The double-edged sword of being Canadian

Jennifer McNeill was born in Muscle Shoals, Ala.,, and worked for a software company in her home state.

Then, at 30, Ms. McNeill moved to Calgary, where she began a serial-entrepreneur's journey that saw her start and sell four companies.

Now 54, and splitting her time between Calgary and Las Vegas, she is building her fifth company, Planetary Growth , dedicated to helping small ventures, mostly Canadian, thrive in the global economy.

GOODBYE, ALABAMA

I was raised in a very entrepreneurial family in Alabama. My dad was in business as an electrical engineer. You grow up thinking that is normal, and to work for someone else is not normal. I joined a software company and, after a while, started managing the business. I had a knack for understanding where opportunities could come up.

I had personal reasons to get as far away as possible from Alabama. Calgary is an easy place to move to if you are American. There are a lot of Americans there. I loved the mountains, and it was very clean and safe.

I took a position with a small software company, where each of the owners was making $40,000 to $50,000 a year in profit, and they were pretty happy with that.

I came in and said, "You guys need to ramp this up." The first year after I started, they made about $250,000 each. Then I bought one of the partner's shares.

IT'S NOT ABOUT MONEY

Canadians limit themselves. When I see an opportunity, I feel there's no reason why I can't grow a company if I do the right things.

But too many people just accept the norm. They're making a couple of hundred thousand a year and they're thinking, "Wow, this is great. If I ramp up, I might make a million a year, but look at all the work I'd have to do."

I should be more like that, because there are quality-of-life issues. But I travel, I have a lot of fun and I try to balance my life.

At the same time, I can see opportunity. It is very limiting when you just stay stagnant, which a lot of Canadian companies do. That satisfaction with life is a good thing in many instances, but it sure does limit business.

The sale of Cipher Systems in 2000 made me financially comfortable. It meant not worrying about money and whether your kids are taken care of.

But it's not money that drives me. I still don't know whether I've "made it." I just do what I love and the rest falls into place.

THE NEW VENTURE

I sold my last company in 2003, and I quit working for the new owner last September. Then my kids started giving me the gears: "So what are you going to do now?" I said I was going to play golf, and they said, "No, you're not."

So I founded Planetary Growth. The piece about helping Canadian companies is very personal to me. And I really like working with Canadians. They are courteous; they are nice; they are respectful; they don't think they know everything. It is a completely different dynamic than in the U.S.

It's a double-edged sword, however. They are extremely nice to work with, but they are not taught the confidence to do whatever they want to – with what they build and what they do.

SELLING OUT

There is a long list of mistakes I've made, and one big one involved selling a company. When you sell a company to someone, you get excited because they're ready to write you a cheque. And they get excited because they want to buy what you have.

So they'll tell you anything – that they will add tons of people and make sure the product does well.

If I could do it again, I wouldn't do one particular sale because they lost focus in six months, didn't really understand the market, and didn't come through.

Luckily, I'm married to a Scot, and we take cash up front. But we received future royalties, and those will be minimal compared to what they could have been.

Entrepreneurs like us have fairly large egos. The biggest lesson is knowing that you don't know everything. When you do a big deal, you're riding high and the challenge is to pull back and take a little perspective: "I don't know everything - and things I can glean from past experience will make me better in the long term."

This feature originally appeared in the June, 2011, issue of Report on Small Business magazine.