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Brian Cline added a mobile ax-throwing business to his repertoire in 2021.
Emma O’Brien left her New York internet job to open Nook Books in Lancaster city.
Jadan Willis works from her Drumore home as a virtual assistant.
Nate Graham, personal trainer, in white hat, works with students at Elite Baseball in Mount Joy on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022.
Melissa Shreve went from bartender to owner of a vintage store in Quarryville.
Colin Rihn of 717 Demoliton and Hauling prepares to do a clean out of a rental property in Lancaster on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022.
Brian Cline added a mobile ax-throwing business to his repertoire in 2021.
As the pandemic continues to shake up the business landscape, here’s a look at six Lancaster County residents who are making money in ways they might otherwise not be doing — at least not yet — had it not been for COVID-19.
Owner, Smokestack Masonry and Hatchet & Axe Co., Lancaster
Brian Cline was already plenty busy running a thriving chimney sweep and masonry company. But adding a mobile ax-throwing business to the mix mid-pandemic seemed too perfect an idea to pass up.
The seed for Hatchet & Axe Co. was planted when Cline threw axes in the Poconos. The man hired to bring that activity to a resort there told Cline he was constantly booked three months out. Cline envisioned putting a similar ax setup onto a mobile trailer. That was in November 2020. The seed germinated until March.
“I woke up. It was a Sunday morning — like 5:30 — and I felt like I heard the words ‘ax throwing.’ By 7 o’clock I had a full business plan,” he said. “I woke my wife up and said, ‘We’re going out for breakfast. I think I have another business we’re going to start.’”
Gatherings have been happening outdoors. Ax throwing has gained popularity in recent years. Cline decided that was a winning combination. By Thursday he had about 60% of the business in place.
“I have business ideas all the time but they don’t typically come together like that,” he said. “I knew this was something that was going to work for me. So we put two trailers on the road last year … and just today, actually, we picked up a third.”
Hatchet & Axe will also open lanes at the Shops at Rockvale in May.
Cline said at his age he may or may not want to be doing what he’s doing on chimneys in 10 years. And finding skilled labor in the construction trades is a challenge. Hiring is easier for Hatchet & Axe, he said. Timing also works, said Cline, who started his chimney business in 2008 just before the recession.
“What I’ve learned out of that is it’s always good to start things when it looks like everything’s crashing,” he said. “There’s always opportunity.”
Does he like the word pivot? “Sure. If you don’t pivot and you don’t flex, you’re going to fail. You have to stay flexible and move with the market.”
Would he have started a new business had it not been for the pandemic? “Absolutely.”
Has the workplace fundamentally changed or will we look back on this as a blip? “Fundamentally changed. I don’t think we’ll ever get back to where we were at.”
Emma O’Brien left her New York internet job to open Nook Books in Lancaster city.
Owner of Nook Books, Lancaster
Emma O’Brien did not enjoy living in Brooklyn during the early days of the pandemic.
When she and her husband learned they were expecting, it was time to go.
The question was where. The couple had worked internet jobs for about 10 years — him as a designer and her in strategy and copywriting for startups. With that flexibility they thought about her native Australia, Virginia, Colorado and Los Angeles.
They put in offers in the Catskills but her husband got cold feet about the isolation. They looked at Philadelphia. She started having doubts about another big city.
A Lancaster listing randomly showed up in an email. The couple toured the house, ate at Central Market for lunch and Luca for dinner.
“That was actually the day that Joe Biden got elected and I feel like the town was just very celebratory,” she said. “It was a beautiful fall day and we fell in love with it.”
Neither knew a single person in Lancaster.
“So it was kind of crazy,” she added. “But we bought the house, moved here in February, had a baby in April and opened the bookstore in November.”
Nook Books sells children’s books that O’Brien says adults can also appreciate. Nook sells some online but pushes in-person.
Working online in a pandemic had benefits.
“But it was also very isolating … from physical interaction with people,” she said. “I think I was already starved of that anyway from just being on the internet for that long.”
O’Brien senses a retail resurgence as people miss the “curious nature” of in-person shopping and reject being marketed to 24/7.
“I know I’ve been part of that industry for a long time. So maybe I’m just jaded,” she said. “But there is something really special about going and discovering something (for which) you weren’t targeted.”
Does she like the word pivot? “I hate it. It feels so strategic and tactical. I don’t like this idea of you were doing one thing and now you must go and do something else. This was very much … realizing the things that are important to me, which I think maybe were just clarified when I had my daughter.”
Would she have started this business had it not been for the pandemic? “I don’t think … I probably would have stayed in New York a lot longer.”
Has the workplace fundamentally changed or will we look back on this as a blip? “Everyone’s completely rethinking the workplace.”
Colin Rihn of 717 Demoliton and Hauling prepares to do a clean out of a rental property in Lancaster on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022.
Owner of 717 Demolition & Hauling, Lancaster
Working on construction crews for projects like modular home assembly meant many out-of-town jobs for Colin Rihn.
That wasn’t ideal in 2020.
“Things were a little tough during the pandemic, having to travel, having to stay at hotels with people, not being able to social distance,” he said. “I was out of town all the time and I’d come home and … (worry about) older relatives. It kind of put a damper on being able to see them.”
Rihn said he’d been doing some demolition on the side for a Realtor friend.
One day he just decided to go that route full time and start his own demolition business. He made things official by filing business paperwork in January 2021.
Rihn bought a dump truck for $2,500.
“It was really old and outdated but it worked,” he said. “I started doing jobs and then eventually got more money and bought a bigger and nicer dump truck. I started acquiring more tools and taking on more jobs.”
Rihn is the primary employee of 717 Demolition & Hauling but he will bring in a crew of helpers for bigger jobs.
His favorite so far was a multistory barn in Lancaster on which the roof had collapsed. Permitting took a while, he said, but added it only took about a week to haul that massive structure away.
Rihn hopes to continue expanding, landing bigger jobs and becoming more efficient. He said job stability is always a concern so he’s glad he went out on a limb.
“I kind of took a shot in the dark that things would work out,” he said. “And things have been going great.”
Does he like the word pivot? “I do.”
Would he have started his own business had it not been for the pandemic? “I’ll be honest with you, I never expected to do this. So I don’t know.”
Has the workplace fundamentally changed or will we look back on this as a blip? “I think it’s changed for sure. A lot of re-evaluation has gone on … a lot of people’s mindsets have changed.”
Melissa Shreve went from bartender to owner of a vintage store in Quarryville.
Owner of Nostalgia A&M, Quarryville
Melissa Shreve’s current workday includes pricing items like rattan lamps and Cabbage Patch kids at the vintage and retro shop she opened last year in Quarryville.
Nostalgia A&M is just up State Street from J&B Hotel. Shreve worked there as a bartender for 15 years. The pandemic changed that.
“We were closed. And because we were bartenders, we got next to no pay,” Shreve said. “It was horrible.”
She knows other bartenders who took classes and transitioned to new jobs. Shreve decided it was time to pull the trigger on her dream of owning a shop and use the money she’d been saving for that.
“I just started gathering everything together and looking at spaces,” she said. “I found this space and thought it’s perfect.”
Nostalgia opened in June. Shreve said she now has repeat clientele. Some have her searching for things they can’t find themselves.
Shreve said her coolest sale so far was a 1940s, sparkly red porcelain table set she discovered online, picked up north of Harrisburg, sold within two weeks and quintupled her money.
She said at times she misses bartending, some of the people and the constant interaction. Shreve can now go two to three hours without any in-person contact. As she talked, she was alone and wrapping a shipment.
“In a way it’s also kind of nice because it’s giving me a break. The people I deal with now are always in search of something,” she said. “They come in here and are like, ‘Oh my gosh, where did you find that? I’ve been looking for one of those forever.’ In the bar scene it’s, ‘Hey, bartender, make me a drink.’”
Does she like the word pivot? “No.”
Would she have done this had it not been for the pandemic? “I still would have done it. The pandemic kind of pushed me. I wasn’t making anything. I wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t want to live off my savings and I thought, ‘I’m going to put my money into me and see if I can make this work.’”
Has the workplace fundamentally changed or will we look back on this as a blip? “It’s changed … it’s not going to go back ever to the way it used to be.”
Nate Graham, personal trainer, in white hat, works with students at Elite Baseball in Mount Joy on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022.
Realtor and owner of Coach Graham Training, Landisville
Although Nate Graham has always been passionate about being a personal trainer, he let go of the gig a few years ago while building his real estate business.
“When you work (as a personal trainer) for someone else they take a cut. You don’t make that much. So it wasn’t worth my time, really,” he says. “I decided to put that time toward real estate. But I kept in touch with a lot of those people.”
When the pandemic hit, he heard from some.
“Obviously lots of gyms closed and people quit their memberships,” he says. “They were reaching out to me and I just started training some of them … I trained some at a baseball facility as well as some home visits … it just kind of started like that.”
By it, he means Coach Graham Training. He filed his business paperwork with the state on the same day his wife, Victoria, filed hers. She’s a speech pathologist who also decided to go the independent route.
Graham grew up in New York and wrestled at Bloomsburg University. He’s got a wide range of training clients. Some are athletes whose routines had slipped and who wanted to get back to training hard, he said.
“And I have some older people who got really sedentary during the pandemic,” he said. “They wanted to get back on their feet.”
Graham works around his real estate day.
“I do a lot of this training in the early morning and the evenings as well as on weekends,” he said. “My schedule is much more flexible.”
Does he like the word pivot? “Yeah. Sounds like you’re adapting to new environments and that’s obviously important, especially now.”
Would he have done this had it not been for the pandemic? “This really kicked it into gear. It’s something I was planning on doing one day but this pushed me into it. So I guess yes and no.”
Has the workplace fundamentally changed or will we look back on this as a blip? “It has fundamentally changed. Most people now would rather work from home and have more of a family life. I think that’s what they realized during COVID.”
Jadan Willis works from her Drumore home as a virtual assistant.
Owner of Jadan Tanner Photo, virtual assistant, Drumore
Jadan Willis has little interest in an office existence.
She’s onboard with the pandemic-fueled embrace of working from home and counts that among the reasons she’s decided to try her hand at being a virtual assistant.
“Virtual assistant is a very vague term, I know,” she said. “You can make it look however you want to make it look, basically.”
Willis isn’t a graphic designer but is adept at using a design platform that might suit plenty of clients’ needs. She’s been talking to realtors about doing database organization and mailing notecards for them. She’s handling social media for clients like a consignment shop for whom she designed a spring consignment guide.
Willis tried real estate for a time but decided around October that it wasn’t for her. She said virtual assistant seemed a fitting way to supplement what she makes through her photography business.
Willis supports a growing “anti-work movement” and said the way many employees are treated in the United States is unacceptable.
“I’m fortunate enough to not have personally experienced a ‘typical’ work environment from my several endeavors,” she said. “But I still stand by the movement. I view my own dreams as ‘beating the system’ and just working for myself.”
Practicality is also involved. From her rural home, it takes Willis 17 minutes just to drive to Quarryville.
“This may seem small, but particularly in winter, I don’t want to have to worry about driving in awful, dangerous weather to get to work,” she said. “Whether that would be driving to a showing (or) driving to a 9-to-5 … not worth the stress.”
Does she like the word pivot: “I do. And it’s obviously very relevant to what a lot of people have had to do during COVID.”
Would she have done this had it not been for the pandemic? “Possibly. I enjoy working from home. I would say COVID encouraged it.”
Has the workplace fundamentally changed or will we look back on this as a blip? “A lot of companies have realized that you can have Zooms and get as much done. I feel like in the older generation it’s harder to convince people of that … I know plenty of employees that are much happier working from home and are resistant to going back to the office.”
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