Hi. Some of you know me already, and some of you probably don’t. My name is Rafael Michelena, and I spent a good chunk of time at SmartRoof as Director of Digital Media.
I came in to do digital media. But somewhere along the way, my job became something I never actually signed up for: helping you guys by developing better systems.
I started spending more and more of my time looking at how the work actually happened, where things were breaking down, what people were struggling with, and what we could build or change to make everybody’s job easier.
And I loved it.
That’s a big part of why I worked so closely with Rob, the OBC himself, and why we’re still close today. Rob has helped me stay connected to a lot of you, and he has kept me close to the problems people are still dealing with in the real world. We’ve spent a lot of time talking through what makes a contractor’s day harder than it needs to be and what could actually make it better.
As SmartRoof started shrinking and letting good people go, a lot of talented people ended up having to figure out what came next. Some of you started companies of your own. My first thought wasn’t, How do I compete with these guys?
It was: How do I help them?
We could have started another company and competed with everybody. Instead, we decided to build something that could help everybody reach more of their potential and hopefully keep helping each other along the way.
That’s a big part of why Potomac Lux exists.
We built it around the problems we already know: homeowner communication, job organization, photos and notes scattered everywhere, the office and field losing context, closeout getting messy, and good customers disappearing after the final invoice.
The goal is to help you run the job from the first conversation all the way through completion, and leave behind a record good enough that the homeowner remembers who did the work well.
And for contractors, it’s free to use. Not free for a month. Not free until we change our minds. Free.
We’re also building a homeowner network around Potomac Lux. As that grows, our goal is simple. When a homeowner needs somebody, we would rather connect them with people we know, people we trust, and people who are trying to build something of their own.
This isn’t a sales pitch. Take a look. Put one real job through it. If something is confusing, tell me. If something is missing, tell me. If there’s something that would make your life easier, I genuinely want to hear it.
We’re still shaping this with real contractors. We can tweak it. We can make it better. We can build something useful together.
A lot of us came out of the same place. A lot of us are building something new now.
I’d rather see all of us succeed.
May God bless the businesses, the work, and the families behind them, and may all of us prosper.
Rafael
