So honestly, I don’t think anyone really plans to end up working in the trades at 17 while simultaneously building an event company on the side. Like, that’s not exactly the career path they show you in high school guidance counseling, you know?
But here’s how it actually happened.
The Setup (Or: How I Had No Idea What I Was Getting Into)
I graduated early, which sounds impressive but really just meant I was 17 and had absolutely no clue what to do with my life. And here’s where it gets kind of funny, because my uncle, he was actually one of the founders of Chemco. Like, not just worked there, but literally helped build the company. So you’d think I’d have some understanding of what industrial work was, right?
Nope. Zero concept. None whatsoever.
I remember asking him what Chemco even did because I genuinely didn’t understand what his company was about. And he looked at me and said I might like instrumentation because I was techy. Which, fair point, because I’d been building and coding my own websites in high school. So I thought, okay, let’s try it.
The Reality Check (Warehouse vs. Site)
The apprenticeship program seemed fine at first. I couldn’t go to the actual work sites until I was 18, so I started in the warehouse. And honestly? The warehouse was okay. Not great, but okay.
The site though? Completely different story.
I remember coming home every single day just dreading my entire existence. Like, that feeling where you wake up and immediately your whole body goes “oh god, not this again.” And my step dad, in all his infinite wisdom, told me that if I chose any other career I’d be kicked out of the house. Which, looking back now, I was young and stupid and probably should have just moved out right then and there. What a loser move on his part, honestly.
But I didn’t. I built this whole life around the trade because the money was good. That was literally it. The money. Everything else? Not so much. Social life? Yeah, goodbye to that. The schedule was brutal and I was constantly exhausted.
Finding An Outlet (Or: How I Discovered Club Photography)
Anyway, I needed some kind of outlet or I was going to lose my mind, so I started going clubbing every weekend. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, bottle service, the whole thing. And one night I saw this club photographer there and I just thought, how cool would it be to actually get paid to party? Like, that’s the dream, right?
But here’s the thing, you can’t just walk into that. I needed a portfolio, which meant I needed to start hosting my own events. So I did what I always do, I reversed engineered everything. I looked at what the clubs were doing, I asked whoever would talk to me, I studied all the big events in the city. Then I created my own plans.
Some of it was offline hype building, like actual real-world promotion, but I knew my strength. I’d been building websites and teaching myself SEO in high school. Digital marketing was absolutely the way to go.
Creating Glow (The 1200-Person “Small” Party)
So I created Glow.
It was a hall party. 1200 high school kids. Yeah, you read that right. A high school party. No alcohol, completely dry rave, but I brought in actual DJs from the clubs. The RCMP in St. Albert, where I hosted it, they were actually bringing people from other parties to mine. Which sounds insane when I say it out loud now, but that’s what happened.
It got a little out of hand, but still manageable. Lots of pressure though. Especially when the fire marshall pulls you aside and tells you that you’re over capacity. The hall was rated for 300 people. I had 1200. So I had to think on my feet about how to clear some people out without shutting down the whole thing. Somehow I managed to keep it going. The RCMP were actually pretty sweet about it all.
And honestly? That party spread like wildfire on social media. People talked about it for weeks after.
What People Didn’t See (The Actual Work Behind It)
But what people don’t see, you know, what doesn’t make it into the Facebook photos or the stories people tell later, is what it actually took to pull that off.
I put thousands of dollars into it. I was grinding so hard to promote it. I’d come home from these brutal 12-hour days in the trades, exhausted, covered in whatever industrial grime, and then I’d go out flyering. Or I’d be on Nexopia until 2am spreading the word. This was before Facebook really took off, remember. I was running on fumes.
And the whole time, there was this underlying terror that someone was going to overdose. Because drugs and alcohol at raves, especially with high school kids, that’s unfortunately pretty common. There were other parties where it happened. I was literally praying it wouldn’t happen at mine. Like, full-on faith in something greater kind of praying.
The responsibility was insane. Way more than I think I understood going into it.
What Actually Changed (The Shift)
But something shifted after that night. I definitely got more confident socially. I’d always had this awkwardness about me, like I felt out of place in most situations. This forced me way outside my comfort zone into this high-energy lifestyle where I had to be on all the time.
It wasn’t instant, but as it became more consistent, as I kept doing events, I was constantly being thrown into new social situations. I had to put myself out there. No choice.
And honestly, what really mattered most was that it put something in my head that drove me forward. I hated the trades with an absolute passion. This felt like my way out. And boy, did I ever want out.
What surprised me though? Event management is a lot of risk. Like, a lot. Especially when you’re hosting your own concerts and DJ shows. So I eventually switched to lower-risk things, but it also created this pattern of highs and lows. Post-event depression is real. You’re living it up during the event, everyone’s having the time of their lives, and then the come down after is brutal.
The whole experience threw me into survival mode. And I learned something important about that. When you’re in survival mode, when you’re so focused on getting out of something you hate, like a job your step dad basically abused you into, you get cranky. Your ego takes over. You’re not your best self.
The Messy Truth (What I Actually Learned)
I had to learn how to actually take care of myself. I didn’t really have good role models growing up for that. I ended up going to therapy, this thing called core skills, and it was genuinely eye-opening. It helped me build the fundamentals of self-care that I just didn’t have before.
Because here’s the messy part that I don’t think I really understood at the time. There was this whole conflict happening between wanting validation and proving independence. I was essentially trying to overcome something really negative a parental figure said about me while doing everything completely on my own.
My step dad had told me I couldn’t do web design, which was what I actually wanted to do, because I’d be “fat and lazy.” There was “no fucking way in hell” someone would “live under this roof” doing that. So I took all that negativity and built something with it. I wanted to be who I really was at heart, not what I was told I had to be.
And honestly, that’s what most people don’t see. They see the highlight reel of events. The moments. The parties. The celebrities. But they don’t see the fire fighting, the logistics, the thinking on your feet at 2am when something goes wrong. They don’t see the part where you’re negotiating with hundreds of drunk people or managing a crisis with the fire marshall.
What you see on Facebook is only part of the story.
I learned that in events, you have to be a role model. People look up to you. They want to be you. You’re literally partying with celebrities. So I wanted myself and my staff to act professionally, to set that standard, even when everything around us was chaos.
The whole experience taught me resourcefulness, resilience, that I don’t give up when challenges show up. It taught me creative problem-solving and how to turn a setback into something that could actually propel me forward. When I had no support, when I was being told I couldn’t do the thing I loved, I created my own path anyway.
Because sometimes the thing that tries to block you is actually the fuel you need to build something amazing. Sometimes getting shut down or having your path completely blocked creates the conditions for something you never would have imagined otherwise.
That’s what Spasso became for me. It wasn’t just an event company. It was proof that I could build something on my own terms, that I could take all that negativity and exhaustion and turn it into something real.
Anyway, I don’t tell this story to make it sound glamorous or perfect. It was messy. I was tired. I made mistakes. But I kept showing up. And that’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it? You just keep showing up, even when life throws everything it has at you.
Especially then.