Entrepreneurs are a special breed, right, risk takers who thrive on never knowing what’s coming next and who would be bored by a regular life?
Sure, some are like that. But most are more like Judy Kolk.
“We’ve being doing this for 14 years and for the first five or six years, I probably would have said, ‘you know what, we should have just stayed on our little two acre plot, kept it simple and had a nice life,’” Kolk said.
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“But I wouldn’t want to go back anymore. I find this very fulfilling and I think my husband and daughters would say that, too.”
Kolk and husband, Claude, grow and process black currants and operate a tree nursery, landscaping business, concrete operation, garden centre, greenhouse, kids’ adventure park and restaurant at Kayben Farms near Okotoks, Alta.
To say they stumbled into most of those enterprises wouldn’t be far off the mark.
Claude, a mechanical engineer, was working in Calgary and Judy was raising their three daughters on their acreage when, in the mid-1990s, they decided to buy a nearby quarter section and subdivide it. It would be a simple sideline business.
“It was only after the municipal district turned down our subdivision plan for the second time that we thought, ‘well, how are we going to make this land pay for itself?’” Kolk said.
That was the first of what would be many “now what” moments.
In 2002 they moved onto Plan B: planting 20 acres of black currants.
“At the time, the world price was close to $2 a pound,” she said. “Before our first crop was even ready, prices had fallen dramatically, to less than 50 cents a pound.”
Plan C was to process black currants into juice, so Kolk took a government course on value-adding, label design, marketing and selling to grocery stores.
“That was a huge learning curve. It was hard to even wrap my head around this because it wasn’t at all what we started out intending to do.”
Meanwhile, some of the nursery trees they had planted on the quarter section, which was another supposedly hands-off investment, were ready for sale.
Buyers started asking if the Kolks would plant them and they said yes, partly because they needed more revenue than black currant juice could provide. Tree planting led to sod laying, landscaping and building walkways and retaining walls.
Because people were coming to buy trees, it also made sense to offer nursery products.
You see where this is going, right?
Well, the Kolks didn’t, not yet, but they were getting comfortable with the idea that somehow it was all going to work out.
Claude quit his job in February 2005 and the farm became their only source of revenue. That fall, they heard about a greenhouse frame that was being given away, and another business was born.
“I think it was 2006 when we finally got a picture of where this could go,” Kolk said.
“We had people coming for the greenhouse, to buy shrubs and pick black currants. And they would comment how they liked coming here and how nice it was to be out in the country. That’s when we started getting a sense of where this could go.”
That year, the Kolks attended their first North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association conference, which is famous for providing up-close tours of successful agri-tourism operations.
As they talked to other entrepreneurs, they heard helter-skelter business stories just like theirs.
“We never feel like oddballs when we’re on one of those tours,” she said. “It’s nice to know there are other people like us.”
That’s also when the picture suddenly came into focus.
Kayben Farms would be a destination, not just for Okotoks but for Calgarians. So along came the five-acre adventure park, corn maze, market garden and restaurant. Finally, there was a grand plan.
And somewhere along the line came the realization they no longer missed the days when there was a steady paycheque and weekends off.
“If I had known what it was going to be like, I would never have gone into it,” Kolk said. “But that’s not what I feel now. Over the years I’ve become far more of a risk taker and far more interested in living up to my potential. I’m not there yet but I’ve gone some of the way.”
There are many reasons to be cautious if you’ve got an idea for a business, but declaring you’re not the type isn’t one of them. The business world is full of Judy Kolks, people who never knew they were entrepreneurs until they became one.
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