Service trades
The work happens at your customer’s place. You price from what you find on site, and the schedule is crews, routes and weather.
Window cleaning · House cleaning · Painting · Landscaping · Pressure washing · Roofing
Websites and systems that turn enquiries into booked work
Half the work you lose was already yours. Somebody found you, decided you looked alright, and asked what it costs. Then the enquiry sat in an inbox for two days, arrived with too little detail to price, or got quoted from memory on a Thursday and never followed up. None of that is a lead generation problem.
I build the path a lead travels: a site that captures the enquiry properly, and the system behind it that converts and tracks the job through to paid. For service trades and custom makers — if you quote work, book it, do it and invoice it, this is built for you. Start with whichever piece is costing you the most.
Q3 2026 · one business wins a site built free · closes September 30
- What I build
- Lead paths
- Built for
- 2–15 people
- Site turnaround
- 5 days
- Apps in production
- Four
01 / The shape of the problem
Every job travels the same road
Somebody needs windows cleaned, a house painted, three hundred shirts printed, a hundred boards engraved. Between that thought and the money landing, the job passes through six hands — and almost nothing is lost doing the work. It leaks at the joins: where information gets re-typed from one tool into another, waits on somebody noticing an email, or falls out of the process entirely.
The first three are capture. The next two are conversion. The last is whether you actually get paid for it. The nouns change by trade; the road does not, which is the only reason one person can build for a window cleaner and a woodworker without being a generalist at either.
01
They look for you
Page three for the search your customers actually type, and a listing nobody has touched since 2019.
A window cleaner has to rank by spring or half the season is gone. A decorator has to rank by August, and it is schools. Same fix, different month.
Capture 02
They decide whether to trust you
Four seconds on a phone, against a competitor who is not better than you but looks it.
A window cleaner is being judged on whether they look insured and turn up. A print shop is being judged on whether the last job in the gallery looks like the one being ordered.
Capture 03
They ask what it costs
Three fields and a message box, so your first reply is always another question rather than a number.
For a print shop that is quantity, colours, locations and a deadline. For a window cleaner it is storeys, access and how many panes. Ask on the form and the enquiry arrives priceable.
Capture 04
You price it
Priced from memory, differently on a Thursday than on a Tuesday, and nobody in the building can do it but you.
Contract tiers and two methods on one order for a decorator. Material, machine time and setup for an engraver. Per-pane against per-hour for a window cleaner.
Convert 05
You book it in
The week lives on a whiteboard, and what happens when one job slips lives in your head.
Press time, machine time and in-hands dates for a maker. Crews, routes and a wet Tuesday for anyone working outside.
Convert 06
You get paid
Invoiced from memory, chased by text, and no idea which account is quietly sitting at sixty days.
Deposits and the change order nobody wrote down, for a painter. Net-30 commercial accounts for a window cleaner. The reprint argument, for a decorator.
ManageNo single piece of software runs that whole road. The all-in-one platforms that claim to cost more than most small operators want to spend, and two-thirds of what you'd pay for sits unused. So I build the pieces separately, and join up the ones you already have.
02 / Who this is for
Two shapes of business, one road
The difference between them is how you quote. Everything after that — booked, done, chased, paid — is the same job wearing different clothes, which is why one road covers both.
Custom makers
The work happens at yours. You price from a spec — materials, quantity, artwork, turnaround — and the schedule is capacity and materials.
Screen printing · Embroidery · Laser engraving · Woodworking · Signage · CNC
Written up so far
In your own language
These have their own page, with the leaks that actually happen in that trade rather than a generic version of them. More as I go.
Service trades
Window cleaning
Recurring residential routes and commercial contracts, run out of one place instead of a phone and a notebook.
See the detail →Custom makers
Apparel decoration
Screen print, embroidery and DTF. Quoting, art approvals, group orders and fulfilment — the trade I actually work in.
See the detail → Not written up yet? Painting, house cleaning, landscaping, roofing, laser
engraving, woodworking, signage — same road, I just haven't got to the page. If you quote
work, book it, do it and invoice it, take the assessment and I'll
answer in your language anyway.
03 / What I do
One path, three pieces
These are not three products on a shelf. They are the stretch of road each one covers, and which you need depends entirely on where yours is leaking. Most businesses start with one. If you already know which, go straight to it — if you don't, that's what the assessment is for.
Capture · from $500
A site that captures
Not a brochure. A lead capture tool that gets found in your town, is believed in four seconds on a phone, and asks the questions you would have asked — so the enquiry arrives priceable instead of starting a conversation. Six pages, five business days, fixed price.
See what's included →Convert & manage · quoted per job
The system behind it
Where the captured lead goes. Quoted the same way every time, followed up before it goes cold, and visible until it's paid — instead of four tools and a spreadsheet nobody trusts. An honest alternative to Printavo, Jobber and Housecall Pro.
How it works →Whatever's left · quoted per job
Custom software
The thing your business does that no software does — including mine. Internal tools, customer portals, and AI applied where it earns its place, with a straight answer about where it doesn't yet. Built and deployed on Replit, and you own it.
What I build →04 / How this goes
Three steps, and the first one is free
No proposal, no discovery deck, and nothing to sign before you know whether I am any use to you.
01
Take the assessment
Fourteen questions on how work actually reaches you. Five minutes, and "I don't know" is a valid answer to all of them — on a couple it's the most useful one.
Five minutes 02
I tell you where it leaks
Three findings on screen straight away, then I open your site myself and send you what I actually see. Written by me, free, and yours whether or not we ever speak.
Two working days 03
We fix the piece costing the most
One piece, working end to end — five business days for a site, quoted per job for anything else. Not a platform, not a six-month programme, and not all three at once.
From $500And if the answer is that your existing tool already does this, or that a new site is not your problem, that is what I will tell you. It is a cheaper conversation than the alternative, and I would rather say it now than have us both find out in month three.
05 / Where to start
Which of the six is costing you the most?
Fourteen questions on how work actually reaches you. Three findings on screen the moment you finish, then I open your site myself and send you what I see. Free, and there is nothing to buy at the end.
Straight away
Three findings on screen — which stretch of the road is leaking, based on how work reaches you today.
Within two working days
A human look at your actual site. Where you rank for your town, and what your enquiry form is costing you — the missing quantity and deadline for a shop, the missing storeys and access for a cleaner.
Either way
One fix you can do yourself this week. And if a new site is not your problem, I will say so rather than sell you one.
Q3 2026 · finish it and you are entered to win a website built free · closes September 30
06 / Why not a generalist
A generalist would have to ask you what the job actually costs
There are plenty of good developers who'd take your project. Almost none of them have priced a job at 6am, watched an afternoon disappear on an enquiry that was never worth taking, or had to explain to a customer why the thing they asked for costs more than the thing they thought they asked for.
Three trades is not the same as no trade. What they share is a shape — quote, book, do, get paid — and I run a business with exactly that shape, which is a different qualification from having read about one.
The decisions are pre-made
Minimums, recurring work, deposits, change orders, the seasonal rush that wrecks your schedule. I'm not learning how small operations work on your budget.
I run one of these
Alpine Apparel Co, in Castle Rock. Different trade from yours, possibly — but a small operation that quotes work, books it, does it and chases the invoice is the same animal whether the work is shirts or windows.
Narrow, and compounding
Everything I learn in one build makes the next one better, because they are the same shape. That stops being true the moment I take on a business that isn't — which is why I turn those down.
Who's behind this
Jesse Poteet
I'm a developer who ended up in the print business, or a printer who ended up writing software — depending on which day you ask.
I've spent years building operational systems on Airtable — for small businesses, and on projects for teams inside large organizations where the spreadsheets were bigger but the underlying problem was identical: too many tools, none of them talking, and one person quietly holding it together.
I also run Alpine Apparel Co, a print shop in Castle Rock, Colorado — a small operation that quotes work, books it, does it and chases the invoice. Same shape as yours, whatever the work is.
It's also where three live products came from — Pricely, GroupKit and Packed, each one a problem I had on a Tuesday and couldn't buy my way out of. They're for apparel decorators specifically, so they may well be no use to you. I mention them because shipping and supporting real software is a different thing from talking about it.
- 20 yrs Building websites
- 10 yrs Airtable — Certified Builder
- 13 yrs In the screen printing trade 9 of them running my own shop
- 3 yrs Replit — Certified Level 4 Advanced Builder Top 1% 4 live SaaS apps in production Verify ↗
07 / The rest of it
I'm not visiting this from the outside
Operator Stack is the software half. The other half is a press in Castle Rock, a YouTube channel, a couple of communities, and several thousand printers who ask me questions every week. Apparel is the trade I came up in — but what I learned there is what a small operation does between an enquiry and an invoice, and that part does not change when the work becomes windows or paint.
I print
Alpine Apparel Co Water-based screen printing in Castle Rock since 2017. Every product here started as a problem I hit on the press. Contract printing Shops send me the water-based and discharge work they'd rather not retool for.Published & interviewed at
The Apparelist Podcast interview Interviewed on discounting and print-shop pricing, plus video segments on water-based color matching, niching, and email marketing. Ryonet · ScreenPrinting.com Guest contributor Guest articles on Ryonet's blog, including the path from graphic designer to running a water-based shop.
None of this is what you're buying here — it's just why the person building your systems already knows what a flash cure costs you in throughput.
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Systems that actually support the work
Short, practical notes for people running a shop: what to automate, what to leave alone, and what your software is quietly costing you in time. Written from inside a working print shop, not from a product roadmap.
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Find out where your shop is leaking work
Answer fourteen questions and I'll tell you where work is falling on the floor between someone wanting shirts and you getting paid for it — then I open your site myself and send you what I see. Free. And this quarter it enters you to win a website built free.
Short on time? Get just the free site audit — two minutes, no giveaway entry. Or send me a message.