Case Study: Do You Need to Slow Down?

Lisa Disbrow's doctors urged her to slow down. Could the entrepreneur find a way to manage her illness and her business?

Andrew Cutraro

On the Job Lisa Disbrow wasn't willing to leave behind the business she loved.

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Lisa Disbrow was lying in bed with her laptop open one night in late 2008 when an e-mail caught her attention. A customer of her popular Raleigh, North Carolina, clothing boutique, Scout & Molly's, was interested in opening a branch of the store in the Dominican Republic. After seven years in business, Disbrow had two locations and was about to open a third. She got frequent inquiries from developers and entrepreneurs wanting to help her expand to other U.S. cities. But setting up shop in a Caribbean resort seemed like a dream. Excited, she read the message to her husband, Jarrett. He quickly threw cold water on the idea.

Disbrow wasn't used to hearing no from her husband. But doctors had recently diagnosed multiple sclerosis in the 34-year-old mother of two. The tremors, numbness, dizziness, fatigue, and, on occasion, slurred speech and difficulty walking -- not to mention frequent visits to the doctor -- had upended her family's comfortable existence and made managing the business alone nearly impossible. Already, Jarrett had been pushing his wife to scale back her hours. Now, he implored her to put aside thoughts of expanding Scout & Molly's, at least until they could regain their balance. "Give it a year," he pleaded.

After years of skillfully juggling a fast-growing business and a full personal life, Disbrow faced a gut-wrenching dilemma. Not only was the breakneck pace to which she was accustomed becoming difficult to maintain, it was now a hazard to her health. Stress, her doctors warned, would cause more frequent flare-ups of her MS, during which her symptoms intensified and put her out of commission for days or weeks at a time. And keeping the disease at bay required drugs that suppressed her immune system and left her susceptible to other illness.

She and Jarrett were fortunate in one sense: His own start-up, a pediatric drug marketing company, was doing well, so the couple didn't need her income to get by. Her medical bills, moreover, were covered by their existing private insurance. Yet Disbrow was reluctant to relinquish any control of Scout & Molly's, which she named for her two Labrador retrievers. Running the business, she recognized, kept her from dwelling on her illness. She also feared that without her constant presence, sales might suffer and new opportunities might pass her by. "Your business does better when you're there," she says. "No one is going to care about it like you do."

Disbrow had loved clothes since she was a girl but never envisioned herself working in fashion. After college, she earned a graduate degree in education and planned for a career as a college counselor. One day, though, while she was shopping in a chic store, she found herself in a long, friendly conversation with the owner. She eventually took a part-time job at the store and discovered that she loved selling. In 2002, backed by a $60,000 loan and $20,000 in savings, she opened Scout & Molly's.

The store offered hip brands such as Nanette Lepore and BCBG, with a personal touch. Disbrow painted the walls bright colors and hired an interior designer who handpicked vintage furniture and original artwork. Disbrow was rarely away from the store, and she insisted her sales staff welcome customers warmly, to make them feel as if they "were shopping in their best friend's closet." By 2006, sales hit $1 million; Disbrow had opened a second store in Chapel Hill and was making plans to license a third in Greensboro. (She took the Scout & Molly's name off that store after a year.) Says Gary Rosenblum, a national sales manager for Parameter, a New York clothing line that has sold to Scout & Molly's for seven years: "She's an incredible merchant."

Disbrow's health, though, was another matter. Not long after giving birth to her second child, she began to notice a mysterious numbness behind one knee. It got so bad that it kept her awake at night, and it was followed by weakness in her right arm and fatigue that was unusual for her. An MRI turned up minor irregularities, but her neurologist brushed them off, attributing her symptoms to stress. Believing something more serious was wrong with her body, Disbrow sought other opinions and underwent tests for nutritional deficiencies, Crohn's disease, and a host of other maladies.

On a normal day, Disbrow's symptoms were imperceptible to others, but she sometimes dropped things and tripped over her own feet. One day in the store, she was talking to a vendor when she started feeling dizzy, slurring her words, and dragging her right foot when she walked. It took two years for doctors to arrive at a diagnosis. By the summer of 2008, every possibility but MS had been ruled out.

Friends and family members urged Disbrow to slow down. Jarrett, a former sales rep at GlaxoSmithKline, picked up some of the slack at home by getting the kids ready for school and cooking dinner. But he was also in the midst of his own start-up. They discussed the options, including selling one or both of the stores. Yet Disbrow found herself unable to scale back. She fielded offers from people wanting her to expand to Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Wilmington, North Carolina; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She made plans to open a new store in Charlotte with one of her employees. "I put the business before myself," she says. "I wasn't ready to say, 'OK, let's hire somebody,' because that would have been admitting to myself that this illness was affecting me."

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