Suzy Bushur is bringing years of family life, financial experience, and volunteer service into her first business, with a team she trusts and plans that reach beyond the services.
Before I had finished my tour of The Beach in Troy, the conversation had already paused for greetings, a familiar face, and a customer looking for a service.
It gave me a chance to see the business in motion. People asked questions, talked with the staff, and moved between the experiences available. Suzy showed me around, explaining the equipment while keeping up with the people coming through the doors.
The Beach Tanning & Spa opened on January 2, 2026. At 46, Suzy is in her first year of owning a business, and she has brought a great deal of her life into how she runs it.
For women accustomed to fitting their own needs around everyone else's, she wants this to be a place to spend some time on themselves. She understands how easily that time can disappear. Her life includes four children and eleven “bonus children” she and her family have helped raise, a long career in finance, and a decade of work with the St. Jacob park district.
Now, those experiences meet in a business built around wellness, personal connection, and making room for people.
A Place to Explore Wellness
As Suzy showed me around The Beach, there was plenty to ask about. The business brings together tanning, sunless options, and a range of wellness experiences, with equipment that can look unfamiliar until someone explains what happens during a session.
The dedicated red light bed uses red and near-infrared LEDs, with adjustable settings. Separate light panels offer another way to experience those wavelengths. Suzy explained that the dedicated red light sessions last ten minutes. Possible benefits of red and near-infrared light therapy include smoother-looking skin and a reduced appearance of fine lines, with ongoing research exploring pain relief and muscle recovery. Benefits vary from person to person and depend on the treatment schedule.
The Arctic Dry Float was one experience I wanted to understand better. A treatment table gently lowers guests into a bed of chilled water, with a membrane keeping their skin dry. It offers the sensation of floating and exposure to cold without stepping into a pool. The Beach lists reduced inflammation and muscle recovery among the Arctic Dry Float’s potential benefits
For those who prefer warmth, The Beach offers a far-infrared sauna that accommodates one or two people, providing a space to unwind and sweat at lower temperatures than a traditional sauna.
Whole-body vibration platforms stimulate repeated muscle contractions, with possible benefits including improved strength and balance.
Another option is PEMF, short for pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which uses equipment such as full-body mats to deliver pulses of a magnetic field. Researchers are studying its potential to ease certain types of muscle and joint pain.
The tanning equipment has its own differences. The K11 Air combines adjustable UVA, UVB, and red light in an open design, while the SunRise 11 is a standing booth. Other beds offer features such as cooling, music, and adjustable tanning programs.
For sunless color, the Mystic Unity spray booth offers customizable shades without UV exposure. Its WellFit skincare applications can be added to a spray tan or selected on their own.
As we moved between the equipment, Suzy took time to explain the choices. For someone like me, who had heard about several of these services without trying them, that conversation helped turn a list of unfamiliar names into a clearer picture of a visit.
Membership choices include wellness, tanning, and combined access. Suzy explained that all-access members can choose up to four experiences in a day. That creates room to explore several services in one place and choose according to personal interests and available time.
The Experience She Brought With Her
Throughout the tour, I kept thinking about the woman who had brought all of this together. Her first business had opened in midlife, but the experience behind it had been accumulating for decades.
Suzy became a mother at a young age. Responsibility arrived quickly. She needed a job and a way to provide for her son. That job became a career in finance lasting more than fifteen years. While working full time, she continued her education with her employer's support, eventually earning a master's degree.
The company valued her, she said. It also became the place where she met her husband. They did the same kind of work, and her career brought her to Illinois, where they eventually built their life together. Later, after welcoming two more children, she stepped away from her financial career to stay home. The family settled in St. Jacob, across from the park she visited regularly with the children.
What Ten Years of Volunteering Taught Her
People began encouraging her to help run the park district. She was unsure. She had never written a grant or managed a government entity. But she took it on, and over ten years learned the administration, tax levies, grants, payroll responsibilities, and organizing that kept it moving.
What stayed with me was how quickly Suzy had moved past those ten years of volunteer work before explaining what they involved. Grants. Payroll. Budgets. Responsibility for a place families depended on. I wondered how many women do the same thing with their own experience, describing it as “just volunteering” or “helping out,” when they have been learning to lead for years.
That work had given her the practical knowledge to open The Beach.
“All of that, I have been able to do on my own because I had been doing it for the last ten years,” she said.
It had also taught her how much she cared about the people and places she served. When she began building the business, she spent two years preparing to hand over her park responsibilities. Two women now share that work, and she still checks in and offers her help.
Leaving something she loved required trust. Building something new required it, too.
The People Who Make It Work
At The Beach, she has found that trust in a core group who have been with her since the doors opened: Heidi, her full-time manager, and Olivia and Marti, who both work part time. Marti is also her best friend of fifteen years.
She speaks about them with affection, and when we discussed another possible location, her hesitation centered on whether she could recreate what they have together.
“These people are my family,” she said.
The relationships reach beyond work. Children attend the same schools. Members become familiar faces around town. Humor carries into the videos Suzy shares online, where she is happy to laugh at herself and let people see the imperfect moments.
She wants guests to feel comfortable enough to ask questions and get to know the people helping them. Recommendations from guests have played an important part in the business's growth.
A Family Tradition of Service
Her plans for The Beach also reflect a family connection that has long shaped her community work: military service.
Her father was a Vietnam veteran, other relatives served, and both of her adult sons chose military paths. One is an Army captain currently deployed. Veterans Day holds personal meaning for the family, and making space to recognize veterans is an important part of what Suzy wants to do here.
Previously, her family helped develop a Veterans Day event in St. Jacob that brought people together and helped fund accessible pathways in the park.
For The Beach’s first Veterans Day, Suzy is turning that family tradition into a week of giving back.
In her announcement, she describes Veterans Day as the most important holiday in her home. Her gratitude extends to the ordinary things she values: freedom, family, business, and the ability to live her daily life. She wants that gratitude to lead to action.
The week begins Monday, November 9, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with a Little Black Book Mix & Mingle and veterans fundraiser at The Beach, open to the public and Little Black Book members. Guests who make a donation will receive a free Beach experience and a goodie bag. Donations from the event will go to the Troy VFW to support local veterans.
For the rest of the week, The Beach will offer one-time experiences at 50 percent off, with all proceeds from those experiences donated to support local veterans. Throughout the entire week, veterans and their spouses can enjoy any experience free of charge. Suzy is using the honor system, with no proof of service or marriage required.
Giving people several days to participate also leaves room for other Veterans Day traditions and commitments. It is a practical expression of something that has run through our conversation: Suzy thinks about the people she wants to welcome, then works out how to make it easier for them to take part.
Helping Women Take Their Next Step
She is applying the same approach to women building businesses. Suzy plans to bring a group together before business hours to practice social media skills, from making videos to going live. She knows that motivation does not automatically come with instructions.
“You don't need to be inspired. You need to know how to do it,” she said.
The day before our interview, a 25-year-old woman came to her worried about filing her LLC paperwork. Suzy pulled up two chairs, and they worked through it together. In about thirty minutes, it was done.
I thought about the difference between encouraging someone and sitting down beside her. Suzy had given her time to help with the task that was making this young woman hesitate. In my conversations for GlowInto, I’m often interested in what helps a woman move forward. Here was one practical answer: someone willing to give her time and work through an unfamiliar step together.
There is a clear connection between the young mother who learned unfamiliar work because she needed to, the woman who took on a park district despite her doubts, and the business owner willing to sit beside someone taking her own first step.
Suzy recognizes the uncertainty. She also knows how much can happen once you begin.
When I asked what she would tell her younger self, she paused. Then she offered a few words.
“You're gonna do it, girl.”
At The Beach, those words have a place in the future she is building: a business where people can explore wellness experiences, a team she trusts to welcome them, and room for others to find the confidence to begin something of their own.
The Beach Tanning & Spa
643 Edwardsville Road , Troy, IL, United States, 62294
https://thebeachtanningspa.com/
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