You Can Do That Here: Recent Episodes
Andrew Zwicker - KAST
How can you succeed in business, doing what you love faster? Learn how with in-depth, candid, professional and real conversations between successful entrepreneurs on how they did it, and how you can learn from their success. Hear their start-up stories, get their advice and be inspired so that You Can Do That here too!
Jared and Bethany Salte joined us in The Old Firehall in Rossland, BC to talk about life, love and how that translates into great music. They played two gorgeous acoustic version so their songs Never have time and All we have.
The Bros Landreth caught up with The VinylCast in Nelson, BC for a deep dive into their songs Got to be You and Our Love and a spectacular live acoustic performance of each.
Numbers. They are both the language of business and its method for keeping score. Knowing that one could discern that they who have the best knowledge and understanding of the numbers, will most likely also score highest on the bottom line.
There is a particular subset of the entrepreneurial world that struggles more often than others with the numbers: The creative entrepreneur. The people who are so good at their craft that people want to give them money for it, and thus their creativity becomes a business.
They excel at their craft but not always at the numbers side of the business. Making that task even harder for the creative entrepreneur is the often subjective nature of placing value on their work.
Figuring out how to properly and effectively price your work as a creative entrepreneur is critical to your success.
So we know there is a clear market out there with a clear need. What it took was someone who lived through that need to come up with the solution.
Melissa Welsh of Nelson, BC has done just that.
Follow your passion as a photographer, only to realize you can't afford to live off of your passion, come up with a solution that increases the profitability of your own business and many others by selling them your system? You Can Do That Here!
What is the ultimate goal of pretty well all companies? Well of course it's to make money. Hopefully it's at least a little bit to do some good in the world, but most of all and most often the end game for any entrepreneur is to sell their company.
Yes, building your idea from scratch into something big and profitable that someone else wants to give you millions of dollars for some day is essentially the driving force behind most startups.
Selling your company is awesome right? Well... Yes and no... and not always.
The biggest downside to selling your company of course, whether you stay on as an employee or not, is that you're no longer in control of the company. It's no longer your ideas, thoughts, morals and principles guiding the ship.
Sometimes that's great, sometimes it sucks. Like seeing the company you built and then sold moved out of town, leaving all of the hard working employees, friends and the work family you built out of work.
Don Freschi faced exactly that scenario, and from the moment the company decided to pick up stakes his clock started counting down on a non-compete to get back in the game.
Sell your company, see it move out of town and layoff your entire workforce, wait out a non-compete and then launch back into the game to start rebuilding something bigger and better? You can do that here!
Put in the time and effort ,work on your delivery and consistency, and find the right team that wants to get to the next level. That is a simple formula to success in both the curling and business world.
Nathan Small, now making his home in Nelson,BC has followed that strategy to success to a professional level in both of those pursuits, all while competing at a high hobby level in the other.
The result so far, has seen him become one of the top support engineers on the planet in his role as a technical director at one of the 5 largest software companies on earth.
Not to mention he’s also an accomplished professional curler with Olympic aspirations.
Bounce around Ontario growing up, fall in love with computers at a young age, get head hunted from a chance golf game with a tech startup CTO and go on to be one of the top support engineers at one of the largest tech companies on earth, while trading in your Ontario life for a Lakeside dream in Nelson,BC? You Can Do That Here!
Larry Sparks of Golden, BC, has led a life and career as a community builder, and over the past couple of years he has put that attribute to work launching his own, self named Enterprise to do just that. Connect entrepreneurs with the professional talent and team members they need to take their ideas over the top.
Move to Golden after being inspired by a staff rating trip retreat? Ingrain yourself in the local community build a large and growing network of talented folks, and put your community building skills to work in a new business? You can do that here!
Chris Kent of Fruitvale, BC has made a life and a career out of the pursuit of simplicity. Having recently gone out on his own launching Left of Center designs, he’s hoping that formula will be the key to having fun and making money.
Hang your shingle and go out on your own helping others turn their ideas into reality, and solving people’s needs with beautifully simple solutions? You can do that here!
Blockchain is one of those new kid on the block opportunities. A new and emerging sector with clear standards yet to be set. In many ways the potential of Blockchain can and likely eventually will change the backbone of how we handle data in just about every aspect of our life and economy.
The opportunity is huge, and if you can be the one who develops “The Standard,” you’ll be positioned for massive success. Gustavo Nobrega of Levare Research is working hard to be that guy.
Grow up 10,000 km, a hemisphere, a different country, culture and language away, spend your whole life in a City near Sao Paulo, Brazil before making a connection and finding the opportunity of a better life for his young family, and a massive opportunity to potentially be a big player in a rapidly emerging sector, all while living and enjoying your new life in The Kootenays? You Can Do That Here!
For creative / lifestyle / entrepreneurial nomads Krista Humphrey and Bernard Mitchell, the latest stop on their adventure is here in The Kootenays.
They’re putting their maker mentality, successful entrepreneurial history and newly completed university degrees to work on an exciting new experiment in Trail.
Head out from Ontario in a Volkswagen van with a plan for bigger things, settle and launch a successful creative business in Whistler, cash it all in and head to California to gain a higher education before moving to Trail to buy, renovate and transform an old church into a live/work industrial design studio? You Can Do That Here!
Jonathan Quarrie, originally of Blackpool England, and now calling Rossland, BC had a desire to create a snowboard that perfectly matched the conditions and riding style of his home mountain. That is what has been driving the development of his new company Starlight Snowboards.
Grow up snowboarding the dry slopes of the UK, develop a passion for the sport that would lead you to the powder filled slopes of British Columbia’s Kootenays and start your own snowboard manufacturing company on the side while working full time in the hopes of launching something bigger? You Can Do That Here!
Co-work spaces have been popping up in recent years, and the latest to try and pull it off, with grand aspirations of much bigger things is a Calgary-come-California tech transplant in Megan Adams.
Launch your own marketing business after studying online courses, move to Silicon Valley, pick up a major client and then get head hunted by a billion dollar company to teach online marketing courses before moving back to the Kootenays to build and foster a local tech community? You Can Do That here!
What if vending machine experiences became a new social channel where you could gift products and snacks to other through your phone, swipe right and left on others who enjoy the same snacks as you….. Who knows. The future and possibilities are endless and the time seems to be right. Brad Pommen of Nelson,BC has been thinking about the idea for years and is now making it happen in a big, big way.
Disrupt the vending machine industry with a new high tech, data driven concept, to rapidly take over the aging industry and take it to the next level? You Can Do That Here!
GeoLyn Mantei of Nelson, BC was driven from an early age to take care of herself, later her family and ultimately many others like her. She found entrepreneurship a natural outlet to do so and that her talents were just the foundation needed to launch numerous successful ventures.
Today she’s at the helm of an international digital marketing and communication firm Moda Partners as well as running a locally geared online marketing company Quickshot Media.
Be driven by a mission to help other women reach their own goals and launch two innovative companies to fuel the growth of her next big thing… that organization she dreamed of at 17? You Can Do That Here.
Remember Vinyl? Sure you do. In fact if we look at the stats you probably own a record player and collect a few records yourself.
Yes, looking way back to the depths of 2005/2006, with iTunes in full swing, and peer to peer sharing sites still hanging on it looked like the physical medium for music was all but dead. By the numbers it was. In 2007 less than a million records were sold in the US. That’s when the Vinyl revolution took hold and by 2017 ten years later that number grew to greater than 14 million records sold. A greater than 1000% growth rate for a medium previously pronounced dead on numerous occasions. During that time the rise of the podcast also appeared with over 50 million North Americans regularly listening to podcasts. At the same time, the re-emergence and now craze that is the subscription box service appeared on the scene.
In 2018, 3 guys from BC are betting they can merge those three trends in something they are calling The VinylCast. With it’s launch happening now. They’ll soon find out if the idea has financial legs, and can be an innovative new piece of the Vinyl revolution.
Learn more about The VinylCast
Start life as an entrepreneur at a young age selling vegetables at the market in the Costa Rican village you grew up in, grow that spirit into a highly educated, high level executive who loves solving problems and working with data, go on to be the CEO of a number of tech ventures, connect with a like-minded entrepreneur with small town roots and launch a game changing new company aiming to lead the way in the fourth industrial revolution? You can do that here!
Information. It’s the currency of our current era. Indeed, they who have the most and best information available to them at the fastest speed, has the most power.
Knowing that, it would naturally seem that the biggest opportunities would lie with those would could best provide information to those who need it, quickly simply and reliably. But how does one even get their little toe into the market of delivering information, with so many enormous players to compete against with massive amounts of capital and talent behind them?
The first trick as always to any successful business is to find a specific problem for specific people that would have value if you could solve it. The more specific and narrow your focus is, the better. Find that niche market you can solve a problem for, establish yourself as the thought leader in that small space, and then be amongst the first to deliver them the solution they need.
Chris McGrath of Nelson, BC has done just that with his latest venture Tangowork, building chat-bots for some major clients.
Get into the online industry in the early days, take a wild ride from building a few corporate websites in the Kootenays to being headhunted by a major bank, spend a few years kiteboarding in St Lucia, and starting a few businesses along the way, before jumping in to dominate the internal chat-bot space? You Can Do That Here!
At some point in our lives we all look back and wish we had gotten in on the next big thing, while it was still just emerging.
Having the foresight to see when an emerging trend is just about to go big is one thing. Having that just about to explode new industry also line up with your talents and lifelong passion is a golden opportunity..
Virtual reality has long been a future promise of our generation. In many ways the giant headsets became the symbol of “The Future,” in the early 90’s. When they failed to materialize into a consumer ready and accepted product though, they also became a bit of a symbol of the “Unattainable future,” when things looked more bleak.
20 years later however, all of the critical factors for virtual reality’s breakthrough have lined up and the long emerging trend is having its hockey stick growth moment.
Lee Wasilenko of Nelson,BC jumped on the trend and was amongst the early content developers for VR, riding his lifelong passion, skills and good timing to big things.
Grow up as a gamer, go on to study physics, engineering and business, launching successful startups in the process, before re-discovering your true love, and launching two new successful companies in a rapidly emerging new industry? You Can Do That Here!
When you have been doing something you love for so long, eventually it becomes second nature. You no longer have to think about every little detail as you do it. It’s just natural.It just happens.
Like the experienced carpenter who’s tools have become extensions of himself, to the skier who rips down the steepest of slopes with ease and nary a second thought.
Yes to truly achieve ultimate success in a particular skill or ability, it must transcend from being something you actively do, to being something of pure instinct.
Al Eagleton of Rossland, BC grew up as a builder, and as a prairie kid was infused with a longing for deep snow and big mountains. He turned carpentry into a career, and chased the snow for decades until making his home in Rossland,BC.
Naturally, he let his two passions grow until they merged into the launch of Instinct Skis.
Grow up in the prairies, chase the snow to BC, develop your woodworking skills into a career, ski as much as possible and ultimately launch your dream job running a ski company? You Can Do That Here!
Metal, it’s one of the core building blocks of our society, economy and life as we know it. The companies that produce it in all of its various forms are often large in comparison to their surroundings and are often key building blocks of the communities and local economies they support.
When every decision and move your company makes has the potential to have major ripple effects in the local community, environment and the lives of thousands of people, making sure you have got a good leader at the helm is critical.
In the commodities world, much of your businesses success is can be dictated by global prices. Everything else that you can control has to be executed well with a constant eye to changing and shifting forces, as the small town company competes on the global market. At Teck Trail, the new leadership has been putting in place the key building blocks to set the company up for growth over it’s next 100 years.
The week before Christmas, we had the chance to sit down with Thompson Hickey, the GM of the largest private employer in the West Kootenay. Having been in the role for two years, we looked back at his own past, what he has been able to accomplish so far, and where he hopes to drive the local business behemoth that is Teck Trail Operations.
Move to a small town, while taking over the reigns of the biggest company in the region shortly after exiting the big industry world to launch your own small consulting firm, introduce a new leadership style, and drive a century old business into the future? You Can Do That Here!
Home. There are endless metaphors to describe the places we we choose to eat, live and sleep. Buying or building a home is typically the biggest expense we’ll ever face in our lives, and living in a healthy, happy home is one of the most critical pieces to our overall health and well being. Knowing all of that, it’s perhaps surprising that it has taken so long for the way we build our homes to even begin to change, and start adopting new design principles and technologies to help us build better.
Sure, if you asked just about any person who was thinking of building or buying a home that they would love to have an efficient home that didn’t cost that much to heat and run, that is healthy, and full of sunlight, and that has a small environmental footprint. In actual practice however, when it comes to actually building or buying that new house, the general rule of thumb still seems to be to default to the cheapest, lowest cost option.
The end result is a housing stock across BC an across the country that is dominated by inefficient homes.
The design philosophies and technologies to make it happen have been around for decades. Greg Hoffart of Revelstoke grew up watching and learning all about it. With a progressive builder as a neighbour he was indoctrinated into the world of high performance homes from an early age.
Over the last several years, he’s now on a personal mission to create a better housing supply, and has launched his own business Tree Construction to make it happen.
Learn from a master builder at a young age, get into the building industry and spend years witnessing less than efficient home building, getting frustrated going out on your own and launching a new company with a goal of changing the face of home design? You Can Do That Here!
Check out Tree’s homes here
Trails. They represent connections from one place to another, connections between humans and nature, and very much so a connection to place.
They represent connections between people and fun, excitement, relaxation, whatever your pleasure. They often also represent connections between people, collectively sharing the trail together. Yes to truly get to know an area’s geography and natural self, there is often no better way to do so then to get out on its trails and explore.
Step 1, finding said trail, can often be the most difficult part of any adventure, especially if you are new to an area or visiting on vacation. Some trails, and trail builders don’t want them to be found, others are built and promoted as real tourist draws. Either way, finding the trailhead can often require seeking out that critical local intel.
In the Columbia Valley with their gorgeous trail network straddling the Purcell’s and the western slope of the Canadian Rockies, they would love you to come find their trails. Not that long ago though, you either had the locally written seminal trail book, or you were lost.
Several years ago, a dedicated group of volunteers set out to change that in a big way. And then an applied mathematician originally from the Washington DC area with former ties to the CIA came along and built things a step further launching the Columbia Valley Trails app.
Volunteer your skills to help promote the valley and trails you love, while putting your skills to the test, turning data into a mobile atlas of Trails? You Can Do That Here.
The Knowledge worker. The high income earner, not tied to any specific geographic location, moving from project to project be it working remotely with a big company, or launching their own startup. The latte sipping, culture consuming, shopping, volunteering, all around great citizen. Every city would love to have more of them. But if you’re not a natural hub like Silicon Valley, New York, Toronto or a Vancouver, how do you get them?
The old adage the Kootenays have leaned on for survival and growth on some level has always been the fact that, if you could choose to live anywhere on earth, why wouldn’t you choose to live in The Kootenays?
With the levelling of the playing field in many ways due to the influx of fiber and truly high speed, reliable internet through the region, that dream of being able to live and work wherever you want has come true. Increasingly the migration of folks, largely in the tech and knowledge based world has begun.
What would it take however to turn Nelson, The Kootenays, or any small city or town for that matter into a Knowledge worker’s paradise?
Our obvious trump card is our spectacular natural environment, and one of a kind culture and lifestyle. Where you go from there has been a trial and error process.
Dominic Bortolussi, of Toronto and current part time resident of Nelson, moving towards becoming a full time resident, knows all about trial and error. A knowledge worker himself he’s become focussed in on the startup world, and recently presented on the idea of Nelson itself as a startup.
Take a novel, entrepreneurial approach with a Startup mindset to solve the problem of How do we turn Nelson into a Knowledge Worker’s Paradise? You Can Do That Here
Imagine… if you’re from the Kootenays, or any small town for that matter, having the responsibility to fill the positions of every person in town. To populate the city, from the doctors to the teachers, shop keepers to the bartenders, literally thousands of people to hopefully live and work together harmoniously.
If it sounds like a huge task, imagine now doing all of that, but on a city that also floats. With new cruise ships being built and launched every year, and each one of them requiring thousands of staff, filling those positions can be a huge job.
And if you’re a world traveller at heart, the notion of getting paid to travel the high seas is pretty appealing. Navigating your way from, say, the university campus to working the Mediterranean is also a foreign path for most.
If you happened to have grown up on a ship, worked most of your career on a ship, and spent much of that time and more in HR and recruitment for said ships, you’ve probably learned a whole lot about both in the process.
Amanda Hathorn-Geary, is perhaps one of the few people in the world with that knowledge base, experience and skill set. Having settled in Revelstoke, a long haul from the ocean, she set out to put that knowledge to work for her while she raised her son.
Turn your knowledge and experience from a life at sea, into a residual income business, while living in the mountains, so you can live the life you dream of? You Can Do That Here!
Community. Websters describes it as a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.
One of the beautiful things about being connected to and part of a community is that it tends to reward those who put energy and effort into to improving the community. Help out a friend, and they tend to want to help you out when you’re in need. Get in with a bunch of folks that all share similar passions, love similar things and pretty soon helping each other out becomes great fun, and everyone rises together to a better place.
Think of what the perfect customer looks like…. It probably sounds pretty similar I bet? Now think, just what would that perfect customer look like for your product or service? It’s probably someone that wants to help you out and wants to support you, all because you’re part of the same community. Knowing that, the secret to success starts to appear relatively easy at least at a base level and it all comes down to something we’ve all been taught as kids. The golden rule. Help out others and they will be happy to help you out back.
Ryan Arnaud and Petri Raito of The Rossland Beer Company get this in a big way, and it’s been the number one factor to their success…. Along with great tasting beer of course.
They moved to Rossland because they loved the community, its people, beauty, values and shares passionate love of life. This is the kind if place they always wanted to live and so they felt a deep urge to give back and support the community. 3 years after we last talked to then way back in episode 10, as they were first opening, they’ve worked that magic formula to success. If you need any more proof of their strategy’s efficacy. Their recent 400% expansion in capacity should be proof enough.
Move to a new community, start a business you love, give back to your customers and community, and in term feel the love, grow and expand your Brewery in a small market all with an eye to keeping things local? You can do that here!
More and more research is showing that the volume and diversity of bacteria in our guts can be one of the biggest determinates of our overall health, wellbeing, and ultimately, our happiness.
Leeza Zerwick of Castlegar, BC, discovered one delicious way to help boost our good bacteria levels while at one-year old’s birthday party.
Over the course of the following year she’s taken that initial inspiration from birthday to business.
6 weeks after he launch we got together to hear her story, and find out that she’s got big dreams.
Discover a delicious and nutritious drink, watch it improve your own health, turn it into a DIY brewing kit product and retail health drink and sell out your inventory at launch while pursuing major potential, with an endless passion and drive to create Happy Guts the world over? You can do that here.
Plastic. It’s everywhere. Everywhere we want and need it, and everywhere we don’t. From the Pacific Garbage Patch to the nano-plastics that now inhabit our own bodies, the wonder product of the middle 20th century has grown to be a plague on humanity.
The downside? It’s also really handy useful stuff, and if we shut off all plastic production tomorrow, we’d be in a pretty difficult spot.
So how we solve the problem? We’ve been coming it at it through demand management, trying to promote less use, re-use, recycling and the like. As we all know of course trying to plug the pipe at the end never truly works. Moving to a supply management where rather than using less plastic we aim to use better plastic would seem to be a better route.
Plastic that is both more advanced than what we have now, and that was truly biodegradable and non-garbage-patch-building sounds like part of the solution.
Darrel Fry of Rossland, BC and his company Advanced Bio Carbon 3D is trying to do just that. In fact, it’s their second go at it. 10 years ago, the market wasn’t ready. In this episode we dive in and find out how and why he’s looking at going bigger by going smaller, and helping solve man’s most pressing challenges in the process.
Create a better plastic by working with nature, turn it into a better product for the market, and create better environmental and business solutions in the process? You Can Do That Here.
Eternal life. Imagine the possibilities.
Imagine if we could just eat the right things and do the right activities and keep our self well enough that we could live forever. Would you do it?
I bet most people would at least be interested in giving it a passing try. I mean on some level we’re all trying to eat right, lose a few pounds, put on some muscle, get those washboard abs and killer bi-ceps.
Where most of us fail, knowingly or not, is simply not having the knowledge behind what to eat, what to do, and having the focus and tools to stick with it.
Aaron Davidson of Revelstoke, has long been a bit of a fanatical health nut with that very goal of living forever driving him forward. Back in 2005, putting his computer science masters degree to work he set out building an app as a hobby to track his nutrition and activity to an extremely detailed level. What he didn’t know was that the competition at the time was about to land half a billion in investment.
Fast forward 6 years and Aaron has clearly seen the market opportunity and has been building out his app in a race to catch-up to the industry and surpass it with a better product.
Another 6 years on and he’s got over a million users and a rapidly expanding team all aiming to help us live forever.
Turn your hobby into a business, make yourself and the world a healthier place, while living the dream life in Revelstoke and making a few bucks in the process? You Can Do That Here.
San Francisco, Vancouver, Rossland... It sounds more like a fundraising bumper sticker than a natural career path progression.
That is.... unless you change the values and goals you're seeking out. Sure you'll find a much greater concentration of talent, experience, customers and money in the larger centers, particularly in the tech sector... but, thanks to the fruits of the tech industry, living and working anywhere has fully become a reality for many.
Darin and Summer Recchi made the leap just over a year ago. They had both worked their way up through the tech industry and were succeeding in all of the traditional work and business metrics. What they lacked was time.
Making the geographical and lifestyle move from bigger centers to Rossland, BC turned traffic time into family time, and allowed them to enjoy life on a new level while maintaining their tech careers.
Curiosity, inquisitiveness, wonder.
A desire to deconstruct, reconstruct, design, create and understand.
All of these are traits closely associated with the true innovators through history. Whether it be inventors, entrepreneurs or world leaders. Or perhaps that 5-year-old that just needs his imagination and an environment to explore to create anything out of nothing.
When it really comes down to it those qualities are everything required to both ask questions, discover problems, and then create solutions. And if you can identify problems, and come up with solutions, well you’re going places kid and you may just be that next great inventor, entrepreneur or world leader.
All of that only happens of course if we’re able to instill and foster those qualities in our kids.
Farrell Segall, now of the West Kootenay and originally from South Africa was inspired as a kid by his father’s tinkering and followed in his footsteps. After his father’s passing at a young age he put those problem solving skills to work, first for himself and his family, later as a career inventor and most recently giving back.
Seeing a world where kids are rarely exposed to tools, making things, and increasingly less demand on their imagination and creativity, his most recent endeavour the Makermobile provides that same inspiration his father did for him to kids and adults all over.
Grow up in South Africa with a love for solving problems, face adversity and put it to work for you, move to another country and start a new career as an inventor and innovation / design consultant and invent a host of everyday useful products many of us know and have interacted with often, and then turn your attention to inspiring the next generation of makers with a cool new lab on wheels? You Can Do That Here!
Community. Whether it’s the five, ten or ten million people that live physically near you or the several hundred or thousands of online friends we connect with digitally, community ultimately comes down to one simple thing: The gathering of people together in a common space.
For much if not all of human kind it has been the gathering of people in a common space that has pushed and pulled our civilization forward. To that end, the ability and place to gather is indeed critical to the lifeblood of our communities and our culture.
One troubling trend, perhaps best epitomized most recently as the onset of VR has been the encroachment of technology on our time and ability to gather, and thus posing a threat to our community as a whole.
Sure VR, just as radio, television, cable, the internet, Netflix and all manner of instant access content has posed a threat to the gathering of people in the past could be a threat, or it could be the next cool thing in the world of theater and cinema.
Eleanor Stacey literally and figuratively grew up in Nelson’s theatre scene. She took that inspiration and launched a globe trotting career in film and the arts before settling back in her hometown to take on The Civic’s Theatre’s relaunch.
No longer seen, at least in the more progressive eyes of folks like her, as a threat, the ties and bonds between technology, screen and cinema are rapidly forming as the next era of community culture in the Kootenays thrives in places like The Civic.
Grow up in a theater family, travel to the Caribbean, New York, Germany and beyond working in the industry all before returning home to take the helm of the community cinema, partnering with local tech and filmmakers and blurring the line between tech and theater? You can do that here!
Stacked Films is the story of a couple of Kootenay Kids who grew up loving action adventure sports films. One (Steve Hall) left town to get into filmmaking. The other (Tyler Hadikan) got into the action as a semi-pro snowmobiler and ended up spending more time behind the lense than the handlebars. Fast forward a few years and they came back together in The Castlegar area, combined forces and launched Stacked Films.
Their acceleration since from single hand held camera to 10’s of thousands of dollars in gear, rapidly growing big time clients, stature and experiences can only be described as a dream come true in just year one.
Connect with an old friend, combine forces, launch a new film company and in less than a year have a long list of clients, shooting the very action sports films you loved as a kid, be in high demand for commercials and events and have your sights set on cashing a $10 million dollar cheque in four more years? You Can Do That Here!
Why? Why do you do the things you do? What drives your business, career and entrepreneurial choices? How do you decide to take this job or that, start this business or that, chase one idea or another?
The concept of a career has changed, morphed and shifted over the years, but for the most part it’s been all about a progression of jobs in a similar field, linking together common skills and growing them over time, and moving up the hierarchy of your industry.
An idea we’ve been floating on the You Can Do That Here podcast a number of times is a different way of looking at what a career truly is. Perhaps more so rather than a progression of jobs, a career is instead the motivation or the reason why we choose to do what we do.
Perhaps we choose jobs for security, perhaps we choose it to solve particularly problems, or achieve certain goals. Almost every entrepreneur will tell you they are in it to make the world a better place. What we loved about Andrea Bell of Trend Prive Magazine in Nelson BC’s story was her driving motivation of why she does what she does.
It all starts from a place of truly understanding who she is and being confident in her own skin and not afraid to be her true self.
On top of that, It’s having the courage to do what you love and make decisions and chase goals based on what is the most fun, exciting and closest to your true passions.
It’s a story of serendipitous opportunity, and letting fun, creativity and extravagance guide your career, however you choose to define it.
Create your path by following what looks the most fun, putting yourself out there and actively meeting people and making relationships, meet an eccentric, worldly philanthropist, and take the reigns of her new magazine concept, coordinating a global team of talent whom you’ve never met in person all from your home office in The Kootenays? You can do that here!
The Exit. So much of our attention, time and learning, especially in the podcast world is dedicated to start-ups, big ideas, new concepts, product launches and growth. Those are the sexiest times in a businesses life and of course if you don’t have a great launch, everything else is really pointless.
But let’s think about the other end of the spectrum, that day, if/when it comes that you decide to sell your business and move on. Interestingly enough much of the excitement around the launch of a company, if not overly clear, is built on the potential for what it could be sold for some day. Yes, much of the money to be made from your venture comes in the sale of the company or your stake in it.
While there is a vast resource of knowledge and information on how to successfully start, there is much less out here on how to exit.
Seeing a gap in the market, and having experienced successes and failures in selling his own businesses in the past, Scott Duke of Revelstoke set out to fill that information gap, and become a source of information and of course services to help folks transition out of their businesses successfully.
The quick lesson? It’s a lot of hard work, takes time and in the end banks you a whole pile more money at the end of the day.
Scott is currently in the middle of an intense mission to up his game, but more importantly to up your game and help you sell you business for a bunch more. Hear what he’s up to and get some valuable tips along the way.
See a clear gap in the market, undergo an intense education and put your past experience, skills and new knowledge to work in an effort to help 100,000 businesses with your services? You Can Do That Here!
What are those beliefs and values that you hold dear in your life? Those things that draw a line in the sand on and say “Nope I’m not going there because I believe this and that.”
Perhaps you’re an environmentalist or simply hold nature near and dear to your heart. Maybe it’s religion, family, sports, activities or anything really. Now look at your work, be that your job, your business or volunteer efforts. Does your work line up with those values? Is your business helping drive yourself and the world closer to those? If not… why not?
One of the best ways to increase our own personal happiness, relative wealth, performance and overall satisfaction, is matching up the long hour and hard work we put into our businesses with the beliefs and values we hold dear.
Yes, having that strong moral compass provides the why behind the who, what, when and where that we spend our time on, and can be a major accelerator towards the goals we strive to achieve.
Steven Cretney of The Forest Communication and Design has let his own moral compass guide much of his career. From an insight while travelling after high school, to turning down lucrative jobs from customers that don’t match his values, and pursuing jobs he loves in which he can make a real difference, and strive towards that elusive over used term of “Making the world a better place.”
Turn down jobs from big customers, pursue your passion working for companies that match your values, go out on your own and move to the small town you’ve always dreamed of, all while launching your own venture and going out on your own in an effort to improve the world? You can do that here!
Adventure. Webster’s defines it as a verb meaning “To engage in hazardous and exciting activity, especially the exploration of unknown territory.”
By that definition the world of entrepreneurship is nothing more than one big adventure. We start with an idea and a plan and then leap into often unknown waters, attempt to navigate around the obstacles, rocks and rapids in our path. Often we spill but we get back up and continue onward, and If we manage to make most of the decisions right along the way we’re rewarded with an awesome time and a lucrative exit out of the river of business
The more you think of it, the very nature of tackling a white-water river trip is very much the same as running growing and selling a business.
Chris and Andrea Ryman, met through their mutual love of the water and adventures in paddling that led tem to the Kootenays.
11 years later they’ve bought, grown and sold a business, and have been instrumental in growing the paddling community along the way as they look forward to the next story in their endless adventure.
Rik Logtenberg, along with his co-founders launched a game-changing start-up in the events space just over half a decade ago. As the CEO of Time.ly he oversaw a large, rapidly growing team and was in the position of having to constantly make decisions, many of which directly affected the success or failure of his company.
Having been a technical guy from the start as a software developer, he had been longing to get back into the coding and development seat and at least temporarily out of the CEO chair. Combining that desire, with his technical expertise and a co-worker who had a similar idea, they teamed up to create the product they wished they had had while with Time.ly.
The end result? A soon to be released full version of a better, cheaper, simpler decision making support software he hopes will change the world for the better.
Launch and run one of the top three event listing/ calendar apps in the world, recognize your passion and step out of the CEO chair, and back into a developers chair, build a better decision making software system and make the world a better place, all while moving back home and being the best dad you can be? You Can Do That Here!
What is it you truly love? What are you currently doing as your main hobby? It’s been said over and over that the best way to succeed in business is by doing something you love, by getting deeply into your passion and turning that into your business.
Let’s face it, entrepreneurship is far more than a full time job. There’s the classic joke about giving up the 9 to 5 40-hour work week so you can chase your dream and put in 100 hours a week. It sounds silly, why would anyone take that deal? Well it all comes down to the simple principle that if you’re loving what you do, then you never truly work a day in your life. And just like that your 100-hour work week just vanished into spending lots of time on the thing you love.
For Josh Secord and his partners at Torchlight brewing, there was a lightbulb moment of sorts while enjoying a fresh growler of craft beer at a North End Halifax nano-brewery. Chatting with the owners over a little lubrication, the thought to take their new found love of craft beer back home to Nelson, BC with them, and to launch their own craft brewery.
Running out of beer 3 days in was a good sign. Now coming on three years later they are about to embark on their next great adventure with a massive expansion into a brand spanking new brewery.
Have your friend travel across the country by motorbike to visit you on the East Coast, make daily dashes for growler refills at the local craft brewery, get inspired by the beer and business potential, move back home with a new inspiration and business partner and launch a brand new craft brewery, only to undergo a major expansion three years in? You Can Do That Here!
Bad news… We’ve all been there before when something out of our control happens that dramatically changes the courses of our moment, day, year or lives. It can often be devastating, and have a lasting impact on our lives. As we’ve all heard from many people in many ways, in life it’s not about what happens to us, but rather how we react to it. Entrepreneurship at it’s very core is often born by or fuelled by bad news.
It could be the bad news that the product or service you wanted or needed wasn’t available, and so you created it yourself. It could be the likely many bad news, mistakes and failures along the way that drive you to improvement and success. In the end, as in life, so too is entrepreneurship all about not what happens to you but how you react to it.
In that sense, as in many others, David Agnew of Crawford Bay BC is very much an entrepreneur at it’s core. For most of his life he enjoyed a busy and successful business career in the oil and gas industry. In a matter of three days that all changed as he lost his eyesight. That’s when his business mind fired back up and he went through a typical lean start-up approach to getting back into the game. The end result is a creative and unique business, motivated by his bad news.
His unique story is one any person who has ever received bad news or faced adversity should hear.
Lose your sight and your former career due to an unforeseen medical condition? turn your life around? find a productive path forward, launch a new business and inspire others with your story? You Can Do That Here!
Rob van der Laan grew up in The Netherlands, and in addition to wanting to be a rock star as a kid, he had a love of nature. In the largely wilderness free lands of Nether, that connection to nature grew into a love and practice of a new trade.
Plying his wares as a horticulturist around The Hague was good, but he dreamed of bigger, more rugged wilderness, which ultimately brought him to Nelson, BC and helped launch his business Kootenay Precision Earthworks.
Grow up with a love of nature, pursue that while travelling and working abroad before discovering a gem of a community in a beautiful environment deep in the West Kootenays, emigrate to a new country, learn the rules of the road, find a unique niche where you can pursue your passion for the land and horticulture, purchase a unique piece of equipment and successfully launch a new business? You Can Do That Here!
We last talked to Jordan Strobel, way back in episode 8 with his business partner Tim Baldwin and their lifestyle brand Ebon. He’s since paired up with another friend from high school Keelan Bourdon and together they’ve launched Apex Multimedia.
Their unique video production style and fully certified drone filming are designed to generate a quick wow factor is suited perfectly for social media and their following has been growing rapidly. Their beginnings though started through a brush with the law.
Turn a childhood hobby into a business partnership with a high school friend, get awesome at drone flying, filming and editing, flirt with federal law, and turn that experience into a unique business advantage? You Can Do That Here!
For Cameron Wenaus and the team at Retreat Guru in Nelson, a fairly mundane act of renting out a spare desk in their office was the spark for a runaway wildfire of co-working success.
The concept is all the rage, a growing trend around the globe and has long been thought to be one of the key’s to unlocking the Kootenays creative, tech and knowledge based industry potential. A number of efforts around the Koots have had varying results.
With the new Jam Factory space, run by, and the home of Retreat Guru, Cam and his team have figured out the magic formula to make it work.
Start renting a spare desk in your startup’s office space, grow your tech company from 4 to 12 people, take over a massive old heritage building in downtown Nelson, renovate it into a successful co-working space and fill it with a mix of energetic and exciting small, largely tech and mindfulness based businesses, all while spawning collaboration and growth in a new industry and maybe even helping launch new start-ups from your space? You Can Do That Here!
While any strong that vibrates at 261.62 Hz, you’ll hear a middle C. In the easiest of terms, the voicebox of all of these instruments that determines what that tone sounds like, lies primarily in the wood.
The density, and flexibility of the wood affects its resonance. the sound is echoed inside guitar body and the characteristics of the wood affect the sound that is distributed outwards.
If you knew all of that, and you’ve spent your entire career working with wood in the forestry industry, you’d likely end up discovering that some of the trees that grow in abundance in the West Kootenay match the characteristics for the soundboard.
These specific mountain side sentinels, standing amongst our forest just happen to be perfect for making great sounding guitars from. Graham Heim of Fruitvale, BC figured this out while working in the logging industry for much of his career. He tested it out and his company Kootenay Tonewood has since supplied soundboards to major guitar companies around the world as well as specialty craft builders.
The next time you ear picks up the changes in air pressure we call music coming from an acoustic guitar. If you follow its sweet sounds back to their vibrating wood source, there’s a strong chance that wood previously stood on a Kootenay hillside.
Avi Phillips of Nelson, BC has gone from child actor in the big city to entrepreneurial dad as the owner of his own online marketing agency, and co-founder / developer of a new app along with his wife / business partner in the Kootenays.
Following a serendipitous path he translated his acting, writing and overall creative storytelling talents into a successful career in the SEO and online marketing world. Seeking out a more family friendly home in the Kootenays he went out on his own launching his own agency, Design For Growth, and also launched an app development startup with his wife.
Hi entrepreneurial, do it yourself spirit, paired with a genuine nice guy demeanour, technical writing skills, along with creative talent, Avi has been on both received those applause, as well as helped other companies receive them from their own customers
Over the last 150 or so years, large scale industrial logging has dominated our forest landscape and much wealth has been harvested from it. Indeed, the primary reason we harvest and process our trees has been to provide jobs, wealth and the resources needed to build and maintain our communities, and in the process to do our best to maintain the environment required for such a renewable resource to remain renewable and flourishing.
Knowing that as the base reason for why we log at all begs the question… What if there was a way to get more of what we want out of our forests? More jobs, economic growth and resources, while maintaining what we need from them, clean air, water, habitat and wild spaces?
In the latter quarter of the 20th century, a small community on the West Arm of Kootenay lake asked that question. They asked that question while under outside threat of industrialized logging moving into the hillsides that surround their community.
The answer was a beautiful scene that began with protests, and settled with the community coming together and self organizing themselves to pro-actively protect their community and their forests. The legacy has been the Harrop Proctor Community Forest.
Come up with a home-made solution of their own to get the most jobs, economic growth and resources out of the forest, while protecting their water, air, and the natural beauty and habitat that surrounds, all while maintaining local control, and building a stronger community together over common, shared goals? You Can Do That Here!
Let's raise a glass and celebrate 100 Episodes of the You Can Do That Here!podcast. To celebrate we flipped the seats and series producer and host Andrew Zwicker took the guest seat while Kelly Mclean took over the hosts chair.
Andrew Zwicker is a serial entrepreneur who isn't afraid to chase his dreams, take on big, audacious goals, and make them happen. From his first business in high school, through launching a popular online newspaper, publishing company, creative agency and renewable energy company among others, Andrew is a big believer in "Just starting," when you have a great idea.
Start a podcast designed to break a myth, achieve a big audience that stretches well beyond the geographic boundaries of our region, and record 100 interviews with 112 innovative and interesting guests? You Can Do That Here.
Many thanks to our awesome listeners and 100 episodes of inspiring, talented guests proving indeed that you can indeed do that here.
To learn more about AZcre8ive check out www.AZcre8ive.com
And now for something completely new!...
To kickoff the celebrations around the 100th episode of the You Can Do That Here! podcast we decided to go live, and to host the first ever You Can...Or Can't Do That Here! Gameshow.
In front of an electric crowd of 30 plus tech entrepreneurs, Andrew Zwicker hosted the show with 6 of The Kootenays most innovative minds on the panel for a fun and challenging first edition of the game.
Featuring Don Freschi of Fenix Industries, Inventor / Designer Kaj Gyr, Brent Malysh of Backroads Brewing, Charlotte Ferreux of Change by Choice, and Aerin Guy of SpaceRace Digital.
Colin grew up in "The country," in the north of Scotland, an area very much like the Kootenays. From the age of four he can recall a strong bond between himself and nature. After an injury just prior to the 1988 Calgary Olympics derailed his ski racing career, Colin put his talents towards making the world a cleaner, greener and leaner place. His noble goal was to make sure his son could grow up in a world where he could tell the seasons by the snow starting the fall and the salmon spawning up river.
He recently moved to Rossland,BC where he as co-founder he heads up sales and strategy.
Figbytes, a robust, industry leading business that is helping everyone from countries to airports to universities achieve their sustainability goal. If he is successful in that, he may just get his lifelong goal of a cleaner and still snowy planet for his son.
Dirk Lewis is the mosquito guy. He fell into the field while searching for a summer job in high school. A quarter century later he's moved up the ranks, taken over the company and moved it to Rossland. He's now putting his own spin on the company expanding it's capabilities and markets with the addition of some innovative new technology.
This episode is a beautiful example of how to take a traditional business or service business and up your game with technology while opening up new markets and moving up the value chain.
Turn a semi-random summer job into a lifelong career doing something you love, buy the company, take control and chart a new innovative course forward, all while living the dream lifestyle in small town BC? You Can Do That Here.
This week we catch up with Rich Thompson, currently of Nelson, BC.
Motivated to beat his sister's academic record, and to live an entrepreneurial life, travelling the world in the progress, Rich helped start a tutoring company. 6 months in he took over the company and began the effort to move it to an online delivery so he could continue his travels.
Grow up in an academic family, compete with your sister for grades and in the process figure out a better, more efficient way to learn, take over a classic tutoring business and move it online, while travelling the world living your dream lifestyle? You Can Do That Here!
We caught up with Christian Rawles in his home in Uphill Nelson, BC to hear his fascinating story.
After following his passion into the outdoor industry, he ultimately found himself in a position to buy the company he worked for. Taking an ultra LEAN approach he's utilized technology and outsourcing to build a beautiful company he can run from anywhere while living the lifestyle he's always dreamed of.
Follow your hearts true passion, build strong relationships to forward your career, and ultimately put people ahead of profits while growing an outdoor apparel company from your home office? You Can do that here.
Have you ever had an idea that you just couldn’t shake? An idea that when it formed in your brain, it simultaneously formed in your heart and soul? An idea that you know you can run with, make money, have fun and make a whole bunch of people happy in the process?
Brent Malysh of Nelson, BC lived the classic entrepreneurial stereotype. It all started over a beer, a chat with friends, and the famous backside of a cocktail napkin.
The better part of a decade later, this former ski school manager is just about to realise his dream.
Early in 2017, the latest new piece of awesome will arrive in Nelson, BC. All things continuing to go well, Backroads Brewing, the first brewery lounge in town, will open in the heart of Baker Street
From idea to business plan, Brent and his partners are in the middle of making that idea a reality. This story, is one about having big ideas, taking the time to plan them out and then having the courage to just going for it.
Adam O. Thomas has made a career out of letting his creative juices flow, collaborating with others, and creating unique, engaging content. Whether creating experimental comedy or educational media Adam brings a punk rock, do it yourself attitude to everything he does, infusing his own life experiences along the way. He's had success recently with his new web series Parked, commercial work, and a wide variety of creative film making projects in his career. Along the way he's learned there are 4 things it takes to succeed in both film, and entrepreneurship in general.
1) Be yourself 2) Find or build a community 3) Be prolific 4) Hustle.
Having grown bored and isolated in the fast growing, expensive metropolis of Vancouver Adam has relocated to Nelson and found a new creative community to launch his next batch of Kootenay creativity.
Following the tragic news of her husband's skiing accident which rendered him a quaraplegic, Invermere BC's own Cassy Campbell did what any mom would do. She decided to take her newly purchased hobby business to the next level, all while becoming her family's primary breadwinner, her husband's care-giver, continuing to be the mom of two active kids and working to give back to her community and mom's everywhere. No big deal right?
The story of Stripes Gear is a story about the unstoppable spirit of the entrepreneur, the unbreakable bond that is family and overcoming any challenges.
There is a growing trend amongst the younger generations that defies the past norms. Today's digital natives that barely if at all knew the world without it's wide web, are giving up the digital dream. They are longing for and seeking out real and genuine experiences.
Luke Lewis of North Woven Brooms and Jennifer Cross of Jennifer Chocolates are the perfect examples. Luke was in Environmental science in Toronto, and Jennifer was also a Torontonian from the tech world. Through their own unique circumstances they ended up living the small town lifestyle, working with their hands as successful artisan entrepreneurs that understand the true value of a life well lived.
From an early age Anthony Sanna, by necessity became a translator and storyteller with a knack for getting the gist and passing it on. As he grew older, he realized he had valuable skills he could turn into a business. We hear Anthony's story of how he became a marketing smarty pants from his own perspective and three key role players in his career's development.
We last talked to brad back in episode 64 which you can find at www.kast.com/youcandothathere. In that episode we chatted about his love story with tech and the remarkable movement he built with the Nelson Tech Club.
He launched that club and grew it into the biggest per capita club in the country at over 400 members. He has inspired a generation of youth and the young at heart with science, technology and just plain cool machines. He is now on to phase two with Midas Labs. At the Nelson tech club he was the spark that launched a grassroots movement.
He's now got a half million dollars of the latest technology, a permanent home and an operational budget to take MIDAS, his next movement to a whole new level.
Change. It has a way of separating those that are good at doing, and those that are good at doing as well as learning, growing and adapting. The person who is open to learning, adapting and evolving will find change to simply be the canvass for their creations. Yes standing still is death in a world where change and motion are continuous. Winston Churchill once said that “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
There are few worlds that have been changing as often, completely and fast as the digital world of the web. One of the biggest changes over the past five to ten years has been a continuing shift in web design to in many ways becoming a self-serve industry. With the likes of WordPress and Squarespace, building a decent looking website has never been easier.
With a near infinite number of pages on the web, the need to fill them with quality content has grown in step. Indeed content is king, and the content creator is highly sought after.
Adrian Wagner of Nelson, BC has been a great example of adapting to change. Building on a base of passion for all things artistic and creative, he has put two decades into the web design game so far, dabbled in the commercial music industry, and is adding content production as a photographer to his repertoire. I sat down with Adrian to hear his story and find out what drives him in his pursuit of perfection in a world of change.
Shift careers, in a rapidly changing business climate, while maintaining and growing your artistic passion? You can do that here!
Two heads are better than one. For that matter, three, four, five or more heads are better still. We’ve all heard that before. Yes it’s common wisdom that the more minds you set to a common problem, the quality of the solution goes up exponentially. It’s been true, since the inception of life itself. From the first time two single celled organisms merged in that magical pool of bubbling ooze, the power of connection began.
So should you go with your gut? Or should you seek out expert advice and add more heads to your problem? For Julia Gillmor of Nelson, BC it started with a natural talent in connecting people, and then a strong gut feeling to go out on her own, trust her gut and get back to what she loves most.
With a strong head for business and a track record of entrepreneurial success, Julia Gillmor communications was launched. She now uses the power of connection to launch her clients to greater heights, as well as continue to launch her own game. It all starts with one innovative thing she does before starting any marketing or communication campaign. I sat down with Julia to hear her intriguing story, and learn what that one key thing is.
Discover what you truly love, and put your natural talents to us in your own business? Help other connect with the right strategy and the right customer with unique and innovative tricks and tools? You can do that here
Culture. Webster’s defines it as the manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. Culture is also a perfect way to view and understand a particular group of people or geographic region. It’s a beautiful thought really, understanding and getting to know a place or people by their collective achievements.
Here in the Kootenays much of our everyday life, work, and fun is dominated and dictated by the spectacular geography and natural playground that surrounds us. Indeed whether simply living in their shadow, creating art inspired by them, achieving great feats of human strength and endurance by scaling and descending them in all variety of forms, Kootenay people are a culture defined by our mountains.
Capturing that culture, and publishing it in a high quality magazine over the past decade and a half has in many ways put Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine at the forefront as the true story of record for our region rather than the traditional newspaper.
True to the culture of the region, it was born out of passion and a pioneering, enterprising spirit. Tired of having his freelancing story ideas stolen by other publications, like any true entrepreneur, Peter Moynes of Nelson new there had to be a better way.
15 years later, Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine has become a legend within and beyond the region and has also expanded to the coast with Coast Mountain Culture and many other publications in between. I sat down with Peter in his home office overlooking Kootenay Lake to dive deep into the motivations, the struggles and the joys of being the mastermind behind capturing the achievements of mountain people and capturing the culture that we all know and love.
Good Health. If there is one business that has a universal appeal to all humans, it’s a business that helps us all be happier and healthier people. As our good health and the foods and nutrients we consume continue to become more important in a world of “Food like products,” and as global connectivity continues to open up new offerings from around the globe, superfoods are the next great trend. As little as a couple of decades ago seeking out so called exotic plants from various ecosystems around the world would have likely meant physically going, seeking, finding and learning about them in person. In the information age, a trip to the Himalayan foothills in northern India is merely a few clicks away. Yes the opportunity to discover such plants and superfoods is now open to everyone with an internet connection and the time to spend seeking.
Miel and Kirk Dubeilewicz of Invermere, BC came across just such a superfood nearly 10 years ago that they hadn’t previously heard of or found available in Canada. It wasn’t just any food, it just so happened to be the most nutritious plant in the world, The Moringa tree. Starting out as consumers, and immediately noticing the health benefits themselves, the married couple and now business partners set out on an adventure to be one of the first companies to bring Moringa to the Canadian market. The short story? It wasn’t easy, but this inspiring energetic couple made it happen despite numerous roadblocks and setbacks they are now in the game and on their way to what they hope will be a happy, healthier and in their own personal case, a wealthier world.
Seek out the world’s most nutritious plant, survive through Health Canada’s regulatory process and be one of the first to bring a new product to a new market? You Can Do That Here.
Bread and Dough. Although it's impossible to trace the exact date of the first slang usage of "Dough," as a term for money, it seems to have originated in the 19th century. Where bread was the traditional everyday necessity of life at the time, to earn one's living was to earn one's bread, therefore bread became synonymous with money. The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary found the earliest printed use of "Dough," as a slang term for money in 1851: "He thinks he will pick his way out of the Society’s embarrassments, provided he can get sufficient dough.” The quote appeared in the Yale Tomahawk, a publication of Yale's Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity.
Phil Gadd, originally from the UK, has lived out this expression in both of its meanings. Having discovered the beauty of life in Fernie,BC while on a snowboarding holiday, the former film and television editor from London, made it his mission to find a way to both live and make a living in Fernie. Inspired by a unique bakery/café run by a friend in southern England, his plan was set in motion. Fernie’s bakery had recently closed, and he and his wife emigrated. Three years later he was running The Loaf as a million dollar plus business and living the life of his dreams and was both literally and figuratively rolling in the dough and making lots of bread. He’s now set his sights on helping others achieve similar success.
Emigrate to a new country, launch a million dollar business in a brand new industry, and teach others how to do it as well? You Can Do That Here!
The Genetic Code. It represents the very instructions of life itself. Yes the many genes that make up every living organism have an in depth story to tell. They contain vast volumes of information that we’re only just beginning to explore the possibilities of. In the realm of science it may just be one of the fastest growing areas of study, as well as perhaps one of the most critical to the future of life itself.
But what about the business side? More and more we are seeing and hearing about practical business applications of genetics. From companies like 23andme that will send you back your genetic sequence from a mailed in DNA sample, to pharmaceutical companies partnering with geneticists to develop the next wave of innovative drugs.
Alison Cutts, of Nelson, BC is helping lead a team working on developing, among other things a better drug to combat pain in a new and innovative way using genetics. The surprising part? She’s doing it from her home office n Nelson, BC along with her team located on the coast. I sat down with Alison to dive into the fascinating world of genetics and learned how it’s done, how it’s helping us all be healthier people, as well as the cautions and ethics of such a powerful science.
Discover gene mutations of ultra-rare diseases and use that knowledge to develop new pharmaceutical products from your home office in Nelson, BC? You can do that here!
Jobs. For many entrepreneurs they are the worst thing imaginable. They are the very thing we’ll happily work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week just to avoid the 9-5 work week... We want to control our own destiny, and drive our own success, even if that more often than not means additional stress, additional hours and a strong to severe risk of not getting paid at times. If only there was a way to avoid that last part, it would be a dream world, where everyone rises to great heights.
What if there was a way to design the lifestyle you desire, do something you love with passion and purpose, dictate and drive your own work, workplace and workmates? What if there was a way to in every sense be an entrepreneur, without the financial risk?
Cam Shute of Nelson, BC is a smart guy. An Engineer and outdoorsman from an entrepreneurial and artistic family, he’s driven by great challenges. He found that in his job, designing new backcountry skiing products for G3 Genuine Guide Gear, but his inner entrepreneur wanted out. The resulting story is how he found his niche as an entrepreneur within a job and is living his dream.
What is it you truly love doing? What are those things that when they engulf you your whole world radiates positive energy outward? Now think about how your job and work make you feel. Are those two things one and the same? If you are like most, probably not. But why not?
Why do we feel like we have to do certain things in life why do we put up with the monotony and stress of jobs that we don’t love?
For many there can be no more frightening thing than revealing your inner self to the world and letting people inside your inner workings.
But what if... either through choice or through adversity we took the time to ask those first two questions of what we love and why we’re here. And what if we fashion or careers and work around that in way that we can sustain our pocketbooks as well as sustain our wellbeing? What if through discovering your own passions and living them out you could also spread wellbeing to everyone else around the world?
That is precisely what Dragon and Danu of Winlaw are doing with their business Raw Magic Chocolate. Through adversity they discovered their purpose, came together and launched a fascinating and unique business with a genuine and noble purpose.
Discover your true calling? Build a business around your lifestyle? Spread well and heal the hearts of the world through a unique and thriving business? You can do that here!
Getting started. It is the single most difficult thing to do in the business world and it is what separates the entrepreneurs from the wannapreneurs. If you can just get started, you have boosted your likelihood of success by 100% over the alternative. But how does one get a business or an idea started?
There are countless different ways and means to get an idea from your mind to your market. At the core of every successful start there are three things: Understanding your market, learning if, when, why and how the market wants your product and raising enough money to deliver it to them.
It sounds easy right? Well… yes and know. Easy in that you know what you need to know, hard in that it is a lot of work to make that happen. In the past, even just a matter of a few years or a decade ago, going through that process could take months or more likely years. With the advent of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, you still have to put all of the work in ahead of time, however in 30 days you can quickly learn if it’s going to fly and if you did your homework ahead of time can run through those three stages through a single Kickstarter Campaign.
Eddy Boxerman of Nelson, BC recently ran a Kickstarter Campaign of his own to launch a table top board game idea he’s been building with his business partners. Sitting down with Eddy in his office above Oso Negro, he walked me through his experience, how his campaign went way above his expectations, and the critical things to understand before running your own campaign.
Create a board game, and raise $220,000 on Kickstarter to launch it into the market? You Can Do That Here!
Mother Nature. She has given us everything we could possibly ask for, and shown us the natural beauty, longevity and prosperity of building sustainable systems. Mimicking and building-in natural processes into your business can often mean pumping up the bottom line and sustainability of your business.
Three folks who know this well are Shannon Hames of Flat Bags, Annette Carberry of The Red Dresser, and Mandy Lawson of Revived Wax.
These three vibrant young women have started three diverse businesses that all share one common thread. In each case they have woven an environmental consciousness into their businesses, and in the process, found innovative business models to turn one person's trash into another’s treasure. Indeed, in each case, and many others, the "Environmentally friendly," business model is often also the most profitable model.
What started as a chat over drinks on a lakeside patio, later became a scramble out of the rain, a dash inside, and then a move down the hall to a quieter couch, only to be met by an intrusive air conditioning system. What is entrepreneurship though if it's not rolling with the unexpected punches, and turning challenge into opportunity?
Andrew Zwicker sat down with Shannon, Mandy and Annette to hear their unique stories of taking a low value waste stream and turning it into high value new products for sale.
Storytelling. It is one of the oldest past times and jobs in the history of humankind. Whether handing down knowledge, entertaining a crowd or selling the virtues of a product or service, the ability to tell a great story, is truly among the most powerful of skills. Whether painting on cave walls, or developing content for a new mobile app, there is no greater way to engage an audience's mind, heart and soul, and perhaps even their purse-strings, than a great story.
In the marketing world of today, content marketing is one of the hot buzz words. The savvy customer is no longer sold by annoying ads. Instead, they are seeking out great content whether 140 characters or 3,000 words long. They want to learn, be educated and entertained, not sold too. Ignoring that desire to sell, and rather putting that effort into creating great content often leads to more customers grown, and more sales longer term, than going for the sales kill right off the bat.
So what is that secret to creating great content? Vince Hempsall of Wo Now Media, has got it figured out. From a background in print, through online content and marketing creation, all the way to developing content for apps, his ability to tell a great story crosses mediums.
I sat down with Vince in the front yard of his Nelson home to hear his story and get some tips on how we can all tell better stories.
Relationships. Solid, trusting relationships are the foundation of just about everything. From husband and wife, boss and employee to business and customer and everything in between, the fuel that drives each to great heights is their ability to create, grow and nurture a strong relationship.
Even just a couple of decades ago, the number of people you could possibly reach out and build a strong relationship with was pretty limited to who was in your immediate presence or who you reached out to over the phone, or by mail. If you were hoping to run a successful business you needed to be where you those customers were to make those relationships and fuel your growth.
The advent of internet connectivity just about anywhere, anytime put in place the infrastructure to reach out and connect to the world. The rise of Social Media created a reasonable facsimile of being able to “Be in the immediate presence,” albeit virtually, of any customer in the world, and thus allowed more businesses to operate from wherever they choose.
To that extent, social media is absolutely critical for businesses to build strong relationships with their potential customers. Figuring out how to do that though is a major challenge faced by many. It’s certainly not a build it and they will come scenario.
I sat down with Aerin Guy of SpaceRace Digital in Rossland BC, and connected with Rachel Ross of Mandala Custom Homes in Nelson to learn how they’ve mastered the art of using social media to build relationships and grow their companies.
Collaboration, cooperation and celebration. You might say they are the three C’s of how to sell most any product, especially beer,
Find the right partners to work with supplying your business, and distributing your product., cooperate on sales and marketing efforts with key partners, and throw a good party where people can enjoy and consume your product. Of course there is one more point to add to that list. Make a good, quality product that sells itself.
The Nelson Brewing Company has been figuring out that formula for 25 years. While craft brewing is all the rage and a major growth industry around the world, in the early 90’s when NBC set up shop in the West Kootenays, they were pioneering a new trend in the region. To sell their beer they first had to educate the market that their “hippy beer,” was just as good as the big brands. Then they found their niche making organic beer, and finally they embedded themselves deeply into the community’s culture, character and lifestyle.
The end result is a bursting at the seams brewery, scrambling to continue its production expansion to keep up with growing demand from a growing geographical area, all while at the same time staying true to their Nelson roots and taking care of home first.
I sat down with Chad Hansen at the NBC brewery to hear their backstory, and their universal lesson on how to sell and market any product.
So you’ve got an idea for the next big business.
The downside? You don’t have very many potential customers around in your small town.
The dilemma? You love your small town and the small town lifestyle and wouldn’t want to move to a major center.
The question? Can you launch and grow a small business from your small town. If the previous 75 episodes are any indication the answer is of course you can.
Getting your product or service (especially in the early days) out to a wider global audience can seem like a daunting task. Can a big business launch, grow and stay in small town once they have made it big? Is living in a small market a major disadvantage to making it?
This episode is the first with our newest supporter. We’re excited to have two of their awesome previous clients Mary Racine of Handy Hay Nets and Charlotte Ferreux of Thrive Consulting with us for the first episode.
Idle. Webster’s defines it as being not active, as well as being without purpose. Many folks could well say that being idle is one of the leading causes of the climate change challenge we all face together. Whether it’s governments failing to take action fast enough, corporations not stepping up to improve their environmental game, or just everyday people sitting idle, not being active, or finding their purpose on how they can assist in the efforts.
Most all of us have ideas, big or small on what could be done to help protect the air we breathe, water we drink, land we live on and plants, animals and humans we live with, but few of us actually find our purpose and take action.
Kim Klassen is not among that group. This week’s Sustainability Action Hero has identified one purpose that she has gotten active on, and has taken her idea and put it into action. Not sitting idle on the issue of idling cars and trucks in Rossland, Kim has already achieved success on the first steps of her current purpose with more to come. Here what she’s up to, how she’s taken her ideas and put them into action and how you can too.
Snakes and Ladders. The business world can often feel like and adult version of the popular game, especially when trying to invent a brand new product. For every two steps forward there are often one or more steps backward to follow. Just when you think you’re on the right path, another emerges. Yes it’s really all just a big game of choose your own adventure really. By setting out a clear end goal, having enough perseverance, a belief that your idea is indeed a winner, and the confidence that you will get it to the end line whatever it takes with perhaps a little bit of luck sprinkled in, you might just luck out and get more ladders than snakes.
Rob Barden is nearing the end of his version of the game with the finish line in site. We last spoke to Rob back in episode 30 in March 2015, just over a year ago. At that time, the former photocopier tycoon from the prairies was just embarking on his journey. The goal: invent a remotely releasable ski binding to keep skiers safer, and get it into the market.
I sat down with Rob at the KAST office in Rossland, to hear how things have gone since, and how he’s almost completed the task of taking an idea to real product, to the market. If this episode teaches us anything however, there may just be a few more snakes and ladders before they get there officially.
Climate Change. Most likely the biggest threat to mankind in our short history on the planet. The technology and ability to avoid and reduce its impact has been around for decades. What has been missing is a broad agreement on the true impact of mankind on climate change, and getting broad buy in on global level to do something about it.
Imagine future where any disagreement on the subject would be impossible. Imagine a future where mankind’s impact on climate change could be measured accurately around the globe?
Pilar Portela and Bryan Fry o Rossland, BC have combined their talents to make this happen and take it a big step further. Combining her Enterprise Resource Planning software development and Bryan’s Internet of Things and mass data storage experience, they intend to measure all of the emissions data on earth using big data, paint a clear picture of the image, and offer in depth analytics on solutions.
No big deal right? Just a couple of Kootenay entrepreneurs combining talents to save the world through Big Data.
Fun. If there is one truism across humankind, it is that we all love to have fun. Yes, if you can take a seemingly mundane activity, or even a potentially undesirable one, and turn it into game, the chances of people participating in that activity goes up dramatically. While gamification may be the buzz word of the twenty teens, the simple act of getting people to do a certain behavior by turning it into a fun game has been around for ages.
Another common aspect of human psychology that generally applies across the board is that people love recognition. We love that pat on the back when we do a good job, that special treat for good behavior, the bonus at work for top performance, and that general feeling of achieving something and being rewarded for it.
A more modern day commonality shared by the now billions of technology users, is that in general, we hate to see ads. We hate to be interrupted while playing our favourite app or taking in our favourite digital content. We hate it so much, that we'll happily pay money to not have to see those ads. This presents an enormous conundrum for the online industry which has been largely funded by ad revenue, now has a major and growing user base that doesn't want to have to see ads.
Like any entrepreneur, Brian Wong, originally of Vancouver knew there had to be a better way. He combined these three insights to develop a brand new way to deliver ads that makes them fun, rewards people, and actually makes people want to see and participate in online ads.
I sat down with Brian at the BC Tech Summit in Vancouver to hear his fascinating tale.
Human Resources. What do you think of when you hear those two words? What role does it play in your company’s success? Is it merely an administration aspect of your company that you pay attention too when you need new staff and talent for your venture, that then gets put back in a box until someone needs to be hired or fired? Perhaps in days gone by, this may have been the case, but over the last decade in particular there has been a major shift in thinking around just what HR's purpose is.
Let's stop and think for a minute. People, we know, are the lifeblood, the heart and the soul of any company. For what is arguably the most important part of your venture, why so often dos HR take a backseat in the growth and development of our businesses?
Agata Zasada knows this better than many. She has lead major scale-ups for the Olympic Broadcasting Corporation, Lululemon, and most recently for BC's own Hootsuite. Truly leading edge, progressive companies like Lululemon and Hootsuite know that to be successful, the modern day HR department should be at the forefront of your company’s core. Yes to be truly successful, you need a strong and clear company culture that not just aligns with your business goals, hiring practices and strategies but one that drives all of those forward.
I sat down with Agata at the inaugural BC Tech Summit in Vancouver to learn how we can all find, retain and keep the right people we need by letting HR drive of strategy forward.
What is it you are meant to do? If a stranger walked up to you on the street and asked you what your purpose in life is, would it match what you’re currently doing?
Whether from a mentor, friend, colleague or conference presentation, we’ve all heard it a million times over, “Do what you love, and success will follow,” but just how do we find out what it is we love, and what we were meant to do with our lives and careers? If you’re one of the lucky ones, you may already know. If not, a tried and tested route to get there is simple trial and error. Every failure is a step towards ultimate success.
Sometimes, as En Vogue in the 90’s would have us believe, we have to just step out of the stream of life, free our minds, and the rest will follow.
For Lindsay Smith, CEO of Massive Media, it was a combination of both. Having already achieve career success in the software game, launched and run the influential Tech Vibes series while climbing the tech industry ladder it was a failure that caused her to reflect, listen to her inner voice and relaunch her career of making the world a more harmonious place through technology that she found her true calling.
I sat down with Lindsay at the first inaugural BC Tech Summit in Vancouver to hear her inspiring tale.
Summits. They are that small point of land where all upward sloping things eventually converge together, look down and realize they’ve created a mountain together. They are a convergence of talents coming from vastly different places, moving in opposite directions that meet to form something amazing. Whether ridgelines, and alpine bowls, or founder, funder and first adopter coming together, when you put the right pieces together in the same place, great things are formed.
We took the podcast on a field trip this week, and got to experience a full emersion education in the world of tech business at the first BC Tech Summit event held in Vancouver. Not entirely sure what to expect, I felt like I was living an episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley, and quickly got caught up in the hype. Being surrounded by literally thousands of ides, start-ups and businesses “making the world a better place and thinking that expands beyond earth, and even transcends time and humanity itself, is inspiring to say the least
Pain Points. They are those areas of every business where a problem or challenge exists that is preventing or slowing down that business from getting where it wants to be. Yes pain points are in effect the very genesis of every good entrepreneurial idea. If there is a pain point, there is always a better way. If you can find that point, and come up with a solution that solves it, you're well on your way to a successful enterprise. Finding that point can be a challenge. Learning how can be the greatest tool any entrepreneur could ever ask for.
You can come up with a great idea on your own that you may believe is the most fantastic thing since sliced bread, but if it's solving a problem that the customer isn't concerned about, it's likely going nowhere, and you may well have wasted many hours and dollars coming up with a solution that no one really wants. On the flip side, if you go to your customer first and ask them what their biggest challenge is, and then go and solve it for them, you've got a customer ready and waiting to buy your product the moment your it comes off the shelf.
Mike Hambalek of Cranbrook, BC has figured out and mastered this art. With a host of patents and products under his belt already, his most recent venture solves a problem with a huge market, that also happens to be environmentally friendly, cost saving, and headache reducing. I connected with Mike to learn just what he's up to, how he figured out and uses this process, and what he's up to next.
Jeff saw the light when it came to building his own new home. He wanted his home to reflect his environmental sustainability values. The first step was moving to a warmer climate in BC from Saskatchewan. Phase two involved tireless research and building of his own efficient home.
While we would all like to have efficient, green homes, many of us are scare off from the build or the renovation based on the perceived high cost of going green. As Jeff explains in this episode, the big, sexy silver bullets are not the best way to spend your home efficiency dollars. Have a listen and hear the top two things you can do to build efficiently without spending the big bucks.
Water. It's at the very core of life itself. We need it to sustain our bodies, minds and environment. Wildlife needs it, and our City is obligated to both deliver clean water to our doors and take away our dirty water on the way out. It's safe to say we can't live without it, and working with it as a City can be both expensive and challenging to the local environment. What if there was a way to clean up our water, create healthy habitat for ourselves and wildlife, and reduce the City's cost to manage our water as well?
Rachel Roussin and Eva Cameron of Rossland took up that challenge. What started as a weekend workshop became a beautiful pilot project on what can be done to better manage the water in our City environment.
Using energy, passion and a grant these two citizens pulled off a great project all on their own. Learn how they did it and how you can too.
Broadband, Fibre, High Speed Internet. Whatever you call it, it is to the present and future economy what roads, rail and power were to the industries of the past. In the past, the Kootenay region could not have flourished if they didn't have the roads to get the gold, silver and timber out. Just the same, the economies of today and tomorrow cannot flourish if we can't get data in and out of the region. Following the great recession it was Roosevelt who started the often imitated economic development stimulus of building roads and infrastructure required to get the economy moving. As recently as the great economic crash of 2008 onward we saw vast billions of dollars going into roads and bridges. Those in the know however understand that to stimulate the economy going forward that money could be better spent installing data highways of fibre optic networks throughout the region.
Dan Salekin knows this better than most. He has been involved in greater than a dozen IT start-ups, including the raising of a billion dollars to build the first coast to coast fibre network. Moving back to his home of Castlegar he pushed the Columbia Basin Network to consider putting money into connecting the Basin with Fibre. Several years later that has begun happening and Dan's own company Columbia Networks is offering the service in his home region that he's been selling to big centers across western Canada for years.
I sat down with Dan in his Castlegar office to hear his inspiring backstory and learn just how important broadband is to the region, and how to make it happen.
The exit. It’s the dream that every tech entrepreneur dreams of. That magical day where someone decides that idea you’ve come up with, nurtured and grown is worth something to them, and they write a fat cheque to buy it from you. Whether selling the next big thing to Google for billions of dollars or simply selling your shares for a decent profit, the Exit is what we’re all working towards. Few businesses survive however and even less have that big exit. What does it take to get there? Once you get there how do you execute and sell that business?
Brian Fry of Rossland, BC has launched, run and sold several big tech companies throughout his career. In Part one we learned how he transformed from a downhill ski racer to a tech entrepreneur, from selling computers to fellow students in the 80’s to building the largest cloud provider in the nation. In Part two we look at the second half of the picture, selling the businesses he worked hard to help create. I sat down with Brian at his home office in Rossland, BC to dig under the surface of his companies sales to learn how he did it.
Go faster. Look ahead. Visualize yourself on the podium and get to the finish line as fast as possible.
All of these pieces of advice are perfect for the ski racer standing in the start gate of a gnarly downhill course. They could also be the personal mantra of an entrepreneur seeking to stay at the forefront of technology and dominate a new sector.
Brian Fry played both of those parts at various times in his life. Starting out as a downhill racing Crazy Canuck from Rossland, BC, injuries lead him to seek out a new field. The trend of going faster continued as he shifted into the technology industry. From selling computers to fellow students in the mid 80’s, Brian went on to co-found the largest cloud provider in Canada. In this episode we’ll hear his tale from start gates to Bill Gates, and how a couple of guys launched the biggest cloud network in the country.
Investors. They are the beings out there amongst us that with the wave of a wand and the signing of a cheque have the magical ability to help turn ideas into companies, and companies into even bigger companies, when everything comes together. One of the biggest most challenging questions in the business world, is "How the heck do I find my perfect investor?" and "When I find them, how do I convince them to write me a big fat cheque? The simple answer is often a lot of hard work, trying, failing, learning, and trying again until you match the perfect pitch with the perfect investor. That's not always the case though.
Jim Firstbrook and Dave Macleod of Thoughtexchange have been running a tech company out of the Kootenays for a number of years now, and have done so successfully. With millions of dollars in revenue and a broad base of clients for their software things look to be going very well. No true entrepreneur is ever happy to settle though, and so Jim and Dave made some critical changes at the company, and went out for investment to keep growing toward their billion dollar company goal. The end result was a $7 million dollar investment at a $50 million dollar valuation and nine out of eleven pitches proving successful. How did they do it, and what's coming next? We sat down in AZcreative's Rossland studio to find out.
Technology. It’s everywhere, and in every part of our lives these days. As much as reading and writing it’s becoming a critical part of our education system. As much as natural resources and tourism it’s becoming a critical and growing part of our economy. But can a thriving technology sector and economy really take hold in the wilds of the West Kootenay? If so, how do you get it started and accelerate it forward?
Just like with any sector, a key piece to growing a thriving community is getting people together of like mind and passion to share ideas, thoughts, projects and more. In an industry like technology where the need to actually get together with other humans is perhaps less than most others, actually getting real people together in a physical space together can be a challenge.
Brad Pommen has taken up that challenge. Moving to Nelson several years ago, he was keen to get to know the people and culture in the area, as well as find other tech-geeks like himself. With an aim to find new work and friends, what began as chats over a pint in the local pub, quickly grew into the largest technology club in Canada, and is fast fostering a growth in the community amongst all ages.
Lawyers. They are the butt of many jokes, often considered expensive, and not typically an aspect of people’s business or lives that they enjoy working with. On the other hand, law touches every aspect of our lives from marriage to death and everything in between, including the businesses we launch and run. Indeed the perception of lawyers being expensive may well be incorrect, and rather a good lawyer will save many hours of heartache and grief as well as money if used wisely. Yes a good lawyer will help set that foundation for your business, put in place the rules that keep you and your partners happy and functioning well, or separating cleanly if that’s the case. So is that lawyer expensive, or is it perhaps the best money you’ve ever spent as an entrepreneur?
Leon Pigott of Pigott &Co. in Nelson BC is a strong example of the type of lawyer that can be that wise investment of your early startup cash. As an entrepreneur himself, having been lured in by Nelson’s lifestyle siren song from bigger centers, he decided to launch his own firm with a specific focus on working with up and helping up and coming entrepreneurs lead the Kootenays into the next generation of business success.
I caught up with Leon at the Kootenay Coop Studios to talk about his own entrepreneurial journey as well as the two tips that every entrepreneur needs to know about the law and how and when lawyers can be a great investment in your business.
What were you doing when you were 8 years old? Probably going to school, and playing with your friends I would imagine. How about at 13? More of the same perhaps? Maybe having the first idea of wanting to get a job? In your teenage years you were free of responsibility for the most part. You didn’t have a mortgage to pay, you didn’t have kids to feed, and you were free to play as you wished.
Now let’s think about some of the reasons we don’t start businesses when we’re older. Fear is the number one thing blocking most people. That fear stems often from the very real responsibility we pick up as we get older. Those mortgages that need paying and kids that need feeding.
Knowing that, it would seem that there is really no better time in our lives to take risks, go after what we love, and start our own business than when we’re in our teen years. Of course to do that one would need whole lot of focus and drive not often found until later in life.
Maxwell Nicholson is an anomaly in this case. He had that focus, drive and determination from a young age. It started by winning sales competitions at eight years old and continued on into launching his first business at the age of 13. Now in business school at UVIC, he’s also a recent winner of the Junior Dragon’s Den Contest and on his way to making big things happen. Yes this now 18 year old from Grand Forks, BC is wise beyond his years and there is much that any entrepreneur of any age can and should learn from him. I connected with Maxwell via Skype to hear his inspiring tale and learn how we can all up our games to keep up with this teenager on the road to success.
What is the first thing any person does when they get an award, achieve something great or succeed in their pursuits? Ok probably they say thank you first to whoever gave them award, but immediately after they tend to heap gratitude upon those who help them get there. Successful people, among many others are, are often the first to admit that they couldn’t have done whatever they did to succeed without the help and guidance of others. Yes, whether an athlete, an entrepreneur, or simply someone wanting to make the most of life, coaching is a critical element to realizing your full potential.
There is an ever growing trend, and it is a trend that podcasting has ridden in a major way of people seeking advice, tips, and how tos from others who have made it in their chosen field. Indeed the self-help industry has perhaps never been bigger than it is today. It seems many of us are looking for others who have done it to tell us how they have done it in such a way that we can simply follow their success manual and reproduce what others have done. Yes there is a massive market searching for, and indeed a very wealthy industry providing answers. Answers. Are answers really what we need though?
A great coach is a person who has the ability to help someone be the best they can be, not by giving them answers but by asking the right questions. Yes questions are the key to great coaching, and coaching is the key to great success. So the true path to success lies not in discovering answers, but in seeking the right questions to unlock your ability to be the best you possible.
In today’s podcast, I sat down with Lesley Beatson, a coaching expert from Rossland, BC. Through asking the right questions she has helped coach numerous athletes to high performance, CEO to business success and average everyday people to a better, happier place. Lesley walks u through what she loves about coaching, and provides a few tips, questions, not answers, that we can all use right now to help self-coach ourselves to being the best us we can be.
Content is king! You’ve heard it a million and one times. If you can find a niche that people are keen on, and produce great content you’re well on your way to developing a big audience you can then monetize. Some of the earliest forms of entertaining content were letters sent home from travellers out exploring and enjoying new locations. Yes travel writing has always been popular and remains so in the modern era. Today rather than carrier pigeons, the pony express and snail mail of all sorts, travel media has found a natural home on the web and remains one of the most popular content types.
In the mid 2000’s a couple of guys in Silicon Valley launched new online travel publication called Matador and a forum for travellers to connect. Carlo Alcos of Nelson, BC who happened to be traveling at the time, joined the forum and began reading articles. Shortly thereafter he thought “Hey I could write better articles than this!” Fast Forward eght years and he is the managing editor for the publication as well as director of an online school, breeding the next generation of content producers.
Maps. They get us where we need to go, help us discover new places and make the journey from where we are to where we want to be safer. From the earliest days of ancient man wandering beyond his cave, camp or tree to find food, fun and fortunes, knowing where you are in relation to where you need to be has been critical to mankind’s survival. If you’re a backcountry skier, maps can be a direct link between car and super sick lines. They can provide routes to good times as well as be a guide through dangerous terrain.
From the earliest days, explorers would set out into unexplored lands, charting their course as they went so that others could safely enjoy those same routes later. While not discovering new colonies, continents or cultures, Trevor Campbell of Nelson, BC has been on a personal lifelong mission to discover new secret stashes of the vertical powder filled variety. What began as collecting data and photos for his own personal backcountry snowboarding bible, eventually morphed into a new business. Now as one of just a handful of backcountry cartographers in the country he’s helping skiers and snowboarders alike access the goods in a safer way with his company Mighty Bighorn Maps.
Wastewater, sewage, bio matter… whatever you call it, there is a massive global need to figure out a better way to handle it. For thousands of years indigenous, sustainable man lived in largely closed loop energy systems much the way nature still does today. In such a loop there is no such thing as waste and energy simply transfers from one form to the next. With the advent of so called modern society’s disposable culture, human animal and agricultural wastewater has become a major environmental concern on a grand scale. Indeed more people die from the effects of untreated wastewater per year than AIDS or malaria. Unfortunately poop just doesn’t get the same headline coverage as the other two blockbuster causes.
Bill Powell of Grand Forks has had a lifelong attachment to the land whether during his early business years as a rancher in Australia, or living a sustainable lifestyle on his 10 acre plot in the Boundary Country. Several years ago he was turned on to a product that had the ability to reduce disease, clean up the environment and generate energy in the process. Indeed he saw an opportunity to both do right by Mother Nature and mankind and make a buck at the same time.
Content marketing. It has been the buzz world of the marketing industry for the last several years. As a strategy it has been around ever since the first person told a story to promote their product, themselves or anything for that matter. Indeed the ability to tell an engaging story to the right people in the right medium at the right time is truly an art unto itself. Mastering it can be the key to unlocking the doors through any wall separating you from your audience.
Tammy Everts has been in the content marketing world for two decades, long before it became the current it thing to do. She began as an avid reader, reading everything she could and reproducing the message in succinct digestible forms. From producing the must-read book as a child for girls who love horses through to content director for a silicon valley based company from her home in Nelson BC, Tammy is as valuable a resource you’ll find when it comes to producing amazingly engaging content.
Hi Podcast listeners, today we have another special 7 quick hits section with Colin Payne of Colin Payne Photography. Today we learn why Bob Marley’s revolution songs get him fired up and how he lives his live in pursuit of trusting “It,” even if he’s not yet entirely sure what “It” is.
Brevity, the sound bite, the easily digestible message. However you describe it, one of the key factors in marketing and selling just about anything, is the ability to quickly, concisely and effectively deliver a critical message about your product. As they say, a picture tells a thousand words, so what better way to sell your business than with a truly captivating photograph that sums up the message you’re trying to send in one stunning picture? Knowing how critical and effective a great photo can be for selling, and how great and inexpensive quality cameras have become we should be surprised that we still see anything less than perfect pictures out there. Whether it be on a Facebook Page, Instagram account, company website, brochure or magazine article, simply taking the time to get the perfect shot often gets lost in a super easy point, shoot and publish world.
Colin Payne of the South Slocan has first got drawn in to the world of photography on a trip through Europe as a way of documenting his adventures. Growing that talent with a journalism degree and photo journalism courses he went on to a career shooting and writing for community newspapers. After finding his way to, and falling in love with the Nelson, BC area, the community paper he worked for quickly closed. What came next was a forced entry into the entrepreneurship world or photography.
Hi Podcast listeners. As you heard in the full episode with Sean Smillie of Planet Fiction studios, chasing after your dream and doing what you love despite what the naysayers may say is critical to success and happiness. In the 7 quick hits section with Sean we explore everything from his favourite video game of all time to how he plans to one day be connected to everyone in the world.
Hi Podcast listeners. As you heard in the full episode with Jenna Raider and Shane Hainsworth from Nelson BC who are in the process of launching their new live broadcast TV show, the lineup, the two have a great energy. IN the 7 quick hits with Jenna and Shane we’ll dive into everything from who motivates them to be awesome, why their parents are their heroes, and how David Letterman, Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres may play a role in the future movie of their lives.
What is it you really love doing? I mean really love doing to the point that you could do it for days on end and not get tired of it? What if you could turn that into your full time job and career? What if you could tell all of the nay-sayers and folks telling you that you can’t do that, you have no training or formal education, “No! This is what I love to do. This is what I am awesome at, and I am going to do what it takes to follow my dreams!”
Sean Smillie grew up in Rossland, letting his imagination run wild, being inspired by the beautiful surroundings and awesome skiing, snowboarding and mountain biking that surrounded him. At an early age he fell in love with comics, books and movies, anything that fit with his imagination, creating new worlds, fantasies and adventure. When he ran out of things to read he began writing his own stories and continuations of comics and stories he loved. That love of writing, untameable imagination and love for gaming stayed with him into his adult life. With perhaps a stroke of luck or just a recognized opportunity he was introduced to a big time gaming company through a snowboarding buddy and ended up getting hired on as a game tester. It was a unique and bold move thereafter that led to the rise of a prolific writing career, developing and designing big time video game titles. Now coming full circle he has moved back to Rossland and launched his own creative design / writing studio to push out more of his ideas, and is also teaching the next generation of writers from his home in the Kootenays.
I sat down with Sean in the AZcreative studio in Rossland to hear his amazing tale.
Have you ever wanted to start your own show? Sure at various time throughout our lives whether it was child hood dreaming, sitting back with a beer at the pub or chatting with friends we've all had great ideas for the next TV hit. Of course those dreams were near impossible unless you happened to have your own TV production company and studio, or were able to convince someone who did to make your show. With the advent of high quality inexpensive video and audio recording technology in concert with the proliferation of broadband internet, that dream of making and perhaps starring in your own show is now a reality. Whereas in the past you needed huge resources to back up your big idea, today all it requires is the passion and energy, along with some skill in operating the technology, and you too can be a TV star.
Shane Hainsworth, and Jenna Raider have been dabbling in the arts and tech world their whole life. Three years , and a major evolution in technology after their first attempt at a live broadcast show, it was indeed a beer at the pub that spurred the launch of their new live broadcast show, that is about to hit the airwaves in a big way