what Marcus is doing now

I started Cornerstone Renovations in 2014 after twelve years working as a site supervisor for a mid-size general contractor in Mississauga. I had spent those years watching homeowners get handed back a finished project that looked fine in photos but had corners cut underneath: insulation stuffed rather than fitted, tile set without proper waterproofing membrane, decks built without permits. I kept thinking I could do this differently if I ran my own crew. So in the spring of 2014, I left, took on two small bathroom jobs in Oakville, and started building a reputation one project at a time.

The first few years were genuinely hard. I was doing estimates in the evenings, managing two or three jobs at once, and learning the business side from scratch. The turning point came in the winter of 2016 when a client in Burlington referred us to her sister, who referred us to a neighbour, and suddenly we had a waiting list for the first time. That referral chain is still how most of our work comes in. We have never run a flyer campaign or bought leads from an aggregator site. Every client we have worked with found us through someone who already knew us.