Young guns in business

Page 19

Entrepreneur- Gisele Martin, 27, Partner-Douglas Wright, Business-Tla-ook Cultural Adventures

Launched-National Aboriginal Day, June 21, 2002. Location-Tofino, B.C.

Tla-ook Cultural Adventures offers guided cultural tours of Clayoquot Sound in traditional Nuu-Chah-Nulth dugout canoes.

Windspeaker: Why did you start your own business?

Gisele Martin: Well, I had the idea for quite a while. I'd been guiding on and off for almost 10 years before I started the business ...various different things, kayaking, whale watching. And I think my first job when I was whale watching, I realized we were using a lot of diesel fuel. And I had heard about biodiesel, but I never knew where it was available, and I thought, 'You know, it would be really great if we used the canoes because then we wouldn't be using any fuel.' It would be environmentally friendly, and also you go a lot slower, you see a lot more and we can do cultural tours, which there weren't any in Clayoquot Sound at the time. And that idea kind of stuck with me, though I never thought I would personally do it.

Windspeaker: Any formal business training?

Martin: Nope.

Windspeaker: What are your business short-term goals?

Marin: I would like to expand into overnight trips. Right now we're just doing day trips.

Windspeaker: Long term?

Martin: Well, right now we just have our home office, so it would be really nice to settle into a permanent office in Tofino, and that's a little bit hard ... I would like to do more kids' programs. I'd like to expand in the winter and just be able to donate more of our time into local education and stuff... I've worked with the Raincoast Education Society in Tofino. I used to work for them years ago, so we've had some of the schools come through this year, and that's been really fun.

Windspeaker: What has been your greatest business success so far?

Martin: Well, I guess getting it going was really great ... I loved the idea, and when we started it, it was really great. It was a lot of hard work. So I think just getting through all that and finally onto our fourth year now has been a huge success. And all the help that we got from different people.

Also, I won an award from Aboriginal Tourism B.C. two years ago. And that was the Young Adult Achievement Award, so that was really great.

I mean, people's reactions, from our guests, when they come off their trips, I think that's the biggest success. They love it.

Windspeaker: What was the biggest hurdle you've faced so far in operating your own business?

Martin: I guess one would be my lack of business education ... I'm not keen on math at all, and having dropped out of high school half-way through Grade 9, I've learned everything mostly by experience, you know, by experience in the industry and everything.

So starting the business and finding out how much paperwork was involved and just all those facts and figures, was a huge kind of challenge for me.

Windspeaker: What has been the biggest surprise for you in getting your business up and running?

Martin: Lots of media attention.

Windspeaker: If you could start all over again with your business, what would you do differently?

Martin: I would start to plan earlier. Because when we started planning, I didn't realize how much time it would actually take to get the business started.

Like when you start writing your business plan to the point where you're actually running it, takes a long time. So we started doing that in January and we were kind of functioning in July, but we still hadn't had any advertising out, we still hadn't gotten all our loans and all that in place. So, yes, I'd definitely start earlier. There's lots of things I've learned along the way, for sure.

Windspeaker: What is the greatest reward of running your own business?

Martin: Well, I love being outside, and I'm really happy with what I'm doing now, guiding, trips outside. In the winter I work for other places in Tofino.

I've ben waitressing and stuff, so when I get back to doing my own job in the springtime, I just realize how great it is and how I can go down the same trail maybe three times a day with three different groups of people, but every time it's completely different. The landscape changes every day with the seasons and the people always bring new questions and make me think and learn about new things as well.

When I don't know an answer to a question, I have to go and find out. So I've learned a lot that way. So that's been really, really rewarding.

And working with my partner Douglas has been really rewarding as well, and we've both learned a lot from each other, as well as people, guests. Their feedback is really rewarding. That's a huge part of it.

Windspeaker: What one piece of advice would you give to other young Aboriginal entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs?

Gisele Martin: Plan far in advance, get a mentor, someone who's been in kind of a similar business before, if you can. You'll learn loads from them. (Martin and Wright benefited from taking part in a mentorship program offered by the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Economic Development Corporation.)

And try to do something that you love. Don't get into a business about something that you don't like doing much.