Learning Mandarin is just one of the many ways that Carlo De Masi shows his devotion and implication in all aspects of the company, in particular, the decision to treat everyone, whether employee or contract, with the respect and honour they are due. Each and every person involved is as important as the next. At Prolex, the small company gets the same treatment as the multi-million dollar contract.

With 600 active customers, ranging in size from little start-up operations in someone's garage to companies as large as Bombardier, Prolex manufactures everything from connectors to components to whatever is electronically driven; they can service it all. “A customer will come to us and say, 'Listen, I've got a new computer product that I need to have manufactured. Can you help me out?' And we'll produce the PC board, the metal casing, put it all together for him and give it what you call 'turnkey production,' where he just gives you a blueprint and a list of materials and you produce the entire unit for him, in a box, ready to go on the shelves of the store or shipped directly to his customers.”

Nearly 40 years ago, father, owner, and president, Mike De Masi, saw a need in the Canadian marketplace for a company that would be able to service the small to middle-size people, and he went for it, branched out on his own, and created, first, Prolex, and then IGG Electronics. “When companies become a certain size, they are less likely to deal with customers who are asking for 100 parts, or 50 pieces of something,or 100-dollar orders... ” says son, Carlos De Masi. “They are more likely to ask for minimum order quantities. A company that's into millions of dollars of sales...and that is multi-national and is a global company is not going to want to fill an order for 50 parts to a local guy in Vaudreuil here who's developing something, which one day could be really cool, like Boomerang, the car security company. They were a local start-up. Everybody's got a Blackberry in the world, right? That was a little start-up company in Ottawa.”

A proud milestone recently, Prolex contributed the cabling and connectors for the new LED (Light Emitting Diode) traffic lights. But Di Mai's proudest accomplishment remains watching the company grow every day. “Hiring more people, employing more people, being a bigger contributor to the economy. That's the pride I get.”

No individual project stands out as supreme for De Masi. It would lessen their commitment to the little guys, he says. To De Masi, each project retains as much value as the one before and after. “It's not like when there's a big project everybody drops everything and celebrates. We have to focus on each and every one. That's the reason my father started this business...so he's hammered that message home. We treat every customer the same. When we're in front of a customer, regardless of whether he's asking for 10 parts or a million parts...to him, because he is putting the life of his company in our hands. Every single customer no matter how big or how small has to be treated with the same level of importance.

“You never know when they're going to grow. We've seen it time and again; customers that are 1000 dollars a year to us, all of a sudden explode because they're onto a really good idea. And we were there when they were small. Generally speaking, they keep us around when they grow. Business shouldn't be more complicated than providing a responsible service to a customer who is kind enough to give you his time.”

At the rate they're going, De Masi expects Prolex to grow dramatically. Twenty years ago, they were strictly doing connectors. “As the market changed, we changed with it. We started doing what you call 'value added.' We went from connectors to cable assemblies which have connectors on them. From there we went to custom molds... So we've grown. Recently, we acquired a company that has a 'proprietary touch technology,' which is competitive. There's only two or three companies in the world that have something like this cause there's only so many ways you can patent this principle, and we have one of these companies.

In spite of their recent acquisitions, the numerous new contracts and hirings, Prolex wants to keep things simple. They do not want to lose site of their original mission. They are trying to grow slowly and continue to do business here as well as abroad.

They feel fortunate to be able to manufacture in both Canada and China where they employ over 500 people. De Masi implicates himself fully in the business operations there as well as here and has taken it upon himself to pay tribute to his Chinese employees and their culture; he is studying Mandarin, having, to date, mastered the language insofar as to make simple sentences of gratitude, greetings and appreciation. Learning Mandarin will give De Masi, at the very least, an insight into the culture; He will gain additional respect for putting in the time to learn one of the most difficult languages around. Because the Chinese have worked very hard to learn his language, in order to do business with him, he feels he should at least do the same.

De Masi has put his devotion to the test and is giving the individual employee in China the same attention and time as the large company in Canada.

Eduardo Aparicio has been singing for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for numerous years. He has traveled across the world, from the Netherlands, to his native Chile, yet when confronted with his musical success— I am a dentist, he responds with assertion. “Verdi Requiem,” he continues, “is a magnificent piece of music, a very huge piece of music, with choir and orchestra...”

Aparicio sang with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for over 23 years, going with them from Carnegie Hall through the United States and Europe. Now whenever they have big pieces of music, they call, he says. His musical contributions remain timeless in Les Trojans, Carmina Buranna, and L'Enfance du Christ. Five years ago, he was a major contributor in the 350 years of Montreal Anniversary Presentation at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Verdios Requiem is what he performed. “I enjoy my music,” he persists. “It is a hobby. It is a part of my life...if you are sad, you have music to express your sadness; if you are happy, you have music to express your happiness. Music is part of our lives.”

Music, he says, always came naturally to him. Then the crossroads. What to choose as a life career? What to decide? His original intention was to become a doctor, but due to an overwhelming amount of applicants for medical school that year, dentistry was the next logical choice. He wanted a solid-based profession. Music would always be there— and, with dentistry, he'd get to use his hands. Perform.

Aparicio, in fact, considers himself both an artist and a scientist. “Dentistry is a science, but it's also art; you create smiles, you preserve smiles, you reconstruct smiles, and you have to have art to do that. You have to be like a sculptor. You have to carve, with your hands, a piece of art to put into the face of somebody.” Music, on the other hand, is quite openly an art, but it is also science. “You have to have a mathematical mind in order to cut time into little pieces. Rhythmically, some pieces are longer than others, shorter than others in order to create music.” Also, says Aparicio, to interpret what is written, you have to have the ability to divide time and rhythm.

The biggest challenge for Eduardo Aparicio to date has been to re-validate his degree upon his arrival from Chile. He had to be an intern, a resident at McGill hospitals and finally, to pass the required and stringent examinations. “This was a very difficult exam, because the coverage is so wide that you have to be excellent in all the things that they ask.”

He completed all the requirements in only one year and a half. Afterward, he was free to be an entrepreneur. He started his own dental business over 30 years ago. Now, he implants teeth and music into people.

“I like my independence,” he says—with Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' playing in the background.

Former theologian and pastor, Ralph Loewen, takes on the business world, turning Itergy into a Gold Certified Microsoft Company, and winning the coveted top spot in the Profit Magazine. In 2007, they edged out Garda and RIM based on an impressive 30 to 50% growth per year.

In very large enterprises, Itergy will architect, design and implement systems the business applications including accounting, human resources, security, servers, web portals, etc. When one logs onto a network and puts in their password, Itergy is likely to have set up the security system behind it. When sending e-mail, they are possibly the ones who put the servers into place.

Loewen says business has always been a part of his life. Inspired from watching his father, he started his first business in high school and hasn't stopped since. “Running a business is much more secure than having a job. There's some sense that we control our future. We like the rewards that come with success, and we accept quite easily the difficulties that come when you're not a success, cause as you know, it takes a few failures for every success when you're an entrepreneur.”

Loewen and partner established Itergy just a few months before the dot com crash. Their first client went bankrupt; the client that had placed them with the first client went bankrupt, and they lost their startup funds. “So we had to build the company on a totally new model than we had planned on. We had to recast the vision very quickly in the beginning. We switched from a product company to a services company. Everybody thought the Internet had arrived, hundreds of thousands of companies went bankrupt within months. There were no business fundamentals behind them.” You're as good as the people who work for you, says Loewen, the quality of your consultants and your client list.

Itergy grew without marketing--and managed to win awards for it. “We learned that you hire on demand,” says Loewen. “These are things we learned from the dot com crash late 1990s and 2000. You have to have a business plan, and it has to make sense for what your shareholders are expecting. We are in the services business, there is no room for error.”

Fixated on bringing business value to every client, whether here or abroad, Itergy has opened a support office in the UK, with 24/7 monitoring services, and plans on expanding and adding as need arises. “You don't spend the money before the money is there. Every piece has to work for itself. When each piece is built and it makes sense financially and technologically, then we keep going. Acquisition should do the same thing.” Loewen plans to continue acquisition activity, to increase capacity. “It makes sense to bring together certain companies...

“I've always been technical but have not always been passionate about IT. I've always been passionate about people,” says Loewen. “Our faith has always been very important to us. We built a business ethic right off our own sense of ethic. Ethics are necessary. At the same time we have a clear vision, one of which is family. RRSP plan, insurance...we always make sure that people are properly taken care of. We spent a lot of time doing the rights things--not always doing it right. Processes need to follow.”

Loewen's best advice to entrepreneurs is to keep the complex things simple. Business must always make sense. “Technology exists for us, we don't exist for technology. Get rid of things that are unnecessary. People spend way too much time on the wrong things. You've got to spend time on things that add value. It's better to be number one or two, than to be number six, seven, eight, nine or ten, then you're lost.”

Success is equilibrium between your personal life and your business, says Alain Gagnon of Boreal, a custom vision company founded in 2003. “To me success is an employee being happy... it's a balance. Setting a goal and being able to accomplish it; that's exciting...bringing new ideas...merging ideas to see if together you can do something better.”

Gagnon took parental leave and started Boreal. His perspective of the business world changed with the arrival of his second child. “I decided to integrate these elements into a company. Everybody that I hire has a family too. To me it's really important. I give them a flexible environment so they can meet their familial needs. What I've seen is that the effort I put into the company, they put into the company also. So I don't have to police them in terms of hours.”

Boreal specializes in inspection, building illumination for machines, working with automation to provide a way for a company to inspect their product with a tool. With ten years experience under his belt, Alain Gagnon decided to branch out and offer this product with the added twist; quantity would not be important and no project was undo able.“This is a wide industry. Several companies contribute to this, but we are building special illumination for that market. We found out that by customizing the illumination a little bit, we have better results. We work in partnership with our clients and come up with ideas, a new way of illumination.”

The key philosophy at Boreal is flexibility. They are open to adapting the product for each individual client. This is new to the market. In fact, many of Boreal's competitors have followed their model. But, says Gagnon, “If you don't build it from the ground up, it's hard to move towards something flexible. If you have a structure and you have employees that are working in a certain way, it's hard to change them. But we started like this. Our production is like that, our engineering is like that, and our way of seeing the product is like that. So, for us it's easy.”

“We're trying to be a team with our clients. It's a collaboration. What we see is they come back for business. They work with us in the first phase, they like what they see, they like the relationship, and then, I would say, 90% of our customers come back because they like the experience. It's something we believe in.”

When starting a new business you need help somewhere, be it financially...someone to buy a first contract, helpful colleagues. Everyone he's talked to who is successful, he says, had a little something extra that enabled them to advance and grow. For example, says Gagnon, “Aceris is my customer, and now I am renting them space. They have helped me a lot. I've helped them by giving them my product. We also benefit from them. They are flexible on the rent...I am able to negotiate with them.”

A group of twenty people working for the company, diversification, and the creation of another division focusing on different markets are the goals Boreal has set for the next five years. “Now, our main clients are machine integrators. They are in the vision machine market. They have all kinds of applications. We focus on them; we have a product that is dedicated to that market. But what we want to do is since we became very good at illumination with LED, which is going to be the next thing for replacing the lights, we want to be part of that new trend of illumination by LED. This is more efficient, better for the environment, less polluting. I see a good opportunity to separate the company.”

LED is a light source made with a semiconductor. Consequently, when it's a sound ball there is no mercury, no lead. This technology will become more efficient, will produce more light, will likely move to general illumination within the next two years, according to Gagnon. Boreal is currently looking into opening up an office in the United States and manufacturing in Asia.

The best advice the president of Boreal has received is not to need to be right the first time. “The most important thing, says Gagnon, “is making a decision. The idea is to make that decision and spin it in a way that you're going to reach your goal even if you made a bad decision. And that's really important, because if you don't make a decision, then you're stuck. You don't go anywhere.” Adjusting is key, adds Gagnon. “It's better to make a decision and then adjust. You have to be wise enough to adjust your decision if you see that it's not going to be successful.”