All in the Family: Building a Multi-Generational Business with Tom & Lawson Craddock

Pete: Alright. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Roofr Report. I am your host, Pete McKendrick, and, really excited about this one. If you guys have been watching our Roofr of the Month series.

Today we're gonna shift gears a bit. We're gonna talk with Craddock Roofing and excited about this one because these guys have been around for what, 41 years guys. 41 years. That is officially, I think, the longest amount of time that anybody has been in the industry.

So really excited to have this conversation. Welcome man. Excited to have you guys here.  

Tom: It's good to be here.  

Lawson: Yeah, absolutely.  

Pete: I think this is the first time we've ever had a tag team, more than one person here.

So, excited about that too. We get some different perspective here. So, real quick guys, introduce yourself, introduce Craddock Roofing and if anybody's not familiar with you, where are you guys based? How big are you as a company? Obviously we stated that you guys have been in business a long time, so just give us a little bit of background on, on Craddock itself.

Tom: Uh, well, we're based in Houston, Texas, started the company in '84. Our niche is residential reroofing. That's really what we do. And, we strive for quality installations. We're trying to roll with the times and we're in a transition period. I started the company and Lawson has come on board this year and, he's gonna be taking the reins.

Lawson: Yeah. Don't let him talk too lightly. I have a brother as well, but we are very much a family owned and operating company. It's only three of us that sell roofs for the company.

And then we also have really only two other employees. We have an office administrator, and we have our superintendent. Everyone says you're only as good as your subs or your workers. And we're thankful that we do have that great relationship with our crew.

Been with us for 41 years, and he's also seen very much, has seen it all.  

Tom: You can't forget, Ellen, my wife, she's the CPA and she really keeps the reins on it. So, not to mention we have a office administrator, but we also, have a great accounting staff, which is Ellen.

Lawson: She's the real boss.  

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. She's running it in the background. Oh, that's really interesting, right? Because a lot of times when you talk to companies that have been around as long as you guys have, sometimes they've grown really large, sometimes there's a lot of people involved.

I've been on the roofing side of this industry on the tech side for about eight years and seven, eight years ago when I started, most of the companies that you talked to, the solution was throw people at it. Right?

You know, a lot of sales guys out there running around. I talked to a company just the other day that I think has 10 sales guys and they're still only in their second or third year of business.

So, really interesting that you guys have kept it small.

Lawson: And there's a reason behind that.

And that's because of, how particular he is, and that I'm learning to be. We'd love to be busier and do as much business we can, but we don't wanna sacrifice the work that we do to get there.

We don't wanna grow beyond our means and suddenly have a bunch of business come in and not be able to handle it. We wanna make sure that every roof that we install, is the same quality that we strive for.

Until we find another person, that holds the same quality, it's, yeah. That's why it's been the two of us. It's our last name on the certs and the company, so it's our reputation on the line. And if we can't hold that to our name and our standard, then, yeah. makes it difficult, but also satisfying.

Pete: Yeah. I love that. We talk about systems and processes all the time. It's one of the things that as people have an opportunity to get busy, that stuff kind of becomes second to the fact that, hey, we can scale and grow. Like we've got an opportunity here to grow and get big, so, I applaud you guys for staying focused and staying on top of that stuff.  

Tom: Throughout the years, we've had busy times where hailstorms have come through and I have staffed up to 10 crews and multiple salesmen.

When it's all said and done, when the dust settles, I look back and I just really wasn't happy with the workmanship. It came in also, with the peaks and the valleys of the storm situations, trying to keep all the sales reps and the crews going.

I learned from those past storms that I was more interested when the business goes up to keep the same quality of workmanship throughout. So that has limited our scaling but we found a little happy niche here.

Pete: Yeah, and I think that's an important piece to note, right? Like I had a conversation with a roofer maybe a year or two ago that is a good friend of mine and he grew over the course of five or six years. He grew to a decent size and he said, I've seriously considered scaling back. 'cause my life was actually easier when I was making a little bit less money as a company.

But he said it was easier to manage. We didn't have all the headaches. It was easier to manage quality. Less people involved. So there's something to be said for staying in that sweet spot that you guys found. I think more people should probably think about it that way.

You know, where is a nice, manageable level? Where can I kind of hang out? So, Tom, talk a little bit about how you got into roofing.  

Tom: My dad was an accountant and, so I felt that I should be an accountant myself, was going to school at the University of Houston. Junior year.

The classes, I was stuck in that basement with the window up high and a little bit of sunlight. And I'm going, am I gonna be able to do this the rest of my life? A friend of mine, I was working nights at a restaurant and they, were opening up a restaurant in Crested Butte.

They offered me a job, so, I quit school and moved out to the snow country in Crested Butte. While there, you just have to scratch a living to do anything you can, you know, wash dishes, bar back, sous chef, firewood.

The first summer I got a job on a roofing crew. Putting metal roofs on. When that big project was over, that roofer scaled back, but he kept me on and, I learned the roofing trade, putting metal roofs on in the snow country. Met my wife, who visited her brother out on a ski trip, and, she moved to Crested Butte.

Drug me to Boulder so she could go to school. And, I got a job with a bigger roofing company and learned more of the trade and, more of the shingling aspect, putting on shingle roofs, three tabs, t locks, laminated, and also working on a built up crew. Learned a lot about the industry.

My mom was aging back here in Houston. I decided to move back in 1984 and start the business and did it on a shoestring. I had a thousand dollars in my pocket and a pickup truck. I grew the first five years it was doubling sales. Doubling sales. You get to the point that, you know, scalability, so it just started on a shoestring and, been at it ever since.

You gotta start somewhere. Exactly. There was a lot fewer chucks in a truck back in the eighties.  

Pete: Yeah, I'm sure there was.

Yeah. Now Lawson, you probably have one of the more unique backgrounds, I think coming into roofing, right? So I'll let you tell your story a little bit here.  

Lawson: Yeah, I mean, I was born in '92, so he had the business well and established by that point.

So that's probably how I got my start in was running up and down the roof. One call from the neighbor being like, you might wanna check out what's going on out there.

So that's probably one of my first memories on a roof.

But I did get sidetracked for a couple years. My dad was, you know, he's a big cyclist.  

When I was 10 years old, started doing a summer camp out there. Started racing bikes and just got hooked. I was a very hyper kid, had a lot of energy. So cycling was a good way for my parents to get that energy outta me. I started racing and, you know, when I was 15, I was lucky enough to join the US National Team, growing from there.

I was pretty fortunate to turn professional when I was 19. Pretty much moved over to Europe, full time shortly after that, for 14 years. And just retired last year and came on board with Craddock Roofing. Which was always my plan, you know, cycling, every kid grows up, wants to be a professional athlete, a fireman, an astronaut, all that stuff.

But I wanted to be a roofer. You know. Cycling just kind of took me away for a little bit. I retired from cycling, but I'm hardly anything but retired these days.  

Pete: That's very cool, man. What a cool background. I mean, I've met some professional baseball players and professional football players, but you are the first professional cyclist I've ever met in roofing, very cool backstory.

Tom: Just have to throw it in. He's very humble in his accomplishments.

I mean, numerous national championships, Tour de France. And the Tokyo Olympics. So, yeah, it's rarefied air that he was riding in.  

Pete: Yeah. I looked you up Lawson. But look, I'm a sports guy, so of course when I saw that, I looked you up and definitely some pretty impressive resume there.

To be an athlete at that level, in any sport is very impressive. We often talk about how sports, especially at that elite level, equate to running a business. The discipline and the work ethic and everything that comes from being an athlete at that level and how that equates to running a business.

Definitely sets you up differently than a lot of people for success in this environment, in the roofing space, right?

Lawson: There's really no days off. And, you know, if you don't perfect your craft, you'll be left behind pretty quickly. I grew up with a roofing family, but I didn't really know much about running the business, until I came on board.

But I would hire, any one of my teammates, old teammates, cyclists, even if they know absolutely nothing about the ins and out of the industry. 'cause I know that one thing that it does teach you is the ability to commit.

The work never stops. Can't be, you know, afraid of getting up on a roof when it's 110 degrees outside.

Pete: you know, I watched a podcast a while back where the guy was saying that one of the most underutilized or under leveraged pieces of someone's resume is the fact that they were a high level athlete, let's say like a college athlete or a pro athlete.

Like, if I'm looking at your resume and you have that background, I'm moving you right to the top. 'cause I already know that you are gonna show up. You're committed. You're gonna probably outwork the other guy. You have the traits that I can turn you in to an incredible employee.

I can turn you into a leader, or you may already have those leader qualities because of that background.

You know, it definitely gives a competitive advantage when it comes to, working a career like this.

Lawson: It doesn't just, it doesn't come outta thin air.  

Pete: There's an interesting quote by Derek Jeter. He said that there'll always be someone better than you, but the one thing they can't be better at is they can't outwork you. You can always outwork them.

Tom: And I see this in his, what he's brought to the table here in the last few months since he's come on board. It's hard work.  

Pete: Especially in that market that you guys are in, right? A highly competitive market. That's the kind of advantage I think that will continue to help you guys excel in that market.

I know Houston is crazy. I remember we did a RISE event there and a contractor told me, I think there's 7,000 roofing companies or something like that in the Houston area. Wouldn't doubt it. Yes. Yeah, just incredible. Right? So very competitive market and very difficult to stand out there.

So Tom, I think this is probably one of the more unique podcasts that we've done, obviously, because we have the handoff here.

Talk a little bit about the changing of the guard a bit and your time here now handing it off to Lawson, knowing that it was the right time for that, and how you guys are handling that whole handoff.  

Tom: Luckily I am, I'm ready for that.

Yeah, it's not coming early in my career and I had many discussions with my wife. She said, you're not gonna be able to let it go. You know, you're gonna be, there's no way. But with Lawson coming on board, it's been a lot smoother.

And it's actually going faster than I thought it would be. I thought it's probably gonna be about a year transition, but it's good chance it's gonna happen quicker than that where he's obtained all this knowledge that, it took me 40 plus years, you know, and he's crammed it in, in a matter of months.

But, yeah, the transition is, he's taking it one step at a time. Of course. The most important thing is, you know, the first thing he did was say, Hey, I wanna work on the crews. I'm not gonna step into this job as a roof salesman. When I started the business, I was a roofer for a number of years.

So I knew when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, and, when to pass up some of those jobs and what to expect out of the crews. So when, the first thing he did is come on board and said, I'm gonna spend the first month working with the crews. Of course he had to earn their trust and he did a lot of trash, a lot of tear off and trash removing.

It was a while before a hammer got put in his hand, but, he learning it from the ground up and learning the ins and out and there's never a bad question on you on how, you know, what to do. Can you hand me this? But, as we are going forward, there's those fewer and far between, and he's really taking the reins.  

Pete: Yeah, this is really interesting, because we were just talking about it not long ago, internally here at Roofr, is that we're seeing a transition in the roofing company owner to be more of a sales driven force. There's a lot less experience on the production side with some of these owners, a lot of them are either guys who just freshly came into roofing or they were a salesman somewhere and then started a roofing company.

And that's obviously completely different than even eight years ago when I came onto the roofing tech side and started working with roofers. At that point everyone was similar to you, right? They had started as a roofer and worked their way up to owning a business.

There's that missing piece, right? There's that missing understanding, of knowing at the root of it, how things are done and when to walk away from a job and how to manage a crew and all those things. And we're just building these sales engines more or less now. I guess speak a little bit to how you guys see that as a competitive advantage.

How you think that knowledge gives you an advantage over someone that maybe just came straight through sales and is running a company now.  

Tom: Sure. The typical of these thousands of roofing company owners here in Houston, a storm would come through and, a contractor would put it out on Craigslist, that's Craigslist come and gone. You know, we're we're hiring door knockers and canvassers. And so, they learned the aggressive storm chasing aspect of it. They would know the good times. And then they said, okay, I've, there is no licensing in the state of Texas to be a roofer, right?

So it's pretty easy to be that chuck in the truck. They would learn a few the sales techniques, so they know how to sell a roof, but they really don't know how to put on a roof. You see it in sales meetings, where we'll sit down with the homeowner and go through the procedures of the installations. A lot of times after this sales meeting, we'll hear from the homeowners. It's like, you're the first person to actually tell us this and be able to answer our questions. I think that having that knowledge, it helps in the sales, because you're not just making up answers when somebody asks you a question.

Just really have the knowledge to answer those questions.  

Pete: Yeah, I totally agree and I think that having that advantage is going to really play out. Personally I just think that's going to create an issue for them, whether it's a log jam in a bad process or not understanding what's actually happening or potentially having issues managing quality 'cause they don't necessarily understand it.

I think a lot of companies are not focusing on production, and I think it's gonna come back to bite them, ultimately. Right.

And I have a question for you, Lawson. As you're kind of transitioning into this, Roofr being a tech platform and obviously with the age of the business, tech did not exist when Tom got this running, so  

Tom: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. So how are you guys incorporating technology and at what point did you say like, Hey, we need to, and maybe that's a question for both of you guys, but Tom maybe when did you say like, Hey, maybe we should be using some technology to do some things, to streamline some processes, and how has that helped the business or changed the business for you guys?

Tom: Well, I'll start out and let him finish up. It was a tape measure and a yellow pad at the beginning and getting up on the roof and dragging a tape around and crunching out numbers, on a calculator.

Back in the nineties we did write a program that we're still utilizing today. That, helped us estimating and we're transitioning over to Roofr. My oldest son Parker came on board about 10 years ago, and he wasn't real comfortable walking on roofs.

So satellite imagery had come about around 2008 or so. We started utilizing the satellite imagery and bringing that into it. That was the biggest step to technology is, is from out measuring roofs with the tape to we could do it from our desktop.

It's forever changing. Today it is the CRMs and all the pipelines in your platform.  

Lawson: It's, yeah. As someone who's come on board recently learning the old system, it is challenging. There was, you know, he has this folder system in his briefcase. He's like, okay, well he's just, he goes here, here, here, here. There's like 18 of them. And I'm like, well, shoot. Like I don't, I don't know how to follow, you know, how do I know where I've been, where I need to go?

And, just like trying to get a digital calendar. That's when we found Roofr and we've been utilizing it and just having, for me, having the pipeline is huge. You know, I can move the job cards everywhere. I know exactly. Everyone is a different stage of selling a roof, getting the call all the way to, picking up the stack and the job is finished.

The measuring is really nice. I was out there with him at the beginning and he start walking you through, this is how you measure a roof with your tape measure. And he starts whipping it around, just like, and he's like, okay, yeah, it's 48 squares.

And I'm just like what? Then you blow through three tape measures a week. So we basically went through our tape measure budget to, and turn that into a CRM platform. It's been very helpful for me 'cause, just having a central location with all the information that we have, and that accessibility with the customers has made it so much easier.

You're not trying to drive down, pulling folders out, you know. For him, he's done what's worked for 40 years. Right. And then one thing that my mom emphasized, find your own way to do things. Find what works for you.

Him, he's a little more tech resistant.

We've been getting the hang of things and of course, we're very particular about how we like things. One thing with talking about CRMs and Roofr especially is, we've spent now five months getting everything exactly to how we want things.

Having the proposals and getting the price that we want, trying to get that within very tight margins on Roofr proposals, things like that. We're bought in and we're working tirelessly to get everything there so we can utilize every function.  

Pete: Like it.

Now Tom, maybe this is a good question for you. How much of a difference in the amount of time. With using technology versus like the original way, you know, the traditional way of doing it?  

Tom: I don't think there's a day goes by. Tell Lawson you don't need to get these proposals out in an hour.

The old style was going out to the home, measuring it, take the information back to the office, calculating it, the price, putting in a fax machine if you had one, and faxing over the proposal. So it's taken a, like a a day process and putting it down to two, couple of hours. Yeah. Yeah, so it has really helped out. And also, having everything streamlined and being able to see it on the job card and moving through the pipeline. It's been a bonus.  

Lawson: To be honest at the beginning, it took a lot longer to figure out how it works, there were times that the staff and the onboarding staff, we worked a lot with them to figure it out.

There's stuff that, you know, we went back from our system that worked for the last 40 years and trying to do the same thing realizing it is different. So it is a process. But it is one of those things where, just like when I first started with the business, the stuff that would take me two hours now takes me 10 minutes.

Figuring out the drawing process, took a long time, but now it's gotten to the point where you whip up a complicated house in a couple minutes, no worries.

And now it's getting to the point where it has made it much easier.  

Pete: Yeah, I like that because I think that's an overlooked part, right? A lot of people when they get a CRM or some piece of technology, they just imagine it's gonna magically fix everything right away.

We used to always say, you get out of it what you put into it. We expect miracles from these things, but like you said, there's a learning curve.

There's dialing that thing in. Hey, you're gonna build a workflow and you're probably gonna tweak it three times before you get that workflow and those job cards flowing the way you want them to. Like you said, learning how to draw. There's a learning curve to it. That's an important point to make.

Talk a little bit about, and I guess Lawson, maybe this is more geared towards you as you're kind of taking the reins, but what does the future for Craddock hold, like what are you guys looking to do as a company over the next three to five years?

Lawson: Well, what does the future look like? He's been doing it for 40 years. He wants to take a step back and go on vacation. He absolutely deserves it. I'm new to the business. I'm, hungry and I want to be busy every day.

I want to take on new projects and figure it out. Maybe go in different fields and directions. We're a very small company, like we talked about in the beginning.

It's really only four or five of us, six max. Never done any form of advertising. Never done any form of marketing, we truly believe we're terms of quality, a top roofing installer, in Houston. Our crews, the experience they have is incredible.

One been with us about 25 years. The other one been with us, 18 years. We have great relationship with 'em. We truly believe that they're the best. But you search on Google. We're nowhere.

And not that we wanna turn it to, 15, $20 million, company. But, it would be good to, at least have the name a little bit more out there. Scale it up a little bit, but still try to find that balance.

Pete: Yeah, I love it man. Marketing has become a huge part of the selling process. Customers are finding you in ways they've never found you before, and they're able to do a lot more research.

One of the guys I interviewed said 70% of the customers that come to me are sold before they even pick up the phone and call me. They've already figured out they want to use me because they've done all their research online. So obviously the times are changing with that.

But ultimately this is still a face-to-face business and a trust business. Managing that quality so tightly and that reputation so tightly, I think is definitely a huge advantage and part of your success.  

Lawson: We're roofers. We're not salesmen. We have no, I was talking to someone this morning, I've got no business background. He has no business background. Someone could probably come in and watch us, the way we operate and the way we run things, and be like, what are you guys doing? There's so much that untapped potential, but, you know, for us, we're not obsessed with chasing a bottom line.

Keeping our crews busy, you know.  

Tom: Just being the best.

Pete: Yeah. And I think there's something to be said for that. You guys have found that sweet spot. If you're gonna have one takeaway from this podcast for those watching, I think that's it.

You don't have to necessarily grow into this massive company to find that sweet spot.

The fact that you guys have been able to stay a family run business this entire time, because you've just focused on that quality, kept it small, kept it amongst yourselves and been able to run a really successful company that way.  

Tom: Right. And that you said the family time. It is just really, you've gotta have the sanity. The fine balance of family time and running a business. That's the niche I have tried to achieve.  

Pete: I love it. Well, thank you guys. I mean, this has been a fantastic conversation. Congrats on being Roofr of the Month here with us.

Excited to see how you guys incorporate Roofr into a company that's been successful for that long. Hats off to you guys for everything you've accomplished and, Tom, I hope you get to enjoy retirement here soon.  

Lawson: Yeah. Cool. I'm done. Good luck.  

Pete: Yeah, yeah. Well that's good. I mean, that means the trust factor's there, right?

Tom: The trust factor's here. Yes. Absolutely.  

Pete: That's awesome. Lawson, be interested to see the things that you're able to accomplish.

For everybody listening, check out Craddock Roofing if you aren't familiar with them. You know, just a great family story and a great family run business. Really what this industry was built on, is right here.

Thank you guys for jumping on again.  

Tom: We, we're honored to be Roofrs of the Month and we're honored to sit down with you.

Pete: Yeah, thank you man. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for joining us and thank you everybody for listening. We'll see you next time on the Roofr Report.  

Lawson: Alright, thank you.