Day recounts challenges after fire

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This article was published 25/10/2024 (590 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Early on the morning of Oct. 13, 2023, Progressive Westman president and CEO Spencer Day received a disheartening phone call from his brother Riley saying that their company building at 372 Park Ave. East was on fire.

Though it would be eventually confirmed that the cause of the fire was accidental due to an electrical problem, Day told a large audience of Brandon businesspeople that it was one of the most difficult times of his life.

And yet, perhaps one of the most eye-opening.

“The story that I’m going to tell over kind of our next 12 months is … it’s not about me,” Day said. “It’s about all of us at Progressive and we have just the most incredible family. We can’t even call them anything but that. Without the commitment of this group, like there’d be just absolutely no chance that I would have been standing here today.”

The former Brandon Chamber of Commerce president was the guest speaker for the Chamber’s Celebrating Small Business Success luncheon, held at the Keystone Centre’s MNP Hall on Thursday. While the theme was small business success, Day spoke at length about how he and his brother faced both success and adversity alike when they started the business and progressed throughout the years — a “locally owned and operated partner for comprehensive cleanliness and sanitation solutions,” according to the company website.

In the wake of the 2023 fire, however, Day and his company staff, as well as his family, faced some of their most difficult hours as they attempted to get the business ready to operate the following Monday. That meant making arrangements for a new location — one that was not out of his house — finding products and a place to house them, and working with supportive customers to work out the logistics of their new situation.

Day described how it was a conversation with Chez Angela co-owner James Chambers, who helped him clear out the extraneous concerns from his head that he had been overwhelmed with and refocus on his staff and family.

“So James showed up at the house with goodies for everyone. And I remember him standing inside my front door and just looking me square in the face, and he could see I was completely overwhelmed with just the generosity, and everything else that was going on,” Day said.

“And he says, ‘listen to me, your only job right now is to take care of your people, and everything else is going to be easy.’ And you know the tears were pouring down my face, and you know he had to shake some sense to me, I remember him telling me just to stand tall and get to work.”

With that little reminder of the need to focus on the most important part of the business — his people — he said everything they did from that moment on was focused on ensuring his staff were kept in the loop and taken care of.

“Whether it was ensuring our staff all knew that they weren’t going to be $1 short on their paycheques or an hour shy, or just keeping them really informed about the information that I had at my disposal,” James said, “and just (having) everyone really up to speed because it was, it was a bit of a scary time.”

In the process of speaking about his own hardship, Day offered the crowd a glimpse of how resiliency and determination — and lots of community support — helped Progressive Westman to continue moving forward, even in the face of disaster.

Following his speech, Day told the Sun that they expect to be back at their former location and moving into their new building in May 2025.

“So the building is closed in now, almost closed in, and gonna spend the winter working through that and getting it all set up exactly the way that we want,” Day said. “And hopefully we’re set up for the next 10 to 20 years there, and we’re not moving again.”

When asked what advice he may have for another small business that may face a similar disaster down the road, Day said that it was important to “lean on your people, and to let your people lean on you,” and gave full credit to the support of the community for helping Progressive Westman carry forward.

“Whether that’s the people inside of your business, at home, in your family or the people in the wonderful community here, the amount of support was completely overwhelming that we had from every corner of this city, and really all of western Manitoba,” Day said.

“It’s really difficult to go through something like that, but really the most emotional part, I think, is just the compassion and the kindness and generosity that you find from complete strangers that are just there in a heartbeat to lend a helping hand.”

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

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