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CANADIAN INDUSTRY ONLINE - NOVEMBER 2015Manjit MinhasORIGINALLY TRAINED AS a petroleum engineer, 34-year old Manjit Minhas has built an empireon beer. Born and raised in Calgary, she is the founder and co-owner of Minhas Breweries and Distillery. Minhas started the business with her brother when she was 19, and her ca- reer and success has been on an up- ward trajectory ever since.Now as a Dragon on CBC’s ever- popular Dragons’ Den, Minhas helps new entrepreneurs with financing and advice, and she spoke with CIO about her own journey in business—celebrat- ing her past and looking towards the future. This year, Minhas Breweries and Distillery is expected to make $205 million.CIO: What characteristics make up an entrepreneur?Manjit Minhas: I think you have to be a little naïve to be an entrepreneur. And you can’t weigh everything out and calculate everything because other- wise being an entrepreneur is too scary. And I think you have to also be willing to take on challenges and be willing to work.You also can’t care about having a regular 8-4 job. With my brother and I running our company, we talk about work everywhere: even at my parents’ house we still talk about work over dinner. Vacations just aren’t the same ifyou’re an entrepreneur. I think you also have to be comfortable with being un- comfortable, and have to be willing to learn continuously and be coachable.Being willing to constantly learn is huge: I didn’t know anything about ac- counting and HR and marketing when I started. I didn’t know how to read a balance sheet. You hire consultants so you can learn things you don’t know. Not only that, you have to be willing to accept that it might not work out the first time you try your venture, or even, the first couple of times, but you dust yourself off and keep going. Look at those not successful days and ventures and take them as a learning experience. That’s what makes a great entrepre- neur: an emotional attachment to your venture. You eat sleep and breathe your business. It is hard work and success is not overnight. A lot of paths change along the way.CIO: How is it working in a fam- ily business, in your case, working with your brother?MM: We were close growing up, and we ventured into this together. We’ve always competed and loved sales, and we were both willing to learn and tackle things together. We were also able to divide things up and then meet in the middle (product development etc.) It’s nice when you work with fam- ily (especially in our case) that we don’t8 | Canadian Industry Online | November, 2015