Taking ESL Outdoors



May 18, 2005 -- You could say that making a living in the Kootenays still relies on natural resources. For those of us who don't work in mining, logging or water industries, supporting ourselves can mean digging deep into our inner resources to find a means to stay.

That's why an extraordinarily high number of small businesses per capita have developed here. While no hard statistics exist for this area, in a Bank of Montreal study, an Alberta community took top honours in Canada boasting 500 business licenses for every 10,000 residents. The community of Nelson has more than 1,200 licenses with a population of about 9,500. It, and other Kootenay communities, didn't make the survey because the study only considered those with more than 10,000 people. One can speculate that most centres in the Central Kootenay region demonstrate similar resourcefulness.

While we've come to expect innovative businesses to line our main streets, even more are nestled away in people's homes. Just what are some of these home-based businesses up to and how do they do it

Is working from home the easy life, like some stereotypes suggest-hanging out with the kids, going to the gym, chatting with friends on the phone Or is it 60-hour work weeks, struggling to find the balance between personal and work life

Keith Rodgers of Nelson is currently setting up his home-based business. Adventure Language School offers English as a Second Language courses with optional outdoor activities in the West Kootenay area. These include hiking, mountain biking, camping and canoeing. He plans to hire qualified guides, preferably with ESL teaching experience.

Rodgers has had his nose to the grindstone for months, working from home planning the program, recruiting customers, and designing his marketing materials, including a skookum website that he launched in January. His market is youth from all over the world including Germany, Japan, Mexico, Korea and Taiwan.

The idea for the school percolated a couple of years ago when he figured out how to pull his eclectic work background into a focused career. Rodgers, who grew up in Nelson, has worked as a ski and raft guide in Japan and Whistler, taught ESL in Vancouver and was a biologist's assistant, touring all over the West Kootenay.

The new business owner reckons he spends 45 to 50 hours a week on the job and says he feels fortunate to have a separate room for his office. This is in contrast to earlier days when he worked in his dining room and couldn't escape the work. Now his challenges lie more in the occasional temptation of escaping through his work.

"This is really the first time I've spent so much time working by myself. I might spend the whole day on some little web graphic which in the grand scheme of things doesn't make a whole lot of difference when there's a dozen other things that I should have been finishing."

He figures he's doing okay getting the balance between work and home life though, keeping time open for when his girlfriend returns home from work, then often scooting back to the computer once she's fallen asleep around 11 p.m.

The biggest advantage of working from home is the flexibility, he adds. There's the savings he can put into extra marketing. Plus, not only can he head back to the office in the wee hours of the morning but he doesn't have to travel to the office. On the days when things come to a lull, like that sleepy, unproductive time between 1 and 3 p.m., he can head for the hills. Taking off for a couple hours leaves him feeling refreshed and inspired for more work when he returns, he adds enthusiastically.

It doesn't make a heck of a big difference whether he's working from home in the Kootenays or in a large urban centre he says, other than the proximity to the ski hill.

"Could I do that in Vancouver Definitely not. So that's a huge advantage. But in terms of the work itself, I don't think it actually makes a huge difference. I mean, conversely, if I was a person who, maybe my stress release was going to art galleries, then I'd feel a little bit limited here"
http://www.adventurelanguageschool.com

This article is part of a series on small business commissioned by Community Futures. Sally Smith is a freelance journalist living in Nelson. She can be reached at
http://www.sallywordsmith.com





Taking ESL Outdoors