60 Billboards, Zero Middlemen: How Ken Conrad Built a $20M Roofing Company

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Speaker 1

People think success is this grand certificate, but really it's just sweat and overalls. You know, it's do what people are already doing but better. It's really people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You're listening to The Roofer Report, the ultimate podcast for roofing professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs. Get insider access and hear about the highs, lows and tales of triumphs from thriving business owners.

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Speaker 1

Brought to you by roofer, hosted by Pete McKendrick.

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Speaker 2

All right. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Roofer Report. I'm your host, Pete McKendrick. We are back with another roofer of the month podcast here today. You know, these are been a fantastic series for us. You know, we've we've had some incredible guests that have spanned literally from brand new businesses up to, you know, companies that were started in the 80s and were being handed down to other family members.

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Speaker 2

So we've we've run the gamut here to, you know, on the roof report. And it's been phenomenal to hear the stories and talk to these guests. And this will be no different here today. So super excited about this one and getting ready to dive into it here with Ken Conrad. So welcome Ken. How's it going. Yeah man. Excited to have you on.

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Speaker 2

I think this will be a really good back story. And I think you got some cool stuff that you've done in your time in the industry. So a little bit different from some of the guests we've had recently. A lot of the guests we've had recently have been fairly new, you know, to the industry probably in their first year or two of business and, you know, so this will be somewhere.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. And this will be a good opposite end of that a bit. And you've done some other stuff that it'll be fun to talk about. So excited to dive into this. But Ken is with Conrad Roofing and give you here a little quick introduction. Can I let you introduce yourself and Conrad Roofing and how long you guys have been in business.

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Speaker 2

You know where you guys are located, that kind of stuff.

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Speaker 1

Conrad's roofing, located here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, second biggest city in Oklahoma. Started roofing with my father way back in the 90s. He had a Twin Oaks tree care. It was a tree service company. When people would have branches fall on the roof, he would ask, you know, you have a roofer, you know, anybody. And he'd go up there and fix up the roof and get them taken care of.

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Speaker 1

He passed away in zero eight. Originally, our name was Affordable Roofing and just couldn't get away from people. Asking for the lowest price was almost like budget or cheap. Kept us busy for a long time. In 2010 we changed it over to Conrad's Roofing, used our last name after he passed away. And here we are.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. That's interesting. Right? You don't think about that kind of stuff when you're thinking of your branding, right? But branding yourself as a roofing. I remember I worked with a company one time that actually named themselves, like, I think it was a affordable or something like that, because back in the day, you used to be the top right of like the Yellow Pages.

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Speaker 2

That was like the way to get your.

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Speaker 1

You still got a ton of them here. They still exist in Tulsa.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. That's funny. So but yeah, you don't you don't necessarily think about that. But yeah, it definitely gives you that connotation when you go into to quote a job. Right. They expect you to be the most affordable.

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Speaker 1

100%.

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Speaker 2

So talk a little bit about that. Like your family obviously was in it, you know, how long would your dad roofer.

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Speaker 1

So my dad been roofing since right around 1988, 1990. It's really a cash guy. Kind of have very, very novice beginnings. To be honest with you, I didn't really want to get into roofing. It was kind of a it's a dirty, you know, extremely competitive industry, especially here in Oklahoma. You know, this is where the wind comes sweeping down the plains.

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Speaker 1

It's there's I think right now close to 8 to 10,000. You know roofers here in Oklahoma. And we're, you know, not even the top 30 of US cities. So very very small amount of population. And so the market's kind of capped. It's definitely not like Dallas or Florida. So it's a lot of work getting up every day and then trying to compete with some of the best guys in the industry.

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Speaker 2

Yeah obviously you guys are in an area that's, you know, deals with a lot of weather. Right. And so. Every day. Yeah. So what's the breakdown of your work as far as like retail work versus insurance work. What do you guys what are you guys doing. Are you mostly insurance. Are you are you kind of doing the more retail stuff now?

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Speaker 2

What's kind of thinking out of that?

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Speaker 1

You know, we've kind of created a campaign in the last two years of our roof now pay, pay later strategy. We really want to get homeowners flipped over to cash. I mean, it's just better for for flow, for for production, for the ease of wallet strain. I mean, if you're doing, you know, 20 million a year, you get a huge hailstorm.

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Speaker 1

A lot of that money is coming right back out of your pocket. And, you know, it's if you've been doing this for more than a decade, you know what I'm talking about. It's a lot of it's a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul a lot of times. So with cash, you know, if we were able to get insurance companies out of the industry and we'd be able to be like HVAC companies and plumbers, you know, it wouldn't have such a negative connotation being in the roofing world if, you know, guys weren't going out of business every two and three and 4 or 5 years and then opening up as a new company, you know,

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Speaker 1

every four years.

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Speaker 2

It's funny. You know, I literally just saw a comment in one of the roofing groups this morning on Facebook where someone made a comment about the lack of getting paid from insurance work. Right, and the time it takes to get paid. And, you know, especially nowadays with the the lack of storms now, like, obviously if you were heavy, heavy leaning on that model like this is not a good time for you right now.

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Speaker 2

Right? You're really having to try to pivot. So yeah. So it's interesting that you brought that up because I think that, you know, it's getting harder and harder to lean heavy into the insurance side of things. And you know, obviously the companies that do it well. R very usually larger or spread out, you know, you know, covering multiple states, which is a whole nother, you know, there can of worms to open up, you know, if you're running a business like that.

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Speaker 2

So I can't.

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Speaker 1

Even imagine having to run, you know, all over the state.,

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Speaker 2

Multi-state.

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Speaker 1

And seeing the laws, the code, everything changes as soon as you leave the city. For me, you know, we've been here for almost 18 years now with me at the helm. It's a it is probably one of the heavier, congested areas for our trade. There's just a lot of guys doing the exact same thing, you know. But iron sharpens iron.

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Speaker 1

A lot of the guys out here are fantastic at roofing. It's not so much the roofers that you have to worry about the insurance companies, the insurance companies, even in healthcare, you know, it's not just allotted specifically to, you know, the the insurance industry for home, you know, remediation. It's it's it's all of them, you know, their money is how do we save it.

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Speaker 1

And the best way to do that is denied claims. But our strategy now is to flip people over. That was one of the fantastic things we loved about, you know, roofer. You know, for decades, homeowners had no idea what a roof should costs. They'd get three wildly different bids and have to guess on who was on us, you know.

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Speaker 1

Technology is finally bringing transparency to one of the biggest purchases for homeowners. That positions you, and it positions me to either get taken out or, you know, really get a great deal.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. No, it is it is interesting. You know, I think that it definitely has helped with the transparency piece for sure. You know, I think you're seeing more and more guys exposing their numbers more to homeowners. You know, I remember when I first started in this, it was like, oh, I can't tell my homeowner any like they can't see anything.

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Speaker 2

They're going to go to Home Depot and try to undercut me. And like all this.

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Speaker 1

They got $75 a square.

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Speaker 2

Yeah.

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Speaker 1

You mean $20,000?

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Speaker 2

Yeah. I saw it at Home Depot cheaper last weekend when I was there. Right. I remember those conversations. And it's, you know, I think we're moving a bit away from that.

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Speaker 1

I think it's speed builds trust. You know, everybody thinks speed means rushing. I think speed means respecting someone's time. If someone has storm damage, they don't want to wait for days to get an estimate. You know, tech technology lets us be spend less time measuring roofs and more time educating homeowners.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, and I mean, we live now, you know, more. We're seeing more and more a switch in the the buyer. Right. And you know, we live in an Amazon world now where you know, if I look at that and it takes more than three days to get to me, I'm probably gonna buy it from somebody else.

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Speaker 1

Or DoorDash.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Or DoorDash, which is even more ridiculous, which I'm guilty of for sure. Like, you know, I don't even want to waste my time to go to the store anymore and get it myself.

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Speaker 1

Is huge. I mean, look at McDonald's. We all know. Terrible, terrible for you. Yet you're on a road trip. You're with the family. Everybody's pulling in this pit stop to go to McDonald's. It's convenience. It's the exact same, you know, burger. No matter if you're in Texas, Oklahoma and York or China, people really love convenience. And they like the simplicity of having the exact same thing every single time.

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Speaker 1

Yeah. You know, nobody wakes up excited to buy shingles. They're buying peace of mind. They're buying confidence. You know, they want somebody who's going to pick up the phone and, you know, answer us five years from now. And roofers really allowed us to speed up everything and get our customers fast estimates. So that was our biggest issue. Our biggest issue is when we went back and we looked at the last five years, you go and you you talked to homeowners, you talked to, you know, sales reps.

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Speaker 1

There is a huge lack before roofer came in to getting the eagle view to the estimate to the customer, you know, and there was lag times a 24 on a good day, 24 hours on a bad week. You know, you're looking at 4 to 5 days before a homeowner can even get an estimate. And roofer has kind of revolutionized the industry in that way.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, that's obviously a goal of ours is to help you guys with the customer experience. Ultimately, like if we can provide, you know, a world class experience for you to offer your customer, then we're all winning. You know what I mean? Like products working better for you guys. It's it's working better for your customer.

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Speaker 2

You know, that's always kind of been you know, that the basis that we've been on is, you know, in from the very beginning when when it was created, the idea was to try to facilitate and make a better customer experience. And we realized right away there were some things that were broken. Right. And so that's really where the roofer, you see today kind of blossomed from.

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Speaker 2

So yeah, we've always kind of had that in the back of our mind. It's like, okay, how are we helping the contractor create a world class customer experience for their customer? So you know, are the tools conveying that. So yeah. So I appreciate you saying that.

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Speaker 1

Yeah.

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Speaker 2

Let's go back a little bit. How did you you said you said yourself you didn't really want to get into roofing. So talk about a little bit like where you're kind of path when and how you ended up becoming part of the, you know, the family business, man.

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Speaker 1

You know, after my father passed, you know, my mom had it for a little bit. I kind of took over the roofing name. Just tons of people calling and asking for, you know, four and $5,000. Yeah. I remember when, you know, a a typical cause for a roof was about 4 to 5 grand. Yeah. It wasn't here until the last 6 to 7 years that.

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Speaker 2

You know, it wasn't that long ago.

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Speaker 1

11, 12, 15. And now we're looking at an average of 18 to $20,000 for a pretty standard home of 2020 500ft². So for me, getting into it, a lot of failure, you know, losing a lot. When I first started, I was putting on the roof. Sometimes I was out till 10:00 at night with, you know, Home Depot lights just sitting on the roof and literally roofing through the dark and having the homeowners come over and tell us if we didn't turn off the lights and leave, they're going to call the police.

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Speaker 1

So, I mean, it happens. You learn, you learn how to deal with people. You learn how to, you know, babysit. You learn to become a big nanny. You learn personalities or traits, you learn how to read people, and you still make the same, you know, you know, errors, but you try to learn and you move on. We really didn't get into the, you know, eight and eight figures till probably in the last ten years.

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Speaker 1

So I mean, it was a long staircase of trial and error.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah for sure I think and you know that it's important to note, right. Like you said, you know, when we were at the very beginning there, everybody starts somewhere, right. Like you got to learn and, and we've seen so many different paths in, you know, some of these guys coming from I think we had one guy came from an e-commerce background.

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Speaker 2

He would run like a really successful e-commerce company, and now he was trying to apply that to roofing. Another guy just used repairs to essentially teach himself how to roof, you know, and now he's running a company that's doing re roofs and repairs, you know, so it's always interesting to see like how people kind of get in there, learn the industry, figure things out.

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Speaker 2

Right. And obviously like you had the luck not of the luxury, but you were fortunate enough to kind of like grow up in it, right? Like you had some folks around you that knew the, you know, the industry a bit, you know, so that that definitely helps. But like you said, even even with that being the case, you're still you're still a big learning curve, right?

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Speaker 2

It's still a ton of learning.

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Speaker 1

Every 5 to $10 million of revenue, from building systems to trying to become vertically integrated. You know, we're one of the only companies that private labels, you know, our nails or cap nails, synthetic felts, polymer sealants, split boots, pipe boots, ice and water shield. We were even designing our own shingle right now. It's a lot of work, man.

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Speaker 1

And to really try to control all those different key features of the company, there's not enough there's really not enough time of the day. It's not. It's complex. And this isn't for everybody and it's not for everyone. But if you're willing to put in the time and, you know, get the notches on your belt, I think that a lot of these guys that are coming on, especially if they start to, you know, learn especially from, you know, especially having great software like roofer, it makes everybody a, a roof estimator.

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Speaker 1

I mean, anybody steps on the roof, they're a roof estimator. And sequentially they're all really good at it too. I mean, we rarely have, you know, issues with our roofer. So it's been a fantastic software.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. It's always interesting to me. I think what we're seeing now is this transition into more obviously more tech savvy folks starting roofing companies. Obviously, you know, like you said, your dad started in the 80s. You know, I had a conversation with the Craddock a while back. I think he started in like 84, like there was no tech, right?

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Speaker 2

Like you're doing everything pen and be. Yeah. Yeah, right. I remember talking to a company and they're like, yeah, you know, everything's done with manila folders. Like we literally have a job in a manila folder and we have.

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Speaker 1

A. Copy and manila grounds.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. You know, so but I think we're seeing more obviously more tech employed. Like you said, the tech has helped a lot to streamline and lean out some of these businesses, but also a more business savvy person coming in. Right. Like I think the days of guys starting, you know, as a labor person nailing shingles on a roof and then progressing into a business over.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, I think those are kind of you don't see as many as you used to, right? You see a lot of these guys coming in with a more business background, potentially. They ran a business in another industry and now they're parlaying that into into roofing. So I think that's changing the industry a bit, you know, for a couple in a couple different ways.

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Speaker 2

You know like obviously they understand how to run a business maybe a little bit better. And all of the aspects of it, not everybody, but some of them, right.

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Speaker 1

You know, I dropped out in the 10th grade. You know, I never got a GED. I never got a diploma. I just went to work pissing people off in Oklahoma City, knocking on doors and, you know, getting told to go screw myself. It's people think that success is this grand certificate, but really, it's just sweat and overalls.

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Speaker 1

Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time and it's a lot of failure. And if you're really not willing to pay the piper, it's not for you.

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Speaker 2

Well, and like you said earlier, I think the thing that I'm getting from this obviously is the experience, right? Like you said, fail a bunch, you know, figure it out. You know, you're like you're on the roof at nighttime, lights on, you know, and you just keep pushing. Like a guy said to me yesterday we were talking and he said, he said, our motto is fail forward, right.

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Speaker 2

You're going to fail, but you fail forward, right? Like we fail, we move on. We figure it out so we don't fail. Do the same thing twice, right? But we learn from our experiences and that's how you gain experience. I mean, you don't gain experience. I always tell I coach a lot of youth sports and I always tell my guys, you learn more about yourself and about your teammates and about the situation and the game when you fail.

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Speaker 2

Then when you succeed and win, you know what I mean?

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Speaker 1

100%.

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Speaker 2

You know, and.

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Speaker 1

We have something that. You say, you know, here at the company and say you fail to your highest point of preparation, you know, and so if you're not prepared, you're going out there and you're just kind of, for a lack of a better word, half assed it, you know, you're not going to you're not going to get the results.

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Speaker 1

You might be able to sell a few roofs, but you're definitely not going to be able to put up the numbers that make you into a true word merchant.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Talk a little bit about your staff. How big of a staff do you guys have right now?

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Speaker 1

You know, subcontractors. We probably got about 130 to 140 at any given time. From gutters to roofing crews, technicians. We have about five full time employees. We've got a media guy that's looking at me right now with a big camera. We've got approximately 18 salespeople. We have a whole staff accounts payable, accounts receivables. We've got three front of the house grills, CSRs.

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Speaker 1

They're taking phone calls, accounts payable. We're a little bit different. We have an in-house auditors, which are, you know, supplement team. I mean, we've basically got everything you could possibly think of. So if I had to put a number on to say, but 28 to 30 employees currently. So well, at the end of the year, probably about 2021 million is is the goal nice.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. It's interesting right. Because you see it's interesting to me to talk to companies and see like where they're at as far as numbers because you see so many like we we talked to a lot of companies that are in their like second, third year of business. And they're trying to stay so lean, right. They're trying to run so incredibly lean with very, very minimal employees.

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Speaker 2

And you know, so it is it is interesting because I remember just, you know, I think I've been in this eight and a half years, you know, and when I started, you know, if you were talking to a $5 million company, they probably had 15, 20 employees back then. You know what I mean? Yeah.

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Speaker 1

Well, I'm definitely try to stay lean. You know, it's it's hard, especially when you do all the production yourself. You know, one of the pluses of being vertically integrated is, you know, you can get your materials out there the next day, somebody calls in today at 5:00, says, hey, if you don't put this roof on tomorrow, we're not going to use you.

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Speaker 1

We're going to use somebody else. We're able to meet them in the middle, you know, running the semis, getting dot Department of Transportation involved, making sure your semis are up to code, making sure you have a team of production guys who know what they're doing. They're not taking or mixing dye lots when they go out there, you know, having on hand, you know, $100,000 worth of shingles.

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Speaker 1

But if you guys don't know how to deliver them correctly, you're roofing the wrong color house with different, you know, manufacturers, you're having different you having different places. Like, for instance, you know, we had an issue a day ago where we had been told that we thought we had some oak.

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Speaker 1

Red style durations, which we don't really install oak, but we typically install Co. But the one of the new production guys had gone through and looked up the name in a contractor's cloud, our software and roofer, and had seen the homeowners name was the exact same name. And so we delivered it to the mom's house. And, you know, we tore off the roof and, you know, we ended up redoing it.

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Speaker 1

Luckily, just by chance, we were already doing the roof and it was already paid for by insurance. So chances that usually happen, but it's just small little things like that that if one person takes for granted. You know, and we've done it before, I think we had one probably about 4 or 5 years ago, but you put all those systems into place so you don't take those hard hits to the jaw.

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Speaker 1

And even when you do put them in, it still takes one person to make one bad judgment call to have everything come crashing in. So it's really about learning about those things and, you know, making sure your ego doesn't get ahead of your capability.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, I did a I spoke I think it was last year at our cat down in Texas. And while I was there, you know, one of the guys actually stood up and said, like, I got to tell a story. He's like, we were talking about system and processes. And he's like, yeah, we used to have this process where my guys would just text the address to the subcontractor, and he said they literally texted the address one day, missed one number on the address, and they tore the roof off of the house.

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Speaker 2

That was literally they drove, he said. They literally drove into the neighborhood and drove past the material. I was sitting in the driveway of the house. They were supposed to went down the road like 20 houses and ripped the roof off.

00:22:02:10 - 00:22:23:03

Speaker 1

It happened. Place. Court Street is what we call it place Street. You know, you can have the exact same home address if you're not checking the homeowners name, you're not checking the check in the East Core. I mean, we've done it. I would say in the past 20 years, we've done it approximately four times. So we at least make one giant mistake every five years.

00:22:23:05 - 00:22:40:04

Speaker 2

There you go. Hey, if it's once every five years, that's not horrible, I guess, right? Not as bad. Yeah. Volume. That's bad. Yeah, not too bad. So talk about I always ask this question and this will be an interesting one because of the size of your staff and the size of the support staff that you guys have internally.

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Speaker 2

But I always ask them, the owners who who would you say along your time with the company has been the most integral hire that you've made?

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Speaker 1

Oh that's hard. That's really talking about position.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Just position. It doesn't necessarily have to be. I mean either way it could be a specific person. That's been hugely helpful. A lot of times people will say, you know, this specific position. When I added it, it made a huge difference.

00:23:05:14 - 00:23:28:11

Speaker 1

Oh, 100%. So, you know, the number one person I would think about is probably Jordan Winston, who is now Jordan Conrad and my wife. Fantastic, fantastic master of Software and Systems. You know, I was kind of the big bloke who was like, we're going to sell and we're just going to knock doors and just make more money. Just make more money.

00:23:28:17 - 00:23:45:01

Speaker 1

And she was the one who kind of put a rhythm to the rhyme. And so she's probably been the largest component. And then she was also, you know, she was known throughout the United States for her supplementing capability. And she's worked for large scale roofing companies all across the South. And she just knows how to deal with people.

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Speaker 1

She's a lawyer without the without the law degree.

00:23:48:08 - 00:23:51:08

Speaker 2

Yeah. So she's still involved with the day to day of the company.

00:23:51:10 - 00:24:00:15

Speaker 1

I still get complaints every day. So one of our best to make her happy. But it doesn't always end up that way. I'm sure you deal with the same thing in your house.

00:24:00:17 - 00:24:04:04

Speaker 2

Yeah, it is what it is, right? You know it's coming.

00:24:04:06 - 00:24:06:00

Speaker 1

Happy spouse, happy house. Right?

00:24:06:00 - 00:24:19:22

Speaker 2

Yeah. So talk a little bit about like you guys, obviously you've grown, you know, over the last years. What do you guys what's the plan for like let's say the next 3 to 5 years. Where do you where are you guys looking to go with Conrad Roofing?

00:24:20:00 - 00:24:39:01

Speaker 1

You know, there's a there's a market cap. I think the residential market cap in Tulsa is probably close to 25 to 30 million. You know, once we achieve that, it's just, you know, sustain. How do you sustain you constantly revolutionizing the industry for yourself. You really got to go back to the playbook and say, okay, what are we doing wrong and how can we make it better?

00:24:39:07 - 00:25:10:13

Speaker 1

It you don't have to revolutionize, I should say you should. You have to be able to disrupt. You know, it's do what people are already doing, but better. I think that's one of the biggest things that people kind of overlook. You know, AI is not taking over, you know, anytime soon. It's it's still, at best, a tool. People still aren't counting on AI to come walk up to their house and check their insulation and tell them their insulation, then get up on top of the roof and, you know, install the roof.

00:25:10:18 - 00:25:29:09

Speaker 1

I know there are people who are trying to do that, but it's far from, you know, I would say it's anywhere from 10 to 30 years from now, even at best. You know, everybody thought the electric cars were going to be everywhere. And there's kind of been a back run to gasoline again. It's it's a crazy industry to be in.

00:25:29:09 - 00:25:48:05

Speaker 1

But my, my goal is, is to become fully integrated and really not have to count on distributors. I know there's probably some distributors are going to watch this and go, we hate this guy, but we want to be developed to a point where we don't have to pay middlemen. It allows me to pay my employees better. It allows me to have a better staff.

00:25:48:07 - 00:26:08:19

Speaker 1

It allows me to have a better marketing budget than anyone else. If you can't lower people's salaries and take away from their life, which we don't want to do, we want them to have, you know, the same type of experiences that ownership has. You can't really take that away from them without having a company that can cut overhead.

00:26:08:19 - 00:26:12:11

Speaker 1

And really, the only way to do that is to cut out the middleman.

00:26:12:13 - 00:26:29:15

Speaker 2

I think that's an interesting take, and I've heard that before from other folks as well, trying to do some similar things, you know, probably about the same time in their business cycle, like about the same, you know, about the same size as you were when they kind of decided to go that route and try to cut out that middle guy and figure out a way to do that.

00:26:29:15 - 00:26:48:20

Speaker 2

So, yeah, it's an interesting take. It is a it. You brought up a good point. I was on a podcast a long time ago, a couple of years ago, and one of the guys on the podcast made it a very interesting point. That kind of stuck with me. And he said, you know, at the end of the day, when you boil down to it, we're all installing the same shingles, mostly in the same way.

00:26:49:01 - 00:27:06:19

Speaker 2

You know, we're probably there's a lot of guys out there that are very, very good at it. And so how do you stand apart from your competition? So what are you guys doing? You know, from a customer experience standpoint and from the way you guys do business to stand apart, you know, beyond the production end of things, right.

00:27:06:20 - 00:27:34:11

Speaker 1

We call it the Disney World experience. I mean, we really try to follow what Disney Steve Jobs, you know, Steve Jobs and some of his last are what they call the lost interviews. And he talks about, you know, what's the difference between, you know, the best to the greatest, right? There's really not that much percentage in between. When you really break it down, it's maybe 10 to 15% difference from the guy who's doing it the best versus the guy who's doing it incredibly.

00:27:34:13 - 00:27:50:00

Speaker 1

Really, it starts with the homeowner experience. You know, when you pull up to the house, are you rolling the trash cans in, you know, are you going up to the door and you hear the smoke alarm going off? Or are you taking nine volts in your car that you get from Dollar General and, you know, changing them out before you do the roof inspection?

00:27:50:01 - 00:28:08:20

Speaker 1

Are you keeping a bottle of WD 40, you know, in the back of your trucks when you open the door for grandma, you know, the door squealing. We say, hey, before we get on this roof, let's go ahead and get this taken care of. The 40, the the the door and you take care of them. It's really people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

00:28:08:22 - 00:28:27:04

Speaker 2

That's a great point. Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's I think that the customer experience is always, like I said, that's that's something that I preach about when I speak. And it's something that we try to keep, you know, top of mind when we're building stuff at roofer. And how can we help you guys make that customer experience out in the field the best possible?

00:28:27:04 - 00:28:29:17

Speaker 2

But it is a lot of times those little things like that.

00:28:29:18 - 00:28:33:16

Speaker 1

It's simple. All you guys got to do is do everything we tell you.

00:28:33:18 - 00:28:41:11

Speaker 2

That's right. So talk a little bit about I want to bring this up because it's a bit unique to you. You wrote a book, right? And yes.

00:28:41:12 - 00:28:53:10

Speaker 1

I have two books. I have Roofing and Easy Contractors Guide to Roofing Success on Audible. And then I have a hardcover copy of the Art of Sales The Psychology of Cells.

00:28:53:13 - 00:28:54:11

Speaker 2

Now, what's.

00:28:54:13 - 00:28:55:05

Speaker 1

For broad?

00:28:55:07 - 00:29:00:02

Speaker 2

What spurred you to write some books? I love that approach. I think it's really cool that I wrote it in.

00:29:00:03 - 00:29:25:00

Speaker 1

2019. I had noticed that no other roofers had written a book about roofing. There was one book, I think, that was on audible and it was called the Roofing Roofing Rip Off. And it kind of broke down, you know, manufacturers and you know what makes good shingles and what makes them not. But for the most part, the reason why I did it, it was really to let people know that, you know, roofers aren't just, you know, big dumb guys with ladders and tape measures.

00:29:25:01 - 00:29:29:10

Speaker 1

You know, we can we can also get in there and swing with the best authors.

00:29:29:12 - 00:29:46:00

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's a great actually to like it adds to your street cred from a professionalism standpoint, for sure. You know, to say like, hey, we're you know, I'm a published author as well as being a roofer. So because I think that is something that like it's a connotation that we constantly fight. You know.

00:29:46:02 - 00:30:03:04

Speaker 1

You guys are trying to take us over there. They're trying to rip us off and trying to scam us. Lawyers and roofers, two of the most, probably the highest people on the dockets and courts in Oklahoma. Roofers and and lawyers. It's judges don't like them, and neither do jurors.

00:30:03:06 - 00:30:24:12

Speaker 2

Yeah. It's funny. We've had Ben Morrow on a number of times from Roof Tiger, and he talks about branding and how you don't want to look like everybody else because we already have a trust factor. Right. You're not trusted. Like in general, roofers are not trusted. So why would you want to look like everybody else? Because it's immediately you're fighting that, you know, that factor coming in.

00:30:24:12 - 00:30:28:03

Speaker 1

So you're 100% right, man. When they go left, we go right.

00:30:28:09 - 00:30:44:18

Speaker 2

I like it, I like it. So what are the things that really you guys have done from a unique standpoint for that customer experience? You know, you mentioned a couple of the small things that you guys are doing there, like the little the little stuff. How about from a marketing standpoint, how are you guys standing out from a marketing standpoint?

00:30:44:19 - 00:30:46:15

Speaker 2

You said you're like in a really tough market.

00:30:46:15 - 00:31:20:00

Speaker 1

So 100% a lot of companies try to aim to take over the the airwaves with TV. And we do. We run about 480,000 live ads, which are, you know, they play on YouTube, they play on, you know, Google, they play on Hulu, Facebook, etc.. What we've really done is we've taken over the highways. We have probably close to around 60 billboards now, and they're big, bold and simple.

00:31:20:01 - 00:31:33:06

Speaker 1

There's one behind me. If you you can see in the this little area back here, they're pretty simple. And I think that's what this was our first one. This was over I think.

00:31:33:08 - 00:31:58:02

Speaker 1

2019. So this has been seven years now. We've changed it. We've got you know, I kind of stole this idea from me standing there from Mr. Clean. You know, I kind of got the, you know, the roofers hate it, but their own free 22 point inspection I took that from really hit him down had like these little things that they would put out and they say you know it's a 22 point because everybody said hey everybody says, you know, free inspection.

00:31:58:03 - 00:32:09:04

Speaker 1

Well give it a little bit of value, you know, actually put it on a piece of paper, make it worth something. And then the big logo, Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola is big, bold, simple. Keep it simple. Stupid.

00:32:09:07 - 00:32:10:08

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00:32:10:10 - 00:32:31:00

Speaker 1

You know, it's really one of the ways that we've been able to really set ourselves apart because nobody else was doing it for us. Nobody else really had dived into that. And I'll be honest with you, I almost didn't want to when I had first did it, you know, my wife told me, she said she said, you know, I don't know if those are going to work, you know, blah.

00:32:31:00 - 00:32:46:14

Speaker 1

And then I did it and I put a girl on there and she hated it. She said, oh, you got to take her off immediately and put yourself on there. A big ugly guy on the side of the highway when they're driving there. No, you're going to do it. And she was right. She was right. After we did it, everybody was calling.

00:32:46:20 - 00:33:12:13

Speaker 1

You know, we went from, you know, probably 7 to $8 million to 14, 15 almost overnight. It's it's been a great investment. Now we virtually control the highway. Problem with ads is you can skip you know, you can't turn away from a giant, you know, 60ft by 30ft tall, huge landmark that you're driving past at 65 miles an hour.

00:33:12:15 - 00:33:14:02

Speaker 1

So we try.

00:33:14:02 - 00:33:15:18

Speaker 2

To stay to see it, right?

00:33:15:20 - 00:33:38:10

Speaker 1

Yeah, we try to stay away from the digitals unless it's nighttime. They're fantastic, but during the day they just kind of become eye pollution because they flip through so much. You get about an 8 to 9 second flip count with a static board that's constantly there. And if it's got a 3D effect where it's kind of popping out at, people love them, we get, I would say probably 40 to 50% of our calls are from our our billboards.

00:33:38:11 - 00:33:49:00

Speaker 2

One last thing here as we wrap up. You've been in business now for a number of years. If someone was starting out, if I was a new business, say first, second year, what would be your biggest piece of advice to somebody like that?

00:33:49:00 - 00:34:09:22

Speaker 1

Don't give up. Don't let your ego get in the way and keep on pushing. I mean, there's really people think that I kind of said this before. It's like complicated. Do what you say you're going to do, and if you do something wrong, make it right and show up on time. Dress to impress. You know, if you want to be $1 million salesman, you got to dress like it.

00:34:09:22 - 00:34:20:14

Speaker 1

You got to act like you got to believe it. Look like a firefighter dressed like a firefighter. Put out fires. Must be a firefighter. So if you're starting off and you got to fake it til you make it, there's the groundwork.

00:34:20:18 - 00:34:31:15

Speaker 2

Yeah. There you go. Like it's, you know, like you said, it's, you know, you got to start somewhere. So it's in the beginning. You got to just pretend a little bit, do what you got to do. Right?

00:34:31:16 - 00:34:38:18

Speaker 1

I mean, that's what everybody is. You know, initially we're all pretending to be, you know, something we're not. Until we finally become it. Yeah.

00:34:38:23 - 00:34:40:23

Speaker 2

That's how I started this podcast, right?

00:34:41:01 - 00:34:41:17

Speaker 1

I became a.

00:34:41:17 - 00:34:43:14

Speaker 2

Dad, and he wasn't.

00:34:43:14 - 00:34:45:04

Speaker 1

Born knowing how to be a dad.

00:34:45:10 - 00:34:46:22

Speaker 2

Nobody's prepared for that, right?

00:34:46:23 - 00:34:56:01

Speaker 1

Nobody's prepared to be any of those things. But you learn along the way through the problems, and you learn how to overcome those things that you never thought you could.

00:34:56:07 - 00:35:18:19

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's great advice, man, I appreciate it. Well, this has been fantastic, Ken. I'm don't want to hold you up too long. I know you guys are busy, so. Yeah, but but this has been great. I mean, this is, you know, some really good advice, and I think that, you know, you having an interesting background there. You know, how you got into it and what you've been able to do in the time you've you've been in charge of the company is has been fantastic.

00:35:18:19 - 00:35:34:00

Speaker 2

And, you know, honored to have you as a roofer of the month here at roofer. And congrats on that. And so, you know, always always interested to see how we're able to to help companies and how we're able to grow with companies. So excited to see where you guys go and how roofer can help out.

00:35:34:06 - 00:35:35:17

Speaker 1

I appreciate it was a pleasure.

00:35:35:18 - 00:35:50:05

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thank you. And thank you guys for listening. Hope you guys got some good nuggets out of this one. And if you get the opportunity to go back and listen to some of the other roofer of the month, there's some also some great, you know, insight in those as well. And we will see you all next time on the roof report.

00:35:50:05 - 00:35:51:05

Speaker 2

Thank you everybody.

00:35:51:09 - 00:36:02:12

Speaker 3

Hey everybody. Thank you for listening. Check us out next time on the Roofer podcast. But until then be sure to like us, subscribe to us and check out all our other episodes on YouTube and Spotify.

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