Sean Ivens has gone from a young emergency medical technician hustling for work to running busy businesses that provide medical services and supplies.

Meet Sean Ivens, president and CEO of Medic North and Med. Ex. Inc. In 1995 this long-time Northerner decided to embark on a career as an emergency medical technician. Nearly 13 years later, he’s gone from being an EMT to running two thriving businesses that sell medical supplies (Med. Ex. Inc.) and provide medical staff for industrial sites (Medic North). It’s a long way from where Ivens started. He talked to Up Here Business about how it all came to be.

On whether he was always interested in being an entrepreneur growing up:
Always. My father was a businessman. Like any child you look up to and learn from your parents. From a very young age I had that entrepreneurial spirit. A buddy and I used to – on quite a regular basis – have lemonade stands as most kids do. But we had a marketing plan, we would advertise and talk to everybody we knew. We had a real system in place.

I’ve had jobs off and on through the years and never felt quite comfortable working for anybody else, knowing in the back of my mind that I had the capability to be doing my own thing. I would say I’ve always had the entrepreneurial spirit.

On where the idea came to start Medic North and Med. Ex:
When I first moved to Yellowknife there was no opportunity as a young emergency medical technician. I had to create my own opportunity. I recognized there was a niche here in Yellowknife and I started doing first aid training. That was a real challenge because St. John Ambulance teaches first aid in Yellowknife. Back in 1995 when you look at the Workers Compensation Board and the mine safety regulations, everything referred to St. John Ambulance first aid training. There were no alternatives and there never had been in the North.
I had to fight that uphill battle of getting a new form of first aid training accepted in the North. I went out and became an instructor/trainer. I could teach other instructors and started teaching first aid to industry and what goes with that are first aid kits. There were two separate things happening. You’ve got a retail side where you are selling the product and you’ve got the service side.

I also had some of my own gear so I thought I could hire myself out for some short-term contracts. One of the ones that came to mind was forestry, where during the summer there are forest fires and they set up camps and they need medical services. I was marketing myself to the forest fire fighters.

The concept started right there. As things grew and flourished we ended up forming two separate companies – one specializing in medical supplies, where we now sell medical supplies, capital equipment and pharmaceuticals to hospitals and health centres and to industry throughout the North. On the service side of things we now provide medical staff of all levels to industrial sites throughout Canada. We also provide management of ambulance services and air medevacs.

On whether or not he’s surprised by the success of his companies:
I was 25 when I started the company. My vision was to have myself contracted out on a relatively full-time basis. That was my only goal – to get a job out of it. Thirteen years later, here I am with more than 100 employees throughout Canada. I’m very surprised. This is not where I envisioned the company – at all. Providing the level of service that we do was not even a factor back then.

Now we’re specialized in critical care flight nurses and flight paramedics, physician assistants, we’ve got a doctor on staff and we’ve got a management group of about 10 people. As the company grows, you grow your vision. But 13 years ago I did not see this coming.

On the challenges facing Northern businesses:
You have much different challenges than in southern Canada. We have a very small marketplace in the North. When you look at a specialized service like medical services, there are only a handful of potential clients.

The second challenge is because we’re in the North and because of our physical and business environment; our overhead is much different than it would be in southern Canada. The cost of doing business in the North is much higher. When you have these higher costs you have to pass those costs on to your client. Companies from southern Canada can operate with a much larger marketplace and a much lower overhead. Their prices tend to be more competitive. But Northern businesses, in general, do a phenomenal job of keeping up with southern competition. It’s interesting to see even though Northern businesses have these challenges they can still remain very competitive.

On the worst thing about doing business in the North:
We have a lot of clients that are not truly Northern companies. A large mining organization that has a head office in some other part of the world and a lot of the staff don’t always understand the needs of Northern business or understand the marketplace.

You have other companies, like large oil companies, where you don’t see any infrastructure being built in the North. They tend to do a direct comparison and it’s a dollar value comparison. So if you are taking our services compared to the services of another medical services provider from southern Canada, it’s a bit unfair to do a dollar-for-dollar comparison without taking into account the smaller marketplace and the higher cost of doing business in the North. Not all oil companies are like this. Some have made the commitment to learn the Northern economies and cultures. But many of them have not. In the case of the mines, they have mostly recognized that and are willing to support the Northern economy.

On the best thing about doing business in the North:
The people. Just as a result of business, whether it’s clients, other business people in communities or business partners, I’ve made some fantastic life-long friends as a result of being in business. I’ve met some fantastic people that worked for the company as well.

On his business philosophy:
I think our mission statement says it all: We want to provide opportunity. We want to take advantage of opportunity.
We want to provide a top quality product in the best way that we can. And we want to have opportunities for our employees – we don’t just say it, we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk.

On what advice he would give to other Northern entrepreneurs:
You have to be unique in what you are trying to provide. Be diverse. I think it’s difficult to start a business off with the thought that you can do one thing and do it well. It’s a difficult thing to do in the North.

We’re very diverse in what we do here. We provide medical services to industrial sites. But we provide all different levels – right from first aid to physician assistance and everything in between. We provide all the equipment and all the pharmaceuticals that go with it. We sell medical supplies. We do first aid training. We do other forms of safety training. We do drug testing. These are all things that have grown and developed. To try and start a business and focus on one area is a challenge for Northern businesses because it’s a small marketplace and there is higher overhead. You need to find ways to offset your overhead and the best way to do that is to diversify what you are doing.

On what he’d like to see from the new NWT government:
We’ve worked with some of the politicians in the past. A few years ago on the medical supply side of things, the government was very much offside in the purchasing practices of medical supplies and equipment. We’ve worked with some politicians to try and gain opportunity. We weren’t looking for any guarantees of purchases. We were looking for the opportunity to at least provide price quotes and to supply the government with some of their needs.

Since that time, we’ve now seen Med Ex. have more and more opportunity to bid on tenders and more opportunity to bid on the supply of equipment and pharmaceuticals. There are still many health centres and hospitals across the North that don’t even give us the opportunity.

But we’re working on that. From the new government in place I would like to see more opportunity being given to Northern businesses to provide medical supplies and equipment to more health centres and more hospitals throughout the North.
On the medical services side, I would like to meet with Sandy Lee – the Northwest Territories Minister of Health and Social Services – to discuss some potential solutions to health- care staffing throughout the North. I’ve had this vision for a number of years. I’ve spoken to past health ministers about it and it didn’t really go anywhere. I think we have a really viable solution. The North can be seen as cutting edge. I want to see if we can get this vision into action and see it go somewhere.

On what he does in his free time:
I’ve got two children. David is seven and Lena is 11. I spend good quality time with the kids. I travel a bit and I enjoy snowmobiling, getting out on the land and camping and fishing. I’m an avid fisherman. I grew up fishing throughout the North and have a lot of favourite places to go fishing and relax. Diving is another one of my passions. I do quite a bit.