Head of the class: rather than seek greener pastures elsewhere, a few young go-getters have planted roots in the North. Economic development insiders give us their top 10 young entrepreneur picks.

Don Aiken of Red Lake, Ont, is the quintessential entrepreneur. The ambitious 27-year-old admits that he cannot pass up a chance to buy and run a business.

"I just don't know when to say no. I can't pass up any opportunity," confesses Aiken, reached by phone at his latest endeavour, a Pizza Hut franchise operation in Red Lake. The young man laughs as he describes his behaviour in almost addiction-like terms.

Aiken has so many businesses that he barely recalls when he started his first one. After pausing for a few seconds to think, he says that his first job was when he worked full-time for the Town of Red Lake, shovelling snow. At the time, he was only 11. When he was 15, he opened up his own seasonal chip stand.

Today, he owns close to 10 business interests and is into land development. He currently owes lenders over $4 million in loans. His passion. Aiken says, comes from his family.

"I come from a family that works very hard and encouraged me every step of the way with advice on business matters. However, they never helped me financially," he says.

When he was growing up, his family owned a bowling alley that was constantly busy. Aiken recalls that, in order to see his parents, he had to work at the bowling alley.

Even then, Aiken was into the corporate world of mergers and acquisitions. Faced with competition from another chip stand in the community, he bought it out. It was his first hostile takeover. By the age of 17, he was operating two chip stands. Within a year, he had also purchased some rental units.

"I skipped so much school because I had to run my business," he says.

Aiken, it seems, takes the words of Mark Twain, who said to not let schooling interfere with your education, seriously.

The next year, he bought two more--one in Ear Falls and one in Balmertown, a small community near Red Lake. After high school, Aiken took the year off to decide his future. He eventually decided to take political science and philosophy through Algoma University College in Sault Ste. Marie. His choice of studies, he says, has nothing to do with his real ambition--business.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"I don't have to go to school to get a job," he says.

While at university, Aiken could not be held back. He bought a joint Pizza Hut-Pizza Hut Express franchise in a 20,000-square-foot strip mall in Red Lake while still in school. He even transferred to Lakehead University in Thunder Bay in order to be close to his businesses.

His next venture came by chance.

"I was a little cocky one day and asked the strip mall manager for a price to buy the whole strip mall off of him. About two months later, he came back to me with a quote," Aiken says, laughing.

Aiken's sojourn into business, however, was interrupted by a brief political career. Elected to the Red Lake town council in 2001, he took it as an opportunity to learn more about business. While a councillor, he sat on the town's development committee and learned all he could about property development. The knowledge he gained from the committee work helped him when he and his father purchased a 60-acre plot of land and created a land development management company that leases residential and business property.

Land development was not his only new venture. He entered into a partnership to purchase a 40-boat marina in Red Lake, which includes a gas bar and a snowmobile and ATV dealership.

Events in Red Lake, as well, he says, have influenced his business decisions. The presence of the world's most lucrative gold mine in Red Lake (owned by Toronto-based Goldcorp) has created opportunities. Goldcorp approached Aiken to build and maintain a camp for its workers in the area.

Aiken just finished opening the doors to a new 60-room Best Western hotel, the end of an agreement he started in 2003.

All in all, Aiken says he is satisfied with all his interests and assets. He is not motivated by money, but by "success." According to the entrepreneur, he never enters a venture that will not yield back at least 15-per-cent in profit.

For him, the chance to invest in Northern Ontario, a place he calls an "untapped source," is worth it all. He says he is appalled at the level of infrastructure in the North, which he feels is an obstacle to growth.

"We just got high-speed Internet only recently," he says.

For Aiken, however, he says other northern entrepreneurs should not look at this as an obstacle. Risk, he claims, is all part of the business.

QUOTE

"Be careful. If you slow down, someone else is going to pass you."
--Don Aiken, young entreprneur, reveals his passion to succeed in
business in the North.

By JOSEPH QUESNEL

Northern Ontario Business