A Rapidly Rising Roofing Company: Salus Exteriors from Houston, Texas

‍Pete: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Roofr Report podcast. I am your host Pete McKendrick, and I am joined today by Juan Rodriguez. So Juan is our August Roofr of the Month. We have this ongoing this year, this ongoing initiative where we're, showcasing a roofer every month that is a a fan of ours and that we are a fan of. And so we're excited to have Juan here as our Roofr of the Month for the month of August. So welcome  

Juan Rodriguez: Hey, thanks B. Thanks. Hello everybody. I'm glad to be here. I appreciate you guys giving me the initiative to partake. And my name is Juan Rodriguez. I'm with Salus Exteriors. We're a new up and coming roofing company in the Houston, Texas area. so we are, we're here to provide as much exterior services as possible.

Pete: Nice. So we've had a pretty common theme here with our, our Roofr of the Month. A lot of new companies, a lot of new startup companies that have been finding a lot of success really quickly, doing a great job and of getting up and running and, and finding success very, very early on in the career of the roofing company.

Pete: So, give a little background on yourself, Juan, how you got to, to where you guys are and how long has Sal has been in business and, what is your background? How did you end up in the roofing industry?

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah, so Salus has been around since the beginning of this year. We started this year. I've been in the roofing business for some time. When I used to live in Florida, so Florida roofing, I learned quite a lot. I'll say that. You get to learn The hard ways and the good ways you get to meet some great people.

Juan Rodriguez: I worked mainly just roofing and then I moved here to Houston pre COVID. While I was here in Houston, trying to find a job in the COVID time was a little bit difficult. But good thing I had a degree. I have a degree in marketing and economics, so I worked in the corporate field for a little bit.

Juan Rodriguez: And that got me to think, look, I can open my own company. I can be the owner and what I didn't like from previous companies I could make sure that my customers don't get that negative impact. And I can make sure I can train my guys and have them understand that this is a great industry. There are a lot of companies, just like myself, are companies that are doing the right thing.

Juan Rodriguez: And that you can be known for being the right go to person.

Pete: Yeah, that's great. Two tough markets, obviously, right? Like if you're familiar with Florida, Florida is a very, very tough market to be a roofer in. Yeah. Texas is probably one of the toughest as far as competition. And,

Juan Rodriguez: Oh, yeah.  

Pete: Just the number, sheer number of roofers. I remember being in I think I was in Dallas and a contractor told me that there was 7, 000 roofers in the city of Dallas, like within the city limits.

Pete: There were 7, 000

Juan Rodriguez: Oh, yeah. I think greater Dallas. So Dallas, Fort Worth area, you're talking about 10, 000 plus  

Pete: Unbelievable.  

Juan Rodriguez: Oh, yeah, it's huge. But I'll say this, everybody, every one of those companies, they have a thriving business. At least a successful or somewhat successful business.

Pete: Yeah. That's crazy. It's crazy

Pete: that there's that much work to go around.

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah, there is

Pete: Nice. Nice. So you guys started earlier this year. That's awesome. How, how has business been for you guys? Since you

Pete: got, got it rolling.  

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah. Business has been great. Unfortunately the city of Houston has suffered through a lot of different storms with the last three months. We're in this business to, we can't stop the storms, right? Nobody can stop the storms, but we are in this business to make sure people need a good service and they get the best service possible.

Pete: Yeah. So you guys just had a hurricane, correct? Come through there.

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah, we had a hurricane last week. The city was without power. I'm still without power in some areas. There's some people that are barely getting their power back. I had my power back last Friday. So it was about six days off with that power. It was a little brutal, but I think that there's a lot of work.

Juan Rodriguez: We haven't stopped, I'll be honest with you. We haven't stopped since March. There was hail. There was a hail storm, a couple of hailstorms, one in March, one in April. There was a tornado that went by in May. It's just been catastrophic, a little bit of catastrophic, I'll say that.  

Pete: So now are you guys what makes up your business? Are you guys doing retail and insurance work? Are you doing just

Pete: predominantly insurance  

Juan Rodriguez: So our biggest thing is we would like to focus our, ourselves on 50 50, not just rely on one side. We know that the insurance market is great when, when insurance pays. We know that the retail market is great when we have a great connection with the clients and we can't just stick to one or the other.

Juan Rodriguez: We go for both. And as of starting in October we're going to be starting new construction as well.

Pete: Oh, cool.

Juan Rodriguez: Yes. So a little bit of everything, maybe it's in the plans. It's in the works for next year to start a commercial side. So I know I don't like to start anything too quickly and grow too quickly because that's when headaches come around, but if there's one thing I learned, if there's an opportunity knocking at your door you have to open it and not let it go to waste.

Pete: how do, how many people do you have working for you? What is your crew made up of?

Juan Rodriguez: So we have different crews. We have about three different crews comprised of eight at the most each crew. So between six and eight we have a few people in the office. And myself as a sales right now, I'm down to myself to sales.

Pete: Nice.

Pete: It's great. It's hard now. Yeah.

Juan Rodriguez: Sales is it's a very difficult part of our business.

Juan Rodriguez: I'll say that maintaining sales, right.

Pete: Yeah.

Juan Rodriguez: It's any company I think goes through the same course of training, sales, retention, and. It's not for everybody, but it's very beneficial when that person understands, learns and gets the time.

Pete: Yeah. So how are you guys approaching sales? Are you guys door knocking? Are you guys running ads? Like what kind of a marketing are you doing? If any, and

Pete: you,  

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah. So  

Pete: how are you getting leads?

Juan Rodriguez: when we comes through we were pretty big on this, digital marketing we have running, we are running leads, we are running online leads mostly through Google through I will say this. Some people abstain from using apps like Angie's List, Thumbtack or some of those, but we don't. Leads come through.

Juan Rodriguez: We're not going to say no. And we've been able to gather some great clients and great referrals from those clients coming from a vast array of of apps.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. I think, it's funny, we see both sides of it. We see some people that start out and just focus all their energy in one spot when it comes to marketing and, and some like yourself who diversify across the number of places and give themselves a ton of opportunities to, to grab leads up.

Juan Rodriguez: That's right.  

Pete: I think a market like yours, it makes more sense, right? Obviously. Cause you guys have a lot of competition there. So,

Juan Rodriguez: Oh, yeah.  

Pete: So having as many opportunities to gain leads, I think is a good

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah. But I'll, I'll say this. One of the things that we're, we're really focusing on narrowing down right now is events. So we go maybe sponsor an event, get to meet some great people within the industry, or I just had a great event sales training events that I partook yesterday with 40 plus realtors.

Juan Rodriguez: So just showing them and giving them a little bit of training on, on roofing and what it, what it encompasses and how they can do use that roofing knowledge, use it as a tool for their for their clients, for their buyers or sellers.  

Pete: this is a great, great, topic because we often talk about becoming the neighborhood roofer. Nick Nick and I do a masterclass, a roofer masterclass every other week. And a topic that always comes up is how do you become that guy in your

Pete: neighborhood? How do you become the guy that everyone knows?

Pete: Our, our July roofer of the month was Ben from roof tiger. And he does an incredible job of being like that neighborhood roof. He's in a small town, Peoria, Illinois. He's got these tiger stripes, stripes, stripes. Trucks and, his branding is over the top and it works, right?

Pete: Because everybody recognizes him. He's like the neighborhood guy. And I think it's such an overlooked thing and simple stuff, like what you're doing, like being out there in the community, participating in events, sponsoring things,

Pete: It's so, important to get your name as like a household name, right.

Pete: And you become recognizable as like

Pete: the guy, and I think that

Pete: that's an easy. Like a pretty easy pull, right? Like it's a pretty easy deal to just, like you said, you get to go speak in front of all these realtors, and realtors are out there looking and selling houses every day. Right. So they're the perfect

Juan Rodriguez: Right. And the great thing about that is it's word of mouth. Yeah, it's word of mouth to, how many people do realtors, get to speak with and that they can drop our name, Hey, you can visit sales website and maybe get some of the services that they're requiring to sell at home, maybe to do some fixer uppers or whatever.

Juan Rodriguez: It's, it's a real great tool to, to be part of the community, to be part of, of a team. Aside from your own company where you can provide this knowledge, you can provide some training. And at the end of the day, brand yourself as a professional.

Pete: Yeah, and absolutely. It's a, an important thing to know what you said. It's the word of mouthpiece, right? Because still to this day, after all of social media and everything, the number one performing, lead generator for a roofer is still the referral. Right. It's

Juan Rodriguez: Oh yeah.  

Pete: of mouth referral. So,

Pete: and most of the time they're slam dunk, right? Like most of the time they're essentially a sold job. So, we often talk about the customer experience and like you talked about all the things that you saw other companies do that were creating a negative experience for the customer you're able to fix and

Pete: create this positive experience for the customer, because all of that stuff leads back to producing that referral and producing that word of mouth.

Pete: Yeah. For you guys, builds that

Juan Rodriguez: Yep.  

Pete: and so it's, it's a genius way to, to produce leads because it's also the cheapest, right? It's really,

Juan Rodriguez: That's exactly right. Yeah. It isn't the most expensive. Some of it I'm a big believer that time is more, more important than money or more important than anything else. So if you look at it, anything. That values in time has this cost, right? If I have to go speak two hours at an event, there's some time that I could be selling a roof, right?

Juan Rodriguez: So maybe if you look at it that way, that may be more expensive than just paying some ads, but it makes the most impact. In my opinion, it really does.

Pete: Yeah. And I think it's more of a long term play, right? Like it, like you said,

Pete: you're developing those relationships that, like you said, you, you spoke in front of 40 realtors. Now those 40 realtors are going to go out and They know who

Pete: Salus is. They're going to spread the word for you. And it's a really a longterm effect, a ripple

Pete: effect that you wouldn't have maybe necessarily with an ad that runs for a couple of days.

Juan Rodriguez: Exactly, Exactly, right. Yep.

Pete: yeah. So really

Juan Rodriguez: And it's a great niche. I love, I love getting in front of Realtors, because they understand how we sell. Because they sell very differ very closely they kinda closely resemble our Sales strategy, customer, all customer, provide a great service, be the professional, understand the needs and wants from the customer and it aligns.

Juan Rodriguez: So they understand our language, just a different different roofing terminology that they got to know.  

Pete: no, it is very true. I actually have my real estate license and I went through all the training and everything,

Juan Rodriguez: Awesome. So you know what we're talking about,  

Pete: Yeah. When you sell, when you sell a house, it's very similar. Like you're, you're very, very much selling the relationship, right? There's a trust

Pete: factor that you have to build there, just like as a roofer.

Pete: Right. And like you said, they parallel the sales processes, parallel each other very closely.

Pete: So, they can very easily relate to, to, and it's

Pete: a huge part. A lot of times of selling a house is the roof.

Pete: Like it becomes a, it becomes a huge factor in selling a house a lot of times. So, I can tell you that I've used our own people at roofer before to call them and say, Hey, what do you think this roof is worth trying to sell this house?

Pete: Yeah.

Juan Rodriguez: And, it's also like a part of giving back. So it's not just about the brand. It's not just about meeting new people, but giving them this tool of understanding the roof and how they can best do it. Molded to their clients so they can make a purchase or maybe ask for some money in from the seller.

Juan Rodriguez: And make the sale, close. If I'm able to do that, I'm providing value, right? That's the whole game and roofing is providing value.

Pete: Yeah. Nick often talks about in our masterclasses about the education piece and how like even our proposals when you're a roofer, and you're presenting a proposal to use it as a piece of education for your homeowner, a roof is not something that

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah. Oh yeah.  

Pete: about.

Pete: Right. So, You're doing the same thing, but for your community, like you're going out to these real estate agents and giving a little bit of educating them a little bit on the roof itself. And a quick, better understanding for them, something that they have some talking points on and they can

Pete: sound a little bit more versed.

Pete: It's only going to help them when it comes to, selling a house. So

Juan Rodriguez: Exactly. And like you said, the education side, we, we use it a lot on our retail side too, because one of the things we like to focus is not just selling. Anybody can sell a roof, but selling the right roof for the right client. Right. If the house has, Bad ventilation, show them, explain it to them, educate them.

Juan Rodriguez: What is ventilation for a roo? You know what it needs to have, what is the 50 50 balance in your attic? What, what are the different types of events? Maybe they can go with a more upgraded vent because they see the value in that or these little things, it really does create the wow factor, but it.

Juan Rodriguez: It lands you as the professional, it lands you as the, you are the go to, once you educate them.

Pete: Yeah, it definitely established establishes that trust factor

Pete: and establishes your, like we joke and we call it street cred, right? That you know

Pete: what you're talking about. You know what I mean? But that's what it is. Really.

Pete: It's your credibility. And that goes a long way, right? Because if I, feel comfortable with you as the homeowner, I'm more likely to recommend you.

Pete: I'm more likely to come back to you in the future for other work. If I need something else done or a repair or something like that, I'm, I'm going to remember, the guy who taught me a little bit about it and gave me a

Pete: little bit better understanding. So

Pete: what have  

Juan Rodriguez: a little bit different and because we don't just do roofing, we do a little bit of other services. So that gets us kind of like a little push, once you finish a roof, maybe later on they say, okay, maybe we're ready to do a fence, right. Or we're ready to do some siding work. So.

Juan Rodriguez: That creates that relationship. We follow up with great communication. And we just established that trust. Like you said,

Pete: Now, is that something that you guys decided to do from day one to offer those other

Juan Rodriguez: Oh yes,  

Pete: Nice.

Juan Rodriguez: absolutely. Day one.  

Pete: What,

Pete: what was the, what was the deciding factor there? Like, what was the reason that you decided to, to have

Pete: all of those options?  

Juan Rodriguez: it's funny because I learned this at in Las Vegas at IRE. Mostly because in order to do an insurance thing, you're not just going to rule a roof. Most of the time there's something else that goes wrong, right? So there's something else that goes wrong with a person's roof and their roof claim and their insurance claim.

Juan Rodriguez: So right now, Houston, the biggest thing that's gone awry is everyone's fences.

Pete: Interesting.

Juan Rodriguez: that affects a tree that fell on the fence, but it also fell on the roof. So we can do a little bit of everything. And being that we're in a market where there's so many people and so many great trades great labor we can build that into our system.

Juan Rodriguez: I think it's a geographical decision. I'll say that.

Pete: Yeah, no, it's smart. And I think that, we have this, I have this conversation with a lot of new roofers and there's kind of like two schools of thought, really like some people today, like, oh, I'm just going to focus on the roof because that's what I know best. But I think in a case like yours, it comes down to, and I think it was Amanda Veinott, who was. One of our Roofr of the Month, I think May. And like she said, you, it's great to diversify and add those other things. As long as you are comfortable, like if you, as long as you have the understanding of them and like,

Pete: obviously you guys, you have the crew for it, you're able to do the job.

Pete: Like you're not selling something that you guys aren't able to produce. Well, and, and have a

Pete: good understanding of, so, and the market demands it, right? Like your market is calling for that. So it's a smart decision, I think, to diversify early on, if you can do it. And not everybody can, but, but if you have the

Pete: ability to do it, I think it definitely opens you up to more work.

Pete: And you definitely can upsell some jobs and things like that because of that, this

Juan Rodriguez: And I think too, it's building our, our database, right. Building our, our digital infrastructure that goes a long way, later on we can sell we can send Email campaign, right? Storm's coming, what to do, how else to educate it. Maybe a client came in on a fence repair, but later on they need a roof repair, right?

Juan Rodriguez: It's a way for us to juggle a little bit more of these works and turn them from opportunities to a closure.

Pete: like it. Yeah. Yeah. We often talk about, the ability to offer multiple options or, other services like that is not only an opportunity to potentially win that customer and close a job with a higher, close the higher dollar amount,

Juan Rodriguez: Oh yeah,  

Pete: margin. But like you said, it plants the seed, like I might not be ready for a fence right now, but you quoted me a fence because you're already here quoting me my roof.

Pete: And now six months from now, when I need a fence. I already have a quote from you and I can come back. So you're essentially selling ahead of time. Like you said, you're building that database. You're planting that seed with the customer.

Pete: They know now that I can come back to you and

Pete: you've built that trust and relationship. So it's easy for me as a customer to circle back to you again for another service.

Juan Rodriguez: And I will say too, Roofr make, made it easier in a sense where I can pull it already on, on my proposal. So I'm doing a roof replacement. Right. Let's say it's an optional upgrade. But I already have it there where they can go and get new gutters, Right,

Juan Rodriguez: It's already there. So I'm going from maybe a 10, 000 to a 12, 000 sale, right. Little upgrades here and there, that gets us a little bit better when it comes to clients understanding of sales.

Juan Rodriguez: We can do a lot, a little bit of everything. So they'd love that,

Pete: Yeah, I love that. And, and that way it establishes, like we said, we talked about that street cred, right? Like it establishes you guys as like the, the subject matter expert, right? Like you guys are the in

Pete: house expert they can look to knowing that you guys can do more than just the roof. So,

Juan Rodriguez: Yeah. And I think too, in the beginning I had that idea and what, that's why I didn't pull the name of Sal's roofing, right? It's Sal's exteriors for a reason. It's we do not just roofing. We do a little bit of everything else.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, that's smart. Then you'd have to pivot later on.

Juan Rodriguez: Exactly.  

Pete: so what you guys have been in business now since the beginning of the year, what have you seen be the, probably your biggest challenge for, for the company as a whole?

Juan Rodriguez: Biggest challenge. I would say there are a few, I think the biggest one would be. Sales retention. There are so many great apps and it does take time to learn them, right? It but once you learn them, they're so useful. But sometimes, people, they just want to start making money right away.

Juan Rodriguez: And like every job or every part of a job, you need training

Pete: Yeah.

Juan Rodriguez: Big guys can say, okay, they have the big pockets to do that, right. To maintain some, some of their sales staff. And that's one of the biggest impediments right now for us is maintaining that trust that, give them, give them a couple of months and you'll see the results.

Pete: Yeah. I can see that. Yeah, for sure. So

Juan Rodriguez: And I say that because there's been just so much demand for Salus. Or in so much demand for our services That even though we do train, they're having to, instead of just door knocking, we already have a bunch of filled slots for free roof inspections, right? So, that's giving us the, a rollback of, okay, we're still a little bit backed up on our inspections because we don't have that enough coverage.

Juan Rodriguez: That's a good, I guess that's a good problem to  

Pete: problem to have,

Pete: Yeah. But  

Juan Rodriguez: But

Pete: hopefully it's one you can solve, right? Hopefully something

Juan Rodriguez: right, right, right.

Pete: What what have you guys used as far as technology to get up and running? Like, are there some

Pete: specific things that you couldn't live without? You think,

Juan Rodriguez: Aside from Roofr, I think without Roofr, I wouldn't be at the place that I'm at such a short time, I think Roofr and the ability to collaborate with other apps like CompanyCam, I'm a big believer in CompanyCam. I have studied CompanyCam so much. That I teach my, my guys and, and I work with public adjusters too.

Juan Rodriguez: And they love me for this. They love me for this. I'm also part of a Latinos in Roofing here in Houston. And I go around and, show them why they need Roofr, why they need CompanyCam and the Collaboration you can do between both of them in your CRM and use it for, for proposals without those two.

Juan Rodriguez: I think I wouldn't have grown as fast as I have.

Pete: nice. Now you're using, so

Pete: you're writing your proposals and everything for your  

Juan Rodriguez: oh yeah. Proposals to Roofr. It's amazing. I have a great way of doing it. Where they can learn about our manufacturer learn about the products that they offer, the warranty that they offer learn about us. It takes a little bit of creativity, right?

You guys can't give that to us. You give us the infrastructure for us to be creative and, and use it to our advantage. And I love that. I love that you guys are able to have all these great features. On the proposal side, PDFs. You're talking about something that the majority of my competition are not giving to their prospects when giving them a proposal, a PDF about the single that they're choosing to, to, to install or a PDF about ourselves, right?

Juan Rodriguez: Our, our value proposition, or why Salus, these little, these things may be little, but they're so useful. They're so great. And on our proposals. They may not be the shortest, right? They're about 25 pages, a good proposal for a roof replacement with different shingles to choose from a good, better, best, a little bit of information about us, FAQs, um, what to expect, some different steps.

Juan Rodriguez: We, we go very detailed and, and. That's goes without saying that communication is the biggest thing as well as being able to sell, but communication is part of trust and that's how we gain the trust. With our customers,  

Pete: And I think one thing that's overlooked is I think traditionally in this industry, the proposal was just that it was like the contract, right? So everybody thought like, Hey, a couple of pages, I got my, this is the price. This is my terms and conditions sign here. Right. And it's evolved over time to like, what you're just said is more of a presentation, right?

Pete: Like that's essentially. You're presenting everything, right? You're presenting your manufacturer, you're presenting yourself, you're the actual contract. It's all in there. So it's it's definitely the proposal, as a whole has evolved in this industry. And like you said, the guys who are still doing it. Looking at it from that, it's just a contract point of view. You've got a leg up now because you have all this information in there that they don't have. And yeah, you

Pete: might have more pages, but that's because you're, you have everything in there. Like you have your whole

Pete: presentation in that, in that

Juan Rodriguez: And this day and era, a customer has so much information at their disposal, right? Even just Google it or whatever YouTube they see and educate themselves because before they come to us. So it gives us a chance to educate them in product knowledge, warranty knowledge and how we do things, the steps that are required, we, we, we go very detailed.

Juan Rodriguez: So they understand or have an expectation when the time comes to do the roof.

Pete: Love it. So what is the future hole here for status? What does the next couple of years look like for you guys?

Juan Rodriguez: So we do have a, a very strong three year to five year plan. Hopefully everything goes the same way we're working and even better. We're able to hire more people next year, start a small commercial division. That's what we want to hopefully by this time, we'll have that commercial side where it can put us to the next step.

Juan Rodriguez: Right. I think everybody wants to start learning their roofing industry. They want to be in the commercial side. They want to be part of bigger jobs. They want to be able to do commercial new construction, commercial retail. Because that's it's a great next step. So that, that'll be coming hopefully by this time next year.

Pete: Nice. Like it.

Juan Rodriguez: And then, like I said, in October, around there, we will be utilizing our, our staff and our knowledge so we can start some new construction jobs in the single family market. And I want to say by 2026, hopefully be in Austin, be in in San Antonio. I don't think Dallas yet, but maybe we'll get there.

Pete: Yeah, cool. Well, man, awesome. It sounds like you guys got some big plans and a lot going on over there. So, really want to thank you for joining me today, Juan, and, and, and

Pete: just kind of like giving us a low down on the business there and, and what you guys got going on and we're really excited to have you as the refer the month for August.

Pete: So

Juan Rodriguez: I appreciate you guys.  

Pete: Yeah, congrats on that. And keep it rolling, man. You guys, sounds like you guys got a lot of good stuff going on over there.

Pete: And a lot of big plans for the future. So, happy, I'm glad that we were able to be along for the ride here at Roofr and, and

Juan Rodriguez: Oh, yeah  

Pete: your success.

Pete: So,  

Juan Rodriguez: I appreciate you guys work.  

Pete: yeah, thanks for joining us. And so thank everybody else for listening. And we look forward to seeing you next time on the Roofr Report. Juan.

Juan Rodriguez: Thank you. Bye everyone