Photos Courtesy of Dane Simmons
Logan Ramsey
Editor-in-Chief
In the late 2000s, Dane Simmons had all his eggs in one basket.
“I was a leading performer, and in the midst of one phone call, I could lose everything,” Dane said.
At the time, Dane was working at Apria Healthcare, and he didn’t necessarily feel like he fit in. He would suggest ideas for improvements for the company that people didn’t want to hear, and then the next thing he knows, his boss would take credit for the idea.
In a moment that would change his career, he received a phone call. Thinking he was calling in for a meeting, he hears on the other line, “‘Mr. Simmons, you have two choices. You can go on three weeks severance or you can go part-time with benefits.”
Dane chose part-time, but his salary had been cut in half now. He realized that in one phone call, he could lose all his income.
“Never again,” Dane declared.
Using his newfound spare time, he started making calls to surgical implant manufacturers saying, “You don’t have any sales? I’ll be the one to get you into the market.”
Dane saw that surgical sales was the opportunity in Idaho that didn’t have representation.
As Dane built up a customer base, he was able to take on more representatives and cover more territory. By 2011, Simmons Surgical was born.
While Dane has other business ventures, Simmons Surgical is his main venture and it’s allowed him to invest in the community and build wealth.
Six years later, after watching her husband go through it, Jennifer Simmons felt inspired to declare her own financial freedom.
Jennifer and Dane attended college together at Idaho State University and afterward, she got a job in her degree field as a Physical Therapy Assistant.
It was a passion of Jennifer’s, “to make people feel better and stronger,” but “there was just something missing for me, and I just didn’t love it… So I just decided to quit and go for it.”
Jennifer was scared at first, but, “I knew I was gonna make it work somehow. Somehow, someway, I had enough determination and enough work ethic.”
She started out with no equipment, and to even get set up she had to rent the space out of another gym.
She began to build her clientele with the philosophy, “No matter if one person comes to your class, or ten, you teach it like they’re the most important person in that room because they showed up.”
The Simmons balance a life with three kids, LaJae, 9, Nyla, 7, and Dane III, 5, and Jennifer said they allow them, “to be creative, in their own way.”
They try to keep the kids involved too, like allowing LaJae to design a room in Dane’s building or Nylla making her own work-out routines.
Today, Dane and Jennifer are still pushing their businesses forward.
In September, Jennifer did away with her old system of “boot camp” classes and instead swapped the classes out with names that “fit what the format is.” Not only that, but she’s oversubscribed on her classes, so there’s a waiting list to take them.
Dane is preparing to introduce Suture by Simmons Surgical, a surgical skills lab in Old Town Pocatello for surgeons to work on modern surgery techniques.
The build-out for the lab is scheduled to be completed by late 2019, but the lab won’t be officially open until the spring of 2020.
