How a heart attack and being hit by a semi led to this businesswoman’s transformation

Having a heart attack at a young age and then being hit by a semi have transformed Ashley Thill’s personal life and her professional one, too.

Now, she and her new business partner, Kami Power, are hoping their new Full Circle Strategies will be transformational for other small-to-medium-size business owners.

“Our whole journey has been about how do . . . small- and medium-size businesses get the same kind of service as they would in the corporate environment?” Power said.

She’s talking about things like marketing, tax strategy and bookkeeping.

“We’re creating a community of other service providers,” Power said. “So, really, when someone walks in the door, we can say hey . . . here are all the people in our network who can support you.”

It’s a long way from the days when Thill said she’d never have a business partner.

For more than two decades, Thill has had an executive consulting business called A Z Advisory Group, which she took a step back from while she ran her family’s Zernco construction company from 2009 to 2019.

She built a new Zernco headquarters at Pawnee and Greenwich, and she said the company was on track to become a $50 million contractor. Thill was still trying to help some of her C-suite clients, too, but it was all too much. In 2017, she had a heart attack at age 44.

“It was a stress-related heart attack,” Thill said. “There was no permanent damage, but it put the fear of god in me.”

Thill never had planned to stay at Zernco permanently. She was trying to help her parents transition out of owning the company. The heart attack prompted her to speed up that transition, and in 2019, Scott Marko became the sole owner.

Thill and her stepfather, Dave Zerngast, gave Marko the option to buy the Zernco building or remain for two years and then get his own place. He chose the latter, which he’s now building near K-96 and Greenwich.

“Which is great because I still . . . have a special fondness for that building, and it’s the last business that my dad and I still own together,” Thill said.

She and her stepfather now plan to develop the other four acres they own next to the Zernco property.

Not according to plan

When Thill left Zernco, she needed a new home for her consulting business. That’s when she moved to what everyone calls “the white building” at 3219 E. Douglas just west of the Hillcrest Apartments. It’s a former rug store and one-time funeral home.

She found an investor to buy the building and made a three-year commitment to get the building running. Thill moved in her consulting business, which she planned to keep there only until she moved back to Pawnee and Greenwich. She also created a venue with plans to start the Whole Shebang, a kind of community space “all around empowering women in business and youth in business.”

The deal closed in 2019. Thill renovated the building in January 2020, and then COVID hit, “which kind of took away from experiences because nobody left their house.”

“It didn’t turn out as I planned.”

Her goal still is to recruit 100 entrepreneurial-minded women to help keep the building alive through a $95-a-month membership that allows them to have private working space upstairs and have an area downstairs for shared experiences, workshops and lunches.

Thill’s idea is to then transition ownership of the building to a small group of members.

So far, there are about 30 members.

Thill said she was working on increasing membership while also doing her consulting work when an accident changed the direction of her professional life.

‘Not a good deal’

On April 14, Thill was driving to her home in rural Douglass where ranchers were burning fields.

“It was almost, like, picturesque,” she said.

Thill was stopped at an intersection, and she said a semi driver, perhaps distracted by the fires, hit her at full speed. She said she was pulled out of her seat belt and into the back seat of her vehicle, where she banged her head.

“And when I came to, I didn’t know who I was.”

Her husband arrived, and emergency workers asked Thill who was president.

She snapped back — using colorful language — to ask why they’d want to know that.

“And my husband goes, ‘She’s back.’ ”

Thill said she was bedridden for a couple of weeks and then started physical therapy.

“I couldn’t even walk without falling over.”

She said she was forced to slow down.

“I couldn’t operate at a C-suite level for at least 60 days,” Thill said. “I lost a few clients because I wasn’t at full capacity.”

She said that “it was not a good deal.”

It’s what made her change her mind about taking on a business partner, “which I said I would never do.”

Thill and Power had a mutual connection and began talking.

Power been in corporate world, most recently at Spirit AeroSystems in program management, when the pandemic caused her to decide to stay home with her 12-year-old.

It’s “hard to be a busy executive and teach sixth grade math,” she said.

Power said she’s always had a passion for small and medium businesses.

“I love the entrepreneurial community.”

She said she wanted to connect and give back to that community, and she said Full Circle Strategies will do that.

“It was a need that we saw,” Power said. “It’s about the community we create for the small businesses. It’s kind of our dream for it.”

Although Thill said she’s still not back to full capacity, she sees a lot of silver linings in everything she’s been through. She said she’s learned the importance of self care and other forms of wellness and wants to help others learn that, too.

“There is something to be said for looking at things from a different perspective,” Thill said.

“I’m still learning.”

She said she plans to continue to as well.

“For the rest of my life.”