Thoroughbred entrepreneurs run on instinct, fuelled by a love for the game. Take Fred Smithers, for instance

by Jim Meek

Some things you can't learn in school. Fred Smithers figured that out a long time ago. As an eight-year-old, Fred collected old newspapers in his hometown of London, Ont., and sold them to a recycling outfit. When he turned 16 on March 24, 1958, his dad, Alfred, showed up at his high school and hauled his son out of the education system for good.  The "old man," as Fred affectionately calls him, had found his boy a job at a printing company. Not much fun there, so Fred moved on to an outfit that laid concrete floors. That's the first rule for entrepreneurs: "Never mope around working at something you don't want to do."

Fred liked the concrete business—driving around southern Ontario with the older men in his crew and getting paid for travel time, meals, and motels. Heck, that was a blast, which is the second rule: "It has to be fun." Entrepreneurs share an inspired restlessness. They'd make good rock stars or roadies or itinerant pool hustlers, but bad accountants or bureaucrats or career bricklayers. Entrepreneurs also have to move on, which explains how Fred ended up in Halifax by the late 1960s, married with kids. He started his own concrete company, which doesn't sound exciting until you find out how he ran it.

In the early 1970s, the concrete business could be described in three words: men with wheelbarrows. Pouring concrete by hand was a costly labour-intensive business, like something out of one of Stalin's five-year plans. So Fred figured out a way to take concrete pumps to new frontiers, to deliver cement to places where it had never voyaged before-like the innards of a new power dam then being built at Wreck Cove on Cape Breton. He saved the contractor tons of money. It helped make Fred's reputation, which led to really big jobs like pouring the floor at the Michelin plant in Bridgewater, N.S. Lesson No. 3: "Curiosity leads to innovation." Or, "You don't have to do things the boring reliable old way just because it's the boring reliable old way."

Did I mention that Fred is restless? Wanderlust and a love of sailing brought him into the company of a man named Burt Keenan, when both competed on the Southern Racing Circuit. Keenan was the founder of the big offshore-supply company Offshore Logistics, which needed a Canadian partner in the early 1980s to work in the East Coast oil and gas sector.

Fred didn't know the first thing about oil and gas, or about offshore-supply boats, or about how to win business in a fiercely competitive sector, but he didn't let that stop him. He founded Secunda Marine Services, a Dartmouth, N.S.-based owner and operator of offshore-support vessels servicing oil and gas companies nationally and internationally, and went into business with Keenan.

That's the fourth rule: "Entrepreneurs take risks." I know, you want me to qualify that by saying "calculated risks" or "educated risks," but the real thoroughbreds run on instinct and just take risks, period. Either they get lucky and win big or they end up begging their in-laws or their bankers for money to see them through. Anyway, it all worked out for Fred, so much so that he was able to sell the business in 2007 to the McDermott group of Houston for more than $260 million (U.S.).

That brings me to the fifth rule of successful entrepreneurship: "Timing." Secunda Marine was sold at the peak of its market value, when oil prices were soaring. Smart people reckon it would be worth $100 million less today, if that much.

One final four-letter word before signing off: "Love." I talked to Fred three or four times about his story, and I have to say that he loved it all, loved the big win, and loved dusting himself off when it all went into the crapper. Today he loves to tell people that his son, Dwayne, is so good at running McDermott's huge marine division that the company lets him work out of Dartmouth, not Houston. Fred also savours the old office perch on Canal Street. "If I couldn't go in there, it would destroy me," he says. "I still love talking to the young fellows."

Maybe love's the sixth rule, after all. Or maybe not. Either way, it's something else you can't learn in school.

Jim Meek is a freelance writer and consultant with Bristol. He can be reached at jmeek@bristolgroup.ca.