Roofing Success
The Roofing Success Podcast is a show created to inspire roofing contractors to achieve optimal success in their roofing businesses. The host, Jim Ahlin, is the co-author of the book, "Internet Marketing For Roofing Contractors, How to TRIPLE Your Sales and Turn Your Roofing Website Into an Online Lead Generation Machine", and Co-Founder of Roofer Marketers, the Digital Marketing Agency for the roofing industry. On each episode, Jim will be sitting down with industry leaders to talk about their processes, the lessons they learned, and how to find success in roofing.
Roofing Success
California Roofing: Why It’s Harder Than You Think with David Reyes
What’s it really like to run a roofing business in sunny California? Spoiler alert: it’s not all clear skies and easy days. In this episode, we dive into the challenges of roofing in the Golden State with David Reyes, owner of Green Ladder Roofing. From dealing with perfect weather that reduces demand to navigating tough labor and compliance regulations, David shares what sets California roofing apart—and why it’s one of the most challenging markets to thrive in.
You’ll hear how David’s unique journey, from working in local government to growing a top-tier roofing company in Pasadena, has shaped his approach to branding, social media, and scaling operations. Plus, learn the surprising strategies he used to transition from subcontracting to building a scalable, trusted brand that wins customers’ hearts (and reviews).
👉 Tune in for tips on:
- Overcoming the toughest roofing market challenges.
- How to navigate the backend of business, from insurance to Google verification.
- Building a collaborative network to grow faster and smarter.
🔗 https://greenladderroofinginc.com
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What does it take to go from being a second-generation roofer hesitant to join the roofing industry to building a company ranked as one of the top roofing businesses in Pasadena, california, all in just three years? In this episode of the Roofing Success Podcast, we sit down with David Reyes, owner of Green Ladder Roofing, to uncover the secrets behind his rapid success. From leveraging grassroots branding to mastering social media and streamlining operations, david shares how he turned every challenge into a thriving business model. David's journey is one of resilience and ingenuity. A former political science major turned roofing entrepreneur, he's combined his deep understanding of community engagement with a fresh take on modern branding strategies to carve out a niche in a competitive California roofing market.
Speaker 1:What sets David apart isn't just his results. It's his relentless focus on collaboration and his ability to adopt to rapidly changing demands of the roofing industry. Whether it's building trust with homeowners through glowing reviews or navigating the leap from residential to commercial projects, david's insights are both inspiring and actionable. In today's episode, you'll learn how to brand yourself effectively, overcome common pitfalls from the subcontracting side and create a scalable business model. Let's dive into this dynamic conversation with David Reyes of Green Ladder Roofing. Welcome to the Roofing Success Podcast. I'm Jim Alleyne and I'm here to bring you insights from top leaders in the roofing industry to help you grow and scale your roofing business. David Reyes, with Green Ladder Roofing how are you doing today, man?
Speaker 2:Good, good sir. How about yourself? How's everything Good man.
Speaker 1:I don't get a lot of roofing contractors out of California on the show.
Speaker 2:So you know, you're my people, right.
Speaker 1:I'm from there, you know what I mean, but there's, I don't know what it is. You know, I guess it's. You know there's. Maybe there's more roofers in the store markets than there are in the retail markets in California and things like that. But man, how's life in Cali Life?
Speaker 2:is good, life is good, I can't complain. Weather is always perfect in the way, but as a roofer, you always want that rain. As a roofer.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, well, we should talk about that man Like being a roofing contractor in the, you know, greater Los Angeles area. You know, with good weather most of the time, that must be, you know, a challenge at different periods. How did you let's start with a little bit about how you got into roofing, your company and things like that.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So I've been in the industry about 12 years now. I'm a second generation roofer. My dad was a roofer and dragged me into the industry, like everybody gets dragged into it. I worked my way through high school and college and, you know, honestly, I didn't want to be in the industry at all, like everybody.
Speaker 2:It's just something that you and out of necessity, out of opportunity the roofing industry does have a lot of opportunity uh, eventually I learned to love it and once, once that just snapped in my head where I like I'm working these summers, I'm working these uh, uh years, I might as well take something out of this and I started being curious and I think that curiosity opened the doors to listening to podcasts, like roofing podcasts or listening to podcasts like this. That kind of was the gateway to the behind the scenes. Because when you're like so focused on just the roof work, you you get sort of like I don't know, you feel claustrophobic seeing like you feel like you're like so focused on just the roof work, you get sort of like I don't know, you feel claustrophobic, you feel like you're not going to go anywhere, that you're just another guy working on the roof and so seeing the back end of the industry made me fall in love with the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the business side right, Like there's the roofing and then there's the business, right. It really is a much different. And and the business side is where the where I, you know, that opportunity is like, or a lot, you know, the greater opportunity is. So, is that, is that what made you fall in love with it? What'd you go to school for? What'd you go to college for? And things like that.
Speaker 2:I went to school. That's funny. I went to school for business school and I got dropped from business school. Wasn't fit to do business. It was just because it's a test based system. So I tell people like you don't, you don't need to go to college to be successful owner and anything business owner. So I went to school for business business, ended up settling for political science major. Um, I graduated and I and I actually ended up working in local government. So I ended up, uh, helping a Congress Congressman, um, working in.
Speaker 2:I eventually went to my local government and started doing like a council member work, working for council members like kind of like liaison work. But I ended up back into the roofing industry, my, my dad's boss. My dad still works for a different company right now and he's a good man. He's been treating my dad and my family good for years and he gave me an opportunity to work in the office once I graduated. I did that for a little bit and I ended up parting ways because I had an opportunity to become a project manager somewhere else closer to home. I was tired of that two-hour commute to their office.
Speaker 1:Isn't that like three exits down the down, down down the?
Speaker 2:10. And I've been in the industry ever since. Uh, meeting people like you continues to to tell me I'm in the right place. Um, yeah, man. And so, yeah, I've been trying to get more, more involved in the industry as possible ever since then. Ever, like 10 years ago, I started going to to expos and and all that. Before they were cool and I feel like now it's like if you're not going to these things and you're not part of the, you're not, you're not part of the movement. Like you got to get involved, you got to get, uh, you know, have a collaboration like this.
Speaker 2:And it's funny you mentioned that you haven't talked to a lot of California roofers. For some reason, I feel like California roofers a little bit more distant from each other. They don't like to talk to anybody. I ended up going to a couple of other expos and conferences near Florida, near, like closer to your guys' end over there and they're so open to collaboration. They're so open to sitting down and like talking shop or talking about softwares they're using, and I was like roofers on that end are much more tech savvy and they're more willing to collaborate. So I can see why it's such a big difference in in business structure, are you?
Speaker 1:why do you? Why do you think that is what's the? Because cali's the, like you know that's the tech hub, right, like I mean especially northern california, like what's the? What do you think the disconnect is?
Speaker 2:I think it might be the out here it's the scarcity of work. Scarcity of work, so people don't want to talk their their, their tips and trades secrets, because out here it's like you have to brand yourself before you can even get work. I feel like I don't know the store model too much, but out there it's like there's so much work. You, you, it's whoever gets there first and makes that first connection. So I felt like it might be a little different. Out there you guys have to mass produce, track it and then properly collect. Out here it's like you have to brand yourself first, like you're not going to compete If you're not Googleable, if you're not on Google, if you're not rated at least you know four stars or above, if you don't have an Instagram. It becomes that mindset of like contractors are sketchy, so you need to be, have a presence, have that pulse in the internet, and so Cali roofing is like you have to have brand behind it.
Speaker 1:How do you, how did you go about going about branding first, what was your philosophy, what were the steps you took along that route?
Speaker 2:So, we definitely focused on our local city first, like we grassrooted in our city we got involved with like chamber of commerce, we got involved with like community service. We connected with a lot of other business owners, different industries, but also maybe some people that can be service partners to us. So like storm restoration people that need to do the interior work they need the roof done first because that was the first cause. So they need us as much as we need them and we kind of repurpose clients, we share clients, we make sure they're all taken care of.
Speaker 2:So it was that word of mouth that was the beginning base for us. I think as of last year it was like 65% referral base. All our leads were 65% referrals. It gets to a certain point where you do have to start advertising a little bit more, but it was only after the brand was cemented. Uh, I have like a theory was like if you spend money on ads, um, without a backing of brands, they're gonna go back to your profile and be like, okay, this person has one post. No, I think it might be scammy.
Speaker 1:So you still have to run first before you start scaling with ads and marketing yeah, yeah, there's your online visibility and the things that the way that you look online has a big impact. Hey, you should use this company. Okay, cool, so let me search up Green Ladder online, yeah, and if I, oh man, that website looks like it was built in you know 1983. Like, what's going on here? How come there's no phone number on it? Like, what are you doing? Or maybe they don't even exist online. And so that's a great advice for people is to build that foundation.
Speaker 1:The other thing I love there is that where I think there's a gap for a lot of contractors starting out in building relationships first, and it's like people want to rely on. I don't know what it is, Maybe it's a fear thing where you don't want to tell you're not sure about your business or what you can. You know how, how well you can, you know what well you can execute on your business. That's why you don't tell your friends, your family, your neighbors, your, your, you know the go to these business meetings, go to these meetups. But, man, I think that's a core foundation that anyone can use. And and how much did it cost you startup? Yeah, like, well, like all that, all those like meeting people and telling people.
Speaker 2:The branding was it's free, like you can go out there and talk, and that's that's free. You can stand at the corner of the street and yell like, babe, this is who I, who I am, it's free, like that's free advertising, you're not spending money somewhere, um, before your brand is cemented, so it's just going out there and just meeting people, making that connection. Um, I used to say that, uh, I was like I'm not a salesperson, I'm just, I'm just a roofer and I'm just, uh, and so like every time when I would go out and do roofs, like I would just talk about our story and like I would get so in detail with like information, like just information to the client and that would ultimately sell the job, it wasn't, it wasn't because I was a pushy salesperson, it was just I was genuine about the information I wanted to teach them and they kind of resorted to that. Eventually, I realized that I was never asking for the clothes sometimes, so that's why I was losing some jobs.
Speaker 2:So I had to realize, like, as an owner or as anybody, you're a salesperson, regardless. There's different connotations to sales people but you, as a person branding yourself, you're a salesperson. You need to sell your brand. There's no other alternative to that Branding yourself. You're a salesperson. You need to sell your brand. There's no other alternative to that. And so when I quickly realized I have to. This is selling, like you and I we're talking, we're convincing each other that we're good people, our brand behind is also good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's, but you got to ask for the close. But what, what? I think there's a, there's a. The part of it is that people don't don't go into it as a learning experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, if you, you know and go, man, I went on. I went on 10 appointments and I and I sat down with 10 homeowners and now what? How come I didn't close as many as I thought I should? That's right. Yeah, what happened there? Like, oh, I forgot to even ask them if they would do business with me. Right, like you can analyze the game tape. Right, like you can figure out what you've been doing, what you did wrong. The game tape. Right, like you can figure out what you've been doing, what you did wrong, and and it's the continuous iteration of that and getting better over and over, day after day that that really leads to success and with people, man, and I think that's where people get lost because, um, like you said, that was a keyword the gate, the game tape but the thing is that people don't know how to monitor the game tape.
Speaker 2:They don't know how to get the game tape even captured. And when I first started off, I was just going based off feeling like, oh, this is how I felt at this employment, maybe I should do this next time. But if you start monitoring with like KPIs and just monitoring with conversions, you're like, okay, this is what worked, let's stick to this. Besides emotions Like this is what's working.
Speaker 2:But some people first starting off it's so hard to measure, because you're just you're just throwing darts and blindly trying to hit something up until you get and you don't know what to measure a lot of times. Right.
Speaker 1:Like and, and I always like to say around my household we know that feelings aren't facts. So we, we, we. So we got to get to the facts right, like we got to get to the facts. And so what are some of those key metrics that that you've learned to measure along the way and it it could, it could be in the sales process, through production, anything like what? What are some of the key metrics that?
Speaker 2:you're like, man, I'm glad I I'm we're measuring this now and it's helped us so I think some of the most important stuff is on the front end, where it's like we get a phone call, how long does that phone ring for before someone picks up? And if, if someone does pick up, like what, what are they saying and how? From that call, how many get booked for an inspection? Because we were realizing we're spending so much money on ads.
Speaker 2:Eventually we're like we're, we're not getting as many appointments. So what's going on? Is it? Is it the quality of the leads? Or is it kind of answering the phone properly and asking them like, hey, these are the days we have available, cause sometimes people are like, oh, we don't have that available, I'll call you back later. So maybe you just gotta be a little bit like, was there anything else we can do? Like how about Wednesday? We can be flexible this day.
Speaker 2:So measuring leads to book inspections. That was like a big game changer for us. Then we got to go into like the booked inspections to how many proposals did we get out in time? Because another rule of thumb now is like there's so much information out there, so many roofers in Cali. It's like if you wait two, three days, they're gone, like they're they're with someone else already, and so it's like, how fast did we get these proposals out in the beginning?
Speaker 2:And if we even got them out because everything happens when I was first starting off, you'd be so busy that man, I didn't. I didn't send that proposal out like I I completely forgot. And I'll be serious, I'll be honest about it. It's just a part of life and part of scaling sometimes. Sometimes things start to drop, but that's where you have to be able to measure and be like okay, this is where, this is where the leaks happening as a roof, metaphorically, and then as as a business owner like this is where the leaks happen. We have to patch this up or get a new roof, a new system on there.
Speaker 1:And that allows you, like just knowing, and sometimes you don't know what the right number should be, right, so maybe, on that, how many appointments got booked from these phone calls? Right, like, I encourage people, in the beginning you won't know what that's supposed to be. That's right. Right, make a guess, and I think we should. I think 50% of the people that call in, we, we book an appointment on yeah, and and we're. And now and now you have something to measure against. And all of a sudden you're like, oh man, it seems to be like more like 70%. Cool, we adjust our metric and now we're measuring off of that. Right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:And with proposals out, that's a good, that's a very it's. So you have speed to lead. But then that speed to estimate is probably another very important factor in the decision-making process. I could see that from a homeowner perspective. Man, if I'm sitting around wondering, you know, man, did David send us that, yet Did we get that? Hey, honey, did we get that proposal from David yet? Right, like, if that, if that's happening, you know, like you're, you're losing trust with that homeowner, and so, and then, as you start to not just be the only salesperson in your company. Now you have something to measure against. What, what, what are you guys shooting for in in time? How fast are you trying to get that in the hands of the are like converters, so I'll even start from the call, so the call.
Speaker 2:We try not to let the call, the phone, ring more than twice. So first you know respond, second ring uh. From there on we try to. We try to schedule an inspection within uh 72 hours. Sometimes our busy schedule gets busy. Okay, they can be a little bit flexible. The proposals were what's the most important. We try to get that out within uh 48 hours, no more, because after that they lose, they lose interest or they go with someone else like yeah, it's, it's getting, it's getting pretty. There's a lot of technology out there for software. For software uh proposal you should be able to get it out faster.
Speaker 1:Honestly, like to be honest with you with the, with the new estimating software, depending on what crms you're using, and things like that. But that's right. But uh, yeah, if you, if you properly pre-load a lot of things into your estimating software, you could get a man. You could turn these things out really really that's right.
Speaker 2:Like right now we were pushing hard on job numbers and they were amazing. Like with the sumo quote integration. They can that's right turn them out like yeah, you can sumo quote. You're able to to do estimates very quickly you can turn them out easily and I think that gap between the old school and the new school is hurting a lot of the old school roofing.
Speaker 1:What do you think the difference is? Because, like the company your father works for, it sounds like they've been around for a long time and your father's worked for him for a long time. What differences do you see between the old school?
Speaker 2:and the new school Huge difference. So I very a lot of variables. So they're, they have no, they have no crm, they it's just all, just servers and files. So drag and drop and it's still like uh, to make a picture report you have to uh crop and putting into like a microsoft, like copy paste kind of thing it takes. When I was there, man, it's still there, because I asked some people that still work there.
Speaker 2:It took me like 30 minutes to an hour to make one inspection report Like it was just. It was ridiculous. But the thing is that they're having they have a different clientele base. They wouldn't enter in the residential base clients. They're very commercial, they're industrial.
Speaker 2:They work with a lot of consultants. So a lot of the work is very old school work, where it's like a close knit of like people who trust each other already and it's like very basic specs and it's just. They focus on two manufacturers only yeah, that's it, and it's all flat roofs only. So they specialize so much to the point where they don't maybe don't need all these fancy processes but they also don't measure anything. So they've been very successful, but it's solely based on just, I think, specializing and being just focused in the in the industry for such a long time. Nowadays it's a little bit different, and especially residential residential. You need speed, you need efficiency. Every, every like. If you miss a box of nails can slow down the whole project, so little things need to be addressed.
Speaker 1:How have you looked at specialization? I think we talked about this when we chatted, but I think, like, how have you looked at specializing from a residential standpoint? It sounds to me like it was kind of a location-based specialization. Was that? Was that a thought process for you? Or like hey, I want to. Like our specialization is Pasadena Like we're going to, we're going to, everyone in Pasadena is going to. They're going to know that we are the best roofing contractor to use for residential. Yeah, where, like the company your father works for, it's like hey, if you own an industrial building, this is who you should call. Did you put any thought into that? Or I did.
Speaker 2:I put a lot of thought into it because, like I didn't want to go against the currents, I didn't want to go against like the big forces against me. So in my area it's near LA, so traffic is horrible, so I didn't want to take on jobs that are two hours away from me because to do four inspections. I wouldn't be able to get to four inspections because all the traffic if I was going to all these different cities. So in Pasadena we're able to knock out like four or five inspections in one day and still have time to do other things because we're so close to each other. So one thing was localization, like making sure we're local and grassrooted there. The other thing was like, are we doing commercial, are we doing residential?
Speaker 2:And I came from a commercial background. I've been doing that for most of my career. But as a small startup I'm like, okay, the cash flow is going to be an issue. Uh, I don't have, we don't have the money for that big of an insurance general liability with umbrella coverage yet. Like, okay, so we have to start off where we have something that's turned around pretty quickly cash flowing. So residential was a space for us. We want to get into commercial, but I think there's levels to it. You can't just jump straight into commercial even though you know the work. You have to forecast yourself a little bit. Like they have different net terms, like they have um, I don't know much larger job materials you need, so the supplier might not give you all that credit yet, things like that. It's, that's what we thought.
Speaker 1:Traffic, I think.
Speaker 1:And then traffic is like like that's something to think about a major metropolitan markets anywhere, right, like it's like, oh, how long does it take? Like if you're, you know it doesn't matter if you're in Miami or in Dallas or or, or in the LA area. Like it's, it could be an hour to drive three miles. Like we're talking about. Right, like it's, it's crazy so. So that's a good that that local focus helps. I love I want to explore this conversation about residential to commercial a little bit and I love what your mindset on it be in in because it's it's like I don't know what it feels like.
Speaker 1:What you're saying is you, you're, you're trying to earn your stripes going down that route, right, like it's. Like you're not trying to just say we're, we're pros, we could take it on. It's more. Hey, I know we got to do this. Then we have to take on a little more than we could take on. A little more than we could take on a little more. It's like you're, you're, you're proving yourself. You know you could do the work, you've done the work in the past, but it's like you're proving yourself to the suppliers. You're proving yourself to the market. You're proving there's probably infrastructure and people that you need on your team. That's right to to be doing those projects. How are you thinking about that?
Speaker 2:yeah, so it this commercial structure and residential structure very different. So, like when I, when I first started, I mean the only thing when you're thinking about is just money, like cat, like being being having money to survive. It's not even money to spend, it's money to survive, like money to pay your guys, money to pay the bills, keep the lights on. So the the focus was like cash flow, that's the biggest thing. But then, once I started looking at the structure of it, I was like we don't have all the machinery for commercial. Uh, we don't have any professional looking trucks for commercial, we don't have logos, and so I didn't. I didn't want to take on clients and then let them down. So I wanted to. I wanted to focus on, you know, chewing a little bit at a time, like you said, like building up that kind of like that muscle memory, like making sure we're we're strong enough to to focus on these big jobs. Because, yeah, if you stretch too fast you're going to snap like a rubber band. And I didn't want. It's like you said. You said it perfectly.
Speaker 2:I wanted to earn my stripes, even though if you ask a commercial person, hey, would you do residential? They would say no, that's too hard and then because the aesthetics of it dealing with a customer, that customer service very different, different, commercial. But if you ask a residential, hey, can you? Commercial it'd be like might be too hard, it's too big, and so it's like there's this gap where like, oh, we just don't know how to do the other. That's why it seems hard. But when I really look at it, when, when I structure everything, commercial is easier to produce, but it's, yeah, residential is easier to sell, but each one has its own, you know, cons to it which is residential, your customer service has to be on point or else your brand will burn out. So it goes back to branding and customer service needs to be everyone's always answering the phone calls, answering any minor thing that a customer wants fixed.
Speaker 2:You got to go do it. It's not, it's no, no, fighting back on it. Like at the end of the day, it's their house and they look at it every day. And but commercial? I definitely want to get back into more of the commercial realm. I like, I like that environment. It's a B2B environment where you're talking to professionals that know what you're talking about already and they're able to understand why the system you're using is a system that's the best for them, opposed to thinking emotionally. Again. It goes back to presidential, is very emotional, like this is my first house ever and I want this color and they're like but this is my budget and I'm like, okay, we'll see what we can do here.
Speaker 1:That's right. There is much more emotion in uh, in residential, for sure, Uh versus commercial, Um, you said that. I remember when we were talking I think it was last week or whatever you said that you started off your first work, your first year, and you're like, man, I'm going to go after sub work Because, again, and it's of that mindset, and I think this is every startup mindset is we need money.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, we need cash in the door. Talk about that experience a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need cash in the door. Talk about that experience a little bit. Yeah. So the first year we ended up doing a big amount. I think for a first year we ended up doing about $2.8 million the first year. And every conference I would go to people would be like that's amazing, you're killing it. But I was like, am I really? And it wasn't until the end of the year that I realized that was not a good year.
Speaker 2:It was good on paper but our focus was on getting revenue in and we decided to go down the subcontracting route for big commercial buildings again. So we kind of were getting some at bat, which was good, but the margins weren't the best. There's not the best margins as a subcontractor in California if you don't properly negotiate it right Like if you do negotiate it right, there's definitely win-wins for everybody. But we were just taking on. We were eager, we were hungry and we were taking on. We were eating a little bit too much that we needed to and then had a little bit of a repercussion, you know. Uh, so it was just that eagerness and I realized this model is not going to work. We have to brand ourselves the more. The more you sub for somebody, the less you. You buy from suppliers because they're buying on their account so you're not building that reputation with supplier.
Speaker 2:The more you work for somebody else, the less you can wear your logo and be around people that can see you. You can't put a wrap on your truck. If you're being a sub, you have to respect the brand of the person you're working with. So you have to understand that game too. You can't be a sub that wants to like oh, I want to, I want to brand myself within this like this community, no, like you're working for somebody, be respectful for that person. And that's what we were. But I realized like eventually we want to stand on our own two feet and, uh, we, we started shifting a little bit more back into the again to residential, because we saw the barrier to entry there was easier, it's harder to maintain because it's constant selling constant, you know, without rain and it's constant selling somehow. But yeah, that's where we were at. Now I think we've cemented ourselves. I think we're ranked number one or two in Pasadena now, and that in just in just a year technically, because a year before it was just all subbing out for commercial.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think and that's a great filter, Like some things that I heard there is like that. The first thing is, it's the old adage what is it?
Speaker 2:Revenue is vanity profit is sanity right Like that's the first thing that made me think of man is like you know you go and you, you know you.
Speaker 1:Like you said, you went to this show and you're chatting with someone and they're like oh yeah, how much. Where are you at? Oh, we're in our first year. We did 2.8.
Speaker 2:And they're like oh wow man great job.
Speaker 1:And then you get you know, and then you look at your bank account at the end of the year and you're like, oh well, there's nothing left, right it's the those top line numbers don't matter, they don't. There's people out there doing you know, you know 100 million and not making any money. You know, like you know. So that that that's the, the path there, that's the path there.
Speaker 1:Other things I heard were around what I would think of as opportunity cost. For people that don't understand the concept of opportunity cost, it's like you're trading something you're doing today for something that could have been done, and so what you had said was like well, we weren't wearing our brand, our brand, I didn't have my wrapped truck in front of that house, so you're sacrificing yeah, in a way, right, you're sacrificing future business. You're sacrificing your, your company, or for for that quick buck now and and there's always an opportunity cost when you, you know, in everything that you do, there's an opportunity cost in hiring. There's an opportunity cost in marketing. There's an opportunity cost in in in an office or not getting an office. There's an opportunity cost of getting some new equipment or buying an equipped. That that you said. Man, I can't sacrifice the, the, the long term vision that I have for the for the short term money. Yeah, and you know that that sounds like what is what happened.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it's scary because you're like how can I let go of this without the unknown not knowing here? You're like how can I let go of this without the unknown not knowing here? And the real answer is you don't. The real answer is you work both at the same time. Yeah, you're working commercial and you have your guys working. Okay, cool, they're getting paid, we're good. Now I'm out here after hours trying to work on my website. Now I'm after hours trying to work on my Google page. I'm after hours collecting pictures, after hours making sumo quote, uh templates. Like the real answer is you don't just magically stop one thing and do the other thing. And the answer is you, you grab and you put in the work to do both. For now you know like there's a like.
Speaker 1:I know this is roofing isn't a nine-to-five job specifically, but there's this like. I heard someone talk about this recently. I think it was Dan Antonelli who wrote Buy Back your Time a great book. If anyone wants, I highly recommend reading that. But he talked about you have. Most people have they work nine-to-five. Most people work nine-to-five but they forget that they have five to nine and five to nine, so you can get up at five and work until nine. On the other things you work your eight hours on your thing and then you have another five to nine that you have an opportunity to work on. That's right and of course, challenges if you have family and kids and other obligations and things like that. But if it's how you spend those, the five to nine, that could determine and and I think a lot of times, man, when you're starting out, you need that. You do like man you. You have to out. You need that. You do Like man you have to be.
Speaker 1:You can't. It takes a lot. Like you know, I'm here in Minnesota, so you know we're a. You know it's cold and snowy outside and you could go out and build a snowman but like to get that thing right, you got to get some, you got to roll that snowball, you got to get it and then you get some momentum and then you get this thing rolling and that's right. But to build that momentum, to get that momentum going, it takes a lot more effort up front. What do you?
Speaker 2:you know yeah, and they it's. It's funny you say that because I have heard that where it's like the hardest thing to a process is to start, like that takes like 75 of process is to start, like that takes like 75% of your energy to start, and then little sacrifices that you don't want to do or that seem a little weird. That I would do when I first started off was like at the gym, instead of listening to music, I put on a podcast. So like I would encourage people to listen to your podcast. Like at a gym or on a long ride LA, there was so much traffic Instead of me listening to music all the time, those two hours of commute there and back that I used to do, I would put on a podcast. And back then it was, you know, dade sullivan back then, uh, it was the only person back then. But now it's like people like you and uh I, I highly encourage people to listen podcasts on their on this time in between their time.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's not like you can't work on your side or your business because you're eight to five no, like you. Or nine to five you. You can work in between your lunch break, uh, while driving to work and driving back. That's right, but some people rather pick the comfort of like no, rather, I want to listen to music, or it's my time to rest right now. Well, okay, but okay, but, um, that's. That's the edge you're going to get over, getting out of the slump or getting out of the. I don't call it a subcontracting trap, because, no, really good work for subcontracting can make a really good living, and they do. It's just for us, um, it wasn't, it wasn't the route for us, um, and so, uh, yeah, that that's what I encourage people to do, like, just listen to podcasts when you can, yeah little by little momentum builds.
Speaker 1:I've heard it put as windshield university right, like you, just go it on podcast, books, yeah, um, all of that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I've said to a lot of people is what phone calls are you making While you're on that drive, if you have 45 minutes or an hour or whatever you're on that drive? Do you have a list of insurance agents that you could call? Do you have a list of realtors, maybe, that you're trying to develop relationships with Anyone else? Right, like, spend your. It's how you spend your time. Yeah, that's more important. Absolutely Cool stuff, man, and it really is impactful. Like you have to put in additional effort in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no one knows you, right? Like, no one knows you. No one. People don't know what you do. People don't know that you can solve a problem for them. You said one of the things you focused on was getting found online. Let's talk about that a little bit. Um, yeah, you know, I mean, to me, it's a no brainer, right? Like, yeah, get found online. Like, if you don't, if you, to me, if you are not online, you don't exist in the world to me, like you, like, it doesn't even make sense to me that you don't have a website, that you wouldn't have a Google business profile, like that you didn't, that you don't have social media accounts Like to me. It blows my mind and maybe and I'm not young, I'm not super young, right Like, I'm not, I'm not a millennial, you know, I'm not a Gen Z, right Like, but it's crazy to me.
Speaker 2:So that was one of the things that that it sounds like you focused on yeah, I think it was the single most important thing was getting be able to be found online. It was so hard at the beginning, for me too, because, um, we're engraved in into the in our heads by our parents and by the industry, where it's like don't't be the loud, don't don't be talking loud about what you want to do. Like, just just put your head down and work and just do it. And so a lot of them, a lot of my mindset was like why am I going to advertise what I do? Like I know I'm good, like I'm just going to focus on my work and people will just know me.
Speaker 2:That's such you know like that's like the old way of thinking and it keeps you small, unfortunately, like I get where the I get, there's, there's positivity in a good place that it comes from. But no, you have to be out there and telling people how good, like by your action, how good you are, but you have to showcase it. No one's going to come up to your door and knock on your door and be like hey you're, I think you're great at roofing, right, can you do my roof Doesn't happen unless they know you. And so I had to switch that mindset of like I do have to start posting little by little, instagram, start with posting on Google, linkedin, facebook, and little by little it started kind of flowing it. And like multiplying, like the power of like, multiple like, is it the power of? I forget what it's called. It's like from one referral you can get up to three and from that you can get up to nine.
Speaker 1:It's like that, that right there it's an exponential growth curve to it right, like it's it, it, it, it multiplies. It's not one plus one equals two, right's a different. It continues to increase and increase. And that's why I feel like companies that have been around for a long time they don't like a lot of times, they don't feel like they have to market as much because they have that. They have that referral business. But you only have referral business who, I always say this man, david, is who refers you right, and it's always it's people who you've done good work for.
Speaker 2:That's right yeah.
Speaker 1:In most cases, right.
Speaker 1:Of course your cousin's going to refer you and you're, even if you haven't done their house like you know what I mean, but but in most cases, it's people that you've done good work for, so you just need to find more people to do good work for. And then, and that that starts to that starts to build and starts to build. What were some of the key learnings? I, I, we were I was talking about this recently with with Joseph Hughes, with contractor dynamics, and we were talking about skill sets. Right, a lot of times, as a contractor, you probably didn't have a skill set to build a website or to do SEO or to be a content creator on social media. You know what. What did you do to kind of build some of that skill set, to know what, even what to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you hit it on the on the head when, like when should university with podcasts, youtube university with videos of how to? But I quickly realized, like you can spend as much time learning at it from from it as much as possible, but you have to actually start doing it. And then you have to start reaching out to help for people who have done it already, that that you you close the gap on time right there. Like you can spend maybe 10 years trying to master it and maybe you will, but what? At what cost? Like you spend so much time learning it yourself instead of finding a professional, maybe getting some consulting work, maybe hiring them to do it.
Speaker 2:I always encourage people if you're hiring someone to do a service, learn the service with them. You don't have to master it, but learn to ask the right questions from them. That way you guys can make sure you guys address it properly, because there's people that might not know the industry as much as you do, but that's where you guys have to team up. They know the back end of how to plug in things here and there, but you can tell them like, hey, this is what I think most people or homeowners would like here, so definitely reaching out to someone who's done it before.
Speaker 1:Were there specific. Did you reach out to like other content creators? Did you reach out to like an agency agencies? Did you reach out like who did you reach out to to get more, more knowledge? Like did you say, oh man, I got a friend from high school that like crushes it, like who was it that you kind of you know, found those, those connections with?
Speaker 2:So I started off with just my local friends, like something free, like who knows in my circle, immediate circle, how to make a website or who knows about Google pages, and I started asking questions and we got, we got somewhere, we got the momentum going and as soon as I knew a little bit about like, oh, I need a domain first. I need to buy a domain before you even make a website, then I started asking and I started gravitating towards more of like the website space, and then I was in that space for a little bit and then I learned, like, oh, this guy does really good websites. And then I started moving to him and then I started learning about a guy making website, not even in the roofing industry, just in general making websites. Yeah, so you start off with your immediate circle and then you get pulled into more information and you go down a little rabbit hole of like, oh, wow, this, these are the questions I need. And then you go down to another rabbit hole of like finding, wow, this is the guy in the space that's really good at it.
Speaker 2:Let me, let me start listening to him and you and you do you start listening to him as much as possible. Like listening to you. I know you know you were, uh, marketing, marketing. Oh man, I remember listening to your, some of your stuff, and I'm like this is the person I need to listen to. Uh, eventually, you know, sometimes maybe they might not be able to get ahold of you because you're so busy or something, but at least they hear you and they make terms of it Like they, they know the words that are used in that space, so one day they, they might reach out to hire a coach or hire agency, but they know enough not to get screwed over, because there's always that's what I feel man is is get to know enough, and that's what joseph and I were talking about the wood joe and I were talking about.
Speaker 1:man is like. Like I used I did a lot of residential fix and flips between 2008 and 2013. And, like, every time I did a project or not every time, but on all of my beginning projects, I GC'd all my own projects. So, on every project, like to start off with, like, I was doing tile work on one, I was doing plumbing on another, but I only did it because not to become an expert at it, but I just wanted to know what went into it. Man and like, like, how is this made? Do I? How do I know when I hire this drywaller, if they're like, if they're giving, if the bid is is within reason, a reasonable limit, right, like, and then if it's outside of that, I get to ask why.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, because I know of that. I get to ask why? Because I know something I know. Oh man, it doesn't seem like that. Man, really, that's what you want to charge per sheet. That's crazy. You know what I mean. What does that include? Is that board through texture or is that just hanging the board? I get to have a conversation, I get to have an intelligent conversation, so I, you know, always encourage people to do that, one of the things that you also focused on. I want to actually let's start, let's go, let's let's talk about social media a little bit, because you've developed some traction on social media, sure, yeah, what have been some of the key learnings that you've had in building your social media presence?
Speaker 2:I've learned that you kind of sometimes have to be surface level with things, unfortunately, and kind of have to know your audience. Like you would have to be a little bit clickbaity to get traction. Unfortunately, you have to know the generation. Nowadays it's like, it's very like. I only have this amount of time in your face and before they swipe you, so you have to capture that hook. Obviously, the hook is important in an email, in a sales pitch, in a social media post. So I've learned that you do have to change the way you appear sometimes just to make sure you get their attention and then you can give them some good information. And even then you can't go too detailed. Like I love these conversations, we can go into detail about things. But social media, if we do things like I, have to do very surface level stuff because I want the majority of people to just know enough. I don't want to lose anybody yet.
Speaker 1:Explain that a little bit more, like when you're creating a video so I hear hook and surface level, those are the two things. Explain that a little bit more. What's a what's a what like? Maybe an example of a video you've done recently or something like that.
Speaker 2:Well, let me, let me explain a little bit more with the hook. The hook is usually a story and the stories are all true. That's happened to me and these stories I always say are very true and so when I say a story, it kind of gravitates people more because there's a statistics where stories resonate with people. It's like I heard this this is like if you're, if you're speaking, making a speech, if you make a story within the speech, it's like a 50% or 55% more likely to be remembered, remembered, yeah, wow, yeah. So when I when I like this talk, I like to talk about my experiences, very genuine place, because I've lived through them and I don't want people to live through those dark times. So it's definitely so.
Speaker 2:You need a hook, you want a story. You also don't want to lose your audience. Don't, don't, I don't want to throw around terms of roofing and and make it so people, they, they're like I don't know that word, so they, they skip. It's so weird, like that's just the perception. I do that sometimes too, when I'm reading a book and I'm like, oh, big word, skip, just, yeah, just my brain. Sometimes I don't know, it's just like. I'm like I have too much in my head already. I don't want to get more information that I don't need, and I just so I I think it's been really important to have all those components, the hook, the story being digestible information.
Speaker 1:Keeping it simple, it sounds like, is a good good idea. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The other one that's been helping us a lot is collaboration. I think collaboration is a new good idea. Yeah, the other one that's been helping us a lot is collaboration. I think collaboration is a new currency and that a lot of the coaches try to teach us. This collaboration You're introduced to different markets. You're you're using other people's traffic. At that point You're not spending money on ads, you're not spending money on paying Facebook and Google, although they're amazing. You're. You're you're working with another person who has another list already and you're you're both growing the brand together. You get. You get some clients that are that that might be attracted to that guy, and then you get some back on some audiences. So using other people's traffic very, very important.
Speaker 1:I love that man. Like the collaboration is something that people don't think about a lot. That's a good one. Yeah, what social media channels have you focused on? Like? What social, what, what?
Speaker 2:So right now we're doing Instagram, tiktok, youtube, okay, oh, and Facebook. Instagram has been the most, I think, better conversations with people. A little bit professional than more professional than Tik TOK. Uh, less professional than LinkedIn, but right, that's the sweet spot, because people are still able to be free and express themselves without feeling like they're going to be judged as too much, like on LinkedIn. Um, so Instagram has been a very, very good sweet spot for for branding purposes, like personal branding and then company branding. Um, we want to lean into the linkedin world more once we get more into the property management, commercial hoa stuff. So we're still posting, but only on the company side there.
Speaker 2:I don't post on my personal brand. Uh, there too much. Uh. But instagram has been good. Tiktok has been good for just getting known, but definitely not to make the best connections. Like, I think we met through Instagram and I was like, yeah, awesome, like branding. I don't know how to describe it, but branding has changed the trajectory of our life so, so fast, like in a good way, where people are reaching out, they want to collaborate. People say, hey, I've seen you this and doing this, like, thank you for sharing this information and I just take it, for I've taken it for granted that the information that I have, that we've been doing for so many years I think other people know it Like it's just a thing, but so it's been a really good experience. People have came and try to partner up with us. If you can spend some money on something, I would say on branding.
Speaker 1:Branding and marketing is the fuel to the business. It's amazing what happens I say it this way, david it's amazing what happens when you put yourself out there. It's just amazing because so few people do so few people take that risk. Risking their, just risking, you know, people talking funny about them online or something you know, risking having a video that that that people think you know what I mean. Risking other people's opinions of yourself. Another thing that you guys have done really well and I remember you telling me that you guys really focused on and, man, it's something that I feel everyone needs to focus on and that's reviews. What was your thought process on reviews initially, and then what was the execution? How did you get to, you know, 200 plus reviews as quickly as you did?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the mindset was you have to be Googleable, you have to be found, you have to be able to. Someone can go into Google, put your name in. You get to be found. If not, then you're already sketchy, you're already you're thrown into the bin where all the people that they're they're constantly filtering. I think we're in a day and age where people have so much power at their fingertips, so much knowledge, that in the fingertips that they can, they can quickly go and try to learn the shingles themselves or learn who the roofer is or what the roofing company is, and so you need to be able to be found and you can. So you and so you have to stop hiding. At first I wanted to hide who I was, my company, I wanted to work, and so when I first started doing the branding side, you're right, people just talk, they're going to post some stuff out there and people are just going to talk, and that's part of it. You need to be comfortable enough to be found on Google. The next step was how can I showcase how good we are? And so there's different metrics on Google that can help you rank higher.
Speaker 2:Of course, like SEO, constantly posting on Google updates, so posting pictures, posting status updates. So we do that daily, twice a day, post pictures, do statuses. We also started asking of clients that we worked with in the past that didn't leave us a review. We're like what's the list here? Like let's go through our CRM, let's print out a list of people that we might not have asked. We didn't ask for the review, so let's print it out and let's go ask them again and, regardless if they left the review or not, we would send them a gift basket or like an Amazon gift card, just to say thank you for taking time to even consider reading the email, or like reading the postcard. And then that is weird because even though they wouldn't leave it, they would referrals out. So at least we got something out of it, you know.
Speaker 2:And so we try to make it as easy as possible to get a Google review and a Yelp review by doing hyperlinks and and putting into an email campaign or putting it into like a text message easy for them to just click and open. So it's that removing the friction to being able to do it that allows us to scale so fast, because the execution is one thing which I think a lot of roofers have, but it's like the follow-up. And then how do you follow up, making it easy for them? If you tell them, hey, can you just go give, give me a google review, and then they have to go look for your exact name on google. They have to figure out where the google link thing is. Sometimes it's very hidden, to be honest. Sometimes it's hard to find a google review clicking button. So you have to make it easy for them to just be like yeah, of course, thank you, like, let me do it right now. Um, that's what helped us scale so fast the frictionless ability to get a Google review.
Speaker 1:And then, how has that? Have you felt that change? Has that changed the conversations that you have with people, like at the kitchen table?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's like our primary selling point, because at that point you're not, it's's always, there's always going to be a price objection anywhere. But now we have some, some sort of backing, like we're not, we're not going to be the cheapest, but we do. We do good work, and here's, here's, the amount of people backing us up. Here are the testimonials just that's apart from the reviews. Here's the testimonials, video testimonials of everybody that's been happy. And on top of that we use something called uh project map. It tells you exactly all the locations you've done in their area. So I set them a map and they see all their neighbors have done the roots of this. And then they're like, oh, wow, like kind of like a you don't want to miss out kind of thing. Like, oh, everyone's doing it, so maybe, maybe, this is the route.
Speaker 2:So the conversation has shifted from oh, I don't know, I can trust you. That used to be an objection at first. We're like I don't know, we got a beer company here kind of wanting to bid. It might be a little too expensive, but we love your guys' work. We've seen you on Instagram, we've seen your reviews, but now it's just a price objection, right, which we can work with. We can see where we can come up to either payment plans or figure out middle ground somehow where we can bring in more value to justify. But that objection is easier to handle than the oh, we don't know if we can trust you Like, we don't know your type of work or where you're located, and all this so it's helped us scale in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. What do you think the best advice you can give to overcome the challenges that you faced over these?
Speaker 2:that kind of through this, this journey to the audience yeah, um, it all depend on what part of the journey they're on, but I think the biggest hurdle for us were, um, um, behind the scenes, on getting your workers comp in order, getting your insurance in order, getting being able to, I guess, properly submit all the documents you need to be vetted on, like Google. Even Google verified, you need to submit a couple of documents, and so all that backend stuff took me away from the work itself, and I was a roofer by trade, so, like I was, I was in deep water with no one to talk to. So my biggest takeaway was find someone who's done it before and find people like you that you're speaking to all these people and you're teaching these people to, to kind of grow with it. Grow. You're definitely not alone.
Speaker 2:That was like one of the mindsets that was kind of holding me back, saying like why am I? Why did I even start my own business to begin with? Like, did I? Did I make a mistake? Should I just be, you know, going back and do be project managers or something? It was that feeling of like I'm going alone through this, but no, like if you zoom out, you see hundreds of other people going through this exact same thing. All you need to do is come together and talk to them and collaborate with them and you'll find the answer way quicker. It's. It goes back to close that gap from information to not knowing, and you'll be able to execute and create that momentum to go forward. It goes back to just how much, how much activity can you do? Let's do these little increments to grow Awesome. That's what I would say.
Speaker 1:Awesome. David Mann, thanks for your time today. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast. Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast. For more valuable content, visit roofingsuccesspodcastcom While there, check out our sponsors for exclusive offers, shop for merchandise and sign up for our newsletter for industry updates and tips. Also join the Roofing Success Facebook group to connect with other professionals and stay updated on the latest trends. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, share and leave a comment. Your support helps us continue to bring you top industry insights. The website link is in the description. Thanks for listening.
