Ep. 26 The True Mother-Daughter Odyssey to Building a Business in BC

Picture this: a spontaneous idea during a drive that blossoms into a thriving cold plunge and sauna studio in Squamish, founded by a dynamic mother-daughter duo. This episode takes you through our exhilarating journey, from almost opting for a franchise to braving the complexities of municipal zoning laws. We share our personal story of leveraging family legacy, balancing our unique strengths, and turning a spark of inspiration into a sustainable venture. You’ll gain insights into the strategic thinking and unwavering perseverance that powered our dream, along with the remarkable dynamics of working as a mother-daughter entrepreneurial team.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, we break down the critical steps of opening a business in regions managed by Vancouver Coastal Health. Learn why early engagement with health authorities and strategic lease timing can make or break your venture, all illustrated through our experiences with Plunge Wellness. We also highlight the indispensable role of commercial leasing specialists and consulting professionals in navigating this complex process. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to bring their business vision to life, underscoring the essence of meticulous planning, community support, and expert advice in achieving entrepreneurial success.

LINKS:
Plunge Wellness: https://plungewellness.ca/
Vancouver Coastal Health: https://www.vch.ca/en
District of Squamish Planning Dept: https://squamish.ca/business-and-development/home-land-and-property-development/
The Pelly Clinic: https://thepellyclinic.ca/
The Legal Education Society - More info on leasing: https://pm.cle.bc.ca/clebc-pm-web/manual/area.do?area=241093

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey, all you cool cats and kittens. I thought I'd try something new today for the intro because I think a lot of times people think maybe I just record recorded the intro once and I don't do it new every time, but it's a cold read every single time. And also, I wanted to remind you that four years ago we were all watching Tiger King. You remember Carol Baskin who would say hey, all you cool cats and kittens on her YouTube channel. Yeah, come to think of it. I don't really want to be identified as someone like Carol Baskin. I have a little something different for you today and I just thought you guys might really enjoy the story about how my daughter and I built a cold plunge and sauna studio in Squamish in in 2024. I'm going to toss in the disclaimer here just to say that this entire episode is based on my experience. It does include the research that we did during the process, but it is 100% experiential and this is going to alter between whoever you talk to and certainly between municipalities, but for the most part, I'm going to give you a rundown on just what it's like for two women to start a business and in this case, in Squamish, and some of the municipal hoops, but that's not all that we had to go through. So if you are keen to hear the story buckle up, normally when I do a podcast I have a whole bunch of notes of research and I use those to kind of weave together a story for you. But in this case I am going to tell it to you all from our experience and I hope that you enjoy it. So a little backstory. I have been an entrepreneur for a very long time, including 10 years before I got into real estate. So I have an entrepreneurial mind, I think strategically, I think ahead, and I seem to have produced a daughter who has the exact same sort of brain. Well, except that she wouldn't mind me saying this Her brain works in definitely different areas, much better than mine, and mine works in areas much better than hers. However, that said, she's an entrepreneur From the time she was quite young at 12, she started babysitting, saving her money, and then she started a business before COVID that did very well and then kind of had to shutter it during COVID and she pivoted to selling candles and that did really well, and she just always has some kind of thing that she's doing and I think it works out great for her personality and she certainly enjoys it. I'll add, too, that my dad was an entrepreneur. He was a life insurance salesman and he was self-employed as well, so I think it just totally runs in the family.

Speaker 1: 2:59

At around the end of 2022, lane decided that she was going to shut down her travel business. It came with a whole bunch of issues, including dealing with people that would just not pay their invoices and she'd have to chase them down, and it became more of a job than it was a fun career where she could travel and put together really cool trips. So she shut down the business and in the beginning of 2023, she was kind of starting to look for something else to do. We had been working together. She was helping me a lot with my social media and my web design and all that sort of thing, and if you have looked at my social media, you'll see that there is definitely an influence from somebody younger than 58 years old and I get yelled at when I don't do it correctly. So that's my daughter.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Anyway, we were driving around one day and we were literally on Dollar Ten Highway in North Vancouver when we learned of an opportunity to create a franchise or not create a franchise, but to buy a franchise. And we thought about it for about a minute and then kind of discarded that idea. And then about half an hour later I said well, why don't you just do this, open your own Cold Plunge sauna studio, and we'll do it in an entirely different market so that we are not stepping on any toes here in North Vancouver. And I should know better than to make suggestions to Lane, because as soon as I make a suggestion to her, her brain starts to work out all the reasons to make it happen, and then I have to look for reasons not to make it happen. But as it happened, it happened.

Speaker 1: 4:53

The timing on this conversation was interesting because Lane was getting a chunk of money from an outside source and we were trying to figure out what the best way to parlay that chunk of money into something sustainable would be. And going to Hawaii for a month was thrown on the table, but it was quickly dismissed as something that would not actually create any revenue, but it would create a lot of mental health. But anyway, I lost the bet and we didn't get to go to Hawaii for a month, but instead we started to talk about opening Plunge. I don't know about you guys, but when your kid comes to you with an idea, you definitely do that thing where you're encouraging them but hoping maybe it won't happen. That's kind of what happened with this.

Speaker 1: 5:39

But very quickly she crunched the numbers, she figured out how much money she would need, she figured out some opportunities of where we might put the studio. It was always going to be Squamish, so that was one part of the puzzle. And then she started sending me listings are with Squamish, but there have been, there's been a lot of building going on up there and a lot of industrial building. And I think in the old days Squamish was kind of the wild west and they they weren't really super strict on zoning, but a couple of years ago they got together with the planning department and they really, they really cracked down on zoning and how they wanted the city to to be laid out so that you know industrial there'd be heavy industrial, light industrial, multi-use, that sort of thing and so as they were expanding, they actually started making some really smart decisions about how everything would be done. And we ended up going and looking at one warehouse brand new warehouse and we went over to the district and we asked them what the zoning was and they said it was light industrial and we were not permitted to open what's it called personal service or recreational in that, in that building. So even though that building was almost perfect, it didn't work out.

Speaker 1: 7:06

But this brings me to a point. If you are considering opening a store or a restaurant or a recreational facility or anything that is going to be inside the boundary of a regional district that has zoning laws, the very first thing you need to do is figure out where you can put your business. So the first visit you make is to the bylaw department or the planning department. You go in there and they're almost always very nice. It's going to be tougher in a bigger city like Vancouver, even District of North Vancouver, they're really nice. Here you can make an appointment and go and talk to somebody there. The planning department wants you to succeed. They just need you to follow the rules. So with that in mind, you're going to run up against a procedure and as long as you follow that procedure you're going to be okay, all righty.

Speaker 1: 8:02

So once you have the space and you know that you are legally permitted to put whatever business you want into that space, you then have to negotiate the lease with the landlord and generally the landlord is represented by a commercial agent, which was the case here and you should be represented by an agent, and obviously Lane was represented by me. And I think it's very important for people to understand that lease price per square foot and triple net and all the things to do with a commercial lease are negotiable. And I think a lot of times inexperience comes to play here and they go and they talk to the leasing agent and the leasing agent says this costs this much and then people think that that is how much something's going to cost. So everything's negotiable. Once you secure a price and you secure the lease, then you can talk about dates for when you're moving in and if you're smart, like Lane was, you will have everything backed out to take possession on this date and you hope to open on such and such a date. So X, y and Z has to get finished before all that happens. Now, in Lane's case she leased a bare warehouse, which means that there is a great big power box and no outlets anywhere at all in the warehouse, which means that one of the first things you do is you speak to an electrician, which means that one of the first things you do is you speak to an electrician. But because Lane was knowing, she knew she was opening something that was unusual in British Columbia or really anywhere.

Speaker 1: 9:45

The Cold Plunge sauna studio is not being done all over the world yet, or indoors In many cases. In some cases, the big, big places, they are classified as a pool by Vancouver Coastal Health. And that brings me to a very important aspect and one of the reasons I think my daughter is probably one of the smartest people in the world. She, very early on, within about two weeks of getting the keys, she had the Vancouver Coastal Health representative in Squamish come in and explain exactly what needed to be done in order for her to be compliant with the Vancouver Coastal Health rules around cold plunging. Now, having said that, they didn't actually really have rules around cold plunging, so she and the Vancouver Coastal Health representative worked together to determine what their classification would be for plunge and she can speak more of that if you want to call her. But long story short, the rep from Vancouver Coastal Health said you have to do this, this and this, and it was a lot more than what we had previously anticipated. We thought we could maybe just get a bunch of cold plunge tubs and put them on the floor and they could drain into a drain in the floor, but that was not the case and if you get your butt up to plunge, you'll see that there's this beautiful kind of a stage, a low stage that has been constructed and it slopes to a drain, and that was to be compliant with Vancouver Coastal Health.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Since I do believe that this is probably one of the most important things you can do, if you are opening a business that serves people, either food or any way they might get injured, or any way they or is has water involved or heat or anything like the really the only thing that you probably don't need Vancouver Coastal Health for might be a work share studio. I don't even know. Maybe you do need it for that, but I would make that phone call regardless, even maybe even before you secure a space for whatever business you want to put in, and find out what the requirements are from them. So when you have Vancouver Coastal Health and you have the district and you know what they need, then you are going to be ready and that's when Lane was ready to start creating Plunge and every single thing that was done in the warehouse was done with the intention of being compliant with all levels of authority and it was so important to her and to me that we make sure that everything was done above board and with all the required permissions and permits and zoning requirements.

Speaker 1: 12:43

So I just want to make sure that if you are doing anything and you are you need, if you need some help, well, first of all, if you need some help anywhere between Squamish and New West, call me and I will come and we can talk about it. And if you're outside of that region, I can find you a commercial agent that can really help you figure out what you need to do. But I will say also that not all commercial agents are going to talk to you about getting independent advice from Vancouver Coastal Health and the district where you're operating. They are the representatives. Well, you're a representative for buying or leasing, but ultimately, the onus is on you to find out what you need to do and where you can put your business. So it's very important to recognize that you may have an agent that you know like and trust in, commercial, but they might not know the area that you're looking in and they may not know the zoning, so you really want to protect yourself by following up everything for yourself.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Lane would also tell you that if you plan to get everything ready in three months, you may want to have a long conversation with a planning department wherever you're opening your place, because oftentimes permits could take longer than that. Sometimes permits take six months building permits, that sort of thing so you definitely want to check with them and find out. That might be a question you asked beforehand too, like maybe you don't want to get the keys or you don't want to start paying rent until after you have all your permits in place. Okay, you definitely. It's strategic. You got to sit down and figure out what you want, when you want it and how you're going to get to that point with the proper authority. It's not impossible. It's not even really difficult if you know what you're doing. What's difficult is if you try to do it by yourself and you don't have any advice. So that's where having a commercial leasing specialist come in and help is really important.

Speaker 1: 14:57

And as much as I love Squamish, I actually have somebody up there that I think is just the fantastic commercial leasing agent. So if you want to open something in Squamish. I would probably pass you along to him. He's brilliant and he knows all the stuff that needs to be known. But with the other stuff I can help you find the people to speak to. I'm never going to advise you on what to do outside of the parameters of my real estate license, but what I can do is advise you on the professionals to talk to about it, kind of like in residential, where I cannot help you get a mortgage but I can pass you along to a couple of mortgage brokers that I know that can really help you, depending on your circumstances. Again, you know different people have different requirements. Some people have entrepreneur, like self-employment income and that's an entirely different animal to get a mortgage than if you have a consistent 25 year income. If you're over 65, there may be issues with getting a mortgage. If you're, you know there's lots of things and I, again, I don't speak to any of those things but I put you with the right people. I think that's actually where a lot of my value comes from, is I know all the right people to talk to to get the things done that you want to get done on your list. So and it doesn't cost you anything, and I don't make anything from referring you to any of these people, so I'm always happy to do it.

Speaker 1: 16:27

But back to Lane and Plunge Wellness. To say that I am proud of Lane and the work that she has done is it almost doesn't even seem like the right word proud. I think we use that a lot, but if there was, maybe we could capitalize it and times it by 5,000, I think maybe we'd be getting a little bit closer to how I feel about what she has created up there. It's not only incredibly helpful for athletes, for people my age who need the additional health benefits of cold plunging and contrast hot and cold therapy, but it's also beautiful and the zen that you feel when you're in the space that's all her she created. That it came right out of her head and right into the building Blows my mind every single time I walk in there. A cute little story about that is obviously I was helping her and I would arrive and she would have a list of things for me to do and I would just work through the list. Her dad would come up to help and she would hand him the list and he would say well, why are you doing it this way, or why are you doing it that way? So she would. By middle of February she would have all the answers ready for him, because she just didn't want to have to explain every single time why she had an idea, one idea or another, and because most of the vision was in her head. It was difficult for other people to see what it was supposed to look like, but once it came together, every single person that walks in there is absolutely blown away, and you will be too.

Speaker 1: 18:06

I'm going to put a link to Plunge in the show notes. It's not going to be super busy this summer, we don't think, and I think the fall is going to be very busy, but the prices are going to go up for the fall and winter. And she currently is running a special, I think through her Instagram or on her I don't know how it all works. You know these kids today, gen Zs. Anyway, she has some kind of deal where you can lock in the summer monthly payment for a year, because if you wait until winter to buy your pass, it's going to cost a whole lot more, because it's going to be crazy busy in there. It's already busy, but it's going to get much busier in the winter.

Speaker 1: 18:46

I hope you enjoyed Jackie and Lane's adventure in Cold Plunge Sauna Building. If you want any more info about this or you need some help figuring some stuff out for yourself, please don't hesitate to give me a call. If I can't help you, I absolutely know someone who can you know. I like to do a shout out to a local business. I've forgotten a couple of times. Um, I don't know why, but uh, today I'm going to shout out my chiropractor. His name is Todd Pelley, he's on upper Lonsdale. Chiropractor His name is Todd Pelley, he's on Upper Lonsdale. I got to tell you guys, this man has saved me over and over again, but no time more than this week.

Speaker 1: 19:27

Last weekend I tweaked my back a tiny little bit and then, true to form, I played two and a half hours of pickleball. And then I had the Canada Day event, event in Pemberton Heights where I was standing all day. And then on Tuesday morning I reached into my car to get my glasses and I put my back out so bad that I actually couldn't put weight on my legs for a few minutes. That's a first. That hasn't happened to me quite so badly before. I put my back out many times because you know I like to beat the heck out of myself, but this case it was really bad. So obviously my lower back was in spasm and I called the clinic and I begged them for an appointment and thankfully they were able to get me in this morning, which was about 24 hours after I hurt myself, which is crazy fast. I was on the cancellation list. Anyway, I went in and he adjusted me and for the first time in 24 hours, I don't have tears in my eyes, so I was able to record the podcast.

Speaker 1: 20:21

So if you need a crackerjack sorry, that was a joke, right Crack crackerjack. Anyway, I'm here in my studio alone, so I'm the only one laughing. But if you need a really great chiropractor, todd Pelley is your guy, and also Lane mentioned to me there is a great new show on, I think, tlc called Crack Addicts, but it's about chiropractors, which is hilarious just in the name. So, 100%, I'm going to start watching that. As always, you can get Keeping it Real on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts and you can also get it on my website, along with a whole bunch of other really cool stuff like Buyer's Guide and Seller's Guide and a bunch of information about the neighborhood and blog posts and all kinds of stuff. Anyway, that's NorthVanHomeSalescom and you can click on podcasts if you want to see all of the episodes. And yeah, I will talk to you guys next week.