It’s been a while since I’ve had the time or, candidly, the motivation to write a blog.  But October 26th is one of my most important days and has throttled up my enthusiasm for writing.

So, let’s go back in time.

The year is 2000. I worked for a Quebec-based industrial tool supply company and had done so at that point for about 2 1/2 years.

Candidly: I kicked maximum ass!

Having started as a lone salesperson working out of my car I quickly found success and, within two years, had gone from nothing to the fastest growing and highest profiting office within the company.  My office had the highest gross profit percentage as well as the highest actual profit dollar amount. I introduced new product lines to the company that they still work with today and created & developed a rental inventory and program that added a very lucrative revenue stream.

Again, I kicked ass.

The company’s owner was a friend of my family although we didn’t make this connection until after I was hired on. When he or any of the company management would visit, I would invite them to our family functions to show that I valued them and wanted them to feel welcome.

I had leveraged my success into a new salary, a new position as Western Canadian Sales Manager and was focused on using my technical expertise to help the company grow in as many markets as possible.

The owner was a crotchety old guy who wanted his staff to act on the lines of “yes, sir”, “no, sir” and “three bags full, sir”. But, I was not a mindless drone. The company offered all salespeople the same basic salary of around $30,000/year with commission paid based on Gross Profit every month. In the end, if you did fairly well, you could turn your $30k salary into a $40-45k year. Not exactly setting the world on fire.

I started negotiating a new package with the owner I pointed out that our success in Edmonton was coming from me putting in extra hours and extra days into the operation and doing things uniquely to that of their other salespeople.

I’ll never forget him saying to me “you know, Colin, we need to treat you like our other salesmen”.  I responded to him “if you want to treat me like your other salesmen, I’ll act like your other salesmen” which meant showing up to the office at 8, sitting around drinking coffee until 10 as I “planned my day” then coming back around 3PM. Sticking to a Mon-Fri schedule and never doing anything outside of a 40 hour week.

He quickly saw that I wasn’t like his other salesman and bumped me to a $50,000 salary, which would be paid based on a $45K salary with $5k being deferred and deposited directly into an RSP of my choice. I would also see a small percentage of the growth from our other Western Canadian offices.

In 2000 I had been married for 4 years, and we were just over 1 year into our first mortgage.  My son, Parker, turned 1 year old on Oct 16th of that year.

When I arrived to the office on the morning of Oct. 26th, the owner was in my office, sitting at my desk. He had travelled from the other side of Canada to Edmonton without letting me know that he was coming to town.

There was only 1 reason that he’d do this and I knew it the moment that I saw him: I was about to be fired.

The image of him at my desk will be frozen in my brain forever.

From the instant that I saw him I snapped into “survival mode”. It’s a skillset that I’m extremely proud to possess although I’d prefer to use it a little less often.

I walked into my office and immediately said “This is an unexpected pleasure”

He said “Colin, please have a seat and read this letter”.

The letter said (I will use quotes here although I don’t have the EXACT wording) “Dear Colin, due to differences in managerial direction we have decided to terminate your employment as of this date”.

I asked him what the real story was and he came up with some malarky. I said to him that I didn’t want to be somewhere that I wasn’t wanted and started cleaning out my office with him bird-dogging me the whole time.

And that was it. I was unemployed.

I had never received a reprimand.

I had never received a negative employment review.

I had never done anything to justify being terminated but I was and there was nothing I could do about it.  Not only was I terminated but they never paid me my bonus on the other offices and kept my $5,000. Not exactly treating me like family as I had treated them.

I can’t speak for how anyone else would react or their emotions, but I’ll never forget mine.

You have to keep in mind: I hadn’t planned this, I had no experience and truly had no idea what I was doing. But, one of my favourite expressions is: “it’s amazing what a person can do when they don’t know that they can’t do it”.  I didn’t think about failure, I was only able to focus on what I needed to do to make sure that my family was taken care of.

Obviously, I had to leave behind my company car & cell phone…yes, we had cell phones back then.  It also meant that I had to be given a ride home. I directed my former employee to stop at the Petro Canada station just west of 91st Street on 51st Avenue so that I could make a phone call from a pay phone. I called one of my suppliers who immediately agreed to supply me with demo tools as they knew that I was the one that had driven their success in Canada.

I then had him make a stop at my father-in-law’s shop. Aside from being a father and a friend, he was also a mentor.

When I walked into his office at 9:30 in the morning he was pretty surprised to see me.

“you’ll never guess what happened,” I said and followed up with “I just got fired”.

He said “You seem to be taking it pretty well” mostly reacting to the fact that I had a massive grin on my face and followed up with “So, what are you going to do?”

Without hesitation, I told him “I’m going to try and do this on my own” and then: “I’ve never failed at anything professionally in my life and I know that I should be upset but I have to say that I feel relieved”.

We then travelled to my house where I had to inform my wife that I was unemployed. It was an extremely simple and quick conversation where she asked me what I wanted to do and I told her the same thing as my father-in-law: “I’ve done well for them over the last 2 1/2 years; there’s no reason why I can’t do this for myself”. Without hesitation, she said she believed in me and knew I’d be successful no matter what I chose to do.

My FIL gave me space within his shop to set up a shelf and a workbench; I worked with that 40 ft/2 space and my home office for almost 3 years before we bought our building, which we’ve now owned for 20 years.

Not only did he give me space but he let me use his mother’s 1980 Chev Impala. That car was great that I could fit 4 pumps in the trunk. I used that car for the first 4 months until I bought a 1995 Caravan SE from our friend Cam McPherson, who owned Subaru City. The van lasted me over 2 years.

The van wasn’t exactly a hot rod but it was able to help me pick up and deliver tools. At one point I had loaded 30 x CP772H impact wrenches in the back for a customer order.

Please also understand that I’m not trying to name drop but I am trying to illustrate that I’ve had many people help out in various capacities and I appreciate them all.

I had never considered becoming self-employed and, in fact, I’d probably still be working for that company today had they not axed me.

By 11:00 on the morning of the 26th, I had 6 companies willing to supply me products on credit just based on our personal relationships.

CanTorque was born on this day.

It was one of the worst things that ever happened to me professionally and I couldn’t be more thankful that it did.

Happy anniversary to me.