This month, Canadian Business ran a feature profile of Lavin speaker Manjit Minhas—the newest member of the hit CBC show Dragons' Den. Observing Minhas and her “family of entrepreneurs” at a recent taping, Canadian Business puts her role in perspective. “Poised and regal, she plays the straight woman,” the magazine writes. “As tapings progress, a consensus emerges that she's the tough one, in the vein of sharp-tongued Kevin O’Leary.”

Before being chosen to sit in Den's inner circle, Minhas came to prominence as the young upstart who, along with her brother, runs one of the country's largest breweries. She has overcome many regulatory and competitive hurdles on her road to success. “The scrappiness with which Manjit fought her way through Ontario's red tape should prove a useful trait on Dragons' Den. 'I'm fast at cutting through the BS—it's my personality,' she says.”

The piece goes in depth, chronicling the rise of “the beer baroness” from working in her father’s liquor store as a teenager in Alberta, to running a liquor distribution business with her brother, to becoming the CEO of one of the country’s biggest breweries:

"Ruthlessly controlling expenses is something Manjit Minhas knows well. Her company, which started out selling deeply discounted spirits to Calgary-area bars and restaurants, now has two breweries and a distillery producing 160 varieties of beer and 90 spirits, as well as subsidiaries in everything from TV production to trucking, bringing in a total of $155 million in revenues. But even as the Minhas siblings expanded into different categories and markets, they have stuck to the same formula: offering the lowest-cost option."

Manjit Minhas speaks on the subjects of entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership. To book Manjit Minhas as the keynote speaker for your next event, contact The Lavin Agency speakers bureau.