Building a Team You Can Trust with Victoria Veltri

Pete: All right. Welcome everybody. Welcome back to the Roofr podcast. I am your host, Pete McKendrick. And, I am joined again by another great Roofr of the month. You know, this has been a fantastic series for us, featuring a lot of really good Roofr users, but also a lot of good newer roofers.

One of the things that I've been telling people is if they're not listening to this series, they really should, because it's really great to hear the stories of a lot of up and coming roofers that are fairly new to the business. The challenges that they're facing, how they're overcoming them, and the successes that they're finding.

Some savvy folks that we've had on here, so I'm sure no different with this Roofr of the month here.

We are excited to be joined by Victoria Veltri of Dynasty Roofing. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Victoria, and [00:01:00] Dynasty. Where are you guys located? How big is the company? How long have you been in business? Those type of things.

Victoria: I'm Victoria. I own Dynasty Roofing and Construction. We are a Houston based company with an office specifically in Webster area. We've been in business about two years now. My husband actually started it. We've grown a lot in the past two years, and we have about 15 salesmen currently.  

Pete: Nice. So two years in business.

You guys are obviously in a very competitive market there in Houston. What have you guys done to really stand out from the crowd?

You know, two years in business. You guys have done pretty well, with a very tough competitive market.

Victoria: We focus a lot on making sure that our salesmen are really getting to know our clients on an individual basis. Not just let me knock on your door and sell you a roof, but really help them and get to know them as a person. So I think that really sets us apart is we're not there to sell something. We're there to genuinely help people.

Pete: Now, are you guys doing a lot of insurance work [00:02:00] there or is it retail work? A combination of both.  

Victoria: We do a combination of both. If there's a good storm date, we'll do insurance work, help the homeowner call in the claim and do all of that. But we'll also do the retail side if they just have an older roof or they're looking for an upgrade.

We've also done one commercial roof. We're slowly dipping our toe into the commercial world, but we're not quite there yet.  

Pete: Alright. Now, are you guys only roofing or do you do other trades as well? Any siding or gutters or anything like that?

Victoria: We can do anything. Basically siding, gutters, fences, interior. I think we've built a whole patio before. We can do additions of new structures if people want that. Primarily roofing, but we can do anything that is wanted.  

Pete: Nice. Very cool. So let's talk a little bit about how you got into the business.

What did you do before this and, how did you end up here, running a roofing company?  

Victoria: So I graduated from college. I actually got my psychology degree and then [00:03:00] went into teaching and taught first grade. And then when I met my husband, he had been in roofing doing sales. He loved it. We had our daughter, she's two years old now, he's like, do you think we can start our own company?

I really think we could do this and build something different. I'm like, yeah, I think we could. So I got out of teaching. I was home with her already, so I'd already kind of transitioned out of that and I was doing all the backend office work while he did the sales and the sales training. And then we built up from there.

And unfortunately, about a year ago, come September, he passed away, so I had to step into the ownership role that he was playing.

Pete: Like you said, you have a younger daughter, right? So managing business and family, I'm sure has been a major one for you.

But what are some of the other challenges that you guys have faced getting rolling here in the first couple years?  

Victoria: One of the biggest challenges is to find quality salesmen. We have a great team now, but in the beginning it was a lot of going out and recruiting [00:04:00] people, doing Indeed posting. And it took us a good five months to start getting enough people that were gonna stick around, that were trainable, who were hardworking.

'cause a lot of the people, they see the dollar sign and they're like, oh yeah, and then they just ghost you and you never hear from 'em again.  

Pete: Yeah, that's an interesting thing.

With a lot of new businesses, you struggle to find quality people that you can trust and people that you can count on. I think that's a pretty common theme, right? Especially, when you're just getting going and you're trying to make it, and then trying to find people that kind of have the same idea and the same path and want to grow with you, can be a challenge.

Any other challenges with the market or the business itself, as you guys were getting going?  

Victoria: I mean, obviously when my husband passed a year ago, that was a big challenge to figure out how we were gonna restructure, who was gonna take what roles.

'cause he was our top salesman and our role model and kind of everything. And so we kind of had to restructure everything.  

Pete: Yeah, I would imagine that would [00:05:00] be, a shocker to the business as well as personal life and dealing with that and keeping a business running. Hats off to you. That's impressive that you were able to keep the ball rolling and keep things moving along.

Let's talk about hires, you brought up salesmen. You said, it was tough to find salespeople that I can rely on that are doing a good job. What would you say, two years in? I always like to ask this question.

What would you say was your most important hire?

Victoria: The person who we initially brought on to be our project manager, the person out there on the jobs getting the materials, yeah, he was so thorough and nothing was ever missed, and we eventually transferred him, last August, into the office to help me on the backend side. And he is the most valuable asset that we have.

'cause he's constantly finding new things and figuring out new things about Roofr. And he'll email me like, Hey, can we sign up for texting? Can we do this? He just takes charge. So he's definitely our most [00:06:00] valuable.  

Pete: So is he working like an ops strat manager now?  

Victoria: Yes, he does  

Pete: like help run...  

Victoria: all the backend office stuff that I can't handle being a stay at home mom of two babies under two.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, that's awesome that you have somebody there, that can help run the day to day. That's a huge asset. Like you said, very thorough and essentially taking it on as if it was his own business is a huge help.

So, that's a good one. I always like to get people's insight on what they see as the most important hire. A lot of times it is that first ops manager person that kind of has the same mindset as you do about the business.

I'm glad you found that person and it seems to be working pretty well. Let's talk a little bit about, you said you have how many people working? 15?  

Victoria: About 15 salesmen.  

Pete: Okay. And you guys sub out all your work? Yes. Would you have sub crews? Okay. So from a tech standpoint, what has been some of the more important tech things that you guys have done with the business?

How early on in the process did you adopt tech?  

Victoria: Tech? [00:07:00] As in different softwares?  

Pete: Yeah, like different software. How early on did you start to use software to help run the business?  

Victoria: Honestly, because my husband had come from a roofing background, we started shopping for different CRMs and softwares before we even officially started.

So we called Roofr and a couple other places, and we ultimately went with Roofr. So we had that up and running before the first sale was ever even made.  

Pete: Interesting.  

Victoria: And I've loved how it's kind of grown with us. I love the texting and the emails. Like I used to send emails after every build, asking for reviews and referrals and all of that.

But then now y'all have that capability. So that just makes my job so much easier. 'cause everything's just streamlined.  

Pete: You know, it's funny, I've been on the roofing side, the tech space side for about eight years. It's very interesting to hear, back then you'd have businesses that were in business for five, six, sometimes 10 years and still have no tech.

Now what we're hearing is more and more people employing tech from day one. How has tech [00:08:00] helped bring salespeople in? In the past, we had to look for salespeople that had roofing experience, that understood the industry really well , probably had sold roofs before. How easy is it for you now to bring salespeople in and get them trained and up to speed? Because you have this process in place with the software?  

Victoria: Oh, it's super easy.

We basically bring them in, get them set up on all of the different software, and then we have them watch the roof strategist training videos before they ever go out knocking and shadowing one of our more experienced salesmen. But it's, we have it down to a very fine tuned process with checklists and.

Pete: I love it. So you guys are using checklists and automations and stuff like that? Yes. Inside of the software. Yeah. Love it. I mean that has allowed you guys probably to run. Besides this 15 sales guys, is it just you and the ops manager?

Victoria: And then we have a general manager who does some of his own sales, but kind of oversees the trainee trainer relationships.

Pete: Yeah. So from an office standpoint, you guys are running very lean, and very [00:09:00] efficiently, which is probably allowing you to be much more profitable early on . And I assume your sales guys are all commissioned guys, right? Yes. So it's all based on their sales.

So really you've only got a few employees running full-time on the inside. That's an amazing thing to me. What we're seeing more and more is these companies being able to run and make good revenue in the first couple of years.

With almost no people, right? Because of the software involved, and how they've got it set up. What would you say is your favorite piece of tech that you guys have put into play, in the business?  

Victoria: One feature specifically with Roofr that I love that we put into place is the different streamlines of workflows because we have different crews that'll do different jobs and it's easy to just kind of toggle on and off who's doing what.

It's gonna be super valuable here in the next month because we are soft launching a San Antonio branch, so it's gonna have its own workflow, own manager, wonderful to have that capability. So not everything is just flooded into one box.  

Pete: Yeah, that's a great insight.

I think that's [00:10:00] probably an underutilized feature in the product, is that we have those multiple workflows and you can really set yourself up, to have multiple branches set up in there, multiple trades, however you want to do it.

The effectiveness of that and how streamlined it can make the operation. It'll be interesting to see you guys running San Antonio as its own separate branch with its own separate workflow in there.

That'll be cool. Excited to see how that works out.

Talk a little bit about where you guys are currently at, you've grown to this point. Obviously soft launching San Antonio, so you guys have some plans to expand a bit.

You've said you're dipping your toe a little bit into commercial. Where are you looking to go with Dynasty?  

Victoria: I love where we're at currently. I want to grow more and become more well known in the Houston area.

A lot of people already know our name, but I wanna continue building that brand awareness. And then San Antonio is kind of our next stepping point. I see probably up and running in the next six months, maybe get an office, stuff like that. I [00:11:00] also really would like to move into the Austin market, once we figure out San Antonio.

And then we're looking for some trainings for commercial. I would eventually love to expand to all the major Texas cities, but that's down the pipeline .  

Pete: What made you guys pull the trigger on that second location at the two year mark?  

Victoria: My uncle actually came to sell for us back in January, and he's from San Antonio. He got a little RV and was coming down to sell for us here, but he went back to San Antonio to be back with his kids and his wife and family.

And he called me and he said, Hey, how would you feel about me selling for Dynasty in San Antonio? 'cause we'd been thinking about it. Wasn't really ready yet. Then I was like, you know what, let's do it. So I called my suppliers, my appraisers, my crews, and they're like, yeah, we can do this.

So he is gonna start officially in September, I think.  

Pete: Very cool. I think there's always that kind of fine line you walk of knowing when to pull the trigger on expansion. You guys really have a good dialed in process and things are running very smoothly [00:12:00] so it may be very easy to replicate that system again, in another place.

What would you say from a process standpoint have been the biggest things that you've learned?

We mentioned the challenges of getting employees in the system, but as you're building the process, that you guys run, on a daily basis, what has been some of the biggest lessons that you've learned about it and maybe even some of the biggest mistakes that you've made?

Victoria: One of the biggest lessons that we learned in the first year was we pretty much let our salesmen be autonomous over their own estimations and jobs and stuff, and we just schedule it do the backend stuff that we need to do.

Sometimes if it's a bigger job outside of just a roof, they aren't the most accurate at estimating exactly what it's gonna cost. So we've learned that we need to have multiple sets of eyes. A salesman will come to us, Hey, this is the project. My office manager and myself, we'll look at it separately to make sure that everything's accurate as [00:13:00] far as what the pricing's gonna be.

And the other lesson is to make sure that we have our salesman taking pictures. Tons and tons of pictures. You can't have enough pictures before they even call in the claim or before they do their inspection, so that we have those good before, during, and after pictures.  

Pete: Yeah. This is a really interesting point because I've been in a couple of roofing companies where I've seen a similar situation, right?

I've seen people bring in salespeople who have a little bit of experience. They kind of give the salesperson the reins. I was in a company a few years back where, they had three sales guys and they were all doing things differently to the point that they were even pulling different measurement reports.

They weren't even all using the same measurement report service. It was a free for all to just run whatever process they felt worked for them. There was no standardization to the way they were quoting or the pricing really.

Some guys were giving discounts where they probably shouldn't have and [00:14:00] things like that. So it's really interesting that you mention that because I have seen that a number of times and then you realize oh, maybe they're not as skilled or as experienced as maybe I thought they were. And you start to dial that process back in and reel them in a bit.

You said early on that you brought that guy in to be your production manager.

Obviously you guys saw a lot of opportunity there to facilitate the customer experience.

So speak a little bit about why you brought that person in and what responsibilities he had and how much benefit you gained from having him as the production manager out there in the field.

Victoria: Yeah. So we brought him in in the beginning 'cause Peyton wanted to make a company that was gonna be different from your run of the mill company. That's just in and out. You never see anyone. So he was gonna be our person that was gonna be on every job site in the morning, knock on the door, tell the customer, good morning.

Explain what's gonna go on. If a build happened to go to a second day, knock on the door at the end of the day, explain what's going on. 'Cause things happen during builds, extra decking needs to be replaced, whatever. So he was there to [00:15:00] make sure that the customer was in the loop every step of the process.

And then of course, your normal things like going for supply runs, taking the pictures during the build and after and the crew does their cleanup, but the project manager stays after the crew to do a second cleanup because we don't want to leave anything behind that wasn't there to begin with.

Pete: I love it. It's interesting, I live in Kentucky. We had some storms, earlier this year and, there's just a ton of roofing going on and there's a ton of roofing companies here. So it's always interesting to watch the different companies and see their different processes.

What I like to watch is they're set up ahead of time and they're cleaned up after. Because I feel like that's fairly telling about the company and how they're doing things. There's a house just down the street from me.

It had roofing and siding done to it, and there's a pallet of materials that has been sitting on their front lawn for probably two weeks. What. Leftover, leftover materials and some scrap. They literally had a dumpster in the driveway. They finally pulled the dumpster after about a week and a half.

[00:16:00] But the pallet of leftover stuff from like final walkthrough, I guess punch list stuff, it's still sitting on the front lawn and it's been there for at least two weeks. Where another house down the end of the street was done literally in an afternoon.

It's a smaller home and these guys came middle of the day, knocked it out and cleaned up, and you would've never even known that the roof was replaced if you weren't paying attention because they were so quick and so clean about it that there's not even like a trace of them being there. The customer experience doesn't just end when the roof is installed. Like you said, you guys are asking for reviews and referrals from these customers, and so much of that is, how are we handling it after the job's over? How are we communicating with that customer through the production phase and then after the production phase.

So, pretty cool. I'm impressed. So, lemme ask you a question, right, because you probably did not plan on owning a roofing company.

So how are you liking being a roofing company owner?  

Victoria: I really love it. When I went to [00:17:00] school, I told my mom, I don't know what I wanna do. I don't wanna sit in an office all day. I don't wanna be doing the same thing every day. And so I went to teaching and I wasn't really sure about teaching because I didn't really, I love my kids.

I don't love all kids. When I started helping Peyton with the office, I was like, oh, this is fun. There's new challenges every day. I don't have to do the same thing. I can collaborate with people when I want, but I don't always have to be social. The flexibility to be able to be a mom and own a business at the same time.

Of course I do get the random phone call at 11 o'clock at night of, Hey, we have to deal with this right now. But for the most part, it is amazing.  

Pete: Yeah. I was gonna ask you, how has it been, the work life balance? Running a roofing company here as a solo owner and then having young kids I'm sure is at times a challenge.

And I have kids and I know just trying to work sometimes during the day is like, give me a minute here. I can only imagine having young kids [00:18:00] like that, it's tough, right? Like I'm sure you have your days right?

Victoria: So, the first year when Peyton was still here, we just had our daughter and his phone would ring from 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM and I kept trying to tell him, you have to set boundaries. You have to tell them to call you during work hours or this or that. He's like, no, I will always be there for my salesmen. I'll always be there for my homeowners.

When we transitioned after he passed, my general manager really stepped up into a fantastic role and he said, how about we have the salesmen call me? And I'll deal with anything. And if you need to be looped in, then I'll loop you in. He has taken a lot of the random phone calls, puts out a lot of fires before he even brings them to my attention to make sure that I have the ability to do what I need to do behind the scenes and be a mom.

So I could not do it without my general manager. And of course, my office manager who I talked about earlier, they are the backbones of my success in [00:19:00] being able to balance things, being able to do the best for our customers and for my salesmen and for my family.  

Pete: Yeah, it sounds like you found some really good people there. Having that help on the backend and, to really dial everything in is a huge asset. So. Lucky you found some good, definitely some good people you can trust there.

So let's just talk about, you said you guys do some other trades, right?

You have some other trades that you handle, do you see yourself expanding beyond roofing? The majority of your work is roofing work, right? Yes. Do you guys see yourself expanding into doing more besides roofing on a bigger scale, or you think you'll always mainly focus on roofing?

Victoria: I think for the foreseeable future, we'll mainly focus on roofing. If times were to change and circumstances would happen, I'm not opposed to expanding into other trades, but for now, primarily roofing and the things that go along with it is our bread and butter.

Pete: Yeah, I like that because I think [00:20:00] that's something a lot of new businesses fall prey to early on. While we're here roofing, we might as well do these other things too that the homeowner needs. And next thing you know, you're essentially a general contractor.

At the end of the day, I agree with the people who think, Hey, let's be really good at one or two things and not try to do a million different things. I'm impressed that you guys have been able to stick to that and just say Hey, let's be the roofing company, and let's not worry about all that other stuff. 'cause you can easily get yourself in a bind, right? In a tough spot. Yes. Trying to handle too many things.

Well, this has been a great conversation, Victoria.

I really enjoyed talking with you. Super impressed at what you're doing. And, hats off to you for, keeping that business running, so strong and all the things you guys have going on. It sounds like you have a very bright future there. Expanding a little bit and getting into some other stuff, happy that Roofr could be along for the ride and really excited that you guys are using Roofr like you are and excited for you to be our Roofr of the month.

So thank you. I appreciate everything.  

Victoria: Thank you so much.

Pete: If you have not checked out our other Roofr [00:21:00] of the months, be sure to do that. The Roofr Report podcast is on all of your podcast channels, like Spotify . If you go to the Roofr website and go to our resources section, you'll see all of our podcasts in there, as well as our masterclasses and the Roofr Academy and just tons of resources.

If you are using Roofr or thinking of using Roofr, it's a great place to go and get a lot of information about the software as well as some of our great users like Victoria.

So again, congrats on being the Roofr of the Month, Victoria, and thanks for jumping on and we will see you all next time on the Roofr report!