YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR FEATURE
JOELLE BOURQUE Wild Thing
J
oelle Bourque knows she doesn’t fit the conventional mold of what a young woman, in business or life, is “supposed to be”. Sometimes she second guesses herself, overthinks, or compares herself to others. “Even though my Dad was always in business for himself, and my brother and sister also have businesses, I still thought that what a person was supposed to do was get a job and live a normal life,” she says. So, right out of high school, she took an oilfield job and stayed in it for eight years. “The whole time I worked at that job, my | 26
She is Creative. She is Passionate. She is Wild. best friend and I spent all our time dreaming up business ideas!” She laughs.
A Life Changing Year Then, she and her husband took a year and moved to Australia. She knew, upon return, that she couldn’t go back to living a conventional life. She recognized that her creativity was – is - a core part of who she is, and she knew she wanted to do things to make money borne out of creative expression. She took a course in film, fashion and theatre, entered and won some competitions and began freelancing in makeup, under Wild Earth Artistry, which
is the overarching banner under which she operates all her business ventures to this day. After winning a makeup competition, a salon owner asked her to take a lash extensions course and come to work for her. She began doing lash extensions and esthetics as her primary business, and, within a few years, opened Salon Wild with a partner, Nancy Vaughan. “It seems that no matter what I’m doing, I am always seeing new business opportunities,” she says. “I get all these ideas and see them as ways to make money.”
Unconventional and Ever Evolving
