History
The business that God built: unlikely people with a God-given mission
God can use unlikely people. When he touches us with his own love for other people it’s hard to predict where that will take us. Jeff never envisioned the kind of growth that Just Working Construction has experienced over the last nine years. He insists that it is God who has built this company. He has led Jeff and the team that he relies on through every stage of their growth.
The primary thing: Love your neighbour
The company’s motivation is “Love God, love your neighbour and work hard towards the goal of building better communities.” This motivation was birthed in Jeff when was still a very new Christian and an unlikely candidate. He had only recently emerged from a lifestyle of drinking and drug use. His church encouraged him to love his neighbour in practical ways. And that message stuck.
Through the church’s Love KW program, Jeff volunteered with Welcome Home, a refugee center operated by Ray of Hope. He quickly formed a friendship with a family from Eritrea. They had deep conversations together. Jeff told them about his recent drug use and alcoholism and how God gave him a second chance at life. As he shared about the loneliness and depression he had experienced, they opened their hearts to him too.
Jeff learned from this Eritrean couple just how difficult it is to start over in a new country. When they escaped the trauma and tragedy of war to settle in Canada, they were elated. They envisioned an idyllic life here. But after a while, the realities of starting over in a different culture set in. The husband was struggling with depression. He agonized over his inability to find employment to pay the rent and feed his family. This man’s struggle with hopelessness affected Jeff deeply. He was gripped by a profound new sense of purpose.
God put it on Jeff’s heart to spend the rest of his life helping people like his Eritrean friends. He knew he was not called to be a minister, but he loved people. And he knew how to build things. He had also discovered through his volunteer work how hard it is for new Canadians to find employment in the construction industry.
Small beginnings
Jeff decided that he would find a way to create meaningful job opportunities for newcomers to Canada. At first, he went on Kijiji to find requests for small construction projects. He worked on Saturdays with a crew of two newcomers to Canada doing minor home renovations and landscaping. From the beginning, God made it clear to Jeff that it was important to give customers a high-quality product and a clean work site. The customers appreciated this and spread the word. After the first month, Jeff never had to look for work for his crew on Kijiji again.
At first, Jeff had no intention of starting a full-time construction business. But after a few months, he was ready to leave a good position with a large construction firm. “I just knew,” he says. “At that point, I had nothing left in me to keep going in my current job. I was just on fire for starting this.” But apart from his wife Natalie, family members and friends were not easily convinced. “Almost everyone I knew told me not to do this. I believe the most supportive person in my life, always, in everything, is my wife. I couldn’t do any of this without her.”
Natalie, who is a Certified Public Accountant, skillfully guided the company through the incorporation process. They also hired an Eritrean friend as a part-time bookkeeper to help them set up the business. Jeff’s office was in the leaky concrete basement of their 1100 sq. ft. home. Sometimes, Jeff and the bookkeeper had to put on rubber boots to do their work. “She put up with a lot!” remembers Jeff.
Growing step by step
For the first year of Just Working Construction, Jeff had just two labourers working with him on job sites. That same year, several local news outlets carried the story of Just Working Construction. Even the CBC picked up the story of this new start-up company that was employing newcomers to Canada. Every year since, they’ve added more employees. These include a strong team of skilled workers, supervisors, and project management professionals, both international and Canadian. These individuals train entry-level onsite workers and guide the increasingly complex projects. Now, eight years later, Just Working Construction employs a team of thirty people.
Conventional wisdom suggests that expanding from a small to a medium-sized corporation can be messy and stressful. Small business owners often struggle to restructure and to offload responsibilities onto a management team. But God has provided Just Working Construction with the right people for each stage in their development. Jeff says, “I am pretty comfortable delegating, not taking it all on myself. And God has brought the most amazing teammates to this company that you could possibly ask for.“
An important part of the success of this growing company is Jeff’s unwavering commitment to a good work-life balance. “Right from the start, we never worked overtime, and we never worked Saturdays. Forty-four hours is the work week. After that, we want you to be home with your family, if you have a family or living life.”
Just Working Construction has a talented and cohesive project management team. They oversee multiple projects, some of them close to twenty million dollars in cost. They focus on three kinds of projects:
- Affordable housing (from tiny homes to large residential housing complexes)
- High-performance buildings (meeting optimum green energy standards)
- Heritage buildings (saving old buildings, most recently the Paisley Inn)
Three years ago, Jeff hired Jess Van Es, who proved to be more than capable as office manager. She now serves as chief operations operator for JWC and for the new social enterprises it is developing. Jeff calls her “a true gift,” enabling the company to move confidently into the future. Other key additions to the team include David McLagan, senior project manager, and Kelvin Chatinyara who, since joining the team in 2017 as a new Canadian, has become the Services Manager for the Just Property Services division.
Finding new ways to love their neighbours
The excellent project management and operations team at Just Working Construction has allowed Jeff to re-direct his efforts. He is now free to focus on the company’s vision and culture, and on networking and growing the company:
“God has put it on our heart to do something different, says Jeff. “We want to use our business as a vehicle for loving others. Our goal is to take the blessings that he’s given us and to pour them back into the community. We are doing this by creating more housing. My job now is to develop this vision and to share it with Christian businesspeople and all businesses.
“We should be putting people before profits. Times have changed and there’s enough money in our businesses to do something big in our communities. Rather than depending on government assistance, we can make a big change with the resources we have acquired.” By God’s grace, Jeff and his company are finding new ways to love their neighbours. And they are encouraging others to do the same.