Thinking Like a Homeowner with Manny Hamgeri of 3JM

Pete: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Roofr Report. I am your host, Pete McKendrick, and, joined again by another great guest here today. We have had this Roofr of the Month series going on for a little over a year and had some incredible conversations. We've had a really good mix of folks on, some new business owners, some very established business owners, with some companies changing hands and things like that.

A little bit of a different twist. We normally are talking to company owners most of the time, but today we have a different feel and I'm excited for this one. 'Cause I think it'll be a different fresh look on how things are going and how things are being done at the company.

So I wanna welcome Manny. Welcome, Manny to the show. Excited to have you. And Manny, you are with 3JM Exteriors, right?  

Manny: That's right.  

Pete: All right.

So welcome Manny, and, excited to have you on as Roofr of the month. Glad that you could be a part of this and let us dive into the story here a bit. So tell us a little bit about what you do and why this is obviously a different conversation is, just to preface this, Manny is an operations manager, correct?

Manny: That's right.  

Pete: At 3JM. And so gonna have a little bit of a different take on things here. I'll give you a little bit here to just introduce yourself, Manny, and, talk a little bit about 3JM, how big are you guys?

Where you guys located? What type of work do you guys specialize in? Just kinda give us a little bit of background on 3JM.  

Manny: Yeah, so 3JM's been in business for over 20 years. The owner, Jeff started out mainly like chasing storms. So he traveled a lot. But obviously grew up here and, you know, as time goes on we wanna settle down and, it is just easier on family, when you're not traveling all over. So, settle in Chicago, in the Chicagoland suburbs. Most of our business is done in the suburb area, but we really do work all over the state.

A little bit also in the outskirts by Indiana. But most of our work is done, within an hour drive of where we're at, which is, Woodridge , Illinois. I came in to the business. A friend of mine actually started, his own roofing company who used to work for 3JM.

He said, I knew I needed an operations person. I need someone like you. I came in really knowing nothing. First year, we did a couple million dollars, just short of three. And, I learned a ton and I really loved it. Which was like a little surprising 'cause I didn't come from this industry at all.

And I think it's kinda shows you where the industry is going, right? So it's, you have more people that are not necessarily in, like, have a construction background, but they're finding themselves in the business because the industry's changing. It's evolving and that means new people from all kinds of backgrounds.

So we focus primarily on residential. Most of our business it's a mix of storm damage work and, retail. Some years are more storm focused depending on what it looks like here in the Chicago area. Like last year was pretty heavy. We had some big storms.

This year is a little bit more of a mix, we're looking to make, a consistent, steady revenue growth so that it's not fluctuating year to year and having a stable business. We're a small family business at the moment.

Pete: I like it. Now this is actually interesting because I was talking to a buddy of mine this morning, and we were literally having this exact conversation about how the industry has changed. And you don't have to be a roofer to be in roofing anymore, right? Like you can run a very successful company a lot of times without being from a roofing background.

What industries were you in prior to coming into the roofing space and how has that helped you coming into the roofing space and learning roofing?  

Manny: Yeah. I spent over a decade in the wireless industry, so I worked for companies like T-Mobile, AT&T, US Cellular, worked myself up to management in the district sales trainer role.

I think that set me up for operations. I was very good at managing stores, opening new stores. And then when I got into as a trainer onboarding experiences for sales consultants and managers, and then kind of managing their training and the education front there.

I got really good at operations and the way things should go and having like a consistent replicatable system from store to store, from manager to manager, from an associate. And I think everyone kind of goes through it, you find yourself somewhere and you figure out what is your sweet spot, like what makes you tick and what you're successful at.

I got really good at that and I brought that to the roofing industry. I think a lot of companies, they do a lot of things well, but they don't really know why they do that. And how can you replicate that result, especially when you're small and as you're trying to grow, you need to able to kind of duplicate yourself and create a consistent process that multiple people can be successful from.

So that's kind of what's, made me successful and why I like it here and why I think I'm a good fit for 3JM.  

Pete: Yeah, it's an interesting topic. We were having a conversation about, the standardization of things and being able to just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, and having that dialed in so that it is consistent and it is a standard process and you can easily plug people into it and, they can hit the ground running. Understanding processes I think is where a lot of the newer roofers that I'm seeing are really excelling. It's allowing them to get up to speed fast.

Like the fact that you guys were able to do a couple million dollars in the first year. 10 years ago, eight years ago in this industry, a $5 million roofing company was a big roofing company, right? Probably had, 15 employees and was considered a pretty good sized, roofing company that really had it figured out.

And now we're seeing guys doing that damn near in their first year of business. A lot of it has to do with people starting to be more business savvy, more tech savvy, coming from different backgrounds to where, you know, they understand things like the process better. The need for standardization, the need for organization, those type of things.

Talk a little bit about how long have you been with 3JM.  

Manny: I've been with 3JM since January 2024, so we're just crossing almost two years now.  

Pete: Nice. What are some of the things that you saw early on when you came to 3JM from a process standpoint and things that you worked on as an incoming operations manager, challenges that you guys were facing, and how were you guys able to solve some of those things?

Manny: One of the things was just trying to get a standard process. We got a lot of talented people at the company. People that have been working there a long time. Like I said, family business. 3JM has three brothers. So three brothers actually work in the business, which is really cool.  

Pete: That's cool.

Manny: Yeah. Mom actually works in the business and in the office. Pretty cool. So a lot of it was just taking what they were doing really well and trying to translate down to some of the newer sales team. And truly try to present a picture of what type of company this was. So it was everything from marketing to how we present ourselves to a potential client that might see us and new people coming into the company and trying to design that experience.

So I look at it from like designing. If you could design the ultimate client experience, in order to achieve that, you would need to design a great employee experience. And they both go hand in hand because you can't give the client everything 'cause somebody has to produce that.

So that's kind of like these last two years have been really trying to implement more technology, trying to make things easier on a employee level as well, and have something where it's again, bringing in that system it takes a lot longer than you think. And you have to be really intentional with what you do.

But it's been a good journey and I think things are going pretty well.  

Pete: Yeah. So this is gold and this is where like, I'm gonna derail our conversation a bit here because this is something that I believe really strongly in, I think traditionally, when we're looking at the success of a roofing company, and a lot of times when we're thinking about the process, we're thinking about like, okay, how do I streamline things for my folks internally?

How do I make this the easiest for us to produce jobs to, catch leads, to win leads, all this stuff. But your approach is something that I've been trying to preach, you know, like when I speak at events and stuff like that.

Leads right into what you are talking about is like, the customer first, right? Working from the customer experience backwards in a way, is like, okay, what do we need to do to offer this world class experience to the customer? Now we build a process around that and obviously there's pieces of that, right?

Like you said, we can't just always build everything for the customer, but you know, someone's gotta produce it and we've gotta be able to manage it, keeping that in mind as you build the process and as you figure out what everyone's responsibilities are in there and how things are communicated I think changes the whole way we look at things, right?

And how we approach building that process and setting things up. And ultimately, at the end of the day, so many things in our business spur off of that customer experience. From referrals to reviews to our main lead sources, to just how easy it is to produce jobs.

I mean, I was a contractor out in the field. I've experienced what it's like to have customers that don't have a good customer experience, right? So what can we do to make that the best situation possible?

And I think that gets overlooked. Of all the stuff that we're gonna talk about today, I think this is the piece of gold right here for anyone listening, when you guys are looking at your process, are you really looking at it from the customer experience point of view, and how is this potentially not only affecting my internal people, is it making things streamlined and more efficient for them, easier to understand and cleaner for them. But ultimately, how is it affecting the customer experience?

And I think if you're leading with that, everything else kind of snowballs off.  

Manny: It really does.  

If you ask most. Not even just roofing companies, but most businesses, what do they want? They want more leads, more profits.

But how do you get that on a sustainable level over 10 years? You could have a great year because you sold some really big jobs. But then what if your employee leaves? Or, you do a lot of storm work and you had some great storms, but then what if you don't have any storms the next year.

Yeah. So long-term thinking is another thing that's super important because the only way to create something that's sustainable, that grows consistently is if you're thinking five, 10 years out. And how do you create that experience so that people refer you when people think of. The trade that you do. Roofing in particular, that they think of your company.

Everybody wants referrals, but then what causes somebody to refer, so yeah, you have to really think in long term. And one of the things that, when I first started, I sat down with Jeff. He's like, I never had operations manager before. Tell me what you know you would do, or, and I asked him, well, what are your goals?

And he's like, I don't want to just be the biggest company. I wanna be the best. And I want to have the best client experience. And so it really kind of starts with what your goal is and working backwards and not just achieving it one month or achieving it one year, but how can you achieve that over time?

And so that's really what we're working on. And that's our goal over the next couple years.  

Pete: Yeah, and I think one of the most important factors you said in here is the consistency, right? Like making things consistent across salespeople, across the entire organization, and that's not just like. Hey, everybody's using the same proposal or everyone's pulling the same measurement. Like it's everyone's using the same branding. Yes. We're marketing the same exact way. You know, we're talking to customers the same exact way. Like I can tell you from experience, I've been in roofing companies where it's like, oh, you know, I've got three or four salespeople and they're all really experienced.

So I just let them do their thing. One guy's doing one thing and another guy's presenting a completely different proposal and he is marketing the company completely different and you know,  

Manny: and he may be successful. That's the thing, you know, that's what makes it challenging.

It's like that person may be successful.

Pete: What is the long-term ramifications of that.  

Manny: Yes.  

Pete: And like you said, what if that guy up and leaves? Right. And now he was my successful guy. But because we didn't replicate what he was doing or potentially dial in what he was doing, you know, to, to make it consistent.

Now we've lost that piece of the process, and now we're back to square one, trying to figure it out again. So it's like, yeah, I think that whole consistency piece across the entire operation is overlooked a lot of times. 'cause like you said, you find success and you're just like, all right, let's just run with it.

We're making money, let's just go, right? Like we don't have to worry about it. And then, when the time does come that you do have to worry about it. It's like, oh crap. You know, we probably should have thought about. Yeah. So, and I really like the fact that you said you have to be thinking about things long term.

When you talk to contractors and they're picking software, a lot of times it's like, I just need a piece of software that will help me do this right now. or I just need the cheapest piece right now because we're small and you know, we don't really need a lot out of our software. You need to look and see, where do you expect the company to be three to five years from now?

Will this piece of software still work the way you hope it will work, is it still gonna be a sufficient piece of software for your company, or is it something that you're gonna outgrow three years from now and potentially be in a situation where now you've got this nightmare on your hands of trying to figure out where we go next. Right?

Manny: I guess one of the things I really like about your guys' tools is I use a lot of tools. I'm a big tech guy, so it's like, oh, we can find another piece of technology that can do this.

I'll make it easier, it's better. Right? But I learned very quickly that it's not always the case, so you have to find something that has a very good base, and that they have a good plan long term.  

And I feel like a lot of the tools you guys are building is like, I'll mention the proposal tool, for example, 'cause it's one of my favorite tools, is it's such a good platform that you guys built from the very beginning.

I started using it very early on and it's consistently got better. But probably would've not been able to be where you guys are at today. If the very base of it, you weren't intentional about how it was laid out. When it comes to tools we've turned on tools from different companies and then turned them off because like, the initial idea was good, but when you try to implement it and use it and deliver your client experiences is what you want, it kind of starts to fall flat.

You gotta be intentional with any tool that you use. Just like any process that you bring in. And, yeah, I mean, that's why I really like some of the things you guys are doing.  

Pete: Yeah. Appreciate that. I think that is a great description of proposals. Proposals has probably evolved the most in our offering.

But like you said, I think it's been able to do that because it was built on a strong foundation and it's been able to just kind of build on itself into what you guys needed out in the field. Is so much technology now available to roofers that, you wanna make sure that you're getting stuff that it's gonna do effectively what you think it's gonna do for your operation. And that's not always gonna be the case.

Some of this stuff may seem good in theory until you actually put it in there and it doesn't work out like you thought it would, is this truly going to long-term help the business? Or is it a situation where we're potentially, creating a job, because now we have to have someone who's managing tech that doesn't speak to each other and doesn't flow well together

I mean, I've seen that happen, after COVID, and we saw this explosion of tech and everybody's grabbing up all these hyper-focused platforms. You end up with CTOs and roofing companies now because, there's 18 pieces of tech running and someone has to manage, making sure there's not too much double entry in there.

Right. So I think it's a good point that you make there. Is it built on a good foundation? Can it evolve with you? Like, can it grow as your company's growing? And if so is it a good long-term solution for wherever you're plugging it into?

Or is it just a potential bandaid for something that is, maybe an opportunity in your process right now?  

Manny: Yeah, we started using Roofr for instant quote. When we first started, I thought that was gonna be like the biggest thing, and it, it is a really good tool and we use it.

When you guys started really building the CRM and building like that all in one solution, you realize that when you're using multiple different technologies, it creates a problem for your company internally to be consistent and to do things the same way. And if it gets complicated for your people, you're not gonna produce a great experience for the client.

And so with measurements and the proposal together, it really makes it super easy to put that together and you can spend more time, as the sales consultant when you're in the home or at the property, focusing on what's actually going to sell that job and not trying to like put everything together.

Those pieces are important. And that's why we use proposals a lot. With any type of roofing estimate. We use proposals and the measurements together. And it's created a really standardized process and having, when someone looks at a proposal, you get notified.

Then what's our process when someone pulls it up? Oh, could we give 'em a call? If we're not doing it in person. So having those things really makes the client experience better. And we've had people say, wow, your proposals were great, or your estimate was not just an estimate, it really explained what I'm buying.

You know, I'm spending 20, $30,000. I'm able to put those descriptions in there and make it easy for people to understand what are these different parts of a roofing system. Why 3JM versus any other company, and it makes it simple and it really kind of drives the point home, which we're trying to do.

Pete: And I think that's important. Like we're seeing more and more companies that are moving to that kind of approach, especially with our proposal tool. It's a presentation, right? Like it's more of a presentation than it is just an estimate at this point. When I started on the tech side of this business, our CRM had the ability to create a contract and get a signature and all that stuff.

But it was built in a way that it was very much an estimate, right? Here's the pieces we're gonna use, here's the labor that's involved, sign here at the bottom. And from a homeowner standpoint, that means absolutely nothing to me most of the time. You know, where this is allowing you guys to really build out, almost like build out an, a virtual in-home presentation to where, like you said, you're explaining what you guys are gonna be doing. You're explaining the process, you're explaining who you guys are and why you're the choice that they should make.

I think it facilitates everything, for the homeowner's education, for the salesman's approach, it just is making that whole relationship so much smoother. Having all that information up front built right into that proposal.  

Manny: I think that's why a lot of people like myself, it's easy for them to come into this industry.

Like not having that construction background. Because when I first looked at an estimate. With tools we were using before, it was just line items with names like ice and water underlayment. And if you've never purchased a roof before, know nothing about roofing. That doesn't mean anything to you.

And so what I really try to do is approach it from, Hey, if I was gonna buy a roof, what would I want to see? What these things mean, how you guys do it differently, and why it matters. Being able to explain that easily with the proposal tool is I mean it's night and day from just, line item with the quantity next to it, right?

Pete: That's a really good fresh point of view. when we're building our proposals, are we thinking like a homeowner? Are we thinking, what does a homeowner wanna see? What information do they want to know? What information do they absolutely not care about?

I hired a roofer and he is a master something, gaff master something. And I was like, he's a master elite.

And he's like, yeah, well I have no idea what that means. He said it looked cool. He had a little thing on his proposal and on the side of his truck. But that means nothing. Like, I don't even know what that means. Right.

Like we know all that stuff means but your everyday homeowner, he was like, yeah, that sounds cool, but. What does that actually mean? Like, does that mean he is good? Does that mean he is a good roofer?

You know, yeah. I think more folks should probably take that into account. When you're building this stuff, are you really doing it with the customer in mind? Is it customer first focused.

Talk a little bit about, like you said, you've been in it about two years now. What was probably the biggest challenge you faced, in the business?  

Manny: So you can sell a lot and then comes the second hard part, which is to produce a lot, right? And produce well. And that's where my brain really turns on is like, the process of signing the contract, the process of getting the insurance money and then getting that money to us. If there's upgrades, if there's change orders, if something goes wrong, that was a very challenging piece, putting those parts together.

It's because the industry changes so fast, insurance companies have changed, and homeowners sort of have changed a little bit the way they approach this business. I think if you ask most companies who've been in a long time, like 3JM has been in a long time. The way people will just sign and pick colors are just, it's just not the same.

People are a little bit more intentional about how they want exterior of their house to look. And so that's probably been the most challenging. And I think the second challenging thing would be implementing change is always difficult. And I think small businesses, it's also challenging because you may not have like a marketing department and an HR department and a, finance department.

So, being able to work with, people who've been doing it a long time and figure out we want this changed though it may seem sort of radical. Is really gonna help us get to that result. And so implementing change and being intentional about it and also just dealing with the production of a lot of leads or a lot of sales and doing it right where you have a great client experience at the end is something that I think about a lot.

There's a lot of things I would love to do, but then you have to think about what is that employee experience gonna look like? What is that client experience gonna look like? You have to be realistic into what's gonna hit your goal. Again, thinking 10 years from now, 15 years from now, not just, this year.

And that is very important. But it's not everything.  

Pete: It's come up a couple times, in these Roofr of the month conversations is, even if you're a company that's been in business for years and your process appears dialed, you always have to be revisiting it, like, there's always opportunities, and you said not only are there opportunities, but how is the industry that you're selling to and dealing with changing on a yearly basis. And so how does your process need to adjust?

One of the biggest things I'm preaching is the focus on the production end of things, and how the production end of things gets so overlooked. We focus so much on sales, right? How important are sales? Like you said, everybody wants to get more leads, everybody wants to close more business, but ultimately the biggest downfall to that lead funnel is a bad customer experience because production falls flat on its face.

Because it isn't able to produce what you sold. And I think that that's something that needs to be stressed more as an industry like I think we over the years have focused very, very heavily on sales, right? There's tons of sales trainings and sales conferences and all these things.

You know, you never see a production conference, right? I think we all just kind of figure like, oh, everybody kind of knows. We're all roofers. We know production. But there's a lot more to production than just installing the roof. Like you said, there's managing what if something goes wrong and there's managing crews and scheduling and customers, in the midst of all that.

So, let's talk about 3JM and what does the future hold for you guys? What are you guys looking to do as a company, over the next three to five years? What are some goals, that you have personally that you wanna accomplish maybe with 3JM or in the industry as a whole over the next couple of years?

Manny: Yeah, so our goal as a company is we obviously want to grow our revenue. But when I say grow revenue, we're looking at like the first year I jumped in, we almost doubled the revenue we did the previous year. This year one of our best sales reps, he moved outta state. He had always planned to move out of state, and that just happened a little earlier.

But it's really just trying to grow a consistent revenue. We're not trying to be the biggest company out there but we wanna be known in our area. We want to grow our sales team a bit. We are looking at changing, possibly opening up some different roles, kind of rethinking some things that's gonna help us achieve our goal.

So we're looking at probably adding, five to 10 new team members on our sales side, maybe two to three people on the production side that can help deliver that experience. We're looking at moving our sales people to more defined in sales and having a separate production team so that there's not so much of a mix of the different roles.

Then technology is something we're looking at. Again, being intentional with that, but we're looking at trying to see how we can implement technology. I think a lot of people talk about AI a lot, but then there's simple things that you could do digitally that you don't do now.

How weaving in technology is gonna help us kind of accelerate our brand and our company.  

Pete: Yeah, I love it. I think that there's so many opportunities still inside of even the most successful companies, right? There's always opportunities, it doesn't necessarily have to be using chat GPT, you know, there's probably some stuff, it could be potentially be things in your own CRM that you just don't have implemented yet or just aren't effectively utilizing that you could potentially do.

We talk often in our masterclasses about automations, like, automations have evolved. I mean, I remember the basic automations we had when they first came out in CRMs versus what you have the opportunity to do now. And you can automate so many different things in your process. And specifically when you're talking about customer experience, like these automations can be a game changer especially around communication and being proactive as far as the customers go.

Manny: One of my team members sent me an email that a customer had sent them, and it was because of an automation that goes out two days before their build, two days before the material gets delivered.

And they're like, thanks for keeping me informed about all these different things. I really appreciate it. And, he sent it to me, and said, thanks for making me look so good 'cause I didn't do anything but it seems like it and so yeah, those things are important and it goes a long way if you're trying to drive a deep brand that's gonna get you referrals, you know, year after year.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, traditionally, even when I was out in the field, so much of it was reactive, right? Oh, customer called, or a customer wants us to come by the house, or customer has questions, so somebody's gotta go over there or somebody needs to call 'em, right? As opposed to now, like you guys have these automations in place to where it's sending things to the customer before they can even think about 'em. and I think that just changes the whole outlook on the job from a customer standpoint and also changes their whole feeling about you guys as a, the trust factor, the credibility, the relationship that you guys are potentially building with that customer.

So, that's something like, if you guys are listening, that's something that you could look at doing today, right? Like how proactive are you being, just the communication with the customer. Like that's step one of the automations, is, how can you better communicate. Like you said, the sales guy said, I didn't even do anything, you know, and I look like a champ, right? So, setting that up for your people.

Manny: Even like, it's simple stuff, but even writing those templates and just not relying on the generic. Did you spend some time thinking about. What that looks like for your company. 'cause every company's different, right?

Is it in your brand voice? So those things matter a lot.  

Pete: Yeah. Simple stuff like, how is your proposals branded. Colors. Just that consistency goes so much further and people give it credit for, right? Like, it just adds a level of professionalism that I think we overlook.

In this industry sometimes we just think it is what it is. I'm the expert. I'll give you this proposal and that's it. That's all you need to know. Jeremy Simpson, I had him on as a Roofr of the month a while back, and he said something about 70% of the customers that come to him have essentially already sold themself.

On just understand, like doing their research, knowing the company, reading the reviews potentially getting a referral, whatever the case may be. They've done their research. They probably know, or at least have an idea of what type of roof they wanna put on.

He's like, they're essentially ours to lose at that point because they've more or less. Before they've even picked up the phone and called us, they've made that decision that we're gonna be their roofer. That's a huge shift in the customer base of this industry. Like, before it was a lot of random calls and whoever picks up the phone, I'm gonna probably use, but, now they're much more educated and definitely doing their homework ahead of time.

So we gotta keep that in mind with how we're dealing with these customers.  

Manny: Well, we say sometimes if you're in the house, you already won.

Pete: Yeah, exactly.

Well, Manny, I wanna thank you, man. This has been some awesome stuff. Some really great insight into what you guys are doing and some really great insight for the listeners of things that they could potentially implement on their end. Excited to see what you guys do at 3JM and continue to grow.

Love to see the established companies embracing tech and figuring out how to continually get better. So awesome to see you guys doing that and definitely, I think has helped them, having you come in with a fresh look on it, and I think that speaks a lot to the industry as a whole.

And I think what we can do as an industry as far as hiring. If you ask roofers, usually the two biggest things they'll say is, I need leads and I need labor. Right. I need good people. I think you're a good testament to the fact that you can go outside of the industry and find some really good people that can come in and be game changers, for their company.

Congrats to you for what you've done there and for being a Roofr of the month with us. Excited to have you, man. And, thanks again for jumping on and sharing your story.  

Manny: Thank you. Thanks for having me.