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 5 Hidden Bottlenecks Stopping Your Roofing Company from Growing with Jon Broce
Are you really ready to grow your roofing company? Or are you unknowingly stuck?
In this episode, Jim Ahlin sits down with Jon Broce—serial entrepreneur, former COO of Meredith Home Improvements, and co-founder of Day 41 Thrive—to uncover the 5 hidden bottlenecks that kill growth for most roofing companies.
You’ll discover the 5 core areas every owner MUST master:
➡️ Capture (Marketing)
➡️ Convert (Sales)
➡️ Create (Production)
➡️ Control (Admin)
➡️ Culture (People)
Jon shares the exact framework and chart he used to scale and sell a roofing company in 2024… and how YOU can use it to spot bottlenecks, remove them, and build with confidence.
If you’re tired of working 70-hour weeks, managing chaos, and feeling stuck, you’re not alone. Jon’s been there too. He’ll show you how to stop guessing, fix the root issues, and build a business that grows—on purpose.
🎯 Want to scale the right way and avoid the pain of dumb tax? This episode is your roadmap.
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How do you scale a roofing company to a successful exit and know you're ready to do it again? In this episode, we sit down with John Brost, co-founder of Day 41 Thrive, to dissect the five core areas every company must master before scaling Capture, convert, create, control and culture. John is a serial entrepreneur and former COO at Meredith Home Improvements, which he scaled and successfully exited in 2024. He now helps contractors get clear on when and how they truly need and are ready to grow. What makes John unique is his obsession with systems. He's not throwing out theory. He's giving you the exact chart he used to identify bottlenecks and scale multiple businesses. If you've ever felt burnt out or stuck, he's been there too.
Speaker 1:This episode isn't just about growth. It's about sustainable, intentional growth. If you want to know whether you're truly ready to scale, this one's for you. Let's dive in with Jon Brose from Day 41 Thrive. 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. Jon Brose.
Speaker 2:How are you, jimmy? Good brother Good.
Speaker 1:This is awesome. Wonderful to have you back.
Speaker 2:It's glad to be back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for those that don't know, john's been on the podcast a couple of times. If you haven't listened to the past episodes, go back and listen to those. We've become good friends over the years and our partners in a in a in a home exterior washing company called sure home pros. How would you describe it? Home services company? We'll say home services company, john, because it'll go beyond we're already, uh, starting out here, so, um, yes, sir, and now the founder of Day 41 Thrive.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, absolutely One of the founders. One of the founders.
Speaker 1:One of the founders, correct. Let's talk about your journey in roofing briefly, like over the last few years, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, if we go back to what 2014, I had, I I landed the first big boy job, if you will, right, like I'd work for the contractors and help them scale, but as far as on the roofing side, like I'd been a sales manager, sales trainer, sales person got into the business development side, became chief operating officer. Then I exited that company in 2019. So I was there for about five years and then I partnered up with my partner, ty Meredith, and we're still partners in a few other businesses. But I partnered up at MHI, which was Meredith Home Improvements, and it was, you know, his last name is Meredith, so he had purchased the company off his uncle in like 2011. And we were, you know, competitors for a while and he had seen the strategic growth stuff that we had done at the other company and I was like, hey, man, like you know, like how do we become friends first and then how do we become partners? And so we took a lot of the strategies and we built MHI. I became an owner and a partner there and then, january 2024, we successfully exited and sold the company.
Speaker 2:I stayed on for an extra year and a half or so, like 15 months, as the chief operating officer of Floridaida for vertex um and had a wonderful sunset. We always knew that, uh, my time was going to be there to help consolidate and get everybody on the same system. Once we get everybody in the service, titan, it's like, hey, it's like it's time for john to go on his next adventure. And that brings us to which is day 41 thrive and Sherwin-Pose, as you mentioned. So, yeah, yeah, man.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. One of the questions that I know you get and I've gotten a lot of you know that I think people need an answer to is am I like, am I ready to scale my company? I'd love to answer that question today and then maybe and then even move on to how to right. So let's start with am I ready, like it, when is a company ready to scale?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's a very broad question with uh, there's not a real narrow answer. So, um, when are the company ready? So we have what we call our four plus one. C's right. So we measure everything. So it's going to be catch or convert, create control culture, which, if you put it in into real words, I guess is going to be marketing, sales, production, production, admin and then people.
Speaker 2:So one of the first steps that we do is we help identify where those blind spots are and those gaps in each one of those segmentations. So a lot of people just focus on marketing or just focus on sales or just focus on, you know, whatever the financial controls, the, the kpis, but the real answer is it's, it's everything, you know. You have to get a good broad scale of where it's at. So we created our own growth gauge, if you will, plus a behavioral assessment where we develop a dope chart to get started, right. So we identified like areas, so like, if you think about a dope chart, you got xy axis is like what is the most prime person that's ready to go, and so we kind of started with is it clear or obscure, right? So like that's the first thing. So any sop, anything that we're asking, we're trying to identify is it very clear on what you're doing or is it obscure? Is it simple or is it complex? So, ultimately, if it's simple and clear, like this is easy to scale right. If it's complex and clear, you know.
Speaker 2:Let's say marketing, you know we see this a lot as like it's complex because they have 11 different marketing streams. It's complex but it's clear because they know their numbers and they know where they want to go. It's a little harder to scale but you can scale it right. And so if you take marketing, again, let's say that it's very simple. All they do is door knock, right, it's very simple. But they don't have any controls in place because they don't have any other revenue channels or any other way to bring in leads. It's simple but it's obscure because it's very hard to actually scale. Then if you go to complex and obscure, like it's going to be okay. So I don't know, the sales reps just do what they want to bring in leads, like we don't even know how we want them to get the leads.
Speaker 2:So we kind of identified as just like you know, just back in grade school, right a, b, c or d, and so we developed this dope chart that we've used for years and years and years. Like, anytime that we're analyzing a sop, right, we, we want to make sure that it's simple to understand and it's clear, so that the communication is there. So, and in the same thing with your leadership score and culture score, right, like you know, we will grade that as well. Like are they a very directive person? And like they don't have any empathy and don't you know, look like different types of leadership scores. So like, if somebody is very direct, so it's very clear, right, but it's complex because they don't have this back and forth with the employees as well. So, like it goes really really deep on to build this dope chart, if you will. And dope, if you know what that is, is data on previous engagements, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on friend Dave Carroll, that's, right.
Speaker 2:When Dave Carroll made that clear, right, but that's actually a military term, right, it's data on previous engagements. So, like you're just trying to identify where does everything lay and you're just doing a cluster, point, right. So you're just finding these clusters of data and that's what we do is we have a whole questionnaire and we take those answers and that clusters it on this data chain.
Speaker 1:So hearing what you're saying is the first thing is you need to look at these five areas of your company and be honest with yourself about each of these areas. That would be the first thing. And in collecting that data and looking at that data, hey, is our marketing? You know, where are we? Is it simple, is it complex? Is it clear, is it unclear? And now you know, let's start with marketing.
Speaker 1:What would be an example that you've run into with a company that it's unclear? Well, you kind of mentioned it, right, they don't know where their leads are coming from. That would make's unclear. Well, you, you'd kind of mentioned it, right, they don't know where their leads are coming from. That would make it unclear. That that's a really, you know, a really good one. I mean you, you guys worked with with us at Roof for Marketers and MHI. You know, for many years and and you know we, the goal was always clarity and where the leads were coming from, right, like we needed to know. Hey, were these Facebook leads coming? You know, are these Facebook leads? And then, how are they converting? Are these Google ads leads, the SEO leads, even down to your billboards and your yard signs and everything else. You're trying to get that clarity. What other things could someone look for in the marketing aspects? What are some obscure things maybe that they're not thinking of in the marketing aspect to that that they should be looking at to determine if they're clear, unclear things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it gets into the control section to like having real measured out KPIs, right. So you know like we want to talk about raw lead to set right, to set appointment, from the appointment to the actual demo, from which which is what is what we call price presentation, and then from the the demo to close. So so there needs to be more than hey, I got 100 leads and I closed 10 up right now. That, right Now, that is something to actually measure. But there's steps along the way so you have more clarity on is your marketing? Is it a lead problem? Is it an appointment setting problem? Or is it a sales problem? So it could be any of those things. So if I had to say I got 100 leads and only closed 10 of them, like sure, it's 10% close rate from from from raw to sale, but where did it break down at? And so that's really what we want to try to do is measure those micro well metrics here, if you will, just to make sure. Ok, so it's so, it's like OK, so it's speed to lead issue, right. So we got 100 leads, but it took us over one day to get back to all a hundred of these leads. So is that really a sales problem? And so I went from a hundred leads to only set 20 of the appointments, but I closed 10 of those. So I don't have a really a sales problem because I'm closing at 50%. So I have a set problem.
Speaker 2:And then this could be something as simple as you know having an AI agent to at least help set some of these things, or having people on the front end of the phones that are actually answering and calling back within the first three minutes. You know that will help set the stuff. And a lot of times Rufus say well, it comes in, I email it to the next sales guy. Rufus say well, it comes in, I email it to the next sales guy. The next sales guy is the guy that's going to. He's going to filter it however he sees fit and he's going to put it onto his schedule, which fits his schedule and not the homeowner's schedule. And so there's these little things that you can make these little changes and pull these levers to really maximize that dollar. So, from raw to sold.
Speaker 2:But also it's like what is your cost per lead? What's the cost per acquisition? You know everybody talks about those things. I go in as far as to say what's my cost per appointment, right? So, like, I want to measure what did it cost me to actually sit in this appointment? Because are these guys, you know, like, if I set this up and the sales guy gets there and he just doesn't sell it, like and he has a 10% closure, well, he's costing us money at $500 an appointment or $300 an appointment, like it's not a free lead to go out there and try to close it, like it's costing you money to generate.
Speaker 2:And then one extra step that most people don't do, which is an extra layer that we threw in about three to four years ago, is called NSLI, so it's net sale per lead issued. So once you issue that lead to the sales rep, right, closing rates, great, right. But what's his NSLI? Because, like you know, like, if he's closing all repairs and no replacements and his NSLI is under, let's say, $5,000, whatever the threshold is right. I'm just making that as an arbitrary number. But whatever you set your threshold is, we think healthy is above $3,500. Is it going to be healthy? Like, really stellar is above $5,000 or $6,000. I'm like that's a really good sales rep, but if he's under your threshold, okay, he's selling too many road repairs, I I need to raise my repair price, so it's all these little metrics that go in place. So it's so. You can't blame the marketer. I can't blame jim and brian for having bad leads, because I don't believe that there's such thing as a bad lead, right, if you, if you know how to maximize everything.
Speaker 1:But that's in the marketing aspect, and you know we're doing a lot of this in the RSRA too and helping people to become the GC of their own marketing and understand these metrics along the way. That aspect of am I ready to scale man, the front end there is very impactful in knowing those numbers and knowing the details along the way. It is not just how many jobs did you close from the leads that came in. You really get to identify the key areas of focus that you need to focus on. That you need to improve by looking at the whole thing right, like if you can't just say it's this big problem but you're not looking at all of the problems in between right, all of the problems in between right On the sales side what, what are some things that, what, what would be complex or or, or you know in the sales process. If you're looking at that like if you had a, you know in measuring that?
Speaker 2:how? How are you looking at that from the dope chart? Yeah, so it's going to be process, right? Is there a process? Right, so let's start with. Is there a process? Cool, so that could be simple or complex, right, but is there a process?
Speaker 2:So how simple is the process to implement? How fast can you spin up a sales rep? You know, are you taking ownership of that? Are you just trying to hire the problem away? Right, so, like if you don't have oversight of the sales team and you say I want to hire the problem away, Right, so, like if you don't have oversight of the sales team and you say I want to hire a guy because he has all this experience, that's a very obscure and complex system. You can't scale that. Right, I need to take over my own training and this is how I want. I want, I want you to sell the room. So you know, like, I'm not saying that we would never hire anybody with experience, but what I would say is, at our peak, with our 12 to 13 reps, like maybe two had experience in route, enriching. Everybody else was brand new, fresh off the street, because they didn't have any bad habits. So do you have a simple and clear process, or is it again? I go to the same analogy.
Speaker 3:It's simple because it's like okay, like just go sell it.
Speaker 2:It's very obscure because I don't have any training process or any of those types of things, so it's more of a process driven to understand it, and number of reps. And is there a leader in place? Is there training in place? Is there on you know? Are they? Are they bringing them on to the, to the team, the right way, with the right expectations?
Speaker 1:yeah. So again, understanding your processes, understanding that I'm starting to hear a theme to know if you're ready to scale. Do you, do you have your playbook right? Do you have your marketing playbook in a way to measure it? Do you have your sales playbook in a way to measure it? I would assume that moves on to production too. What are you looking at in the production process, like, how do you, what are you looking at to say, wow, your production process is more complex than simple, is it? You know?
Speaker 2:So, on production, I would say it's, it's. It's actually probably the most important part, other than within culture, because you can sell anything. I mean, how many sales courses are out there? Right, you can outsell anybody. So I did twelve million dollars in sales but I only installed three million dollars, like it's. It's a vanity metric, right, the sales side, right.
Speaker 2:So like what I think of it that way is, like you know, sales is for show, but the production is to make the right. That's how you actually bring money in. So, again, it's it's. What are you measuring? How are you measuring that? So we would measure all the way down to returns, right, so like, if you have a project manager in place that's dedicated just for that. So let's say that the company has sales reps who are also the collection agent, who's also the production manager. That's going to be a little bit. It's simple, but it's kind of obscure because it's going to be a CU rating. It's harder to scale because you don't have the controls in place. So it's simple, because I just got the sales guy, he just does it all. But it's also obscure because you have no control over the outcome and so like, that's the way that I think about on the production side is we like to bifurcate that out to where sales and the production teams do what they do the best. There's nothing worse than a sales guy being on a sales call getting a text that I need six pieces of drip edge and he's got to run an hour across town to go do that. He's got to cut that sales appointment short. If you're in sales, you should sell. Now. There's people that will not agree with this, but that's just the concept that we have always thought was the best.
Speaker 2:Is you separate it out? It needs to be a pass-off meeting, if you will, right? Once the sales is done, is everything done? Is all the pictures in? Is all the work orders correct? Passes it off to production. And that's where, in my mind, the real process comes in. Is are we auditing these jobs as they come in? Then we pass that on to the scheduling team. And then is the scheduling team reaching out to the homeowner on a consistent basis, right?
Speaker 2:Then you go to the next step. Are we ordering the correct materials? Are we auditing back to the original roof drawing? Right? Are we? You know? Are we pushing these things along and making sure that there's little to no screw-ups the day of the build, right now, don't get me wrong here. So if, if a sales rep sells, you know 50, you know in his clothing, his clothing rate, that's 100 day, like he did really, really well in production. If you get 80 of your stuff accomplished that day, that's like having 150, 50 percent close rate as a sales rep, because it's such a problem solving, ongoing thing that you got to solve every moment of the day. Right, because the crew gets stuck at the dump, you get a flat tire, they send out the wrong color, drip edge, ridge cap, whatever it is like.
Speaker 2:There's all these moving pieces, and so one of the things that we try to measure is what is your installed revenue? Right? Like, are you actually installing this? What is your collected revenue like? Those are the two big things that we're measuring every week, because then that way you can determine what is your actual backlog, right? So like, if I sold a million dollars but I installed 200,000, I probably have a backlog of 800,000. And if I can only install the 200,000 a week, guess what? I'm four to five weeks out now. So how do I increase the production rate to where I'm two weeks out, two weeks out, right, so you've got to be able to measure these things effectively. So what did I actually install this? I might not have collected it yet, right, because it's an insurance job or it's a big HOA job or whatever. But what's my revenue that I installed this week and, like that's one of the things that's that's hard to. It's not hard to measure, but it's hard to rack your head around why I measure.
Speaker 1:It makes a lot of sense and I think that there's a. There's probably a big gap there in a lot of companies, and this is why we're talking about this in terms of are we ready to scale this thing up? Right, like, if you can't measure your capacity, like you can't scale beyond your capacity to to, to be honest, right. So, if you don't, if you're, even, if you, man, I just need to add more sales reps, not not always. We just need to sell more jobs. Well, you got to be able to build those jobs and you have to determine, like you said, you know how many people, how many homeowners, are going to be okay with waiting two months to get a new roof roof built? Right, like, how many? Two, three months, if you have the capacity to only build x amount per week, man, you're in a lot of trouble. So, when we're thinking of and there's you know, kind of coming back to the theme of this conversation of of being ready to scale, being ready to measure that right, or having the proper measurements in place around production, to know, okay, okay, what's our capacity here? What, what, what are we able to do? What about on the admin side? Like, moving on to the admin side, like what are the things that you're looking at in terms of admin that? What metrics are you measuring? What are you doing on the dope chart to kind of determine those things?
Speaker 1:Before we carry on with the episode, let's give a shout out to one of our sponsors. I talk to contractors every day that feel stuck, not because they're not working hard, but because they're missing the structure to grow without chaos or their culture's falling apart, because their team's unclear, unaligned or just burned out and when change hits, they're reacting instead of leading because time and priorities aren't under their control. Day 41 Thrive helps to fix that with proven strategies for growth, culture and leadership that actually work, ready to thrive beyond the storm. Visit the link in the description or visit the Roofing Success Podcast website on the sponsors page to start your journey today. What about on the admin side? Like, moving on to the admin side, like what are the things that you're looking at in terms of admin? What metrics are you measuring? What are you doing on the dope chart to to kind of determine those things?
Speaker 2:But this one is is is important as well. So it's measuring their reporting packages, like, are they on cash basis or the other like gap accounting? Like either either one is fine, but how are you? How are you measuring? Are you? Are you looking at this stuff weekly or just at the end of the month or at the end of the year? It's like, hey, I'm throwing money at it and and just spray and pray, right, like that's what we don't want, right, what what we're looks. Just like that's probably the mechanism to help you, like start to launch.
Speaker 2:Is I know my numbers, right, because now I could just pull a lever. Right, I know my, my cog. I know my, my, my overhead, right, I know everything involved there. But at the end of the day, it's like, if so, if I can't control what my, what my profit is going to be like, I won't be in business for very long, and so I don't want to be that guy, right, that goes out of business in two to three years. So the first thing I'm going to learn is going to be QuickBooks.
Speaker 2:How do I understand what a journal entry is Like? What does this really mean? Like, do I have cash in the bank to actually do this, because cash in the bank on a cash basis doesn't mean I got cash in the bank to actually invest in something, right, because I've taken a down payment or I'm not completed on this job. You know like it's work in progress and so you got to understand the financials to make good decisions. You know it's kind of like with with your point a minute ago is I don't want to hire a bunch of sales guys to keep doing sales at the problem if I can't get the work done. So I got to find that bottleneck and the only way to measure that is in your financial. So I got to find that bottleneck and don't want to measure that as in your financial reporting. So if I don't know what what my cost of goods are, like my labor, my material, like how do I reduce that and not have to raise prices? Right, it's OK to raise prices.
Speaker 2:But the first thing I'm going to look at is how do I lower my, my cogs first, and it could be little things, like I said earlier about like measuring returns right, it's like we would pay commission to the production team for the percentage of returns, right, and then it cut my cogs down, right, even though it became a variable expense and that's the other thing too it's fixed very, very. I love the variable expenses because when you look at your reporting package at the end of the month, like if we did well, well, guess what Commissions went up, so it's still a good percentage. But if we did bad, well, guess what Commissions went down, or these variable expenses went down. And so it doesn't look like this on a cash basis. It looks more like a wave of like. Ok, like January is a bad month, but it's a bad month across the company. So we love variable and then no cap on things, so it's fun.
Speaker 1:And so in admin, in that admin role, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, like your office manager, you know people working around the office and things like that, but you're talking about even going you know it's your finance A lot of that category that you're talking about even going, you know it's it's your finance A lot, of, a lot of that category that you're talking about is around finances, sounds like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's finance and SOP. But I think departmentally, if you break it up like sales will probably have a salesperson, sales coordinator. That's kind of an admin or sales admin. On the production, it's the same thing the production manager and the production admin. So yes, that's part of it, but it's more of the control of the administration. The back end making good, good decisions. It's not just who you hired in that department. So yeah, yeah what?
Speaker 1:now? Let's move on, I guess, to determining if you're ready to scale around culture. Yeah, and culture is a vague, you know, I mean, it's kind of, you know, it's a word that's kind of thrown around a lot. It potentially is not as tangible in its metrics as a lead to book appointment to say, right, like for production, you know, returns to right, like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, there's, there's, there's less of those like real, finite quantitative measurements. Yeah, what are we what? How are we determining if we're ready to scale around culture?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's the most the complex of this. Um, and how do you put objectivity to a subjective matter, right? So a, so a lot of people and this is just being honest here think that their culture is awesome. Because we're family owned and operated, we do all these wonderful things, we have a fun.
Speaker 2:Like the real culture metric that you want to try to measure is when somebody walks into your office, you close that lid on the laptop and actually listen to them, or do you just ignore them and continue to work? Don't get me wrong. I believe that you have to separate that out, right, like having distractions and things like that. So, like it's simple things that you can do I mean, since I'm giving you kind of an answer here instead of the question to it but like it's simple things that we that would, that we want to measure.
Speaker 2:Like, if my door is closed, like I'm in a meeting, I would put a code out on the door that they could scan and get on my calendar. It seems formal, but it also gives them a voice. If my door is open, walk in any moment at any time, right? And so how do you make sure that your door is open more than when it's closed, and so that's the hard part. So we developed what and I've had this for about the last 10 years, but it's called aep, so it's attitude, effort, performance, so we're trying to take the subjective matter of culture and put it into an objective standard.
Speaker 2:So we actually have a blind peer-to-peer test that we do based on their attitude, their effort and their performance, so to see if the culture is ready, right, this is like step three in the testing. You test the entire organization, and it's a blind test. Nobody knows who voted who or what, and then they ask you know, it's 33 questions, right, and every one of them is worth three points, except for one. It's four, it's on 100 percent scale, and we even vote on the CEO all the way down to the field rep, and because, like as a sales manager, I got such an Elaine in a channel at one time that my sales guys are killing it. Right, they're closing, they're closing, they're closing, we're doing our job. But when they were talking to the admin team or the production team, there was absolute jerks, and like I didn't realize, I'm like no, he's good to me, what are you talking about? I was so. I had blinders on, and so being able to measure that effectively is very, very difficult, but we have a way to do that.
Speaker 2:Back to the original part of the question, though, is like part of this assessment and culture is knowing that your culture is not. We call it MVV. Right, mission, values, vision, like people. Like, our mission was never to the customer, my mission was to the employees. Right, our values weren't to the customer, our values were to the employees. The vision was never to the customer, it's to the employees.
Speaker 2:What does it really matter to the customer what my mission and vision is? I mean, I know it sounds weird, right, so we have a very obscure way of looking at it, a very different way of looking at it, but we wanted to make sure that employees were the people. So, but we stuck to the mvv, right, so if it didn't meet our values, we had to cut that person loose. Period, like it was not, even it wasn't negotiable. Right, because everybody's watching. If you want to build a, a team where, where people will run through walls and I feel like we had that at emhi like we talked to, I talked to all of our leaders and everybody was there it's like. It's like we, we built this culture where their voice meant something, but when we said no, it was okay because they understood why. Right, so like that's the way that we look at it.
Speaker 2:So if you want to build that culture where they run through walls, right, you really have to dig down deep, and that's where it starts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's hard to measure, but there are definitely things that you can, that are there to measure against, to understand if your culture is there. Because all of these, the four plus one, right, the four main things plus culture, as you had mentioned, it's four C's plus one they all have to be in place. How much in place, john, to say, hey, I'm ready to scale. Do you need to be at a? Could you be at an 80% on one and a 60% on another? Or do you need to be at 100 percent ready on all of them? Because you know how we do it, man, we build the plane on the way up sometimes right.
Speaker 2:That's a very good question, right? So you could be a D and still scale, yeah, well, you have to have a very clear blueprint and path. So I think it's a great question. So I hope I didn't scare anybody away by saying that the number one thing, no matter what and it really goes into the culture, but it's going to be extreme ownership in the owner itself. They have to be ready to change, they have to want to change and they have to understand that there's going to be a lot of pain in this growth. There's a lot of pain in this growth. There's a lot of pain in that growth, right, and you're going to lose some people on your team that you've invested in and that you really wanted to be there, but they're holding you back and that's tough to say it.
Speaker 2:But in the original side of that, if you want to scale the company, you have to make very hard decisions and change management has to be the forefront of your um, of your mind, because, like when it's just you and two people, you're, you're floating around on a rowboat, right, you could move directions, the current, you follow, the current that you could go once you have a 30 man org, let's say you're on a battleship right. It takes a little bit of time, planning strategy, to turn that ship to go down a different channel, right. So you have to get the troops on board. There's a whole new mindset that you have to do, but it has to start with the captain. If the captain is not ready, right. If the captain is not ready to make that change and to have those hard conversations and to put the SOP in place and to measure that SOP in place and to measure everything effectively, then you're not ready to escape. That's the number one thing. So all these other scores help, right For us to know where the blind spots are at.
Speaker 4:But the number one thing is is that captain ready?
Speaker 2:mentally Want to actually escape.
Speaker 1:So now that leads me to what do you feel gets the captain ready? What have you seen? What did you see in yourselves, in Ty, in other successful owners, jason, and all these guys or people that you've worked with on the consulting side? What? Why is I'm going to put it this way? What? Why have you seen in a lot of these owners who make that decision we're going in this direction? What? What is that? Have you seen it? More of a financial motivation, of a of a purpose driven motivation, like what do you? What is the motivating factor? That? That that that gets the captain ready in a lot of cases.
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Speaker 2:in a lot of cases, yeah, it's a great question, the, the, I'd say the the top few things are going to be. One is they're tired, right, they're fighting the storms. They're tired, right, they're fighting the storms. They're doing everything and they're and they don't know how to delegate Right. So that's one of the big, the big things is learning how to delegate. They don't trust right, they don't trust people. That's why you got to have a process and trust the process. But most of them want freedom, and it's not financial freedom specifically, but they want freedom from owning a job to actually make it make an impact.
Speaker 2:The people who are looking to make true impact on the community, on their team, on their family. They're typically tired, like they tried everything there. Their pride's been broken, like, which is a good place to actually be, because now you can learn to be an empathetic leader and make hard decisions. And sometimes people you're making the best decision to let somebody go because they're not happy on your team. Anyway, they're bringing down three other people, but they're worn out down. You know three other people so, but they're worn out.
Speaker 2:I'm I don't know if that's the right, the right terminology here, but kind of like you know, when I was writing the book. Like you know, don't get thrived through storms. So those were the things I was thinking about is like we developed these systems because we were tired. You know we were because life's a storm. Right, we're either in the middle of the storm, coming out of a storm or going into another storm. These storms just keep hitting you and hitting you, and hitting you, and hitting you, and if you don't know how to navigate that and and and have the right compass and the right blueprint, you just get worn out. And so being able to put yourself into a, a stoic mindset of hey, like this too shall pass. You know, if, if, if it's great, it's great. If it's bad, it's bad, it just is what it is.
Speaker 2:And I know that's like an overused term, but like, how do you get on an emotional intelligence level? That's what it is that they're really searching for. And the bottom line of is how do I become more emotionally intelligent? Right, and that's the key that unlocks the growth. It's like I'm tired.
Speaker 2:How do I not get upset about everything that comes and goes? How do I lead, lead a team effectively? We're getting ready to run to the side of a mountain here, but I've got to turn this ship right and in the next 90 days, how do I make that turn? That's where most guys are at. And then you know and it's sad honestly, because you know that's why most businesses fail is they don't have that right focus. Yeah, and as I hired my friend, I saw a lot of potential in him, but he's the anchor that's turning the ship around in a certain way. So that's what I would say is that the catalyst is they're tired and they want freedom and they want to break free and work on a business instead of in a business and make impact in those around them.
Speaker 1:I love what you said, that trust comes from process, trust with our team, because we have a level of knowledge or and a and a, a love for our business that other that your team members will not have, a love for our customers that your team members will not have, right, we can't or I shouldn't say will not have, which we shouldn't expect them to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, like we can't expect them to love our business the same way we can't expect them to have, we can't expect them to love our business the same way, we can't expect them to love our customers the same way or appreciate our customers the same way we do. So that lack of trust in your team becomes that roadblock to moving the business forward, or working on the business versus in the business, because you have to be so involved in everything. So the trust comes from process. I love that because if you have the process now you've trusted that you have put the things in place to take care of your customers, to take care of the mission of the company, to be able to work on the business, how do we go from that assessing our readiness to scale into scaling? Let's move into okay, we, we've assessed it, we think we're ready, we're, we're, you know we're. We understand that, that it comes from process, comes from metrics and measurement. Now let's move into how do I scale.
Speaker 2:yeah, so I want to hit one thing real quick. You said there, though, jim too, because I think it was important and I don't want to just go over it. So one thing that you said too, that we really talk about a lot is expectations and you know, and what is an expectation versus what? Did you agree, right? So if you don't have clear expectations and an agreement, right so, like my, my sops are, I mean you agree to do this, right? So it's not like it's not an expectation that I didn't verbalize. But back to the expectation thing too is like, how do you expect a, a employee, to 5x what a normal person would do if you're only doing 1x, first of all? So, second of all, with that too, is you can't expect the employees to be the same as you. So the expectations as an owner is like hey, this person, why don't you take care of this customer as much as I would have taken care of? Well, the real answer is that you didn't take care of the employee the same way that you want them to take care of the customer. Henry Ford was one of the best that I've studied a lot, right? So I mean you can love or hate Ford, I drive a Dodge, but anyway. But Henry Ford, when it came to culture and people and it it's. It's often overlooked like, yes, he created the assembly line and not the car, but he really created the 40-hour work, work week and he created a culture where he invested in the people and then the people invested in the product, which invested in into the customer. So once you get to a certain spot, you're no longer the customer service interface.
Speaker 2:My new customers became my leadership team. That was my customer. How I treated them is how they treated the next customer, which was their leadership team or the direct customer. So you have to change that site to not be so far at the end for just the customer. My new customer is like, how do I serve my leadership team? Right, because when I serve them they serve the next leader or the customer. So that's servant leadership, that's being an empathetic leader and that's extreme ownership. That doesn't mean that I won't talk to a customer, an actual, like paying customer. But when I changed my vision from just the customer only to how do I serve my team, they became my customer. So how do I get them to 2x, 3x, 5x expectations? Is they became my customer.
Speaker 2:But if, right now if they're just a C player or a B player. I'm first going to examine myself. What have I done, like where have I messed up? Where have I not given you what you need to succeed? And so I think that goes to part of your question is how do you do this? First is like if you jump into the book that we have, but it's self-examination. You have to examine yourself first, like where did I get where I'm at? How do I go to the next level? Right? So you have to self-evaluate. Once you self-evaluate.
Speaker 2:That might be through a coach, through your church, pastor, somebody, but you have to self-examine where I'm at in my life, where I want to go. That's the starting point, because if you want to lead people and not just make money, because people are over-profit, if you want to lead people and make impact and change other people's lives, it starts with you. And it's the old adage of when the airplane is going down I could put my oxygen mask on first, so I can help everybody else. That's the same thing. You've got to work on yourself first. That's how you start, that's the first step.
Speaker 1:I agree, man, that that self work, preparing yourself for this journey, right, Like if you're not ready, you're, you're not going to do it.
Speaker 1:It's not like you're gonna have a lot of challenges.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you mentioned was putting the focus on the team, and that's what I've seen it with a lot of good owners. Is that, like when businesses get started, I say I've said this probably a lot on the podcast, but when we start businesses, we'll make a living a lot of times and then we get to this place where we're making a living, a good living, and then all of a sudden, there's maybe, potentially, hopefully, you get to a point where there's some excess. You're like, wow, I don't really need any more, like financially right, but through that process you build this skill set that what you can do for others is tremendous, like the, the, what you can do for your team changes. And so now, when that mission shifts from your financial gain to their or your financial and and personal growth, to their financial and personal growth, wow, like I've seen some shifts like it's crazy when that happens. So understand yourself and and then you know, understand where you want to take this ship and lead it. What are some tangible things that they can do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a mindset shift, right? That's the first thing, um, and next thing is find a good mentor, um, that that you can trust and look up to, not because of their sales metrics, because of their vanity metrics, all the other things, but people that. So we are the sum of the five closest people, right, and so so I don't take what's the right word here. I don't take what's the right word here. I don't take advice from people that I don't want to be, yeah, right, and I don't take criticism from somebody I wouldn't want to look up to. So, and usually, when you find that right five in your circle, like, you become that sum of those and this good or bad, right, it's negative and positive. So you got to be very mindful of of who you, of whose advice that you take, um, and not all advice fits you. So the first step I would say is find a good coach or mentor consulting team, like that's. That's one of the things that we do. One of the things that we do as well, as, after this assessment is, you know, and then we start to work with you, is we got the people side, as we say, right, or the personal, on the development side. That's why I partnered up with Jeff Vaughter. So if you're ready but your mindset is just a little bit short of getting there with change management, we will put you through that first, because whatever you try to implement after, that is not going to matter.
Speaker 2:So it's got to be a mindset shift first, um, and then like the tangible things are going to be, you know, make sure you start measuring actual metrics, like go in and do the hard work, like let's do the five years of historicals and like one little tip with everybody out there, the first thing that we do when we start to build a one historicals, and like one little tip with everybody out there, the first thing that we do when we start to build a one-page plan and like build out budgeting and all this other thing is, I want to look at the historical. So if you, if you've been in business for 30 years, don't, you, don't, you don't have to go that far, but let's go back just five years. Right, and how much revenue did, did I do in january in year one, two, three, 3, 4, 5? February year 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. March year 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So we'll start to trend right. Notice these trends.
Speaker 2:And so now I'm going to go what's my percentage of business? Instead of saying I want to do $1.2 million this year at $100,000 a month, what is my normal trend? So in january I normally do twenty thousand dollars and not a hundred, right? So my percentage of business is this is two percentage, not ten percent, and so that's the way that we want to look for trends like that's. The first thing to do is go find those numbers. What's my historical data? Right? That's like step one. Then you want to back into the stuff that we've talked about with the marketing and the sales and the production rates. Like once you start to know that now you can have control over the company but those are usually the first tangible steps is mindset, know, know the historicals. Then start to build around marketing, sales and the production side to where you can have an FRP or a financial reporting package.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's it. Knowing the historical, that's an important thing that I think is overlooked a lot because, man, when you make that decision I want to go from a $4 million company to a $10 million company it's managing your own expectations in a way. Right, like you know, how'd you get them for? Did that for take you 10 years? Like, and what you know, and and and how did you do? Were there some ups and downs in there? You should have some expectations around the ups and downs that'll. That'll happen between the four and the 10 or wherever you're going. Right, then you've looked historically. Now we got to start looking forward into planning, I would assume right, I think we talked about this before like a 30-day, 90, 90 day, one year, three year plans. How are you building those out? I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors.
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Speaker 1:You've looked historically.
Speaker 2:Now we got to start looking forward into planning, I would assume right I think we talked about this before like a 30-day, 90-day, one-year meeting, like, hey, what do you want to do? So well, you know, in three years, like, I try not to go all the way to five, so I try to go to three. Well, I'm at three million now and we want to be at 20 million in three years. Cool, how are you going to get there? So, and then we have to work our way backwards and it's like well, so to get to 20 million, we've got to do X. This is our average job price, right? So our average ticket, if you will. So you've got to sell X amount of jobs to actually get there. And so I bring it down to the realization of OK, so do you have $7 million in CapEx to invest? Like, well, no, I'm like, well, then you're not going to go from three to twenty and three years unless you've got money out of pocket to spend on infrastructure now. So why don't we get into the realistic side of this and say, okay, so 30 organic growth should be a minimum standard, right?
Speaker 2:30 to 50 is where most people should land in growth every year. So if you're at three million, right, and you know like it's, it's easy to double from one to two. It's easy to double from two to four. From that point on it's like 30 percent organic growth. Because now I've got to put in SOPs, I got to hire people, I got to train people, I've got to work on the people aspect, I got to work on my leadership skills. That four to 10, man is like a hard stretch. It's a hard stretch. So, as a roofing company owner, you probably make less money at 10 than what you did at four. So make sure that you're ready to do that, to make less money or at least the same money. Just because you got more in revenue doesn't mean that you're making more money to bring into the household. So I think that that that's one of those expectation things. So 30% organic growth. So we would break it down.
Speaker 2:So okay, so let's set a 50% growth goal, knowing that we're setting our budgets at 30% growth. So I did $3 million. I'm setting it 4.5 for year, one right of this new growth, like so. So that's our growth goal. I'm setting budgets at 4.1. I'm not setting the budgets at 4.5. Well, what if I fall short? What if something happens? So I try to give them more realistic ways of getting there. And then so so I'm gonna go from the 4.5, what's next? Okay, so you can do two and a quarter more more. So now I want to go to 6.7 or 7 million, right, so you can get there by year 10, you're, or by by year three, you'll probably be at 10 to to 12 million if you're three now, if you, but it's going to take six months of cleaning everything up and then that's the starting point, right, once you've launched. Okay, now I'm ready to grow.
Speaker 2:Three years you can go from from three to ten easily, but it's there's a lot of growth pains and involved with that. So that's what I would say is like. So what we do is we come in and we start at three years and work our way backwards. Once we work our way backwards, then we set a the realistic. Let's go to 12 million in three years instead of 20. Okay, what does that look like in year one? So now it's 4.5 this year. What's it look like in Q1, q2, q3, q4?
Speaker 2:Now I've got quarterly goals, okay, so what's my next 30-day sprint? Right? So what's my 30-day goals and the reason why you want to have this, like in my world as a strategic growth advisor, if you will this is the most important part is 3, 1, 90 and 30 all have different meanings. I don't share the three year goal with the field reps or with the sales reps, right? So you have to understand that you can't share the full vision with everybody. Their vision has to fit inside of your vision and they have to understand and own it. So you got to know where everybody lands, right? So, like I, go to sales managers. Well, sales managers they see the one year and 90 day, but they're focused on the 90 day as well as the 30 day. That's what their daily focus is on. They understand that there's a one-year goal. Then the general manager they're focused on the one-year and the 90-day. Yes, they got to drive home the 30-day goals, but their main vision is one year. Then you go to the three-year. Now it's C-suites and owners are three years and five years.
Speaker 2:You got to look at the full vision and work your way back, and most guys don't do that. They just start throwing spaghetti at the wall and with T on my team, she's phenomenal. She used to say I hated her a bowl of spaghetti and asked her to lay it all out. She was right, though, but she's an operational genius anyway. So, when it comes to SOP and and implementation like she was just the bomb and still is the bomb and she's on our team as well, but like a bowl of spaghetti, how do you untangle the spaghetti and put it down? Right, that's what you need. An implementer that's what you need. It should be the integrator. I'm top of funnel, I'm throwing out all the right and you know it's funneling down. It's like how do you actually integrate this? And put the details too?
Speaker 2:and that's where you got to find the right people and be able to communicate that clearly, simple and clear yeah, the right people.
Speaker 1:That's a tough one, man like. I think that's the biggest challenge for everyone is finding the right people.
Speaker 2:Well, and two is you might not find them, but you find the personality and you help build them. Yes, right, so you just find the right personality. So, like I personally don't like resumes, like I look just to see like work, history and that, and that is that they've been gainfully employed. Honestly, like the, some of the best people has come on to our team and this is going to sound crazy, but some of the best people are people that that their resume was. I was here six months a year, year and a half six months a year. You're not like they were, but they're finding, they're trying to find the right guidance and they're in their mid-30s or their late 20s and it's like those people that come onto our team, stay and don't leave because we give them that.
Speaker 2:So I'm looking for personality. Right, it's not because they're not employable a lot of times. It's not because the college you know was or wasn't a thing, it's. You know what's their personality Like? Are they telling me the truth? Do? Are they fitting into my core values? Right person, right bus, wrong seat occasionally, so you can move the seat.
Speaker 1:How do you? What are those personalities like? What is the personality that you're looking for?
Speaker 2:that's a great question. So one one is approachable. Are they approachable? Can you actually talk to them? Are they? Are they going to be open and honest in all situations? Listen, like, if you mess something up, it is OK, we can figure it out. If you lie about it and mess it up, that's the problem, right? So open and honesty, being approachable, just having a positive mental attitude Right, so open and honesty, being approachable, just having a positive mental attitude Right, the PMA is really important in our organization.
Speaker 2:It's like how do we always stay positive and keep moving the ball into the future? And so and I want problem solvers, I want the solution based sales, right, I want solution based people. Like don't just come with a problem. So, like, learning to delegate that. Like well, what have you tried? What do you think that we should do? Let's do that like that's how we've solved most of our issues. And so you want people that can stand on their own feet and sometimes it takes time to get them there, but it's if they start out with a positive attitude, they're approachable and they're honest. Like those are the three core things. Like I can work around. You know a skills gap, it's a will gap.
Speaker 1:I, I think, work around we got the sure pups in the background yeah, they're out there in the background yeah, yeah, to wrap this up, john, like how could you summarize this for someone, like you know, at a high level? You know we're talking about determining if you're ready, you know, preparing yourself for scaling, and then the the actual implementation of everything into scaling. How how can you summarize that for for kind of, as you know, for for someone as a quick action plan?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say that what we help people do right in in that action plan is we help you stop guessing, we help you ID all of the blind spots and the funnel points and all those things. Let's build a real plan, like a real one-page plan, a real you know plan to actually get there. Um, that, that way you can grow the actual business. And then the main thing is quit paying, quit paying dumb tax, right, like we've already paid that tax. I've already messed up enough.
Speaker 2:Listen, so I can tell you what failure looks like. And I can tell you what failure looks like. And I can tell you what success looks like, right. So success is just a bunch of layers of failures and eventually you finally get it right. And I think that's where we can really help people is know that failure is okay, you're going to fail, but that's okay, right, that's just part of the growth and the personal growth. And you know I've made a lot of bad decisions in my life. I made a lot of bad things in, uh, in business. Like you know, it just happens, you know. But like we can at least tell you what not to do. We might not be able to tell you what to do, but I can tell you what not to do, like.
Speaker 2:I did that terrible idea, right, um, but I wouldn't just say it that way. It's more kind of like hey, it's like what do you think the at what do you think this will result in? Right, so, if you did it this way, if, if you don't take action, what does this do you know? So it's, it's those types of things, man. But yeah, like just stop guessing, man. Like Just get your freedom back.
Speaker 1:Don't be tired, that's awesome. Down in the description there's a link to Day 41. Thrive, john, it's always a pleasure man. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast.
Speaker 4:Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast. For more valuable content, visit roofingsuccesspodcastcom. 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.
