You Can Do That Here

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!