05/27/2026
Last Thursday at 4:54 PM, just before closing time, I received a voicemail from a client looking for help with a last-minute tent installation for the weekend.
I was tired and almost waited until the next morning to return the call.
Instead, I called back immediately.
That one decision turned into one of the most challenging and rewarding event setups we’ve ever been part of.
The client owned a tent that was being shipped to Toronto from another event across the country. It was scheduled to arrive Sunday night and needed to be installed immediately for an international sporting event activation event taking place Monday morning in Toronto.
There was just one problem…
We had never worked with this specific style of tent before, and our crews were already committed to another large teardown the same night.
Over the next 48 hours, we scrambled to make it happen:
• arranging transport and ballast delivery
• pulling together additional crew members
• finding setup instructions
• hiring an experienced installer familiar with that system
• reorganizing schedules multiple times
Then the shipment delays started.
The tent arrival changed from 8 PM… to 3 AM… then 6 AM… then 8 AM.
Crew members arrived before sunrise, some after only a few hours of sleep, and waited patiently onsite while updates kept changing. Despite the frustration, nobody complained. Everyone adapted and stayed focused on getting the job done.
The tent finally arrived after 9 AM, after the event had already begun around us.
And somehow… we still pulled it off.
What I didn’t fully realize until afterward was how close this event was to being cancelled if the installation didn’t happen in time.
The client repeatedly thanked us for staying flexible, positive, and solution-focused throughout the entire process. At the end, he invited me to attend the event and said, “Come see what you helped create.”
That moment stuck with me.
This business can be exhausting at times, but moments like this remind me why I love it. Not because everything goes perfectly — but because of what a great team can accomplish when things don’t.
Very grateful for our crew this week. They stepped up in a big way.