The Chamber’s ongoing series gives residents a chance to hear directly from local leaders, learn about issues shaping Folsom and walk away with a better understanding of their community
I walked into Wednesday morning’s Folsom Focus familiar with the three successful businesses represented on the stage. I walked out knowing considerably more about the people behind them, the challenges they faced and just how much work took place outside of the public eye to get those businesses where they are today.
But I also walked away thinking about Folsom Focus itself and something I believe deserves more attention in our community: These programs put on by the Folsom Chamber of Commerce and Choose Folsom are extremely well done, genuinely informative and worth attending.
And I don’t mean just for business owners.
Wednesday’s Business Over Breakfast program featured Mikuni Restaurant Group’s Taro Arai, Destination Aesthetics founder Shawna Chrisman and YogaSix owner Michelle Watts. On paper, it was a discussion about entrepreneurship and growing a business beyond its first location. Sitting in the room and listening to them, however, it became something much broader.
It was a conversation about taking risks, making mistakes, recovering from setbacks, choosing the right people, building relationships, making time for family and finding the determination to keep going when the path ahead looks anything but certain.
As a business owner and founder myself, there was plenty I could relate to. But as I listened, I kept thinking that you didn’t need to own a business to get something out of what these three had to say. There were lessons in that room that could apply to just about anyone who has taken a chance, faced adversity or wondered whether all the work they were putting into something would eventually pay off.
We all know Mikuni. Many throughout the region know Destination Aesthetics, and YogaSix has established itself locally with locations in El Dorado Hills and now Folsom. From the outside, these are businesses people associate with success.
Wednesday offered a look at the side of that success most of us never see.
Arai talked about Mikuni’s early years, when his family struggled just to keep the restaurant alive. There were months when rent wasn’t paid, times when suppliers stopped providing the fish they needed and plenty of uncertainty about whether the family business was going to make it. Years later, after Mikuni had become successful, another series of decisions left the company millions of dollars in debt and facing the possibility of bankruptcy.
Today, someone walking into a Mikuni restaurant would have little reason to imagine any of that.
Chrisman’s story was different but carried many of the same themes. Destination Aesthetics began in a 10-by-12-foot room while she was still working as a nurse practitioner. She spoke about the moments that convinced her to commit fully to the business, the challenges that came with expansion and the realization that growing meant she could no longer carry every responsibility herself.
Watts offered yet another perspective. After 24 years at Intel, she walked away from a successful corporate career and started over as an entrepreneur. Today she owns YogaSix studios in El Dorado Hills and Folsom, but she was very candid about the sleepless nights, staffing challenges and pressure that have accompanied opening that second location.
Three different industries. Three very different journeys. Yet there was a striking amount of common ground.
What we see as success from the outside rarely tells the entire story.
There is an enormous amount of work taking place behind the scenes of any business that customers and the general public will never see. There are risks being taken, mistakes being made and corrected, employees being trained, relationships being built and difficult decisions being made long after the doors close for the day. There are probably plenty of nights when the person everyone assumes has it all figured out is lying awake wondering what comes next.
That perspective was eye-opening, even for someone who understands firsthand that building a business is rarely as simple as it appears from the outside.
When people see Folsom Times today, for example, they see the finished product. They see the stories, photographs, breaking news, community coverage, sports, events and everything else that appears on their screens each day. They don’t necessarily see the countless hours, difficult decisions and challenges that go into building and growing a local news organization from the ground up.
Every business has its own version of that story.
One of the messages that stuck with me Wednesday was that making a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean you have failed. Sometimes the mistake becomes the lesson that changes everything afterward. Arai described one particularly costly mistake as ultimately becoming one of the best things that happened to Mikuni because it forced the company to rethink its mission, values and culture.
That’s a perspective worth hearing whether you own a company, manage employees, work for someone else, are raising a family or are simply trying to figure out your own next chapter.
And that brings me back to Folsom Focus.
What impressed me as much as the panel itself was the forum the Folsom Chamber and Choose Folsom have created for conversations like this to happen. Folsom Focus puts local and regional leaders in front of the community and gives them time to get beyond the talking points and dig into subjects that actually matter to the people who live and work here.
The format is comfortable and conversational, but there is a tremendous amount of information packed into the morning. You listen. You learn. You hear perspectives you might not otherwise encounter. You can ask questions. You meet other people in the community. And, if Wednesday was any indication, you can walk out looking at a familiar subject quite differently than you did when you walked in.
That is why I would encourage more Folsom residents to pay attention to the Folsom Focus schedule and attend these programs when the subject interests them.
Too often, an event organized by a Chamber of Commerce gets mentally categorized as a “business event.” Certainly, the Chamber serves our business community, and business owners and professionals have plenty to gain from attending. But Folsom Focus has value well beyond that audience.
The subjects being discussed are community subjects.
Business growth affects our local economy and jobs. Education affects families, neighborhoods and our future workforce. Development affects traffic, housing and city services. Public safety affects everyone. Economic development, transportation, health care and the many other issues shaping Folsom don’t stop at the door of a business.
These are conversations residents should be part of, and Folsom Focus provides another way for that to happen.
The next program is a particularly good example.
Folsom Focus returns Oct. 16 with a State of Education discussion, and there may be few subjects more relevant to a growing community like ours right now.
Folsom and the surrounding area continue to change rapidly. New homes bring new families and students. Our schools are growing and changing along with the community, bringing questions about enrollment, facilities, staffing, programs and how to meet the needs of an area that looks different today than it did even a decade ago.
Those issues obviously matter if you have children in school, but they should matter even if you don’t.
The quality and capacity of our schools influence where families choose to live, our workforce, neighborhoods, economic development and the overall health of the community. What happens in our classrooms today will help shape what Folsom looks like years from now.
With so much happening across our area schools, I expect the State of Education Folsom Focus to be another enlightening morning and another opportunity to hear directly from the people closest to the issues.
At Folsom Times, part of our job is to attend events like these and report what was said for readers who couldn’t be there. We did that with Wednesday’s program and will continue doing so.
But reading the story afterward and actually sitting in the room are two different experiences.
There is value in hearing an answer in its entirety. There is value in seeing how someone responds when a question takes the conversation somewhere unexpected. There is value in being able to ask your own question or speak with someone afterward. And there is value in simply being around other people who care about what is happening in their community.
The Folsom Chamber and Choose Folsom deserve credit for continuing to create that opportunity through Folsom Focus.
We hear a great deal about wanting people to become more engaged in their communities. Engagement doesn’t always have to mean attending a City Council meeting or stepping up to a microphone. Sometimes it can be as simple as showing up, having breakfast, listening to people who know a subject well and leaving a little more informed than you were an hour earlier.
Wednesday morning did that for me.
I went expecting to hear three successful entrepreneurs talk about growing their businesses. I left with a greater appreciation for what Arai, Chrisman and Watts went through to reach the success people see today — but also with a greater appreciation for the Folsom Focus series itself.
These are informative, well-produced community conversations, and more people should take advantage of them.
So when the next Folsom Focus rolls around, don’t assume it isn’t for you because you don’t own a business or aren’t a Chamber member. Take a look at the subject. If it affects your family, your neighborhood, your work or simply the community you call home, consider taking a seat in the room.
You might be surprised by how much you take away from it.
To learn more about upcoming Folsom Focus events, visit ChooseFolsom.com.
Bill Sullivan is the co-founder and publisher of Folsom Times.
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