FUN FACT

She also keeps an eye out for future projects to share with her dad. “It was a really great experience having him as my partner and having all that time with him,” she said of the restoration, during which they learned her great-grandmother also attended the school. “We are still looking at properties and every once in a while one pops up …”

Within a year, the airbnb listing took off and Tefft found they were

2021 Startup Adk Participant

Doug Knight isn’t the kind of guy who enjoys downtime.

So when he switched from being a mechanic to working in excavation, he couldn’t sit around in the off-season. Instead, he bought a portable sawmill and hit the road, offering services throughout the region.

“I worked at a sawmill in high school and really liked saw milling,” said Knight, who moved to the region after graduating from SUNY Morrisville. “At the end of the day, I’d be the guy convincing my boss to put another log on the mill because I liked it so much.”

After a few years of staying busy through the winters with a tow-behind sawmill, Knight decided to jump in full bore. “I was going all over the place,” Knight said. “I drove two hours north for eight cherry logs, I helped a Paul Smith’s College professor who cut trees and wanted lumber, and stayed in his camper, I drove to my parents’ house in the Cortland area to cut up a tulip poplar tree.”

When taking to the road started to cut into the joy Knight found in sawing, he set up shop with a more traditional setup, inside a building. “I went full time with it, getting busier and I just wanted it more than anything,” he said. “I worked 14, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I didn’t do anything else, I never saw friends, all I did was work.”

That work ethic paid off, as in just seven years Knight Sawmill went from a one-man shop to having two full-time employees and three part-timers.

“I don’t want to be any bigger than that,” Knight said. “I already have a lot of gray hair.”

The COVID-19 pandemic provided Knight an opportunity. What started as a wholesale business that offered pallet parts, railroad ties and lumber now focuses on retail.

“Wholesale is a marathon,” Knight said. “You could saw lumber all day long every day. I had so much work, I couldn’t keep up.”

When lockdown hit in March 2020, he made a change.

“The pandemic broke me away from wholesale,” he said. “I told the guys, ‘We’re going to sell retail lumber.’ It was a huge success, we have been so busy for most of the past few years, we ran at about two to three months out on custom retail orders, sawing as much as we could.”

On a recent day, he was building a rack to store tongue-and-groove lumber and shiplap, so when customers walk into his Fort Ann sawmill, he has products they need ready to go. He attributes part of his adaptability to taking SUNY Adirondack’s StartUp ADK online.

He made a lot of valuable contacts, he said, and has been able to change his business structure in an evolving market.

“If I had known about that class before I started my business, it would have been helpful,” Knight said. “They really teach you a lot; I was impressed by how much good stuff there was.”

Kathy Miller spent her childhood on Lake George and when she met Ron, she introduced him to the idyllic setting of her youth.

After moving around for many years for Ron’s career, the couple relocated to Lake George permanently in 2010. “We always came back; no matter where we lived, we spent the summer and holidays here with family,” said Kathy Miller, owner of Love is on Lake George, a specialty online gift shop. “One day the light bulb went off and we decided to make this home.”

A gift celebrating Kathy’s family’s connection to the Queen of American Lakes led to her starting Love is on Lake George. Ron framed photographs of Kathy’s parents on the family’s boat on Lake George, set on a background Kathy’s father-in-law painted years earlier with the words “Love is on Lake George.”

That inspired the beginning of a retail shop, which started small while Kathy was working full time. In the meantime, Ron bought a wooden Lyman boat.

“I wanted to have a lake cruiser for family activities, similar to what Kathy’s family had,” he said.

He named the boat “Love is on Lake George” and set about operating a cruise business in 2013.

“We take families for a day of swimming in the narrows, sunset cruises are popular, weddings and photo shoots, engagements, there have been several proposals on the boat,” Ron said.

“There’s a synergy there,” Kathy said. “Sometimes couples will ask, ‘Can we bring a bottle of wine?’, and I say, ‘Yes, and check out our selection of wine glasses.’”

Boat tours generally last two hours, but the Millers offer a few options and work with interested clients to determine what best fits their needs. They also offer limited catering, ordering food from local country stores, picking it up for boaters and having it ready to serve onboard.

Love is on Lake George is pet friendly and has partnerships with regional businesses. “We’re a preferred waterfront vendor at The Sagamore, we do weddings on demand with couples at [The Inn at] Erlowest, Blue Water Manor, The Chateau, Wiawaka, and some people find us just because somebody is smart enough to want a classic wooden boat ride,” Ron joked. “The appeal for me is there’s variety and it’s not a drone of the same thing every cruise.”

Both Millers took SUNY Adirondack’s StartUp ADK program for entrepreneurs, Ron in 2011 and Kathy in 2012.