Shane Parrish

He did everything from working the production line to loading the trucks.

He took a salary of $100 a week while he paid some of his more senior people $150.

He was trying to build a company and the company ate first.

Their equipment was mostly secondhand and constantly broke down.

When something went wrong, Harrison would drive around the county visiting local garages and asking mechanics if they could fix whatever had failed.

None of their employees had worked in a plant like this before because no plant like this had ever existed in Canada.

They were learning how to operate the thing while simultaneously securing potatoes from local farmers, hiring and training staff,

finding customers and figuring out how to ship frozen products thousands of miles from a town with almost no transportation infrastructure.

All at the same time and all before their cash ran out.

It was also not uncommon to see Harrison going up and down the production line, borrowing travel money from employees.

$2 from one person, $5 from another.

He always paid it back.

But that's what the early days of this global empire actually looked like.

A man walking up and down the production line, borrowing gas money from his factory workers so he can drive to his next sales call.

The first year, sales totaled $153,000 and against all odds, a tiny profit.

Almost comically tiny, $1,800, but it was in the black ink, not the red.

It was the beginning of successive profitable years that have lasted without interruption to this day.

Harrison decided from the very first day to reinvest everything.

We invested every nickel we made, he said, and every nickel we could borrow.

There were no dividends, no money off the table, and all of it was plowed back in every year.