“I’d say that happiness is a function of being able to live and be who you are.”

Passion for entrepreneurism

Dickinson found her calling and developed a passion for entrepreneurism at the age of 31 after getting married at 19 and raising four children.

Through hard work and perseverance, the author of Persuasion and All In, said she’s been able to overcome numerous challenges that have helped shape her as a business person.

Her success and leadership has been recognized with multiple honours and awards including: Canada’s Most Powerful Women Top 100, the Pinnacle Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence, as well as PROFIT and Chatelaine’s TOP 100 Women Business Owners.

She is also CEO of YouInc.com, a company she founded in 2012 that is dedicated to serving and investing in entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial lifestyle.

“ A lot of what I’ve learned is through the school of hard knocks,” said Dickinson, who never had a university education, but has learned about business by taking risks and figuring out how to recover from the failure and mistakes she’s made along the way.

Learning from mistakes

Mistakes, she said, aren’t fatal, as long as you can learn from them.

“For me, having gone through a lot of the struggle of building a business from the ground up, dealing with partnerships and dealing with building and growth pains, I’ve learned at the end of the day, you have to be able to look deep within yourself to figure out where you’re helping the company, figure out where you’re not helping the company and surround yourself with people who are better than you are,” she said.

“That’s an old saying, but it’s a very true one.”

She added that entrepreneurs need to recognize that their biggest enemy tends to be themselves.

Resiliency is key

“Self-doubt can play a huge role in your ability to succeed, so if you believe in something you have to stick to it. You have to be resilient,” said Dickinson, noting that to be successful as an entrepreneur you also have to navigate the roadblocks along the way and accept that you’ll face a lot of rejection.

Dickinson is a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal recipient, an Honourary Captain of the Royal Canadian Navy and is the recipient of honourary degrees from Mount Saint Vincent University, Saint Mary’s University and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Tickets to the Breakfast Seminar Series cost $90. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 905-632-4444 or visit www.microspec.com/tix123/etic.cfm?code=OEW2014.