Stan Rector has been an entrepreneur since he was 20.

At first, it was a breakfast restaurant in Regina, Saskatchewan. He decided that wasn’t for him, so he pulled up stakes and made the trek to Calgary in 2008.

He took his background in construction and put it to use opening a contracting company. Rector spent the next 12 years doing that, mostly high-end renovation and landscaping.

In 2020, he decided it was time for a change. He said the scalability of that kind of contracting business was limited.

Still, Rector had the experience and knowledge of the business itself.

“I found it’s really difficult to try and run it by yourself. You’re doing every job – with your invoicing, you’re chasing down the money, to the job, and after you’re trying to do marketing to get leads,” he said.

“Like it’s an almost impossible task by yourself,” he said.

That’s when he launched Calgary-based My Home Handyman.

Service for the contractors

Contractors are still doing their thing, but Rector saw an opportunity to provide that support they’re missing.

“It’s overwhelming, those first few years. We were running by ourselves and it’s lonely too because you don’t have any support system,” he said.

My Home Handyman does full-time marketing and lead generation for contractors. They provide sales support and do the follow-up for contractors. Rector said they line everything up with the client.

“We kind of just like marry those two together – a small contractor with that big company mentality. That’s how we run our platform,” he said.

Rector said they handle all sorts of jobs, big and small and they work with reputable contractors to get the work done.

Folks looking for someone to do the reno work will book through the My Home Handyman site and they farm out the work to Calgary and area contractors.

Running a stable business

Rector knows what a good foundation means to a structure.

He said working with the Platform Calgary Junction program provided those solid building blocks to launch his business forward.

“It was really giving me those good foundation blocks that are needed to help with the scaling of the business,” he said.  

“It’s a big change when you go from a certain size company to that next step up. It gets extremely chaotic, so they kind of give me those give me that map to follow up as a business.”

Over Covid-19, people have been wanting jobs done. He said it’s been a challenge to keep up with the pace. Finding high-quality contractors is always key, he said.

Beyond the pandemic spike, Rector said as he fine tunes the service here in Calgary, the next step is to replicate it across the country.

Again, he goes back to the proper foundation. He doesn’t want to grow too fast though.

“It could be damaging,” he said.

“We want to make sure we’ve perfected our business model and have the right team underneath before we spread out to different markets.”