The golden rules of growth: Elaine Minacs (1945-2006)

No one knows how to build a business better than the entrepreneurs behind some of Canada's most successful companies. These are their most powerful lessons. Elaine Minacs (1945-2006) Founder Minacs Worldwide Inc. Toronto See the opportunity in obstacles What do you do when a marquee client offers you a lucrative, five-year contract — for a job your firm has neither the resources nor the experience to perform? Elaine Minacs would have jumped on the opportunity. Minacs Worldwide started life in 1985 as The Employment Centre, a staffing firm. But when Ford of Canada asked Minacs both to staff and run its customer-service department two years later, she didn't even consider saying no. "[Friends] said I should stick with the staffing business," Minacs told PROFIT in 2004. "But I had bigger dreams. Good entrepreneurs are good at seeing opportunity, and I saw it then and there." Indeed, Minacs eventually sold her staffing agency to focus full-time on business-process outsourcing, by providing call-centre, marketing and back-office administration services. As the market matured, Minacs faced the threat of giant U.S. competitors. Her response? In 1999, Minacs took her company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange through a reverse takeover. By fiscal 2005 — Minacs' last full year with her firm before succumbing to cancer at age 61 — revenue exceeded $290 million. At the time, the company employed 6,000 people in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. "What often appears to be a challenge can in fact be an opportunity," said Minacs. "I've never been deterred by obstacles — they are there to be overcome." —KS