The golden rules of growth: Rebecca MacDonald

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. Rebecca MacDonald Executive chair Energy Savings Income Fund Toronto Develop mental toughness "I grew up without preconceived notions of what I could and could not do," says MacDonald. "I was taught to believe that women can do the same job as men, and have to be just as tough." Mental toughness served MacDonald well as she built Energy Savings Income Fund into a $1-billion-a-year energy reseller in Canada and the U.S. That inner strength also helped MacDonald overcome personal challenges, including the death of her husband in 1992, which left her alone with two young children and a business to run. Four years later, MacDonald was bedridden by rheumatoid arthritis. Through it all, "never give up" was her mantra. "I was very poor and very hungry, and I had two children to feed," she explains. "Somebody had to do it." In fact, MacDonald says, her children were her greatest motivation and her biggest supporters. "They were my partners," she says. "I needed their approval not to be around in order to do well in business." Whether it's family, a mentor or a friend, find a supporter who will keep you motivated and mentally strong in good times and bad, advises MacDonald: "Life is not a bowl of cherries." —RW