Chris launched his company 26 years ago and has never looked back. Find out the keys to Chris’s success as a business owner.
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Success Stories, brought to you by Project Aspiro, produced by the World Blind Union and CNIB and funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
In this video you will meet Chris Chamberlin co-founder and president of Frontier Computing. This video includes a montage of clips that show Chris speaking with colleagues, using a Perkins Brailler and talking on the phone.
A range of assistive technology devices are also shown, including portable and desktop magnifiers and braille displays.
<Music>
Chris: My name is Chris Chamberlin, I’m president and owner of Frontier Computing. I’m totally blind; I had partial vision at birth but as of a result of congenital glaucoma I lost all of my vision at about age 7 and have been blind ever since.
I had worked in a couple of different sort of early careers in my life. I worked for the CNIB library for a couple of years, and beyond that I worked for the Ontario Provincial Police in technical surveillance for five and half years.
If you’re looking to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, of course it’s very very important to gather some experience, as much experience as possible, before you do it.
I had already worked for almost 10 years for other people and I really felt that I wanted to work for myself. And govern and control my own actions.
I realized that there were a variety of technologies available from other parts of the US and Europe and I thought exposing those to Canadians would be of great value for the blind population in general. And that’s when I decided that it was time to strike out on my own and form Frontier Computing.
When we initially started, in terms of sort of seed money and so on, I actually took some of my own savings. And we actually started out with about 3500 dollars into the company and we sort of agreed that for the first six to eight months we wouldn’t take anything out of the company either.
So we were kind of feeling our way initially with myself and two other employees and then we eventually expanded and grew, rather quickly, through the mid –late eighties and into the nineties.
We needed somebody with vision who could do some driving for us, because we needed to get out to our customers and that wasn’t easy on public transportation.
My philosophy was that I had certain strengths but it was important that I hire my weaknesses. And I think that’s what can make you a success; identify your strengths but remember you do have weaknesses and you need the support from others.
The best part about this job in general and overall, is the sense on an everyday basis that we are, as an assistive technology company, making a difference in the lives of blind Canadians.
There’s nothing more rewarding then demonstrating a product to somebody and it’s the perfect solution for them. And their reaction to that is just priceless!