As I walked onto the premises of YESA and Canada First Home Fortification, I was struck by a sense of order that felt both intentional, alive, and brimming with possibilities. When I met with the 35-year-old man at the helm of it all, Corrie George, he embodied that same energy. Precision, consistency, and results, show this man to be heading relentlessly toward a clear destination with definiteness of purpose. 

A Burlington resident, with his office headquarters now in Oakville since the end of 2024, he runs two thriving companies, YESA and Canada First. The first one is a top trade school for sales in Canada, and the second is the largest home defense company in Southwestern Ontario.

In the early part of his door-to-door sales career, Corrie became the youngest executive in a billion-dollar company in British Columbia. Now, running his own ventures, he employs more than 200 people and generates approximately $50 million in annual revenue since starting in 2017.

Born in Toronto, and raised in Cambridge, Corrie’s journey started in communications because he wanted to be a film director. He attended Mohawk College to study television and communications, but then decided to drop out. 

“I took a business communications course, and I was thinking about my professor, ‘this guy's never run a business.’’ Corrie said. “I was 19 when I dropped out. I decided I'm going to go work for a successful business person and get mentored by them.”

The decision brought him out west to British Columbia where he honed his skills knocking on doors, quickly becoming a manager and, by age 24, an executive responsible for a team of sixty. His talent caught the attention of Ledcor, a major construction firm, where he became the youngest executive in the company’s history. He helped establish a sales division that grew to nearly 300 staff, delivering over $100 million annually in sales for Telus. 

He had several mentors along the way including business trainer Grant Cardone, who he’s developed a friendship with. The connection is evident in YESA’s roots, where Cardone’s influence shaped much of the academy’s early approach.

The experience validated his belief that sales was the cornerstone of business success. “Ninety percent of the beginning of any business is prospecting and sales,” Corrie said. “That’s where people need training.”

That’s where YESA comes in. It stands for Young Entrepreneurs Sales Academy. Corrie’s true passion is education and feels the current education system doesn’t have a “trade school for business.” Which he believes is extremely important.

“When people go to business school and they come out with a Bachelor’s or Master’s in Business, business owners don’t automatically know how to run a company. And we see that in stats, because 90% of businesses fail in the first 10 years. Over 80% of them fail in the first five years,” Corrie said. “That was the mentality in building YESA. I thought why don't we build a business where somebody comes in and they make money instead of going into debt. And instead of paying us to be here, it's a job. What we did is we split their workday up, so they do about 90 minutes of studying education every day, and then they have about seven hours where they're actually doing sales.” 

It’s a system that turns the traditional education model upside down. Rather than role-playing in classrooms for years before setting foot in the workforce, YESA students are dropped directly into the line of fire. They sell telecom services on behalf of major clients like Cogeco. They practice pre-framing customer concerns before they arise. They learn how to do objection-handling. Every part of the experience is measured, scored, and gamified, with Corrie building a competitive framework around sales. 

Corrie’s journey is equal parts resilience, innovation, and an unwavering belief that real success comes from building systems where everyone wins. 

Behind the spectacle, Corrie has built YESA into a trade school for selling; the one skill he believes is foundational to every business. “A fundamental part of business is knowing how to sell, knowing how to communicate, and knowing how to present yourself,” Corrie said. 

It’s been a long road from the condo where he launched YESA in 2017, to the $40 million in sales the company generates today. However, Corrie didn’t stop there. 

“Canada used to be the safest place in the world. The main message for Canada First is restoring the comfort and the safety that Canadians expect from their home,”

Canada First Fortification is a new company that Corrie started last year, under the umbrella of YESA, and it’s well on its way to earn $800,000 per month in sales and about $10 million annually. That business was borne out of a need Corrie saw in the community and a passion to put Canadians first. 

With the rise of burglaries in homes and vehicle thefts across Southwestern Ontario, Corrie was unsatisfied with the tools Canadians had to help themselves. 

“Canada used to be the safest place in the world. The main message for Canada First is restoring the comfort and the safety that Canadians expect from their home,” Corrie said. “When I saw a video of some police officer in Toronto who came out and basically said, ‘There's a lot of cars getting stolen. People are breaking into houses and to prevent you from getting hurt, leave your keys at the front door, that way the burglars can just take your keys.’” 

That’s when Corrie decided to do something about what he sees as a “defeatist mentality.” 

“Our home invasion and grand theft auto statistics are some of the highest per capita in North America,” Corrie said. “When I saw that video, I'm like, you know what? I had the business savvy to run a big sales business. I'm going to build a technician business.”

Canada First offers a protective transparent film for home defense that gets attached to doors and windows and makes them almost unbreakable. In fact, Canada First demonstrates this avidly on social media and in their advertisements. They also provide locks for the top and bottom of the doors, to reinforce the protection when someone tries to break in by kicking down the door.

“Most of the time these screws are only two inches or an inch. We take those screws out, and put screws that go four inches in; and now you can't kick the door down,” Corrie said. “This is simple stuff, but no one's thought of it because we never had the problem until now, right?  This makes home security that wealthy people can afford, available to everybody.  You know for a few thousand dollars, I mean, our lowest options are probably around $1,200-1,500, but for $3,000 you can make your house pretty burglar-proof.” 

What makes Canada First so successful? It solves a problem.

“The whole idea of the business is, I want people to be able to go to bed at night the way you used to growing up in this country. Because this country used to be epic,” Corrie said. “Like to be real. It’s still amazing. I love my country. I love Canada. But it's really messed up right now. We have higher property crime than they have in Detroit.”

The other reason Canada First is growing to become the largest home defense company in the country, is its focus on excellence. True to his philosophy, Corrie built Canada First with an emphasis on education. His technicians undergo six weeks of rigorous training and must practice on fifty windows and doors before ever touching a customer’s home. Unlike competitors, where one technician handles everything from measuring, to cutting, to installation; Canada First specializes each role for consistency.

“What makes our sales business successful is it's heavily based on education. That's my secret to business success. Everything we do, we educate our staff. It cost me more money,” Corrie said. “But guess what? Then I don't mess up my customers’ houses. I don't mess up their windows. I don't mess up their floors.”

What is the same all across the board for Corrie is that he and his work are expressions of a larger mission: to restore best practices in education, business, and society.  “Education should be about studying the best,” Corrie said. “We should have best practices for everything—money, relationships, health. That’s what I’m trying to build.” 

He is outspoken about doing right by people, transparent selling, and rejecting the manipulative tactics glamorized by pop-culture sales icons. “You won’t last in business by telling white lies and manipulating people,” Corrie explained. “We teach transparency selling. Tell the customer everything. Show them the fine print, the real price. Only if it makes sense do you ask for the business. Get good at being honest, not slick.”

Despite the demands of running two rapidly growing companies, Corrie doesn’t draw a hard line between work and personal life. His wife helps run events and employee relations. His father builds doors and supports projects. “It’s all integrated,” Corrie said. “I don’t do balance.” This month, he became a father for the first time, welcoming a son.

He personally feels there is a way to get through the issues of working with family.

“The reason people or family can get issues (when working together), is because people don't get really clear on what the business is there to do. You have to put it in writing. If it's not in writing, it's not real,” Corrie said. “What’s the business's mission? Put it in writing. What is the business's vision? What is our final product? What do we produce? Define it, very clearly. Get very clear on what you do.”

Business aside, the suave side of Corrie enjoys life in the fast lane, fueled by an intense passion for cars. When asked which car is his favourite, he was almost startled by the question.

“That’s an open-ended question; it depends on what the car’s for. I have eight cars,” Corrie said. “I have a Baja pickup truck. This is just the beginning. I don’t have any Lamborghinis or Ferraris, maybe one day. Most of my money gets invested back in the business or real estate. My cars are my fun. I have a muscle car. I have a Corvette that I’ve modified that makes 1,000 horsepower. All my cars are fast. I modify the engines. I make them really fast. We’ll rent an airfield or hit the race track to take them for a spin. I also enjoy car shows, where I can smoke a cigar and have a good time.”

It wasn’t quite the answer I was expecting, though he did get there in the end. 

“But to answer your question my favourite car is probably a Ferrari F12berlinetta, which is like an Italian sports car with a front engine, V12, nice car. But it’s like $400 grand,” Corrie shared. “Like I could buy it, but I just feel that at this chapter in my life, that's just pretentious and a waste of money. Maybe when I’m in my 40s. Maybe when I employ 1,000-2,000 people.” 

In the end, his advice for people starting a business is this: get out there.

“Get on the communication lines of the people who already do business with your potential customer,” Corrie said. “Let's just say, for a moment, I was opening a hair salon. Let’s talk about the places women already go. I would go build relationships with all the nail people, those who don't compete with me. The nail salons, the massage parlors, places like that.”

Build relationships. “I would really make myself known. I would spend time meeting people and getting out of non-existence, so people knew who I was,” Corrie said. “Then I would work like hell.”

For all his ambition, Corrie doesn’t see himself as a lone visionary. His success has come from surrounding himself with people hungry to learn. “Always talk to somebody who’s achieved the result,” Corrie said. From a condo startup to a multi-million-dollar enterprise, from a door-to-door hustler to community leader, Corrie George’s story is one of resilience and reinvention. And he’s only getting started.