Tracy C. - Be My Guest
Premier Host - Sunshine Beach House
DID: 2016
Initially I was surprised to be invited to share my story about being a digital independent. I never considered myself to be a “techy”. Instead, for over 30 years I enjoyed an incredibly rewarding career in nursing practice, education, and research. I spent the majority of this career at UNBSJ as a nursing professor, completing my PhD and Post-Doc, and achieving the rank of Full Professor. These accomplishments were hard earned and the work was meaningful and fulfilling. However, after three decades, I was starting to feel ready for a change of pace, as well as an opportunity to spend more time with my family and friends.
After literally years of careful consideration, I decided in 2016 to take the plunge. I stepped away from the world of nursing and academia to focus my energies on a more relaxed pace of life, with time to focus on family, friends, and other pursuits that filled me with joy and purpose. At first, I didn’t know exactly what these “other pursuits” would be. I left myself open to opportunities that I had faith would eventually come my way. Sure enough, while enjoying some beach time at our cottage in beautiful PEI, the inspiration hit me! I could set up a business that would allow other hard working families to come and enjoy their precious vacation time in a beautiful PEI vacation home by the ocean. The only trouble was, we had only our own family cottage that was too heavily used to open it up as rental business. As good luck, or maybe fate, would have it, within a year of having this inspiration, a beautiful beach house just three doors down from our own hit the market. I had that undeniable feeling from our nose to our toes that, yes, this vision of running a vacation rental business was meant to be, and I bought the property without hesitation. Caring for people has always been central to my life and work, and I am blessed with the opportunity to now care for people not during times of illness and strife, but during their happiest times—family summer vacations!!
Although I never thought of myself or the work of running a vacation rental business as “techy”, technologies, such as the VRBO platform, Instagram, email, and other web based services, are, in fact, central to the work I do. These technologies enable me to advertise, secure customers, manage business transaction and accounts, and, most importantly, connect and communicate with our guest to ensure they are having the best vacation possible. Technology also lets me conduct this work when I want and where I want. I am no longer ruled by tight deadlines, heavy workloads, and other demands of full-time employment.
“I am completely in charge of my work, my time, and my purpose. I in no way thought I would become anything “digital”, but I am, in fact, using digital technology every day to independently run my vacation rental business. I am, indeed, a happy, fulfilled digital independent.”
I have always had an interest in music, arts and culture, and I’ve worked on a variety of community projects in this area, but the dream for me has always been to find a business model that would allow me to do this kind of work as a career. As it turns out, people who work in IT, the nerds, the creatives, the entrepreneurs, are often the same people who are supporting our local music, art galleries, and film festivals.
So many many of my friends and colleagues are closet artists, and after a series of conversations, a small group of us realized that with strength in numbers, there could be a business model that would allow independent creatives to develop their careers, alongside artists and musicians who can benefit from a supportive and collaborative community.
These conversations led to the formation of Industrial Parks Collective. Drawing on our local heritage as an industrial town, we built it on the idea that what artists and creative professionals seek most is a way to earn a living doing what they love, and we can make that easier by creating a network that offers the same kinds of benefits industrial businesses have simply by being in close proximity.
Growing up as a nerd and a loner helped me to pursue my own interests and trust my own intuition about things, but finding a community among people with similar interests has made it possible to do things I couldn’t do alone. In a way, finding a community of peers helps to support our individual needs and goals. So for me, the path to independence has come from finding other nerds, loners, and creatives who share common interests in the broader community.