My name is Paul Drouin and I am the Managing Partner of Global Kiosk Systems here in Regina, Saskatchewan. In March of '95, our business was started and is based solely here in Regina and we specialise in development of interactive products for both private sale and for public access.

The business is something we were working on for about seven years. My partner and I both were employed at the same business before a round of layoffs pushed us into the private sector, I guess, and we had a couple of really good ideas and decided to try to take them to market and chose to stay in the field that we were having success in.

One of the personal characteristics that you have to have to own your own business is you have to be diligent and then sort of everything that comes along with being diligent comes right after that, you have to be dedicated to your business, you have to be understanding of all the circumstances around your business, and one of the most important things is you have to respect the act of doing business, that's one of the characteristics you have to have. As an independent owner of any sort of business, you're always the little guy. We're a small operation, we're five people, now we're five people, but us against a larger company, you have to come across as being respectable, you have to be legitimate, you have to be honest.

Teamwork skills and I guess the ability to get along with other people is tantamount, it is one of the most important things or skill sets that you can bring to any small business. The reason being is that in a larger organisation, you have a lot of people to depend on, a lot of people have different tasks, a lot of people are task performers, in our business, given our size, and that we are a small business, we characterise small business, you have to be able to do everything. You have to be able to work as a team, you have to be able to accept criticism, as well as praise within that team and know what your strengths are and play off each other. So everybody knows what they're good at, but everybody should be able to do everything.

The skills that I brought when my partner and I opened this business originally, when it was the two of us when we started, I already come from a background in broadcasting, I come from a background of teamwork, where you act as a team, but when you come into this environment, and you go from a team of eleven down to a team of two guys, well, these skills have to be home and you actually pick up the best way to deal with, not only your partners personality, but the personality of your customers, you have to be able to sort of mirror off them, you have to understand their concerns and all of those things sort of make up the mesh of what teamwork is. So, everyone in my organisation can understand what we're doing because everyone has first hand knowledge.

Positive attitude is probably, I guess at the end of the day something you have to have. You can't let anything, you can't let anything get to you and that's one of the things about owning a small business is that at the end of the day if you're going to let some of the smaller things, that maybe in your previous job or your previous career, use to really bog you down, you have to step aside, you have to say "I can't let these things bother me because there's more people dependent on me now, as a business owner, than there ever were before".

The ability to change I guess in our business is change on the fly, because we're information technology, our business rolls over every eighteen months. If we're not standing at the edge of what technology has to offer, in other words, changing the business or changing everyday, well we disappear. That's probably one of the most key underlying elements to owning a small business. You have to be able to anticipate, anticipation is change, you have to be willing to accept whatever the customer brings to you, answer it in I guess, a swift or a determined fashion and you have to make sure that your answers, when you give them to the customer, are precise. You can't live on stuff that you've just made up, you have to be able to back up what you're telling people and as you change your business and change your ideas, adaptability is pretty much key. You have to have leadership skills to run a small business, otherwise, you'll find yourself victimised by everybody who wants see everything from a photocopier to a cooler for the water in your office. You have to be able to stand there and say "I'm gonna live by my decisions, I'm gonna make them as quickly as I can and not with any sort of clouded judgement". That's really important.

To rank training experience and people skills, in our business, and I can only speak to our business, probably people skills is the biggest thing. When you're selling anybody technology or any new idea, and it doesn't matter if it's a better way to clean a cat litter box or it's a better way to order for a customer or to build an interactive application, you have to be able to convey your ideas. Now the second part that backs it up is training, or experience with a product and for us they sort of go hand-in-hand, if I didn't have any experience with a product that I was helping to sell, to my people skills, well I'd be dead in the water. The last part of it is training, I guess in training for basics, basics on how are business transactions gonna happen, what do I have to do when I get a purchase order, what do I have to do to get financing 'til the customer stuff gets here, these are sort of all things that rank in there but for us it's people skills, person foremost.

I always start my day early, we deal with a lot of business's in Eastern Canada, we're always, you know, given the time of year, an hour or two hours ahead of us, a lot of our business requests and information requests come from that part, so we always start early. We're doing an assessment of our day, what are the tasks that have to performed, then what I do is I spend time with people who are contracted to us We talk about where you are, what you're doing and what are you doing to get where I want you to be and it doesn't matter if it's graphics, writing code or general design features or building boxes. I talk to my people during the day before lunch, so they know that as they work through the balance of their day, they know what's expected of them. In the afternoon, for us, we address mostly the hard aspects of business, which is, whether it's requests for information, whether it's developing material, working on graphics and I usually end up my day, working on graphics everyday.

The biggest challenge to operating your own business, is wanting to get up and doing it everyday. That is one of the biggest things, that's the biggest challenge and I'm fortunate that the small business I've chosen, I'm very much interested in it and that the challenge is to make a better product.

I would say the most satisfying part of any business, or in particular, our business, should probably speak to our business, is that, I know we deliver a good product. I like when we've delivered a good product and are recognised for the work that we do because we are in a brand new industry. When we come away from any situation, when someone says, you know, you guys have brought good ideas and you've brought a good product and you've delivered on time and within the budget, you always come away with going, you know, what's everybody else doing, I'm not all that special, I'm not anymore special than anybody else, but I believe in what we're doing. So I guess that's what I take away from it, I take away that sense of you know, I can do this, it's a sense of accomplishment, I did it.

I'd tell anyone who's about to open their own business to plan, and not to plan, there's a lot of emphasis in any sort of literature that you see, what's the business plan, what's the business plan, where are you going, what are you doing. The best thing that anyone can do is surround themselves with people who know what their talking about. Find yourself a Lawyer, find someone who can do taxes, find someone who has been in your industry and talk with them, find out what you're up against. The other piece of advice I would tell anyone who's gonna start a small business, tell your family what you're doing, tell them the hours, tell them what's gonna be involved. It's easy to sit back and say you know, well, we can go to friends for money or we can seek out the bank or whatever, you have to have a plan for the nuts and bolts of what the banks of business run, but when you're working seven days a week and you're putting the stresses on your family especially, where you know, I have to work and you're not able to spend that time, you have to remember the people that you're working with and working for, now it doesn't matter if it's your family or significant other or whoever, work for yourself first, but remember there's a cost for everything you do, prepare them, it's like anything else, you'd never ship out a product that's broken, tell your family what you're doing.