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50 B C B U S I N E S S . C A J U N E 2 0 24 A MOVIE SCRIPT ENDING Before Netflix and Prime Video, entertainment executive Diane Johnson founded Descriptive Video Works. Now most streamers you can name use the service by Nathan Caddell home that night I couldn't sleep, I was so excited. It was the begin- ning of realizing that it was time to give back." Volken, an immigrant from Germany, got into the furni- ture business in the early '80s. "I didn't have any experience in the furniture business and a good friend of mine who worked in the business told me not to do it," says Volken. "I told him I was going to do things differently." How differently? "Number one, I wasn't going to do any sales. How can you buy some- thing, have it displayed and delivered and make money off it at 80 percent off ? [My friend] said, 'John, without sales you won't survive.' Then I said, 'Oh, and I'm not going to have sales- people take commissions and I won't open on Sundays.' He said, 'John, commissions are a part of the business and Sunday is our busiest day. Save your money, don't get into this.' As an entre- preneur, if you're inspired, you follow your dream. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but this time it did." In 2004, Volken sold UFW and its 80 or so stores to the Brick. He put the money toward estab- lishing the John Volken Founda- tion, which he in turn used to start the John Volken Academy, a long-term residential drug and alcohol treatment facility, as well as Lift the Children, a charity designed to support vulnerable children in Africa. He acknowledges that the academy, which has locations in Surrey; Kent, Washington; and Phoenix, isn't an easy path back from addiction. "It's a two year minimum program—most drug addicts don't think that far ahead; it's about today and tomorrow," says Volken. "It's difficult to recruit students, but once they've bought into it, it's marvellous. The changes from before and after—it's amazing." While there are differing opin- ions on the facility's approach, Volken points to graduates of the program who sing its praises. "It's very rewarding but hard work," he says. "I'm 83 years old now and it's a 24/7 job. But I love it; the successes are awesome. There's no money in it—in fact, you're paying for it—but it's very rewarding." iane Johnson wanted to be in broadcasting, and she wanted to make a difference. Stop us if you've heard that one before. But unlike, say, Reese Witherspoon's ambi- tious newscaster character in The Morning Show—who wants to change the world from a spot in the anchor's seat—Johnson had worked mostly behind the scenes in mar- keting through stints with companies like CFOX Radio, Global and Disney. In 2003, she had been out of the indus- try for a couple of years, but she was feel- ing the itch to go back. "What was I going to do?" she recalls. "Knock on the door of CTV and say, 'Hi! How would you like me? I'm going to make a difference!'" Around that time, a friend called her to say that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommu- nications Commission had just mandated described video (a narrated description of a program's main visual elements for blind or vision-impaired watchers). "She said I should look into it, so I thought, well, if the broadcasters are going SETTING THE TABLE John Volken and his wife, Chawna, run multiple charitable endeavours together

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