Judy Hunter was dreaming of retirement: more time to make art — like the above watercolor! — and sing alto in the community chorale and visit her grandkids on Cape Cod.
After nearly four decades at JB’s Hair Design in Petoskey, she’d earned it.
Then the salon’s owner decided to retire first.
Judy could have walked away. Instead, she bought the business in 2016 — retirement dreams and all.
Hunter and her husband Gary are longtime Petoskey residents. They raised their kids here and have long been active in the region’s sports, arts, and business communities. But they’d always been employees, not owners. Taking the leap was, well, a leap.
“We had to figure out how to buy it,” Gary said. “We had no money.”
Banks told them to run the business for a year, then come back for a loan. But they still had no money.
Northern Initiatives helped bridge the gap with an SBA 7(a) Community Advantage loan to purchase the building and an SBA Microloan to buy the business.
Then came the next challenge: learning how to run it.
Gary, then general manager of a local sporting goods store, taught himself QuickBooks to handle the salon’s accounts — and eventually put the sporting goods store on QuickBooks, too.
At the salon, they kept most things exactly as they were, including the name. “Changing the name of such an established business would be silly,” Judy said.
Today, the salon’s two employees work on commission, while Judy handles taxes, inventory, and scheduling.
And retirement? It’s still on the horizon.
“We haven’t been able to take new customers in six months,” Judy sighs. She works five days a week, which includes Saturdays (“I have never had a Saturday off.”), when she perms the hair of several nonagenarians. “They always say, ‘See you next week, the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.’”
She still dreams of retiring and now has a feasible, bankable plan to accomplish it. “We could still run the business. We own the building and it has 12 parking spots, which is huge. And we have the most loyal clientele you can imagine.”
