For those of you who simply cannot get enough St. John in your lives, you’re in luck because yet another HGTV episode featuring St. John is airing tonight.
Tonight’s episode of Caribbean life will feature Chris and Shawna Dudek, the owners of St. John Car Rental. The episode follows them as they look at several properties on island following the purchase of their business. The episode airs tonight at 9:30 p.m. EST on HGTV. It will re-air tomorrow at 12:30 a.m. EST.
We actually stumbled onto the filming back in February. We were at Joe’s Rum Hut and had just met Steve and Liz Horner, the owners of Barefoot Cowboy. They invited us to happy hour to tell us about buying the business. Then I saw a cameraman walk by, and immediately learned that St. John Car Rental had sold too. Something else pretty fantastic happened that day too, but I can’t give away all of our secrets at once. 🙂
Cool. Thanks for the heads up. We never miss the St John featured anything. Also always looking for your posts. More. More. See y’all end of October
It’s slow season on island, which is why we’ve been slower here at NOSJ. But don’t worry, we will give you more, more, more very soon!!
My wife and I love your show and we are so excited to see Chris and Shawna tonight. They are wonderful people and great friends. We miss them dearly back here in Minnesota. We are also so happy for them and the adventure they are on. You picked a perfect couple that love and support each other for your show. One of the things we would love to see is another follow up with some of your couples to see how life has been after a year or so of living in the Caribbean. You do a wonderful job keep up the good work and give our best to Chris and Shawna we miss them on our beaches here with the St. Croix Yach Club.
Dan and Nancy “Dancy”
In the episode the couple mentioned they had no prior experience and purchased this car rental business. So this has made me really curious… what does it take to purchase a business there? Is it the same as in the mainland US where you just have to either have the cash or a decent down payment and convince a bank to give you a loan, or is there more to it? This would be an interesting topic to write about if you haven’t already.
As an accounting/finance geek, I agree with Shawn. I think interviews with business owners, both established and new, would be interesting. So many of us have the dream of living on STJ, insight into how business “works” on the island is something I would love to read. So many businesses seem to turn over with 18 or so months, why the burn out?
Why the burnout? Partly because they miss home and family. Most of the people whom have businesses on St John are “Continentals” and island life on St John does get boring for most whom have no relatives here. St Thomas has a very busy cosmopolitan diverse atmosphere, businesses there can thrive due to the huge number of visitors and locals.
Just a random opinion…..most people dive into the dream, but then don’t know how to be comfortable being uncomfortable or be ALL IN. And to live on st john, you need to love and thrive off of being uncomfortable, so to speak, from your normal taking everything for granted type of lifestyle on the mainland. You’re going to work harder and have more complications on stj and that’s the opposite of the optimistic dreamers’ vision.