"Stash your ego in your back pocket".

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Lessons from Leaders - Hi-Tec Security and Investigation - Brief Article

Susan Koprash does not consider herself too far removed from her days "in the trenches" as a young entrepreneur when she worked until the wee hours of the morning cleaning offices.

If one of Canada's Top 100 Women Business Owners has learned anything from those heady days of full-time scrambling when she and husband George first purchased Sunlite Floor Cleaners in 1987, it is being willing to stash your "ego in your back pocket and do whatever it takes" to get the job done.

The dynamic young couple never shy away from being willing to do the "unglamourous jobs" to satisfy a customer, even if means donning the cleaning garb themselves.

"We've seen a lot of businesses fail because the owners may have been a little too proud to do what is necessary," says Koprash, president of Hi-Tec Security and Investigation, part of a stable of companies owned by Koprash and her husband. Those companies include Sunlite Floor Cleaners, Koprash Sanitation and Supply, Hi-Tec Security Armoured Services and a new start-up company KBS (Koprash Building Services), a Sunlite offshoot providing complete building and property maintenance services.

Today, the pair head up a minibuilding sanitation...