April Brown forms one half of the duo with Motel Makeover on Netflix. Brown and her best friend of nearly two decades are managing renovations to a Sauble Beach motel in Canada while battling the unforeseen effects of a global pandemic. Despite the challenges, the June Motel in Sauble Beach became an overwhelming success with the locals.
After graduating from Western University with a degree in Management and Operations Studies, Brown had no plans to join the hospitality industry. However, after six years of working for a public relations firm, Brown quit his job to co-found the Instagram-friendly June Motel in Prince Edward County.
This article will look at April’s parents, boyfriend, and journey from PR expert to hotel industry guru.
Contents
- 1 April’s entrepreneurial father instilled in her a love of entrepreneurship.
- 2 Brown and her boyfriend are renovating their property in Prince Edward County
- 3 April tackled the first June Motel project as a side job, but it soon became her full-time job.
- 4 April feared losing her home and her first June project to the coronavirus pandemic
- 5 Renovating the Sauble Beach location was a unique experience because of the TV cameras.
April’s entrepreneurial father instilled in her a love of entrepreneurship.
April Brown was born on June 20, 1984 in Canada. She liked growing up in the Calgary area of Canada. brown said Travel and Style:
“I grew up in Calgary, so I’m a bit biased towards the West Coast. I particularly love the Okanagan area: wineries, lakes, and mountains; What’s not to like about that?’”
Brown’s parents encouraged her to pursue whatever she wanted. “I really admire them both,” Sarah said. Authority Magazine. “They worked very hard to build the life they wanted for themselves.”
April’s entrepreneurial father, Ken Brown, instilled in her a passion for entrepreneurship. “My dad has owned his own business and he taught me a lot about what it means to be an entrepreneur,” April continued. “I think I certainly got that entrepreneurial spirit from him!”
Brown and her boyfriend are renovating their property in Prince Edward County
April Brown is dating her long-time boyfriend, Ingo Rauth. Ingo became a permanent Canadian citizen in August 2019 and is a Professor of Professional Development at IE Business School. He also has a PhD. in Innovation and Design Management and is a career transition coach.
Brown and Ingo have a lot in common, including a love of adventure. On January 18, 2020, Ingo shared a photo of himself on Instagram atop Camelback Mountain. He attached the following caption:
“Morning hike/rock climb with @aprilkbrown up Camelback Mountain – great view and trail that reminded me of my childhood, climbing trees and using all four legs to get up a hill.”
“Personally, I think we did it,” April said.
April and Ingo are currently renovating their property in Prince Edward County.
April tackled the first June Motel project as a side job, but it soon became her full-time job.
April and her partner, Sarah Sklash, saw an opportunity to embark on a successful motel adventure after hosting a wine party at the Sportsman Motel. They saw potential in creating a motel for millennials in an area that was quickly becoming a tourist hotspot.
Intending to run the motel as a side business, the couple purchased the property. They run the motel under its old name for one summer before starting to renovate it. april said Authority Magazine:
“The funny thing is, this was supposed to be a side job, but it quickly turned into the biggest full-time project we’d both undertaken. We spent the first summer operating the motel to learn the ins and outs first hand, before making any changes. It was stressful, but it gave us the space to make mistakes without hurting our own brand and it taught us a lot about what was to come.”
Brown embarked on a renovation project with no interior design experience. Furthermore, he had to tackle the huge project on a limited budget. Brown and Sarah worked hard to minimize their labor costs.
They also relied on friends, family, and connections from their previous jobs to help build The June Motel. brown talked to refinery29 About the Primero de Junio Motel:
“Having a background in marketing and public relations, I felt that as entrepreneurs we had a bit of an advantage in that we had great immediate relationships to bring into our business. We had connections of influential people, and a lot of knowledge and those relationships that I had built in my earlier career certainly helped launch The June five years ago.”
April and Sarah completed their project in early May 2017 and opened The June Motel on May 5, 2017. Now, full-time moteliers have been taken aback by the overwhelmingly positive public reception of June Motel. brown said Authority Magazine:
“Most important, though, was validation that all the hard work, sweat, and literal tears we put into the first property could pay off. He also validated that going with our gut and staying true to our vision would resonate with our audience.”
One of the first challenges April had to overcome was dealing with the negative comments posted online. “I used to get really nervous every time I saw a negative comment, but now I’ve realized that sometimes there is some truth to the reviews and other times people just hate it,” she said. Authority Magazine.
After running the Prince Edward County June Motel for a couple of years, April and Sarah felt ready to expand. They chose a property in Sauble Beach after practicing “slow travel,” a term April coined for an extended stay at a travel destination “to gain a holistic taste for the environment and people.” april said yahoo:
“We fell in love with Sauble the first time we came here. We live in flip flops all day all night the sunsets on the beach are some of the best sunsets we have seen anywhere in the world and there is a really laid back vibe like a retro beach town to this place which really convinced us.
April and Sarah undertook a project with more rooms than their first property, a pool, and a restaurant. They had more money for renovations, but they needed expert management to accommodate the larger project.
The coronavirus pandemic presented an unforeseen crisis for April and Sarah. The couple had used their homes and First June Motel to raise funds for the new project. If they stopped, they risked losing everything they had built over the past five years. brown said Fashion magazine:
“[During] Throughout that entire period of lockdown, there were almost daily conversations of ‘What are our options? How are we going to move forward? We have money? Are we going to run out of money? And that was probably the scariest moment of our lives, definitely of our career.”
So the couple and the director of the renovation project moved on. The acquisition of wood and labor proved to be a great challenge. Yet despite all the obstacles, The June Motel’s Sauble Beach branch opened just two months after its scheduled opening date. april said refinery29:
“You couldn’t get wood, and a week before opening we had this half-built wooden pool deck and there was no pool. So it was a very, very stressful summer. We felt like we were fighting an uphill battle every day but getting nowhere. In the end, it all came together. Magically, somehow we made it. We opened and we had this amazing grand opening weekend.”
Renovating the Sauble Beach location was a unique experience because of the TV cameras.
For April and Sarah, the renovation of the Sauble Beach location was a unique experience, as they had a television crew documenting it. The situation became more unique after the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“There were a lot of firsts that we had to address just on this project, and that would have been a challenge in and of itself,” Brown said. Fashion magazine. “But then you overlap with a camera crew following you every day, and then you overlap with a global pandemic.”
The show introduced us to the term ‘junification’, which means ‘to take a basic space and find this combination of tall and short shapes to make it pop and make it fun.’ It is about painting, wallpaper, old pieces and plants.
Brown recommends a dash of neon for true ‘Junification’. April and Sarah’s unique style has made June Motel a hit on Instagram, which has become a valuable advertising tool for the motel.
Sauble Beach presented Brown with the opportunity to work with other businesswomen, something she enjoys doing. brown said yahoo:
“What we really loved at Sauble was that we had met a few other female entrepreneurs, one who owns The Wellness Refinery, another who owns a cool, hip taco bus, and I think seeing, one, that there’s some fresh, young energy and a place that is about to change and grow is really promising for us.”
The secret to Brown’s success is determination in the face of adversity. He also advises that one be ready to seek help and inspiration from other people. The businessman told him Authority Magazine:
“I would like to inspire people to follow their wildest dreams and put everything they have into their projects. There really are no limits if you have your mind and heart set on a goal. There will be some bumps in the road, but that’s part of the process and growing up.”
Also Read: Is Sarah Sklash Transgender? A closer look at Sarah’s sexuality, her parents, and her transformation.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn