In the season 7 premiere of ‘Yes, We Are Open’ Al flies to Winnipeg, Manitoba. His first visit is with Ashley Lyons and Mikol Markiw from The Real Escape Canada to delve into the intricacies of the escape room industry.
In the season 7 premiere of ‘Yes, We Are Open’ Al flies to Winnipeg, Manitoba. His first visit is with Ashley Lyons and Mikol Markiw from The Real Escape Canada to delve into the intricacies of the escape room industry.
Tune in to hear how a family’s shared passion for puzzles turned into a successful escape room empire and how they navigated the challenges thrown by the pandemic. Discover the cutting-edge technologies they plan to integrate to stay ahead in the thrilling world of escape rooms.
You can learn more about The Real Escape Canada at therealescape.ca.
SFX: [00:00:00] We're happy to have you on today's flight to Winnipeg.
Allan: This was me just over a month ago on a flight to Winnipeg. Thanks to this podcast, I can now say I've visited every one of our ten provinces. I'm hoping to visit the territories next. To say I'm grateful would be an understatement.
If you've listened before, thank you for joining me for another season. I think you'll really enjoy the stories we have in store for you. If this is your first episode, welcome. I hope you enjoy it. I've loved traveling across this big country of ours, visiting so many of the small businesses that are part of the backbone of Canada's economy.
So, it's off to Manitoba for Season 7. Once again, I'd never been, and once again, I couldn't wait to go. I couldn't wait to meet the business owners and tell their stories. Stories of how and why they got started, stories of their greatest struggles and how they overcame those struggles, maybe they're still happening, and what those owners hopes and dreams are for the future of their businesses.
So, settle in for eight new stories over the next eight weeks. Hopefully you'll find some inspiration for yourself, and [00:01:00] perhaps you'll dare to dream of one day starting your own business, if you haven't already.
I'm Al Grego, and this is the Season 7 Premiere of Yes We Are Open Podcast.
I arrived in Winnipeg on a Sunday night in late August. It was a very hot and humid day. I was told I had arrived at the tail end of a heat wave.
My hotel is just off Portage Avenue across from the Canada Life Centre, home of the Winnipeg Jets. In addition to the heatwave, I'd also arrived on the last day of something called the Burt Block Party, a four night outdoor music festival which was taking place just outside the Burton Cummings Theatre, about a block northeast of my hotel.
The festival attracts up to 4, 000 fans each night. Sadly, I missed Blue Rodeo, the Arkells, and the Headstones the first three nights. But I was happy to catch Sass Jordan and Tom Cochran closing out the final night of the event. I could hear them clearly from just outside the fenced in event grounds.
Being a musician myself, I'm a big fan of live music, and so this was the best welcome to a city I could have asked for. And speaking of music, [00:02:00] when it comes to music in Canada, Manitoba might not immediately come to mind as a hotbed, but it really should, considering the province's influence on the Canadian music scene. Winnipeg is home of perhaps Canada's first super group. The guess who, which featured the aforementioned Burton Cummings on keyboards and Randy Bachman.
Later, Bachman would form a group of his own called Bachman Turner Overdrive and Crank out hit after hit in Canada and all over the world.
Neil Young, while not from Winnipeg, spent most of his formative years here. He, along with Randy Bachman, even made the Winnipeg intersection of Portage and Main famous in his hit song Prairie Town.
Fast forward a few years, and Manitoba's contribution to Canadian music just keeps growing. You get the great Tom Cochran, Crash Test Dummies, The Watchmen, Chantal Kraviazuk, The Weakerthens, Remy Shand, Susan Aglukark. The list just keeps going on and on.
Anyway, I digress. The next day, Monday, the excitement of the block party was gone. The city of Winnipeg got back to work. And I got back to [00:03:00] taking care of business, so to speak.
The first visit on my trip was a short drive along Portage Avenue to an area called Sturgeon Creek. I pull into the Greenway Plaza on the north side of the road. Taking up multiple units of this plaza is a unique business that I've really been looking forward to visiting.
They're in an industry that's still relatively new. An industry that emerged around 2007 and has been growing in popularity ever since. This industry has a market size valued at 12. 71 billion U. S. this year, and it's projected to reach 38. 33 billion by 2031. That industry is escape rooms. And the subject of this week's story is The Real Escape Canada.
From the outside, the place looks very underwhelming, like any other storefront in the plaza. But once you walk through the doors, On your left, there's a very comfortable looking waiting area with couches and coffee tables highlighted by a bright red wall with a [00:04:00] Real Escape logo on it and posters showing off the eight rooms you can choose from, like a menu.
I've done a few escape rooms with my family back in Ontario, but what really excited me today was the prospect of seeing what goes on into putting these rooms together behind the scenes.
Hi, Ashley?
Ashley: Ashley, yeah.
Allan: I'm Allan.
Ashley: Hi, nice to meet you.
Allan: Nice to meet you.
That's Ashley, the owner. She introduces me to Mikol, the manager, and together they take me for a tour of each room.
Each door opens up into a different fantasy. The Castle, The Mine, Oz, The Ruins, The Pyramid, London 1888, Los Angeles 1947, and their newest edition, The Arcade, which puts you inside a video game. And then you have to, well, you know, escape.
It was so cool to see the rooms and to get a sneak peek at the mechanics behind how they worked. Each room was its own little production with sound and lighting effects. Practical and digital effects. And yes, even a human touch here and there.
Mikol: Again, the [00:05:00] same setup with the computers here. They've got like trapdoor 1, 2, and 3, so this is all their entry points to the room. Um, they've got a costume they're putting on too, it looks like that person behind you there too.
Allan: Once my tour was done, Ashley, Mikol, and I settled in Mikol's office for our interview.
Ashley: Hi, my name is Ashley, I am one of the owners of The Real Escape Canada. Um, I'm also the owner of Timelapse Escape Rooms.
Allan: When did you get into escape rooms?
Ashley: 2015, I did my first escape room and immediately I went to my family and I was like, Hey, we need to do an escape room. They're so much fun. I think you would love them. My family is always there. been like big into like board games and puzzles. So we tried it out as a family and I had this random big idea. I'm like, what if we open an escape room? I think we're good at puzzles. I think like we have the passion for that. And from there we kind of just. Thought on that for a few days. And came back to it I was [00:06:00] like, Oh, like we could probably actually do this. Let's do some more escape rooms and like do some research into them. And my dad, Bruce, he's kind of like a jack of all trades. He knew how to build and, um, do a little bit of carpentry work and electronics. So he knew basic electronics and. Implementing that into the room. So he did all the building originally.
My sister is the creative mind. She's the one that always was like coming up with puzzle ideas and she'd be the creative mind behind it.
I was more interested in the management part of a business and the analytics and stuff like that. So I'm marketing.
Allan: So what was your background before you started this? What were you doing? Were you a student?
Ashley: I was 19. So I was just freshly out of high school. So I was just working a random retail job at that time.
I always wanted to go to school for business. That was kind of my next goal to do that. Um, so I did take like a lot of online courses to help with just like knowing how to run a business and stuff, but I've always had that entrepreneurial mindset and I knew I wanted to have a [00:07:00] business of some sort. I just didn't know what at the time. And I think this was the perfect opportunity.
Allan: You're 19. You have this idea for a business, you know, escape rooms have been around now for a little bit. But it's still kind of a new thing when you approached your father, how did he respond? Was he like, what are you crazy or?
Ashley: My dad and I are very similar to each other He always had these elaborate like crazy ideas that you're just like what? What are you talking about? So he was kind of on the same page with me. My mom is more of the one that brings us down back to earth No, she did we all had a say it was Um, she tried out the escape rooms and saw them firsthand and she saw how fun they were. And she saw that there was only like, I think a couple in the city at the time. So the market was still like pretty, it wasn't saturated yet. So it was a good time to get into the escape room world. And we were passionate about it, but it just felt right.
Allan: Um, all right. So this is a question I've been waiting to ask. How do you start an escape room? How do you do it? How do you create these puzzles and [00:08:00] are they pre made or do you have to make them up from scratch? Give me a bit of like behind the scenes.
Ashley: Well, there are options, many options in the escape room world, but we've always opted to creating everything originally, um, from our brains.
If we need an idea brought to life that we don't have the skills for, then we can get somebody that does have the skills to make it for us. But everything, it's, Alana is my sister. She's the creative one. She gets inspiration from everywhere that she sees. Like she'll be going for a walk and she'll get inspiration for a puzzle. Like her brain just like sees something and thinks about how can I make it a puzzle? Or how can I make this fun? How can I make this involve like teamwork?
Back in 2015, it was a whole different world of escape rooms. It was more like first generation escape rooms where it's more so locks and keys. Less electronics, like very simple electronics, like magnetic locks opening a door or like opening like something like that, but now it is a lot more complex than it was back then.
Allan: Now, what's the name of the first one that you opened?
Ashley: Timelapse Escape Rooms.
Allan: Timelapse. Where [00:09:00] is that one?
Ashley: A 654 King Edward Street.
Allan: Okay, and how many rooms is that?
Ashley: We have full 60 minute rooms, and then we do seasonal ones that we change out. So, technically six at the moment. But I don't even know how many we've done in total. Because we have seasonal rooms that we switch out every few months. We have Portable escape rooms that we bring to events. So we've designed quite a few as well.
Allan: So what year did Timelapse, first open doors?
Ashley: We opened in 2016.
Allan: So only a year later from your first escape room to when you opened your doors for business was one year.
Ashley: Yeah.
Allan: You work fast. Wow.
Ashley: Yeah.
Allan: Amazing. And how were you received when you first opened?
Ashley: Quite well, actually, yeah. Wow, that's a long time ago, thinking back.
Yeah, we opened with one room. A lot of people enjoyed it. We had lots of feedback to, like, make improvements. We made the improvements, and from there, we had a pretty good reputation moving forward.
Allan: That good reputation will come in handy in the next part of Ashley's story. We've now learned about how she and her family started Timelapse, an escape room business. But you're probably wondering where [00:10:00] The Real Escape Canada factors into the story. To help us with that part. Let's introduce Mikol.
Mikol: My name is Mikol. I am the General Manager at The Real Escape Canada. And you've been here since day one. Not quite since day one. It was 2017 when I first started. So the business opened in November, 2014. So a couple years later is when I came along.
So my background was mostly in hospitality. I did a lot of work in hotels. I've been through almost every hotel in the city here. And you know, just was looking for a change in scenery. And I came here to start as a escape room facilitator. I had never done an escape room before, before I started working here. I didn't know what it was. I was always terrified of 'em. 'cause I thought they were all scary. Right? And then I. Got the job here and got introduced to the world and have been stuck here ever since. So I kind of worked my way up from running the rooms to being a shift supervisor to eventually now being the general manager.
Allan: While Ashley and her family were building Timelapse Escape Rooms into a reputable business, not too far away was The Real Escape Canada, founded by Adam and Megan Schmidt, a couple from Ontario who moved to Manitoba to open up Winnipeg's [00:11:00] first escape rooms two years earlier.
Ashley: The Real Escape Canada opened their doors in 2014. Megan and Adam Schmidt were the owners. They were the first ones to open an escape room in Winnipeg. They kind of like had the market of escape rooms. Like this was the one that people knew about because of the first one to come into Winnipeg. It was very exciting.
Allan: Adam, a former RCMP pilot and Megan, a physiotherapist, didn't stop at their escape room business. They continued to evolve their business into a new company called Activate Games touted the world's first active gaming facility. Their new company grew very quickly, forcing Adam and Megan to make the difficult decision to sell off their original business.
So you worked for Megan and Adam for a few years. When you heard that they were selling the business, how did you feel?
Mikol: Very surprised, because working with them for so long and knowing that this was kind of like their first born child essentially, even before they had kids of their own. They had Real Escape. So to know kind of how dedicated they were to this business and to the industry, it was surprising, but also at the same [00:12:00] time, their other business Aactivate was taking off in a way that they never expected it to take off and they were going absolutely global with it.
So to know that that was where the energy was focusing, that was what was making the most money. That was, What needed to be focused on, Real Escape kind of became more of the second child. Essentially they wanted the business to succeed and they just wanted to have owners that were going to put the energy into it. That was going to make it succeed.
Allan: Enter Ashley and her family.
Ashley: They liked that we were a small family business and they thought we would take care of their escape room. Just like we do with Timelapse.
Allan: I'm assuming you were aware of Timelapse back then.
Mikol: Yes.
Allan: So when you heard that it was Ashley and the Timelapse team taking over, did that make you feel a little bit better about the transition? And don't worry that she's in the room.
Mikol: LOL! Right. I think there's, there's always a little bit of hesitation when acquisition like that happens because you kind of, you're used to your systems and how things are going and you'd always have that fear and worry that these are the people that they already have their business. They're just [00:13:00] going to translate that into this and then we're going to become Timelapse 2.0. But after I think our first meeting or two, it became pretty clear that they didn't want that to happen and they wanted our systems to stay exactly the same. Okay. And I think that, you know, the people, all the staff who were here were retained. That was a big part of it to keeping the systems in place, keeping everything functioning as it is, and just making sure that, you know, we're not overlapping any business ideas.
Allan: What would you say, since you've been here anyway, what's been the heyday for this business?
Mikol: I would say probably 2016 to 2018 is probably when we were kind of really hitting our stride, and that's when the escape room industry was really at its peak.
I think that those kind of two years were really when people started to learn about escape rooms. Like, when we started, we were kind of in the same boat as Timelapse was. We only had the one room, and we were in a different location just on top of an office, and that's all we had. And then, you know, once that proved that it worked, we kind of developed into here. And then as we opened and as we started building rooms, we noticed more and more companies popping up, like Timelapse and other escape rooms in the city were shooting up as well. So the [00:14:00] market was just booming for escape rooms. And those were the really big two years that we saw probably the most business.
Allan: Up next. Since taking over The Real Escape Canada, Ashley and her family seem poised to dominate the escape room industry in Winnipeg. Will they be able to continue to innovate and do what's necessary to stay on top? Stay tuned to find out.
You're listening to Yes We Are Open.
At 19 years of age, Ashley Lyons convinced her family that they should start an escape room business in Winnipeg, and that's exactly what they did. With creative help from her sister Alana and her father Bruce's handiwork, they opened Timelapse Escape Rooms in 2016.
Over the next seven years, they grew their business and built enough of a reputation that when Winnipeg's OG escape room, The Real Escape Canada, became available, the owners, Adam and Megan, chose to sell their business to Ashley and her family. Are they up to the task? Let's find out.
In the eight years that you've been in business, either here or Timelapse, what has been your [00:15:00] biggest struggle?
Ashley: Well, I think everyone knows what the biggest struggle is during the pandemic. But other than having a pandemic on our shoulders, um, I would say coming up with escape rooms and like having them be only playable one time. And like when somebody does the room, they could do it again, but they'll remember everything. Right? So I think that's one of our biggest struggles is creating something that people could come to back and play again and creating that repeat business where it's not just opening another escape room and then they do it. So we're still in that position and that's still like a very much a big struggle that we face, but we're trying to navigate how to make escape rooms more of a replayable option versus only playing them once. That's been a struggle.
To make up for that. We did start doing seasonal escape rooms that are 45 minute, one room adventures in our smaller space that we had at Timelapse. And that we've found is a little bit better because we do make them sectional. So they're only around for two to three months. [00:16:00] Then it's the next theme goes in and then we bring it back next year.
Allan: All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about the pandemic because
Ashley: can't avoid it.
Allan: Yeah, you can't avoid it. And I mean, you know, I don't know what the lockdown situation was like in Manitoba. I know it was like an Ontario. It took a couple of years for things to get back to normal. In an escape room you have a large number of people in one small room. So I'm sure that there was a long time there where you couldn't even open your doors, right?
Ashley: Oh yeah, I think we were closed for a total of nine months.
Allan: Nine months?
Ashley: Yeah. Not in a row, but it was nine months.
Allan: It's probably worse though that it wasn't in a row. Right? Cause you're opening and then closing.
Ashley: It's like, yes, we're opening! No, we have to close again. Yeah, it was, it was very emotional rollercoaster.
At the beginning we didn't know what was happening, so we were just closed for, I don't know, do you remember how many months? Like the first wave? March?
Mikol: I believe it was from March until July, I think was the first closure.
Ashley: Yeah.
Mikol: Yeah. We got to open up a little bit and then it was, it was just that kind of, like you said, that emotional rollercoaster of like, okay, you're closed and now you get to open up to [00:17:00] half capacity. Yeah. And then you get closed again. And there's these hopes of opening because the numbers are getting better. Yeah. And then the next week everything's bad again, and now you're closed again.
Allan: During that lowest point, did you ever have that conversation, the go, no go conversation, where it's like, we can make it maybe to the end of this month, otherwise we may have to shut down?
Ashley: We never really had that conversation because once the government assistance was in place Like our rent was highly subsidized and our employee costs were also highly subsidized. So at that point we still had like a good amount of the savings and a lot was subsidized. It was when they started lifting that we were just uncertain of, okay, are people, going to be coming for us to be able to pay our staff at the full price now without the subsidies.
So there was that kind of like struggle of not knowing like how long it would take for people to come back and like that unknownness. But yes, we were kind of scared, like maybe we will have to close, but there wasn't really serious conversations of that. It was just kind of like in our heads, but not.
Allan: Worst, [00:18:00] worst case. Yeah, didn't even want to think about it.
Ashley: Yeah.
Mikol: Yeah, I mean, obviously the first thing that we're all told is two weeks to flatten the curve, right? So we thought we're gonna shut down for two weeks. We all back to work and that obviously got extended. And you know, we all got laid off when that happened at the beginning in March. And once we got to a point where we realize, okay, this is gonna be a lot more long term than we imagined it to be we brought back our escape from designer just to kind of work from home and do some stuff behind the scenes. And he took that time to develop, I believe it was four new rooms all in that time. So we knew that we're going to have time to do all this. And we had this kind of subsidy from the government that was helping us out with, with wages and whatever else. So we had the resources.
Um, as we were able to bring people back slowly, we brought back a builder, we brought back, you know, a programmer, and we used that time to destruct some of the rooms that we currently had, some of the older ones that were on the docket to get axe anyways, and we built four new ones. So by the time we reopened, People were able to come back and do three or four new [00:19:00] escape rooms over the course of less than a year almost.
Allan: When things started opening up again and it looked like things were kind of getting back to normal, was there like this rush back or did it take time for things to kind of come back?
Mikol: It took time just because of the uncertainty around how we were going to make it all work. It's kind of a unique thing, like I mean, yes, you can go in there and have a mask on and But it's really hard to be socially distant in a room that's maybe 10 feet by 10 feet with a group of four to eight players in there. So there was that kind of confusion of how is this all going to work? How are we going to sanitize everything? There's a lot of locks a lot of props in there. What are we doing?
Allan: Yeah, I imagine the cleanup between Did you have to have what a half hour between groups to? Kind of sanitize everything or how did you handle that?
Mikol: We did. Yeah. So we allowed our staff more time to go in between the rooms and do a lot of cleaning. We invested in ULV foggers to, to kind of douse the room in a spray disinfectant. We, you know, we put the investment as well into like, you know, actual sanitizing spray with cloths and going in there, wiping everything, all the high touch points down. [00:20:00] The ULV fogger obviously saved us a ton of time because that was an easier option. And then, yeah, just having restrictions and how many people can actually be in a room at a time. Masks on at all points, but yeah, it added a level of difficulty to that because we'd never had to do that before.
Allan: So let's talk inflation in economy for a second there, because, you know, since the pandemic, a lot of the conversations I've had kind of shifted more towards now hyperinflation, right? Especially if you're in the food industry, food costs have gone way up, causing everything else to go up. I mean, in your business, I suppose when you're building a new room, That's the case. Costs go up, but how effective are you guys by inflation?
Ashley: In comparison to other businesses, probably not as much, but the cost of building materials is going up, the cost of employee wages is always going up, and it's been going up at quite a steady pace, I would say, so lots of businesses, largest expense is employees and payroll, so that has definitely gone up a lot for us, but in general, I would say, like, we are in a luckier business sector than [00:21:00] others for inflation, but just all of the little expenses have gone up A little bit.
Slowly, people got more comfortable with that as everything kind of settled down and all the restrictions kind of settled, but yeah, 2022, it really got busy. Like people were like, Oh my goodness, we took for granted all of the things that we could have been doing. So like now let's do it. Go out and like have fun, go and do things that was before, like things really got affected with inflation. So I think 2022 and even part of 2023 was really good in that sense. People wanted to do more things and see people again.
Allan: I'd asked about the heyday before the pandemic. So Mikol, you said 2016 to 2018 and Ashley, you said around 2019. Are you back to those numbers yet or have you passed them or, or what do you think?
Ashley: Uh, Timelapse we're keeping pretty steady with the new numbers after the pandemic, like our better numbers, but the amount of players per group is still like, I would say they're smaller than before, like before you'd get lots of groups of seven, eight players. Now it's just more like four or five. [00:22:00] So. The number of bookings is staying the same, but we have increased our pricing in the last year. So that's helped.
Allan: Coming up after the break. We find out what the future holds for The Real Escape Canada.
Welcome back to Yes, We Are Open. Ashley and her family have now been in the escape business for eight years. They own two of Winnipeg's top escape rooms, having recently acquired The Real Escape Canada. So what does the future look like for The Real Escape Canada? Let's find out.
You've got these two businesses running in parallel, Timelapse and The Real Escape. What are your plans for the future?
Ashley: I mean, there's always talks of, like, what the bigger future plans are. And so there's always ideas. There's nothing necessarily concrete right now. But since we have taken over The Real Escape We're trying to co market a little bit more to get more business on both parts.
We're currently just in the designing phases. Nothing set in stone for what we're opening when, but we're working on Timelapse rooms. We're working on ideas [00:23:00] for future rooms here. So nothing that exciting, I guess. Just like, thinking ahead. Coming up with new creative rooms for the futures and what will replace other rooms, but nothing set in stone.
Mikol: Yeah, I think for my hope with the business is what we have Are continuing to do now is to push the boundaries of what is possible in an escape room You know going back to the early days of 2014 to kind of 2016 It was very much as locking key style escape rooms that were pretty basic and easy to do Whereas now, like we've got a programmer on staff, half the puzzles are all technology based and the the level of technology that we can do in there is just absolutely incredible and there's stuff that you'll go into rooms and see that you've never thought that you'd see inside.
For example, one of our rooms has a full car in it.
Allan: A full car?
Mikol: exactly.
Allan: Oh, and so we How did you get it in there?
Mikol: So we, we, we had found a car off of a junkyard. We brought it to our parking lot, cut it up into pieces, put it in the door, rebuilt it, and made it into a puzzle.
Allan: Wow!
Mikol: So doing stuff like that, using really high technology, um, that just has never been used before. So we're doing a lot of research and development into what we can do and how we can continue to [00:24:00] push those limits. And I think that I would personally to get to a point where, you know, obviously to kind of toot our own horn other escape room businesses wouldn't be able to keep up with us because we've kind of gone so far that. Unless you kind of had the same resources we do and have the knowledge that we do, you wouldn't be able to do what we can do. And we can kind of monopolize that, that industry.
Allan: So you went from never having done as an escape room to you're all in now. This is completely, this is your life.
Mikol: Yeah. And it's so interesting. Cause yeah, like I said, I'd never done it before. I never had any idea what it was. And now it's almost all I think about. It's become a passion of mine since I started here in 2017. So to continue to be a part of that. Continue to be part of the growth of the company and just a proponent of the escape room business is just one of my top priorities because I think that we've seen a lot of businesses come and go in the time that we've been open a lot of escape room businesses have started and closed and to be part of the one that's still going to keep encouraging it to go. I'm very happy to be part of that, and I hope that that continues for a long time.
Allan: Your dad isn't here to speak for himself, but I'll ask you to speak for him. What do you think he would say if I asked him how do you feel about what your family has built [00:25:00] in the last eight years?
Ashley: I think he would be really proud to be able to have created something that provides for our family And that we can all be a part in like my my sister is a part of it. I'm a part of it I have a brother that lives in Vancouver. He is sometimes a part of it, but I think he'd be really happy to look back at his life And see that he created something that was actually one of his millions of ideas that he's had and made it come to life.
Allan: You're the catalyst for all this, so now you're looking back at eight years of being a co owner of these two escape rooms. How do you feel?
Ashley: I'm proud as well. Yeah. Like it's, it's really incredible. Like being a 19 year old, having an idea and having somebody believe in it as well with you and seeing it go from like that idea to like real life. Yeah. I'm really proud of that.
And then I'm also proud that like Megan and Adam approached us thinking like we would be good enough to keep their business going like that. That says a lot about us as people [00:26:00] And about them trusting us with their firstborn child, like you said. So it's, yeah, I feel like how far we've come and how we keep relationships in the escape room industry. Like, I feel really proud that we've created something so special that people really enjoy and like creates a lot of joy in people's lives. And it's more good days than bad days.
Allan: Thank you so much for your time.
Ashley: Thank you so much for having me.
Allan: Ashley and Mikol, is Real Escape Canada open?
Ashley & Mikol: Yes, we are open!
Allan: That's the story of The Real Escape Canada.
Belief and support. Those two things could be the difference between someone taking the leap of faith and starting their own business, or someone playing it safe. You not only need belief in yourself, it certainly helps when others believe in you as well. In Ashley's case, her family believed in her idea and they provided the support she needed to make it happen. Ashley mentions having an entrepreneurial mindset that no doubt was nurtured by her family.
Now we've had [00:27:00] stories of family businesses before, but until now it's been the well told tale of the patriarch running the business and maybe looking to the son or daughter as a successor. I believe this is the first time we've had the opposite happen, where the younger daughter convinces the family to start the business and the family acquiescing. I think it's a promising sign of things to come.
And as far as the future of The Real Escape Canada is concerned, I'm not concerned in the slightest. Ashley has surrounded herself with the right people. She's got all the pieces of the puzzle for success.
Yes, we were open as a Moneris Podcast Production. I'd like to thank Mikol and Ashley for taking the time to share their story.
You can learn more about The Real Escape Canada at therealscape.ca. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok @therealscapecanada.
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If you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at podcast@Moneris.com.
Tune in next [00:28:00] week for another story, a small business struggle and survival on the Yes, We Are Open podcast.
I'm Al Grego.
Thank you for listening.