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!