Stolen Steel, Hacked Emails, and a Week That Had Everything | Leaman Signs Vlog #005
If you ever want a snapshot of what it's actually like to run a sign company, Episode 005 of Life at Leaman Signs is a good one to watch. It's got interpretive panels, channel letters, wall vinyl, a pylon base cover that required digging a hole to China, a mysterious pile of stolen steel in the yard, and a hacked email account. Oh, and someone ended up in the wrong building.
A Week That Covered a Lot of Ground
Greg runs through the week in his own words: two guys out of town on the restaurant drive-thru survey project on the West Coast, fabrication in the shop, channel letters, wall graphics for the Teachers' Pension, scoping out lighting at a health hub project, wrapping up the car dealership, getting started on Home Depot, back at No Frills on the grocery install, and loading up for a weekend downtown artwork install. Three weeks left before Christmas. The push is on.
Portugal Cove: An Interpretive Panel
One of the more interesting installs this week takes the crew out to RC Church Road in Portugal Cove-St. Phillips to set up an interpretive panel beside a historic ship's anchor. The job involves excavating, placing a pre-cast concrete base, and mounting the panel on top.
The Pylon Base Cover: A Smaller Problem Than It Sounds
Back at the car dealership pylon that went up a couple of weeks ago, Stephan returns to fit the base cover — the skirt that wraps the bottom of the sign and hides the anchor bolts. The issue: the concrete base extends out slightly, leaving only a narrow gap to work with. The solution involves tipping the cover at an angle and working it down into the gap just enough to pop it into place. Practical, unglamorous, necessary. That's finish work.
Wall Vinyl at the Teachers' Pension
Rick heads out to install wall graphics — after first going to the wrong building entirely, discovering the elevator layout was different, and eventually finding the right floor. It makes for good vlog content.
Once on site, he walks through why the vinyl choice matters: wall vinyl is intentionally lower-tack than standard adhesive vinyl so it can be repositioned during install without pulling paint off drywall. It's a small detail that makes the difference between a clean job and a callback.
The Mystery Steel
Monday morning, Greg arrives to find a pile of unfamiliar steel in the yard. Nobody ordered it, nobody knew where it came from. Cameras showed it was dropped off in the middle of the night. After some digging, the story comes together: a client's trailer had been stolen — full of steel — and whoever took it apparently dumped the contents in the Leaman Signs yard to offload the evidence. The steel went to the recycler. And the episode ends with a note that decals on trailers make them a lot easier to find when stolen.
The Email Hack
On top of everything else, the company's email gets compromised. A phishing attack came disguised as a message from an out-of-province client, embedded in a normal back-and-forth thread and looking completely legitimate. One staff member clicked the attachment. The response: change everything, use different passwords across the board, set up a password manager vault, and audit what was accessed. It's a good reminder that sign companies aren't immune to cybersecurity issues just because they work with their hands.
A Gray That Actually Printed Gray
In what might be the most relatable moment for anyone who works in print, the episode ends on a small victory: a client logo with a neutral gray that actually printed as gray on the first try. No hours of colour matching, no profile adjustments, no reprints. Just gray. Kristen’s reaction says it all.
The full episode is above. Subscribe to the Leaman Signs YouTube channel for a new one every week.