By working alongside entrepreneurs who have carried out philanthropic projects despite their busy schedules, I have come to realize that we all have the ability to make a difference in the lives of others, no matter our situation.

No matter how great this contribution may be, it is better to take action than to remain passive. Faced with this realization, I no longer had any excuse to procrastinate any longer.

The biggest challenge I faced? I didn't know where to start or where to focus my energies. It was after reading Gary Keller's book "The One Thing" that I was able to come up with the most daring project of my life.

For their foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates decided to focus on a single issue. They asked themselves the following question: "Where is the place where we can have the biggest impact with the money?" It was by choosing to set aside other issues that they managed to make a strategic choice and focus on the development of vaccines.

BUILDING STRONG CHILDREN

So I started with a process of reflection to determine the social issue I would like to get involved in. In my case, I spent the last seven years building my company called Excellence Construction Rénovation . This allowed me to gain experience in renovation project management and develop business relationships with trusted partners. That said, it is since the company started doing house flips in 2020 that I realized that I could help my community by putting renovation projects into practice.

Frederick Douglass said that "it is easier to build strong children than to mend broken men." A healthy family environment is, in my opinion, a crucial factor during childhood. Having had the chance to grow up with a family that supported me throughout my development, I wanted to give that chance back to some children.

It was finally in June 2021 that I decided to meet with the director of the Fondation du Centre Jeunesse de la Montérégie to tell her about my intention to contribute in my own way. After several months of work, I set up – with more than 20 partners – the Unis Pour l'Excellence volunteer project with the aim of renovating the Maison l'Escargot. This is a residence that welcomes at-risk children (ages 0 to 6) from Montérégie.

Completing this project required a lot of changes in my time management. With my busy schedule, I knew I wouldn't have had time to complete this project with my old work habits.

That's why I reorganized my work schedule so that the first hour of my day was dedicated solely to preparing, planning and carrying out this project.

In other words, one hour of work dedicated to the United for Excellence project without distraction, without television and without telephone.

“Success in anything always comes down to this: focus and effort,” said Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I couldn’t say it better myself.

In order to carry out a daring volunteer project with the little time I had at my disposal, it was necessary to determine the most important tasks, dedicate the necessary time to their completion and delegate the rest of the tasks to my partners and my team.

Extraordinary results in any sphere are often the result of a domino effect. Every morning, I would renew my priorities, find the main domino and put all my energy into moving it.

It is this working method that allowed me to find key partners for this project and to find solutions to challenges such as the lack of supply of certain materials.

Looking back, this project made me understand more about the importance of delegating as many tasks as possible and never getting too immersed in operations to the point of losing the “big picture”. When all tasks seem urgent, it seems like they all have equal value in terms of the outcome. That’s why when I started in business, I was constantly running around trying to get everything done and I just couldn’t do it. Now, I prioritize my tasks at the start of each day and delegate the rest of the tasks to my team. This way, I never lose sight of the important elements of project management.

I would say that this way of organizing myself worked well, because after more than four weeks of renovations at Maison l'Escargot, we managed to complete work worth more than $80,000. Among these: a completely renovated bathroom, new floors, improvements to the electrical network, plastering and painting. The Unis Pour l'Excellence project was also widely publicized. Furthermore, the project had a greater impact than I would have imagined on the children's lives. I believe that seeing strangers renovate their homes without any expectations in return allowed them to have a new perspective on life.