12. John Kudelka - His Vertical Climb

‘All Your Virtual Climbing Needs’ John is the Owner and Manager at Junction Climbing in London, Ontario. John Kudelka’s career has, in many ways, mirrored the business he is in. Junction Climbing, as John says, is where “you can find all your vertical climbing needs”. True! John provides a place for people of all skill levels to find a personal challenge and an absorbing and good time, alone or with friends, family or co-workers.  John also talks about his personal vertical climb in envisioning and executing his dream of opening this business. John reveals the soul-destroying situation of dealing with a fraudster who preys on people’s enthusiasm and trust. 

More on Junction Climbing can be found here: https://www.junctionclimbing.com/ 

More on Ford Keast can be foundhere: https://www.fordkeast.com/services/human-resource-consulting/

& for all the podcast information visit our website: https://www.career-resilience.com/

Thank you for listening. 

Transcript

00:03 | Hello and welcome to our series Career Resilience, where we talk with people about their career path and their career journey, and maybe we can all learn from each other. My name is Jan. Damn good luck. And I'm a human resources professional in London, Ontario, Canada. I work with Port Keast LLP and I work with my clients to help them with the outside of their business.

00:27 | We hope that you will enjoy these discussions with real people about real challenges and real working life situations. Welcome. My guest today is John Padalka. John, welcome to Career Resilience. Really appreciate having you here. Thank you. It's your you've been very helpful over the years answering my questions, so I'm happy to return the favor. Thanks for that. So, John, can we start with what you do ?

00:55 | Because I find it quite fascinating what you do. And I have a lot of questions to ask you. So so tell me what you do. I am the owner of the Junction Climbing Center, which is an indoor rock climbing facility here in London, Ontario. And the oldest village we have twelve thousand square foot building. We've got roughly one hundred and ten or twenty different climbs at any given time.

01:20 | And we're a business that is open for sort of split between memberships and people who do this as our main recreation and also sort of people who pay for a day pass and come in just to kind of come in and have fun. Or also kids camps, kids programs, birthday parties, all your vertical climbing needs, vertical climbing needs. How did you get into this business ? What is your background that led you to this business ?

01:49 | The I never really fit well into sort of standard sport. I always felt like I was never a very fast kid. I'm not a tall person, so I didn't really find a home and traditional team sport. And then one day I went to a. A climbing facility, a climbing, rock climbing wall that the local scouts had, and I did this thing and I was like, I need to find a way to do this for the rest of my life.

02:18 | And it just it was something there. There was no competition against another person who was just your ability against this this challenge. That sort of interest led me to a degree in recreation. I worked for years at summer camps that worked as an old drill instructor, and these were all wonderful jobs. But they all had the challenge that they are very seasonal. You can really you know, you sort of follow the work and in the summer, you might be a new guy. And then in the winter, you might be a lifeguard.

02:48 | And in the spring you might be working in the red center. It's it's hard to patch together a career. And after about of. 10 or 15 years back, I was looking for something more stable and and recognizing that I think in today's economy it's very, very difficult to save money if you're buying your house, hoping the house will accrue in value. And that's going to be sort of your nest egg. I thought, well, why don't I do that with a business as well ?

03:18 | And then I'm kind of saving twice as much because of the business development and equity that owns the assets that you can then sell when you want to move on and retire. So kind of put those thoughts together into the only thing I kind of really knew was into a rock climbing. And the big benefit to me as someone who'd spent so much time in the outdoors was you don't get rained on, you don't get you don't get folks, you know, you don't lose money to bad weather. You don't lose clients to to changing seasons. So the industry was one that had this sort of.

03:49 | Stability of year round income that I've never really known before and climbing as a sport had been growing for twenty five years, you know, the first few gyms you'd see in in the province where dusty warehouses and now when you go into some of the modern gyms are these beautiful glass acres of climbing that's just really showing that the sport has arrived at a place of maturity, that people really want a good experience. So that's what we try to do when we open up.

04:16 | Did you find a particular attraction to rock climbing ? You mentioned that when you first did that at the Boy Scout camp with something about it. What was there about it ? Exclusive of the business aspect that later developed. Climbing is just it's such a new sport that it's it tends to be free, like most of us have gone and played baseball at some point in our lives as kids.

04:43 | And you have an association with good or bad and climbing because it's so new doesn't have the sort of cultural presence and baggage. So when you encounter it, you tend to encounter it on your own terms and you encounter it in a way that's not, you know, it's just it's just a very pure, simple sport. We all love climbing as kids, like we all love going up things and climbing returns.

05:06 | Just that it's a wonderful sport as well, because it's a rare sport that allows anyone of any ability to play and do it together without having to be the same ability. So no two friends can go and one can be athletic and one can be knocked up. But they cannot have an equally good time because it's not about like in tennis. If you play somebody better than you, it sucks. But even if someone is going to tennis, if you play somebody who's not as good at you, it sucks.

05:33 | And in skiing, you end up like skiing separately because people want to do the hard yards of the easy hills. And any climbing, you kind of bring everyone together in the same room and you can have parents of kids. You can have no male and female. You can have all the all the mix of people in a space enjoying the sport. And that's pretty unique. And it's it's almost it's pretty affordable compared to a lot of sports. It's not the years not expensive, you know, compared to two of its membership is in line with the membership being part of any other gym.

06:05 | So that's pretty cool. Is it a growing sport ? Is there any competition around while climbing ? I mean, in London, where the only facility like this, it is absolutely a growing sport. When I started this seven years ago, I started researching this in 2009 and the number of climbing in Ontario have doubled in that time. There's usually three or four new gyms opening a year. The average facility size, like when I started Zhongxun would have been considered a big facility.

06:35 | Now we're kind of average or medium sized in the US gyms being built 40, 50 thousand square feet. It's the Olympics, which is a huge thing for our sport to be recognized as something that should be. It should be there. Has anybody ever been stuck on a wall or have vertigo when they were halfway up or any of those kinds of things, John ? Yeah. So the systems there's sort of two styles of climbing.

07:05 | There's the there's the big walls, which we call roots. And that's what most people think of them as the little what we call the boulder. And the boulder is more of a sort of shorter, intense version. And the safety systems on the big walls are set up so that you really can't get stuck if you are fearful, afraid in some kind of emergency, you let go and you get lower down and it's really set up to not keep you at risk.

07:35 | There was one incident were on the boulder. We scrambled on top and we had a guy who went up there and he couldn't get down because he was having an episode where he hadn't eaten all day and then took too much exercise and felt faint. But we gave him a granola bar and it was it was all fine. So you've got a granola bar up to him ? We have. Yeah, we do. We had an emergency granola bar in our in our procedure. When you were first, again, getting into this, did you have a mentor or how did you you just sort of make your own way ?

08:07 | I was very fortunate to connect with the owner of the grotto, so I actually live in well at the time and kind of reached out to him. His name is Dave Phroso and he's had a gym and growth since nineteen ninety four and knowing I'd be doing it in London because London had the room in the market and knowing I didn't have the experience and some of the sort of more obscure parts of the business reached out to him.

08:36 | And I've really been fortunate to benefit from his his investment, his expertise, his. You know, just sort of general wisdom around all things climbing. How long has it been an Olympic sport ? It will be the first Olympics will be the ones coming up. And they've already added a second medal to the next Olympics. There was one medal sport and now it's a Tumelo sport. And that's OK.

09:04 | And will the world and the Olympics be a lot taller than the walls, for instance, at Junction climbing ? Not really. A little bit. There's there's sort of three disciplines to Olympic climbing. I already mentioned we are bouldering and ropes and those are two of the disciplines. And then the third disciplines called speed and speed is a defined course that you go up is the fastest possible time, which will be incredible fun to watch when it's on TV, because it's pretty it's pretty intense.

09:35 | How do you put yourself out there so that people are aware of this kind of still somewhat unique sport ? I mean, I think I think there's a. I think it's been pretty well, I don't have anything to back this up specifically, but I know I've read articles that talk about how the. The people's way of doing leisure and the way of concern of spending their money is shifted away from things towards experience. People want to buy experiences now.

10:05 | They want to buy. They don't necessarily want to buy stuff in the same way. And so we're really fortunate in that climbing provides a very meaningful, tangible, physical, accessible experience for all of us who love the sport. At some point, someone brought us in and showed us how fun this is and how rewarding and how physically challenging how and that thing for a lot of our people change their lives. To them, joining a sport that helped them lose weight, let them join the sport to help them find community or make friends.

10:34 | And we have people who met at the climbing gym and gotten married. And that's such a gift to be able to create a space where people could experience that, too. As you know, this is a combination of sort of the kinds of things we do for a living and also career resilience. And I can tell that through your career, you know, you've been thinking about what you want to do and what you want to grow into. And that's how you got to doing the junction, climbing and owning that business.

11:01 | And I can tell you, credibly proud of it and rightly so, keen on the career resilience side. You and I talked about how when you were first starting out, it was extremely difficult. Can you speak to that for a few minutes, John ? Sure. I mean, I think it kind of alluded to this earlier in the in the story, but I was in a place where I kind of had felt my career I was in couldn't really go forward, that I was held back by the limitations of being a seasonal industry.

11:33 | And I held back also by the fact that the outdoor industry typically does not pay very well. I did a lot of research and there was a lot of industries I looked at and when I saw on climbing is something I knew and loved and realized that it could be the thing if I was in this sort of indoor climbing side of it. I sat down with a climbing owner of another climbing gym. He was kind enough to set aside the time and answer my questions and talk about. How to design a space and how much space you needed and all these things, and then the one story he said is that, you know, I, I he said he sat down with probably 50 people and had similar conversations about starting their own gym.

12:09 | And that of those fifty one had actually pulled it off. And that that Jim is in Toronto, the one guy who pulled it off. There's a gym in Toronto. And at first I was like a little disheartened by that. And then I realized that one in 50 odds are actually pretty good odds. And the only difference between the guy who succeeded and the forty nine who hadn't yet open the gym was he hadn't stopped working, but he actually went and kept doing the work. It wasn't that the others had failed.

12:38 | He hadn't opened a gym and it closed on them. They hadn't they just for whatever reasons, not finish the project. And I think that was the deep lesson I took is just to keep to keep working on it and eventually, it will come. But if you stop working on it, it definitely woke up and. We went through I started in two thousand nine is when I kind of sat down with my wife and said, I think I want to do this thing and thousands of thousands of words of praise for her, her patients.

13:06 | I didn't open the door until 2014 was five years. And, you know, there was a couple of years doing research and trying to find money and trying to find buildings and losing buildings. And every time we had a setback, like, OK, well, let's just keep going and. And that that about when I think of Brazilians, I think of that phase of trying to start things, that this thing that you know, and it's embarrassing, you don't want to say you've been working on a thing for three years and have nothing to show for it.

13:35 | You don't want to say, Ethan, you've got this dream, but it's so far away that it's almost like saying, well, I'm going to be a Cresco regional hockey player like that. So it seems like because if you if you speak it and it seems unlikely, you feel like you going to be at risk of being judged on that. But you're working at that goal every day. Eventually you'll get to, if not the actual goal, some version of it. That's pretty good. London wasn't my first choice of cities I lived in. Well, I would have happily stayed in that region, but that was where the market was.

14:08 | And so that was our spotlight. And now we're in a great location with an amazing building. We've got Anderson's brewery next door. Like this has worked out so much better. If I limited myself to, like, I'm just going to stay and. Well, yeah, that would be. You know, now you said that you also ran into a fraudulent situation and that that was extremely difficult and I really appreciate you being willing to speak to that as well, John. Someone approached us saying they have the money there actually being a partner.

14:39 | And so we quickly got plans transitway. We didn't want to lose the building. We were very much rent. You know, the. They got involved in like February, by April, we kind of finished up our conversations, negotiations and started spending money in May and June and July, construction started. And then by like in late August. What's going on ? This seems really weird.

15:06 | And people who said they were like he would pay, not being paid and stuff the guy said he would buy wasn't being bought and suddenly realized that this guy had not he wasn't who he said he was. He was basically exploiting our eagerness and excitement to open a business, to, in turn, use us to basically steal from the savings we had. And he was exploiting our relationship with these vendors to steal stuff for himself. And it was soul-destroying because not only were we.

15:37 | Yes, you know, tens of thousands of dollars they'd taken out of the account. We were on the hook for all these projects, those contractors we'd hired. And we're like doing the work like they were like work. But you owe us for this whether or not you finish the work. And we had opened our face publicly to the community to say, hey, we're opening accounts, great design, because it costs money and we're going to build something beautiful for London and. We let all these people down.

16:01 | We had incredible support, we had members that were like people ready to buy memberships, people who bought t-shirts, people had gone to like the council to, like, help support our rezoning. Like like it was such a that was the hardest part was letting the money I can return, but I can't. It's hard to build up that trust. And, you know, in six weeks from like mid-August, which sort of things seem strange to the end of September, everything gets dark.

16:29 | And suddenly we had, you know, contractors who were like trying to take back materials so they could get some money out of them. We have to know climbing wall people were like sitting there sending their workers back home to the country's like it was just and like it was and it was a dark, dark, terrible time. And, you know,  we were committed that we knew the idea could work.

16:55 | And the solution when we dealt with this, the end solution was to still keep working on it, to not give up. And when we. Approach those people who were like all the trades in the landlord and the people who are running is to say, look, you've got two choices, you can bankrupt us. Which you're entitled to do because you don't know, but I'm paying you, but maybe give us just a few more months to figure this out.

17:24 | We are, as we are willing to make this right and we believe in this and be going to them with that kind of radical honesty of like we are. We have nothing but your trust. Please trust us that we're going to make this right. Every one of them said, OK, you've got you've got some time. And getting them all on board together and saying, you help us see this through, you're going to see something. You're going to I would say things like you're going to see this amazing facility for climbers. And they're like, I don't care.

17:53 | I want to see mine. But they all got on board. And we had built just enough to get to show the vision and to show that it was workable. And so we kept looking for new investors. We kept looking for, you know, we change the design of the building. So it was smaller and we didn't find as much money. We did a lot more work ourselves instead of paying contractors, you know, and a year later we opened and it was within very easy to walk away and just throw our hands up and say it's too hard.

18:31 | And was there a moment that you thought of that there were honestly that seemed worse, you know, that it was never a moment where that seemed like the right choice. Know, we certainly thought of, like, what happens if we give up on this ? I would probably get a bunch of letters from lawyers saying, you lost money. You we probably be caught a bunch of times, you know, or we could go in and frame the bathrooms. So let's go from the bathrooms.

18:59 | That's so much better. So what happened when you confronted this investor, this person who did later actually go to jail for this fraud and others would let this person kind of exploit us ? Was we were so keen to be. He was just so excited to have something that they would promise things that.

19:31 | In a big enough way that we would project our hopes on that. So when once we kind of had our, you know, and they would play games where they would they would, you know, promised they would take money out to say they paid someone, but they took their own cash and they just say, oh, so-and-so wants it in cash. And that's not uncommon for trades to say if you have any cash. So but that money would go out and cash. It would go to trade and go to the guy.

19:58 | And and, you know, when you look at the books and you realize how much what was actually happening and it only took six weeks, you know, once we just confronted him and said we don't want to part of this business. You're not good for us, and if you talk to us again, we will have you charged. And I think he knew his game was up and he moved on to his next. Next right. I think this was see, he didn't really push he tried to push back a little bit, but in the end, it was. It was.

20:30 | The weight of evidence on our side was enough that when we showed that card to say this is what's going on, and once the blinders were on for us, that the hoax we are projecting on him weren't going to be satisfied. We were able to yeah, we were able to see through anything he said at that point. We just didn't believe it. That experience changed you in any way or like continue to affect you in any way.

20:57 | I think I mean, there's certainly sort of scars on the business from that, because we didn't have investor money, we ended up debt-financed. We're paying a lot of debt. You know, I would never want to finance the you know, the debt ratio in our business is something that is very burdensome and will be for a while. We're very fortunate that we've been able to pay it since we opened. There's parts of the building that are our unfinished or changed or modified that aren't aware of built because we had to build them that way at the time.

21:26 | And so some of that is there. I think there's definitely a sense of like. There are also things like good things that came out of it. One less business partner, that's one less person to share the money with. So this is kind of a that's not a bad thing. Yeah, there is definitely a. You know, there's a high importance I place now in paying all my suppliers on time and pain. I don't want to be known still as the person being pay. There is.

21:55 | There is. There is a. Skepticism of getting involved with future partners and how that could go, that's maybe affecting how I think about growth in the business to do it with someone else. Yeah, there's a certain pride that we pulled it off, you know, that difficulty. So it's a bit it's sort of complicated. It's a good question. And I think I'd have to kind of think deeper in terms of like where it's where it's still affecting me in terms of that experience.

22:28 | Yeah, I think that that kind of experience, which we've all had at some level. But when you've put your heart and soul into a business and for so many years and you had such a goal, that I think you would have to be an extremely strong person to, you know, continue and recognize that you had your eyes on the prize always.

23:01 | Well, that is absolutely true. And I've often compared it to being in a relationship that this person manipulated us and abused us and probably always will be very similar to that type of thing. And so the question is, can you can you like you're never going to be healed, like, unhurt or undamaged after that. But are you better and stronger and more understanding of your own things ? And I think that absolutely is. There is a truth.

23:27 | So I want it to end off by you telling me three reasons why someone who hasn't climbed should consider getting into climbing. I'm going to try to avoid the basic ones like it's fun, I think. If you are into. Climbing.

23:53 | It's not just the latter that you go up, there is an incredible range and sequence of movements and positions, some of them incredibly subtle. And so as little as turning your right, your ankle, left or right, they can change the whole sequence of moves. And I think people who are attracted to Problem-Solving will find themselves engaged in figuring out how to do a crime and then changing it to how you can do it even more efficiently.

24:20 | I think that has a real appeal for. Logic bringing people, it's much more of a much more solution driven than you might expect. I think the. The. What's what's beautiful about our type of business is that you can do it on your scheduling with your people.

24:48 | So anyone who's played hockey knows how hard it is to find a goalie who plays baseball is like, oh, my gosh, getting nine people on the field at the same time is a nightmare. You know that with climbing, you can go with whoever is available. You can go. No one's available and go at the time. You want to leave at the time you want. There is a there is it's not even like, you know, skiing where you have to go bowling. We have to proclaim like you think you can just go and do it. And and that is you know, that is a thing that makes that works well in the economy today, where people don't have pretty full schedules are pretty messed up.

25:22 | And you can bring your kids or you could leave the kids at home, whatever works for you. The third reason is we are located beside Anderson crap else and they have the wonderful Etowah Food. People doing food inside, and even if it's not that great, you can go to the brewery and have an amazing meal next door afterwards, so support those local businesses. If you get a place to go afterwards, that's great. You can go next door and debrief.

25:51 | You can cool your hands. We all saw and hold the cold beer there and the food if you don't drink the food there is fantastic and you don't like their beer, you can go two blocks over to London brewing and you don't like their beer. You can go for more blocks to our house, who also has excellent food. So you are well suited in that regard. John, thank you so much for chatting with me today. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you hear my stories.
26:19 | Yeah, great stories and incredible perseverance. And I love that that you were never taking a look at the short term. You were willing to look out at the longer term and in a world where instant gratification is very much the norm. You moved away from that and thought it through. And that's something to really, really be admired and something to really be proud of. So good for you.

26:47 | Thank you to our viewers and our listeners, thank you very much for joining John and I today. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Also, we are on YouTube now. I hope that you will subscribe and follow us on Spotify if you're a listener rather than a viewer and subscribe to Apple podcast if that's where you get your pie. So thank you very much for being with us today. And until we meet again.