It's never too late to break out of your comfort zone and strike out on your own. If you don't believe it, meet Leonard Lee.

Lee was 39 with 16 years of government service under his belt when he left his management job in the federal government's Trade and Commerce Department to become a rookie entrepreneur, founding Lee Valley Tools.

The Ottawa-based designer and manufacturer of woodworking tools, yard tools and cabinet hardware has flourished, but the self-made multimillionaire wasn't the least bit interested in resting on his laurels.

Now, with his son Robin heading Lee Valley Tools, the 67-year-old Lee is building another private company, Canica Design Inc., which designs and develops surgical tools and supplies. He is also founder of Algrove Publishing, named after his Saskatchewan hometown.

1. You were recently quoted as saying that you weren't at the top of your game. Were you being facetious?

"(Laughing) Hey, wait'll you're 67 and see if you're at the top of your game. I'm more cunning than I used to be. You compensate as you can."

2. When you turned over Lee Valley Tools to your son Robin in 2002 (he is now the company chairman), why didn't you retire to some tropical beach to drink those umbrella drinks?

"That is probably the greatest fear of my life. Actually, the greatest fear is that I would become a mall walker. No, I did not want to retire. What I've done for the last 28 years (since becoming an entrepreneur) I have thoroughly enjoyed and I thoroughly enjoy what I do now with this business (Canica Design Inc.). We have invested an alarming amount of money. We have other shareholders in this company, unlike Valley Tools, which is a family-owned company. We have some 35 other shareholders in Canica. The good news is that we're now getting the rewards for that investment. The company will soon be cash-flow positive and we should be profitable within a year."

3. Why did you start Canica Design?

"Mostly, it was because I didn't want to retire and be a mall walker for my amusement. But it was also because our oldest son, who had been working in the company ever since he was about 15 except when he was at university, had been the 'son of' for longer than he probably ever anticipated. I thought it was time that he ran it and, since we employ a lot of people, I did not want to be a threat to that many people. I wanted to turn over the president's job while I was still a good president, not when I was a bad president and had to turn it over. I had determined when I was about 60 that I would retire (from Lee Valley Tools) by the time I was about 65. I slipped out seven months early."

4. How did you come up with the concept of Canica Design and the surgical tools business?

"One of our longtime Lee Valley customers (Dr. Michael Bell, a surgeon) said to me in 1998, 'You know, what you should do is design a decent scalpel because there isn't one in the medical field.' So we started to design a scalpel. Now the company employs 15 people and we have a number of products. The scalpel is providing most of our revenue now. We designed and still have the only scalpel on the market that will take any blade, including Gillette's blade. But the product that will certainly be the largest (revenue) product in the future is the dynamic wound-closure system. This system closes wounds that previously required skin grafts. They're not only beneficial to the patient, but also save a huge amount of money. We are giving away the wound-closure systems initially and then we will sell them."

5. Where do you want to see this business five years from now?

"I want to see it returning a dividend to its shareholders. I'm not terribly concerned for myself, but I'm concerned for the other shareholders who took the risk and hoped that they weren't investing in a one-trick pony who'd already done his trick. The other thing I want to see is for us to become a company that designed, prototyped and bullet-proofed instruments and then licensed them to others to make. Right now, we manufacture both the scalpels and the wound-closure systems. There's a lot of administration involved in manufacturing. Five years from now, I would think that our revenue will be in excess of $5 million per year (currently, it's about $1 million)."

6. Have you considering taking the company public?

"Not a chance. And the investors all know that. That's because the last thing I want to do is have to brief stock analysts and play the game of a public company where it's all short-term revenue that you're getting pressed to obtain. That's always to the prejudice of a sounder, longer-term plan."

7. What do you remember about your upbringing on a Saskatchewan farm?

"I grew up at a little place called Algrove. I went to a one-room grade school and a one-room high school. We had a bad piece of land there. My father didn't start homesteading until 1931, when most of the good land was gone. It wasn't one of the better places to farm, but we seemed to survive. I remember my parents worrying about money. But I had very good parents. They were very aware that their limited education had been a factor in their limited income. They wanted to be sure their kids all got a good education, which then meant finishing high school. Still, you don't realize you're poor when everyone else around you is poor. In fact, I remember a friend who was so envious when we'd come to school with half an apple in our lunch. So those of you who have half an apple are rich in the company of those who don't ever get apples. I was never beaten and I never went to bed hungry. What's to complain about?" 8. What's the most important lesson you brought from the farm into business?

"I think I learned a good work ethic, to do what you say you're going to do and to give it your best shot. When I hire people, I'm most comfortable hiring people from a blue-collar background because that's my background. I know what motivates them and I look for people with good belief systems, good work ethics and people who are honest. You've got it beat once you've got that kind of raw material."

9. You spent the first 16 years of your work life working for the government. So what took you so long to become an entrepreneur?

"Well, my parents, who had come through the Depression, said, 'Get a good education and get a secure government job.' They didn't know that government jobs were seriously overrated. But when you don't have security, which my parents didn't, that looked awfully good. It took me a long time to become an entrepreneur because once you've been poor, you don't want to have the back out of your pants again.

"So security was fairly important. Yet, I also realized that it could also smother you. I left because I was really quite dissatisfied with government. There is not good personnel management in government. I resigned from the foreign service when I was in the Peru embassy (as head of the commercial division) because I had an impossible ambassador to work with. It's not necessarily a very good place to work, except for the security."

10. In spite of everything, was it good experience for a budding entrepreneur?

"Yes, it was. Among other things, I was able to realize what was wrong with the organization and what would have improved it. I sometimes say, 'If you want to know how not to do something, look at how government is doing it.' But that's unfair because you can't do the same things in government that you can in business. But one of the huge differences is that in government you never have the authority that is commensurate with the responsibility. Authority is always very tightly held at the very top. So that's a problem. In Lee Valley, for example, when you walk into a store, the first person you talk to on the floor has the authority to refund any amount of money to you for any reason that they think is fair. That never happens in government and one of the reasons is that they don't hire terribly well and somebody's probably going to give away too much. Also, the government doesn't have profit'-sharing the way Lee Valley has, so there's no proprietorship there. So you can't do that in government."

11. How would you describe your entrepreneurial style?

"I focus on hiring people with good work ethics who have good principles and are honest. Then, you can delegate all of that so that they treat the customer exactly the way they'd want to be treated. We don't take advantage of our customers (at Lee Valley). If we lower our price, we'll refund anybody who has bought that product in the previous three months."

12.. How do you think your son Robin's management style differs from yours?

"I know he's much better at business analysis. I tended to go more on instinct, but he has better information structures. But he's not going to be all that different because he's got good principles."

13. What's been the foundation of the success with Lee Valley Tools?

"Well, we almost always got our customers by referral. You don't see Lee Valley advertised in the newspaper, or on television or radio. That's because we get our customers by referral from other customers. If you treat your customers well, they'll tell other people they should buy there. We also give very solid guarantees on our products, which is a wonderful driver of quality control. We will always offer refunds where there's been any technical flaw and for 90 days you can bring it back if you don't like the colour. People just want to be treated decent and get a fair price. It's about that simple."

14. What are you proudest of from your career in business?

"I think that in the years I've been in business, we've been able to create some 800 direct jobs and probably that many again in indirect jobs. I'm proud it was done from a Canadian base, and I think the other thing I'm very proud of is that our company is so well known in international markets that half of our mail-order business is done outside of Canada. We (Lee Valley Tools) ship semi-trailer loads of products to the U.S. every day."

15. What else are you investing in these days?

"I made the mistake once of investing in a company that I didn't control and I'm not going to do it again. Oh, I do have one stock and I'll tell you what it is. TransCanada (Corp.). It's a fine stock that pays a four-per-cent dividend. I have it in a minuscule RSP (registered savings plan)."

16. If you had to trade places with one other entrepreneur tomorrow, would it be with Donald Trump or someone else?

"No, it's not Donald Trump. I admit to bad hair. He doesn't. I don't know if I'd want to trade with anyone. There are some people I particularly admire. Everything I've heard about (Isadore) Sharp (CEO of Four Seasons Hotels) is good and the same can be said for the president of TransCanada (Hal Kvisle). I think most of the really good people are not high profile. I want people who are good in the long run, who can run their businesses well and who treat their employees well by giving them some security. Nortel went astray when they got into much shorter term kind of management and guys who followed a will-of-the wisp."

17. Reflecting on your success, what do you think about considering where you came from?

"I don't know. I still don't throw anything away. I guess what I want to say is that there's a big difference between being wealthy and being a poor boy with money, because you don't change your spending habits overnight. Most of the things I want don't have anything to do with buying. What I'm interested in is good books, good conversation, interesting work, challenges. That's why research and development is so fascinating to me. It's just a lot of fun and the market decides whether you've done it well or didn't do it well."

18. It sounds like you're not going to be walking any malls any time soon.

"No, I don't think so. I've structured this company (Canica) so that I can be away as long as I want. And I learned how to do that by restructuring my work pattern at Lee Valley so that I could retire. When I left, it was like somebody taking a thumb out of a bathtub full of water. Nobody noticed the difference. You owe that to your shareholders, to build a structure so that you won't cause any problems if you leave."

19. So you've done that at Canica?

"I think I've done that here. While I still continue to work five days a week, I'm not the general manager of the company. I'm the president and this place will run when I'm not here. If I wasn't here, the shareholders would still be looked after. It's important to me because I want to be able to take more time. It's really nice to have the ability to take the time off."

20. You live on a 75-acre farm near Almonte, Ont. Is there much work to do there?

"Somebody else takes off the hay. Let me tell you. The best thing in life is to live on a farm and not have to earn a living from it."

IN PROFILE: Leonard Lee

* Title: President/majority owner, Canica Design Inc.; chairman, Lee Valley Tools; president, Algrove Publishing Ltd.

* Born/raised/age: Wadena, Sask./Algrove, Sask./67.

* Family: Wife Lorraine, two sons.

* Education: Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.), BA (economics), honours; Royal Roads Military College (Victoria, B.C.), civil engineering diploma.

* Career: Lee began his career in the Canadian Foreign Service, based in Chicago and the Canadian embassy in Lima, Peru (1963-69). He was later executive director of the Canadian Consumer Council (1969-71), executive director of the National Dairy Council (1971-72) and a trade commissioner with the Department of Industry (1972-78). He founded Lee Valley Tools in 1978, Veritas Tools Inc., Lee Valley's manufacturing arm, in 1985, Algrove Publishing in 1991 and Canica Design Inc. in 1998.

* Websites: www.canica.com, www.leevalley.com

* Moonlighting: Lee is a director of the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

* Accolades: Lee was a recipient of the Order of Canada and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003. He was the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade Business Person of the Year in 1998.

* Pastime: Woodworking (he recently built a bridge, a 14-metre structure, for a friend), reading.

* Boyhood idol: The Lone Ranger.

* Favourite authors: Historical author Alan Moorhead and novelist Patrick O'Brian.

THE COMPANY: Canica Design In.s

* Brass: Leonard Lee, president; Alden Rattew, executive vice-president; Mike O'Malley, VP, research and development; Dr. David Armstrong, VP, clinical affairs and corporate development.

* Profile: Canica designs and manufactures medical/surgical instruments for the health-care industry.

* Key products: Surgical scalpels, wound-closure systems.

* Head office: 36 Mill St., Almonte, Ont., K0A 1A0.

* Phone/Fax: 613-256-0350/256-0360.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)