Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have ice cream in their veins. These two unlikely entrepreneurial heroes rose to pop culture status by following different paths. Jerry is more of the joker, always ready with a quick quip, who landed his first job in the industry as an ice cream scooper in college. He tried moving through medical school without any success and reverted to work as a lab technician, whilst Ben drove an ice cream truck in his senior school year, but also dropped out of college.

The pair first met each other when they shared a Manhattan apartment following graduation, but they did not explore their entrepreneurial possibilities until they became reunited in upstate New York and decided to go into the food business.

Ben and Jerry’s could just as easily have been a bagel bakery, but they deemed that option too expensive and decided to make ice cream instead. In the equally-as-funky Burlington, VT., they opened their first scoop shop and started churning out their off-the-wall ice cream creations.

Ben and Jerry realized the power of social networking in 1978 and started off by hosting a free film festival and by establishing several traditions, including a give away of free ice cream on the anniversary of the founding of the first store. “We measured our success not just by how much money we made, but by how much we contributed to the community. It was a two-part bottom line.”

Through the 1980s, business was great and they expanded out of state within New England. By 1987, annual sales totalled $32 million and even President Reagan became a Ben & Jerry’s fan in 1988, when he awarded them the prestigious US Small Business Persons of the Year award.

Ben & Jerry’s was, and still is, known for its creativity. Flavors such as “Chunky Monkey” and “Rainforest Crunch” featured unique flavor combinations, unusual packaging and colorful marketing methods. By the end of the 1980s, the company was operating in 18 states within the USA.

Their rapid growth was not without growing pains and they had to further innovate and sometimes capitulate as they grew. They were forced to relinquish some of the firm’s informal hierarchy and more established players, such as Dreyers and Haagen-Dazs, were putting up stiff competition.

Through the 90s, however, the firm continued its growth, with sales approaching $175 million towards the end of the decade. Perhaps inevitably, the brand was purchased by the food giant Unilever in 2000, although a unique arrangement allowed Ben and Jerry’s to continue to feature its unique operating style.

Since the outset, the duo had always been on somewhat of a social mission and this trend continues to this day. They have a solid commitment to recycling and conservation at all facilities and they use hormone-free milk in all products. “Now, when we face a problem like global warming, and you understand that the biggest impacts on global warming come from business and industry, I think business needs to take a leading role,” observes Jerry.

Ben & Jerry’s is very much the quintessential American success story, but they have always maintained their strong social and community values. “Neither of us could have anticipated twenty years ago that a major multi-international would some day sign on, enthusiastically, to pursue and expand the social mission that continues to be an essential part of Ben & Jerry’s and a driving force behind many of our successes.” I’ll lick an ice cream to that.

Adam Toren

If any of you have flown easyJet, stayed in an easyHotel, or rented an easyCar, then you know this serial entrepreneur. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou defines the entrepreneurial spirit, both by his success in developing businesses and in giving back to the community. He offers a multitude of best practices that I think all entrepreneurs, whether just starting out or in business for years, will find beneficial.

As the son of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon, it would have been easy for Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou to sit back and take it easy. But instead, he worked to amass his own fortune by establishing a business empire that continues to expand and succeed. His first endeavor was at age 25 with the shipping company Stelmar, funded in part with a loan from his father. With its success, Haji-Ioannou founded easyJet, now a well-known budget airline throughout Europe. The multitude of easyGroup companies soon followed.

“I was just lucky with easyJet. I took an enormous risk with my family’s fortune back in the 90s and I was lucky to have been in the right place and at the right time when the European airline industry was deregulating and with the right father to give me a lot of money to bet on new aircraft. And it worked.”

Haji-Ioannou is of the strong belief that once you’ve built a successful venture and want to move on to other opportunities, then you need to put your trust in a manager to carry on your vision. “Entrepreneurs mess around, once you’ve proven the business model leave it alone and get a manager in, and hire a proven manger.”

For entrepreneurs working towards developing a brand, Haji-Ioannou’s model is one to use as a guide. “Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you.” As the owner of easyGroup.com, Haji-Ioannou created a business empire with easyBus.com, easyCar.com, easyCinema.com, easyCruise.com, easy4men.com, easyHotel.com, easyInternetcafe.com, easyJet.com, easyJobs.com, easyMobile.com, easyMoney.com, easyMusic.com, easyOffice.com, easyPizza.com, easyValue.com, easyVan.com and easyWatch.com.

The Greek-Cypriot entrepreneur revels that his secret to success is to “Look at companies where the consumers are paying out of their own pockets and give them a product at the right price and they will take it; Choose a product/service where when you reduce the price more consumers buy; Look at the yield management, which is the same product given at different prices; Eliminate the frills; Under promise and over deliver; and Don’t expand too fast.”

During these challenging economic times, Haji-Ioannou, like other entrepreneurs, is trying to position his companies to make it through the uncertainty. “Remember, risk and reward is asymmetrical. You can’t risk having to raise debt or equity in a deep recession. I believe that the competitive landscape will not be as benign as we think it will be. I think we are entering an era of big government.”

Haji-Ioannou, who is worth over $700 million, is committed to giving back to his community and helping other entrepreneurs. He provides over 200 scholarships to his alma maters, the London School of Economics and Cass Business School in London, to support young, exceptional scholars; he created the Disabled Entrepreneur of the Year award to recognize entrepreneurs who have overcome limitations to start their businesses; he co-founded CYMEPA to preserve the marine environment in Cypress; he established the Stelios Award for Business Cooperation in Cyprus; he supports the Pendeli Reforestation project in Greece; he established the Stelios Haji-Ioannou Award for Entrepreneur of the Year in Greece; and he established the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation to recognize far-reaching aspirations, innovative ideas and measurable change.

It is for his services to entrepreneurship that Haji-Ioannou received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2006. “I am very passionate about encouraging and recognizing entrepreneurial spirit, and seeking out and celebrating business ability.”

His advice to budding entrepreneurs is threefold: “Pay attention to the detail of a business, those mistakes in the business model may be small now but they are compounded by growth. Don’t overestimate what consumers will pay for something that saves them time. Don’t bet the farm on your business, put enough in to have enough skin in the game, an amount that is meaningful but leaves an amount small enough for you to survive.”

Adam Toren

Photograph courtesy of easyGroup

Sixty-two-year old James Dyson is unlike others who can be classified simply as inventors and creators. He is not too wrapped up in this to forget the company’s bottom line and this is reflected in his considerable corporate success. Dyson, who graduated in interior design, has spent the last 40 years inventing one thing or another and has been very successful integrating and translating his ideas into corporate profits.

Hailing from the south west of England, this maverick has not been afraid to make controversial business decisions along the way as he strives to convert ideas into sales. For example, in the early 2000s he shifted a large number of jobs away from a production line in England to a much more economical location in Malaysia. Bristling from the negative press, Dyson was mostly vindicated shortly thereafter when his company more than doubled its pretax profits.

At his business locations, Dyson encourages innovation. He has gone out of his way to create the perfect environment for this to flourish. The average age of his employees is just 26 and he is always on the lookout for eager young graduates. He believes that the best ideas come from “getting your hands dirty” and is always ready to mix it up, by moving employees from position to position and department to department, putting them in an environment where they are motivated to innovate. Dyson actively encourages people to think outside of the box.

Whilst he has every respect for computers and the design options that they offer, he believes that everybody is a development engineer and that really good engineers draw by hand first and use rudimentary materials to create initial prototypes. He firmly believes that it is better to make a mistake and learn from them, rather than by having a surfeit of information that you do not need. Dyson’s research and development department is involved in producing radically new products, at a huge risk. He instills this tension into his engineers and believes that his final products are much better for it.

Dyson is not afraid to get involved in the political arena either. He has strong views about government funding and tax relief, arguing that money allocated to higher education would be better redirected to small companies and innovators such as his. Tax relief should be increased, to stimulate money spent in development.

As the inventor of a highly successful range of vacuum cleaners, James Dyson has been able to combine business savvy with cutting edge innovation to best effect.

Adam Toren

He is known as the man who owns the Internet because of the sheer volume of web domains under his ownership. But I think you will find that Kevin Ham’s path to entrepreneurship is an interesting one and his ambitious spirit serves as inspiration to all of us.

Very few recognize the name Kevin Ham, yet he is one of the most influential people in the dotcom world with an empire worth $300 million. Much of his fortune was made by buying domain names and from pay per click ads. But that wasn’t his initial career path. Ham is a family doctor, but he put off practicing medicine when he was bit by the Web bug. Since entering the dotcom business in 2000, he has amassed over 300,000 domain names and makes about $70 million in revenue each year. “If you control all the domains, then you control the Internet.”

That the 39-year old Ham remains under the radar in terms of notoriety is fine with him. He says his is a business that attracts many enemies, particularly other domain owners. The son of Korean immigrants, Ham, who grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, works aggressively to accomplish his goals despite the obstacles put before him by naysayers.

This determination was learned at an early age as Ham watched his parents struggle. Then at age 14 when he was struck by a debilitating disease, it was his strong will that led to Ham’s interest in becoming a doctor. “My father came to Canada with empty pockets and I hardly saw him as I grew up because he went to work before I awoke and didn’t get home until I was asleep. My mother did graveyard shifts as a nurse and slept a few hours, then helped my father in his dry cleaning business, and after that attended to household duties. She had such a very strong will to make sure that all of her three boys turned out to be good people. She engrained in us manners, a reserved personality, and a desire to make a difference in this world. I am forever indebted to my mother for bringing us up with the proper values, and being such a strong foundation for our family.”

Like many entrepreneurs, Ham began his business from a small room in his house. The kitchen table to be exact. That kitchen table has evolved into a mega office on the 27th floor in a skyscraper located in Vancouver. His key to success is taking advantage of opportunities, creating innovative technology to support his operations and capitalizing on the weaknesses of the competition. You can have the perfect plan and execute it, but there are so many other factors. For me, that is giving oneself up to a higher power, with the thought that I be used to do something that helps at least one other person. If you have that grounded perspective, then even when what others define as success is taken away, you are still very whole and humble when you have nothing and also when you have everything.”

In addition to buying up domain names, Ham has made a slight fortune on profiting from people who type in the incorrect domain name. He devised an ingenious plan to place ads on sites that are frequently visited by people who mistype a website address. Every time a visitor clicks on one of the ads, Ham profits.

A man who turns to the Bible for strength, Ham continues to expand his business by developing offshoots to his main focus. He is invested heavily in direct navigation in which people bypass search engines by typing in what they are looking for and adding the .com suffix. He most recently created a new company called Reinvent Technology in which he will turn his most popular domain names into small media companies. “It’s time to build out the virtual real estate. There’s so much more value in these names than pay-per-click.”

Ham credits his father for his entrepreneurial spirit. “He was always telling me why setting up dry cleaners in certain locations would succeed and why other locations would not. I learned the true value of hard work. I saw that to really do anything, you need to not only work hard, but also think about how you work.”

Adam Toren

Here we have Part 5 of 5 in our Canadian Dragons series. It has been quite a journey through the lives of these amazing entrepreneurs. We hope you enjoyed it!

Wilson has had his share of mistakes on his way to becoming a successful investment banker for the energy industry. But he never repeated the same one twice. Probably one of his biggest mistakes was betting on a senior management position as an engineer for Alberta Oil.

“I ended up working for a big oil company, and my dream was to be in upper management in this big oil company. That dream got shattered one day when I took their management aptitude test. They came back and said, ‘You will be a good technical specialist, you will not be a good manager.’ And maybe they were right. But what took me a few years to learn, was that I would not be a good manager in a large, bureaucratic organization, whereas in a small, nimble, fleet-of-foot, relatively entrepreneurial organization, I just might flourish. My short attention span, and a willingness to work on 20 things at once, probably is a big part of the success of my various entrepreneurial adventures.”

True to Wilson’s nature, he took a disappointing situation and turned it into a positive. That aptitude test also showed that his personality was more suited for business rather than engineering. Undeterred, he returned to college and earned his MBA with a discipline in entrepreneurship. Shortly thereafter, he put to use his energy investment background and founded Wilson Machie and Co. Later, he and a group of investment bankers established FirstEnergy Capital Corp.

While he amassed his wealth by being in the right place at the right time during the Alberta oil boom, Wilson has stayed true to his roots and is always at the ready to help his hometown of Saskatoon, Canada. He remains a down-home kind of guy, someone who will gladly have a beer with you and just talk about what’s on your mind. He believes in investing in people and surrounding himself with experts to run the parts of the business they know best. “Maybe it’s because I come from the oil and gas industry where you need to drill 10 wells to get three great wells, two marginal wells and four or five dry holes. So if I invest in 10 businesses, I know right now that one or two of them are probably not going to make it. But I’m not smart enough to pick which one or two.”

Wilson, one of the venture capitalists for aspiring entrepreneurs who make the grade on Canada’s hit show Dragon’s Den, is not afraid to take risks. Nor does he hesitate to go out on a limb when a situation calls for it. “I am highly focused on the entrepreneur and what they know about their business. Honesty and integrity are a must. Passion is a given; they have to be passionate about the business they’re in. They also have to know what they know, but they also have to know what they don’t know. I love the answer ‘I don’t know but I’ll find out.’ That’s a good answer.”

His diagnosis of advanced stage prostate cancer in his 40s has certainly grounded him and given him a strong appreciation for life. Although Wilson retired in 2007 from FirstEnergy, the self-professed workaholic lives life to its fullest and is at the ready to help any aspiring entrepreneur or philanthropic cause. “The ratio of winners to losers has gone up over time. It’s gone up because I’ve gotten better at evaluating people – not smarter at evaluating businesses, but better at evaluating people. Most of the mistakes I’ve made have been in trusting people. Because every business is going to have speed bumps. It’s how you manage those speed bumps and turn the ship around that makes the difference. Absolutely there have been some mistakes, and some great people and some great businesses that haven’t worked out. That’s just the nature of business. But I’m not afraid.”

Do you have any requests for a new entrepreneurial series? Leave them in a comment!

Adam Toren

It’s a pleasure this week to bring you Part 3 of 5 in our Canadian Dragons Series. A profile on Jim Treliving…

Jim Treliving is just your average guy who found something he loved and went after it. While he does regret not starting out in his own business sooner, he is pleased with what he has done with his Boston Pizza restaurant chain since taking it over.

As a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, Treliving runs his business with the same attributes learned in his law enforcement career. He is disciplined, tough with establishing streamlined operations and loyal to his team members. “The very first thing you need is a good business plan. The second thing is to figure out exactly what will cause your business cash flow to jump to the next level. Then you project your cash flow. And then you sit down and say: this is what I’m going to do, and this is how I’m going to do it. And then you go out and work and work till you get it done. It’s all pretty simple, actually, if you just stop and think about it!”

Treliving is proof positive that you should always keep an open mind and be receptive to new things because your destiny could be waiting for you where you least expect it. For Treliving, his entrepreneurship was awakened when he took his first bite of pizza at Boston Pizza and Spaghetti House in Edmonton, Canada. After reviewing the finances and convincing his father to co-sign a loan, Treliving traded in his badge and job security and bought a Boston Pizza franchise.

Some might consider the franchise purchase a rush decision and a gamble, but Treliving was familiar with the company and liked what he saw. He stayed focused and diligent and soon he and his accountant George Melville purchased the entire company. From the very beginning, his motto has been: “Think like a customer, deliver outstanding food value and work closely with your partners.”

It has been nothing but success going forward with Boston Pizza the leading casual dining chain in Canada. Expansion plans are ongoing throughout Canada, the United States and Mexico, with future growth in the United Kingdom, Australia and Asia.Despite the company’s size, Treliving carries forth the theme of camaraderie that is such a strong part of the law enforcement culture. “You take people in as franchisees and they become part of your family.” He makes it a point when visiting restaurants to thank the staff for their efforts and to encourage their ideas and feedback.

Treliving continues to put his golden touch on other franchises and founded White Rock Commercial, a land development firm in Dallas, Texas. He also invests in other business ventures throughout the sports entertainment, real estate, and oil and gas industries. As one of the venture capitalists on Dragon’s Den, Treliving keeps an eye out for other investment opportunities. His advice to entrepreneurs is to develop a solid business plan that can weather any economic climate. “Make sure you run your business well and that you make it even better. If you’ve just established your business, take another six months to a year to make sure you’re doing everything right, and then decide where to go next.”

I am noticing that each of these Dragon’s have very different personalities and backgrounds – it just goes to show, you never know where the next entrepreneur is going to come from.

—————-

Adam Toren

We interrupt our 5 Part Modeling Masters Series on the Canadian Dragon’s to bring you an exclusive bonus post on Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs is the winner of our latest poll “If you could meet one famous entrepreneur, dead or alive, who would it be and why?” – You voted and we listened! I hope you enjoy the post.

If anyone can speak from the heart about the trials and tribulations of an entrepreneur, it’s Steve Jobs. “You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” Today, the CEO of Apple and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios is worth an estimated $3.4 billion as a successful innovator in both the computer and entertainment industries. “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.”

But rewind to his college years and Jobs, like many budding entrepreneurs, was struggling. As the story goes, he dropped out of college and had no money to support himself. He slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, collected soda bottles for the 5 cent return deposit to buy food and walked seven miles every Sunday night to enjoy a hot meal at the Hare Krishna temple. But if there was one skill that the entrepreneur excelled at, it was innovation. “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

Innovation is what landed Macintosh personal computers, the OS X operating system, the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone on the top of the list as revolutionary products. It is Jobs’ belief that if you give people something of value, they will buy it, regardless of its cost. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.”

Although many consider Jobs an egomaniac, the entrepreneur is the first to credit his employees for Apple’s and Pixar’s successes. “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”

Jobs always had a knack for computers and technology, even back as a junior high school student when he would attend lectures after school at Hewlett-Packard Company. It led to a summer job and his first introduction with Steve Wozniak. It was during the technology peak of the Silicon Valley that Jobs began realizing success as an entrepreneur. After a stint at Atari, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple and created the first small computer with a graphical user interface for commercial use. “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.”

It is no secret that Jobs’ personality is aggressive and temperamental, but he excels at the art of persuasion, an important ingredient for a successful entrepreneur. Jobs is always at the ready to offer entrepreneurs just starting out some valuable, motivating advice. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. I was lucky – I found what I love to do early in life. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one.”

Adam Toren

Last week was the first in a 5 part series we are doing on The Canadian Dragons. I took you on Arlene Dickinson’s journey to entrepreneurial success! This week I would like to talk about Dragon number 2 – Robert Herjavec.

It comes down to basic skills our moms and dads taught us. Show up early, work hard, be disciplined – Robert Herjavec

That’s how Robert Herjavec overcame the odds and became a multi-millionaire. His current wealth is a far cry from his youth. As the son of Croatian immigrants, he grew up poor. But his family’s lack of money was the driving force behind Herjavec’s desire to become an entrepreneur and control his own destiny. “It was about getting away from where my family was. I imagined how much better it would be if we had money.”

Hard work and good instincts paid off for Herjavec in the early 1990s. As the dot-com craze emerged, Herjavec had a feeling technology would be the road to success. After waiting tables at an upscale restaurant by day, he spent much of his evenings working on his technology idea. Thus, his first technology company, BRAK Systems, was born and quickly became the leading provider of Internet security software in Canada.

By 2000, BRAK Systems was worth over $100 million when Herjavec sold it to AT&T. He could have lived a life of leisure after the sale, but instead became vice president of Ramp Networks, where he was instrumental in its $225 million sale to Nokia.

The self-made millionaire is not resting on his laurels. Since 2003, he serves as cofounder and CEO of Toronto-based The Herjavec Group, the largest privately owned IT network security and infrastructure integration company in Canada. He works hard and plays hard, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and enjoying his collection of luxury cars.

So why didn’t Herjavec take the easy road and retire early with his millions? His response reflects the strong values of his upbringing. “If you keep doing stuff purely for the money, one day you’ll hit the end of the road.”

As he focuses on the expansion of his company, Herjavec is a firm believer that sales and professionalism are two key components to acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. “Unless 90% of your sales are recurring, service-contract revenue, everything you do has to be driven by sales, from answering the phone, to having professional salespeople, to forecasting, to training.”

As one of the venture capitalist on the popular Canadian television series Dragon’s Den, Herjavec offers encouraging words to contestants seeking to put their business idea into motion.

“Some people need good advice more than they need money. If you keep doing stuff you love to do, the money will follow.”

In my opinion, this quotation is very true, and most Young Entrepreneurs are those that are following their own dreams and goals. What could be more fulfilling?

Adam Toren

This week marks the first in a 5 part series we will be doing on “The Canadian Dragons”. Dragon’s Den is one the most talked about TV shows among Entrepreneurs & Investors. 5 of Canada’s most savvy business minds form a panel of potential investors who are ready to share their cash and their knowledge with up and coming business people, from all walks of life!

Part 1 is my feature on Arlene Dickenson, the only female dragon currently on the panel.

Self-made successful Canadian entrepreneur Arlene Dickinson knows firsthand that being successful in any business takes perseverance, confidence and a bit of luck. “I think it’s really hard for entrepreneurs that are just starting out to get their idea in front of the right type of people. Any time as an entrepreneur, you can get in a room with experienced investors or entrepreneurs who have been very successful, I think that that’s an opportunity to test your own acumen and the validity of your idea, and you should take that opportunity.”

That’s exactly what Dickinson did when put in a position to test her innate talent for marketing. At the age of 19, Dickinson was married, caring for four young children and working to put her husband through college. A career was the farthest thing from her mind. With no college education, Dickinson worked various administrative jobs. But it was a job in public relations and media that uncovered her hidden talent in marketing and put her on the track to business success.

Dickinson continued to follow her talent, despite many obstacles, including a divorce, no formal education in the marketing field and a lack of funds. Numerous professionals discouraged her from starting a marketing communications firm because so many already existed. But Dickinson persevered and she and a partner founded Venture Communications in 1988 with a vision far different from all the other marketing firms.

Traditionally, corporations had viewed marketing as an expense. But Dickinson saw it as an integral part of a company’s bottom line. With the marketing industry cool to the ideas Dickinson envisioned, she set out to prove that marketing tactics could deliver measurable results and enhance profits, revenue, market share, shareholder equity and customer retention.

A pioneer of performance-based marketing strategies, Dickinson subscribes to the theory that a good idea that provides real value can translate into business success. “For the young entrepreneur, the most essential requirement is a good idea. That’s still all it takes to find business success. Don’t lose heart. A good business plan will make its way eventually.”

Dickinson became the sole owner of Venture Communications in 1998, with a goal of growing her business beyond Calgary, Canada. Once again, Dickinson ignored the critics and successfully established a national marketing communications firm, with offices in Toronto, Ottawa and Edmonton. Today, Venture Communications is one of the largest independent marketing companies in Canada and Dickinson serves as its president and CEO.

From her experience in starting and growing a business, Dickinson knows full well how difficult it is for start-up companies to get funding. But she also believes that securing investors is not the sole factor to success. “I think that there are lots of times when investment will make a significant difference in a company. You need to know, as the entrepreneur of the company, whether you require those other resources whether they be financial or business advice resources.”

As I mentioned earlier, Dickinson is one of the Dragons on the hit Canadian television show Dragon’s Den, which provides budding entrepreneurs the avenue to pitch their business ideas before Arlene and the other panel members. She sees many aspiring business people with good vision, but emphasizes the secret to success. “A vision on its own is never enough. You need to have a vision that’s executed and the only way you can execute a vision is by having others help you and believe. You have to be visionary and practical. You have to be able to champion people to your point of view. You need to believe in yourself, but you really need somebody else to believe, to convince somebody else to believe with you or you’re not a good entrepreneur.”

What do you think of Arlene Dickinson? I would really love to hear your comments – Oh yeah, and just a quick mention – you can Follow Arlene Dickenson on Twitter !

Adam Toren

Last year I did a profile on advice from the world’s richest man (Get In When There’s A Crisis – Advice From the World’s Richest Man).

I wanted to continue the profile today by discussing one of Carlos Slim Helu’s most infamous strategies – Go Away From The Crowd.

“When there is a crisis, that’s when some are interested in getting out,” says Helu, “and that’s when we are interested in getting in.”

The entire success of Helu’s business career has rested on one simple premise: go against the current. Much like his father who prospered in real estate during the Mexican Revolution, a time when most others were fleeing the violence and insecurity as fast as they could, Helu has become known for sniffing out great bargain deals and making investments that seem to be directly at odds with what the market, and his competitors, are saying is right.

Helu has never been one to worry about what other people think of him. After all, he says, “When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.” Instead, Helu has built his career on standing out from the crowd. He was not trying to get noticed or to make the next day’s headlines, but by going for the investments that others were scrambling away from in fear, that is indeed what wound up happening.

The biggest investment of Helu’s life came at a time when his own country was in the midst of turmoil. Banks were faltering, businesses were collapsing, and people were living in daily fear of losing their lives. Throughout all of this, how many people would have taken the time to think to themselves, “Now’s the perfect time to invest!” As it turns out, Helu was one of the few, and the fortunate.

Helu looked for patterns in the market and singled out the unusual. If a company was underperforming, he did not turn away from it like the rest; he zeroed in his sights. Did this company have potential? Could he turn it around? Could he prove people wrong and make it a success?

The decision to purchase Telmex was a difficult one, especially in the operating environment in which it found itself. After all, it was not only Telmex that was suffering, but the entire country itself. And, Helu already had his hands full with many other small businesses he had acquired in the 1980s. But, in Telmex, Helu saw the potential and he developed a long-term plan to unlock that potential.

So, how does he do it? Does Helu simply look for deals that no one else is going for and throw his money behind them? Far from it. Helu engages in a strategic and meticulous plan of bottom fishing. Using his math background, Helu quickly determines whether an asset is being properly valued. He examines the entire sector, its outlook for the future, and the prospects for its competition. He goes beyond the regular number-crunching to take a long term perspective, evaluating from property holdings to human capital to determine the company’s intrinsic worth.

When he thinks a company is undervalued, he gets in on the action. And, that just so happens to be often what everyone else is getting out of.

Evan Carmichael