Lila Tunison and her team built Bed and Biscuit Ranch in Bismarck, North Dakota, offering pet daycare, boarding, grooming, and training. They're expanding with a new building and underwater treadmill, with help from SBA resource partners like VBOC and the Women's Business Center.
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I'm Lila Tunison. I'm one of the co owners at Bed and Biscuit Ranch and bed and biscuit 2. We are located in Bismarck, North Dakota. Our main clientele are dogs and cats, and we offer daycare, boarding, grooming, and training. And we are planning on adding an underwater treadmill.
Lyla and I worked together in the North Dakota Army National Guard and our paths would cross because of our love for animals. And so then we would chat about how it was so difficult for our friends in the military to find quality boarding locations when they would go out of town for training. And so then we were like, somebody really should open a boarding facility. And then after months of saying that, we're like, maybe that's us. Maybe we should do this. Okay. Any changes in her medical history?
Neither. Michelle were business people. My whole life I have been in the military up until I retired in 2020. Michelle hadn't either. She was in the Guard her whole career and still in the Guard full time. And so doing this was crazy, frankly, because we were starting from scratch to kind of come up with a plan. I attended conferences and we visited other facilities. I also googled the Small Business Administration and they've got a great entrepreneur's kit. I attended Boots to Business through the Veterans Business Outreach Center. The class was fantastic because it really gave a lot of different resources, lots of reference material. Wendy was great.
Our SBA resource partners, you know, we're a team. Lila has not only just worked with vboc, but she's worked with Women's Business Center Score. Small Business Development Center. With our resource partners, you're able to get confidential, no cost advising. It's been absolutely amazing watching Michelle and Lila, you know, grow as a business from coming to Boots to business with an idea to now expanding and doing an excellent job at it.
Hey, Lila. Oh, hello.
Hi. How are you? Wendy was able to help Lyla and Michelle get the business started from the ground up. Hi, Lila. I'm Julie. Helping them do market research, helping them do some of their business planning, and really pushing the business forward to opening their doors. And now that Wendy has moved on to a different position with the Small Business Administration, I'm able to step in and really help Lila and Michelle keep moving their business forward. And that's really what VBOC is here to do. We are not here just to help businesses start. We are here for the longevity of a business. And so whatever they might need along the way, we're really here for that.
We're super excited. This is the area where we're hoping to start our next building.
It's rvbot can also provide financial guidance and assistance to our small businesses. Lila and Michelle are looking to add an additional building to their main property. Thanks so much for having Wendy and I out at the ranch last week. It was so great. And so what we're able to do is help them look through the financials of the business and make sure that they are making the right choice and provide them with some guidance and some loan opportunities through our SBA backed loans. Yeah, we should definitely take a look.
Look, I would not be a successful business owner if I didn't have great partners. Lila's amazing and at Bed and Biscuit too. We're fortunate to have my brother Mike as well as my sister in law Sarah to be partners with us too. And what we're finding with the SBA is it truly is the right partner to help you in whatever type of entrepreneurial endeavor you decide to take on.
There's just a lot of different things within the SBA that helped us on the front end because we didn't know what was. We didn't know. And you got to have somebody with experience that's bringing that knowledge to you to get you started on the right foot.
If you ask them for help, they are more than willing to help you. They want you to be successful. And having resources like the SBA makes it so beneficial for small business owners because you know that with partners like that, if you can dream it, you can achieve it.
