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Living the Canadian dream |
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Page 3 of 4
“When I started the business in 2000, it was like starting again,” he said. “I maxed out all my credit cards because it was difficult to impossible to get funding. It is a scary feeling knowing you had a mortgage and other bills to pay and not knowing how the business would continue.”
Customers sometimes would not pay bills on time which only added to the financial pressures.
“We finally got help from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) with a small business loan,” says Menezes.
As a new company, it takes time “to build credibility to compete with the large, established companies in Canada.”
To earn the trust of customers and establish the company as a leader in Information Security,
Menezes formed alliances with big names in IT, Cisco Systems and Network Intelligence.
Today, his retail clients include Sears, Sobey’s and Shoppers Drug Mart.
Menezes advises would-be entrepreneurs to forget about starting up a business as soon as they land in Canada, but instead first take up a job. “Learn how the Canadian system works. Take a job in the field so you can enjoy the learning experience.”
It’s all about building up contacts with decision makers “to make the transition to your own business a lot easier and smoother.”
Like Menezes, it took Rajinder Rai 20 years before she decided to set up her own home-based business. She joined cosmetics giant Mary Kay as a consultant in 1998.
“The first 10 months were hard work,” says Rai, speaking of the time she added regular Mary Kay business training sessions to a fulltime job and caring for home and family.
“I prioritized differently and cut down drastically on socializing outside of the business.”
Rai says the hard work paid off. She tasted success, and vaulted up the corporate ladder, becoming a director in 2000.
Mary Kay consultants typically take a decade or more to hit the $114,000 half-yearly revenues required to earn the coveted pink Cadillac. Rai won the ‘trophy on wheels’ in just her third year – a North American record and a Canadian first. This month, she picked up her fourth pink Cadillac, hitting the required sales target consistently in every consecutive two-year period.
“My culture was never an issue in this company,” says Rai, a Sikh, who proudly wears bejewelled saris to glitzy Mary Kay award ceremonies. Even so, when she was featured in the company’s magazine in 2001, she received emails from East Indian women across North America telling her how her story had inspired them. Her inclusion in a predominantly Caucasian winners’ line-up has done much to promote the company among visible-minority women.
Rai now pushes her sizeable team of consultants to achieve their own dreams. “I never saw myself as a motivator or speaker. It just came from preaching what I practise. I believe in what I do.”
Another entrepreneur who took the long and winding road to success is financial consultant Roberto Lloren.
Lloren’s advice to new immigrants with impressive job titles on their résumés is blunt: “Forget who you were back home and start life all over again here,” he says, recalling his own less than auspicious start in the Canadian workplace.
“To get the so-called ‘Canadian experience’, I took a job as packer and labeller for a printing press.” For the former senior manager at GSK, a global pharmaceutical giant, and entrepreneur of two businesses, this was “quite degrading.”
After several failed attempts to enter the pharmaceutical industry, Lloren “took a leap of faith” and joined Clarica/Sunlife, selling insurance in a 100% commission-based job.
“I took it against the advice of well-wishers. But I had a wife and six kids to support.”
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