Remote General Manager / Business Operations Manager for Hawaii Prefab Company

Paa Prefab is a growing prefab housing and building-products company on the Big Island of Hawaii. We sell prefab buildings, storage and office units, container-style spaces, and related building products for customers who need practical, affordable space.

I am hiring a remote General Manager / Business Operations Manager to help run the parts of the company that need consistent follow-through, organization, reporting, research, and systems.

This role is for someone who can take ownership across multiple areas of the business: finance admin, marketing coordination, sales follow-up, procurement research, customer communication, supplier tracking, project organization, and internal systems.

I am looking for someone who can operate independently, solve problems, create structure, maintain standards, and make the business easier to run without needing constant hand-holding.

You will work directly with the owner. Your job is to own the operating rhythm of the business, keep work moving, surface decisions clearly, and reduce the number of things that fall back on the owner.

Financial, marketing, and sales as well as management success, a hunger and will to succeed, strong problem solving, and the track-record to prove it.

Core Areas You Will Help Own

Finance and Regulatory Admin

You will help keep the business financially organized and legally in compliance of tax and other accounting requirements.

This may include:

• Organizing invoices, receipts, quotes, payments, and vendor records.
• Researching required State, Federal Tax and other required reporting/submissions on time.
• Tracking customer deposits, balances due, payment status, and follow-up needs.
• Preparing simple finance summaries for owner review.
• Coordinating with bookkeepers, accountants, or outside finance support.
• Flagging missing documents, unpaid balances, unusual charges, or unclear records.
• Helping prepare clean records for taxes, bookkeeping, and reporting.

You will not be expected to make final financial decisions without approval, but you should be able to keep the finance admin side organized and visible.

Sales Operations

You will help make sure leads and customers do not fall through the cracks.

This may include:

• Managing CRM records and lead pipelines.
• Tracking every lead’s status and next step.
• Drafting customer replies and follow-up messages.
• Preparing quote information for owner review.
• Making sure customer questions get answered or escalated.
• Tracking interested customers, serious buyers, quote requests, deposits, and delivery status.
• Identifying which leads need urgent attention.

The goal is not just to reply to messages. The goal is to help build a reliable sales follow-up system.

Marketing Coordination

You will help keep marketing organized and active.

This may include:

• Coordinating Facebook Marketplace listings and social media posts.
• Organizing product photos, descriptions, pricing notes, and listing copy.
• Tracking which products are listed where.
• Watching competitor listings and local market pricing.
• Helping draft ads, posts, flyers, emails, and simple marketing campaigns.
• Tracking which marketing channels are producing leads.
• Suggesting improvements based on what customers are asking about.

Marketing should be practical, consistent, and safe for the business. No spam tactics, fake accounts, risky shortcuts, or sloppy public claims.

Procurement and Supplier Research

You will help research and organize supplier options.

This may include:

• Researching prefab buildings, container units, sheds, storage units, roofing systems, panels, accessories, tools, materials, and related products.
• Comparing suppliers, pricing, shipping, minimum order quantities, lead times, and product specs.
• Organizing supplier quotes and conversations.
• Preparing comparison summaries.
• Asking suppliers clear questions.
• Tracking open supplier issues and follow-ups.
• Helping identify better products, better margins, or better sourcing options.

The goal is to help the owner make faster, better purchasing decisions.

Operations and Project Coordination

You will help turn messy daily business activity into clear systems.

This may include:

• Creating trackers, checklists, SOPs, templates, dashboards, and simple workflows.
• Preparing daily and weekly owner updates.
• Tracking open decisions, blockers, customer promises, supplier follow-ups, and delivery issues.
• Organizing documents, photos, product details, quotes, invoices, contracts, and project records.
• Keeping important information easy to find.
• Noticing repeated problems and suggesting fixes.

The strongest person for this role will not wait for every task to be assigned. They will notice what is missing and help create order.

Looking For: Strong General Manager Traits

I am looking for someone who is:

• Excellent in written English.
• Highly organized and reliable.
• Calm under pressure.
• Graceful and professional at all times, with customers, vendors, and coworkers.
• A self-starter who does not need to be chased.
• Comfortable owning several business areas at once.
• Good at turning messy information into clear next steps.
• Strong at follow-up, reminders, tracking, and documentation.
• Able to maintain business standards even when things are moving quickly.
• Able to make practical recommendations, not just collect information.
• Comfortable making judgment calls and explaining your reasoning.
• Careful with customer promises, pricing, permitting, delivery details, and anything that could create confusion.
• Honest when you do not know something.
• Able to work independently while keeping the owner informed.
• Practical, direct, and action-oriented.

The strongest candidate will think like a general manager, chief of staff, or operations lead — someone who sees what needs to happen, organizes it, and helps make it happen.

Looking For: Useful Experience

Direct construction experience is helpful, but it is not required.

I am interested in people who have managed complexity in real business environments. Strong candidates may come from many backgrounds, including:

• Operations management for a small business.
• Finance admin, bookkeeping coordination, invoice tracking, or payment follow-up.
• Sales operations, CRM management, lead follow-up, or quote coordination.
• Marketing coordination, social media listings, Marketplace, paid ads, or local business marketing.
• Procurement, supplier research, vendor management, importing, shipping, or product comparison.
• Logistics, dispatch, delivery coordination, warehouse coordination, or inventory management.
• Trades businesses, contractor offices, repair businesses, mechanical services, equipment rental, automotive, marine, appliance, solar, or other hands-on service businesses.
• Real estate, property management, hospitality, events, or other high-pressure customer-facing operations.
• Coordinating many moving parts across customers, vendors, schedules, documents, and money records.
• CRM tools, Airtable, HubSpot, Notion, Trello, Linear, Google Sheets, or similar systems.
• Working for a US, Australian, Canadian, or UK business.
• ChatGPT or other AI tools used for real business operations.
• Building trackers, dashboards, checklists, SOPs, or simple systems for a growing company.

What matters most is not the exact industry. What matters is whether you can manage complexity, maintain standards, communicate clearly, and keep moving with calm, charm, and good judgment.

Looking For: Work Style

The business moves fast. Some things will be messy. Your job is to help make them clear.
I value short, useful updates. I do not need long vague reports. I want information that helps decisions happen faster.

Looking For: AI Tool Judgment

I want someone who can use AI tools well, but not blindly.

Good AI use means:

• Using ChatGPT to draft, summarize, organize, compare, and speed up research.
• Checking facts before relying on them.
• Editing AI output so it sounds human, specific, and accurate.
• Knowing when a customer-facing message needs owner approval.
• Separating facts, assumptions, and open questions.
• Never using AI as an excuse for sloppy work or for a lack of accountability for the work you do.

How To Apply

Please reply with:

1 A short introduction in your own words.
2 Your relevant experience.
3 Why you think you are a fit for a General Manager / Business Operations Manager role.
4 Your expected monthly salary in USD.
5 Your available working hours in Philippine time.
6 Your available overlap with Hawaii time, if you know it.
7 A specific example of a messy process, tracker, system, or workflow you improved.
8 A specific example of a time you solved a business problem without waiting for your boss to tell you every step.
9 A specific example of a time you stayed calm and effective in a fast-moving or high-pressure situation.
10 Which areas you are strongest in: finance admin, marketing, sales operations, procurement, customer follow-up, project coordination, systems, logistics, vendor management, or research.
11 What tools you are comfortable with: spreadsheets, CRM, Google Workspace, ChatGPT, Notion, Airtable, Trello, etc.

Please also answer these questions:

Question 1:
A potential customer asks about a prefab home but gives incomplete information. What information would you collect before the owner spends time preparing a quote?

Question 2:
A customer asks: “Can I live in this? Is it permitted? I’m in Puna and need something cheap fast.” How would you reply?

Question 3:
You notice that leads are coming from Facebook, text messages, phone calls, and referrals, but there is no reliable system for tracking who needs follow-up. What would you build first?

Question 4:
You are researching a new supplier. What information would you collect before recommending whether we should consider buying from them?

Question 5:
Describe a business environment where you had to manage many moving parts at once. What standards did you maintain, and how did you keep things from falling through the cracks?

Optional: Tell me how you currently use ChatGPT or AI tools in your work, and how you check the output before using it.

Applications that are generic, copy-pasted, or obviously AI-written without personal detail will be skipped.

Paid Test Task

Strong applicants may be invited to complete a short paid test task before hiring.

The test may include:

• Creating a lead follow-up tracker.
• Drafting a customer follow-up message.
• Creating a quote-prep checklist.
• Summarizing supplier/product options.
• Writing a daily owner update.
• Creating a basic finance/admin tracker for invoices, deposits, balances due, and missing records.
• Recommending a simple operating system for managing leads, suppliers, quotes, marketing tasks, and follow-ups.
• Explaining which customer, finance, pricing, permitting, or public-facing issues should require owner approval.

I am looking for judgment, clarity, structure, independence, follow-through, calm under pressure, and practical thinking.

Compensation

This is a serious full-time role.

Pay is USD $2,000/month for the right person.

I am willing to pay well for someone who is independent, reliable, organized, calm, honest, and able to take ownership of finance admin, sales operations, marketing coordination, procurement research, logistics support, vendor follow-up, and business systems so the company can run with less owner involvement.