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
From Roofing to White Glove: How These Founders Are Redefining the Industry with Zoe Boothe-Jarrett & Alec Eliasson
Most roofing companies promise great service. But Alec and Zoe actually deliver it—every step of the way.
In this episode, you’ll see how these lifelong friends teamed up to launch East Coast Roofing Systems near Philadelphia. Instead of doing business the old way, they built a white glove experience that makes homeowners feel safe, informed, and cared for.
You’ll discover how they:
- Use drones, automations, and clear systems to remove friction.
- Price every job with precision (not by the square) so the homeowner knows exactly what they’re paying for.
- Communicate so well that customers never wonder what’s happening next.
Their story proves that roofing isn’t just about shingles. It’s about creating a sure thing for your customers—and scaling a brand that earns trust fast.
If you want to see how modern systems and blue-collar execution can work together to set your company apart, don’t miss this one.
Links:
https://eastcoastroofingsystems.com/
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https://www.facebook.com/eastcoastroofingsystems/
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What happens when two lifelong friends join forces to disrupt the roofing experience? In this episode, we dive into how Alec and Zoe built East Coast Roofing Systems to deliver a white glove experience in an industry known for anything but From dynamic automations to granular pricing models. They are building a business where every touchpoint is intentional. They are building a business where every touch point is intentional. Alec and Zoe are co-founders of East Coast Roofing Systems near Philadelphia, with backgrounds in manufacturing, distribution, design and real estate. They're not just roofing contractors. They're systems thinkers, building a scalable, customer-first brand. Their obsession with clarity and precision is evident in everything from drones and photo reports to SOPs that function like assembly lines. They believe roofing isn't just about shingles. It's about eliminating fear and friction for the homeowner. If you want to see what happens when white collar systems thinking meets blue collar execution, this episode is a must listen. Let's get into it with Alec and Zoe from East Coast Roofing Systems.
Speaker 1: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. Today we got Alec and Zoe East Coast Roofing Systems. How's it going? Guys. Hey Jim, how are you Thanks for having?
Speaker 3:us. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk a little bit about East Coast Roofing Systems. You guys are where, right outside of Philadelphia.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we service Southeastern Pennsylvania. Okay, it's our market, yep.
Speaker 1:All right. How'd you guys get started? How did this relationship come to be?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we can both. We both have different backgrounds, I guess, so we can chime in, right, so I, we've been friends for a long time, right, maybe now it's 20 plus years traveling, unfortunately. So I went to Temple University, went to college for landscape architecture, graduated, got a job in Center City working in an architecture firm, worked there for eight or so years seven, eight, seven, eight years, something like that as a senior project manager Right, worked on like commercial, institutional projects, like corporate campus stuff, like Apple, microsoft type of stuff. Like, none of my projects are in Pennsylvania either, to be honest, and love the work. Right, super interesting, super fun, super engaging.
Speaker 4:I was just burned out that's the short of it right, and hours were brutal. Money was not commensurate with the hours. Right, my wife and I wanted to have a family. Right, we wanted just the stereotypical stuff and wanted to not live in the city anymore. Nothing against the city, that's fine In the city. Right, have family close by that whole thing, right, so Right, family close by that whole thing, right. So, um, uh, right. So alec and I conversations right, starting up, starting up a business roofing um, for a number of reasons, uh, happened to be our widget, right, so it's a wig. Right, we're entrepreneurs. It's a widget um to us. Very much so, um, right, so transition period right, I was, uh, teaching at temple as a professor for five or so years, um, during that transition period, because there's spare time there too. Right, as you're starting out. Um, thanks, um, I'll, I'll forget you here. Yeah, I too chime in yeah.
Speaker 3:So, um, I was a little bit more so in the industry. I went to Penn State, graduated 2014, came out immediately, started working for a shingle manufacturer and I was in kind of the boots on the ground as a rep calling on contractors in northern New Jersey, and I'll tell you what. That will toughen your skin up and give you a rougher individual of a rougher individual. But it's okay though, because I think it kind of it hones your sales craft and it makes you able to kind of overcome objections with just about any other person that you would encounter in the day to day. So I was with that manufacturer for several years. At one point I moved up, I was promoted and I oversaw the state of New Hampshire and me for distribution and growing market share up in that market, and then I did have the opportunity to come back down to this area Pennsylvania was also where I grew up.
Speaker 3:Zoe and I went to high school together, so we go way back and I had the opportunity to come back down this way and work for a distributor, and it was a local distributor out of Reading. They sold roofing, siding, windows, doors, and so I'd come now from manufacturing to distribution and I started to engage with customers, other companies that were doing these types of home service products, projects and services, and I started to kind of see the inner workings of how some of these companies were doing business, the way their customer interaction was, the way their orders were being done, the way that they were just overall, just the mechanics of a lot of them in this area, and I began to kind of see that, okay, well, there's some opportunity here for us to come in and be a little bit more streamlined, you know, with the usage of some technology and and just kind of, uh, giving people a white glove experience really with, with, with what we're doing here in our brand. So, uh, the timing uh coalesced nicely with the timing zoe had at that point in his life and that was why we kind of we went on this venture here to start this business and, uh, like zoe said, for us roofing and now we do, we do siding and windows as well. Um, this is more of just a widget for us. We do view ourselves as business owners. It just so happens we do roofing.
Speaker 3:Uh, you have carpets, you can do painting, you could do hpac.
Speaker 3:There's several other avenues, but for us this was this was low-hanging fruit for me, just given my experience in the industry, already to kind of step into this role.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and to a higher level too. I think the home service industry, to a certain extent, is like an untapped industry, I think, for business owners as a whole. So that's also pretty recession, pretty recession resistant for certain verticals within it. Um, right, so that that's super. That was super interesting to both of us. Right, and alec had experience and it was a good. It was a good in um to that right where, like, you can pick a ton of other industries right, like, uh, marketing fintech, uh, etc. Marketing FinTech, et cetera. They've sort of been pretty consolidated right, capital, whatever have you, where home and service is pretty fragmented. It's still a lot of family-run businesses. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that at all. However, from an entrepreneurial point of view, there's a lot of opportunity because of that, because once things get consolidated, they also they right, they trend towards, they're always at a finer point. Right, they're always towards a cutting edge. Money knows that. Right, it attracts talent. So that was interesting to us too, yeah.
Speaker 1:And those years in distribution and manufacturing Alec, like that must, I could see how that would be. Like, oh, I see this business a little bit more clearly than maybe another business that we would try to go into. Right, like, there's always that. It's kind of what is it? You know the um, the uh cashflow quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki.
Speaker 1:As you start off as an employee, then move to self-employed, then business owner and then investor, right, like, as an employee, you're kind of you're, you're learning the business, you're learning the skills. Like, I've actually taken jobs earlier in my life that I was like, I want to work here to see if I want to own this business. Like, you know, like, is this, is this what it looks like from the outside? Right, like, and, and a couple of times I found out, boy, that was not what it looked like. I'm glad I didn't uh, just go and start that business. Um, what have your guys's thoughts? Like it you're really talking about? You came into this with the mindset of building a business versus being a roofer. So what were some of those initial, initial plans or initial thoughts that you had where you were going to, the things that you felt like you could improve upon, what was happening in the industry already.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a great question. I'll be quick.
Speaker 4:I know you have a lot of thoughts. I think that right, so I've done it. I know you have done some real estate investing too. I've done a decent amount of real estate investing too, so I've worked with a lot of contractors. You did Right through that. I GC'd a lot of my own flips and rentals and it's similar to hiring, right, yes, you interview 20 to get one type of activity and seeing the customer experience right of those contractors leaves something to be desired.
Speaker 4:Everyone is like not saying that at all and there's a niche for everybody, right? Some people want that, right, some people like different experiences. That's totally fine. Um, however, we personally and I think a lot of people do right, there's a right little uh caricature of your ideal customer, right, and um, we, we feel that that experience should be like going to the store and buying a mac. Right, that experience you should be like going to pen medicine and or whatever large hospital chain and booking an appointment and getting service there. Right, like it should be that tailored, simple, easy, customer service friendly um you can make some negative comparisons.
Speaker 4:Some large uh cell phone providers internet providers are not terribly that that's what I saw, mostly high right, super high level.
Speaker 4:Um the customer service. The customer service experience was incredibly lacking right um all touch points right throughout the process, right from communication to, um, clear expectations being set, to clear documentation of things. Right, and I, I used to write my own contracts that I would give to them to sign to and write spec sheets and stuff to hold them accountable, but they certainly weren't providing that to me, um, which was normal in my right in my other job. Yeah, besides, besides that right. Anyway, sorry, I'll let you go, I know you have a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So a lot of what we want to do and kind of building the brand around, giving somebody a good white glove experience right, they call they need a home service done and having them have a nice positive experience A lot of that is communication for us and education. Most customers, you know they get a roof. They call they need a roof, they see water coming in, right. Most people, if they're lucky, they'll get one roof done in their life. Maybe if they're lucky they'll get two. You know it's you're not getting them often right, and most folks just they're not even really thinking about it.
Speaker 3:So a lot of what we do is education of the customer. You know, when we go out, explain to the customer hey, mrs Homeowner, here's what I see that's happening right now, here's why that's happening and here are the action steps that we're going to take to fix that problem for you or get that rectified. And I think that value and showing a customer and educating them on that process and what that looks like is really something that is lacking, I think, in the industry. It's just people don't know otherwise and then it does come down to oh, this guy was less money than this guy. Yeah, well, that guy got on the roof and he explained to me exactly what they're going to do and why they're doing it.
Speaker 3:I know more about roofing than I would care to know otherwise it I know more about roofing than I would care to know otherwise, and that's where we're trying to and that is our and that is our customer. Ultimately, it's the customer that still does want to buy on value. Um, yeah, because you could be the cheap guy one day and the next day another guy will come in and undercut you and then, you know, take your lunch.
Speaker 1:We want to try to circumvent that and and approach it a different way and what are some of the lessons that you've learned in the implementation of this so far?
Speaker 3:that there are customers that are not aligned with that mindset and I'm looking to do some people are just cheap yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:That is one thing, though. There there's some customers that you know you can lead a horse to water but you can't make a drink, so to speak, and so there is some of that. But we've also learned that there's customers that might even want a next level of white glove service. So we're constantly learning to just improve and and really kind of tailor our craft to give them that. So we came in with good intentions and good thoughts on what we wanted to do, but it's been a kaizen, a constant improvement and growth of that process here for us, and that, I think, is just going to be continual as we continue to engage with customers, and that will never stop. It'll just continue to tighten, tighten.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I think, um, to add on that, that's exactly what I was. I had in my mind too. I, I, um, I think, well, maybe two things. I think we've learned that the world is drifting very quickly towards instant gratification. Right, it's that amazon, next day, uh, subscription, subscription, one click button. Right, that is taking the amount of friction out of every single interaction down to they click, they get. Right, it's as simple as that. So, like, you, remove all those friction points, right, and those friction points could be lack of communication. Right, the customer has to reach out and, oh, like, when are you coming again, or whatever, happy, right. So, like, really making that as streamlined and I'm not necessarily saying less touch points, it's just that it's clear, smoother, everything is less friction.
Speaker 4:And I think, in getting there, right, to directly answer your question about what we've learned throughout the process, we believe that it's a never-ending process. To what Alec was saying right, it's a never-ending iterative process. Right, so we will never be done. Improving that customer service experience, right, that customer journey, and right, we have it mapped out. Right, we have a document that is a map of if this, then that arrows to different boxes and stuff. Like that it's the customer journey and like, if they say this, okay, it goes to this box, right, and then this happens and then, right, it's this diverging blue chart. And we have meetings with our entire company and they understand that whole process so they can interact properly and we constantly change right, something happens right and we change it right.
Speaker 4:And I guess I went to design school, right, I went to design school, right, I, that's, that's my thing. So, thinking of it in that world, like that's always an iterative process, like that design is never done, like there's right, you start off with concept design, which most people think of as design, right, but then you get into schematic design and you get into design development and you get into construction documentation, then you get into construction administration, then you get into design development, then you get into construction documentation, then you get into construction administration, then you get into post construction um evaluation right, it's, it's just this. It's this whole process and their percentages associated with each one of those Um. So it is.
Speaker 4:Is this never ending refinement process, from little tweaks to oh, does the auto, does the automated email go out at 8 30 am or does it go out at 9 30 am? When right, are people taking a coffee break at 9 or 8, uh right, 10, 15 am? Yeah, are they more likely to write something, pops up their phone and they open it. Or are they going to hit the assignments button on their phone when email notification comes at 8 30 and they're getting that type of stuff? That it's. It starts to get down to details, so very granular.
Speaker 1:Here's a question that I thought of during that and I think it's. I think that a lot of times as we're iterating on our customer experience or any of our SOPs or processes in our company, a lot of times you know, it's that kind of that analogy of the loudest mouths get fed. So the problem children inflect on those changes when in your thought process really around that design process, kind of how you're thinking about that, zoe, is it? How do you determine if it's an outlier or if it's hey, we really need to change this from 830 to 945. Before we carry on with the episode, let's give a shout out to one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1:I talk to contractors every day that feel stuck, not because they're not working hard. That feels stuck Not because they're not working hard but because they're missing the structure to growth 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. How do you determine if it's an outlier or if it's? Hey, we really need to change this from 830 to 945, right? Is it an outlier or is it a? Oh, you're smiling, I like you're like oh, I got a good answer.
Speaker 4:We just had this conversation yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you know, like because there's so many things that are coming at us all the time, when do we know if it's something that we need to change, or if it's, or if it's an outlier, like a one-off scenario?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, yeah, you're asking, you're asking a million dollar question. We did, we took this yesterday. Um, so we, um a couple of things, in particular order, um, again, excellent question. That, uh, that, um, that we look at everything through a lens of what actually moves the needle right, what actually matters and cause there's a triage to everything too.
Speaker 4:Right, like, and some things, um, don't have impact necessarily. Right, like, there can be a lot of noise, but it it just doesn't matter. Right like I I always think of, I think of an extremes right sort of analogies. Right, so there might be, there probably is, there is another albert einstein out there, right, with an iq of 180, but there they live. Right, they live above the arctic circle, right in some one room building and the potential is there, but, but nobody knows. And they might be doing astrophysics, calculations and string theory stuff and whatever have you, but nobody knows and therefore it doesn't matter because they have no input, it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 4:Somebody could be carving a perfectly round marble ball. It's incredible, it's absolutely incredible work of art. Just doesn't matter, though, right, doesn't have any real impact. Um, so we look at things through the lens of, like, what actually moves the needle, we define what the needle is through our kpis like we want things, man right, and if something doesn't actually result in changing the kpis that we want, it's not worth doing. There's a finite time. Is the valuable resource right? So that's sort of the lens that we look at things through.
Speaker 3:Hey Jim.
Speaker 4:Hi, you're muted. I'm muted.
Speaker 1:Sorry. What I was thinking about in that is, you were talking about the KPIs and making sure that it matters. So I guess first we need the KPIs. There is no chicken and egg here. It's like get the KPI first, because then you can determine if it matters or not, or if it's moving the needle or not, how you know. How did you go about developing the right KPIs for East Coast?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, we just define what we want, right. We believe that. We believe that life's very conceptually, we believe that life can just float away. If you let it right, it'll take you right. And so you have to define what you want, right. Like if you choose what you want out of it and then you work backwards to get it at the end of the day, right. So like, if we want to totally make it numbers, if you want to do $100 million in gross revenue, right, okay, what margin statistically can you hit and you work backwards, right. So it's 10 or 15% or whatever, like either margins like net margin, okay.
Speaker 4:So then you start to work backwards from there. And then you work backwards. Okay, so, what's your average job value? And you can how many? What's your closing percentage? Uh, yeah, what's your lead full of like wait, what's your book look like? What's your qualified and unqualified leads volume, look like? And then you can work backwards to like, okay, which platforms can you obtain those through? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's just this huge funnel down to whatever.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say, yeah, what Zoe said, though. We, ultimately we set yearly budgets of, hey, this is what we want to do this year, dollar wise, how much do we want to do? And then let's back engineer that. How do we arrive at that number? All right, we're going to do 70 of it's going to be retail, residential roof replacements, but the other 30 is going to be gutters, skylights, repairs, that type of thing, and then kind of work our way, we tic-tac our way back then to say, okay, well then, that would mean that we need 75 leads a week and we need to be closing at a 35 to 40 percent close rate, and we need to be, you know, and then that's how we.
Speaker 3:So, ultimately, it's by setting a goal of what we want and then kind of reverse engineering of what do we need to move lever wise to get that? Yeah, um, so, and that's that's been the most, that makes the most sense for us, and that's been kind of how we, the levers that we pull here. So for us, I mean, the biggest thing, the biggest driver for us to grow sales year over year, is at least what we found. The bottleneck is its lead flow and sales close percentage. If any company can get the lead flow and sales close percentage dialed in, they've won the game.
Speaker 1:That's the 80-20 in your guys' mind.
Speaker 4:Yes, that's my thought. Yeah, and to be fair, we do retail. We're 100% retail. Yes, I totally understand. Different companies have different structures in terms of retail and work right. Yeah, restoration On the retail side, that's what we found.
Speaker 3:Yes, because they're different animals. Insurance is a little bit of a different beast, yeah.
Speaker 1:What were some of the hardest metrics to determine? What were some of the hardest metrics to determine Like? What were some of the ones that you're like, man? Are we just like? These have been challenging to figure out how to measure this. 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:What were some of the hardest metrics to determine? Like what? What were some of the ones that you're like man, are we just like these? Are? These have been challenging to figure out how to measure this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, um, everything, uh, so we uh two things come to mind, I think maybe maybe three things. We were super analytical and like how we make decisions and like break down data, but but the reality is it's hard, right, it is hard right. So like, um, I know we're for marketers, is uh, omnipresent approach? Yep, a lot of, a lot of marketing stuff that's not directly attributable. Right, that's hard, that's hard yeah, marketing is hard.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's a hard metric to measure yep right it is, I got a depression, but was that going to result in me actually getting a sale?
Speaker 4:yep, that's right. Yeah, yeah, 100. So not to say we don't we do it or don't do it right, yeah, we do do it, I guess. Yeah, never, yeah, it's sometimes it's hard to like call tracking numbers, get you places right, that, uh, all that type of stuff right, you can use call rail and that's great and you can get to all your data. But, yeah, so, like a google lsa lead and a ppc lead and home advisor angie or whatever, like they're pretty directly attributable to like that five dollars that you spend or a hundred dollars or whatever. Yep, however, a billboard might not be right, or that rat truck might not be, or that yard sign might not be. Those are yard signs. Will make it a little easier sometimes if it's an. However, yeah, conceptually, that that's a hard one. Another another hard one is true cash flow. Sometimes on a daily basis or a weekly basis type of thing. There's a lot of money that flows in and out.
Speaker 4:Every business has that, but it's New York money Just passing through, passing through just just stopping by to say hi, goodbye, yeah, so like on a on a shorter time scale, right, it's easy to right over the course of a year, it's easy to click upon any quickbooks and be like, oh, I made five thousand dollars this year or whatever, right, but on a shorter time scale, to actually make decisions off of on a weekly, weekly, is probably a good timeline for what I'm getting at on a weekly basis, like that's, that's hard, like that's hard. Like there are a ton of unpaid bills that are right, there might be bills sitting in like 60 different categories that like there's $10,000 here, there's ten thousand dollars here, there's a thousand dollars here, there's a hundred thousand dollars here, there's five thousand dollars here, there's five hundred dollars here. Like that are just sitting in some silo, right, but they all it's not your money, right, it's a bunch of credit cards type of activity and, again, on a shorter time scale, that's hard to make decisions off of actual cash flow. Right, you can get close. I'm not saying you can't get close, but like, yeah, you can't.
Speaker 4:I guess, uh, um, uh, I, I think another one, um, another one might be. Another one might be understanding what got you a result. Sometimes, in general, go to a data-related business right, because sometimes you can't. It's not this right. It's not always a scientific method where you can control 100 variables and change one. Yeah, again you can get close. I think plenty are attributes, but again it's about knowing your data to make decisions off of it. I guess that's really what I'm talking about. Everything that I said is that right.
Speaker 1:Those of all that are. Yeah, there's a lot of challenging ones. The marketing is for sure. I wasn't thinking about the cash flow, the day-to-day cash flow. That's another one. Really understanding where you're at, as you guys have built this up, and really I think the way that you said it to me and let's talk about that customer journey and customer experience a little bit, I think the way you put it, maybe when we had a call, the other's a you want to create a sure thing for customers, right, you're eliminating the fear, eliminating the friction. We talked a little bit about how that is done through communication and education, a balance of communication and education. But you also walk through the like. You have these mind maps of like crazy. You know flow charts of all the. You know how this works.
Speaker 1:What have been some of the most the things that have stood out in developing that customer journey? Like, what are some of the things that have that? You've gotten that really true response from the customer Like, yeah, we can measure that Like, that one did make a difference. Like, I know there's a lot that are not, that are challenging to understand, but what were some of the ones that you're like yeah, that one, right there. That one was definitely one of those that, like we, made this change in that customer experience, and it was. We saw it in our reviews, or we saw you know something like what were some of those.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say so to go with the communication thing, that's the real big thing on a production basis for us is just relaying exactly what we're doing to the homeowner at all times. Hey, here's where this stands, here's what's going to happen, and I think, implementing a lot of that type of technology where they were just getting hit, there was never something that was just up in the air of like huh, I haven't heard from those guys lately. I wonder what they're doing. Like no, it was almost like all right, I got it, like I'll see you on Tuesday, type deal, you know and it and so. That though didn't allow for any friction, and then things just kind of synced Like they would go smoothly. When we were over community meeting, and a lot of it was just automations, really, we set up a lot of pre-templated automations that go out via email. Uh, generally we also have a SOP for our sales guys to follow up secondhand with the customer. Hey, mrs Homeowner, just giving you a heads up, we're coming out X, y, z. Expect a dumpster on this day. Expect us at this time. Expect dumpster pickup on this day. All of that just pretty much just over communication.
Speaker 3:And once we really started to implement those systems. There was less headache Like the homeowner. We were no longer on their radar of like, oh, I got to watch those guys. It was like we had earned that trust through that communication and that's really what this whole thing is about. People are spending thousands of dollars. They just want to know hey, alec and Zoe seem like good guys, it looks like they're running a good ship here and they're not going to screw me. And that's really what it comes down to, and if we can convey that to them in a way that they feel good about it, that's a lot of it too. It's just making people feel warm and fuzzy, and communication and doing the back-end automations for that was what really kind of made it more seamless. There was less friction, like you referred to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what it is. I always say I've said it on the podcast many times if your customer's wondering you're losing, it happens all the time. In all the things I'm having a new side by side, I bought a side by side out of state. I'm having it shipped up and the guy that that's shipping it I'm like, okay, is it on the road yet? Did you? You know, like, what's going on here? It's been a couple of days. They picked it up from the dealership. You know. Now I'm losing faith Like the. You know, and it's not that they're not doing a good job, it's just that I don't know what they're doing or what's happening. So it's, you know, it's like there's. It's just understanding it from the customer's perspective and and knowing that you know, my goodness, that's it. You would think it's a simple thing all right for us.
Speaker 3:well, even forward facing with the customer communication is huge. But even internally for us we're back and forth, internally emails amongst everybody here on the team where, like, everything is not over communicated but it's communicated effectively. There's no like, there's no things that are like up in the air, like oh yeah, I don't know about that, let me check.
Speaker 1:Like no, it's pretty clear what we're doing and everyone's kind of in the loop, and so that is nice and we do a lot of our crm yeah, yeah, and so that's the behind the scenes of the of the customer experience, right, all of the details that the team needs to know, making sure that everyone's informed of what's happening, what's coming next. Has materials been ordered? Has this been done? Has this been scheduled as the dumpster there or not? Like all of the things along the way, did you build one first or did you build them out congruently? Like hey, we're just building it all at the same time, like we want to make sure what are some of the most important things that are happening on the team side in the team communication then, what are some lessons that you learned there? I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1:As a roofing marketing agency owner and coach, I've seen it all great marketing wasted because no one follows up fast enough. That's why I built power up agents, not just a receptionist. Our ai handles the entire customer journey, from answering the first call to booking the job, to post job surveys and reviews 24-7, inbound, outbound, even multilingual. If you want leads followed up instantly and customers nurtured automatically, visit the link in the description or visit the sponsors page on the roofing success podcast website. Your full ai team is ready. What are some of the most important things that are happening on the on the team side, in the team communication, then? What are some lessons that you learn there? This is him, yeah systems here this is his his love language.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I know, I mentioned traction, if rocket fuel, I know, is that another sequel? Yeah, I'm, I've sitting there. I'm an integrator, like I. I love that system, process I, um, it's my thing. So I, I, um, I, uh, I couldn't. I always make a joke. I couldn't sell a rock to aquari, like that's not my core competency. Um, I'm at home in a room by myself with headphones on and some spreadsheets and that, that's, that's nice, it's fine.
Speaker 3:Um, I do the sales yeah, yeah, he's great at training, right that's right training sales sales teams and I because I couldn't, I wouldn't want to or couldn't do what he does.
Speaker 4:So it's a good yin and a yang thing here we got going, so yeah, um, to answer your question, I, um, I, I think I, we, we designed the systems at the same time because I think they're integral to one another and one doesn't really function well without. So there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. That also well, it does two things right. One is to one is a lot that happens to ensure that customer service experience right. There's a lot of stuff that customer just doesn't see that happens. That makes it easy, right, like that. Right, like it's, it's like code, right, um, yeah, right, we're like I taught a lot of um computer tech, uh classes like architectural computer tech and a lot of it's like right, it's like uh, parametric modeling, python stuff and like seems super easy that you just move a slider and like this stuff happens. But the reality is like the code behind that is aggressive, so it's just, it's very similar, right, like it's that one click button on Amazon, like that's not a simple thing, really, that's very complicated. So like that's the customer sees it Life's, life's polished experience.
Speaker 4:Behind the scenes. There are automations, right, the same time the customer gets that automated email. So I'm making it up it depends on the email, right? Maybe it's not an email, right? We have a lot of other stuff that goes on there. It's not going to be an email, other forms of communication, triggers, right, something triggers it and then Zapier will add something to a sheet and ensuring the production manager and they'll schedule this on this date and it will automatically send something else, type of type of stuff.
Speaker 4:So I I don't know, I think we do over communicate in internally, um, and I think there are two main spots where we found that internal communication is key. Right, so we focus on those, not that we don't focus on the rest of it. So we have our own assembly line internally is how I think of it. Right, so, like there's one guy, all he does is put the rivets in the front, a pillar right, that's all he does. It moves on to the next person and she installs the seats. It's the Henry Ford 7. And each person has their core competency and that's what they do. And then it moves to the next person and between those are those friction points. Right, that's where balls get dropped. So you refine those friction points and balls get dropped less. It will never be perfect.
Speaker 3:Just like sales, right? Yeah, one of my guys is out on site. He's had a nice conversation with the homeowner. They discussed scope of work, came to an agreement on a price. We proceeded here with the contract. We got all that out to them.
Speaker 3:But there's a period in which a transition takes place between sales and production, and it's that right there that little transition period that that needs to be dialed in, because that one little transition can then throw a lot of the backend stuff here out of whack, and so that that's one thing that we do a lot. Uh, we have a system in place for that too, where the salesman um relays any job related info that's required, uh for production, and we have like a pre-templated uh form really that they fill out for all of that noting it. So that way when it gets passed to production then it's like he says you know the Henry Ford factory, for me it's like a relay race, right, I'm handing the baton to them, and now they got the baton and they're going to start running with it, and they're going to start running with it. So that's. But between sales and production, those are. That little transition piece is critical.
Speaker 4:I think, for things to run good and it's not just definitely you know away from the phone call thing Like that gets forgotten, right, somebody else can't look at that. Yeah, right, it's that same. Like that information between sales and production also gets moved to billing. And like production edits right and insert something for what actually happened, cross-check, right, Cross-check billing for right Dumpster cost and subcontracted labor costs and right, so that's all audited and it's all in one place and we can all look, and whoever does that can just check it and it's right, or it's and right. So that's all audited and it's all in one place and we can all look and whoever does that can just check it and it's right or it's not right. And then there's no discrepancy. Like there's not a phone call, it's like oh, like well, did you actually bid this this way or did you not? Like no, it's just there, it's black and white, it is what it is.
Speaker 3:And it does shift too, cause it'll go from office admin then to sales, then production, then back to office admin, then back to sales, and like. So there's a little bit of a period here where it's shifting hats here and it's getting touched by a few folks. But that process, though, has allowed us to then scale and do volume to where we can. Yeah, we can turn and burn some work here, uh, which has been good. Uh, we also don't price stuff by the square, I? I know we talked prior about it, that's what we were talking about.
Speaker 1:I was going to go there next that's exactly what I was thinking about. That kind of went into pricing and things like that.
Speaker 3:Explain that a little bit, yeah, so our view on it is every job is nuanced. There's not some formula hey, I can go to this house and it's going to be this amount of money. So we don't quote stuff that way. We very much it is by the job. You know some guys, a lot of companies are structured where, oh, I charge this per square. We don't charge by the square. That's not.
Speaker 3:We get a calculated job price based on inputs that we get on a per job basis. One of the inputs is material cost, right. One of them is our labor cost and those are all pre-templated templates that are in our CRM. So when our sales guys go in to do an estimate, hey, I need 35 of these, and they put it in and then, after all is said and done, it spits them out labor and material numbers, and then you're taking those inputs and you're putting them into another formula we have and then, after all is said and done, it's putting you out with hey, this is kind of where the job needs to be more or less, and it's been good because it allows us to give you a good, true, accurate price per job.
Speaker 3:I tell people it doesn't matter if I'm installing a roof on a trailer or I'm installing a roof on a million dollar mansion. It's the same material and the same labor. More or less it's going to be the same price. It really is. That's just what it costs. So which is which works in our favor, because then we can scale that, and I think we pick up a little bit of stuff too from guys that are like, oh, I, I'm gonna make a killing on this job. Look at these people's yard, you know.
Speaker 4:And then we, yeah, so anyway, it's incredibly objective for us, like, yeah, it's incredibly objective, like the, the and I know it, it I don't know if it sounds complicated on the surface or not, but it is. It's like the. It allows us to scale right the. We have live link pricing to our material supplier, right, live link, instant, real time. So, like, if they change it, it is what it is and there is right, the sales person just has to look at the material measurement report that we get order right, order and just upload it to the crm and right, they just populate a couple columns and it's all pre-templated right, five minutes right and it's all pre-negemplated right.
Speaker 4:Five minutes right and it's all pre-negotiated labor costs for everything, whether it be hourly or by the foot or by the square or whatever, and populates. And we built an algorithm with a couple punch in things and a couple checkboxes to assess really time, risk, uh, effort type of stuff and um, right, so they're like I don't know eight potential inputs, right, material price is one, labor price is one, uh, size is another, um and um, and it spits you out of sale price. And we audit our jobs heavily and we've never lost money, oriella.
Speaker 3:We've lost money in variety of other ways.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, in other ways, yeah so the analogy that I always think of is like you hire a plumber right to install a solid gold toilet right, Ten million dollars, maybe, right. Are they going to charge you? Are they going to market for it? Are they going to mark 40 points on that? Because that's how they get jobs, right? So it's all of a sudden I guess I can't do the math it's actually more than 14 million anyway. Yeah, um, um. I want to get the math right now, but I I can't we'll call it 14 million?
Speaker 4:yeah, um and right. Or are they going to charge their $250 installation fee for the toilet? Yeah, right. So just because a job is right, just because we're putting on a designer shingle, we will factor in the time associated with that and we will factor in the risk associated with that and the effort maybe, and right, increase material cost. And the effort maybe, and increase material cost. But outside of those things, literally just because the dollar value of the job is higher, that doesn't warrant an increased margin or profit for us.
Speaker 4:So we factor in everything else in the back of the calculator, we factor payroll taxes for the sales commission on a specific job. We fact everything right. Thank you cards being sent out to the homeless, $5. They add up, they add up, right, everything adds up, yeah, anyway. So like, yeah, we do not price by the job, we feel that that's a blunt object. Or, I'm sorry, we don't price by the square, we feel that that's a blunt object. Or, I'm sorry, we don't price by the square, we feel that pricing by the square is a blunt object. Really, a scalp is required.
Speaker 1:How did you guys determine? It sounds like I think and I've had this conversation a couple times, but I feel like a lot of times companies or contractors will price arbitrarily. Companies or contractors will price arbitrarily. What I mean by that is they'll say well, bob, down the streets at, you know 500 a square and Sally over there is at 550. And you know we'll just be at that.
Speaker 4:Like that's where we're at too, hey Jim, and so I think you cut out there when you guys were putting your pricing together.
Speaker 1:When you guys were putting your pricing together, how did you determine what? It sounds like you weren't looking at the competitors. You're very detailed in what your pricing should be for your potential like, for your profitability and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we are very clear on what we're putting on and scope of work with the customer and the timeframe associated with that on every job, and every job is different depending on what it is we're doing. But I also would say that sometimes there's a little bit of a disconnect between what the homeowner gets from competitors. Right, somebody could quote a roof replacement, right, but they're not factoring certain things and they're not necessarily apples to apples estimates, whereas, like, we tend to be very, very clear with this is exactly what you're getting and here's the cost associated with that. Um, and and communicating that effectively to the homeowner so they understand. That is important and that's something that myself, as well as my sales guys, need to do, uh, to make sure that there's no um discrepancy or confusion there.
Speaker 3:Because sometimes homeowners will look at a few estimates most people are getting three, maybe four, right and then they're looking at pricing and they're like, oh, they're all roof replacements. Well, no, they're not. And you know, because we sometimes I always as we ask homeowners oh, just send us over what they said, you can cross out the price, we'll not even talk about that. Let's see what they wrote, scope of work, and they sent you some bar napkin with some guy that wrote a number on it and a couple of things yeah, roof. A number on it and a couple of things yeah, roof replacement.
Speaker 3:Uh, but you're not changing the counterflag yeah, drip edge, like you're not replacing the skylight unit. Uh, if there's so, anyway, for us it goes back to the communication thing. We're, like we try to like be very clear of like, hey this is exactly what you're getting and it's it's itemized on our estimate. Uh, we're pretty anal with that, if you haven't. I mean, you've been talking with zoe and I enough now to see that yeah, he's got his computer with his headphones on in the spreadsheet well he's also looking.
Speaker 3:You know we do drones, so my, my sales guys do the drone thing. It's great, we love it. For one, it's a safety thing too, on roofs that are a little bit more sketchy stuff I mean, I was on a roof here today, but you know stuff that gets a little bit steep or a little bit non-walkable it's good to throw a drone up and get some photos of it, and it's good for multiple reasons. One, it's another value proposition. You're showing the homeowner hey, here's going to be what we do, or here's a before and after of your roof when we come in.
Speaker 4:It's a show. Right, you're out there, people are looking, it's a show.
Speaker 3:It is, and it also helps for production standpoint. So, like, if we have a nail, we do repairs, right. We have a nail pop we're not sure, but it's in this general vicinity, right. Our sales guys have the ability to mark up a photo saying, hey, this is the exact area that we need to remove here to pinpoint what's going on underneath, uh, that type of thing. So the drone thing has been great and, uh, it's, it's good because we, we take a lot of photos. So when he's not looking at spreadsheets, he is looking at photos to make sure our crew is tying off when they're supposed to and doing everything. And that's one someone also um, our guys tie off, tie off. That's. Uh, we're not, we're not really playing with the whole osha fine game thing. I, I've been down that road and, uh, we're not interested in continuing that. So our guys are very much ocean complied. We tie off on every job. It's a non-starter, it's kind of non-negotiable for us. So, uh, yes, sales feature it is so most people don't. It's a safety thing too.
Speaker 1:But but a safety thing that you can then talk about in the sales process, right in the education process, in the you know um, and then the drone and using the drones, you know it's a great visual representation photos. You know none of very few of these homeowners have been on their roof. Yeah, you know like to really be able to tell the story of what's happening and what you plan to do. It's very impactful. I think you guys also I mean, from what I remember is you guys have built a pretty good following on social media with a lot of this content.
Speaker 3:We're getting there. We're certainly getting there. So we on Instagram, I think this past week we went over nine grand followers, yeah, so so we're getting there on that. But yeah, for us, I we're kind of following suit with you guys with the omnipresent approach. Yes, we just want to be in front of everyone. I want to hammer everyone with yard signs. I want facebook, advertising, instagram, all of that stuff. I just want to. They might not need a service from me right now, but when they do, they're going to give us a call because they've seen me probably 18,000 times.
Speaker 1:And that's our goal. I think we also talked a little bit about event marketing, and you know that's one of those things man the roi from events is always a challenging one.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I I, yeah, I I mean they're good quality impressions, right, like they are. They're good quality impressions, um, and we, we have attributed some, right, we've attributed some back. Um, yes to events. Um, yeah, but absolutely, but it is, it's hard, right, it's hard, it's hard, but it is the omnipresent approach. Right, it doesn't cost a lot of money, right, to do those types of things, like, a lot of events are $100 to get a table right. We have tent logo, flag, whatever, right.
Speaker 4:All this stuff right and it is. It's good impressions. You do the 10th thing and you do this, the sign thing, and you send the direct mail and you, etc, etc etc, etc.
Speaker 1:And that's the all of those touch points add up. For sure it does.
Speaker 3:And some of those smaller ones. Like you said, if you know 100 bucks here, set a table up, we get one lead out of. That's less than my cost per lead that we're running for marketing. So for me. We're in the green already, right off the rip. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:If you think about it that way. That's a, that's yeah, that's barely an LSA lead these days.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Um, how did what? What is your mind? How has your mindset shifted from when you guys started till now, like has there been a or like how has it evolved through through being in business for some, you know, a few years now?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's, that is a good question. Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's a good question. I, a couple, a couple of ways question, uh, I, uh a couple, a couple ways, um, I, I think the biggest one, the biggest one that comes to mind is, I think, over the past for me, or maybe I'll be, probably just for me personally, I think it's really narrowing in. It gets back to what I said earlier. It's narrowing in on what is the right.
Speaker 4:Business revenue is the metric of success, right, um, network, I should say, um, revenue is vanity, profit, sanity, to be clear, um, so net, net revenue is what matters. Um, and revenue generating activities, like, and really dialing in on, because that that's fuzzy sometimes. Right, like, what is actually revenue generating, generating, generating activity, right, is it? Is it door knocking? I don't know? Right is, is it refining that? Uh, right, the, the automated email, um marketing email to go out at 10, 30 am to right to click through rate changes, right, yeah, enough, where, like, the lead volume is what it is and that that that is revenue generating activity, or is that totally wasted time and you, we really should just be focusing on x, y or z, right, so, like, it's in my mind, right, it's, um, it's really easy to get caught up in the weeds of stuff that just doesn't have an impact. That's so easy.
Speaker 4:Um, and I also, to a certain extent, I think that I think of it in a couple tiers right, the uh, the work? Right. The worst tier is to have all the education and no action. Right, you can, right, you can have a PhD in whatever, in whatever right, multiple phds, but if you never do anything with it, it doesn't matter, because there's no, there's no impact, right. The next step is no education but just action. Right, it's better than right, it's better than no action, right, um, uh, and the best one is having education and action. Right, that's always the best, that's where you thrive.
Speaker 4:But what I'm getting at is sometimes like, you say it all the time do something, right, yeah, and you're starting out like do something, and then you can go from there, but not getting caught up in the analysis, paralysis or whatever. Have you, I guess, guess, to use your real estate term. But, right, you don't sit and overanalyze things too much. Sometimes I'm guilty of that, I'm super guilty of that. That's my happy place. Sometimes, right, so right, like that's anyway that. That. That's sort of where I've tried to evolve into like, yeah, work on what matters and ignore the rest of the stuff that might be, might be fun, might seem like it's pretty or whatever. It just doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't have an impact for you.
Speaker 1:How do, how do you determine what matters and what doesn't matter, though?
Speaker 4:yeah, there's uh, if it, if it changes the kpi, right. So like we try, we try a lot of stuff, um, and some of it doesn't work and doesn't change the KPI, and we sit and think, if we change these three things about it or whatever, if we actually went through an A-B test? At these things.
Speaker 4:Would it actually change it enough where it would get the Kpi to where we need to be? Right? So yeah, and so, for instance, we worked with a large lead gen service company maybe I should say like paper lead um in the past um to leave names out of it and I tried it. It was undesirable at the time and we went back and we thought, oh, okay, so maybe we did these things wrong. Maybe we treated these leads as if they were Google business page leads. Right, we didn't nurture them correctly in front to make them viable in the back. We thought that was our fault, not to say that it still isn't. Maybe we're misinterpreting it, I don't know. Yeah, but so we tried it again. Same result right, so right, in our cpls, for, like that, 1500 options, 1500 cpls are not viable for our business. Other businesses they might right. Um, hey, you understand where I'm going, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, trial and error, that's been the biggest thing.
Speaker 3:You just got to throw yourself at it. Try a bunch of stuff. We've had stuff that were like it was a resounding failure. And then there's been other stuff we're like all right well we broke even, or we made a little bit here this.
Speaker 3:maybe if we tweak this one or two things and we can improve that and get it more dialed in, and it really has. It's just been as you got to throw yourself at it. I mean, when we started this business, the phones don't just start ringing right, zoe and I went, oh, we're knocking doors, and you know what door knocking is. I give credit Even the people that come and they sell pest, pest spray for around the perimeter of your property. I'm friendly with all those people because I'm like, hey, man, I get it, it's brutal out there. And then I ask him if he's got a solicitation permit. No, no, but you do.
Speaker 3:You got to throw yourself at it a little bit. You got to try stuff and see what sticks really. And you know some of it is going to be kind of a bust, but some of it is. There's some, some gold nuggets in there. You know that you will find as you, as you go in, and I would say that happens even more so with time. We're still trying out stuff and saying, hey, let's, let's talk to these guys, let's explore this more. What about that? And I guess my thought is is I'm not going to hit a home run every time, but I'm going to take a lot of swings. Yeah, you know, that's right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the more swings you take, the more opportunity you have. Right percent man. I appreciate you guys time today. This has been another episode of the roofing success podcast. Thank you for tuning into the roofing success podcast. For more valuable content, visit roofing Success Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the Roofing Success Podcast. For more valuable content visit roofingsuccesspodcastcom. While there, check out our sponsors for exclusive offers, shop for merchandise and sign up for our newsletter for industry updates and tips. Also join the Roofing Success Facebook group to connect with other professionals and stay updated on the latest trends. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, share and leave a comment. Your support helps us continue to bring you top industry insights. The website link is in the description. Thanks for listening you.
