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
Bankruptcy, Divorce, and a $13/hr Job… to Roofing Success with Jimmy Fazekas
Jimmy Fazekas went from broke, divorced, and making $13/hour… to running one of the most respected home exterior companies in the Gulf Coast.
In this raw and inspiring episode, Jimmy shares how he:
- Lost everything in 2010…
- Bounced back in 2017 with Bluewater Exteriors…
- Built a 600+ 5-star review company with ALL in-house W2 employees
- Used AI, automation, and leadership to scale smart
- And created a winning culture that puts people first
If you’ve ever felt stuck… or wondered if you can truly rebuild from the bottom — this episode is for you.
Because Jimmy proves it’s possible to:
✅ Come back stronger
✅ Build a company the right way
✅ And become someone worth following — in business and in life
Links:
https://bluewaterexteriors.com/
https://www.facebook.com/bluewaterexteriors/
https://www.instagram.com/bluewaterexteriors/?hl=en
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How do you go from bankruptcy and a $13 an hour?
Speaker 2:police job to running an award-winning exterior company with 600 plus five-star reviews.
Speaker 1:In this episode, jimmy Fazeka shares his raw journey from failure to redemption and how mastering the numbers, building a team-first culture and leveraging AI and automation helped him scale Blue Water Exteriors. Ai and automation helped him scale Blue Water Exteriors.
Speaker 2:Jimmy's a second generation contractor who bought his dad's business at 20, lost it all in 2010 and came back swinging in 2017 with Blue Water Exteriors. Today he runs a company with in-house employees and a relentless focus on profitability.
Speaker 1:Known for his humility and resilience, jimmy leads with values, putting his team first, pricing for long-term stability and mentoring younger contractors on how to avoid dumb taxes and bad hires. Whether you're in a rut or ready to scale, the right way, this episode delivers battle-tested advice from someone who's been through it all.
Speaker 2:Let's go all in with Jimmy Fazekas of Blue Water Exteriors.
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.
Speaker 2:Jimmy Fazekas, blue Water Exteriors. How are you man? Hey brother, how are you doing today? I am doing wonderful. This is awesome. Glad to have you on. You have a great story in roofing um.
Speaker 3:So my dad, uh, pretty much started in the new jersey area back in the early 70s actually late 60s, early 70s uh, roofing and siding um, and then uh bought a gutter machine, of course, and um ended up moving it down to Alabama in the 70s. I was born in 76. And so he moved to Alabama in 76 and he met my mom here and so in 76, the company was born, called Bob and Bob B&B, and when I was 13 I started helping him in the summertime. I needed money to buy my Air Jordans. Back then they were popular. I think in 89 they were like $125 those Air Jordans. So I bought my Air Jordans with my own money and love making money.
Speaker 3:And then he said if you want to get your car, you got to work. I worked at a school co-op, got out at 11, helped him paint some gutters or whatnot. Then we ended up in 1996. He said I'm retiring. You can either buy the business or somebody else can buy it. I had to grow up. At 20 years old I bought the company from him. My granddad had already passed and started running the company at 20, got married at 20, and had a child at 20. So I had to grow up real fast at 20 years old in 19. That's a big year.
Speaker 3:That was a big year, big year I learned a lot, got in the growth of. He was only doing like $110,000 a year. He was kind of burning out, ready to retire and I took him to Scott in about five years, roughly. We started getting more employees Never subcontractors, always employees, w-2s and so started growing from there. Economy got rough in 08. I was leveraged on new construction. A lot of contractors couldn't hold. On 2010, I filed bankruptcy, ended up losing my house, foreclosure, divorce and had to change gears for a couple of years and get into law enforcement. For five years I realized I was tired of being broke making $13.25 an hour, so I jumped back into the home improvement industry in 2017. It blew our ears. So we're eight years old this year and just rocking and rolling.
Speaker 2:And there's no linear path up right. There's always the bumps and bruises that come along with it.
Speaker 3:A lot of bumps and bruises, and that's what makes you stronger really. It really runs what you want out of life and how you're really going to treat your business and teammates at work too what were?
Speaker 2:what were some of those? What were some of the?
Speaker 3:the the best lessons that you've, that you received from those bumps and bruises um, the number one lesson really in business for anybody, no matter what kind of business you're in, is you have to know your numbers. You have to be dialed in on knowing your gross profit, your net profit, your marketing dollar spend and track all that. If you don't know that, you're just running blind. It's like flying blind without gas or without gauges you don't know if you're going to run out of gas or where you get. So anybody that doesn't run a business without looking at their numbers really is scary. It's scary. So that's number one.
Speaker 3:Two you know, don't overspend. You know I overspent my whole life. I'd buy, you know, just because I made a little bit of money. I'd start buying big houses and boats and living in a better neighborhood and all of this to try to keep up with the jealousies, and that's totally backwards. Put that money back in your business and invest and grow your business, because you're going to get more money in return from growing your business than you are from having to own that house. So that's the top two things I would think would be the best for you.
Speaker 2:So that's the top two things I would think would be the best for you yeah, man, that don't overspend really came into play there in 2008 for me too. We were both born in the wonderful year of 1976. So you know, it was a great time, a lot of great people born that year. But we also, maybe when we were born, there was a little bit of hardheadedness and we're like, oh, let's just spend all this money. And then the you know, everything was nice going through the nineties and into thecom, boom and then. And then, bam boy, that went away quick. So that if, with the lesson that you learned then, if you had reallocated your funds from that boat into into, into something else, into the business, it probably would have been a smoother ride. What were some of the other lessons that you learned in that crash? I'll tell you. Like, for me, boy, labor got cheap and and widely available.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah it did.
Speaker 2:It was crazy and you know there's. I don't know how you feel, but you know, if that ever happened again, how would you be better prepared for a crisis like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, labor was definitely. You could find anybody to work and it was definitely cheaper. It was good times to start a business, right after the crash, you know, there was a guy I know, nick Conley. He owns A1 Girls and he started about that time right after he just started just taking off with his company. Of course he's doing great today, uh. But uh, I think one of the biggest things with labor is it's not getting any cheaper today, you know, especially if you got w-2 employees compared to subcontractors, uh, it's not getting any cheaper. And the cost of having somebody employed, with the benefits going up for less, with health insurance and matching the 401k and taxes and all that. You just got to plan for it and make sure that your prices are dialed in right, that you're making money, you're not just people employed and you're not trying to grow your business or get ahead in business. It can be scary times if you don't know your numbers.
Speaker 2:Back to the beginning of what I said Back to the know your numbers. Yeah, and that's a great point. I feel like a lot of companies when they start off they price their jobs arbitrarily. They say, well, so-and-so down the street selling at this. What kind of advice would you give to that person?
Speaker 3:You know, that's exactly what normally happens in the market. You know and my sales team will say that to me some days They'll say, hey, so-and-so's priced this job for this amount, but so-and-so works out of their house. We have actually an operation, we have benefits, we have our rat trucks, we have insurance for everything. So if you compare yourself to somebody else, then you're definitely going to be in a hole in it. You're going to be racing to the bottom. You're going to run out of cash. In a hole in it. You're going to be racing to the bottom. You're going to run out of cash. It's going to be where you can't pay your material bill one day because you don't have enough cash in the bank, and then you're not going to be able to pay your payroll, and then you're going to have everybody mad at you. And then what else you do? You just close the door. So you definitely have to not fall.
Speaker 2:You have to have your numbers and follow up what's making you profit where you need to be with your margins for sure. That's something that I love to hear, because I mean, it's the same thing that I talk about a lot also, and you kind of have to price your jobs backwards. Right, you're going in, you got to go in with your cost first and not just what's the minimal cost to do this? No-transcript, you know, really understanding your numbers. Where should someone start? Like man, I don't know my numbers.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where should I start?
Speaker 3:When you reverse that. You definitely have to. Anytime you design something, you got to have end game in mind, like for me. I have my end game. I have my five 10 year plan where I want to be at five and 10 years and I know that's a big dreamers. But you have to have that big dream and say, hey, in 10 years, this is what I want to accomplish, and work backwards and say, hey, I want to make a hundred grand a year, two hundred grand a year.
Speaker 3:Got to figure out how many jobs do I have to do, how much is it going to cost me to get that job per job, how much does that lead cost? You know, and your conversion ratio, and just work backwards. You know you're going to have your average ticket, your conversion ratio, you know your booking rate and then you know you need to make sure that what you're spending on your ads is enough to get you to that number. So you kind of got to reverse it by that. And it's really not that hard once you do it. Know it enough times, you've got it out. It's just somebody at the beginning though I mean it's. It's difficult. You know, years ago when I learned that I was like wow, I wish somebody would have told me that years ago, in 1996. I wish I would have knew that.
Speaker 2:We don't get all those lessons right away. Some of them are harder learned.
Speaker 3:And some people don't get them at all because they're never around the right people. And that goes back to being around the right people. That's another big thing. I was just at Tommy Bell's conference last week at Home Service Freedom Spent time there with some quality people. It was just great. Being around the right people makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2:I know you talked about that. I've had Tommy on the podcast a couple times. He's a phenomenal business owner, but it's not like you were even in the room with him. It wasn't that he was your mentor, but he was a mentor from afar. We're in this wonderful age of YouTube and podcasts and all these things and people are sharing so much information. You know it's it seems like how are you don't even have to be in the same room, but you could still find good mentors out there. How, how has that journey been for you? Where did you find you know, how'd you come across Tommy and how'd you come across other people that you're? Who else do you follow that that you've gotten some good uh know, good good advice from, or good, good business? You know coach, essentially coaching from afar.
Speaker 3:I needed to network and that's where I really learned it and I was good at networking. I'd go to conferences and you know the builder international builder show, and then I'd get a group of people and I learned from them, whatever industry we're doing. But in 21, I went to a conference called Gutter Cod. It was a gutter convention, the first in Denver. That's where I met Tommy. I actually met my other buddy from Minnesota, corey. He's got Bainage Home Pros in Minnesota. He's a great guy.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I met him first. He said come over to the table and sit with me and Tommy. I went over and sat down and the first thing I thought of Tommy I was like this guy's cocky. Who is this guy? I didn't know what kind of numbers he was doing or I didn't know anything about him. I was like he's kind of annoying. At first I was like this guy's, he's probably making all this crap up. That's what I first thought. And then, after I got to know him and got to be around him more, I was like this guy knows this stuff. He's not cocky, he's just confident, he understands business and he's actually got a pretty good heart.
Speaker 3:So anyway, I started following him. But Corey kind of got me into that realm and, believe it or not, with our business to growth in the last couple of years. It has to do with me listening a lot of what Tommy does and following his principles and practices. And listening to Al Levy it got him kicked off and then listening to Ryan at Chirp, because we're on Chirp and just some different things. And I'll actually follow most of what Tommy does, just because I know it works and it does work. It works for us as well.
Speaker 3:So, why not event a wheel? Why not just copy? So we follow that. But you got to get around the right people and you got to get around the right podcast and listen to the right podcast to get the right information. There's a lot of podcasts that give you stuff that's really way off in the left field that you don't need to know about. Quality podcasts are very important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I'll say that I think we're one of those quality podcasts. Jimmy, Thanks for the plug you are.
Speaker 3:You're 100% on. That makes a difference, because there's so much information now that you can listen to anything and then you'll just get confused. So you've got to pick maybe three to five different people and just stick with them all, and that's what's most important. I follow Tommy. I follow Bradley. I was actually on Bradley's podcast Friday, so that's going to be coming out. So he really hammered me. He got me a little different than what I expected he was more like a therapist in this part.
Speaker 3:That's not what I wanted, brother, but I'll turn that way off, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:You have all in-house employees. I want to talk about that for a little bit. You know this business is built on subcontracting, right? What was did you ever do some you know have did in the early days? Did you have subcontractors? Has it always been in-house and what's the mindset about that that keeps you focused on the in-house? Team I talk to contractors every day that feel 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.
Speaker 1: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, and what's the mindset about that that keeps you focused on the in-house team?
Speaker 3:The in-house team. To me you can manage better because you can handle training. You know training is a big part today. You know, the younger generations growing up. They need all the training.
Speaker 3:You know, maybe the mom and dad didn't teach them how to do carpentry or construction or whatnot. So training is huge. You can get better training. You just seem to get better employees, but it takes longer. You got to be more patient Subs. You can say I'm going to sell this job, I'll make this money, here's my subcontract pay, here's my material on the job, and then the leftover belongs to me and that's just simple like that.
Speaker 3:But to get a good name and keep your Google reviews up and to, really and a lot of people might disagree with me on this subject, but I just think the W-2 way is the right way to go For me personally. Just and it is harder and I would love to when we're super busy and our capacity is way out, I would love to be able to sub that out and go ahead and get those customers closed out faster to give them a better customer experience ahead and get those customers closed out faster to give them a better customer experience. But then again you go hire somebody and you got this guy that leaves. Either you know the project undone, or there's leaks or there's problems, or or they mess my yard up or tore something up and our guys are just. They're dialed in. They're out for the snake successes. As everybody in blue water, they want to see what's best for the company. They're not just getting a check and that's got it.
Speaker 3:That's what makes a difference when you get that mindset where they're all going rowing the boat the same way, it makes a difference so that doesn't always happen with employees too right like so you've had.
Speaker 2:You've had to put some work into that, I assume. What have the things that you've done along the way been that? Have that have gotten the right people rowing in the same direction?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's actually the number one thing for culture and business is you want to get the right people. That's the secret. We're not in the products business, whatever we install or put on, we're in the people business. If you've got w2 approach, you got to be able to be a good leader to them. You got to be able to make sure that they're taken care of as far as financially, that you know that they're you know, you know they're making, they're getting their bills paid, they're you, you know they're working to get extra like, hey, buy a boat, small boat, or buy, you know, this motorcycle if they really want it. Don't just hey, I'm weekly paycheck, that's all I got just to pay my house payment and my suit. So you got to kind of make sure that your people are succeeding, because if your people aren't succeeding then your company and your customers are not going to succeed. So we really strive to make sure that we pay better than anybody else in our area. That's one thing. We offer benefits, that's another thing we do. We have employee and company get-togethers and cookouts and you know we do Christmas stuff together and it's all that different things.
Speaker 3:You got to keep the culture together when you have w-2 employees, but you just got to really be a good leader to them and make sure you know if they're not doing good, you got to. You got to talk to them in private about that, but if you're, they're doing the phrase in public. You know so public. So there's just so much more to that. Most people don't want to do that because it's a lot harder. It's just easy to go and say close that job, hire that sub, get done. But you're not building a company, you're building a lifestyle business that can go out and get right out, especially in the roofing industry. You know it's what p company is so strong on that. Right now I got a bunch of friends that just started up just to sell to the p, you know, and they're like years on out and so that's a whole another whole topic that could go awesome, that for sure we could definitely talk about that.
Speaker 2:What's uh? Tell me a story of uh, of of one of the most challenging times you had with with a team member or what you. You know, what you know as you were building the team out, because that there it goes either way, right, you can have the subs that tear up the yard and things like that, but then you also, you know, with the internal team and then how'd you, how'd you overcome that or what did you learn from that?
Speaker 3:uh, challenging team members. Um, it can happen at times, anybody, anybody. You know in life what I think a lot of people no matter if you're the business owner or if you're the managers or whatever. But you can go through life and have your ups and downs. I mean you might be more motivated I might be more motivated in spring and fall and less in summer and everybody does it. There's nobody that's 100% motivated all the time. They all have their own story over and everybody does it. There's nobody that's 100% motivated all the time.
Speaker 3:You got to find out when you see some of your team members struggling, you got to step in and say, hey, man, is there something I can help you with? Is there something going on? What do you need from me? If you've got that management team in place that can do that, you can help slow that down. But there's still going to be some teammates that'll get off on the deep end and they're too far gone and you can't bring them back.
Speaker 3:I mean our turnover rate is small but it's under probably 15%. But we still have some. You know some. Some industry averages are 30, 40 percent. We try our best to try to keep it down pretty low and that comes in to really caring about the people and making sure that you're giving them everything as far as the training, as far as everything possible you can do.
Speaker 3:But I've had some odd things. I've had over 200 and something employees 250 in my lifetime of my company and I'll tell you I've had them steal from me, lie to you, I've had some bad stuff go on. I've had them break stuff. I've had them, you know, do side jobs. I've had anything you can think of I've actually had done to me. And the biggest thing with that I would say for any business owner, entrepreneur, is you can't let that get you down. You just got to keep going. That's just that one person. If they act up and that's on them, that has nothing to do with you. You just keep moving on and looking down the road because there is quality people out there that really want to give their all and want to work for somebody that's that really appreciates them.
Speaker 2:So that's what I said there's two. There's two stories that you could tell yourself there. Right, when you have somebody steal from you, you could be like man, it's all over, I'm never hiring anyone again, I'm never going to allow myself to have that happen. Or you hire the next person who doesn't steal from you, and you know, and you keep this thing going and you keep moving forward. But you could it's very easy to tell either of those stories, right, and that was just one person. You know, I made a bad decision. I was trying to help someone out and they, you know, they got me. Or, you know, this, is it that everyone is like that? The whole world is like that, the whole world is against me and I'm going to just do this myself and I'm going to struggle even more because of that.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, and I'll have the struggles that come with that, right, yeah, that's what are some of yeah, that's your mindset and that's making sure you know if you're staying in that negative mindset all the time and you're going to off something that's always going to happen to you, you can get out of that and get in that positive mindset. You're going to have bad stuff that say, hey, that happened because it opened the door for so-and-so to come to work here or this and that, so you got to keep in a business mindset. You got to keep it positive or it'll ruin you.
Speaker 2:That's for sure. The you know it's tough sometimes, though. You know that homeowner, you know, is unhappy, someone screwed up. You know money's coming out of your pocket for this. You know reputation is on the line over there. It was a referral from someone important to you, it's. You know. Well, this isn't an easy thing, you know. But you, but why do you keep doing it, jimmy? You just keep doing it.
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Speaker 2:Your full AI team is ready. Boy, this isn't an easy thing, you know, but why do you keep doing it, jimmy?
Speaker 3:you just keep doing it you know, once, once you do it enough, you kind of get a little numb of the smaller stuff and you and you really appreciate the good stuff that happens and and you get to see your team, the succeeding and all your people that work with you.
Speaker 3:You see them succeed and you see them grow and you see somebody that used to be in this position, that really grow in this position, and that's something cool and that, and you're building your economy of your people inside your company and you're, and everybody's, making a living off the vision that somebody had, and that's cool too.
Speaker 2:That's really what it is. That is definitely. When did that realization come to you? Because I talk about this a lot or often and it's just my thought that when we start off, we're just starting off to pay our bills right, to make a good living. And then you get to this place and you may have been there a couple of times because pre-crash and post-crash where all of a sudden it's like, man, I have enough, I'm doing well, and then for a lot of people, a lot of guests that I've had on this podcast, that changes and it's like, well, how can I pass this on? When did that change for you? Or what changed that made you think, man, this isn't just me anymore. Changed for you, or what changed that made you think, man, this isn't just me anymore? My day-to-day is more centered around what I could do for my team or the community, or however that is for you.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a lot easier mindset to have when you've got this team and we've got a good leadership team that enter me and we all go in our meetings week to week and we figure stuff out together. If you're the only one and you don't know the difference and you're just fighting the fires day to day and you're trying to do everything, be the, you know, wear all these different hats it's not as fun, honestly, and you can't think. You can't get out of your business enough to think how can I make this better for everybody? Because you're buying hires and you're picking up checks and you're somebody's not paying your material bills or whatever. But so I think you have to get to a certain level to really understand what that means. And is that something you want to go to? Do you really want to grow a company that's going?
Speaker 3:to bigger, have more people, have more options for stress. You know, you might lose your hair faster with more people. If you got 50 people compared if you got five people, that's a big difference. But I say, mine happened about three to five years ago, when I started really building my team out and really saying, hey, this is what I want to do, here's my exit plan, here's my end game, here's my 10-year plan, and I reversed engineering and I started working backwards and that's kind of you can't just go in there blind. If you want a lifestyle business, it'll eventually get you. I mean, you might get by with 10 or 20 years maybe, if you're lucky, if you're good at being a technician and being able to install your products. But as far as a lifestyle business, really, it's just not without, especially to come in with AI the coming years. You better know everything, because AI is coming in fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, with the lifestyle business aspect, another challenge to that and you'd mentioned it earlier is the PE PE firms are, you know. I mean, they're coming in hard to, they're coming in to take market share, you know, and so your lifestyle business may be not as good of a lifestyle as you were hoping for it to be right, yeah, that's tough too, you know.
Speaker 3:it is sad because America's built on the American dream and everybody's starting to want to be able to. Hey, I just want to support my family, and this is where my dad and my granddad started. Hey, I just want to have a lifestyle business and support my family. And my granddad started is hey, I just want to have a lifestyle business and support my family. I kind of know it's going the other direction, so I definitely want to make sure I'm following suit and trying to grow it and build as much technology in our company as we can, because that's going to help us succeed. I mean, you still could have a mom and pop five, ten years from now and do some jobs, but it's going to get harder. I'm afraid it's going to get harder for everybody.
Speaker 2:What technology are you focused on adding? What technology has created the most impact? Let's start there. What technology have you added to Blue Water that has added the most value?
Speaker 3:So our CRM number one is in the vents. We added that three years ago Surfstat and that's something I got from Tommy and Corey up in Brandon Yep Up in Minnesota. We used Surfstat. We used a service tag. We jumped on that.
Speaker 3:First year everybody here wanted to kill me because they're like this is too hard and we were a smaller company so to jump on a product like service tag for our size company was a little hard. But now we're getting it dialed in and it does pretty much everything we want. But now we're getting it dialed in and it does pretty much everything. So CRM was number one and that helps efficiency reporting all the good stuff that you need to know when you're running a company. And then we're working with Chirp to do some automated different messages when we get our material in. It keeps in contact with the customer. So our biggest downfall was our communication with our customer in the last five years. So I said we've got to fix our customer communication problem. So you know we might go six weeks and not be able to do an install for a customer, so they need to know what's going on in that six weeks since they get a 50% deposit.
Speaker 3:They need to know where's our money gone. Has Jimmy left the country? So we started this campaign of kind of letting them know the materials in. We're getting closer to scheduling. You know, our materials ordered, our materials measured, whatever it is. We've got these different programs tied in so it's automated now. So it helps dial that customer in, just like when you go to Domino's and you order a pizza and it tells you when it's coming to your house. You can follow the whole thing on the cloud. So that's been real big AI. We have answering service AI after hours and we use AI answers to try to catch that lead, just so they don't just hang up and go somewhere else. Instead of a voicemail, nobody leaves a message.
Speaker 3:You know we've got some new things. I'm really trying to build our website out so we can quote everything possible online, you know. So we can go ahead. If the customer's at 10 o'clock at night on a Saturday night and they're wanting to buy a product like gutters or whatever, they can go on there and they can fill this out. Oh, here's the price. Oh, it's gonna cost thirty five hundred dollars. I can think what options I want. Here it is. Let me go ahead and pay my deposit, get on schedule. We can have it done. In a way, you got the measure tick, comes out, checks color, blah blah. So that's where I think everybody's mindset is going to, that amazon mentality. Amazon, you can just get it right away. Nobody wants to wait two months on anything anymore.
Speaker 2:Boy, amazon changed things right, like, oh my goodness, and they worked really hard on that. It's amazing. You could get anything you want. There's reviews on everything. The pricing is right there.
Speaker 2:Marcus Sheridan talks about this a lot. If you follow Marcus Sheridan, I had him on the podcast not long ago with his book. They Ask you Answer, and then Endless Customers is more what he talks about. It's the transparent pricing and, uh, and so it's, that's where the puck is going. So start skating there, boy, because that that's going to change really fast.
Speaker 2:Uh, the thing that I heard in a lot of the implementation of technology that you have is customer communication has, has been a big impact. Huge, huge, right, what, what, what, what would you? How did you design, or how have you been designing your communication with your customers over the years? Like, what have you found to be kind of a the best cadence or rhythm? When should customers be communicated with? You know from, even you know as they're, you know on that appointment set all the way through? Like when, how have you guys thought about that? What are, what are some of the most impactful conversations? Or even if it's a text message or whatever it is like, where, where are you finding the most value in that in in the customer journey there so the program church.
Speaker 3:Uh, that ties into our service. Titan does most all that. I don't know all the backbones of that, but yep, the director handles that. But, um, I think the journey, the customer journey, is so important these days that you have to stay in contact with them. If you take their money on the sales guy getting out there closing that deal and take their money and then they don't hear from you until the day before the install, it's the worst customer experience possible and we used to be those guys years ago.
Speaker 3:And so I think you know you start with. You start with hey, you know, we've got your deposit, thank you for being a customer. We're working on sending a video out on that. We haven't got that dialed in yet. We're chirping video and it'll be me talking explaining. If you ever got any problems you need me pick up on call. Here's my cell number. I'll give you my cell number. I'm the owner, but I'm not scared to talk to you. Start out with that, go ahead and build some more trust before and then say hey, our, our operations manager is going to be ordering the material. We'll let you know when it gets the an or we're coming to measure or whatever the process. So I honestly think you know probably five to seven times in that whole journey is I don't think anybody's going to complain that you're you're letting them know what's going on in the process. If somebody complains, they're probably not a good customer.
Speaker 2:You probably want to kick them out and don't do any more business with them, probably that's right, especially there's there's pre-sale and post-sale communication, right, and and I think I don't know if you can communicate over communicate in post-sale right, pre-sale communication, right, and I think I don't know if you can over-communicate in post-sale right Pre-sale you might be able to over-communicate, right, like there may be an opportunity to over-communicate there, you know. But I have a friend that is in the real estate investing industry and he sends ginormous amounts of emails and I had lunch with him. This was back in like 2009. I had lunch with him, 2010. I was like my goodness, I get like four or five emails a day from you. And he was like I'm like you don't think that's too much. You're not, you know. He said if people aren't unsubscribing, I'm not sending enough emails.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah, and so we always take this mindset of well, we don't want to bother people. I promise you you don't have data on if you're bothering people until they're saying stop, stop. Yeah, yeah, right, like people are telling you on a regular basis please stop. You know, and not just that outlier, right, not just that one noisy person out of 100 or a thousand that you know that that's telling you that's too much. When, when, when. 10, 15 out of that hundred, start telling you, all right, ok, maybe we'll dial it back a little bit. 15 out of that 100 start telling you all right, okay, maybe we'll dial it back a little bit. But I would personally go to the point of communication that when people say, stop right on the front end, and then once I mean, how good does it feel to get communicated with when you are a customer?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's amazing, you know we get a lot of Google reviews where they'll say they communicate the whole process to us, google. That's great for Google to see that and our future customers that are looking to purchase our products see that. So that's a good thing. You know, and everybody gets buyer's remorse a grand on a product and you know you paid 50% down. You paid 10 grand down. I could have paid off college or whatever, and they're like maybe I shouldn't do that. So the quicker you respond and let them feel comfortable that they made the right decision to the better chance that you're going to have somebody win their money back as well.
Speaker 2:I have. If you have done any amount of contract or hired any amount of contractors for your personal home or maybe you have some rental properties or something like that you have written that deposit check and sat there wondering what the heck is going on. That's a scary time it's a scary time. You write a ten thousand dollar check to someone and most people you know that's, that's a almost. For anyone, that's a lot of money.
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Speaker 2:Click the link in the description to apply to join for anyone, that's a lot of money, you know yeah, so so the more you can stay in contact with them, I think that's's better for your company.
Speaker 3:So I mean, that's something that a lot of people you can't do that if you're a one-man show and you're out giving quotes, I mean you can, but it's going to be a lot harder. So, automations anybody needs to figure out these automations and get down, yeah, automations and get it down, yeah.
Speaker 2:Automations for the small as you're getting started to, until you're in the eight figures and above, like a lot of this can be automated. The technology is there. When did you implement the AI answering? How long have you had that implemented for?
Speaker 3:I think it's almost not a year now. We had we brought it down about a year and we thought it was going to be a little early. We just wanted to try it out and see what kind of response and I think the first couple months we were getting leads on weekends.
Speaker 3:Thankfully we were locking them down instead of them calling and us trying to talk Monday morning and then they've already got somebody else and they're like oh, we don't need you now, thank you. So I think that was about a year ago. It's worked pretty well. It's not perfect AI is not perfect, no, but it's better than nothing. So if your leads cost $100, $125 a lead and you can get $4, $ five on a weekend for that instrument, service, that AI, it's a no-brainer, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, and then it ties into and I don't know about all of this, I'm a marketing director but it ties into Google. If you're open 24-7, and if you don't, google will shut you down or they'll put you lower. All that because you've got to ask your following with AI to automatically answer to what I'm going to miss. That's right. Google's going to bump you up a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's in the Google local services ad. So you know, your response time in the Google local services ads is something that they are using as a ranking factor. So making that phone's answered, that's a big, big, big deal. We covered a lot here. What other things do you see on the horizon for PE? You said you're starting to see people now that are just hey, I'm starting this company to build, to exit. That's a different thing, right? You know all these things come in waves. So all these PE cycles and things like that come in waves. That you know we may be in the peak of it now, we may be in the middle of it, we may be at the beginning of it. We don't really know exactly. But what other thoughts or what else are you seeing around that side of things?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, being at Tommy's a bit uh uh, Christiano through Rhino they do our marketing. They've got a human jacks business Redbird Yep, and I think that's Indiana. Redbird yep, and I think that's Illinois, Indiana, Indiana. And then so these guys, their main goal is to get three to five years build it up and, you know, with your average ticket being 15 or 20 grand, and then a PE company coming in and giving you a multiple of seven or eight for roofing, and then it's just a short-term money grab, kind of like investing in a stock market, but a little different ways in business. But I think that's going to probably be here for the next 20 years.
Speaker 3:You know, especially in the blue collar era. I think we've got it made in the blue collar guys because a lot of ai's taking a lot of like the lawyers and a lot of these jobs they're taking. They can't take our jobs because we need to. You know they need labor guys to go and install these products on these homes. So we're actually going to be the new white collar and they're going to the other. Some of these other guys are going to go down to the blue and we're going to be the ones that are going to be making the books. You know, the labor guys like us.
Speaker 3:But I think it's here to stay. I think it's just going to get more sophisticated and I just think people are just going to have to jump on and learn how to learn technology. And I'm going to be 50 in January and I'm having to learn more technology than I ever thought I'd have to learn. You know I want it to simplify more technology than I ever thought I'd have to learn. I wanted to just simplify. I know how to use my phone and all that. I was like I just want to use my phone. I don't even want a phone Five years from now. I was going to give it, my life.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know yeah that's one of the things is you got to keep up with the technology. If you're not, if you're not doing things with AI that you know, some of the first thing places you could start is just start with chat, gpt and learn how to write a prompt. I have a great episode with Jonathan Mast, who we talk about that in the perfect prompt. Jonathan's an AI expert and just and and just learning how to communicate with it right, Learning how to use it, learning where it can be used. Can it be used in voice, can it be used in? You know how? How are we doing this?
Speaker 2:We're, you know, we're having a lot of conversations around that in the RSRA, you know, because there's what it can do and what it can't do yet, right, and there's there's a lot of things it can't do yet. But, but, boy, you better learn what it can do now so that when it can do the other things, you're already there. Uh, you know leading the pack a little bit. Uh, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a lot of, it's moving fast. Yeah, yeah, moving really, really fast.
Speaker 3:You know, at this conference last week, kevin Leary was there speaking and I think it was Thursday morning and he was talking about AI and he's actually using it a lot.
Speaker 3:He says that he can build a commercial in Dubai cheaper than they could produce one here and it's all AI related.
Speaker 3:I got the green screens on the back and all that. So he flies to Dubai and he said it's $20,000, $30,000, which here costs $80,000 or $150,000 after he flies people and everything. So anyway, he had this one video he showed us on the screening where him and AI and AI is so close to his voice now that now the video looks fine, the video's been fine on AI, but the voice is where it's been a problem. So he's got this. He had this video where the voice was so close and he said he's flying back to Dubai in two weeks and he's going to record a whole 3,000 word script and he said AI's voice is going to be exact to mine and then I can post constantly on social media or whatever I want to do and I don't have to, and then it's going to be a whole lot cheaper and more efficient and that's what everybody's doing as well and I'm actually trying to learn that too, so we can get that going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a, it's almost a. It's an arbitrage of your time, right, it's pretty crazy. I have a. You know, I coach in a digital marketing agency group and so I'm around a lot of digital marketing agency owners and you know, one of them just did a full commercial in Google's video AI and it was phenomenal and I was like, boy, this is crazy. That was one of the. I heard a comment on some podcast recently. They're like, yeah, hollywood's in trouble. It's like Hollywood's in trouble, yeah, hollywood's in trouble because a lot of these things that AI is getting so good at video and voice and things like that that it's going to be a big challenge. A big, big challenge.
Speaker 3:He showed me a movie that they'd already made an all-AI movie. He put it on the screen I don't remember the name of it. He showed me this band, or he showed everybody this band, and this band made it to the top five. They were an all-AI band. It wasn't even real. There's nobody they have to pay these royalties to. Besides whoever designed it. One day we're going to be listening to bands that are not even real, because we like that kind of music, whether it's ZZ Talk or whether it's Metallica or whoever we get because they're going to build AI bands to match what we like. That's right. It's getting wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, google Flow is the platform that he built. That on it's a. Google Flow is the is the platform that that he built that. That on it's in Google Labs. To AI filmmaking tool. But yeah, I've seen that too with the music to the same thing, like whoa, that's a, that's something. So there's a lot of things coming. But then, you know what, what impact does that have on our businesses? How can we utilize it? Right?
Speaker 2:If it took, you know, a lot of people have a lot of companies struggle with making social media content. Boy, a lot of them, right. But if you could, you know, create a more efficient process for that through using ai, like if it can use your voice and do voiceovers and do it in your, in your tone and it. But but you have to feed it the right information for it to feed it. You know, for habit to have a good output. I come from the software development side of things. I'm a terrible, terrible programmer, but I did it years and years and years ago and, um, you know, it's still garbage in, garbage out, you know. So you got to learn that the goal is to learn how to. What the right input is right, what the right inputs that you can have. What are, what are? What are some of the, some of the things you you're most proud of in blue waters journey so far, or your own personal journey?
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, probably the top things I'm proud of is my team Just just proud of my team. And it's hard to have a good team these days. I hear other friends that it's hard to have good people on your team. But I'm proud of my team. I'm proud that we have a good name and our Google reviews are strong at 625-ish right now on eight years. That's pretty good. We started the last three or four years really trying to get to Google reviews. The first couple of years we didn't really know, we didn't try. So I'm proud that we've got great customers. We've got a 10,000 base roughly 10,000, I guess, customer base. That's pretty strong too. We've won some awards the last you know five years. We've won the best gutter service here in our area. We've won the best screen service service here in our area. We've won the best screen service last four years or three years. Uh, we won the best window installation team this last year. Uh, proud of that.
Speaker 3:Um years ago when I had the other company called b b my dad gray, that's the company I fought, company I follow from. I saw the magazine Qualified Remodeler, top 500, and I used to look for it and I'm like man. This is in 2004 I remember exact year and I said I want to get in the magazine, I want to be the top 500. I want to get there. And a couple years ago I saw my wall here. I think, I think it was two years ago we were 492. So we made it in the top 500. You made it.
Speaker 2:You made it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That was a big thing for me. For other people in the company they could care less, but I remember looking at that magazine in 2004 saying I'm going to be in there one day and to be able to get that and get that plaque and be in that magazine and see blue arc steers. That was a proud moment for me. Uh, that, probably to other people it wasn't a big deal, but to me it was huge. And knowing that, hey, I said I wanted to do something and I made it happen. And, uh, everybody here made it happen to what they that was cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. Man. What, uh, if you could give advice to a contractor, you know, starting out, or trying to try to build something sustainable and and and you know, but you know, uh, really trying to build a really great company, what, uh, what would that advice be?
Speaker 3:uh, dream big, you got to dream big. If you just say, hey, I want to start a business just to have some extra money, a little side, dream big. You know you got to give 110 percent to. You know, after you dream big and build your plan and reverse engineer what you want to do, you have to give 110 percent.
Speaker 3:Everybody thinks that all these people are overnight successes. I mean, I've been doing this. If you take the, even if you took the five years of law enforcement out and 13, 35, 37, so 32 years I've been doing this for 35, 37, so 32 years. I've been doing this and I'm still just growing every day and trying to get better at what I do. I mean 32 years of it. You'd think I'd be retired by now, but I'm not. I'm going to retire, so you just got to get to work. I mean, if you look at people on social media and you'll see all these people that act like they're making all this money, don't believe that. Just put your head down, work hard, stay committed and just be honest and have integrity. I mean that's what it's about, especially in our line of work. You know, construction people trust the contractors less than the homeowners do, so have that integrity If you did something wrong, fix it, just keep after it.
Speaker 3:I mean, there's so many different things I could say I could talk for two hours, but really and truly, you know you got to dream big. If you dream small, that's where you're going to land. If you dream big and don't make it to there and you only make it half, you've done great. So you got to drink to it.
Speaker 2:Awesome man, jimmy. Thanks for your time today. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast.
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