Selena Parrish has spent 30 years in veterinary care. She knows what is in every product on her shelves, why it works, and what it will do for your pet. That is not something you find at the big box pet store down the road. That is what she built Wags, Whiskers, and Beyond around.

It started as a converted 18-passenger bus she drove to events across the OKC area. When she was ready for more, she opened a brick and mortar in Yukon, Oklahoma with private enclosed self-wash bays, hand-selected products, and the kind of intentional care that only comes from someone who has spent three decades doing this work. She gives free baths to stray dogs brought in by Yukon animal control officers because it makes them more adoptable. She built relationships with rescues and groomers and veterinarians across the community because that is just who she is.

She came to us with a 10 out of 10 on passion and a 10 out of 10 on frustration. She needed a concrete plan, and we love nothing more than that.

In this episode we dig into why the self-wash is the hook that everything else should be built around, how to stop spreading energy into e-commerce and start building the kind of in-person experience that keeps people coming back, why a photo of a wet dog will always outperform a graphic, and why leaning into the Yukon community is the most powerful marketing move she has not fully made yet.

Selena has always known exactly what she wanted to build. She just needed someone to help her see which parts were already working.

About Selena: Selena Parrish is the founder of Wags, Whiskers, and Beyond in Yukon, Oklahoma. She is a registered veterinary technician with over 30 years of experience and has built a pet boutique and self-serve wash around education, intention, and a genuine love for every animal that walks through her door.

Connect with her:

Website: https://www.wagswhiskersandbeyond.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WagsWhiskersandBeyondLLC

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wagswhiskersandbeyond

The Business Reality Check Podcast is your dose of clarity. Hosted by Jonna and Lori, Co-Founders of Thrive Collective. This podcast is for business owners and solopreneurs who feel burnt out and unfulfilled. They dive deep to uncover the strategic misalignment that is silently sabotaging your success. Learn to eliminate the exhaustion, anchor your foundations with intentional processes and firm boundaries, and achieve total alignment between your life, your offer, and your dream client to stop the cycle of burnout and truly thrive. Real conversations. Real problems. Real solutions.

Watch more episodes and apply to be a guest: https://www.thrivecollective.shop/podcast

Morgan Dilldine and her husband built M&N Property Care from the ground up in the Oklahoma City area. The work is good. Their clients love them. They get referrals because the quality shows up every single time. Morgan has a 90% close rate once she gets someone on the phone. Her clients almost become friends by the end of a job. Those are not small things.

What they are working on right now is consistency. Some months are fully booked. Others go quiet. And when it gets quiet, it gets hard to see clearly.

Morgan also has a farm she tends, shows up at farmers markets, and makes the most of everything she grows and creates. Her husband spent years doing commercial remodels in downtown OKC, managing full project scopes and crews. Together they are a builder and a maker in every sense. And the brand they are building together has way more going for it than they realize yet.

In this episode we get into what it takes to stand out in a saturated contractor market, why the homesteading life Morgan loves is not separate from the brand but actually the best part of it, how to stop posting into the void and start saying the thing that makes someone pick up the phone, and why the clients they already have are their fastest path to the consistency they are after.

Morgan said something near the end that we keep coming back to. People do business with people. And the second you let them actually see you, everything changes.

About Morgan: Morgan Dilldine is the co-founder of M&N Property Care, Remodeling, and Repair in the Oklahoma City area. She and her husband offer residential and commercial remodeling, repairs, and property maintenance. When she is not on a job site, she is tending her farm, showing up at farmers markets, and building something in every corner of her life.

Connect with her:

Website: https://sites.google.com/mnpropertycare.com/mnpropertycare/home

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mnpropertycare/

The Business Reality Check Podcast is your dose of clarity. Hosted by Jonna and Lori, Co-Founders of Thrive Collective. This podcast is for business owners and solopreneurs who feel burnt out and unfulfilled. They dive deep to uncover the strategic misalignment that is silently sabotaging your success. Learn to eliminate the exhaustion, anchor your foundations with intentional processes and firm boundaries, and achieve total alignment between your life, your offer, and your dream client to stop the cycle of burnout and truly thrive. Real conversations. Real problems. Real solutions.

Watch more episodes and apply to be a guest: https://www.thrivecollective.shop/podcast

Mendy Applegate built HDC Academy to answer one of the most frustrating questions in small business: why does nobody hand business owners the actual owner's manual?!

Trust us, she would know. Mendy spent years in corporate, pivoted into running her own bookkeeping firm in 2020, and has grown into one of the most trusted small business educators in the Oklahoma City area. She speaks at the Chamber, at colleges, at real estate groups, at massage schools. She teaches as an adjunct professor. She just released her own textbook! Every piece of that experience went straight into the curriculum she built inside the Academy.

HDC Academy teaches what business school skips and trade school never touches. Accounting, budgeting, profit margins, business structure, tax implications. The mechanics. The fundamentals. The pieces a cosmetologist, a contractor, a coach, and a four-year degree holder all walk away without.

Mendy is teaching it. And colleges across Oklahoma are paying attention! Her vision is bold. She wants HDC Academy in every college and several high schools across the state. We have zero doubt she gets there.

We caught Mendy at one of the most exciting points in her business so far. In this episode we dig into how to lead with transformation when you are already the most trusted name in the room, why the speaking engagements that light her up are her smartest strategic move, and how to streamline a multi-passionate business into one clear funnel without losing the joy.

Mendy walked us through the mindset shift that brought her joy back. She stopped chasing the sale at every speaking engagement and started measuring her success by the work itself. The second she made that shift, everything changed.

About Mendy: Mendy Applegate is the founder of Honey-Do Checklist and the HDC Academy in Oklahoma City. She offers bookkeeping services, business training, and speaking engagements, and recently released her own business textbook. She also teaches as an adjunct professor and is building HDC Academy into a foundational business education program for colleges and high schools across Oklahoma.

Connect with her:

Website: https://www.hdcacademy.org/

Honey-Do Checklist: https://www.honeydo-checklist.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeydochecklist

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeydochecklist/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mendy-applegate-44199a121/

The Business Reality Check Podcast is your dose of clarity. Hosted by Jonna and Lori, Co-Founders of Thrive Collective. This podcast is for business owners and solopreneurs who feel burnt out and unfulfilled. They dive deep to uncover the strategic misalignment that is silently sabotaging your success. Learn to eliminate the exhaustion, anchor your foundations with intentional processes and firm boundaries, and achieve total alignment between your life, your offer, and your dream client to stop the cycle of burnout and truly thrive. Real conversations. Real problems. Real solutions.

Watch more episodes and apply to be a guest: https://www.thrivecollective.shop/podcast