Colin closed a section of his business on March 13, 2020, laying off roughly 50 employees from across North America. He cried in the boardroom. He says each job loss ripples through five to ten other lives, and that leadership demands the courage to make brutal decisions even when they're right.
The morning I had to close a section of my business, that was the most heart-wrenching thing I've ever done. Let me tell you a little bit more about it. I never forget it. It was March 13th, 2020, and I had my entire team had to come into the boardroom. They announced COVID and COVID was a thing, and I decided, you know what, we had around 50 or so people, whether full-time or part-time, across North America, and I got our major ones, our main team, into the boardroom at our office, and I laid everyone off. It was most heart-wrenching time of my life to say goodbye lie to people. In fact, that day I cried. Because one thing I want you to remember, when you run a business, you got to do it with honesty and integrity. And sometimes when it comes to leadership, the decisions you need to make are not easy, especially with people who trusted you, and then you had to let them go. Many of them said to me, Colin, this would only last 1 or 2 months and it will be done. I don't know what got into me, but I knew it was going to be a lot longer than that. Here we sit in 2026, and it was the right decision by far. It impacted so many lives though, because you lay off one person, it impacts probably 5 or 10 other lives because of the people at home. And that was heart-wrenching for me. If you haven't got the guts to do this, don't get into business, because you've got to do the right things in terms of leadership, and it's not glamorous.
