From Martial Arts to Masterful Renovations: The Sosna Story Video

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[Music] I’m Robert Cosi I’m the publisher of Canadian contractor and I’m here with Andre sauce muskie and he is the owner of Sosna Inc and you are a significant renovator in the Vaughn area or your offices in Vaughn is that correct yeah okay but you renovate all across the GTA or what cover what’s your market yeah mostly Richmond Hill North York and one now you’ve been in Canada how many years about 20 years 23 23 years okay how did you come over and and what made you decide that you wanted to start a
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construction business here I came over here because I was invited to teach her Russian martial art okay I wasn’t actually allowed to do anything else except for a teaching martial art and I did that for one year and coming from I got a ask Russian martial arts is that like more dangerous than normal martial arts like why ain’t that Purdy like it’s hard to say if it’s a it’s called and had back in those days when UFC started there was a Russian guy who became a champion of USC and there was a lot of interest especially in in
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Western countries what it is about this military style or Russian martial art no when you first came to Canada I understand you landed in Timmins Timman Timmins Ontario poor man yeah unbelievable that’s the introduction to Canada yes so tell me when and now you’re in Timmins you’re teaching Russian martial arts that’s a long way from being in Toronto and running a successful contracting business yeah so I spent one years there I had a few good students but not nearly enough to to to support myself so I had to do some
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construction work labor work just to have enough money for food so that’s how I started working in construction I wasn’t planning on opening up a business or anything like that and then a year later I moved to Toronto once again to teach the martial art and I continued to do the construction because I guess I wasn’t successful and now it’s enough in martial arts – yes not a good enough killer that’s right yes the construction was better and you began a construction company in 2000 in 2001 a few years
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later I worked for many different companies and I really liked that I learned lots of stuff I worked alone hours and and my story is really typical I think I was a one-man operation then I opened up my own company I was still one-man operation but as as I would get better and better at it we hired my first helper and then the second helper and the third helper and so on and so forth and a time came when I realized that I either have to be putting screws and the driver was a screw gun or using my phone but I cannot
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do both anymore well now your company is you’re doing very well now I understand how many employees do you have 15 employees most of them if I’m not correct most of them are Russian well they’re not the Russian but they’re from post Soviet Union countries so we got the Ukrainians we got Belarus we got Russians we got people from Kazakhstan and we do have two ladies Canadian ladies one of them two designers I I came to visit your offices once and I think there are a couple of people that didn’t speak any
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English did you and when you went to market I mean was that a was that an issue was there a cultural barrier was there an ethnic or whatever kind of a language barrier presumably that you had to deal with because I don’t know did you end up starting off by serving the Russian community here and or at least the Eastern European community no not at all in fact and and it’s it’s interesting even to me it’s it’s sort of enigma I don’t know why but over the course of what 18 years of my company I can count
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how many Russian speaking clients I’ve had it’s just a few maybe three five over these years we we always worked with Canadians field workers who do the labor part they don’t typically interact with clients and so there is no issue here typically our sightly there’s our project managers our designers they all speak English well and I think the biggest challenge in all of this was for me me all of a sudden finding myself instead of building walls in offices and putting up the doors all of a sudden I’m
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ready in the business running people I’m dealing with clients and with vendors with suppliers and the most difficult parts for me was to learn the mentality of Canadians I started laying wish really hard so it’s still not perfect and of course it’s it’s not in America as to the workers they do the job well you know they they work with their hands and I don’t see any ever having any issues is that you’ve been at it for a while what what what suits you best about the process and about being a leader in a
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construction company what suits your character best obviously when you see the final product when you finish a project and typically our projects last Xavier from the design stage to the completion it’s at least half a year so it’s a long time a lot of people involved a lot of brainstorm a lot of collaboration and then you see the final result and you see happy smiles and your clients faces I mean that’s priceless this is awesome you feel very good that you impact somebody you can impact somebody’s life like that change their
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lifestyle and turn their house into their home this is priceless that’s I would say one thing that I like about my business and other saying is that I look at at my business not just means to survive or to earn the living but working with my people with my teammates I am very proud of all of my teammates and my team they’re wonderful people and we tried myself and then we try to learn every day we try to improve we do different things we like we read books together and we brainstorm and to me is what
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makes it interesting is that our business is always evolving always transforming into something new and I don’t ever want to stop and it’s a pleasure to see how people over the years in my team they become better professionals they become more confident they become they get a better life in Canada doing that and it’s amazing to see that that me being the owner I have I have an input I can impact people’s life you have the opportunity to actually be a part of that growth a part of that for an improvement yeah not only
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my clients but my teammates and that’s amazing I love that you’re welcome