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My name is Poul Mark, and I'm the owner of Transcend Coffee, and
I have a degree in,
a bachelor's degree in sociology
and I also have a law degree from the University of Alberta.
My day is actually pretty varied. When I'm in Edmonton, I spend
time in front of a computer,
trying to tweak things and grow our online store
and engage with social media.
And then obviously I'm at the cafe, just
hanging out and connecting with our staff and then
when I'm sourcing coffee I'm actually on a airplane flying and
meeting with producers in countries where coffee grows.
I think the most impactful thing though for me, in all honesty, was my
first degree, my BA. It really set my path, I think, in terms of
a perspective that was sort of a little bit focused on social justice. I had a great
professor there, Meta Bolt, who
was a professor of sociology, but
focusing on Aboriginals, First Nations in Canada, and I've learned a lot about
the plight and the injustice there and that really sort of informed me as I went forward.
And so I think
I practiced law for a little while, left that, ended up in
doing actually some consulting work for First Nations,
one of my former clients,
and then
during that period of time I had an opportunity with some free time to
start to sort of think a little bit more about
Transcend. And at that point of time obviously I didn't know it was Transcend.
It took me eight months just to come up with the name, but
I wanted to do coffee, and I wanted to do something about community, and so that's really
where I started it
and that's really where Transcend
was birthed, was this notion of community, a place, a gathering place where conversation
would take place, and coffee is obviously a great thing to facilitate conversations.
It has been historically.
And then with a focus on quality, that really drove our path towards
this idea of direct trade
and so quality and the social justice component.
Critical thinking is one of the most important aspects of
being marketable and especially if you want to be involved in your own
business, one of the things that you're going to confront all the time is
challenges and problems.
My job over the last seven years in running a business has been getting
up every morning and facing something that I've never done before. With every
step forward, every growth opportunity, every decision we made, I
ended up doing something I've never done before. And in order to do that, you have
to be willing, number one, to assume a bit of risk
or a lot of risk. You also have to have
tolerance for being confronted by things that you're not prepared for and knowing
how to handle that, so I think
sort of a liberal arts
sort of perspective is great.
Asking for help and asking for advice along the way is really important.
I didn't do a lot of that. I think entrepreneurs tend to be
risk-takers and energetic but they're also sort of independent
and they like to sort of think and do things on their own and it's only in the
last couple years I've really learned
it's okay and not just okay, I think it's important and critical that you ask for
help along the way because there's people that have gone before you, you're
not as much as you think blazing a new trail, you're just doing what has been
done a lot already and maybe with a slight twist so there's a lot of great advice out there
and people are often very willing
and actually flattered to offer advice along the way.