“We’ve been growing fast. My wife and I bought this business 10 years ago. We’ve been growing at an average clip 20 per cent a year, year over year growth, over 10 years. Three of those years we didn’t grow at all. So it feels more like 30 to 35 per cent growth in the years we’ve been growing,” he said.

“I started going to the Business Transitions Forum because we were growing really fast and also we were trying to raise money to fund that growth and I really wanted to tap into some non-traditional sort of financing options other than banks. I started to go to really educate myself on that sort of thing.”

Last year, Hyslop spoke at the Forum discussing acquisitions and growth.

“We’ve gone from 50 employees to 275,” he said of the company’s growth over the years.

Hyslop is an award winning CEO, who has spent more than 30 years in the food business, Blair and his wife Rosalyn are the co-owners and co-CEO’s of Mrs. Dunster’s. The company has grown to be the largest family-owned fresh bakery in Atlantic Canada. Mrs. Dunster’s distributes fresh baked goods to just about every grocery store and many restaurants in the Maritimes and Maine. And have recently expanded into Quebec and Ontario. Blair and Rosalyn also own Kredl’s Corner Market in Hampton N.B which they are transforming into a retail and wholesale hub for locally grown, raised, and produced food.

A five-time winner of the top 50 CEO award Blair was inducted into the top 50 CEO Hall of Fame in 2021, he and Rosalyn have both been finalists for EY Entrepreneur of the Year, and have been named Exporter of the Year for the province of N.B.  Blair is the President of The Order of the Wallace McCain Institute and a member of the New Brunswick Business Council.

He is also the President of The Order of the Wallace McCain Institute and past WMI Carpe Diem Award Winner.

“Access to capital is always a challenge for entrepreneurs that are growing and transitioning,” said Hyslop. “(The Business Transitions Forum) is an event that brings together all the stakeholders that work in business transition. People that are financing. People that have money. People that are looking for money. People that are lawyers that are doing deals, accountants that are doing deals.

“So really it’s a very strong networking opportunity. In addition to that, it’s probably a Canadian scenario, but certainly an Atlantic Canadian scenario, there’s a lot of financial illiteracy within the scope of entrepreneurs in the region. Nobody teaches you, unless this is your discipline, how to value a business. Nobody teaches you how to raise money for it. Most entrepreneurs get into business for other reasons and end up having to deal with these issues.

“It’s never too early to start learning about increasing your financial literacy as it relates to growing a business, scaling a business or transitioning one. And if you wait until you need it, it’s too late . . .  You’re going to need money sooner or later for something and that could be to fund your growth, it could be to get out of a whole you’ve dug yourself into, it could be if you want to sell a business or it could be because you want to buy a business.”

(Mario Toneguzzi is a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and only Canadian)