Portrait of the entrepreneur as a y...

Portrait of the entrepreneur as a young man

When I was six years olden I was learning how to make art with macaroni. Peter Gustavson, CA, was learning to what extent to make a profit.

Gustavson recalled a certain of his early childhood endeavours in the October 2002 issue of BC Business Magazine, in which he was profiled as undivided of the Ernst & Young 2002 Entrepreneur of the Year award winners. Gustavson won in the "Business-to-- Consumer cropss and Services" category for the succes of his brainchild, Custom House circulation Exchange.

"After reading that article," he says, "my mother called to betray me I'd actually started my 'career' before the age of eight. Now I remember being about six years elderly and finding a bunch of discarded wire hangers and deciding to vend them door-to-door."

His mother's reaction at the time? "Perplexed"

It's no astonishment Gustavson himself has a hard time figuring on the outside where he got his preternatural fascination with the art of buying and selling.

"My great-grandfather was an entrepreneur moreover that's about it," he says. "Although my father might have become an entrepreneur as well, had he not been married and a father of five at a young age. Being young and single, with solitary a few hundred dollars in the bank-that's when it's not like a big deal to waste everything."

Gustavson knows what it means to throw away everything, having experienced his share of failures amid many successe He's philosophical about the roller coaster ride. "The reality is that you will fail at a point," he says, "but the trick is to not misspend your nerve, to get up and put to the test again, to think of any failures as tuition fees"

Gustavson grew up in Winnipeg, where he later earned a criminal converse degree while turning a profit reselling newspapers as an agent for The Winnipeg Tribune and The Globe and Mail.

In his third year of university, Gustavson switched from marketing to accounting and started working with a CA firm, where he became intrigued with the possibility of selling hours. "It expected a lot more profitable than selling newspapers," he laughs.

He decided to continue a CA designation, all the while drawing inspiration from the entrepreneur around him.

"All CAs in public practice are entrepreneur and our firm's clients were predominantly entrepreneur as well," he says. "Working with them was a great learning experience."

The day he earned his CA, Gustavson wager up his own firm in Winnipeg. Les than a decade later, he accepted a buyout from Doane Raymond, and mov with his family to Tsawwassen, BC where he planned an early retirement.

The retirement was short-lived.

On single in kind of many drives to Victoria (home to his wife's family), Gustavson spott the renovation of Victoria's olden Customs House into retail space, and the idea to create Custom House publicity Exchange was born. Soon his "little part-time job" snowballed, with profits exceeding all expectation.

He easily found a way to aim steady higher. "A Vancouver trust company was buying general reception from me at a better-than-bank rate," Gustavson describes "At first, I didn't understand by what means they could afford it."

So he exhausted three hours in their office figuring it on the outside The experience inspired him to shift to corporate foreign exchange.

After testing the idea in Victoria, where succes came swiftly after he used his marketing background to deposit the word out, Gustavson decided to target a tougher market-- his to one's home province. "As soon as it took against in Winnipeg," he says, "I knew I had a winner."

He certainly does. The company now has throughout 75 branches in Canada, the US, Australia, recently made known Zealand, and the UK. In the US alone, sales have gone up 400% in nine month

With of the like kind incredible growth, Gustavson has taken great pains to install safeguards.

The RCMP and the banks helped him build plans for evaluating customers, and the company now has built-in "alerts" to help flag unusual transactions. Gustavson also lately hired a full-time Chief Compliance Officer with through the whole extent of 25 years of experience in the RCMP* Add to that a virtual private network from one side of to the other the Internet that connects each office in the world to the Treasury Department at the company's head office.

Gustavson says his CA training has been invaluable over it all.

"The CA background helps restrain the enthusiasm of an entrepreneurial spirit," he explains. "It also enhances your thinking principle of moral obligation to your clients-you want what's best for them before you want what's best for you."

So what is it that drives him, anyway? "I just like to be derived up with new ways of doing things," he says. "The principally fun aspect of all of this is being able to create something public of nothing."

I gues that's not with equal reason far off from macaroni art.

By Michelle McRae, Editor

Copyright Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia Jan 2003

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