Most people hear that question and think of family.
Relaxing.
Camping.
Golf.
Fishing.
Watching the game.
Maybe catching up on sleep.
Now ask a contractor.
The answer is often very different.
Weekends become...
Finishing estimates.
Returning phone calls.
Writing invoices.
Organizing receipts.
Trying to remember what happened on three different job sites.
Preparing for Monday.
I've lived that life for more than 40 years.
And for a long time, I believed that was simply the price of owning a business.
I was wrong.
The problem wasn't the weekends.
The problem was the systems.
Every hour spent rewriting notes...
Every forgotten measurement...
Every customer asking,
"I thought that was included?"
...wasn't costing me just time.
It was costing profit.
It was costing peace of mind.
Eventually I realized something.
Most contractors are incredibly skilled.
But nobody teaches us how to build a business.
We learn our trade.
We learn our craft.
We learn how to solve difficult problems.
Most of us do not learn how to build systems that allow us to enjoy the business we've worked so hard to create.
That's one of the reasons I started building Ghost Engine.
Not because I wanted to create software, but because I wanted to give contractors something I wish I'd had decades ago.
Because I wanted to provide contractors something I wish I'd had decades ago.
A way to organize the chaos.
A way to protect profit.
A way to communicate more professionally.
A way to spend fewer weekends catching up and more weekends living.
Because success isn't measured only by how much work you complete.
It's measured by how much life you get back.
What we did this Weekend
This weekend, we worked on her upper bedroom deck, removing all the old railings and posts and replacing them with new ones. The deck now looks amazing. We also got to watch the final show with The Tragically Hip ending their tour in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. It was truly a remarkable performance by Gord Downie and his band. Despite Gord Downie's health issues, the performance left me impressed. The way he handled himself and spoke about what being Canadian meant to him, along with the presence of our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the event, meant a lot to him. |
| It all takes time away from the weekend |
 |
| The before and after look: prep work is what takes up so much time |
 |
| Coming along, still a lot of work left |
What do you normally do on weekends?
If your answer is...
- finishing paperwork
- writing estimates
- organizing customer notes
- preparing for Monday
...maybe it isn't your weekends that need to change.
Maybe it's your business system.
That's exactly why I'm building Ghost Engine.
Building better contractors. Building better businesses.
Joseph Botelho
Founder, Ghost Engine Technologies Inc.
Thanks for reading!
I'm Joseph Botelho, founder of JFB Handyman Services and the creator of Ghost Engine.
After years in the trades, I built Ghost Engine to eliminate the "second shift," those late nights spent writing estimates, change orders, and client updates.
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