The Yorkton Chamber of Commerce welcomed a dragon into its midst at its Annual Chamber Dinner September 30.
Manjit Minhas, who will debut on the 10th season of CBC’s hit reality show Dragons’ Den tonight was the guest speaker for the sold out event at St. Mary’s Cultural Centre.
The dynamic 34-year-old Minhas, along with her younger brother Ravinder, has turned a $10,000 investment 15 years ago in a start-up liquor company into the 10th largest brewer in the United States producing 90 different beers, spirits, liqueurs and wines for 18 countries worldwide. Their group of companies, which also includes the Minhas Micro Brewery and Pizza Brew brew pub in Calgary, generates more than $155 million in revenue annually.
Joel Martinuk, president of the Chamber was very pleased with the event.
“I thought it was a great evening,” he said. “I think the speaker was great. I think she’s one of the first females the chamber has had speak as a business leader and also she is western Canadian, which sort of gives us a bit of an impact. Many people have a familiarity with what she does, Minhas Breweries. People have gone to the liquor store and seen her product and they can relate to her.”
Minhas shared stories of her successes and failures and lessons learned all to illustrate what she said is the most important thing for entrepreneurs, “to not give up.”
“To persevere,” she continued. “You might have to change your path along the way and you might have to refine it or alter it as to what your product or service or business might look like, but at the end of the day not to give up and keep evolving and keep growing not only as a person, but as a company.”
Martinuk said that came through.
“I think the biggest thing that I took away from it was that you have to be diligent, you have to work hard, you have to be driven and obviously she was driven to build her business and to be successful and now that she has been, she’s willing to go back and help those who need her help, she’s a mentor to many people,” he said.
Martinuk was also very pleased with turnout.
“The business community supported it really well and many of our Chamber members came out and were very supportive of our event,” he said.
