Tell Us Your Story. What motivated you to start your business? Why are you passionate about what you do?

About 8 years ago we decided it was time for us to leave our ‘normal’ and set off on a year-long, life-altering trip to SouthEast Asia, India, and New Zealand. (Side note - if you haven’t traveled overseas, go read Rolf Potts Vagabonding and get inspired to open up your world!). We rode trains, TukTuks, camels, and taxis, carrying everything we needed in our heavy backpacks. While traveling is exciting, adventurous, and fun, it’s also stretching, and at moments stressful and exhausting. When we would finally arrive at a new spot, we would instantly look for a place to LAND. This often looked like a cafe that had other fellow travellers, nourishing food and refreshing drinks. These spots were little oases, retreats, places where you could take off your backpack, get refreshed, forget about the heat and dust and sweat, swap stories and get inspired to continue on the journey. Our favourite places combined stunning locations (I’m remembering the cliffside cafe in Varkala, India), abundant and beautiful food and coffee (I’ll never forget the multi layered smoothies and creamy cappuccinos at Crate Cafe in Canggu), where new friendships and community seemed to spontaneously happen. BUT our all time favourite was a Yoga studio that had an outdoor cafe called the Yoga Barn in Ubud, Bali. After a 90 minute yoga class we would head over to the cafe and enjoy bright, beautiful food and coffee with our new yoga friends. We’d leave completely blissed out, feeling like we were floating three feet off the ground. Those experiences never left us. And now here we are, in a new chapter of the journey, at the right place with our scenic location, at the right time as the desire for healthy communities (and really good coffee) is growing in Chilliwack, and with the right people (YOU!). We want to thank you ahead of time for the extra grace and patience as we all learn, grow, and create something beautiful together. We couldn’t be more grateful to create this Everyday Retreat alongside you. Our prayer is that LAND would be a place of deep community, truly a space where people can discover their highest truth and their very best lives. Oh, and that we’d all have lots of fun along the way :) With Gratitude, Ash + Mike

Describe and demonstrate, including metrics, your community support. How do you support and uplift your community, and how do they show that support in return? Minimum 25 words, maximum 2500 characters.

Our core value as a business is helping people live their best lives (whatever that means to them) through community, movement, and awesome healthy-ish food and coffee. Our impact may be hard to quantify from the outside looking in, but our staff and studio teachers have many stories about people who have found comfort, a friend, and even some kind of inner transformation through the classes and community at LAND. Even our own staff have stories of growth and positive change through their experiences here. We don't have a lot of fancy metrics, but we do have a lot of cool stories.

Why do you deserve to win the Business Impact award?

We are not saving people's lives over here, if another business is please give the award to them! What we are intent on doing is our part in supporting people's journeys towards the best versions of themselves through our cafe and studio. I think our cafe and studio team is doing a pretty dang good job of loving our community.

Tell Us About Your Culture. How are you creating a sustainable and healthy workplace where everyone feels welcome? Provide examples of leadership you show in interactions with clients, vendors, contractors, staff and others.

Our company culture is pretty simple, It's built around love. When we started the business we were hesitant to use that word, but we couldn't escape the fact that it felt most true to how we wanted to show up as business in our community. Can we live by the golden rule? Can we create an environment where staff and customers feel a felt sense of acceptance and love? It sounds a little woo woo, but we need a little woo woo in our lives and businesses to remind us that it's not all about profit, and that we need a kind of higher purpose to feel human.