It was an extremely successful party — in every sense of the word.

One recent September morning, the leaders of Canada’s Top New Growth Companies gathered in the TMX Broadcast Centre in downtown Toronto’s Exchange Tower to celebrate their achievements, reveal their most vexing business challenges and share their smartest solutions. PROFIT’s 2012 GrowthCamp was a pleasure to attend, and I had the honour of doing so in the twin capacity of both list-member alumnus and presenter.

When CBSF was ranked as number 20 on Profit magazine’s 2012 Canada’s 200 Fastest Growing Companies inventory, it was actually making a return trip to the podium. We were first acknowledged by Profit in 2009, with a 15th-spot berth on its Hot 50 Emerging Growth Companies list.
For this year’s Hot 50 gathering, Profit editor Ian Portsmouth asked me to return and be part of a panel addressing the 2012 listees. I sat as one of a trio of presenters for a presentation called “success secrets: insights from top entrepreneurs.” Along with Jay Bousada, president of Thrillworks Inc., and Sajan Choksi, CEO of Innovative Vision Marketing Inc. — also 2012 Profit 200 companies — we came to chat about how we’d pushed through the growth barrier and built sustainable businesses.

The experience was invigorating. Dani Reiss of Canada Goose was there, delivering the “lessons from a brand champion” keynote, and there was a slew of inspired breakout peer-to-peer learning sessions where list honourees traded tricks. For my part, I spoke to the group about life as an entrepreneur and shared my views on the economy going forward. I told them I thought we could expect more of the same for the coming stretch, and that I sincerely hoped Obama would be able to keep his post. Given the fragile state of the world right now, I feel pretty strongly that we could all benefit from some consistency.
Our words were well received, the morning passed like a breeze and the occasion was every bit as successful as all the feted souls gathered in that room.