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
The #1 Thing Sabotaging Roofing Business Growth (It’s You) with Dylan McCabe
Are YOU the reason your roofing business isn’t growing the way you want? In this episode, Dylan McCabe shares his journey from healthcare to roofing, building a group purchasing organization (GPO) and leading mastermind groups for contractors. He reveals the silent killers like burnout, isolation, and bad habits that can derail any roofing business owner—and how to overcome them.
You’ll discover:
👉 The power of networking and mastermind groups to scale faster.
👉 Practical strategies to avoid burnout while growing your business.
👉 Why climbing "business Everest" alone is the biggest mistake owners make.
👉 How to set boundaries to create balance in your life without sacrificing success.
Success doesn’t have to come at the cost of your personal life. Dylan shares his top tips for creating systems and recruiting the right team to make your business thrive without relying on you 24/7.
🔗 https://limitlessroofinggroup.com/
🤖 Have a question? Ask this customized ChatGPT for the answer! Specifically designed for this episode, it’s here to help! https://roofingpod.com/chatgpt-248
Listen to the full episode (248) 👇
🎧 https://roofingpod.com/spotify
🍏 https://roofingpod.com/apple-podcasts
Resources & Links:
🤝 Join The Roofing & Solar Reform Alliance: http://roofingpod.com/rsra
👉 Take your marketing to the next level: https://roofingpod.com/jobnimbus-marketing
🎯 Join Our Facebook Group: https://roofingpod.com/facebook
IG: https://www.instagram.com/roofingsuccess/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/roofingsuccess
📱 Text Jim @ (612) 512-1812 – Say Hi!
💬 Leave Us a Review: https://roofingpod.com/review
What if you're the reason your business isn't thriving? Dylan McCabe breaks down the silent killers burnout, isolation and bad habits that could be dragging you under without you even realizing them. In this episode, dylan peels back the curtain on the entrepreneurial journey from his mastermind groups to launching a group purchasing organization. Dylan reveals how collaboration and resilience can drive success. Dylan McCabe's true genius lies in bringing leaders together. As the founder of Limitless Roofing Group, dylan has turned networking into a superpower and a business model. Dylan's approach to avoiding burnout is both practical and inspiring. Whether it's setting boundaries, learning from others or sharing his biggest aha moments, he proves that growth doesn't have to come at a personal cost. Ready to learn how to grow without burning out, dylan's wisdom is your guide to thriving in business and life. Let's dive into his transformative journey and actionable strategies. 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. Dylan McCabe, how are you?
Speaker 2:Hey Jim, Good to see you, man.
Speaker 1:Good to see you, brother. Man, it's always good to see you. I haven't been around the shows this year as much, so I haven't gotten to see you. You know, we, we, we used to be, you know, like aisle mates at, at the. You know, at a lot of the, at a lot of the conferences, and got to know each other over the years and it's been awesome, got to watch you, you know, grow from you know into building Limitless Roofing Group and all the things you're doing there, into from the group buying purchasing organization to the mastermind and the events and things like that that you're doing, which is awesome, and we're just chatting a little bit off camera. And business is tough, business is tough, man, like it's. This is not an easy path. What do you think?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think, unfortunately, some of us are have this, have this belief that if we pursue being a business owner, that the god or the universe or whatever you believe, is just going to roll out the red carpet and throw all these opportunities at you and open all these doors and just make it smooth sailing, and it's the opposite. You know, it's more like going off to another country to go to war. So the reward can be great, but the challenges can be great too. So it's just, yeah, it's just so critical to be ready for that and just know, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm going to sail, I'm going to sail across the ocean and I'm definitely going to sail through some storms, but I'm going to learn how to sail well and I'm going to weather those storms.
Speaker 1:I think that's the main point. I'm going to learn how to sail well and weather those storms. I've had a lot of conversations recently on the podcast about how the entrepreneurial journey is really one of personal development, right Like it's almost. You grow as a person to such great lengths in this journey. How has your journey been?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's 100% accurate. The challenge is not really how to grow a company. The challenge is how to face the limits in my own skills, my own personality, my own ability to manage stress, to maintain healthy relationships, to have work-family life balance. That's the biggest challenge. It's interesting because I met you. You're one of the first people I met.
Speaker 2:I came into roofing from healthcare four years ago and the first RoofCon conference we attended you were the first person, I think, in roofing, or one of the first two or three that I met. That was in roofing. That was a vendor with your marketing company at the time and you were so welcoming and it was such an odd experience because we're at RoofCon, we're with all these different people. We had just started Limitless CEO groups because I didn't know anything about roofing. I didn't realize that in roofing they call them masterminds a lot. I was used to the term peer advisory groups, so we started Limitless CEO groups. But it's just so cool, man, to stay in touch over the last four years and see how you've grown and exited your company and you're doing all these other things now. But it's been a good journey, man. It's been a wild ride.
Speaker 1:It has the evolution from those CEO groups into the group purchasing organization. You know, I guess that was an entrepreneurial journey in itself, right? You know what you know, I guess that was an entrepreneurial journey in itself, right, like it was a pivotal moment, a pivot that you guys made. What was, what were the challenges that you saw in front of you? And then the pivot and then the opportunity that you saw to make that pivot. Because I think you know, from a business standpoint, it doesn't have to be like the very specifics but what'd you see there, what was going on. Because I think that might be helpful for as business owners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've got you know, I love leadership, I love bringing leaders together. I just special life-changing things happen when you get business owners in a room sharing with one another, getting insight, feedback from one another. So we started the CEO groups and we got these guys together. I became an EOS implementer so we were taking them through EOS best practices and stuff. But I still had this thought that would kind of nagging thought in my head where are the GPOs in roofing, the group purchasing organizations in roofing? And we started asking and I went to lunch with the owners of the healthcare company I was with and I told them I'd gotten into roofing. They're like, oh, you should start a GPO. And I'm like, ah, maybe, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:And we started asking our CEO group members hey, have you ever been a part of a GPO, a group purchasing organization? They're like, well, what is that? Okay, all it is is hundreds of us or one day, thousands of us roofing companies would come together and we go to suppliers and vendors and just negotiate group deals and discounts and rebate programs and stuff like that. Like, no, never been a part of anything like that. I'm like, how can this be reality? Like, this is a roof, it's the roofing industry and every company's buying materials. And so we kept kicking it around and finally I thought, man, we, we've got to start one of these. But then the problem is is how do you start a buying group or a GPO if you don't have a group? But how do you get a group if you don't have any deals? So we were really stuck and I think God provided and it just so happened that one of our CEO group members had started a supply company because his local supplier had terrible customer service and he thought you know what, I've had it, I'm going to start my own.
Speaker 2:Started his own supply company, grew it and then it got approached by SRS distribution to they wanted to buy it and in the process he got to know Dan Tinker, the CEO, and a few other key executives. And this guy's name is Doss Rousseau. He's a South African guy, wonderful guy, I love Doss, very successful roofing company, and he said you know, I think this is a great idea, I'll email Dan and let's just see what happens. So he emails Dan Tinker. Dan emails back within about 30 minutes and said hey, I'm on vacation, but I'd love to meet with you guys and I had a meeting booked for eight months later. So then we went from idea to scrambling to put this business model together, file paperwork with the state, do all this stuff. And then we had a meeting with SRS Dan Tinker at their corporate headquarters and it was like an episode of Shark Tank.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, man, and that's the thing is like you have to be watching for the opportunities, Right. And then it's when opportunity meets preparation, that's when luck happens, Right. Like you know, I kind of refer to it sometimes. I refer to it as the art of luck, because you can put yourself through preparation. You, when, if you do proper preparation through your life, right, not just you know in one single thing, but through your life, if you do proper preparation, when opportunities come your way, you are ready to execute on them, Right. So a lot and and. And.
Speaker 1:So maybe you guys didn't know exactly what you needed to do, but I would assume that prior preparation had led to that moment, Right, when now there's this opportunity in front of us.
Speaker 1:Right, when now there's this opportunity in front of us. What that reminds me of is a little bit, or what that makes me think of is you know, the people that were in your CEO group became I mean, they were kind of your relate, some of your relationships that you had in business, and I think that you know we've talked about this before but, like how people operate in isolation, If you hadn't just started expressing things out loud to your CEO groups, there wouldn't have been the feedback that you needed to kind of move in the direction that you guys have gone. And I, I see that you know, in the roofing and solar reform Alliance, you guys with the limitless group, I see that from a contractor level, that expression at all the roofing shows that we go to Dylan sitting down having lunch with people in the evening, you know, over cocktails sometimes or whatever it is for people. Sometimes those conversations that are had in those groups, at the, you know, at a lunch table, at a, at a conference, have an outrageous impact on people's business. And you know what do you?
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts on that? That? You know how, how contractors should not operate in isolation or business owners should not operate in isolation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the biggest challenge to any business owner. And when we, you know, we have a mastermind group and one of the ways we frame what you get to experience is that running your business in isolation is like climbing Mount Everest and you've got this vision of success where maybe you want to grow to 5 million in EBITDA, a million in EBITDA 5 million, 10 million, whatever you want to have. You have this idea of what success looks like financially, the kind of lifestyle it's going to give you, the kind of freedom and time it's going to give you. That's why we all got into business. Right, we didn't want to be employees, we wanted to grow our own thing and climb that mountain.
Speaker 2:The problem is, in real life, no one climbs Everest alone. There's no such thing as a solo climber. Ever, never, ever, ever in history has anyone climbed Everest alone and made it alive. There's always a team and there's a really stirring book called Into Thin Air by John Krakauer, and he was on the climb of Everest back in 1996 when a blizzard hit the mountain and it was a disaster and a lot of people died that day. But they made some critical decisions, really bad decisions. One of them was to reduce the amount of oxygen they carried, to reduce weight of them was to reduce the amount of oxygen they carried, to reduce weight. And other terrible decision they made was to split the team up and start making ascents in pairs and making other team members wait. Well, at one point the leader of the team goes to make the ascent with another team member and they never come back and then the people waiting on them start freezing to death and it's just all. Hell broke loose on the mountain because they were essentially, even though they were a team. They started as a team. They ended up being isolated.
Speaker 2:So my whole thing is there's no need to climb your Everest alone. There's other people you can connect with. There's so many good masterminds you can be a part of and just connect. Well, just like we would have you and I were going to climb Everest, we wouldn't just wing it. We go, talk to other seasoned climbers and say what advice do you have? I'm about to make this climb, what should I know ahead of time? And the same thing in business hey, I'd really like to scale this. We're doing 2 million a year. I'd really like to get to 10 million a year with a net profit of 15% if you could just talk to three or four other guys that are already there. That's life-changing. So that's yeah, nobody should climb Everest alone, man. It's really foolish.
Speaker 1:For sure. It's funny that you bring up Everest. I did a private equity and venture capital curriculum at Columbia University last year and one of the things that we did was it's a Harvard exercise and it's a leadership and team simulation and it's an Everest simulation, and so you're making decisions on should we move to the next base camp, how much oxygen should we take All of the things that were in that book essentially like of how to, should we split up, should we stay together? And then everyone on the team had their own goal. So everyone had a personal goal and then the team had a goal to reach the summit. It was a really cool thing. You could do it with your team. It's the Harvard Business Publishing Leadership and Team Simulation for Everest. It's only like 15, 20 bucks a person or something like that, but it's a really cool simulation in that Because everyone that you talk to is going to have their own goals right.
Speaker 1:They're going to have done it a little bit differently. So I think that there's also a filter that we should have right, like if you're talking, if you're trying to get somewhere, you want to get some. You want to be talking to the people who've gotten there with kind of, especially in the beginning, you want to mimic, right Like you're, you're kind of you're, you're mimicking success. I think as you grow, though, you, you, can, you start to be able to take what other people are doing, what other people are saying, and then and then making your own thing out of that, even if it's slight variations. How have you seen that? You know with businesses? Or do you feel like just just copy what someone else did?
Speaker 2:No, I think that's good. I think when you. So we have one of the mastermind groups we have. We've got a couple of different coaches in there. One has a $40 million a year company, the other has about a $25 million, but the $25 million guy has built a inside slash, outside sales team.
Speaker 2:It's a very unusual business model. He's got inside sales reps as closers and then he's got outside roof inspectors that are not paid a commission. They get paid a flat small fee for every roof they inspect and they get to tell the homeowner look, I'm not a salesperson, I'm just here to take pictures. I'm going to send this over to our office. They're going to send your report, take it from there. It's a very unusual and very effective model. So we've got other guys in the group that are looking at that and saying, okay, well, I love 80% of that. I'm going to take what's going to work for me, my personality and my kind of team that I've got in place. And yeah, you have to. You have to make it your own. Obviously, nobody's going to have something that you can copy 100 percent.
Speaker 1:I think that's another thing. I know Monarch Roofing, martin Pettigrew. If you read his book the Roofing Machine, they have a version of an inside sales team and outside sales team. It's not the same, it doesn't sound the same. It sounds, it seems, like their inside sales team kind of takes over part of the, you know, part of the process. If the, if the outside sales rep can't close on it and I may be mistaken, martin can correct me in the comments if I'm wrong but but, but the but, but, these are all.
Speaker 1:There's so many different ways and I think it's it's fun, it's fun to iterate on these things, right? So now you know, maybe you know you read the roofing machine from Martin and you get the way that they did it, and then you go and look at the way that this company did it, and then you know, you kind of feel how your culture should be, because I think a lot of times it's a company culture thing too. Right, everyone's company is a little bit different. The people that they have on their team have different strengths and weaknesses. You know, from a football standpoint, you know, are you a running team or a passing team, to give a sports analogy, right, maybe understanding your team first. But, boy, you need those relationships right Like you need those relationships. You need to know that you're not the only one facing these challenges, or not the first person that has faced these challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that I think the key to that is humility. If you, if you're humble and you realize you're not God's gift to creation, you don't know it all. You've got a lot to learn. Like the rest of us, you're going to seek out wisdom and advice. The Bible says there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors. Man, I've learned the hard way. I need all the wise counsel I can get. So, putting yourself in a situation where you're seeking that and you're getting that, I can speak for me personally.
Speaker 2:The best things that have happened in my life have become because of people that I've come across, whether it's a sharp business mind, like one of my business mentors, or a great family man. I mean I have forever. I have imprinted in my mind a model of what a solid dad looks like, and he's passed away now, but he was the president of the largest privately held insurance firm in the US, so very busy, lots of demands at work. He lived in a very nice house in a fluent neighborhood in Frisco, texas. But, man, when you were with him this guy, his name is Dan Browning when you were with Dan, you were Dan. His name is Dan Browning.
Speaker 2:When you were with Dan, you were the most important thing in the world. I mean, it was almost like you felt like you were his best friend and his only friend, and he was like that with everybody. At his funeral there were person after person after person just in tears on the stage saying Dan made me feel like I was the most important person in the world. And Dan checked in on me one day and sent a text and said hey, bro, how you doing? And he just stopped by my office on his way home and prayed over me. Just amazing, right. And I got to see the way he interacted with his wife and how he was silly and joked around with her. I got to see the way he interacted with his daughters. It's the people you come across that are the difference maker and you've got to put yourself in front of these people to have these life-changing experiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and and and back to kind of what I think you know kind of alluded to earlier is that is how entrepreneurship is, this journey of personal development. That's all personal development, right, like in, in learning how to be a, a, a better version of yourself all the time. I know some of those people too that are and, and a lot of them are CEOs, like CEOs, true CEOs of large corporations. They will, they will. They're really great at asking you questions and they're really great at asking you great questions, and those questions lead to that feeling of man. They really, they really care about what I, what I think right, like and, and, and. I think that there's also a true intention there. I think that people that get into those most of those leadership positions, they have to care that much, and so they are that inquisitive about you from a personal level, all the way through your work skillset, and so that's awesome, man, I love that.
Speaker 1:Speaking about that, how you said he would stop in and talk to people more about other things that are just not work related, right, maybe? I know that you spend a lot of time from a leadership level and then from a um, just on a personal level. Just that, that life balance. Should I call it life balance, not work-life balance? Because I don't think there is a work to me, there's not a work-life balance because work is part of your life, right? So maybe I'll reframe it and just call it a life balance. How are you you know, I know you're doing a presentation here coming up, or if it may have passed since this episode I don't know when this episode is going to go out, but at Randy Brothers event about this balance and let's talk a little bit about that. How to you know how to how to build balance in your life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm giving a talk called how to avoid burnout as a business owner, and it's something that's going back to my time in healthcare. Physician burnout is a very prevalent topic of discussion. It's talked about at conferences. There's immense amounts of literature written on it. It's something that's been widely studied and it's a constant problem. Because physicians work long shifts. It's extremely difficult to have balance in life, and then they have the psychological pressure to save lives and make people better. And then they deal with insurance pressure to save lives and make people better. And then they deal with insurance related issues, just like roofing companies do. There's just a lot of pressure. So, but burnout if you're an entrepreneur or business owner, you run the risk of burning out, and that's a whole nother subject to go deep into. But there are signs and symptoms there Stress, you know, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, conflict with your spouse at home, all kinds of issues. But I had to learn that lesson the hard way, and I was an apartment manager back in 2009. I was on campus at Dallas Seminary getting a master's degree and I was the manager of the single students building. So they had an apartment building for the single students and they had an apartment building for the married couples. So there were four to 500 people who all knew me by name. So it's almost like having 400 employees, part-time employees, and so from five in the morning till 12 at night I'd have people calling me, texting me, stopping by. I'm on the way to go get groceries. I'm coming back in at 1030 at night. Hey, dylan, you got a minute. I call it death by God of minutes. So I started reaching a breaking point because I was not only being overwhelmed by all of these people who were reaching out to me nonstop, but I was also buried under the workload at Dallas Seminary, which is no joke. I mean, between learning Greek and all the different papers and stuff to read. I mean they bury you under books so much to the extent that your first semester they have a speed reading course, they want you to take semester, they have a speed reading course they want you to take. So, anyway, I was maxed out and I'm like my ship is sinking, this thing is not going to work. So I talked to again. We're back to relationships.
Speaker 2:I talked to the manager of the married couples building and I'm like Alex, how do you do this? Like, how are you not completely maxed out, like I'm burning out man, I'm only three months in and like I want to quit. And he's like well, do you have office hours? I'm like what do you mean? I'm in my office all the time, like I never stop. He's like no, no, no, no. Do you have office hours where you're in the office and outside of which you're not? And I'm like no, he's like all right, starting tomorrow, you need to post on your glass of your window of your office your office hours. He's like then you need to email the building and tell everybody inside of these hours, you can call, you can text, you can stop by. I am here for you. Anything you need outside of these hours, send me an email. If it's an emergency, call 911. And he's like and then you need to take the next 90 days to train your residents on this, because they're going to test it. They're not going to get it, it's going to throw them off. And sure enough, it took about 90 days and it took about well, hundreds of times of people coming across me and saying, hey, dylan, real quick. I mean I'd be on campus going to take class. And Dylan, real quick, hey, is this about the building? Yeah, okay, shoot me an email. Is it an emergency? No, okay, shoot me an email or I'll be in my office tomorrow at 9 am. It took hundreds of those and after a while, man, next thing you know, I'm walking around and nobody's stopping me, nobody's saying anything, and 90% of the time they never emailed me anyway. So I've carried that lesson.
Speaker 2:And now, man in business, I am all in during my office hours at work, I'm trying to grow a buying group, limitless roofing GPO. I want to grow it. I want it to be very successful. However, when I'm done, I want to grow it, I want it to be very successful. However, when I'm done, I get home, I grab my phone. I set it face down on the kitchen counter on vibrate. I'm not going to let this get in the way of my marriage or my role as a dad. I take my Apple watch, I turn it off, take it off, put it in the bedroom, and that's how I have life balance Work is done, and whatever hasn't been done, I can pick back up the next day.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's one of those aha moments, right? What would you say? I mean, you're really just setting boundaries.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's really what you're doing, man, it's just boundaries, and there's a book called Boundaries which is a bestseller, and now they got boundaries in marriage, boundaries in work, boundaries for everything.
Speaker 1:But that's essentially what it is is boundaries, and I think you need those for all the main areas of your life, your physical health, your family life, your job, all of that. So to me, this is a where family is a is a tough one, right, Like a lot of times it's, you know, especially when you're, when you're growing a business and you know everyone is on your team, is is contacting you all the time and you always have jobs to do and things like that. I see how you can set up the office hours for business. I see, now explain to me. To me it's kind of a reverse then for family, a reverse boundary hours, right, or is it like, how are you thinking of that? In the same context, how do you set up boundaries, I guess, how do you set up boundaries for your, for your family life, but then also for your family to understand your boundaries outside of family life? Maybe that's the the where I'm getting at is, how do you help, how do you set boundaries for your family, for the other things in your life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's. I think I think people call it rhythms, boundaries, whatever it might be, but I think you can boil it down to four areas in life. You've got your faith, your family, your fitness and your finance. So faith for me, my relationship with God, is number one. My girls are used to seeing me every morning. I got this old metal Bible stand my mom bought me when I became a Christian 20 years ago, went from being a passionate skeptic to a passionate believer. It was a process. God had to do another big thing to intervene in my life for that to happen. But my girls see me every morning with the Bible While I'm eating breakfast. I'm reading the Bible just to get some daily truth right. So my faith is critical to me. My prayer life, those are big. It's just a daily thing and I'm a pretty structured guy. So it's easy for me to do that every morning and just kind of have it on autopilot mentally. Then after that I go to the gym because who cares if I can grow a successful company if I keel over a heart attack in five years? So my physical health is very important to me.
Speaker 2:I eat the same two breakfasts. I've had the same two versions of breakfast for a year like decades probably. I either eat a bowl of oatmeal and a little bit of yogurt, or I have two pieces of sourdough bread with olive oil instead of butter and two fried eggs cooked in olive oil, and I've taken my cholesterol from 150 to 160 in 12 months. I take supplements and stuff like that. I go to the gym, I work out. I want to be healthy.
Speaker 2:My fitness, or my finance, is my work, what I do to make money. So I want to be successful there. I typically, you know I'm available for work between nine and five. I am not available before that or after that. My employees know that. Hey, if you send a Slack message at eight o'clock at night, I'm gone Like I'm not. I'll get back. I'll get to it tomorrow morning. It is not an emergency. We're not in the Navy SEALs. This is not a question of should I cut the blue wire or the red wire, or this bomb's going to blow up, so it can wait. So that's faith, family fitness, and then, yeah, the finances, the work, stuff, and then but my family knows that and that's something that I will not let anything get in the way of.
Speaker 2:I think business becomes an affair almost when your employees and your company is more important than your spouse or your kids. That's why, when I get home, I put this thing face down, because I don't want my precious three little girls, who are nine, seven and four, to ever think that for some reason dad is more attracted, this thing is more special to him than I am. When my seven-year-old's coming up and saying, dad, look at this charm necklace I created. I don't want to be like this, I want oh man, that's so cool, celeste, I love that, I love the colors, I love this. And I want them to have a healthy view of God too, and a loving God and a lot of that is the way I'm a father to them. So, anyways, it's a big deal to me, man, I'm a little extreme about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but so now the question is how do you like you had talked about the process that you went through of putting in the office hours and the 90 days what are some actionable steps that someone can take to start to build the boundaries around their faith, their family, their fitness and their finances?
Speaker 2:I think the easiest thing is a routine, and some people thrive with routines, some people don't feel boxed in. I've got a flexible but pretty simple routine. So I wake up every day. First thing is breakfast and Bible. That's my faith. Then it's family, because I'm still there and I'm hanging out with my girls, talking to my wife in the kitchen, the dogs running, whatever. That's family time. Then I go to the gym. That's my fitness. Then I and they they expect this and then I go to work and that's my finance. I leave work, I come home. I'm home by five 30 every night, unless I'm traveling at a roofing conference, which is on average six times a year, I'm home at five 30.
Speaker 2:My wife has already made dinner. She's putting it on the table by five 45. Dinner, she's putting it on the table by 545. All of us are sitting at the dinner table, no screens, no TV, no distractions, and we're just talking about how the day went. My four-year-old's telling crazy stories about her four-year-old experience at daycare. My other two are talking about stuff at school, relationships, whatever. We put our girls to bed and now we get into the marriage stuff. Our girls are in bed by 830. I've got an hour and a half to two hours one-on-one with my wife, who's my best friend, to sit and talk, to watch a show together, to do whatever together, and those, so all those boundaries are kept in place by that routine.
Speaker 1:Yep, how do you balance the business aspect, or how do you see roofing contractors balancing the finance aspect? Because that's what seems to bleed over into all of the other aspects of life, especially when you're kind of in startup and growth mode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the challenge is as soon as possible, you've got to get a good operator.
Speaker 2:A lot of guys that start roofing companies are visionary, entrepreneurial types. I know that's a broad, sweeping statement so there can be holes in that in different situations, but for the most part, if you start a business, you're driven, you're good at sales. You've got to get an operator, a business partner, a operations manager, somebody, and I think somebody that's worth even giving a little equity to at some point maybe. But you got to get that person in place so that the business is not you centric. If the business is you centric and you don't have systems and people in place to where you can leave for two weeks and it keeps running like a well-oiled machine, you have a you centric business and if something happens to your health or to whatever, your business is going to completely capsize. So I think that's the deal is as soon as possible. You've got to put those people, that team, in place, get that organizational chart there so that you can have those boundaries and that business. You're running the business. It's not running you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a hard hill to climb in the beginning. I think and I think that some of it, dylan, is around for me as a business owner early in my business ventures. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life and I've made all kinds of mistakes. But for me some of the early mistakes were I didn't know how to hire. I would hire somebody, not the person that I should hire. I would hire when I needed to hire. I wouldn't. I would hire versus recruit. Maybe that's a better way to put it Right. And and I think that that skillset in recruiting and finding the right person, how would, how, how would you advise that roofing contractor to go from being in that you centric business to turning it into that business, the the, you know, turning over those responsibilities that give you that that time back from that from from your business?
Speaker 2:Man? That's such a good question. Here's the problem with most roofing business owners, and my problem too, is we are good at sales, so you're going to interview somebody and you're going to sell them on the opportunity. So, instead of interviewing them, you're persuading them to step into that role and you're persuading them that they can be effective in it. So, going back to people, we need people who are much wiser, much more skilled at this.
Speaker 2:We just started using culture index, so Culture Index is an assessment similar to DISC and all the others. However, culture Index claims that they are 97% accurate, and I believe it because I've actually taken the Culture Index survey twice in 20 years and gotten the exact same result. What Culture Index does is it? It shows tendencies and traits. It's not about just personality, it's more about ways of relating tendencies and stuff like that. So we're interviewing people right now for a sales rep position.
Speaker 2:The first step, if they apply, is hey, this is great. Here's this short survey we need you to fill out. We get that, we send it to our culture index coach and then I'm texting him at the end of the day hey, can you give me a green light on whether to interview these five people and he's like no, no, no, no, and then yes and yes, or he'll call me and he'll say hey, this type, this is what we call a rainmaker this guy's going to make you a lot of money. However, here's some things to be aware of with this type, and they know that because they've looked through hundreds of thousands of these and they know that it rings true, and so that's been super helpful for us to clear the fog. And then so you can decide.
Speaker 2:You know you've got three areas of your business. You got sales and marketing, operations and finance. That culture index will completely clear the fog on hey, you just interviewed this person. They applied for this role, but really they'd be better in operations, and that way, you can start building your bench too. Like, maybe you're interviewing salespeople. Some of these people may be incredible operators and you can tell them that, like, hey, you're not really a fit for this role. However, you scored extremely high over here. I'd like to keep talking to you about maybe running our back office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the personality profiles are interesting, from DISC to COBE to Culture Index and all these different things. It is fascinating, man, and so what that makes me think of first is maybe you need to know who you want, right, Like, just like we know our perfect customer, like we know that we want to deal with this type of homeowner, we need to know who we want in our business. And you said, right, do you want a salesperson, an operations person, a finance person? Like which? What bucket are they in? What skillset do we need there?
Speaker 1:These are some of the things that we don't think about early on. I think I think it's like, man, I need someone to help me with. And I like what you said. You kind of sell them on the, on what they'll be doing. Like, oh, you could do all this. And you know, like, yeah, you'd be great at it.
Speaker 1:I think there is a sales aspect to recruiting, a strong sales aspect, but you're selling your culture and the opportunity for their growth in the company versus, you know, convincing them that they could do the job right. So, in these personality profiles, maybe that's a good place for people to start. It is okay. I need to know how DISC works or how Culture Index works, or you know how some of these things work so that when I go to get the person that I need so that's what I'm thinking of, because a lot of I think we make those early hiring mistakes and we hire the people that'll get us there, but not to where we really want to go, and so you know, what other advice could you give there? Ok, so they've learned how to use a personality test. What else can they do to find the right person for that seat?
Speaker 2:for that seat. Yeah, I think the next step is just to make sure you know finding the people shouldn't be that hard. Between ZipRecruiter and Indeed and LinkedIn and so on, you should be able to get way more applicants than you need. And then some filter like Culture Index and, by the way, if somebody joins our free GPO, they get a discount on Culture Index. We believe in it that much that we're using them ourselves. But after that, you need a solid training program for the next 90 days or you're just setting them up for failure.
Speaker 2:And I think roofing, going back to a broad, sweeping statement many roofing companies have an extremely poor training program and it's like, hey, ride around with me for a week or two and then you're off on your own, go, knock those doors. That's what I had to do. You really should have. I mean, you should have an online university. You should have very clear SOPs. Throw in a manual that's this thick at somebody that's great for them to go back and refer to. But you should have product knowledge on the roof system. You should have knowledge on the sales process, the scripts, and then you should test them on that. And now, with AI, you can have iterative AI that they can role play with. You can tell the AI what prompts you. I mean you should have a robust training system.
Speaker 1:You can honestly just go into chat GPT and say I want to build a training system for this. You know you're an expert trainer. This is I own a roofing company. I'm looking to build out a training system for my insert role here. Please ask me any clarifying questions that you would like that end of the prompt of please ask me any clarifying questions. Chat GPT will just start asking you the questions and start building out that plan. That's my friend, jonathan Mast. Check out his prompt engineering course. It's awesome. It's like $100 or something like that, maybe $150.
Speaker 2:Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1:It's that version of it, but I think that this is where we're going. We have this, we can use chat, gpt in so many ways and and Claude, and all the other large language models. Man, it's getting easier and easier in this business. Dylan, like what you know, I mean you said, like I was one of the first people you met and I was really friendly and, boy, that's how the roofing industry is to me, like it's been that way to me, right, it's just there's a culture in the roofing industry, there's other aspects to it that there's some really hard, you know, strong personalities also and some ego involved, which is, you know, I'm fine with playing in that arena because you know I'm a competitive person and but it's a fun competitiveness to me person, and but it's a fun competitiveness to me.
Speaker 1:And so you know, as we're, as we're, as we're, as we're building this out further now, how do we find those things in our life? Cause we can find the people for our business, to help help with our finances. We, we, we know how to recruit them. We're, we're looking for the right person. How do we take these same things and move it into, like, how do we have more structure around our family or our fitness, kind of thinking about these same, maybe similar models, right Like as we're. As are we buying our you know Dan Martell's buy your, buy back your time book kind of thing is what it reminds me of. In your finances, how do you apply these things to your faith, your family, your physical? How can we leverage? How can we use some leverage? It sounds like leverage to me. How can we have some leverage in those aspects also?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you just need to kind of grade yourself and, especially as men, we can be hard on ourselves, especially if you're the sole provider and breadwinner and stuff like that, but you really, I think. For me, going back to Dallas Seminary, I had a professor one day for the very first class and there was probably 100 students in the class and he said he wrote up on the board here's what it's going to take to make an A in this class. You're going to have to read these eight books, write these five papers, you're going to have to score a 98 or above on this test of whatever, whatever, whatever. And he's just going down the list and you're just like great, this is one of five classes. I'm already feeling overwhelmed. He's like, and he turned to all of us and he said however, some of you are married, some of you have kids, some of you have other responsibilities out of getting this master's degree. And his exact words were it would be a sin for you to make an A in this class. He said some of you need to go for the C. And I was like whoa, what is happening? My mind was just blown. He's like, because if you make an A in this class, your marriage could be on the rocks a year from now. He's like we've seen it. We've seen so many students come in and then they're getting a divorce a year or two later because they made getting an A that basically they're God, they made it the most important thing in life. And so I think you got to grade yourself.
Speaker 2:How is your marriage? Are you still dating your wife? Do you guys laugh a lot together? Are you keeping quick accounts, reserving conflicts quickly, or are you going to bed angry with one another two or three times a week Like, go for that A in your marriage?
Speaker 2:How's your health? How's your blood pressure and your cholesterol? Are you working out three or four days a week? Or health, how's your blood pressure and your cholesterol? Are you working out three or four days a week or are you working out once every two months? You got to take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:We're not made to have sedentary lifestyles. We're not. We weren't designed to sit at a desk all day. You know, hundreds of years ago, everything was manual. People were in amazing shape. How's your faith? What do you believe about yourself? What's your spiritual life? Just make a little report card and, man, if the only thing you're striving for, an a in his business. It's just time to make little incremental changes. I love the book atomic habits because it's like I don't have to make these huge changes. I can make a little change. So you know what? From now on, I'm going to do one lunch date with my spouse a week. Evenings are too hard. We're going to do lunch dates. Or from now on I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to start at two days a week for the next 90 days and I'm going to get a trainer. Just little changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, little little changes, but I love that. That's a. That must've been a like, an aha, that's a huge aha moment. Whoa, I can get a C moment. Whoa, I can get a C. Yeah, like, it's okay, like I'm still passing Right, like and and you know, maybe that's that that's a struggle in your business. You don't want to have a C business, but maybe that C in business is that you go from four to four and a half million this year. That's a C to you. Maybe a B would be you go to five and a half and an A you go to seven. Right, maybe that's your, your. Is that where I'm hearing? Like now you can say, okay, I'm all right, like in my fitness, the one day a week to the gym, or two days a week to the gym, that's my C, right, like, and if I'm, you know, working out with a trainer and doing all these things and now my and maybe I'm changing my diet more, now that's an A right Like, is that a, is that a? Am I down the right path there?
Speaker 2:I think that's great, yeah, as long as you're. The one thing you can't make an F in is your relationships. You know, my one of my business mentors lives in a very affluent area of Dallas where most of the lots are several acres and the homes are massive. He had a really good exit from an international company about 15 years ago and his neighbor across the street lives in what looks like a small castle and so I'm used to going to his house not the neighbor, but my friend's house.
Speaker 2:I used to go every week to a Wednesday morning men's Bible study and it was a bunch of retired guys that had had exits from their companies. Just great guys, very humble, generous men. And but one day I asked my buddy what's the story with your neighbor? There's this massive home I never see any lights on. I've been to your house in the morning, I've been in the evening. I've never seen any cars over there.
Speaker 2:He said, oh yeah, that guy owns hundreds of dental practices all over the U S, uh, but he's divorced, lives all alone and is never home. And I thought, wow, I'm richer than that guy and it is never home. And I thought, wow, I'm richer than that guy. Like I'm, I've got a healthy marriage. I've got three little girls that think I'm their hero. I've got a healthy relationship with God that I love, and that's because of his gift, not because of anything I've done. I'm richer than that guy. That guy's probably a billionaire and I've got more wealth in life than he does. I don't have anywhere near the kind of money he does and maybe never will. But, um, yeah, I just think you gotta make sure you don't make an F in that family, family area, man, and not to bring shame to anybody, cause if you've had some big setbacks, uh, just to pursue that, pursue health in that area from now on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome man. I think that's a kind of a great place to end here, dylan. It's been awesome having you. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast. Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast. For more valuable content visiting success podcast com 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.
