My name is Lee Cryer and the name of the business is The Two Spirit Guest Ranch and Retreat. We have lived here for three years and just completing the first year of business. The business here is a Bed and Breakfast and we also will accommodate horses and their riders and we call it a Bed and Bale overnight stay.

So why did we get into this business? Well, it hadn't been in our initial plan. We realised pretty quickly that the whole area lent itself to sharing and we had an abundance of wildlife and natural flowers out in our unbroken prairie pasture and we just thought it would be a great place to invite people out for lots of R & R and rejuvenation from the stresses of most everybody's everyday world.

Some of the positive characteristics that I'd have would probably, I think I'd have to start off with a good sense of humour and lots of energy and adaptability is important. I certainly don't know in the height of guest season, what's going to occur from day-to-day as far as numbers arriving or what they might require of me.

Teamwork skills are actually most important, that without my partner's presence and active presence, I couldn't handle it all by myself.

A positive attitude is absolutely essential. If you go in with negativity, I don't believe you'll have anywhere near the energy required to get through one days' work.

Well I think adaptability to any sort of change is an important requirement in this line of work and I think it falls into the area of adaptability as well. That they sort of go hand-in-hand I think.

I think I've had to get use to being able to make decisions faster than I would ordinarily have done. That being who needs to be fed first, the guests or the animals. That kind of makes light of a situation, but it is a perfect example. As far as independent decision making here, the operation of the farm itself and the Bed and Breakfast is pretty well my job. While my partner is a Carpenter in the city, five days a week, and so it's important that a) I'm willing to make decisions and that I do in fact do so. This place just wouldn't function otherwise.

To operate a business such as this, people skills would be very important and that's something that I've had really developed. I think I'm far more task-oriented, but I have to say that it's been fun making this adaptation. I think when you do this sort of a business that you also bring some of your personal and business experience that you've gained in past endeavours.

The training part of it, there, you can't go and take training in Bed & Breakfast 101. That, the tourism Regina and tourism Saskatchewan do offer courses from time to time, a couple of days, or whatever, to help in the probably the Business Management, but that seems to be the extent of formal training.

My day starts probably anywhere from 6:30 - 7:00 and I usually put my coffee on and then I go and I feed the animals. And when I say animals, we're looking at 5 goats, we're looking at 20 sheep and they're guard llama. I feed 14 head of cattle and four head of horses and various and sundry chickens and ducks and what have you. Now I do that twice a day, so that's usually before my breakfast and before my supper time and in between then, depending on the time of year, with it being Winter now, I would do inside projects, catch up on painting or yearly room cleaning. In the Summer time you might find me out repairing fences or doing a lot of outside maintenance, keeping the grounds in shape, any one of a hundred different items need to be attended to on a daily basis out here. It actually, it work, try and jam 48 hours in 24 hours and still not be finished. Oh I enjoy the challenges of it, I enjoy the decisions that are required. I enjoy being my own boss, that I can fit and juggle priority one requirements, of which there's usually more than one, and I can go ahead and do it and I don't have to ask a supervisor and go through all that rigamarol.

Well I think you have to determine if you're willing to put the time and energy and hours into this sort of a business. I think that you need to take a calculating look at whether you want to have your home open to various and sundry guests and if that becomes too overpowering what alternatives can you set up for yourself to allow you to keep your own sanity and keep your guests happy and I think that you really need to look at what sort of skills that you would bring to this type of business and I think if you have any doubt at all, that you need to get in touch with someone who is an actual operator/owner of such an establishment and spend some time talking with that person and then I think it needs to have a very honest decision.