How to Get Commercial Roofing Jobs (with Bryan Mitchell)

Pete: All right. Well, welcome everybody. We are live, back with another Roofr Masterclass here. You may notice that we are missing Nic today.

He got some personal stuff going on, and we're excited for him with that. But, joined today by Bryan Mitchell. Excited to have you back, Bryan. Maybe some of the folks that are on the call have, have seen you on our previous Masterclass, maybe not. And so-  

Bryan: I don't know if, me being back is a reflection on you or me because- ... it's, like, rare that I get invited back anyway, except to apologize, but is that why I'm here?

Pete: No. No apology necessary this time at least. Maybe after this one, I don't know.  

Bryan: Okay, yeah.  

Pete: Last time I think we had a great conversation, and we ended up getting cut a little short. You know, we burned through an hour very quickly, and still probably had plenty to talk about.

We can kinda loop back a little bit on some of the stuff we talked about. But also wanna kinda continue that conversation, down the road of, of commercial roofing. We predominantly have small to medium sized roofing companies working with Roofr.

And so a lot of these companies are looking to extend their reach a bit into the commercial market, or maybe they've already are dabbling a bit in commercial roofing, or looking to get into it.

We can kinda run through to make sure they have a good understanding of what they're getting into on, on the commercial side. But as always, you know, our emails are, are pretty simple, and if you wanna get in touch with us, I'm pete@roofr. He's nic@roofr.

We can always point you in the right direction if we're not the right guys to answer the question. We post all of these masterclasses you know, on our YouTube channel as well as on our website, along with some other stuff like our blogs that Joel writes, as well as our podcast.

We're always adding new, new stuff to the mix. The team's always working hard to, to share as much content as possible and help you guys out.

But let's get back to our man here, Bryan, right? So Bryan, I'll let you introduce yourself for the people that maybe weren't on the last one and don't know who you are.  

Bryan: I'm a, uh, a, a foreigner in America. I've been here for 40 years, so I don't think they're gonna deport me. But, ... I was, fortunate to get into the roofing industry in the '90s which is a reflection of my age, of course on the estimating side, and then worked with a roofing company that was actually losing money, sort of struggling to get going in commercial.

When I retired from there a few years ago, they were doing 70 million a year in roofing, and 14 million of that was in service. And then they sold for I don't know how many million. A lot. Like a- ... close to a couple of hundred million. So-  

Pete: Wow ...  

Bryan: they did really well. But, what we'll share today is really just what it takes to get it going, I guess.

And if anybody has already got it going and they wanna chat about how do you get to 14 million in service, we could talk about that as well.  

Pete: I'm looking forward to diving into the conversation with you. A lot of people are dabbling in it, you know. Like, a lot of the folks that I talk to are like, "Oh, you know, we picked up a commercial job here and there." And, I guess first, let's define commercial as you think of it, Bryan, 'cause I think there's...

we went through this exercise, I would say probably about a year ago, where we talked about our product in relationship to commercial work, right? We have a lot of contractors, if you ask them, "Do you do commercial work?"

"Yes, we do commercial work. Okay, we've roofed a, we roofed a church one time, you know, and we did a multifamily home, you know, and so we do commercial." And so when you're talking about commercial, what specifically are you referring to?  

Bryan: Yeah. Well, then I think we do still have to break it into two groups: low-slope commercial, and whenever I speak to a residential guy and I say, "low-slope," they said to me, "You mean flat."

I'm like, "No, no, we got a quarter inch," you know, "eighth of an inch slope in there." But low slope. And then of course, steep-slope commercial is there as well, and, and that's more the multifamily or the churches and that sort of thing. But low-slope commercial is, to me, God's gift to roofers- ... 'cause it, the water does not shed You know, anything steep slope, the water's shedding.

It doesn't have time to find all the nooks and crannies and holes to get into. Low slope, the water's not going anywhere. You know that quarter of an inch. So all low slope roofs leak sometimes.  

Pete: It's funny, i'm in Western Kentucky close to Nashville, and we have had some crazy weather.

I mean, 100 in- heat index is 115 degrees, and we have had these just insane thunderstorms in the afternoon, and I couldn't imagine having a low-slope roof and how much water is probably puddling up on that thing with the amount of rain that's coming down in a short amount of time, you know, these last week or two, so yeah.

Bryan: We had a contractor in, in Florida now emergency overflow scuppers are required when you do a reroof. But this guy had parapet walls. He had a plastic bottle get stuck in his drain, and his roof collapsed on his lap. A roofing contractor.  

Pete: So you touched on something here early when you talked about the company that you were with, and we talked a little bit about it already, but I wanna really focus a lot on it today, and that's repairs.

'Cause I think repairs are like the gateway drug into commercial roofing, right? I think a lot of people think, "I gotta go in and I gotta start doing a strip mall somewhere or something like that to get into low-slope roofing."

But the repairs are really a great low barrier of entry point for anyone that's considering getting into, commercial roofing at all.  

Bryan: Yeah, and when we talk about repairs, how you get into the repair and service side of the business is very important.

It's not just going and fixing leaks. But before we go there, and we just talk about re- why repairs are, the entry point. The, you know, the saying is looking for a needle in a haystack, right? Because low-slope roofs generally, you know, manufacturers say they're gonna last 20 to 25 years. Let's say they last 20 years.

That means every year only about 5% of roofs get replaced, right? Because they're lasting 20 years. So you can look at your market, and fortunately, because people don't maintain them, it's probably like 5 to 10%, but you're looking for those few percentages of roofs to go and replace. Now, first you gotta find them, then you gotta compete against the guys who've been in this business for a long time who know about them already.

And when you're really good, you're probably gonna get about a third of those jobs. So our 5% just got cut by a third And if we're really good, right? So if you're just getting- Yeah ... into this, what are we looking at? 1 or 2%? So w- when we talk about the needle in the haystack, how about if the needle and the hay were both what you were looking for?

Pete: I like that.  

Bryan: And that's, that's what the repair business is, because all low-slope roofs leak sometimes, right? And we've got such incredible support from the NRCA and the manufacturers themselves. For- forever, they have said in their contracts that their roofs have to be maintained in order for y- them to keep their warranties up, right?

So, and I don't know how many building owners know this, but they're sitting there, you know, with a million square foot of roof, and they're thinking they're fat and happy with a nice no dollar limit warranty. That is no longer valid because they're not maintaining it.

Pete: Well, and I think this is an interesting piece, right?

Because on the retail residential side, we don't necessarily... I mean, I've seen guys do it, but it's, it seems to be few and far between, these maintenance agreements, right? And it can work on that side, too. I remember I worked with a guy who had made a transition from commercial over to residential, and that was one of the main things he brought over was his maintenance agreements.

And he was selling them even on the residential side saying, you know, "Hey, let us be more proactive in taking care of your roof. We're gonna come out quarterly, we're gonna do these inspections. If we find something, we'll fix it. It's covered under your maintenance agreement." You know, and the biggest thing for me what he had done is he had essentially kept himself in that neighborhood and kept himself top of mind because people are seeing his truck, right?

And they're seeing him driving through the neighborhood once a quarter. "Hey, why does that roofer keep coming back to your house? Are you having problems?" "No, no, he maintains my roof. He fixes anything he finds," right? So it's just a great marketing thing as well as just a great way to maintain those customers and keep yourself top of mind.

So, uh, but I think it steals a, you know, it steals a piece right out of the book of the commercial side, right?  

Bryan: Yeah, and it's brilliant on the residential side because, you know, how do you get more residential roofs is when you do a roof in a neighborhood, you saturate that neighborhood, right?

So like you said, if you're back there maintaining it. And on the commercial side, we tracked where our leads came from, and a very strong majority of them came from people seeing our trucks.  

Pete: Hmm.  

Bryan: That visibility- Sure ... you know, building the brand. But we're still at the infant stage of the commercial side of the business getting into maintenance.

You know, if we compare us to HVAC, we are like total babies. One of the reasons low-slope roofs leak is because they've got HVAC agreements. And those HVAC guys are out there dropping screws and dropping panels- Yeah.  

Pete: And, you know.  

Bryan: Denting. So, yeah, exactly.

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: But nowadays, if you're getting 20, 25% into ongoing maintenance, you're doing really well, except on your reroofs. Every 100% of your reroofs should filter automatically into ongoing maintenance. And so that's how you're building it on the one side. On the other side, you've gotta find people with a problem, solve their problem, get them to trust you, and now you can show them.

What you should be doing is, for as short a time as possible, so let's say two years, you should be offering ongoing maintenance for the first two years after you've reroofed the roof. And you shouldn't charge for that. Hide that somewhere in your bid, or whatever.

But during those two years, you're educating your client on how necessary maintenance is. Because, you know, if we pulled up the internet right now and let's say we pulled Elevate or GAF or Co- I don't care which one you pull their warranty document, it says right on there, "The owner must maintain the roof."

It's not your responsibility as the roofer after you've done it. It's the owner's responsibility, which means anybody can do it. You don't have to be the guy who put that roof on.  

Pete: Right.  

Bryan: So it's it's a great way to do it, but we're gonna start by, first of all, who can I help?

And, I get excited when I hear about these major rains because that's when the water's coming in, and what's really nice for a new guy getting into this business is that's when the established roofers are so busy they don't know what to do with themselves. I have a, a client- Good point ... he gets 600 calls in a week when it, it has rained.

He can't keep up with that. So that means me- Yeah ... as a new guy, first of all, I'm selective about who I'm gonna work with, and I'll be calling them and saying, we had a h- heavy rain. Everything good?" And they're probably sitting there saying, "My bloomin' roofer said he'll be here in three weeks," you know?

And you can be there tomorrow. So it's a good opportunity for you to get in.  

Pete: Yeah. And what I love about it too, if you're new to commercial roofing, doing the repair work is a great way to learn the roof and learn the repairs, right?

Before you go in to tackle a full reroof, you kind of learn your way around the what to look for, how to fix it. I just had a conversation with, Juan Rodriguez from, Salas Roofing, Salas Exteriors out of Texas, and he's gotten more and more into commercial.

And one of the things that he did was he used the repairs to learn his way into commercial, right? And also to develop the relationships that then allow him to now parlay that stuff into reroofs, right? So, it is a great entry point, but it's also a learning tool, right? It's a whole different animal on the commercial side, different materials, different insulation, different crew size.

Everything is different.  

Bryan: And eight different manufacturers who all have a different product that has to be used. Yeah. You know, the other thing is there's some great training material for you as well. So, you know, I think it's really critical as you connect with the manufacturer, as you're getting into this business, that you go do all of their trainings, learn how to install their products.

And I mean, these guys are amazing. The roofing manufacturers, they'll bring you in, they'll put you up in a hotel to teach you. It's like-  

Pete: Yeah. ...  

Bryan: but then you've got the NRCA. We've written a manual ourselves as well for people to use just because the right way to do the repair side of the business is for you to be using your own guys.

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: It's hard to sub repairs. Now, it doesn't mean you have to be exclusive. You can sub some, but if you're subbing repairs, you're now at the mercy of your sub who says, you know, "I'll be there on Wednesday," but he doesn't specify which Wednesday, right? And with repairs, you actually have to be there, you know, Wednesday this week because-

otherwise they'll go back to the roofer that they hate.  

Pete: That's something that we talk about often even on the residential side is managing that production schedule. And here, you know, if you're doing service work, it's even more important to be timely and to be organized and to have these guys ready to go a- and have a good schedule built and the easy dispatch abilities.

Because like you said, you may get a call on Tuesday, and they may need you there tomorrow or Thursday to fix that roof. It's not something that you can say, you know, "Hey, we're two weeks out," or they're just gonna go to the next guy.  

Bryan: Yeah. And communication is important, but another thing that a lot of people don't realize about the service repair and maintenance business is you have to sell it.

You need salesmen selling that. I had six service salesmen. Now we're doing 14 million, but you need... Now, the good news is a service salesman can sell well over a million dollars worth of repairs for you a year. We, some of ours sold over 3 million, but you need a salesman to do it. And what's also interesting is I generally would prefer that salesman isn't a roofer.

Interesting. Because I need someone who can sell. I don't need as much of that technical knowledge in that. We sell repairs, I think we might have said this before, you know, that residential roofs are sold at the kitchen table reroofs are sold at the estimating table, and repairs are sold at the conference room table.

You want to be across from the person who's gonna make that decision. Please, Lord, let it be the owner of the building because that would be really cool. But it's not always like that. But that's where you wanna be. You wanna be across from that guy, showing him what's going on.

I did a little exercise this week, on a 50,000 square foot roof that was $10 a square f- you know, f- it, it's 500- it's a $500,000 roof. If you look at what the NRCA puts out in statistics, which is an unmaintained roof is gonna last about 14 years, a maintained roof about 20, and a managed, maintained roof about 35.

That same roof over a 42-year period, just to get all of the cycles in, unmaintained would cost $1.5 million. A managed, maintained roof would cost 700,000. So $800,000, y- Pete, you own a, a roof that size, and I'm saying to you, "I could actually save you $800,000." You're probably not gonna believe me initially but those are the numbers.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, that's impressive, right? When you think about it, when you can lay it out like that, right?

I know you've been working with a roofer that we have on our platform to kinda get them set up better for commercial maintenance work, and repairs, and, and stuff like that.

I wanted to kinda loop this in today to our conversation. I really like the way that you've set them up to quote. And I think it plays well with the comment that you made about your sales guys not necessarily being, experienced roofers that are really technically good, technically sound.

Because you guys have set them up in a way with the way you've set up this quoting, and I think it can translate really well to the residential side.

And so talk a little bit about what you guys have done, how you've set them up and what you guys are doing with the, kind of the catalog and the way you guys have set up these line items.  

Bryan: Yeah. Well, I mean, the exciting thing is that Roofr can do it, right?  

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: We, we can do it- It works.  

Pete: Yeah ...  

Bryan: i've always loved Roofr f- for what you give us in reporting and that sort of thing and proposals.

And now we can actually handle commercial repairs in Roofr. And so an important piece of a service and repair company is what is your average job size? You know, you probably got a number when you think residential. You know, w- with reroof, we, we're initially at about 250,000 average. We got to about 350,000 average as we got better.

But on your repairs, you want something that's bigger than $1,000 repair as your average, because otherwise you cannot scale it. And we wanna look at service as a money-making business. It's a profitable business. Our service department paid the overhead for an entire $70 million company. That's how strong it is.

The way you wanna set it up is with these salesmen and with a very efficient way to be able to get a price and a proposal to a client. Now, the clients that you're gonna be dealing with are you're not gonna be doing a lot of work for a building that the elevator doesn't work, and the paint's peeling off, and doesn't have windows, right?

We're generally gonna be dealing with a professional client who's got a nice building, who wants to keep it in good shape, or he's got great tenants and he would like them to pay the rent, so the roof can't leak. We wanna go in there and look professional, and that's what's so brilliant about Roofr.

Let's just talk TPO for instance. Say we were only looking at TPO roofs. We took about 50 different problems that you'll typically run into on a TPO roof. Now I hear this all the time, is that, every roof is different. That's true, but every roof detail is not different.

Y- you and I get on a typical TPO roof, we're gonna find the same problems, you know? If I've got 50 done, I'm not doing a lot of new stuff, a lot of new estimating. I've got my pipes, I've got my pitch pans, I've got my open seams. You know, I've got all of that done.

So, all I have to do is count them, and what, with what we've got, set up in Roofr, first of all, we've got a problem, a description of the problem pre-written. Let's say it's a damaged pipe boot. I've got the problem described, and then I've got the consequence described, right? So if you don't fix that damaged pipe boot, either the water's gonna get into the building or it's gonna get into the roof system.

Getting into the roof system is almost more dangerous than getting into the building because you don't know that it's there. It's like a hidden cancer. So the consequence would be your roof's gonna fall on your lap like that roofer there, yeah. But you can be a little more descriptive. I did one today with Claude for an expansion joint.

Problem, solution, consequence. Beautiful job. So that's your picture of the, the problem, with the problem description and a consequence. And then your proposal to do the repair has the solution, which is effectively your scope of work. So if you know the price, because we pre-estimated it, so we put the prices in Roofr.

So now all the guy has to do is take the picture. He's got a problem and consequence. The next part of his proposal is we're gonna fix it, scope of work, price. And now I've... My goal was always to get my proposals out within 24 hours. You don't really need 24 hours anymore, and I don't need a, a professional roofer.

I just need a guy who can identify that pipe boot's broken, right? Yeah.  

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: I would train guys on how to inspect a roof.  

Pete: Yeah. I created this, and I'm, the, I didn't do a good job 'cause I didn't add the actual, consequence in here. But you can see how I added, essentially added pictures of damage that we would find, right? But, more or less what Bryan's saying is you would put your problem in here of what you found, along with the consequence of, hey, if you leave this like this, it's gonna fall in your lap type of thing. And then from there, you know, obviously it would become, these line items, right?

And these line items are essentially your scope of work, but they are more or less the solution, right? And you can see how they map this out and how his team has put together these, this is PVC problem number one, problem number two, right? And then they, like he said, it doesn't necessarily have to be someone who's very sophisticated in the way that they quote or their knowledge of the roof.

I could go on a roof and say, "Yep, that's a hole," right? Like, it matches the picture, you know? And now I know this is the line item that I need to pull in order to put that solution in there. And like Bryan said, it's already been scoped out from a pricing standpoint on the back end, so it automatically generates our you know, our subtotal there based on whatever damage we pull.

Now, in this case, I just pulled these two, but, you know, you could obviously add all of the damage that you find, the number of them that you find, and now it's gonna calculate your repair for you. So, so luckily I came in over $1,000 here, so we could actually do this one, right?  

Bryan: Yeah. That's a good average job size.

Yeah. But, and, you know, the other exciting thing on the back end of this, Pete, is you can also now pre-write your work order for this. I get my proposal out. It looks professional, it's priced, it's, got all of those things in. The guy signs it. I push a button and my work order is now produced, because in my catalog I've got the work orders for all of those repairs.

Pete: 'Cause you have, you guys have the line item, what it takes to actually execute this scope is already set up.  

Bryan: Yeah. The description and then if you, we do the material and labor as well, but you've got the description there to give to the guys. Yeah. "Here's what you gotta go do."

Pete: You'll love my, terms and conditions down here, Bryan, if I pan down. Look, we pinky swear it won't leak.

Bryan: They're gonna call you on it.  

Pete: I don't know if that one will hold up in court, but, worth a shot, right? I always wanted to bring light to that that kind of problem, consequence, solution set up I think is phenomenal for those line items.

You know, and so many of our guys scope of work estimate anyway, so I think that set up is such a, a clean set up to kinda do that scope of work and present it.

Bryan: And I mean, I love working with the Roofr clients because you've got the base to, to make it work, right? So it's easy to communicate to their people. But because that is now done, even before you sell a proposal, you can do a few dummy proposals, and the next client you go, or potential client you go to visit, you say, "This is what it's gonna look like when I finish my inspection."

Pete: I didn't think of that, yeah.  

Bryan: ... you're really showing them a professional proposal that you did on, whatever roof or, go walk a roof.

Pete: So if I'm starting out, we have a question here really quick, I wanna jump on it. You know, Bruce asked a question.

He said, "What are your margins for commercial repairs?" What is something, like what is a good range? What should we be looking for if we're looking to get into commercial repairs? What margins are we shooting for?  

Bryan: So the exciting news is in repairs, your margins are gonna be somewhere between 60 and 75% gross margin So if you sell $100, $60 to $75 is going, unfortunately not into your pocket because, was it Warren Buffett who said, "Gross profit is grossly overrated"?

That's... Yeah. But that's your gross margin. And it's interesting because I've got a client who joined us that had one service truck, now they got, like, 11. Middle of the year, they put their prices up from 65 to 70%. Nobody blinked." He said, "If I had done that the year before you know, there's several hundred thousand dollars I left on the table."

So th- that's the exciting part of the repairs side. What's even more exciting is you get into the maintenance thing. If you set this up correctly, those are about an 80% gross margin product.  

Pete: And the beauty of that is, what I talked about earlier, is you stay top of mind, right? You're there all the time. Like you said, you're winning business. Not only are you getting an 80% margin on that, but you're potentially winning future business.

You're more visible. It works for you from a branding standpoint. There's just a ton of upside to running those maintenance agreements. You know- Yeah, and- ... if that roof eventually works its way to being a reroof, you're probably gonna be the guy if you've had the maintenance agreement. Let's hope anyway, you know?

Bryan: A lot of my coatings jobs, they didn't even get another quote. It's like, "You're my roofer. Let's, you know, let's do a restoration."  

Pete: Let's do it.  

Bryan: Now, the other good thing, you know, and I've s- sort of broke the bad news that it's good idea to do this with your in-house guys.

Well, as you build maintenance agreements, those in-house guys have got something to do. So-  

Pete: Yeah ...  

Bryan: this is a, a big number, but we had 1,500 ongoing maintenance agreements. Wow. So we actually had trucks dedicated to doing ongoing maintenance. But if, if, we were in South Florida, so you've got two seasons: rain and no rain.

And w- we had no rain, we could have all of the guys doing maintenance work.  

Pete: Still working, yeah.  

Bryan: Yeah.  

Pete: And that's a fantastic idea for someone who's maybe in a more seasonal location, right? Where things really quiet down, maybe say fall time, to where these guys are pivoting into things like gutter cleaning now and Christmas light hanging and all that stuff.

Maintenance could definitely be a bridge that kinda helps carry you through that season. Say, "Hey, here's our time when we're not as busy. We can run all of our, our maintenance work, keep the guys busy, have them out there doing small repairs," and stuff like that.

So what would you say would be step one, Bryan?

If I'm a residential guy, maybe I've been in business a couple years. I'm looking at the commercial side and thinking, I think I can do this. I've got things dialed a bit on the residential side. I want to expand a little bit into commercial. What would be my first step to getting into commercial roofing?

Bryan: Yeah. So and it's a big topic, right? Because down the road we should start talking about what proportion should be service, what proportion should be reroof, what proportion should be reactive, what sh- proportion should be proactive. So let's start with that. I- initially, you're gonna be solving leak problems, right?

You're gonna go repair leaks. But that sort of reactive work should only be about 20% of your service department. 80% of it should be work that you sell repairs. So the, the way to start if obviously we need leads, right? So- Yeah ... and I, I think I was told the other day, roofers can only hear two words.

That's leads and how much money are we gonna make. And I'm a roofer. I've, I'm now growing a roofing company in the Asheville area, so I, I put my money where my mouth is. I'm still in it. But so you gotta have these opportunities and like any sales, more opportunities are better, right? Because if you're out there begging for this one guy to please give you an opportunity, you're gonna drive him crazy.

So get a lot. Get more than you need. So really focus on that. Then the second thing is, do you have a good process on how to handle that lead when you do get them? Because the right thing to do, and it's not always possible. I'm gonna give you the best thing to do, is to get in front of that person before you get on their roof.

I've had guys say to me, "If you wanna get in front of me before you get on my roof, I'm gonna get another roofer." And then I'll say- Hm ... "All right, I'll get on your roof, but then I'll come and get in front of you right away." But so we've got these leads now. We need to be ready to do the work.

So my preference is to have some kind of box truck or cargo van stocked, ready to go and do repairs. Because you're new in the game, and you're competing against the guys who well-established, and, you know, some markets don't have a great well-established repair person, some markets do. And if your truck has what you need to do pretty much any repair, we have an inventory list that we share with our clients, you get hold of someone and they said, "Man, my roofer has dropped the ball, and I've been using him for 40 years, but I'll take a chance on you," you can say, "I'll be there this afternoon, and I've got what I need to fix it."

So you wanna have a good vehicle. You wanna have ideally two technicians, and we spend a lot of time talking about training technicians because let's face it, you don't make any money on the roof, on roofing until you fix a roof, so working on training those technicians is really important. And so we get a lot of trouble on what should an apprentice know? What should a tech know? What should a senior tech know? You know, let's teach these guys because it's not only the fact that they fix it, they gotta fix it right.

And then if they fix it efficiently, you might even make more than your 65% or 70% gross margin. Getting those techs well-trained is important. The other thing is you only really have to train two because then they can train each other. So ideally you get one guy who's skilled, but don't fall in the trap that you think you hired a skilled guy and, you know, let him out there.

I had a client in New Mexico, and, he joined our course. We started getting into labor productions and that sort of thing. His next truck did triple what his first truck did. He's s- looking at those first guys saying, "What have you been doing?"

You know, we want to know what our productions are. We wanna know how long it's gonna take to do those repairs. That's also how we quote it properly and manage it. So now we got a truck, we got materials, we've got two guys. We got a lot of leads, and now we gotta get on the phone, and we can talk about this as an inbound call or an outbound call.

But the first thing you wanna know is what's the address of this property, because We can immediately look at an aerial, right? So I look at the aerial and it's, some metal roof covering a couple of gas pumps, and I'm saying, "Well, let me, put you in touch with my competition.

You know, if it's a nine-pass roof or multiple roofs, I'm now paying a lot of attention, right? And you can talk intelligently about a roof just by looking at it on the aerial. You gotta be careful because, you know, who knows what the date was. You don't wanna start saying, "Oh, well, I see you got a modified roof," and, you know, you find out it's actually been re-roofed and it's now a single ply roof.

But you can talk about the roof itself and how you can help that client. One of the facts about low-slope roofing is- They don't leak in isolation. Any roof we get on, we're gonna find multiple issues. That one particular issue might be causing the l- leak right now, but as a professional, you should be inspecting that roof.

I always compare this to taking my truck in for a service. If they do the oil change and they don't notice that my tire's totally shredded or if they're replacing the brake linings and they don't point out that the rotors are bent I'm thinking, "What kind of a mechanic have I got here?"

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: So we should think about it like that as roofers. I used to catch some of our techs. They would trip over an open seam to get to a pipe boot that they were gonna fix, and they didn't tell us about the open s- you know? So go and inspect that roof. Be a professional, and explain to the client what they've got.

There's no formal education for roofing, so there's a very good chance that your client does not know as much about roofing as you do.  

What I like to do is I like to prioritize the problems.

You know, "Okay, this one you called about actually is leaking right now, and the water is getting into the building." Or, "You know what? What you think is the problem is actually not. It's leaking over there. The water's running down the flutes of the deck and getting into the building over here." And then you've got this problem that if, next time it rains, to me, an emergency is the water's either getting into the building or it's getting into the roof system.

So next time it rains, that's an emergency that should be fixed. Now, so you can prioritize their problems. You know, if it's pitch pans that aren't topped up properly okay, it's not an emergency yet, although the water is eventually gonna find its way, you know, if you don't rectify it sometime. But that might be a maintenance thing or a lower priority.

And building owners like to have choices, right? Those decision-makers, let me put it that way, they don't want you coming and dictating. So you can say to them, "Look, this, these are critical, these are important, these are maintenance. Which ones do you wanna take care of?" I would prefer not to put a roof under a maintenance program unless they take care of everything.

you know, what do I maintain if there are things to fix, I'm  

Pete: gonna- If there's still repairs, yeah.  

Bryan: Yeah, exactly.

Pete: Yeah. So if I'm, if I'm, say, brand new to commercial, right, how do I go find these leads? Do I just go to these buildings and knock on the door? Do I find out who the owner...

How do I get- Like, how do I actually get leads on the commercial- Yeah ... side? Because obviously, like, you hear all kinds of methods on the residential side, but if you ask something on Facebook, someone's probably gonna say, "Put on your sneakers and go knock some doors," right? So, you know, is it kind of the same thing on the commercial side?

Is there a better way?  

Bryan: I mean, there are some very good ways. Now, I think you need to do a lot of different things, right? But commercial roofing is a bit of a relational business. We're talking about trust, face to face. We're dealing with assets that are worth multi-millions in dollars.

Yeah. So, I know a homeowner is, it's very important to them because it's their home. But that building is very important to probably several generations or, or-  

Pete: Yeah ...  

Bryan: thousands of shareholders.  

Pete: Generating revenue, right?  

Bryan: E- exactly.  

Pete: Yep.

Bryan: You gotta be calling, you gotta be finding out. I- fortunately, it's fairly simple. We're looking for people who make roofing decisions, right? So who are the property managers, facilities, building owners, you know, those kind of guys. So we can, we can go after those people. But you need to get involved in an organization that those people go to.

And there are lots of them, right? The BOMAs and the IFMAs and the CAMs and the, there's, there are tons of them. So find one, and don't just become a member, become a gold sponsor. It might cost you a grand, but being able to be in there and giving, and then as soon as possible, get on the committees or the boards or whatever because that now changes your relationship with those people.

That building owner who used to be, "I'm kind of begging," to do some work for you, yeah, exactly. And, and bring your own beer generally. But, that, that building owner that I was kind of groveling to speak to now has to come to me to find out if he can be part of this event or, "Please explain to me..."

You know, suddenly I'm in a different position, and now I can talk to him as a peer, right? So that to me is the key. Now, as you grow, you can get into more of those. But a, a little tip is those associations and organizations seem to be able to have a party three times a week. It's like we're having a bar lunch on Wednesday, and then there's-

you know, a card game on Thursday, and then we've got a golf tournament on Saturday, and we're going fishing on Sunday. And I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna have to, sell my kids, divorce my wife, not mow my lawn." So they're kind of party animals. And so what we found, y- you know, if you think about this, okay, party animals.

I'm not a party animal anymore. Who is a party animal? interns, university interns. So for not much money, you can get interns to go to those events for you. And usually, very often they're better looking than you. They're certainly younger than you, and all they're doing is handing out cards, getting cards, having fun.

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: Yeah, so that is the secret sauce, but there are 23 other sauces, right- ... that you should be looking at. I'll tell you one crazy story. I don't think the owner of the company I worked with would mind me to you telling this.

I clean this street sign on one of the major roads. You know, this roofing company cleans this street, you know, you know those.  

Pete: Yeah, yeah.  

Bryan: You know what I'm talking  

Pete: about? Yeah. Sponsored by or whatever.  

Bryan: Yeah, exactly.  

Pete: Yeah.  

Bryan: There was a woman who managed millions of square foot of roof, who drove past that sign every day, right at, it was right outside of her neighborhood by coincidence.

She would get on the freeway, drive past that sign. She would never take our call. One day, her roofer pissed her off, and she said, "I'm gonna give these guys a chance." That one thing was worth millions and millions of dollars to our company. So you don't really know what it's gonna be, but the relational stuff is critical.

You gotta make the phone calls. It's still dialing for dollars. Dropping off, some nice muffins or something like that is helpful with property managers. We giving, right?  

Pete: I like the way you've kind of set this up though. Obviously my first thought would be like, "Oh, I wanna get into commercial roofing.

Let me go get some leads," right? "Let me go out and, join some associations and let's go find some people," right? But I like the way you prefaced it and said, "Hey, you wanna make sure you've got your ducks in a row and you're ready to do the work first." Like, your guys are trained, you have your techs ready, you have your equipment set up.

Don't just go start grabbing leads and not be ready on the back end to actually perform the work, because now you've essentially shot yourself in the foot, right? If this person says yes, and you're not prepared to actually go do the work in a very timely manner, it could essentially tarnish your reputation right from the start,  

Bryan: look, occasionally we're gonna get call backs, right? Because we don't do the job properly. And if you get a call back, you gotta go and fix it. But If it still doesn't work, you're not gonna get any more calls. You get one shot. So if you're gonna use a sub, you're gonna have to do some supervision, you're gonna have to do some vetting.

You can't just hand this off and say, "Go do it," right? We're talking multi-million dollar opportunities here over time, but it starts with handling a multi-million dollar property well first.  

Pete: Yeah. The biggest takeaway here is if you are gonna get into commercial roofing, is develop that process before you go out and chase the leads, right? We talked a little bit about how you kind of set up your proposals with your scopes of work. Do all that stuff prior, you know?

Like, I've been kinda sitting in on you working with the company that you're with, getting them set up on Roofr, and seeing all the, all the preparation work to get this thing dialed in. Before they really even start going out and selling through Roofr, you know, there's been a lot of backend work by you guys to really dial that whole process in and get it set up so it's very smooth and easy for the team to run in.

And once they really start going and pushing, it'll all kind of flow seamlessly and work. Like you said, they have their techs set up. They have their equipment ready to go. Like, they're ready to do the work, not only quote the work, but do the work.

Get these guys trained. Leverage the manufacturer. I know even the, the podcast that I did with Salas, he talked about the same thing. He's like, "Man, the biggest thing we did on the commercial side was leverage the manufacturers to learn from them."

He said, "They taught us, they essentially taught us how to commercial roof."  

Bryan: Y- you know, even as prepared as you are, you're gonna have problems, correct? The, 'cause that's the business- Sure ... we're in. We're really in the problem- You're learning ... solving business, right?

Yeah. I like to approach it in two ways. First of all, I've got this pyramid that we call the, the fundamentals. We wanna identify what are the products and services we're gonna offer, right? Because people don't really think about that.

They think, "I'm gonna go fix leaks." Well, no, there's about five different products that we're gonna offer. We wanna understand those, and we wanna have an elevator speech for each of them. We wanna know how to execute them. We wanna know how to explain them at a trade show, at a client's office.

It's kind of like when you go into Chili's and you look at the menu. It's got a nice picture of the food, a description of it, and the price. This is what we're talking about. We s- Yeah ... we gotta have our menu, right? Next thing, we need to have the cooks, and they need to Above that we need to start talking about do we know our prices? So that pre-estimating, having those problems pre-estimated, knowing how to estimate the price of that, fixing that problem. And now we can start getting into finding opportunities and selling, right? And then unfortunately it doesn't end there.

We've gotta administrate it and- we gotta hold those sales guys accountable  

Pete: Yeah. I mean, this has been fantastic. And of course, we probably could talk for another two hours, but we're running out of time here.

If anybody has any additional questions for Bryan, I think some other people said that they would also like to get in contact with you, so I think Joel grabbed their names. But yeah. Man, I appreciate you jumping on.

This has been another great, you know, insightful time. I think some great things there. If someone's looking to get into the commercial side of the business, to do your homework, right? And, get yourself set up ahead of time before you just wanna go out and start selling jobs. It's, seems like- Yeah

that's the way you would wanna go. But you definitely wanna make sure that you're in a good position before you do that.  

Bryan: And, Like anything, get a mentor, right?  

Pete: Yeah.

Bryan's a great resource. You know, someone like Bryan, if you can get him on the phone, uh, in between his mountain bike rides and his scotch runs. Maybe you can get him to talk commercial roofing with you for a bit. But yeah. Thank you, Bryan. I really appreciate you coming on again. And, hopefully we won't have to have you back for any apologies. I think we're good.

And John said, "Let's go on a scotch run."

Bryan: Send me your number.  

Pete: Thank you everybody. Thank you for joining us, and we will see you next time on the Roofr Masterclass. Thanks everyone.