Saint-Hyacinthe, Qué. — Pat Thibodeau, fifty-one, third-generation roofer, had a marketing problem he had outsourced for two years and still wasn't solving. He paid Marie-Claude, a freelancer in Granby, $1,800 a month to run his Instagram. She posted, by his count, “maybe ten times in a good month, maybe six in a bad one.” The captions were generic. The before-and-afters were missing the labour story he wanted to tell. Comments went unanswered.
He started Trovedge in April 2026 on a coworker's recommendation. The trial ran in parallel with Marie-Claude's contract for the first month. The contractor's instructions were simple: call the line, talk for thirty seconds about a roof, hang up. He did it from the cab of his pickup between job sites.
By week three the Trovedge drafts were “sounding more like me than her stuff ever did,” he wrote in a feedback note to the operator. Week four he didn't renew Marie-Claude's contract. The Instagram feed kept posting. The book stayed full.
Section A · The setup
The setup.
Pat's business — Thibodeau Toitures — runs three trucks and four crew members across the Montérégie region. Roughly seventy percent of his work is residential reroofing, twenty percent is commercial flat-roof maintenance, ten percent is emergency leak calls. He had switched to digital ads in 2023 after a decade of yellow-pages-and-referrals, and the marketing-hire route in 2024 because “the ads were eating margin and Google reviews were sitting there cold.”
Marie-Claude's value, in Pat's reading, was supposed to be the part of the job he didn't want to do himself — writing captions, replying to comments, scheduling. What he actually got was a feed that didn't look like his business, in a voice that didn't sound like him, on a schedule that didn't track with what his crew was actually doing that week.
Trovedge onboarding took fourteen minutes total. Pat paid for a Starter tier, plugged in his Facebook Page (he'd forgotten he had one), authorized Instagram, picked a Telegram bot. Sophie called him back five minutes later to say his number was active.
@ThibodeauToituresBot
Telegram · 2:14 PM
Memo: Tue · 42 sec · Draft 2/7
Tore off three layers of asphalt on a 1960s split-level in Beloeil today. Owner thought it was two — when we got past the first the deck told a whole different story. Bonus: ice-and-water around the chimney was never installed. Fixed it. The roof will outlive the next owner.
@ThibodeauToituresBot
Telegram · 2:14 PM
Memo: Tue · 42 sec · Draft 4/7
Before/after on the Beloeil tear-off today. Three layers of shingles, no ice-and-water around the chimney. Some jobs you only see what's wrong once you peel back. Forty years in this trade and the surprises still find us. 🛠️ #toiture #montérégie
@ThibodeauToituresBot
Telegram · 2:14 PM
Memo: Tue · 42 sec · Draft 6/7
Some thoughts after another tear-off where the previous roofer skipped ice-and-water membrane around the chimney. This is a $40 material choice that prevents a $4,000 leak. If your roofer cuts here, every other corner is fair game. 1/ When evaluating a quote, ask specifically about ice-and-water around penetrations...
Section B · The numbers
The numbers.
The reason Pat sent us a letter — not the operator hitting him up for one — was that his commercial-leads number doubled between the second and third month on Trovedge. Below is the ledger he sent.
“I'm posting more now, costing less, and I'm not the one writing it. The math used to insult me. Now I show it to my brother-in-law who runs a fence business and he stares at me like I'm lying.”
Posts / month
Marketing $ / month
Time Pat spends / week
Lead inquiries / week
Section C · What changed in the business
What changed in the business.
Pat is not under any illusion that posting alone drives leads. He still pays for Google Ads. He still does the trade-show circuit. But the residential side of his book — where Facebook + Instagram do most of the heavy lifting — moved.
- →Residential reroof inquiries went from two a week to five. Pat closes at about 35% of his quotes; the extra leads translated to two extra jobs a month.
- →He stopped paying Marie-Claude $1,800/mo in May. With Trovedge at $497/mo, his net marketing spend dropped by $1,303 a month — $15,636 a year if you annualize.
- →The time he was spending coordinating Marie-Claude (about three hours a week of approval calls, photo sourcing, review nudges) dropped to about twelve minutes a week of tapping approve on his Telegram during morning coffee.
- →His own face went into more posts. Marie-Claude had been leaning on stock photography because he wouldn't send her selfies on schedule. Sophie just asks for a photo on the call and Pat takes one.
“I was paying Marie-Claude to guess what my business sounded like. Trovedge just records what it actually sounds like, and writes from there.”
Section D · The honest part
The honest part.
Pat's month-three hours-saved estimate came in at twenty-six hours per month against his self-reported baseline of twelve, so he comfortably cleared the twenty-hour guarantee. (Marco Reyes's did not in his first month — Trovedge paid that refund and Marco re-subscribed. Both stories are in the public archive.)
Not every part is perfect. Pat still rejects about one in every twelve drafts — usually because they reference a job detail he doesn't want public. The system regenerates on the spot. By week three he was rejecting one in twenty. By week six, almost zero.
If this could be your business
Pat's tier is Starter — $497/mo.
Same ninety-day money-back guarantee. Cancel any month. The only commitment is letting us measure your posting baseline.
- 90-day money-back
- Cancel anytime
- Stripe billing
- No annual lock-in