We recently connected with Christopher & Stephanie LaFleur and have shared our conversation below.
Christopher & Stephanie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?
We are a family owned group of diverse businesses. We treat all our employees and many of our repeat customers as family. The employees we have retained longest and who fit best in our entrepreneurial model are those who are able to leverage their education to learn new functions, technology, and concepts in order to help us serve our customers best and always find improvements. Current education models reliant on rote memorization are adequate to training employees on things like how long to cook a pizza or how to push buttons on the Point-Of-Sale systems but are not suited well for trouble shooting in a raft as a whitewater guide or best ways to address customers’ use of our golfing simulators. It is our firm belief that any educational system that will best serve students must be based on a diverse knowledge base but more importantly teach the students how to think “around corners” and solve problems. Those problems may be human dynamic, technology, or equipment based and an inherent and automatic internal process of identifying a root cause and ability to address that cause in a positive manner are keys to continued success regardless of industry.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
We both come from diverse educational and experience backgrounds in multiple industries. Stephanie came up through the military as a retired Air National Guard Master Sergeant while also working other jobs as Christopher worked multiple odd jobs, then left the local phone company for education as first a Registered Nurse and then a Nurse Anesthesiologist. Once Stephanie retired from the guard Christopher was able to secure flexible employment and our journey creating businesses began in earnest. We had some experience as long time single owner businesses but as our opportunities expanded we did also–first picking up a defunct local whitewater rafting company and rebuilding it into its former status as the oldest and largest rafting outfitter in MN. We then picked up a set of portable golf simulators from a closed indoor golf company and moved them into a new location to build that business back up as it was a good seasonal fit with the rafting. Around this time we also had the opportunity to produce our first narrative feature film locally.
The demand for the indoor golf grew so we moved to our present much larger location, rebranded as The Caddy Shack Indoor Golf and Pub and now offer a unique indoor golf experience consisting of top of the line simulators located in private suites instead of open bays with a common area. This allows us to offer a level of service and privacy not available in any other indoor golf facility. This also allowed us to expand into offering daily events such as Cash Bingo, DJ Trivia, Karaoke, Live music as well as space for corporate or large party events. Additionally, we were able to use the unused and under construction part of our building to shoot another full length horror film. We have been extremely fortunate to be able to incorporate all our prior work and educational experiences into being able to offer exemplary service and unique experiences in all we do, the teamwork is how we navigate the process, family is the glue. We have always found that treating everyone as family has been one key to our success.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
We bought a defunct whitewater rafting company and rebranded it as Minnesota Whitewater Rafting. Our first season was spent training guides, learning how to manage the equipment, staff, reservations booking systems, and all the other myriad details required to make the business successful. Our customers were primarily found through only social media postings and via family and friends. The second season was a blockbuster with the help of our longest associated guide Blu Bong and our ability to use our prior experiences to leverage primarily social media marketing and local connections to get the word out that our business existed and offered a unique local experience. Over the next three years we built our customer and guide base up to a respectable seasonal operation and then the SARS-CoV2 pandemic arrived and the state government decreed we could not operate. We were able to pivot our customer outreach from actual on the water experiences (and likewise in the indoor golf facility experiences) into merchandise and gift card sales. Once the risks of the pandemic receded over time and with advent of vaccines we were able to pivot back to in-person experiences and then we experienced a draught–this meant a pivot to operating on a different section of our river course until even that was no longer safe. At all these points of challenge we were able to identify new opportunities to generate revenue, pivot to new ways of offering the same or similar services, and ultimately continue to grow all our businesses.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Initially we were able to leverage personal funds for purchase of the defunct businesses and equipment. As we expanded we were able to utilize community lending resources, the SBA’s small business community education resources, and the local Northeast Entrepreneur Fund micro-loans to purchase new equipment. This lead to utilizing SBA loans for property purchase and, coupled with both sweat and personal equity the remodeling of a long neglected building into a new indoor golf facility with expansive bar area for other events and use as a clubhouse for the golfers. We were fortunate to keep revenues in growth to keep current or ahead of the loan payments and maintain excellent credit so when further funding was needed for expansion we were able to easily qualify. This required some personal sacrifices in missed vacations or travel but left us in good standing for when we were finally able to negotiate a needed much larger all-encompassing loan for further expansion of our building into a finished upstairs corporate office suite, rentable office space, a retail space, and an additional and expanded golf and Laser Shot simulator space. The process of qualifying and securing loans is arduous and requires being up to date and familiar with financial statements–one area Stephanie and I had to learn quickly as we expanded and added different business models in different industries.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.caddyshackduluth.com, www.minnesotawhitewater.com, www.serendipityendeavors.com, www.lzproductionsmn.com
- Instagram: minnesotawhitewater, caddyshackduluth
- Facebook: Serendipity Endeavors, Inc. Minnesota Whitewater Rafting, The Caddy Shack Indoor Golf & Pub
- Linkedin: The Caddy Shack Indoor Golf & Pub, Minnesota Whitewater