One of Calgary's best-known businessmen aims to 'do it right' once again at 71

It's a chilly weekday morning in a quiet corner of a Calgaryindustrial park, the kind of place you'dfindoilfield service firms, warehouses and machine shops.

But sling open the doors ofonenondescript buildingand you'll discovera studio with rows of neatly ordereddesks and bright yellow desk lamps. Where acorner office might be, there's a cozycouch. There'seven a few books on the Danish art of happiness.

It might seema bit bewilderinguntil you meet the man behind it all: Mogens Smed.

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This is ground zero for the Calgary entrepreneur's latest ventureor, in his cheery parlance, his fourth"mulligan."

"Where we get to spend the most fun inlife is making the baby," says Smedenthusiastically.

It's only been a few months since Smed one of the city's best-known businessmenwasoustedfromDIRTTEnvironmental Solutions,the award-winningcompany he co-founded in 2004.

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But if you thought the 71-year-old has been spending his time with his feet up, you don't know Smed.

Rather, he's been hustlingto launch anew private company, calledFalkbuilt, finding factory space andsecuring a brightredfire truck, of course.

"Ourfactory has a fire engine in it sitting right in the middle," Smed says.

"And it's really pointless.I can drive around in the factory and run the siren and bells if I want. But culture starts with a work ethic. This is not a country club. Everybody works their butt off, right?But we have fun doing it."

It'sa philosophy that'sserved himwell.

The son of a Danish furniture craftsman,Smed has builtcompanies with a reputation forinnovation.

He helped buildbothSMED International and DIRTTfrom local startups into international, multi-million-dollar enterprises.SMED,a modular interior andfurniture company, sold for $300 million in 2000.

"The guy is a walking, talking MBA school," says DarrinHopkins,co-head of the private client capital markets division of Richardson GMP and a long-time observer of Smed's work.

"It's easy to peg him as the consummate entrepreneur, but he's a lot more than that. He's a lot deeper than that."

Hopkins, a former DIRTT investor,says Smedis the kind of businessman who can build a better mousetrap but market it, too. Smedalso knows how to build a team, hesays.

RosalynPeschl uses her experienceworking onSmed'steamat DIRTTtoteachstudents aboutentrepreneurial thinking at the University of Calgary'sHaskayneSchool of Business.

Smedallows people to make mistakes and learn from them, Peschl says. He is also a great storyteller, a skill that helps himmotivate staff with a clearvision.

"There is a culture in his companythat is palpable," Peschl says.

"He's sitting in the desk right next to you. No one has offices. No one has doors.He has this incredible ability to get a really diverse group of people marching in the same direction."

In launching 15 years ago, DIRTT (Doing It Right This Time) created a buzz as adesignerand builder ofsustainable,modular interiors, which lookscooler than it maybe sounds. Fast Company once listed the firm as a"Rock Starof the New Economy."

The guy is a walking, talking MBA school.- DarrinHopkins, Richardson GMP

Early last year,Smedwas bumped fromCEO to executive chairmanamid severalchanges spurredin part by itsboard's desire to"improve performance, succession planning, strategy, and corporate governance." In September,DIRTTannouncedSmedwas leaving, saying he hadn't "adequately performed the agreed assigned duties."

Smedsays he bears noanimosity towardsDIRTTandno qualms statinghe was"fired."

He says with typical frankness that he didn't agree with thenew approach to running thebusiness and he wasn't going to concede, pointing to the company's history of growth.

It didn't take him long to decide what he'd donext. After getting the fateful call, Smed'swife turned to him and asked, 'What are you going to do now, Mogens?"

"I'm starting over," was theanswer.

Today,Smedappearsexcited to be doing exactly that. He says healso knows what mistakes they've made in the past. Life can be a difficult teacher, though.

In 1982, Smedand his brother lost everything whentheir wood manufacturing business went bankrupt. Their father later died from the stress of it all, he says.

For a while, Smedsays he just felt sorry for himself. Then the impact the failure had on the families that depended on the business hit him. That feeling of responsibility has been with him since.

A few months later, he startedSMEDInternational.

Fast-forward nearly fourdecades,here he is again at the starting line. Not surprisingly, Smedisn't straying far from the businesswhere hemade a name for himself.

The key to success is going from one failure to the next with absolutely no loss of enthusiasm.- Mogens Smed'sfavourite saying

Smed and his team of about 20people are now working on the concept of what the new company will ultimately take to market.Falkbuilt aims to buildinteriors for a variety of sectors from health to education to commercial using an alternative form of construction materials fabricatedoff-site.

They may play in the same space as DIRTT, but Falkbuiltwon't do what DIRTT hasalready done, he says.

"There's no denying how compelling their solutions are and what they've done," Smed says.

"We're going to come after the exactsame market but completely in a different way.We're not going to beat them at their game, nor would we want to. Alot of those people are my friends."

Smed envisions a company of about 150 people by around this time next year and that means a lot of work in the coming months.

But whatever challenges lie ahead for him and his team, Smedwill come armed with his favouritesaying, one often attributed to Winston Churchill.

"The key to success is going from one failure to the next with absolutely no loss of enthusiasm," he says. "And it's the truth."