Roofing Success

You Can’t Build a Scalable Roofing Company Alone with Andy Keys

• Jim Ahlin • Episode 279

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Andy started FoxHaven Roofing Group while living in a halfway house.
Now he’s running a $25M+ company with a team, systems, and real leaders.

In this episode, he breaks down:
- Why it’s getting harder for the small guy
- The hire that changed everything (every roofing company needs this now)
- What makes a real GM or Sales Manager (and what doesn’t)
- Why outsourcing your books is killing your business
- The tool that multiplied his entire company

If you’re still wearing all the hats…
Still fielding every call…
Still stuck in sales…

This is your wake-up call.
You can’t build a real company alone.

Watch this. Then go build the team that helps you grow, with or without you.

Links: 
https://foxhavenroof.com
https://www.instagram.com/foxhavenroofing
https://www.facebook.com/foxhavenroofing/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3pkM6f-6toklxvpWCZ6jNQ

🤖 Have a question? Ask this customized ChatGPT for the answer! Specifically designed for this episode, it’s here to help! https://roofingpod.com/chatgpt-279

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00:00 – How Andy Built FoxHaven Roofing Group from $0 to $25M
01:12 – Roofing Business Startup: From Halfway House to Roofing Empire
03:05 – Roofing Company Growth: $800K to $25M+ Revenue Timeline
05:12 – Scaling a Roofing Business: What to Focus on Year by Year
07:52 – Why It’s Getting Harder to Start a Roofing Company Today
10:45 – How Small Roofing Companies Can Compete with Big Players
11:38 – Must-Have Hire for Growth: Roofing Tech & Marketing Systems
15:45 – Roofing Leads vs. Qualified Appointments: What Actually Converts
17:35 – Bookkeeping for Roofing Companies: The Mistakes Costing You Big

SPEAKER_00:

When you start to document what you know, then you can pass it to other people. If you're the only one that knows how to do something in the company, it's a problem. And I'm still backtracking in certain things. I'm building out some custom tools right now that I'm the only one that knows what they are, but as soon as they're built, I'm gonna have to train my whole team on what they are, how to use it, how to edit it, because you become the bottleneck when you're the only one that knows something. Google Analytics don't mean anything. It's how many people do we actually get in the home for. And then I just look at return on ad spend as how much do we spend on this channel versus how much gross profit do we earn from that channel? So it's not revenue from your marketing channel, it's gross profit. You can get into customer acquisition costs, you can get into all sorts of stuff. But the the big ones for me is qualified appointments and return on ad spend looking at gross profit, not revenue. If you're building a team and you're building a business and you've got big ambitions, because like I'll talk to guys that don't want a hundred million dollar roostic company and they've got one other employee. Uh, and then if that's what you want, why are you outsourcing your books? Why are you outsourcing your call center? Why are you outsourcing all these things? Because you're not going to get anywhere unless you build a team.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to the Roofing Success Podcast. I'm Jim Aline, and I'm here to bring you insights from top leaders in the roofing industry to help you grow and scale your roofing business. Andy Keys, it's been a while. What's up, Jim? How are you, man? Good, man. Good. Thanks for having me. The last conversation we had, I think was in like 2021, live on air, right? And and we got to talk about a lot of cool things. Uh at that time, I think you you might have just surpassed the five million dollar mark in your business, just had a small team. You're, you know, you're just kind of building this thing, right? Just building it. It years have passed now, and and and you've been doing lots of cool things. I keep hearing your name in the industry from different people. And I was like, man, let's have him back on. Let's have a another conversation and get some of the lessons that that that have been learned in the in the in the you know over the last few years since the last conversation. So for people that don't know you, just let's do a little recap, man. How you know how'd you get into roofing? How'd you start Foxhaven?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, uh, name's Andy. Grew up in Philadelphia, uh, was kind of a punk kid, like a lot of us that end up in roofing. Uh, my dad had a roofing company, never wanted me to be a roofer, wanted me to do some corporate sales job, climb the corporate ladder. Uh, but just a lot of drugs, a lot of just a bad kid. So I would always end up roofing for my dad because things didn't work out. Um, eventually the drugs got bad enough where I was in and out of rehabs. So I ended up in Florida as a rehab kid, which is pretty common uh in the part of Florida that I'm in. A lot of rehabs around here. Um got out of my last rehab, living in a halfway house, needed to make money, started roofing, uh, and that was it. Uh kind of roofed as a subcontractor for like a year, year and a half before I started my business. Uh, and that's where it all started.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, man. So 2021, you know, what what year did you start Foxhaven then?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh the end of 2018. So 2019 was my first full year. Got it.

SPEAKER_02:

Um the business has been maturing, right? You're starting to cross these thresholds. What have been what have been some of the memorable milestones to you along the way?

SPEAKER_00:

I guess when you say that, like memorable milestones, and I don't have a great memory for when things happen. I just kind of am in the zone and just working. So like it's a blur, but I do remember my revenue for every year. That's kind of like the milestones I can think of. But when I think about like 800,000, 2 million, 5 million, 11, 15, this year looks like 25. I can tell you what I was focused on in those years, and I know it was different every single year. And I think that's why we've never stopped growing because my day-to-day and my headspace changed every single year in the business. So at 5 million, I was the guy selling like 90% of the revenue, um, still kind of touching every area of the business. And then the jump to 11, I started to learn how to train salespeople. And at the end of that year, I was finally 100% out of sales because now I had a sales team. Uh, and then the following year it was more on okay, we're making sales. Now, how do we produce all this at a higher volume without the whole business falling apart? So then you get into systems, building a real production department where salespeople can drop a contract off, production can take it from here, and salespeople can go sell more. Um, and then this year we've had more going on than I've ever had going on. Uh really leveling up in the marketing. Uh, we always built a great brand, but I've never, we've never done a good job at like we pay this much for this lead source and it brings us this much ROI. Uh, we never really made PPC a predominant lead source for us. We've done that this year. Uh, we've never handled retargeting in a way that uh we could be. So, like when you visit a website and then that company never leaves you alone again, we've now mastered how to do that. Uh so we have all our retargeting audiences set up. Um, and then just the the software, the tools, the AI, all that stuff going on this year to kind of make the jump to the next level. So because everything everything's changed on what I've been working on year after year, I think that's why we've never hit a ceiling. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's what that's what you have to do. I uh from a from a coaching aspect, I do coaching and uh and and it's one of the things as a coach for me is is to help a business find the next right thing to do. And it and it feels like that's how you just keep you just keep going. So you you get you get through this thing this year. Well, maybe a year is a good milestone. All right, we did this this year, right? We we built the sales team. Now we have the now we're on to the next right thing to do is to build out that production, the production team, the production systems, all the all the SOPs for that, build that process out. Well, okay, now what's the next right thing? Oh, now we have an exceptional production team. We have an exceptional sales team. Now, how do we pour gas on it? Right now, let's build the marketing funnel. Let's let let's really improve our marketing. So it feels like you've been doing the next right thing in your business. How have you, how does that how have you determined what the next right thing is?

SPEAKER_00:

Usually just paint, just uh things not going right. So, like um getting myself out of sales, it's like I'm still trying to run sales. I can't imagine growing the business if I was to remove my sales revenue from the business. But then it's like you're running appointments and then everything else is falling apart over here because you know you shouldn't be running appointments every day. So, like, just that pain of like, all right, this isn't working. I've got to figure out how to get other people to sell. Same thing with production, like companies growing, we're selling more jobs, sales team's on fire, but now the jobs are falling apart. We got punch out lists that's never ending, customers are complaining, we're late. Uh, so just the pain of customer complaints and the jobs not going well. It's like, all right, I need to dive into production. I got to figure this out. Um, and then like you said, now I know I need to throw gas on this thing. It's like, how are we gonna take the next jump? Well, it's get better at marketing. Um, so really just the business talking to you um through through screwing up, through pain tells you what's next.

SPEAKER_02:

The pain, yeah, what hurts, right? Like let's what what what do we need to fix next? What hurts? That it's a great way to think about it. We we were just talking a little bit off air, um you know, about kind of your journey and and and you know, when we spoke last and you were like, man, it's so cool. Like you, you know, it was just you and maybe two other people. It was like, you know, it was this this small thing, and and you made a comment that that uh that it it's getting harder for the small guy. You know, let's what are your thoughts on that? How how has it become harder for the small for the small guy? For someone, if if you I mean for you to start it over again with you know with what knowledge and and and connections you had back then, what would what would be the challenges that you see in front of you? Before we carry on with the episode, let's give a shout out to one of our sponsors. Roofers, let's get real. You're great at building roofs, but are you great at building a steady stream of leads? That's where job nimps marketing comes in. They know the roofing industry inside and out, and they'll help you dominate Google, Facebook, reputation management, and everything in between. If you want more quality leads, more book jobs, and more growth, visit the link in the description or the sponsors page on the Roofing Success Podcast website. What are your thoughts on that? How how has it become harder for the small, for the small guy? For someone, if if you I mean, for you to start it over again with you know with what knowledge and and and connections you had back then, what would what would be the challenges that you see in front of you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, really hard, and I I don't like it. I I hate it for the little guy. Um, you know, I love this country because the American Dream's alive, but it's definitely harder just because, not because of any bad guys, just the landscape we're in. Uh and really like the two biggest areas is tech and marketing. I feel like the more we get into the digital world, the further, the further it gets for the little guy. Because like I I was a roofer, I had a tool pouch, like I didn't know anything about technology, but I had some time to figure it out. So whereas if I put myself in my shoes now with the way things are, I feel like the gap from not even just private equity, but even just like the larger companies that have the resources and the bandwidth to uh explore all these new tools out there. Whereas the guy that's just running around trying to sell roofs in his truck uh is so far away from that. Uh it's uh I don't want to say disheartening because you can always make it, but it's definitely harder today than it was when I started. Um that's the reason I do some free coaching and I help guys out as much as I can. I mean, I'm a busy guy, but I do my best to help.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, technology is creating gaps. Um it's uh this is the way I've been looking at it. There's a there's an arbitrage happening right now, right? So there was an arbitrage years ago with CRMs like Jab Nimbus and and Acculinks and different things, and where it went from pen and paper to the CRM, right? Like that was an arbitrage. The people that were that were using the CRMs using Jab Nimbus, like all of a sudden, like it's like, whoa, they're so much they could be so much more efficient than the the the guy down the street. And it it's crazy that some people still haven't adopted a CRM or technology, right? A ERP or anything. Like, I mean, it's like it's it's crazy. It's crazy. I I saw a handwritten quote the other day on a piece of paper. I'm like it was the like someone actually wrote this, like on a handwritten. This is crazy that it's still happening. Um, some of the you know, the things that I'm involved in, like power-up agents and and and and now the AI roofing revolution, we're you know, trying to get the this message out really hard to the to the to the you know to the small business owner to help the small business owner close that gap and get ahead of it now because otherwise you may you you'll have a a big wall to climb. Um and so what let's talk about what what are some things that advice that you would give someone like, hey, I'm just running this, maybe I'm I'm using a CRM, maybe I'm using you're probably using a CRM at this point, right? Like I got maybe a sales person or two, I'm you know, where what are you looking at in technology? Like what what do they need to learn? I think that because knowledge closes the gap, right? Like it's it's not that it's not that the tech the technology is out there, but getting to use the technology is is that gap that I feel needs to be closed. You could tell me if I'm wrong, but like how do they how does someone go about starting down that path?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've been telling a lot of guys this recently, and it's to hire a CTO, even if you're small. Um, because you, the roof guy that's out doing sales, that's running jobs, you're just never gonna be the tech guy. I've come a long way in my technical capacity, uh, but I have that person in my business so that he can own all these things. Um we're so quick to just because most small guys pay an agency for some type of marketing activity. Yep. Um, but then when it comes to working with the agency or even holding the agency accountable, you don't have the technical side of marketing to be able to do that. To go into Google Analytics and check if they're optimizing PPC, to go into Google Search Console, to check the bugs, to check all the activity that's going on. Us roofing owners can't hold agencies accountable, and most agencies aren't doing all the work they should be doing for what you're paying them. Yeah. So the CTO or technical engineer or whatever you want to call that position, I think it's important for the little guys to have a full-time employee in-house uh with technical proficiency so that they can be the ones working with the agencies. They can be the ones making sure that you're retargeting, making sure all your audiences are getting up uh taken from the CRM. All those things that you're not gonna be able to do, um that hire can do all those things for you. And I'd almost say that I've never properly worked with an agency for marketing until I had that position. Uh, because now I have ownership of all the agency's activities and we're supporting each other strategically. Um, and now it's effective marketing. So I should have done it a while ago, but it seems like a crazy hire when you're like you got a$2 million roofing company, you're paying this agency$10,000 a month to try to bring you leads. If you do all the math, I promise it's worth it to hire that person now, because now you can take advantage of all the new tools out there. Uh and it just puts you in a better spot. So I think that's the best suggestion I have for that. Uh, and then if you want to see how I'm using tech, you could just reach out to me and I'll I'll show you just to kind of open your brain up.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's awesome. That fractional CTO, I think that that may, you know, when you put a C in front of the letters, I think that that could get scary for people. You know what I mean? Like because that's an executive level, that's you know, C-suite kind of level. You think of salaries that are, you know, in the six-figure, multiple six-figure area. I I would also encourage you, man, if you just have someone in the company that that will take ownership of it to begin with. Like you could start small and it could be you. You have to sit in a lot of seats when you're building this thing, right? So you may have to to do that. In the in the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance, Adam Benzwin came out with a training called the marketing control system. And we and that's what we really dive into. And it's it's really how to become the GC of your own marketing, right? It's kind of what you're talking about. Like you you need the metrics. You need to know you need to know just enough, right? If you're if you are a roofing contractor, you better know what a completed roofing system looks like and a good installation looks like. Right. You better know if if you're an interior, you know, if you do interior remodeling, you have to know enough plumbing, enough electrical, enough, right? Like you have to know enough to know if you know if it's being done right. You have to know enough to to know if your bids are coming in right, the labor's proper on that. Like you just have to know enough. And I think that that's where that's a good place to start, right? Is just to get to know enough. You mentioned a couple of easy things. Google Search Console. And I bet there's 50 million videos on YouTube about that, right? Like and I bet you could find a real easy one, you know, to to to just at least get just an understanding of what happens in Google Search Search Console. Essentially, it's Google's rank tracking for your website. It'll tell you everything that you're showing up for for all, you know, anytime someone types something in. Um and and you could see the progress of if you are ranking for more and more things and if you're getting more and more impressions and more and more clicks to your website. And you could start to see that. One of my favorite things, you mentioned you guys have built a good brand. One of the my favorite things in Google Search Console because people don't feel like there's a good way to measure brand. Right? It's like, man, how do you measure brand? My one of my favorite things to do is to measure brand searches in Google Search Console. You can see how many times people are typing in Foxhaven Roofing Group. Foxhaven Roofing Group, right? Like they the and and uh over time, if you see that number continuing to increase, you know that you're making an impact from a brand perspective. So there's it's very important to do those. Uh Google PPC, man, you gotta know that, right? Um so an agency is going to report leads, maybe lead cost. Um we look at marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads also. What are you looking at from that metric? How are you looking at your marketing metrics? Like, what what metrics are you have been the ones that are like, man, that has really opened our eyes to things. I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors. I talk to contractors every day that feels stuck. Not because they're not working hard, but because they're missing the structure to grow without chaos. Or their culture's falling apart because their team's unclear, unaligned, or just burned out. And when change hits, they're reacting instead of leading because time and priorities aren't under their control. Day 413 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 are you looking at your marketing metrics? Like, what what metrics are you have been the ones that are like, man, that has really opened our eyes to things?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's it's not leads, it's qualified appointments. Like you said, qualified appointments. Leads in Google Analytics don't mean anything. It's how many people do we actually get in the home for.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh and then I just look at return on ad spend as how much did we spend on this channel versus how much gross profit did we earn from that channel? So it's not revenue from your marketing channel, it's gross profit. A lot of people get that mixed up. Revenue doesn't mean anything. It's how much gross profit do we earn from our ad spend. Um, you can get into customer acquisition costs, you can get into all sorts of stuff, but the the big ones for me is qualified appointments and return on ad spend looking at gross profit, not revenue.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. That's a great that those are great metrics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You mentioned like you got to learn this stuff, and I agree. And like I did learn it uh because that's the type of person I am. I just like dove in and learned marketing. I learned the tech stuff. I'm pretty much like a tech geek now. I haven't been in the office in a month because I'm just on Zoom meetings and on the computer all day, and I just work better in my little home office. Uh but if you're not that person, you just have to understand that. Like I get reached out to a lot about job nimbus support. I'm actually doing a webinar tomorrow night uh showing people how to do their build their instant estimate templates. I did one last week on building out your boards and your workflows. Because I get reached out to every day about job Nimbus support. So there's a lot of young roofers out there that have a job nimbus account and just can't figure out how to use it. They know they know it can help their business, but they just can't figure out how to use it. So, like, if you're the guy that's been slaving away for eight hours a day trying to figure out how to build job nimbus and you can't figure it out, like you just have to be self-aware to know you got to remove yourself from this side of the business. It can't be you. And then I made a big mistake because I was the guy that could figure it out. I built the whole job nimbus out, but I became the only one in my company that knew how to work job nimbus from lead to paid and close. I'm the only one that knew all of it, and that's a big mistake because now when something breaks, you, the owner of the company, is IT support fixing the system, and you don't want to be in that spot. So, like for all those reasons, the technical hire is important, and like, yeah, I called it a CTO. We should call it technical specialist or technical engineer, like we just call it that. That's fine. Um but having a sidekick on the tech side is super important today, uh, more important than ever. I love that.

SPEAKER_02:

I love the a couple of things about that, right? So knowing self-awareness is one of the one of the great traits that that has been measured in in CEOs, in entrepreneurs. The more self-awareness you have, the better it is, right? And so that if you start getting stuck and understanding this is not what I do, this is not my skill set, I can I can hire this, I can bring it in, how I can, I can outsource this. Be careful with outsourcing. Um, but I think hiring and outsourcing, you you kind of have to treat the same way. So we we could talk about that a little bit maybe too, but my thoughts on that and your thoughts on that. But so I I I think that a lot of people make the mistake of outsourcing as an easy button. They'll hire a marketing company as an easy button. They'll you you'd mentioned earlier when we were chatting before about outseat or outsourcing bookkeeping, outsourcing, right? Like outsourcing all of these things. Everyone hopes that that they can just hit an easy button and it gets done. But I think you uh going back to it, man, if you you have to be able to check their work, right? You have to be able to check that marketing agency's work, you have to be able to and and so making sure that you that's all your goal is, is just to have just to know enough, right? Just to know enough to check the work. But then on the other side of it is what you what you mentioned, which I think is very powerful, and I think it's it's something that is very challenging from the growth of any business, is that all of the knowledge gets stuck in the owner's head. My goodness, man, that like the the the knowledge being stuck in the owner's head could be one of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs or business owners face. How do you get that? How do you now how do you transfer that knowledge out of your head and into process and into the team?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there's a there's a few different ways. It almost depends on what the knowledge is. So when it comes to like I'll just put myself in my shoes. When I was the one in charge of all the salespeople, I was the acting sales manager. Uh, but I was at the point now where I couldn't even I couldn't even take that role serious because I was too busy. Well, now I had to create another sales manager. Um, it's first documenting everything. So, like this is where like the boring SOPs and and all that stuff comes into play, but it's important. There's a reason for that because if you can document everything, then you can pass somebody this clean folder or this clean video library or this clean list. We use Notion, side note for all of our SOP libraries, our meeting notes. It's almost like our CRM for our managers, uh, Notion. But we have a video library of like every SOP in the business so that it's our entire business step by step is documented with video instructions. Uh so when you start to document what you know, then you can pass it to other people. But then you also have to, there's a training aspect of that. Like you have to understand that if you're the only one to do it, if you're the only one that knows how to do something in the company, it's a problem. Um, and I'm still backtracking in certain things. Like I'm building out some custom tools right now that I'm the only one that knows what they are. But as soon as they're built, I'm gonna have to train my whole team on what they are, how to use it, how to edit it, uh, because you become the bottleneck when you're the only one that knows something. Uh, so that's where becoming a real leader comes in. When you're training people to be leaders under you, you're passing your knowledge down to them, and now you're an actual leader because you cannot go to the office for a month and everything is intact and everything is fine, and you know you've done a pretty good job.

SPEAKER_02:

That's for sure. In that uh in the creation of SOPs, I uh we've been having a lot of conversations about this recently. Um it's getting much easier with if you're able to use technology to assist you in developing all this stuff, man. How how long do you think it? I mean, well, it's been since you started the company, probably, that your SOPs have been built and and and evolved. If you had to start over, so what we're 20 or five, seven years into the business now? So you have seven years of SOPs. All of a sudden that database goes away today. Using technology, using maybe AI and things like that, how fast could you do you think you could rebuild that seven years of SOPs?

SPEAKER_00:

In a month, if we were really pushing. Yeah, we we documented though, and we kind of re started from scratch because the the technology's changed. So, like the SOP from year one that was typed out how to create an estimate in a word doc, that's useless now. So we we use Tela, Tela.tv. It's just a you can screen record nice videos, uh, you can transcribe the video, and then we embed the Telelink into Notion, and now you have AI that can read the transcription, everything's searchable. So like your team doesn't even have to know what they're looking for. Your sales guy could be like, um, my homeowner's not sure if he wants a metal roof or a shingle roof, and just search the AI in Notion, and it'll give you every video we've ever made on that topic. Um, and source it, and you can go right to it. So those are the types of tools where I'm like suggesting, like, dude, jump on the tech train because you're falling behind, because these big guys have all these crazy tools and crazy technology and they can train people. It's that's that's what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and and there's you know, we we that's kind of how this conversation started, right? How it's harder for the smaller guy. But now, in saying in saying some of these things, it can be easier in ways also. If you if you as the smaller company adopt the technology also, if you jump on the wave with your board too, right? If you start riding the wave too, you're gonna you're going with everyone. Everyone's gonna be going in that same direction. It's the compression of time that we're able to achieve with a lot of this technology, which is so much fun right now. Um another thing that I heard from you, and I've had this it's another thing that's been kind of talked about. I talked about it on a podcast with Rosalind Burgess recently. She talked, she always talks about the power of multiplication. And it seems like that, you know, when you when you first hired those salespeople and got out of sales, that you multiplied, right? It it's it's not addition, it's multiplication. And and and what have been the other like what have been the places that you've invested in your business from a team perspective or even from a technology perspective that have that have that have multiplied, that have created that that power of multiplication in your business. I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors. If you and your team aren't trained on AI yet, you're already falling behind. Competitors using AI are generating more leads, closing jobs faster, and running cleaner. The AI Roofing Revolution gives your team the training to implement AI so you stay ahead, not scramble to catch up. Don't wait until you're losing. Get trained now at the link in the description or the sponsors page of the Roofing Success Podcast website. Like, what have been the places that you've invested in your business from a team perspective or even from a technology perspective that have that have that have multiplied, that have created that that power of multiplication in your business?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I would say in marketing. Um we recently kind of overhauled our all of our marketing efforts. Uh we fired a few agencies. I hired that CTO I was telling you about. I hired a new director of marketing. Um, we got all new agencies. We were more educated, we're more focused. Um The retargeting was a big one. We knew PPC was a whole. But now because I have the team members and then we've got Notion to keep everything organized. We know all of our individual projects per marketing channel. So like PPC has a Notion folder. We know everything we're doing in PPC right now. Ruffle has a folder. We know everything we're doing. Our geofencing has a folder. So the CRM for the managers was a multiplier just on the whole company's productivity. Like I was actually thinking this morning when I was having my coffee that like we have so many things going on, and there's so much output from the company every day in like in a positive direction because we finally have a CRM for the managers. Like the CRMs we use, Job Nimbus isn't for managers. Job Nimbus is to operate the business. But how do you, your sales manager, your director of marketing, your general manager, your tech guys, how do how do you guys all stay organized on the projects you're working on? On AI recording meeting notes, on project tasks. So because we're super organized, we got our vendors in the right place, we have the right people in the right place. Our vendors are working super hard, crazy output. Our managers are working super hard, crazy output. So we've just multiplied the output from the business uh through those things. And I see it. It's it's important. I see it.

SPEAKER_02:

That that makes a lot of sense. The for the kind of the the process manager, the like there's it's a different, it's a different construct from an operational perspective, right? The the the stuff that you have in Notion versus the stuff that you have in Job Nimbus. Job Nimbus is the the day-to-day, man. It's just like this is the flow of the job. Um that's awesome. That that's good stuff, man. Another thing that you mentioned is now you've been working from home. And that that has allowed you to work on a lot of this stuff. But to me, there's something deeper there. It's not that that just going home allowed you to work on that stuff. It's that going home and the and and having a team that is taking care of things and and and and and making making sure everything happens properly on the other side. That's what allowed you to go home and start working on all of these cool projects and stuff like that. So let's talk about that buildup over time and and when you, you know, maybe your feelings around when you started to kind of move yourself into that work on your business mode.

SPEAKER_00:

I've always worked on the business. It's just like, you know, it's never like, all right, I'm working in the business and now I work on the business. That's not how, that's not how it goes. It's it's very seasonal. Sometimes it's 50-50, sometimes it's late nights and weekends are when you work on the business. For most of the early years, that's what it looks like. That's just what it is. So, like from 8 p.m. till midnight, that's when you get time to work on the business because your phone's not ringing. Saturdays historically have always been my favorite workday because there's less going on, the phones aren't really ringing, so I can really knock some good stuff out on the weekends. So you work on the business the whole time because if you're just stuck in the business 100%, you're never going to get anywhere. But there's a period where you have to work in and on the business, and the only way to do that is just hours and commitment. Um, but as you start to bring in real managers, that's when you get to really start to work on the business, is when you have an actual general manager, not just a quasi-generager, which I've had. So you can call someone a GM, but if you're kind of doing their job for them and micromanaging them, they're not actually a GM. Same with the sales manager. If you have a sales manager, but you're still the one running the sales meetings, then who is your sales manager actually? It's when you have a sales manager that runs the sales meetings, runs the sales people, you don't even have to show up. Everything goes fine, sales are still good. Same on the general manager side. Now you have true leaders. But then when you take one step up, like all the notion stuff we're talking about, now I have a full team of managers working on the business. So it's not just me working on the business, it's all the managers working on the business. So now we've got about five people that are focused on doing the high-leverage things that are working on the business, like everybody always gets to say.

SPEAKER_02:

I think that's a big uh a big a big point to make is it's it's crazy how we hire people in our business, but then we essentially end up hiring an assistant, not someone that owns that role. And that's what I heard from you just now is like you're a true general manager, a true sales person, uh or sales manager, right? That that person they are they are accountable and responsible for that, for their role. What what makes what has you said that you I think you said that you had a general manager that was more the other way, that was that was more like your assistant general manager, right? Like that, you know. Um what were some of the lessons that you learned there?

SPEAKER_00:

That you feel like you're the one picking out the problems in the business still. That's the that's the number one. It's like you get a chance to look in QuickBooks and you see an issue with overhead, with what any financial issue. You're the one that picked that out. And then you bring it to them and you're the one that chose them. And then you think, well, why am I the one picking this out? And it it was it wasn't it wasn't them, it was me. Uh, I had to literally I had to give them the jobs. Like I would hire them for the position, but then I was the one overseeing them, and they knew they could always count on me to point out the problems. And it was just very simple. Like I never had a straight up conversation, like, hey, you own these KPIs, these are yours. This is how you look, this is what you're looking for, and this is yours now. I'm not even gonna look. I'm not even gonna look for these problems. You own this now. And then me leaving the office like solidified all of it. I realized I was smothering everybody because I'd been so good for so long that I wasn't letting people elevate to become real leaders. But then once it was apparent that, hey, Andy's not here anymore, we got to take over. Uh, everybody leveled up a certain percentage because they just understand that it's them. I'm not there anymore, and they've taken responsibility for it. Uh, so that was big in leaving, is like we got a certain percentage lift from my leaders because they realized Andy's not here. This is ours now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, he could they couldn't walk down the hall and ask you. You weren't finding the problem. That was a that's a big aha moment for me. What you said is that if you are finding the problem, so uh a good a good team member in that role is maybe a measurement there is are they finding the problems? What if, you know, I'm thinking from a training perspective and a and you know, uh, you know, how hiring is guessing, right? And so you don't know if the person's the right fit. What do you think you could do, you know, as as you're building them in that role to get an idea if they're gonna find the problems or or to communicate to them that that is their job now to find the problems? Like how is that what what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00:

It's just communication. It's just communication. Like let's let's just say um closing percentage per sales rep. Like if you're talking with your sales manager, you show them in the CRM how to find everybody's close rate, how often you want to track it, maybe once a month, and you just explain why it's important. Hey, these these are the these are the standards we hold for our sales rep. This is how we check them. If there's issues, we know we have to have conversations with different reps. So I don't think that's like a I don't think that's like a tough thing. It's just like passing on what you know you need to look for. Uh the the hard part is can they have hard conversations with people? Which if you grow a business, you'll get good at having hard conversations with team members. Uh because that's just part of the, you're you're gonna get good at it. You're just if you don't, you probably didn't grow very much. Uh, but can your leaders have those hard conversations? Uh and that's a different story because they don't own the company, they're just somebody's boss. Uh, but if a leader can't have hard conversations and correct somebody, then they're not a leader. Uh so I would say that's the big thing to look out for. Can can this leader have hard conversations in the correct way to get the point across, but not completely destroy somebody and have it come out the other side productive.

SPEAKER_02:

So, first is the metrics. Like this, these are the metrics. So defined metrics that they can they have a scorecard that they can see that in their role success and failure is happening. They can identify that there is a problem. This is what I'm hearing from you, just paraphrasing, right? Like what I'm taking from it. A scorecard, metrics that they can follow. Hey, this is what the close rate should be. This is what we expect as a close rate. If it if it is above this, great. If it's below this, now we need to start having finding out what the issue is. Do we need to train the person up? Are they the right person for the job? Like, we can start going down the if-then while else, right? Like, okay. The other side of that is that hard conversations. Have you uh have you gotten a chance to train on hard conversations, or is it or you know, because that's a you know, we like I remember our our team of Ruff Marketers at one point with uh some of the account managers and myself, we read Crucial Conversations, which is a great book. There's like we started trying to execute those types of convers like that knowledge into the group. Like, is that something that maybe is a point of training on your leadership management team then? I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors. As a weekend 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. RAI 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. Is that something that maybe is a point of training on your leadership management team then?

SPEAKER_00:

On some level, yes, but on some level, no. So, like, this is where you hear like your best sales rep isn't necessarily a good sales manager because some people, some people have a natural inclination to be a leader and others do not. So, like when we're hiring for leaders, we're looking for the personality traits that make a leader. Um, we're not just assuming that we can train somebody on all the characteristics of being a leader, but then at the end of the day, there's a way to present a hard conversation. You know, a team member's not doing what you need them to do. Um, you know, you have to explain why this is a problem and how we can make it better, and then the benefit of if we're able to do that and just deliver it in a very matter-of-fact way, and it usually goes fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So giving them a framework to deliver the message maybe might be what what gets trained on. But you're right, some people have different skill sets, right? Like people have different skill sets, and and management is a specific skill set. Um, not all the bet it's it's kind of the same thing in you know in sports. The the best athletes a lot of times don't make the best coaches.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Right? They're they might be the best athlete, but they don't know understand how to coach, right? There's a different, it's a different skill set. Um, from a hiring perspective, what are you looking for for those management level people? Or are you have you have you been uh more of a fan of of building and promoting from within?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we've been lucky. Uh, because ideally, like most business owners will tell you they'd rather just move everybody up because then it feels all warm and fuzzy. You've got team members that have been with you a while. The first couple of people you've been with have been your management team, and now they're the highest in the company, which I got lucky. That's just how it happened for me. Um, my first two hires are now the highest uh managers in the company. I've actually given them some equity. So, like that's how it worked out for me. That's always uh the way you'd like to go. So I've never had to experience hiring from the outside and now making them uh my current people's boss. I've never had to do that. Uh I would though, if I had to, if I didn't have the person to move up and it wasn't gonna work out, or maybe I moved somebody up and I realize, okay, they're not a natural-born leader. I've got to replace them. I would do it. I just I haven't had to.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. That's that is that is is fortunate that some of the people that started with you have grown with you in the same capacity. Because it doesn't always happen that way, right? And and and so that's a very fortunate thing for you to have. You mentioned that that you had promoted them and then now also gave them equity. Oh and everyone, there's a lot to that. I I you know there's a lot to uh providing that additional level of mental ownership to the company, right? Was that what what made what was what was your thought process in in I think I'm gonna offer equity to this team member or that team member or these team members?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm I'm huge on that. I'm I'm huge on that. And there's more team members that'll have equity later. Um I I was kind of flirting with selling to PE when like all this started going on. They were reaching out, I was doing meetings. Um, and then eventually I just got to like for what? For what? I have an amazing team. I'm young. What what am what am I gonna do? Why do I need all that money right now? Is it just so that I can get rich? And it kind of like I was never in this just for the money. I didn't start for the money. So it kind of like put me back into like my true roots of why I'm doing this. Yeah, and then it's like again, like, as a matter of fact, I don't need to own 100% of this thing. These guys have been working hard with me for five years. Why don't they own a piece? So I just um we're in it for the long haul. We're gonna keep going. We're starting to help other roofers out, which is really fun. The whole team likes it. Uh, so I just wanted to, you know, have my people share in it because at the end of the day, if we're building something big, everybody can have some of it. And then it feels way better for everybody uh anyway. So it's just like, what am I holding 100% for? These guys have been with me since the beginning.

SPEAKER_02:

What what would what's the process? What was the process for you from the kind of technical side, the operational side of doing that? You know, I I know like large companies, they'll have employee stock option programs and they'll have like esops and they'll they'll have different things. Some some companies I've heard they do there, there's like a term it's called phantom equity, and it's kind of a thing like as you were evaluating how to give equity, what were some of the things you thought about? Like, how do I want to structure this to protect the business but also benefit the the team members that I'm giving this to?

SPEAKER_01:

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SPEAKER_02:

How do I want to structure this to protect the business but also benefit the the team members that I'm giving this to?

SPEAKER_00:

First, I'm not an attorney or a CPA. Those are the people I speak to to make these decisions, but um stock options will be the way we do it in the future when there's a lot of people involved. Uh, but for my first uh closest managers, I actually gifted them equity, uh, which means they won't have a taxable event because Foxhaven's worth a certain amount of money. So if I gift them 5%, they don't owe 5% of the taxes that would come from Foxhaven. Um, you're able to gift$15 million worth of value in a lifetime. So for, and that's why I said later I can't just gift everybody things because I'll reach my lifetime limit of gifting with the IRS. So, but for these first few, I'm gifting them true uh equity. They're members on the OA, they're actual members. Stock options are good. You can give somebody, say, a 5% stock option. So whatever the business is worth today, you give them a stock option that says, okay, 5% of today's value of the business is$100. But then later, when you quadruple the business and the business is now worth$1,000, they can take that$100 value of the 5% and now convert it to 5% of the business is worth$1,000, and now they just made a ton of money on an exit. But you don't benefit from a stock option unless there's an exit. So, like for these original people, it was better that I made them true uh equity members.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for sure. It's it's a lot to think about, but it it's cool that here's here's what I it's how did it feel when you got to a position where you're like, man, I could like I could do this for them. Like I could really cool.

SPEAKER_00:

And now I'm now I'm like gung-ho with it. So like um the the CTO uh I mentioned, we're starting a separate LLC to do some things in um, I don't need to talk about it now, but to do some other things. Uh and I just I'm like, hey man, we're starting this new LLC, you're gonna be my partner. I'm giving you 30%. And he was like, what? What? Yeah, like, yeah, you're doing all the work. We're in it together, and it's it's cool. It's cool. And now now you have a different level of output from the team, a different level of commitment. Um, and just everybody's going in the right direction.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it and it's a it's a really cool thing to be able to take what has been like given to you or that you've earned and and now pass that on to another person and help them. Like it's a it's a it's an awesome thing, man. That that that and it it's it's really cool that you're doing it that way. I really that that's a really cool thing.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a speaking of there's a place we all every business owner knows this when you're coming up. There's a place you're in where you just feel the full weight of everything going on, all the problems land on you, all the oversight lands on you. You're the only one to look and find problems. And like when you can spread that out to your people, everything gets a thousand times better. And like some guys never figure that out and they're just stressed out all the time and they're worried, and they think people are stealing from them, and they're not sure this person's doing their job right. Like, you don't have true managers, and you're not sharing uh the burden of the business with your team, which you should be doing. It shouldn't all land on the owner. So giving them equity is a great way to do that. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, you talked about some other ventures. You you have now uh gone uh into the supply side. You're you're starting to expand your business ventures. It's kind of it's kind of cool. Once you learn business, you can you can apply the business learnings to to to a lot of different things. But on the supply side, talk a little bit about what you've been doing there and then some of the like some of the now you have a different viewpoint of the business. What and and how has that changed for the better or worse? Uh, you know, Foxaven.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh yeah, so we started a metal manufacturing and supply company. Uh, we were just buying so much metal every year, millions and millions of dollars on metal because we do a lot of metal roofing, that it just made sense to go on our own. Um, I didn't have the bandwidth to start that business. So I partnered with somebody that had been in the business 10 years. He was like our go-to guy from our previous supplier. Uh, but like you said, you can take the lessons of business and plant them over here. We got to where uh it took Fox Haven six years to get to where we got in one year. Uh, and that has a lot to do with it. You understand numbers, you understand how business works. The investments in your business don't scare you. So we got up to like 15 employees, all these machines, equipment, things going on. But we knew our numbers and we were watching everything and we could handle it. But when you're small, you're just so conservative and you think you're broke all the time and you think you can't afford things because you don't know your numbers. You mentioned earlier outsourcing your books. I could talk about that for hours because I've been seeing a lot of that recently. Awful idea. Um, but being in the metal roof supply business, our customers are other roofers. So you start to understand uh what's going on in the market in a little deeper of a way. So summer was very slow for everybody. I mean, I noticed on the Fox Haven side with the phone ringing less and us having to do more to keep the appointment schedule booked. But then on the supply side, you notice because your customers are just like, you know, guys used to do one or two a week and you haven't heard from them in a month. And you call them to check in, what's going on? I'm slow, man. I'm really I'm really slow. Um, so we just got to see that over the summer. And then I know all the things Foxhaven was doing to keep the appointment calendar booked and try to keep the thing moving. We did more this summer than we've ever done in terms of like inside sales efforts, marketing efforts, closing percentage efforts to just keep the thing moving. And we were able to do so much because now I've got some leverage in the in the uh form of resources, human resources to to do the things to keep the schedule full. But then, like, you know, little two million dollar guy over here that just getting started, like doesn't even know the things to do when leads slow down to try to keep the calendar booked, um, and then doesn't have the support to be able to do that. And that's a lot of what we're talking about, is just like for the little guy, it's it's getting harder.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for sure. All right, let's talk about it. Let's talk about outsourcing your books. Because it's come up a couple of times now. And it it's uh man, it's a it's it's it's on your it's on your mind and on your heart, it feels like, right? Like, you know, I like I said, I think so many people try to hit the easy button on things, and and boy, that's a scary place to hit the easy button. What are you seeing? What what what what lessons have have you learned on that? What are you seeing from from other contractors that you know that are red flags that are you know the you know what what do they need to know?

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's it all starts like the decision to outsource something or hire for that same thing is like in my opinion, if you're building a team and you're building a business and you've got big ambitions, because like I'll talk to guys and they'll want a hundred million dollar roofing company and they've got one other employee. Uh, and then if that's what you want, why are you outsourcing your books? Why are you outsourcing your call center? Why are you outsourcing all these things? Because you're not gonna get anywhere unless you build a team. You need to build a team. And then, in my in my opinion, when you're early on, the most important thing to do is build a team with long-term bought-in people uh that are gonna be in it with you. And if we're just hiring basic assistants or outsourcing things, well, now we're the only one with the mind for the business. We have no real leverage or real support in the business. So I don't recommend outsourcing everything in the beginning because you think you need to keep your expenses low. I think you need to build a team and then grow the business because now you have a team of people. Uh, I see a lot of guys jammed up with inside sales activities because they don't have an assistant. So they're fielding the calls and they're running an appointment and they don't have an assistant. There's no way you, as the owner, running appointments that way and running sales that way is doing a good job of following up. So, like, hire the admin assistant, show, show them the sales pipeline and teach them how to support you in sales so that you sell more roofs. Because if you do that, you will sell more roofs because you're not following up with anybody. But all the way back to the books, the books is a big one. And I I've I've done probably seven QuickBooks Zooms in the last two weeks, and all seven of them outsourced their books. And most of them didn't even have their QuickBooks login. And they would all tell me the same thing before we started. No, my bookkeeper's good. And it's like, what are you basing that off of? Because what do you know about their books? How do you know they're good? Because they know more than you? Because they seem smart. You don't know if they're good. Let's go into QuickBooks. So we go in there and the balance sheet's jacked up. There's truck payments on their income statement. Uh their cost of goods sold's jacked up. They've got they're two months behind on material uh invoices. So their gross profit looks really strong, but they're two months behind on material purchases. So really their gross profit's 15% less. The advertising category is just one lump sum of advertising. They have no idea where they're spending their money. Um, commission, all sorts of problems to where they have no idea where they're at in their business. And it's like, how do you make the next hire? How do you set a marketing budget? How do you do any of those things if you have no idea where you're at in your business? You don't know what you're making on the jobs, you don't know what your overhead is. I've had meetings with guys where we're going through because the CRM can be powerful for job costing. We've always used QuickBooks because just old school, I guess, but uh we just do our bookkeeping correctly in QuickBooks. It's no extra work to pull PL on the job when it's done. So we don't even use CRMs for job costing, but you can. The tools are in there. But that has nothing to do with your rent, your insurance, your office supplies. Like you have no idea your payroll expenses, which is a giant category, your marketing expenses, which is giant. So I've had guys that say, okay, yeah, we priced a job at 40% gross profit and our overhead's 12, so we're gonna net 28. I'm like, oh, that's great, dude. You're netting 28. That's amazing. Then we go into QuickBooks and their overheads 30%. Like, dude, you're pricing jobs as if your overhead's 12, but your overhead's actually 30, and you don't even have your QuickBooks login to know this. So all these types of examples are things I'm seeing. And I keep telling these guys, QuickBooks is not just to file your taxes. So, like, yes, we file our taxes, so we need a bookkeeper, we need a CPA to file our taxes, but the bookkeeper and the CPA aren't roofers. We keep our books to grow a healthy, profitable business and make decisions. It's how we make decisions, is the numbers in our business. And the CPA and the bookkeeper don't know how you run your business, so you need to say in your books. We've always done bookkeeping in-house, my my whole career. I mean, I did it personally myself in the beginning, and then I hired for it. So we've always owned our bookkeeping. So if you look at my PL, it's structured exactly how I want to be able to see where my business is at without having to click into anything, without having to question anything. It's not that difficult to do that. So, with all the times I've seen the outsourced books, I just feel like it's not an option from what I've seen of guys doing it. Um my long rant on outsourced books.

SPEAKER_02:

No, that's great. No, that's great. But like now, let's go into like how how would how would you think about structuring your your books to give you that the best viewpoint? Like, how do you take your business and and and and and make that into financial statements?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so just uh we don't even need to talk about the balance sheet because that's a little advanced, although like at some point you've got to get into the balance sheet, but profit and loss statement. If we're gonna run a good, healthy business, we got to look at our PL. You have sales, then you have costs of goods sold. But we don't want generic categories that the bookkeeper came up with in our costs of goods sold. Because like you'll see things like in subcontractors' expense, you'll have gutter guys, painters, drywall guys, your roofers, you'll have all sorts of stuff lumped into there. But if I'm a roofer and all that, all those uh outside subs that aren't roofing subs should be separated. I want to know what I pay in roofing labor because that's those are the jobs that I estimate. I want to know what my roofing labor is. Um job materials. Maybe you don't want to see your ABC beacon SRS, maybe you don't want to see that amount category lumped in with all your miscellaneous Home Depot purchases. Maybe that muddies the waters for you. Maybe you want to see them separate. But those are just decisions you as the owner would know. And then the marketing's huge. You can't just have advertising and promotional and have every dollar you've ever spent in marketing in this lump sum category. Now you have to click into the category, look through all the transactions, okay, and then add it up. Whereas if you're just if your bookkeeping was in order and you would categorize those expenses and you had Google LS. Say in a subcategory. PPC. Maybe you had a branding category for things like that. Billboards, TV streaming commercials, meta ads. If you separate it all out into subcategories, now it's real easy to look at the marketing metrics we were talking about. Return on ad spend per channel because you have nice clean data to pull out of QuickBooks and make those calculations. So just all sorts of detail in your books that you, as the roofer, even the roofer that doesn't understand QuickBooks, they still understand their business. They understand how they quote jobs. They understand what overhead is. And if they start to get into marketing, they would understand that that lump sum category shouldn't be that way. Like the roofers understand structuring it correctly. Once they get in there, they just haven't started to get in there because they thought it's something they could outsource. And it's not.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey, marketing agency, you know how to set up marketing. Go set up marketing for me. You like everything gets this like, go do that for me, but without understanding it, without being a part of the process, like without saying, hey, no, this is how my business is run. You know, sometimes we have painters out, sometimes we have, you know, sometimes we're, you know, we're doing these other things, and I need that broken out. I need to see that. Sometimes we're buying, you know, from this supplier, that supplier, and sometimes we have these Home Depot runs. Boy, I want to keep an eye on those Home Depot runs, right? Like, because that's gonna tell me something about my business. That's gonna tell me maybe we're ordering wrong. Right? We're the it's gonna things that these the numbers can make decisions on other aspects of the business. They could kind of to what we were talking about, they can bring some problems to light, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Um there's another big one real quick, uh, just on the quick book, because I've been seeing this a lot lately. Two main things your revenue recognition. So I've seen a lot of guys, they'll have uh maybe they take a 50% deposit or maybe they bill for a hundred percent and then they collect their progress payments, but they're billing for a hundred percent of the job when the job is sold. So QuickBooks is calling it income. So it's making your profit look huge, but in reality, you haven't even done that job yet. So QuickBooks shouldn't be recognizing a$40,000 roof before you've bought any materials, scheduled the job, paid any crews. You shouldn't be recognizing that income because it's gonna make your profit look great. And then if your vendor invoices aren't being added as bills and QuickBooks correctly at the right time, now your job materials category is short 100 grand because you're 30 days behind. So you're way overshooting your revenue up top, and then you're undershooting your expenses, and now your gross profit looks amazing, looks like you have this super healthy business. Meanwhile, you're paying sales commissions that are too much that the business can't afford, and you're negative, but your books say that you're not. Uh, it's it's it's a pro it's a problem, man. And when I do these meetings, like people like almost they almost want to cry because they they think they're doing great and they don't realize they have all these problems. And the just the main source of it is they just outsourcing their books and not paying attention.

SPEAKER_02:

Not paying attention and not, but it's a it's a lack of understanding, you know what I mean? Like we can't know everything in our business. And so, and and I'm a I'm a big believer in in in speed to execution. So sometimes you gotta just go, right? And so sometimes you gotta just, hey, set this set these books for up for me, but then hey, let's revisit this. You know, like let's find, and that's what it seems like you've been getting some time with with with with with with some owners and and revisiting that. Hey, let's take a look at it. So, you know, think about from a from a perspective for the for the listeners, think about, hey, what what do I need to revisit here? What do I need to revisit on a regular basis to make sure that we're we're moving this thing in the right direction, to find those problems, and keep a keep a healthy growing company. Um what uh I'd love to learn or or understand your vision for Foxhaven and the future of Fox Haven and the kind of the way that the roof you believe the roofing industry is going, what you feel like uh you you need to do to effectively ride the wave of technology that's coming to to you know to compete against the the PE money, to like what are the things that you're looking at in the future that is gonna that is gonna make sure or ensure that Foxhaven Roofing Group continues to thrive?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, one thing is like as far as competing with P, that doesn't scare me too much. Uh, because like if you think about who they are, they just collect investment and then take that investment and come buy a company like me and then go buy a bunch of other companies. And they need the guys like me and the guys like the future companies are gonna buy because they're not roofing company operators. They're sophisticated, they understand numbers, they understand business, but us too can become sophisticated and know all the things that they know. Nothing's a secret, everything's out there on the internet. Uh, so I'm not I'm not scared of P entering my market and out operating me because they're just not gonna. I've I've spent a whole lifetime in roofing. I understand every piece of the business. We have the tech tools in place. Uh, we're pretty sophisticated now. So that side doesn't scare me. Um, access to funding is a different story. So because they know all these investors and they're good at collecting these giant funds, uh, they kind of have unlimited financial resources. Uh, but there are ways for guys like me to get funding, uh, to get private funding, to get financially back just the same ways they do. Um so it kind of pumps me up the idea of trying to compete with them. And we may start to do similar, similar activities uh as the PE companies, and that may be why we're working so hard on all our tech and all of our things. Uh, but I'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_02:

That's awesome, man. It's been an awesome, awesome chat with you today. Lots of good stuff. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the Roofing Success Podcast. For more valuable content, visit Roofing Success Podcast.com. While there, check out our sponsors for exclusive offer, top for merchandise, and sign up for our newsletter for industry updates today. Also, join the roofing success Facebook, other professionals updates on the latest site. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, share, and leave a comment. Your support helps us continue to bring the top industry insights. The website link is in the description. Thanks for listening.

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Jim Ahlin

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