5 minute read
YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR FEATURE
JOELLE BOURQUE
Wild Thing
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Joelle 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
She is Creative. She is Passionate. She is Wild.
best friend and I spent all our time dreaming up business ideas!” She laughs.
A Lifechanging 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
Even though she started taking steps toward living her passion after coming back from down under, her battle with herself continued, with self-doubts and comparisons to others conflicting with her drive to live free from constraint and convention. There was always the nagging belief that she’s supposed to find something and stick with it, if it makes good money and is “steady”. And, although she’s had a tendency to take on too many things and try to it all herself, her natural talent and drive has brought results. Salon Wild won the 2019 Young Entrepreneur Award through the Red Deer Chamber of Commerce’s Business of the Year. More recently, the Red Deer Advocate’s Best of Red Deer
Awards has named Salon Wild in the top three in their category. She is good at whatever she does.
Being good at things and wanting to live authentically caused her to stumble into her dream. A few years ago, Joelle bought a digital camera to start taking lash clients for her marketing. Suddenly, she realized her spirit came alive when she got behind the camera. In an instant, Wild Earth Photography was born.
The Gift of COVID
Riding on a wave that was part finding her muse and part entrepreneurial Chief-ofEverything drivenness, suddenly Joelle found herself plunged into a complete stop in March of 2020, when government health restrictions mandated the closure of salons and spas due to the pandemic. Though it was abrupt, it didn’t take long for
Joelle to find her spirit being rejuvenated in the quiet.
She reflects: “Even though my spirit has always been there, guiding me, whether softly or loudly, I kept sort of drowning it out by taking on too many things, and then being too busy or exhausted to give it space.
During the shutdown, it was like I fully woke up. I don’t want to go back to fighting with myself and stifling my spirit.
Now, I’m more aware of when I am letting busywork swallow me. I don’t want to go back to that.”
Naked in Nature
Joelle and Nancy are still running their business and doing well. However, Joelle is now also actively pursuing a full-time career in photography. Specializing in boudoir photography, Joelle’s love of wilderness and outdoors led her to put a unique spin on her business – boudoir photos in the wild.
“I just love the feeling of offering people the chance to see themselves in this raw, earthy, wild state where everything is stripped away and they’re one with the wilderness, the earth.” This past summer, when she and her husband took a couple out to the mountains near Nordegg to do their elopement photos, she felt like she was utterly complete, like this is was she was born to do. “Sheer happiness,” she beams.
She’ll grow her lash business and mentor others into it so she can step back to pursue her photography without overextending herself.
This also gives her more time to dig into some of her other passions, like “bringing awareness to the destruction of our planet,” she says. She and her best friend create art and
use it to save the earth, raising money for planet conservation. They have sold handmade bracelets, donating $5 from each sale to saving the turtles. They are outspokenly against shark finning, do work on coral restoration and have adopted a sea.
Stepping into The Wild
Recognizing how she was working against her spirit and taking meaningful steps toward steeping into her authentic self has been huge for Joelle. She’s learning that her desire for wildness and creative expression and her penchant for money-making ideas aren’t necessarily at odds with each other; they’re all part of the same package that makes her who she is. She is finding out that she doesn’t have to grab onto and do something with every idea – that ideas flow out of her as a creative. And she is finding that she can live a spirit-driven life, embracing her wildness and creativity, and make a career of it.
– Belle Estreller
OCT 14-17, 2020
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Joelle Bourque says creating art, protecting our planet and spending time with the people she loves are three of the most important things in her life. She is a creative soul with a passion for turning people into art with her camera and make up skills. She co-owns Salon Wild, an eco-friendly, green, awardwinning salon in Red Deer's downtown core.
