey, there's another place for you to go. But it was a thing that they would do every year. But did I see correctly that you allow individuals to go, you don't have to have a group with you,

Melissa Struttmann: Correct? Yeah. So the ideal thing for that is someone who's moved into the area or none of their friends scrapbook or quilt, and they make new friends or meet new people so you can come. So we have groups like this one. They all know each other. And then I believe next week we have a group that we call it Individual Retreaters Retreat. And you come knowing that you won't know anyone here, but you're going to leave with eight new best friends. And so I coordinate with them through text, have them introduce each other, say what they're working on, where they're from. So, hi, I'm Susie. I'm from Topeka, Kansas, and I'm working on some Christmas quilts, and then I facilitate them planning their meal so they know that I'm responsible for lunch and the next lady is responsible for dinner and so on. And it's great because you come and you're a little nervous because you don't know anyone, but you leave with because you've been with them for four or five days. It's awesome.

Clarence Fisher: Do you find that the majority of the people who take you up on that are the extroverted type or the introverted type?

Melissa Struttmann: Very few introverted. I would say more extroverted because obviously it's kind of scary to go into a new room by yourself. So the fact that you're wanting to do this to me, it's a brave thing.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. It's something I would do, even as an introvert, I'm extremely introverted, but I would do it just because it scares me. It's like, okay, I don't know you people, but it will be great. I don't even know how to scrapbook, so that would be awesome. Yeah. Okay. This is what made me hit record was I asked you, as we talk about how you got started, I get the sense that you have some experience in business before, and you were telling me about it was a newspaper that you had before.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, we had a magazine in Jenks for probably about five years, and I pioneered it. I actually had a consignment store that I was selling, but I wanted an inexpensive way to advertise it. And I thought, well, maybe if we did up some flyers and some of the businesses around here, we each paid X number of dollars to be on a sheet of coupons or something. And then it kind of like, well, maybe we could, there's the art festival and there's this and there's that. Maybe we could add some information to it. So it just kind of happened. And so it built to, I believe it was a 40 page magazine. It's been almost 20 years ago, and we direct mailed it to 8,000 homes and businesses in the Jenks zip code and surrounding area that was right there. So it was unique in that it was all good news.
It was stuff that you could just sit like a reader's digest. It wasn't anything that somebody got shot and killed. It was happy. And I ended up selling that in time. But it was a lot of fun and it was easy to sell it because it sold itself. And it had also mentioned that I have six kids, so I stayed home almost 20 years raising kids. And that's when I did the magazine. I could work on it at night. And then when they went to school, I could sell ads and stuff, but I was always involved in church with fundraising events and events where we were trying to raise money for different things. And then after I sold the magazine, I started working for the Jenks Chamber of Commerce. There again, you're asking for money, you're asking people to join and buy tickets and that stuff. And then I worked for American Diabetes Association for a while, and I had an event that I think my annual goal was like $190,000 to raise. So it was constant asking for money, and then I just resigned from my job. I was there, I think probably 11 or 12 years in Creek County Literacy in Sapulpa. And there again, it's kind of like a church in that
Everything your budget is coming from the generosity of other people and from grants. So did lots and lots and lots of grant writing, but I resigned this spring in order to focus full time on the business that we started two years ago.

Clarence Fisher: When you started the business, how did crafting come up? Let me ask you that. How did crafting and scrapbooking come up? Was that a hobby of yours?

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, so how we started the business is Steve was interested in having a moneymaking home-based business in our retirement years. He just wanted something that we could count off on our taxes, make a little money, do whatever, but he didn't know what that would look like. But it's been a long time goal of his. And I have tire kicked talked about opening a retreat center because I like retreats and it's fun, and most of us scrapbookers and quilters. Oh yeah, I would love to own a retreat center. There's a lot more to a business than just having
A retreat center. So I have scrapbook, I've cross stitched, I've made clothes for my kids, I've embroidered, I've quilted for basically forever. I've done something with my hands craft wise. And then Steve saw this property on a sponsored Facebook ad in May of 2021, and we looked, and I wasn't sure why he was showing me this house, because we live in Jenks. We're talking about downsizing in our retirement years. We have 10 kids combined. But it's great to have that house for Christmas and take parties and stuff that as the kids have gotten older, some of them work nights, some work weekends, some work weekdays. It's hard to get everybody together. So he's shown me this house and I'm like, why would we move to ook? Why would we buy a bigger house with 11 acres? It doesn't make any sense. And there was a floor plan of the pictures, and he said, it's basically two houses and we could live on one side of the house and you could have a retreat center on the other side of the house. And I was like, ding, ding, ding. This is perfect.
Yeah, that's awesome. So we went and looked at it and 2021 was a crazy time for property, and I think it was on the market two or three days when we went and looked at it. And realtors pitch, best offer in. We have other people saying, put an offer in. So we put an offer on it, and my husband just verbal, and she said, I'll write it up Monday. But they had accepted the verbal offer and he just turned, he doesn't like to make decisions lickety split. And he called her Sunday night and he said, I just can't do this. I don't feel good about it. I just can't do it. So we rescinded our offer and I was just devastated. But it is what it is. Nearly a year later, it was in February of 22, 20 22, we came back out here, looked at the property, put an offer in, put our house on the market, had 40 showings, 20 offers, and it happened. So the rest is history. Wow.

Clarence Fisher: A year later.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah. So this house for, and this is an odd house. It really is for a single family, it's an unusual home. So it's beautiful, but it's just, and it's entirety is a lot for one family. So I think that's why it sat on the market. So that was to our advantage.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome. That's awesome. So you're supposed to be there, right?

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Clarence Fisher: So when we're talking about the crafting, how would our listeners, I just feel like if you're a crafter, you're a crafter, right?

Melissa Struttmann: Right.

Clarence Fisher: But how do they know that they need to go there? Is it something that just, Hey, this is a new place, or is it like how my wife had it where they had their place and they know they're going there and they're not looking anywhere else? How does it usually work?

Melissa Struttmann: I have two different camps. I have some ladies that if it's a craft retreat center and it's in driving distance, they're going to go to it. So I've had people from Nebraska, I've had people from Louisiana, I've had people from Oregon come and they may just come one time. They absolutely love it. It's their favorite place, but they hop. That's what they do.
Then it's a vacation, and they may not want to vacation at the same place every year. And then I have other people that they say, this is my home. I love this, and we want to come twice a year for the rest of our life. And then you have some people that's like, we come here and we go there. So it's just like you guys may not go to the same exact condo at the same exact beach every year for Greg, but you have that one place that you really liked and you want to go back. And then there's other people that it's diehard, I'm going to buy this condo and I'm going to come here five times a year.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. Do you offer the kits, the scrapbooking kits and all that, or

Melissa Struttmann: They bring all their stuff? We do have small amount of fabric for sale, because if it's 10 o'clock at night and you've run out of stuff, you're not going to want to get out and try

Melissa Struttmann: To find.

Melissa Struttmann: So it's there for convenience, but I don't offer a little store, so to speak.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. Alright, cool. The reason I ask, because again, I'm thinking if there's just people are looking for something to do, and maybe you don't know about this yet, I know people are fanatic about scrapbooking and stuff like that, but how does one, I've always wondered, how did you get started? You said you've been doing this with your hands forever. Did you just get started at a young age?

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, my mom wasn't crafty, but I always, when I was little, liked doing things with my hands, I'd make the little pot holders and I'd go around to the neighbors and sell pot holders. And then I made key chains. I always did something when I was little. And then I did a lot of counted cross stitch, which takes a thousand years to finish a project when I was young, married. And then when my kids were little, I would make simple little dresses and shorts and things like that for 'em. And then I tried quilting back in the nineties, but it didn't occur to me that I could get books at the library. And so I tried to teach myself based on the quilts that I had and comforters that I had at home, and it was a mess. But then here we are in the digital age that you can, Google will hear you talking on your smartphone and show you things. So for me, it's a lot easier. There were phenomenal quilters in the eighties and nineties, obviously, but they knew there were books at the library and I didn't,

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Has anyone just showed up with a 3D printer yet? No. Just like, Hey, I'll be by the pool. Alright, that's great. So something that jumped out at me that you just said is you went door to door selling pot holders. My goodness. That is awesome. You want to hire people like that, right?

Melissa Struttmann: 25 cents each or five for a dollar.

Clarence Fisher: Oh my goodness. Who put you up to that? Or was that just something that you wanted to do? Yeah,

Melissa Struttmann: And of course a safe time too that my mom would let a six, 7-year-old run up and down the street and doing that. Because you didn't worry about stuff back

Clarence Fisher: Then, right? Absolutely true.

Melissa Struttmann: Well, always, always a little bit of a hustler.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. So starting your business right now, if someone, there are a lot of people who start businesses because of that. I was that person as well. I had the lawnmower with the can on the lawnmower pushing that lawnmower down the street to see who I could mow their lawn for. And a lot of times we grow up and we become salespeople. And then the process until you get open your own business. So what advice would you give someone who is brand new to business?

Melissa Struttmann: I would say my advice would be to start small and grow gradually. There's no way that I could have handled in June of 2022 when we opened what I do today, you need to grow with your business. So for me, my husband felt like a good goal for a year would be 20 retreats. So when we opened in June, I had four scheduled between June and December, and it scared me to death. And the reason for that is you have eight or nine women who have eight or nine families, and you're trying to get all those schedules together. And it is going to be a rarity that you can get ahold of everyone today and say, Hey, there's an opening at the retreat center in 10 days are you in? Because you're going to have a birthday, you're going to have a thing, you're going to have surgery, you're going to have out of town. So people schedule six months in advance, a year in advance, because it's hard to get that many people now for an individual retreat if you're available. Yeah, that's fine. And then someone's coming from another state, they're available, but it's hard to get eight friends all at once. So when you look at successful businesses in any dynamic, you're not going to open your doors seeing 30 patients a day or whatever.
I think that we need to be realistic.

Clarence Fisher: Do you feel like it was better to go all in or to keep maybe a side job and do this on the side? Or do you think it was best to I

Melissa Struttmann: Wanted to quit my job the day that I started because I knew, I know myself. I know I'm competitive and I'm driven, and I knew that I could make this work today. And again, it's a process. I knew that I was going to have 15 bookings that first year, but four was like, oh, a little nervous, but I just resigned, excuse me, in April, and that gave me almost two years in business. And it was hard because I'm driving 45 minutes one way to work, and so I'm in the car for an hour and a half a day. That however, gave me awesome opportunity to listen to awesome podcasts. I had an hour and a half a day that I didn't have anything else to do. Oh,

Clarence Fisher: Cool, cool.

Melissa Struttmann: I was just double training myself and equipping myself. But the timing I think was right. And by the time that I did resign for my job, I was done. I was toast. It's a lot. It's hard. I worked almost two years after we purchased the property and began the business, and it was a lot. It was a big drive each day, but in order to get my husband comfortable with where we were and where the business was, he wanted me to continue working just to have that extra income. But come this spring, it is been a lot. So it's been successful. It's been great, and it was time. So it was nice to be able to let go of that. But it was also nice to have that income knowing that as this business grew, we still had

Clarence Fisher: And how did that work? When you're on your commute and you're listening to these podcasts, you're getting the ideas and then you're like, Hey, this is something that we can put into practice or just getting ideas,

Melissa Struttmann: A lot of ideas and absorbing of, I never thought about doing that or I'm doing that. And I didn't even know that that was a thing. So it was an affirmation of some things that I was doing and then done moments on other things that, holy cow, I should have been doing that all along. Or I never thought to do it this way or just, it was new to me to listen to marketing podcast and get educated that way because I'm true crime. I'll listen to death and bawling all day long. But it didn't occur to me to listen to how to get more viewers or how to get more business. So to me, podcasts were just documentaries and true crime, whole big world out there.

Clarence Fisher: Your online presence looks great. Are you doing that? Is that you or, wow, that is so awesome.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, I do on my Facebook and Instagram, I'll sit for four hours and just do a month's worth of stuff, try to post. And then I have a little schedule of, well, I'll talk about this on Mondays, and then it goes to pot. But at least I know I have six or seven points that I should be making each week on different topics or different things to me. I don't want to follow you if all you're doing is buy my widget for 1999, buy my widget. Did you know I have a widget? So I think it's a lot of education and being funny and just there's more to schedule a retreat. Schedule a retreat.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, for sure. A lot more. A lot more. So it's been a couple of years. Have you tried or gotten to the point where you can recycle older posts? Okay,

Melissa Struttmann: I do. I'm shaking my head just, but yes. Okay,

Clarence Fisher: Great.

Melissa Struttmann: I recycle pictures.

Clarence Fisher: Excellent. I get pushback on that sometimes and I'm like, man, nobody's paying attention as closely as you think they are. I mean, you can pull a post from a year ago. I mean, after you've been doing this for that long, you've got a bank of content.

Melissa Struttmann: And I'm not going to do, in most circumstances, I'm not going to do the exact same post in the exact picture. I'm going to rewrite it and maybe crop the picture or do, if it's something about outdoors, I have 500 pictures of outdoors that I can use.

Clarence Fisher: That's great. So is that your favorite way to prospect? Is it social media?

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, to me, social media is huge because a lot of my audience is, or a lot of my people are on Facebook and Instagram, Instagram's a little younger folk, but most of my ladies are on Facebook, in my opinion. And I have had a couple guys come, but it's obviously I'm targeting towards women. But I think too, another prospect for me is your wife comes, she has the time of her life. She's felt spoiled, she's enjoyed the amenities, and she goes home and tells her friends and then they call. So a lot of it is word of mouth for me as well.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. Yeah, creating that experience. And I mean, how do you create that memorable experience for the ladies?

Melissa Struttmann: I try to be over the top as far as what I offer and what I do, because I want you to come here and be like, oh my gosh, you thought of everything. I bought little stickers to put on my toilet paper, so I fold my, we went to, what's that place called? Is it Shangrila here? So we went to Shangrila a couple of weeks ago for our anniversary, and they had little stickers on the toilet paper. And I'm like, oh my God, I need stickers for my toilet paper. Everybody's going to want to come and see the stickers on my toilet paper, which is stupid, but it's cute. And you're like, that is really clever. And it's our logo. So little things like that. I have flashlights on the nightstands. We've had probably two power outages where there's been storms when people are here and if their phone is sitting out by their sawing machine, they may not, A house is pitch black at midnight, so there's little flashlights. So if they need to find their way to the bathroom,

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome

Melissa Struttmann: Earplugs by their bed. So if you want to take a nap because you stayed up till three last night, we don't have to worry about being quiet while you're napping. So I try to think of every little thing that makes it luxurious, because I've been to retreats where you want to wear flip flops in the shower, you have to bring your own salt and pepper because there's nothing in

Clarence Fisher: Right.

Melissa Struttmann: So I want it to be that you just need to bring your sewing machine and your projects and everything else is taken care of.

Clarence Fisher: As I'm listening to you, I'm sending my wife because I'm excited for her to witness it and her best friend Holly. And then of course, what'll end up happening, it's just as you said, they'll bring the other ladies from their group. So I'm excited about that. That's a done deal that's happening.

Melissa Struttmann: That's awesome.

Clarence Fisher: And she'll enjoy that surprise. So as far as platforms, as we were talking about as far as LinkedIn goes, how do you feel about LinkedIn? You said most of your people are on Facebook?

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, I love LinkedIn. For my professional background, I'm on LinkedIn and I'm great with LinkedIn, but my ladies aren't on, and I'm just going to say my ladies is my guest.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Melissa Struttmann: Because like I said, I have had a couple of fellows, but LinkedIn is awesome. It's a great program, but that's not the medium that my 65-year-old women are looking for a place to retreat. So you have to know your audience. And likewise, if I'm trying to get, you may be a quilter, your wife may have an Instagram account, and she may, I mean a LinkedIn account, she may be very active on LinkedIn with her business if she has one. But she's not in the mindset of, I'm going to find a retreat center, or I'm going to find some Quilty friends or Scrapbooky friends on LinkedIn. So same with Twitter or X, whatever it's called. Now, most of my clients don't say, I looked for you on X and couldn't. And again, I'm active on Instagram and I want to build my Instagram, but I have five times more followers on Facebook than I do Instagram.

Clarence Fisher: I can see that. And the money would be there. Like you say, your avatar, we call it the avatar. Your perfect customer is going to be on Facebook for sure. I always ask about the pitfalls so that we can warn people. What pitfalls do you think that listeners should be aware of when they are marketing their business? They're beginning to market,

Melissa Struttmann: I would say when you're saying marketing their business,
Well again, know your audience. And I've done some print advertising because I like print. I like seeing things in print. I pick up all the little free magazines and stuff when I'm at the restaurants and things, but I don't feel like print is as effective as it was 20 years ago for my type of business. But there may be some businesses that print is the only way they can get people in, so I don't want print. But I think looking to see where your customers are. If your quilter, where to quilters go, they go to quilt shows. So have a booth at a quilt show. If they have a little flyer or pamphlet at the Quilt show, advertise in that. And again, I think any wise person going into business in a business that they understand are going to intuitively know, okay, I need to find the Quilt guilds locally or the quilt shows and set up a booth there.

Clarence Fisher: Let's go back to starting the business. Okay, so we talked about marketing and pitfalls there, and you've been in business for the last couple of years. Any pitfalls in starting the business that people need to be aware of?

Melissa Struttmann: Well, I think that any business that you go into, whether it's a retreat or whatever, you need to go with your eyes wide open. And you're likely not going to be an overnight success. People may not flock to your open house or your grand opening or shut down your website on day one. You don't know what you don't know, and you need to educate yourself. And even though you don't know, you need to figure out what you don't know. I have a certification through Retreat Business Academy, which is an online program, and hands down, if I could tell anyone who has owned a retreat for five years for one year, this program is amazing. I love it. And I don't think that we would be the success that we are today had I not went through this program and learned what I didn't know, so to speak. So my husband is very cautious and he's not a risk taker. And his thing is like, well, I don't even know what we're supposed to be doing that we're not going to get in trouble, like licensing and that kind of stuff. And the financial aspects of what if I do all the stuff in Quicken or QuickBooks or whatever he uses, but he's doing it wrong, and then we owe 45 million at the end of the year and they burn our house down and put us in prison. That's the stuff that worries him.
So there were modules that cover the recommendation. And of course, this is a US based company, and the laws that are in Oklahoma may not be the laws in Tennessee. So you need to check with your county and your state and your city to see what you need to do. So for example, we are in no Sage County, and there's a little bridge that you cross to get to our house and our neighbors who are on the other side of the bridge are in the city. So we can burn, we can, we can own a business in our home, but our neighbors can't, and we can see them on their back porch. But it's just because that line makes all the difference in what we can and can't do. You don't know until you find out. And again, it's hard to say you don't know what you don't know and find it out, but it's crucial that you educate yourself.
And we didn't want to get in trouble because we weren't licensed to do this business. So we met with the zoning commissioner or whoever it was, and I was feeling at the beginning of this conversation, we had already put the offer on the house and it was accepted that he wasn't going to let us do this business, but because we had the plat or whatever it's called, the survey stuff, and I mean literally we're past the line of Woods County, and he said, well, you can do this business, but you can't have a neon sign. I don't need a neon sign in my What's backyard in the Retreaters front yard and we can't put off fireworks and I can have a 24 inch sign in the front yard. Well, I don't want to a sign in my front yard. So we were just like, but we could work on cars back here and stuff like that, but our neighbors couldn't.
So you need to find out what you can and can't do what you're supposed to be paying each year, like our LLCI have to do every year. And you need to know that stuff and do it. So you need to educate yourself. And even commercial insurance, we had a heck of a time finding a policy because this isn't a common business and it's not really an Airbnb, and it's not really a bed and breakfast, and our insurance is phenomenally expensive every single month. But again, my husband is, it's the rule and we're not going to break it

Clarence Fisher: Really. It's expensive for scissors and

Melissa Struttmann: Well, it's a commercial policy for the property.

Clarence Fisher: Okay.

Melissa Struttmann: Just under a thousand a month.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, wow.

Melissa Struttmann: So yeah, it's a lot.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah.

Melissa Struttmann: And then I would say too, realistically and conservatively create a business plan and a budget, don't go into massive debt. Thankfully I was able to pay for our startup costs with cash and startup, eight beds, eight tables, eight chairs, cutting mats, televisions. You don't think that stuff adds up, but it adds up. And putting that on a credit card is drowning before you've even hit that.

Clarence Fisher: Right? Right.

Melissa Struttmann: So other than our mortgage, we don't have any debt for the business. But I see so many small businesses that are in massive debt, and I know some businesses have no choice because they have equipment that they need or they have an inventory. If I'm selling widgets, I need to have widgets that I can sell, but your business has to live within its means and grow as you're able made multiple upgrades and enhancements. But we've done it over time. If we had done everything that we did at the beginning, everything that we've done over two years, in the beginning, we would've put ourself in huge debt. But we've been able to do things in time and we're getting ready to put in another because this house has four HVA systems, we're replacing another unit next month, and that stuff's not cheap.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. Wow. It sounds like you crossed a lot of T's and doted a lot of i's. What is the biggest mistake you did make?

Melissa Struttmann: Well, it's a mistake in my eyes, not in Steve's eyes. Steve is very cautious and he doesn't want to get ahead of himself. And when you have a list of things to do, you read step one and you do step one and you make sure you did it right, and then you read step two, and then you do step two and you make sure you did it right. You don't look at six, you don't do part of four, you do one thing in front of the other. So we closed on our property the first week of June of 2022, and Steve's like, you're not putting anything out until we close on this house and we make sure it's ours. So he didn't want me working on a website. He didn't want me putting stuff on Facebook. And because of that, we had four bookings for the year because I started advertising June 1st, which not a big deal, but when you acquired your property, start talking then even if it's accepting reservations after June would've been nice to say

Clarence Fisher: Because it's pretty easy to just, I don't know, renegotiate that verbal contract with the person that booked. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Struttmann: I mean, if there's a snowstorm,

Clarence Fisher: If you needed to. Absolutely. Yeah.

Melissa Struttmann: So I say that was a big mistake is that I didn't get to market in the beginning, but it made him feel very comfortable.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome.

Melissa Struttmann: I think a big mistake that others make is not advertising and it's not taking advantage of free social media advertising, not having a decent website. I cannot tell you how many websites don't list the city and state you're in. You direct me to a website from a Facebook page, and I have no idea if you're in Alaska or Maine because you can't assume anything.

Clarence Fisher: But is this particularly for retreat websites or websites in general?

Melissa Struttmann: I feel like the target market of retreat owners are mature women because they're heading into retirement or retired and websites are expensive to have someone develop. And there are programs that you can develop your own website for free and you don't know what you don't know. You just want to flop up some pictures of your pretty place and let the order start rolling in. But we have to know where you're from.

Clarence Fisher: Your website looks really professional.

Melissa Struttmann: I did pay to have it done.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. I'm like, oh my goodness, this looks great. That's awesome. That's awesome. I think also in your business there is this, the first impression is it a lot of times, especially for your business, I would think,

Melissa Struttmann: Well, in little things like you're saying, first impression, I paid a real estate photographer to take pictures. It's kind of expensive, but I want you to visualize how awesome it is, how light bright and airy it is. I want you to see detail. And if I have little dark iPhone 10 pictures up it doesn then pacing place justice.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, exactly.
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So what do you think one of the big things, most important things that you've learned?

Melissa Struttmann: Trust the process? I was devastated in 2021 that we didn't pull the trigger on this property when we looked at it, but for Steve, it was vital to wrap his head around going into additional debt when we're looking at retirement. At the same time, as far as buying your home, I needed the time to research. I'm a big researcher. Also the seller was more willing to negotiate the price of the property a year later. So those things were nice in, I think patience would be the word of just waiting for it to happen. There's a fine line of waiting for it to happen, and it's slipping out of your hands. We're seeing something bad to happen. So also another year later, because of our age, we were another year closer to retirement, and Steve is closer to retirement age than I am. He's much, much older than I am. No, but looking back, it's hard to be patient when you really want something. But our situation worked out perfectly. Don't think everything will work itself out because you have a dream, because sometimes that dream can turn into a nightmare. So for us, just waiting for the time to be right was vital.

Clarence Fisher: It's so cool to me the way you both respect each other in that way and making things happen, even though you have the different personalities, just kind of honoring each other and making it it happen. That's awesome.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, I knew that if I pushed and pushed and pushed, I would've possibly talked him into it, but if anything bad happened that would be on me. So it was hard.

Clarence Fisher: And you say you're not a risk taker, really.

Melissa Struttmann: I mean, yeah, this was a risk, but I knew that I could make it work. I knew that quilting is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. My target customer is $65, is 65 years old. She has money, she wants to travel. Quilting is expensive. It's not a cheap hobby. And I don't get 30-year-old girls in here that have a one-year-old baby and not a great job. I get women who have no problem going into a quilt shop and spending several hundred dollars just because they like the line of the fabric. So I have a great client. I don't have a single broke mom that has to get a tire for her car in order to get to work. So she buys the absolute cheapest tire. I have a woman who has means and wants to spend this time with her friends doing what she wants to do. So I have a pretty risk free clientele.

Clarence Fisher: That's nice. That's nice. Sounds like my wife's going to be one of the youngest ones there because I am much older than her. I was seven years.

Melissa Struttmann: That's what Steve and I are. Oh, really?

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So you shared quite a bit about how to be a good destination. In my mind, I think destination businesses can be difficult, but you have made it work. Is there anything else that you've done that you haven't shared really that made you so successful?

Melissa Struttmann: Work my butt off again. Nothing has been like, well, I shouldn't say that. I feel like there's been some situations that have just been divine and fell in my lap, but I think I was very fortunate that I had a year when we didn't buy the house and did buy the house. It was almost 10 months that I researched and educated myself because I love to research. And I probably looked at every retreat center in the United States basically had a spreadsheet of what they offered, how many beds they had, because obviously the beds are the number of people, what they had in their kitchen, what amenities they had, what their prices were, what their offerings were. So because we can be so have blinders on of, well, this is what everybody wants because it's what I like, but seeing, oh, well, I never thought about doing that or that makes sense. I never thought because of my age and my ability, it never occurred to me that women wouldn't want to take stairs up or down. So to have this beautiful three, three-story, Victorian home that is just a jaw dropper and everything in, it's gorgeous. My 65-year-old women are like, I've had a knee replacement, I've had a hip replacement. I am not carrying my 50 pound suitcase up those stairs. I'm not coming downstairs to go to the bathroom at 2:00 AM So you don't know what you don't know.
So that kind of research. And then amazingly, a lot of retreat centers will use the term sleeps 10 no bunk beds because there are retreat centers that want to stack them deep and they have bunk beds. Can you imagine your mom crawling up in a retreat center and then having to go potty at 3:00 AM

Melissa Struttmann: Ing down that ladder? So it's things like that, that was very helpful for me to have that time to look all that stuff up and see what everyone else is doing. And then two, you can see kind of quick from websites and calendars, who's successful and who isn't. If you're booked out three years, you're successful. And it's kind of like a hairdresser business when you get your repeat clients. We want to come every May. This is our place to come. We're going to come at the beginning of summer or we're going to come in each September. I have some people that come in the spring and in the fall. So again, it's kind of like a hairdresser that you come every six weeks or whatever. I don't have people come here. Well, I do have one lady that comes every six weeks. But too, that retreat business academy was a major lifeline. It brought to surface many things I didn't take into consideration because I just didn't know about or think to consider. So I owe all of our success to

Clarence Fisher: Taking. That's awesome. That is awesome. And you said your goal was 20 a week a year, or that was Steve's goal or what?

Melissa Struttmann: Steve is not quite as competitive as I am, so his goal is 20 because he just wants it to be this passive moneymaking business that we do in our retirement. And I'm like, okay. So we did four the first year and we did 38 last

Clarence Fisher: Year. Oh wow. That's awesome.

Melissa Struttmann: And I have 57 or 59 scheduled for this year.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. And one thing that stood out to me and I really love is your block when we say own the block, right? So your block is huge.

Melissa Struttmann: My block is the center of the United States.

Clarence Fisher: Exactly. That is great.

Melissa Struttmann: Open a big scale.

Clarence Fisher: Do you see it and you see it happening,

Melissa Struttmann: Right?

Clarence Fisher: Yes. Okay. And so it is all going to be facilitated with that one property?

Melissa Struttmann: Yes. Yes. Unless we were to build another one, but I don't have the energy to operate to

Clarence Fisher: How many can you do a year?

Melissa Struttmann: Retreat wise? I could do basically two a week, depending on some people. Most people come Thursday through Sunday, so that's four days, three nights. A lot of people will come for the whole week. So depending on next week, I've got a group it's, it's a little private school in North Tulsa, and they're coming Monday and Tuesday because it's the only days I have open this month. And they're doing team building or whatever you would call it.
So they're not spending the night because they're here. It's probably 25 minutes from us. So they're coming in the morning, staying until the evening, two days, and just using the facility, that's not normally something that I encourage, but with those two days, I wasn't going to make any money off of it. I was more than happy to do that. There's other places in town that you can think of that are similar to a retreat center that was going to charge 'em $5,000. My price is nowhere near that and they'll have a better time here.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. Have you had any family reunions or anything like that?

Melissa Struttmann: We had, and in fact they came last year. They're coming this year and they're already scheduled for next year. All the ladies stayed here and the men got a cabin or an Airbnb on the lake, which is just 11 miles from us. And I didn't realize that that was what they were doing. And I'm upstairs in my studio and I hear this big booming voice like you coming in laughing and talking. I'm like, these ladies are from Texas. What am I hearing? And I'm kicking out. So the husbands would come over at night to pick the women up to go out to eat.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, wow.

Melissa Struttmann: Then, so they're having fun. They're golfing, they're fishing, they're doing what guys do. The women are here, sun up to sundown, living their best life sewing. And so we offer a night of s'mores around the fire pit. So we invited obviously the guys to come the way our living room is situated. It overlooks the fire pit area. Once we do the fire pit, we just keep an eye on it and when the ladies go in, Steve will go in there and stoke the fire and stop it, do what guys do with fire. He's looking and he's looking and all the ladies had gone in and the men are sitting out there and he said, I think I'm going to go check on the men and make sure they're doing okay. So he comes back in 30 minutes later, he goes, okay, so Tom works for Ford and John's been sick, but he's doing really good. And this guy's retired, so he knew everybody's name, he knew where they worked, what they did, and they had a ball. And they came Labor Day. So they came Labor Day weekend and they scheduled again for Labor Day weekend this year. And they've already scheduled for next year. So that's a situation where you had a great time, a great experience, and you're redoing it.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. Do they get anything when they get home? Do you have any type of thank you card or anything that goes out when they get home?

Melissa Struttmann: I started and I didn't keep up with it. I had a big probably five by seven postcard. That's an aerial view of our property,

Clarence Fisher: Which

Melissa Struttmann: That picture a lot to thank them for coming. And I've gotten

Clarence Fisher: That just popped in my head. It's like, when do they rebook? Do they typically rebook before they leave or

Melissa Struttmann: Usually. Usually. Oh, nice. Very nice. And that's what you want. And I had one group that came last year. They were from Iowa and some states up that way and they didn't rebook and they reached out just recently and wanted a date in September. And I don't have anything open. People are going to put my calendar and it's full.

Clarence Fisher: Man, this is so great to hear. Okay. So what is the best kept secret in Osage County?

Melissa Struttmann: I think the best kept secret is it's beautiful. You have the beauty and tranquility. I don't know if you've been out in this area before, but it is just a hidden gem for people who just want to escape. And then specifically our property. We have 11 acres. We have a private park, we have walking paths. We have a saltwater pool. The west side of our property is a big hill that's just covered in limestone, rock formations. And everywhere you look outside, it's stunning. And six o'clock in the morning, seven o'clock at night, you see the little deer family walking down our drive, going to the neighbor's yard because there's more fun things to do at the neighbor's yard. And then one of our neighbors, we have 11 acres. So most of the homes out here are on multi acres, but one of our neighbors has two is donkeys. The little ones, they have two that are rescues from the Grand Canyon or whatever it's called, where they go to retire. You just hear 'em bra in the morning just making their little donkey sounds. And there's just the nature sounds and stuff. You hear the birds in the morning, you just hear all the little nighttime things in the evening. It's just, it's idyllic.

Clarence Fisher: Sounds like a great backdrop. Are they outside in August? It's kind hot, right? Right.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah. We've now transversed or whatever the word is, we've turned our fire pit s'mores night into a night where we serve 'em hotdogs, but they get the sticks and they get to cook the hotdogs yourself.

Melissa Struttmann: So it's kind of fun because if they haven't done it since they were a kid, or the camping ladies love it. The ones that camp, the heat index is probably a thousand today, I'm sure. It's probably yesterday it was 112. So we are planning to do their hotdogs on Saturday night, but it'll probably be seven or seven 30 when the sun goes down and it's not baking.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Wow. I'm excited. I won't be there, but I'm excited. You can drive it off here. Alright. Alright, so closing up. I mean we've covered a lot. So to run a successful retreat center, number one, your customer service is out of this world, right? You are on site.

Melissa Struttmann: Yes. And there are not very many retreat centers set up the way we are. I know of two in the United States. That doesn't mean that there's not plenty more, but our situation is very unique. So our house is 6,000 square feet. 2,400 square feet is dedicated to the retreaters. And there's literally a door that locks that separates us. First day we'll pop in and introduce ourselves. It's important for me that they meet Steve. So if they see him out watering in the yard or cutting grass that they're not like, who is the weirdo in the backyard? And again, these ladies love it. They love knowing there's a sense of security, there's a sense of safety. They don't know how to work the TV. I get a text and I'm there if a light bulb is flickering, we're right over there changing the light bulb. If there's a situation of any sort that they need, we are on hand. Steve will empty the trash. He changes the water jug out and the water cooler. And there's been twice this year that we have brought them onto our side of the house and put 'em in the safe room because of coronatic conditions. So if you're in Nebraska, you might not know to watch. Channel six is our preferred station here.

Clarence Fisher: Same. Same.

Melissa Struttmann: And we don't, because of where we live, we don't hear tornado sirens. We're too far away from 'em. So we have to watch the news when there's stuff going on. And I think there's a sense of safety and security that he's coming over saying, okay, here's where it is. It's over the lake right now, which is minutes away. So y'all need to put shoes on. And I'm like, an empty your bladder and grab a bottle of water and get them over there. And we had a group last year that one of the ladies, her husband had died that year and her adult sons were now the ones that were overseeing and making sure mom was safe and secure. And she told me two or three times, she said, my son was so happy that you took such good care of us tonight.
So that's great because when you're at a retreat center and the owner's 30 minutes away and you can't get ahold of him and the lights went out and you don't know where the power box is, that kind of stuff is frustrating and scary. And so it's been a great situation and you can kind of read the room. There's been one or two groups that they're not really interested in us. And there's other groups that they're texting me saying, come over and make yourself a plate. We've got plenty of food. So it's a family. It's an extended family.

Clarence Fisher: That's excellent. So if we were breaking it down to three steps, we've got that first one, which is exceptional customer service for you. And what would you say the other, if we were breaking it down to three easy steps, what would it be?

Melissa Struttmann: Attention to detail. I think feedback. If people are saying, it'd be really nice to have extra blankets in here, or if this TV is really confusing, do you have directions for the remote? Pay attention to that stuff because that's one person who verbalized it. You don't know how many more people felt the same way and just didn't say anything to you. And I will ask, I say, if there's anything that you feel like we can do to make this place better, please let me know. And people like that. You value their feedback and they will think of things to say. And we've learned great things that one of the first groups said, if you hung the TV, it's hard when you're back here at this chair to see the TV over other people's heads. I never thought about that because when I'm in that empty room, I have a clear line of sight to the TV in it, three more feet up, made it perfect. So little things like that that makes their experience better. I put a chocolate on their pillow. Just anything I can think of to make it be like, oh, she did that for me. So I think anything that you can do to tailor to your customer's needs your guests.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. Okay, so that's number two. We got customer service. All right. Attention to detail and then your wellbeing. Number three,

Melissa Struttmann: Effective marketing. I think you need to utilize social media and word of mouth to attract and retain guests, and obviously to consult with someone like you to get a good marketing plan in place.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. You are really big on the social media thing.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: The social media works for you.

Melissa Struttmann: The one thing that makes me nervous about social media is I feel like, and I'm sure you've heard other marketers say that you need to basically own your marketing. And the day that Facebook and Instagram went down, what was it? Within six months, I was like tasting metal because it was like crap. Because my mailing list isn't that big. I mean, I have an active mailing list that's growing, but I don't have 18,000 names on my mailing list. But I want to be in charge of that stuff. I want to control that stuff. So things like building my mailing list is becoming more and more important when I see weird things that's unexplained for what I'm heavily on.

Clarence Fisher: I'm really glad you're going there. One of the biggest things that we have to do, number one, is to go from a rented audience to an owned audience. We're really renting the audience when we're on social media, when we're running ads even we have to get them on our mailing list so that we own it. I mean, that's a big, big aha right there.

Melissa Struttmann: What is your thought on the little blue thing? It's like certified or something. They push it on Facebook and Instagram because I worry, what if my page was hacked and I didn't get it back and they deleted it and I lost all those followers that I have Where you have a certified page.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, the verified verification.

Melissa Struttmann: Do you think that's worth the investment?

Clarence Fisher: We haven't. We just haven't. And especially with your base, they don't care about the blue dot. And I guess what you're saying though is you're thinking about as far as protection from being hacked.

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah,

Clarence Fisher: Yeah.

Melissa Struttmann: Is there any statistics that

Clarence Fisher: I don't know, but I am going to look that up. I'm going to look that up and give that to you. We have just looked at it for the status. And as far as status goes, I mean, I haven't played that game. We have some younger clients who swear by it, then I let them do that. But it's nothing that we've recommended yet.

Melissa Struttmann: Well, obviously I follow influencers in the quilting industry and more and more of 'em are, but if they have a hundred thousand followers, some of them have 10,000. I don't even have a thousand on Instagram. But again, I get a lot of engagement from the ones I do. I don't want my account to be taken over.

Clarence Fisher: Right. Is that what they're saying is that it will protect being hacked.

Melissa Struttmann: I don't know. But they have a lot more in the game with a hundred followers to than I do.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. That is

Melissa Struttmann: Something that security,

Clarence Fisher: That is something that I think there's the next episode is whether we should do those things. Yeah, no, seriously. I will look into that and I will let you know through LinkedIn as well. So what do you think of the next 30, 90 days that our listeners need to do either starting their own retreat business, if that's what they want to do, or again, I guess your customers, if they're listening and they want to experience what you have, they already know by now that they're calling you. Okay, so if I'm going to start my own business, what do I need to do?

Melissa Struttmann: So I think that in the next 30 days, you need to begin researching and gathering information about the retreat business and begin creating a detailed business plan. And I think that should also include sketching out a budget of what you think you're going to be spending. Because if you're going to bring in a thousand dollars a month and you're spending $5,000 a month, your math is not math. So get that figured out 90 days, you need to secure a location, start the necessary licensing and permits, and develop a marketing strategy. And then in a year's time next year, you need to focus on obviously growing your business, build an online presence, gather feedback from your retreaters, and see where you can improve. Because there's always room to improve, no matter how awesome you are, there's always something else you can do to elevate yourself.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely.

Melissa Struttmann: And I think too, that if you're going to go into this business, just like anything else, you need to know this business. So for me, myself, I'm not going to open up a car repair shop. I don't know anything about repairing cars. I have nothing that I can make that a good business. But as a lifelong crafter, one who's been on plenty of retreats, I have a lot of internal experience that I bring that makes this place what it is because I understand my clients and I understand what they want and what makes them feel good about what they're doing. That's good. You're going to do this. Just make sure you know how to sew.

Clarence Fisher: Right, right. That's good. I don't know, would this work in a franchise model?

Melissa Struttmann: Yeah, I think it could. I've had people ask me about opening a second one, and I know for myself living on site, because I'm the toilet scrubber, so when my group leaves, I'm aware of when they've left and I can go in there and start washing and cleaning and scrubbing. If I had something that was 10 miles down the road, I'm just going to have to guess. So for me, that would be harder, but there's plenty of people that do it and make it work. Right. But yeah, I think you could totally franchise this.

Clarence Fisher: Okay, cool. So what final words, any final words of wisdom for our people here?

Melissa Struttmann: I think, again, because I said earlier I wasn't a risk taker. Work within your means and don't go into it thinking all the little details are going to work theirself out because they don't. And this dream you had can be a nightmare if you don't go into it with your eyes wide open. So I've had a ball. I've been more tired than I've ever been in my whole life. I've worked harder than I've worked in my whole life. It's extremely rewarding. I love what I do. I make 400 new friends a year that text me and it's amazing. And if I had it to do over, I would do it over. But make sure the time's right. Make sure that you got all your bases covered and that you can do your business where you are.

Clarence Fisher: Have you and Steve thought about what the end game is?

Melissa Struttmann: No. And we have talked, and I've told, because we have this nice three car garage that's detached on the back of our property, and I've told one of my daughters who is a quilter, I said, anything happens to Steve? Because again, he's so much older than I am.
I said, if anything happens to Steve, you guys are going to have to move in and help me run this business. And so there's this little area in the top of the garage that's like, you can make a little apartment out of it, but it would be, and so my daughter said, well, first thing we do is remodel the garage and let you live out there.
Oh, wow.
So that's her thought that No, I think we're just going to, he would probably like me to have less so we can travel more, but I think that's our next phase is going to be finding people that can be here on site so we can go off for a week.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome. Okay. So my very last question for you is I have the interview deck and the way that we do this, I don't know if you've heard this on an episode yet, but I ask you to give me a number between one and 20, and I'm going to pull the card and it is a total random question.

Melissa Struttmann: Between one and 20.

Clarence Fisher: Yes.

Melissa Struttmann: Okay. Steve's favorite number is 12. So let's do 12.

Clarence Fisher: Alright, let's go. 12.

Melissa Struttmann: 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Clarence Fisher: The 12 card is. If you were designing your own fragrance to represent you, what would you call it?

Melissa Struttmann: Oh, what would I call it? I would call it amazing is what I would call fragrance that would represent me. Let's just go with amazing. We're going to call Amazing.

Clarence Fisher: Amazing. I like that. Amazing. Or the retreat.

Melissa Struttmann: You got to own it.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. So Melissa, how do we get in touch with you?

Melissa Struttmann: Well, as we've said, I'm active on Facebook and Instagram. It's Osage Hills Retreat. If you're not in this area, it is O-S-A-G-E. And then our website is osage hills retreat.com.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Thank you so much for the time that you spent today. It is awesome. That does it for today. Listen, go to Osagehillsretreat.com and book your retreat today. I'm telling you, just from talking with Melissa behind the scenes, she really has an attention to detail. Can't wait for my wife to experience it. Not saying you'll meet my wife when you book your retreat, but maybe you might. But go book your retreat today. You will be happy you did. Until next time, here's what you got to do. Take what you learned today and go own your block. Will we appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe and the visit localmarketmonopoly.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.