Why Real Businesses Don’t Wing It: 
Lessons From Honeydew’s First Year

You're listening to the Roofr Report, the ultimate podcast for roofing professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurs. Get insider access and hear about the highs, lows, and tales of triumphs from thriving business owners. Brought to you by Roofr, hosted by Pete McKendrick.

Pete: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Roofr Report. I am your host, Pete McKendrick, and, uh, we are back with another great episode of the Roofr Report on our Roofr of the Month series. Uh, this has been, again, a fantastic series for us, you know, getting to know the roofing community, uh, getting to meet. A lot of great roofers, whether they're new to the business, whether they've been in business for a while, uh, and just a lot of like great areas that they're in and, uh, you know, some of the niche things they figured out and, and how they're utilizing products and how they're, you know, how they're running their businesses.

Some of the things that have separated them from their competition. So it's always great to hear from, uh, you know, from roofers. And, uh, this series has been fantastic for that. If you haven't listened to some of the past episodes that we've done, I suggest. Going to our website, jumping on there and, and listening to some of the other Roofr of the Month episodes as well.

But today we are joined by our newest Roofr of the month, and that is Jacob LaRue with Honey Do Roofing. So, super excited to have you. Congrats on Roofr of the month, Jacob, and uh, welcome. I.

Jacob LaRue: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. And it's just been, uh, an honor to get to meet everybody at Roofr and. to really dive into your guys' system and get to know how it works.

Pete: Man, I appreciate you jumping on and I'm, I'm looking forward to hearing your story and, uh, diving into your business a little bit. So to start, let's just tell us a little bit, like how long have you guys been in business? Uh, you know, what's the makeup of the organization, how many people you got working for you, uh, and where are you guys based out of?

Jacob LaRue: Yeah. So, uh, honeydew Roofing was established back in March of 2024. So we just hit our one year anniversary a couple months ago,

Pete: Very cool.

Jacob LaRue: it was me and a another business partner from, um, the church I go to. And, uh, we just started, him and I for a while. Um, now there's been an ownership change. He's left the business and there's a, a new partner I have now. We have, um, one full-time project manager, um, an office admin and uh, three sales reps as well as ourselves.

Pete: Nice. And you guys are based out of San Antonio, correct?

Jacob LaRue: yeah. We are based outta San Antonio and my new business partner, uh, lives in Dallas. So we just actually yesterday opened up our Frisco location, so we're gonna be, um, starting up there as well.

Pete: Oh wow. So talk a little bit about, I mean, 'cause uh, you know, we often hear about the Texas market, how competitive it is, and I think most of the time when we talk about that, where you're thinking Houston, we're thinking Dallas. Talk a little bit about the San Antonio market and what you guys are, what it's like there.

Uh, you know, as far as the competitiveness and the size of that market.

Jacob LaRue: Yeah, so I worked for two companies previous to this one that was kind of like a little bit more on the smaller side, you know, the four to $6 million range. And then, uh, you know, I worked for a company that, uh, was about $30 million when I left it. Um, and I got in at the ground floor there. Um, but I joke with all my customers like. could throw a hammer in San Antonio and probably hit a Roofr because there's so many of us, right? It's definitely not as many as Houston and, and Dallas. I think there's a little over a thousand registered contractors here, and those are just the ones that are registered with the city. Um, so it's definitely very interesting.

You know, we, we got hit with hail, um, for the second time this year, Monday night, yesterday we were out door knocking, and I'll tell you, it was kind of an eerie feeling because normally like the first storm that hit back at the end of March. I mean, everybody and their mother was out there, and so we were

Pete: Yeah.

Jacob LaRue: for roofs and you see every company's yard signs out there, trucks all over the place. yesterday, for whatever reason. There was nobody around us. We were in four or five different neighborhoods and nobody was out knocking. Nobody's yard signs were out. We saw one other company

Pete: Funny.

Jacob LaRue: us out there, they kind of turned around and left. And so it, it's an interesting market because it is very competitive here. Um, you know, you almost never go to an estimate where you're the only person even when you're highly referred, right? Um, we're always competing against each other, but it's just interesting because the dynamics here are always changing. There's times where we're going against seven or eight roofers on every single estimate we go to in a week, and times where it's one or two other people and, you know, we know those people and so we know what we're going up against.

So it's definitely a very interesting market. I love it here. Um, it's definitely not like Dallas or Houston. I think we have all the good stuff that you can have in roofing with such a big city as well. So we have plenty of work. Everybody can be successful here.

Pete: Nice. Now let's get, let's, uh, go talk a little bit about the backstory. What, um, how did you get into roofing? You know, what, how did that, uh, lead in? We always joke, you know, that roofing finds you, you don't find roofing. Uh, you know, so, so there's always some colorful stories as to how everybody gets into the business.

Uh, so what's your backstory? How did you end up in the roofing industry?

Jacob LaRue: Yeah, so I owned a landscaping company from 2013 until 2019. Um, at the time I, I met another landscaper through Instagram. He ended up joining that first roofing company I was at, and then became a partner over there, um, about six months after he joined them. um. So I was just doing some landscaping projects.

I couldn't trust anybody to do the work. I ended up hurting myself and I was like, Hey, I'd like to, you know, get married, have kids, and I'd like to not be a cripple by the time I have 'em. So I'm like, I gotta do something else. I tried to, you know, find some more sales related positions and, um, so I, I reached out to my buddy and I got in with them.

So it was definitely like a. Falling into it. It was just, I saw they were hiring sales reps and so I reached out. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Um, definitely changed my life, that's for sure. Uh, I'm not sure I'd ever leave the roofing industry. I think there's so much opportunity here, but it was definitely like a falling into it.

So that was back in 2019. Um, I'll be in it for six years as of this August, and it has been an incredible experience.

Pete: Now speak a little bit of what made you decide, so you, you came into sales 2019, obviously you worked sales, you said you worked for a couple companies. What, uh, what made you decide to go into. A business for yourself.

Jacob LaRue: So when I was back, you know, landscaping obviously owned my own business. I said I never wanted to work for somebody. And then I got into roofing and I was like, well, these guys are pretty cool. I, I had two great companies I worked for. I really enjoyed it and I. You know, there was one of those things where it's like, I always like building things.

I, I like solving problems. Um, the last company I was at, we obviously, like we started in 2021 at that company and, um, I left in 2024. So, um, I was there two and a half years. I. And we grew from obviously a brand new company to a $30 million company in that time. And there was crazy growth and it was very awesome to see. And there was always something to fix. There was always a new

Pete: Yeah.

Jacob LaRue: that we needed to build, uh, something to overcome. And so it was just like what I loved doing. And, you know, at the time when I went to leave, um, I, I kind of felt like. There was just something telling me my time was done there. And I could tell that we were kind of getting into that mode where things were predictable, we knew our numbers really well, the marketing was there, the leads were there, the sales were there.

And so, you know, as a sales manager, I was like, man, I, I feel like I'm about to get into this routine that I don't think I'm really gonna like, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't have the wrong attitude in that job and then affect that company or my sales team. And so I just started. other options at that point.

And one of the things that I had always wanted to do was create a home service business that was a one-stop shop for everything. And that's kind of where the name Honeydew has come from. Um, so it's actually a buddy of mine at that company kind of helped me come up with the name and that's why it's spelled the way it is. Um, but the idea is that long term our business will be your honeydew list. So it's not just going to be roofing. That's just where we started because I have so much knowledge there. And it was an easy thing for us to get started into right away. But, uh, you know, we plan on expanding and, um, either starting or purchasing, uh, pretty much every other kind of home service business that you can have, um, for the state of Texas.

Pete: Nice. So speak a little bit to you. You said you were with that company, they started in 21. On, you're with them for about two and a half years, and obviously some incredible growth there. What do you think was the biggest lesson you learned in that process of, of seeing that that company grow and, and be successful?

And like you said, there was always fires to put out and things to fix because you guys were maturing and evolving so fast. What were some of the things that you learned? What were, what do you think were some of the most important lessons you took away from that, uh, that business?

Jacob LaRue: So, you know, there's really two things that stand out to me when I look back on that time at that company. Um, the first one being like. First of all, I got to work with some amazing people. Um, you know, the, the guy who started that business with our, was our Owens Corning rep here in San Antonio for a long time.

And he was a really close friend of mine. Um, he was almost like a second dad to me. We were really close and he taught me pretty much everything in 2019 and throughout my career. So getting to work with him was awesome, but his business partner, um, that kind of came in and helped fund the business. feel like I got a, you know, a doctorate in, in leadership and business from him.

Um, so that's like the number one thing I look back at. He's just very knowledgeable. You know, I, I didn't go to college. I knew that wasn't for me. I didn't wanna get into debt. I didn't want to go get a degree that I wasn't gonna use. Um, I knew I had an act for sales and I knew that I had the entrepreneurial spirit and I can make things happen.

So getting to learn under both of those guys who had so much roofing experience and so much business experience. That just gave me an entire new light to leadership and business and roofing and all of that. So, you know, it was, that was like the number one thing for me for seeing it grow that fast and seeing all the great things that we did. It was amazing to be able to have those owners that we had there to be able to back us up and teach us the things we needed. The second thing, which I think is more important for the roofing industry is I got to see what a real business looks like, not a roofing business, because, um, too many times we see, you know, the reason somebody starts a roofing business is because they're on a 10 50, 50 split. They're doing all the work. They're door knocking and they're, you know, getting the customers meeting adjusters, signing contract, building the Roofr collecting. So they do everything that an owner does, but they just don't have the liability of the owner, and they're making 50% of the profit. And so you get somebody who gets pissed off because they don't get their paycheck right, or they don't get commissions right.

And they say, well, I, I already do it myself. I'm gonna do it on my own. And, and that's almost every roofing business out there, right? And so, uh, I had seen that a lot. I had a lot of friends that I knew that had done that. And I hadn't really seen a true, true business, you know, where it was actually ran like a legitimate business. And so being at that company, I got to see, like, we had, uh, every single person was a W2 employee. had 36 trucks that were wrapped on the road. Every single person that was customer facing drove a company vehicle. We had all the right insurances, we paid salaries, we had a whole bunch of support staff. it was, was a completely different thing to see it is possible to run a roofing company and to not tow the gray line that the IRS wants us to tow, right? Like everybody's wondering how can we get past this 10 99 W2 thing, and, and how do we do it and how do we afford to do it? I got to learn how an actual business runs.

And so that, that helped give me the confidence to say, okay, well first of all, I learned so much. I feel like I, like I said, I have a doctorate in leadership and business, but also knowing the ins and outs of being able to actually start and run a legitimate roofing business. Um, I just knew that that was, it was perfect timing for me. And, um, so those are the two things I think stood out to me the most, and that's what helped me build Honeydew Roofing.

Pete: Yeah, this is a great topic because it's something that I was actually talking to some folks internally. We got some new folks that just started kind of explaining the roofing space to them, uh, you know, just earlier in the week. And, um. This is an interesting topic because I feel like we're seeing a bit of a shift in the roofing industry from when I started, like I've been in roofing now in the tech side of roofing for about 8, 7, 8 years.

And uh, you know, from the customers that I talked to and the contractors that I dealt with early on in my career versus. The people that I talk to now, you're seeing a, a significant shift in the fact that people are looking to run, like you said, a more legitimate business. Right. And I think traditionally, you know, I.

The folks that were starting roofing companies eight years ago when I got into this were people who had started nailing shingles on a Roofr and then just kind of, you know, built up over time. Maybe built a reputation for themself, like you said, branched out on their own, grabbed some customers. Next thing you know, it evolves into a company, but they really ultimately didn't know how to really run a company.

They're like super savvy in production. They could literally put a Roofr on. Any structure, any place on the face of the earth. But there's so much more that goes into running a business, and that's something that we talk about internally quite often is the attrition rate of roofing companies and how many of them go out of business in the first couple of years because.

I think so much of it is because they don't understand, or they just haven't experienced or been exposed to running a legitimate business. Right. And, uh, you know, like, I know like yourself, I ran, I owned and ran a, a landscaping company when I was younger. And looking back on it, the amount of mistakes that I made running that business was like.

Incredible, right? Like, if I could do that over again, you know, knowing what I know now, it would be a completely different ball game. Right. And uh, and I just made like being young, right? Not having business sense, you know, just trying to run a business with like minimal knowledge, more or less kind of like.

You know, feet in the fire learning as I went, you know, like obviously I made 'em a lot of mistakes

Jacob LaRue: Mm-hmm.

Pete: you know, I'm sure it affected the business profitability, it affected my employees, all that stuff, right? So, you know, like I've been there, I kind of understand it and, and I see more and more roofing companies now, uh, kind of going like the way you said, you know, whether they're gaining experience someplace else or whether they're just doing their homework.

They seem to be much more. Savvy in running an actual business and understanding all the pieces of that. You know, it's not like money's not all over the place and unorganized, like, you know, there's sales and marketing processes in place that were never there before. Uh, so it is very interesting that you brought that up because I think, you know, gaining that knowledge and that intimate understanding of how to run an actual legitimate business is a game changer, right?

Because it's. It's going to allow you to be much more successful, much quicker, uh, you know, than if you were just a Roofr, right? That just like you said, or or a disgruntled salesperson who just like went out on their own. Right? So, um, so it is interesting, so. You said you got a couple employees, like you got some sales guys going.

Uh, one of the questions I always like to ask everybody in this is, who have you, who would you say at this point was your most integral hire? Who was the most important person that you've hired in this first year of business?

Jacob LaRue: Yeah.

Pete: Doesn't have to be an individual person, but like position wise, what do you think was the biggest void you've filled?

Uh, that's been the most beneficial, uh, pickup, you know, for you guys this year?

Jacob LaRue: I, I mean, right off the bat, it's, it's gotta be production. Um, it was the first hire I made, um, and. I got blessed that my younger brother, uh, actually worked with me at that other company that I was with. And, um, there was an opportunity for him to come on board with us last year in June. So about three months after we started. And, uh, he came in and it was fantastic because him and I had already worked together a lot. We both knew the process. And so, um, it was perfect for us because me and my business partner could focus on selling. Focused on making sure the money was there and, and he just took care of everything production.

So, um, he immediately kind of plugged right in, handled all of our repairs, our replacements, um, and, and it was just a perfect fit for us. Um, I know a lot of people say the first hire should be an admin, and I didn't do that for a long time. I finally hired an admin. Um. In April of this year. So I just hired her a couple months ago. As if you would ask me who's my, my perfect hire, best hire for 2025. It'd definitely be her. She has taken so much off my plate. But for like the life of the business so far, definitely production, that was a huge thing taken off my shoulder. I can, you know, I know it's not like the best thing as an owner to do, but I can answer the phones and I can sell people over the phone. I can run sales appointments, I can do all the other stuff, but production. While it's crucial and necessary for us to get paid, it was something that I couldn't handle doing all of those other things and production, and I just found myself losing time and losing money by being on a job site and ordering materials, scheduling the crew, and going and getting something because something else came up. But, you know, um, you know, our production guy was perfect fit for us and, um, just handled everything perfectly. So that's gotta be hands down my best hire.

Pete: Yeah, this is, that's really cool because I, I preach now on stage, right? Like my, my latest, uh, you know, speech. Each that I do at events has literally been around this topic and how, you know, there's not enough focus. I don't think lately, I don't think there's enough focus in the roofing space put on production and streamlining that and organizing it and having that right person in play.

And all of the young companies that I've seen that are successful have that person like your brother who's in place. Who's running the operation? Because you know, the reality of it is, like you said, if you get a company that's started by someone who's already got sales experience, they can sell, they can sell roots, right?

And so you can produce the sales, like the sales are gonna be there. The problem is, I. You can't support it on the production side. You've just created a massive log jam for yourself and you've created a horrible customer experience, probably. Right? So having that person to manage that middle portion of the, the process and do it well, you know, I think is, is a hugely overlooked asset.

Like you said, a lot of people think admin, they think accounting, you know, those are, they're thinking those are the first things they need to have in place. But you know, if you are not setting yourself up for success. Throughout the entire process, like you're definitely putting yourself in danger of, of having a rough, uh, rough time because like you said, you could sell, you can answer phones, you can sell people over the phone.

But if you're doing all of that. Who's on the other end, making sure the jobs are getting taken care of, making sure the customers are getting taken care of. Right. So, um, you know, I, I think there's been a huge shift in the industry. Uh, heavy, heavy, heavy focus on like sales and marketing and creating these like organizations that are just these sales machines.

And we're moving away from a bit of the focus on production, right? And, and really making sure that production is run correctly. How, um. How important would you say that it's been for you guys to really have your process dialed in early on? You know, being a new company, we always joke, uh, you know, Ty Backer from TC Backer once said, and uh, and uh, at an event I was watching him speak and he said.

Everyone has a process. Sometimes your process is just figure it the hell out. He goes, that's still a process. He goes, not a good one, but it is,

Jacob LaRue: Yeah.

Pete: right? And so, uh, and, and a lot of times we just, that's how it is when we first start, right? It's just like, well, let's just go for it and we'll just figure it out as we go.

Right. So, but how important was it for you guys to really develop a process early on and, uh, and then how important is it for you guys to constantly revisit that and tweak that process?

Jacob LaRue: I mean, the obvious answer is it's extremely important, right? Uh, you know, when you're in the beginning, you know, the first week we were open, I sold something every day, right? I think I got a repair, a gutter job, or a retail replacement, and a contingency for an insurance claim, right? so it was nice because first four days in business, I sold something every day.

It was easy to track, right? I, the first day I sold a repair, I went ahead and did the repair myself, got paid the same day. It was amazing. Right? You know, we figured out very quickly it's like, Hey, we need to make sure that we have communication in place. We need to make sure that we have everything set up, ready to go and, and one thing I'm really big about is CRM.

So like we didn't even start until we had a CRM set up. I know a lot of people just go out there, paper contracts, they keep everything in Excel sheet or a Google Drive when they first start. And there's questions every day in every roofing forum. Hey, what's the best CRM? And some of them don't have one.

Some of 'em don't know how to use theirs.

Pete: Yeah.

Jacob LaRue: um, you know, that was huge for us right off the bat, CRM and, uh, unfortunately we chose the wrong one at first, but we're with the right one now, so we're good. Um, but I'll say like, we built systems and processes and then as we started to expand, we realized, man, these are, they're starting to break left and right, and it was very much focused on. Myself being the one who had the most roofing knowledge kind of being in every piece of the puzzle. Like I had my hand in

Pete: Yeah.

Jacob LaRue: And so we actually just did business four one one's Ultimate, uh, SOP class. It was a three day class here a week or two ago. And we are going through, um. implementation stage for the next three months of implementing a solid foundation for our business. And yeah, we're over a year in business, but there's no better time to fix it than right now, you know, and we're running smoothly. And I, I wouldn't say that there we're a bad business by any means, but we can always improve. And it's like you said, how often should we be revisiting it? You know, we, we look at every single failure that we have, whether it's something as simple as something wasn't ordered. a customer complaint. Every single failure is how can we improve that process? What is the next thing we can do to make sure that that never happens again? so we're constantly doing that right now. We're obviously in an overhaul stage where we're gonna kind of revamp everything and lay a really solid foundation and build from there. But you know, that's something that we will be revisiting. Constantly on a regular basis. That's kind of one of the things that I want my overall role to be is kind of testing and breaking the systems and making sure that they're always getting better so that our customers always get the best experience.

Pete: Yeah, and I think, you know, you touched on a couple things there that I just want to kinda revisit. The biggest one is the SOPs, right? Like I, I remember talking to a friend of mine, he is been. Business for six, seven years at this point. Right? And he, he grew the business pretty significantly. 15, $20 million business.

And he said, I've never had SOPs. Like I had none in place. And he is like, I realized like it's time. Like we need to do it. Right? Like, and so the fact that you guys realized that early on, and I already started to do that and kind of revamp things a bit to have those SOPs, it, you know, it's so crucial if you wanna scale the business in any way, right?

Like it's, um. You know, I think it's something that obviously when you're small, you're nimble, you only have a few employees, maybe we don't need it. It's more or less the figure it out as we go kind of process, right? And, uh, and hopefully you've got the right people in place that they just do go and figure it out on their own.

But as you scale and grow, like without those SOPs, you're really gonna have a mess on your hands. Uh, business 4 1 1 is a great partner of ours and, uh, you know, they, they do a great. Job with that, uh, helping with that. So, uh, hats off to you guys for jumping on with them and, and, and getting involved with that, but yeah.

Um, speak a little bit about, uh, you know, uh, have, having those SOPs, writing those SOPs, what did you guys find right away when you started to really look at that process without the SOPs, you know, where were the breakdowns happening? Like where, where were your biggest areas of opportunity?

Jacob LaRue: Honestly, it was a lot of customer communication, right? And, and internal, right. I guess you could, you could probably just say communication in general because a lot of things live in the sales rep's head. it doesn't always make it out. And one thing I really like is when I was at the last company, we revamped the entire business after we hit 15 million and uh, we had 19 sales reps hit 15 million.

And the next year we did residentially alone. We did over 18 million with six sales reps. There was a huge revamp that happened in January and February to do that of that year. I think that was in 2023. And the one thing I took out of that that was crazy was, uh, Adam Sand with Roofing business partner came in and, and built us a CRM and stuff.

And one of the things we talked about. the mindset of a sales rep. You have your people that are really good at speaking with customers, and they're really good at being in the field and making sure that the customer's happy, selling the vision, selling the experience of working with your company and how they're gonna enjoy everything. And then you have the people that are really, really good at making sure the system's updated, making sure the little details are not missed, making sure that you know all the processes are followed to get that job from sold. To production. Right. And so, you know, one thing that Adam talks a lot about is the, what he calls the inside out model with inside sales and outside sales, and. So what I realized very quickly is obviously we didn't have the money to go all in on this inside out model, and it's something that we will be going towards, but it's a focus on having somebody whose role is just focusing on the things in the CRM, making sure that everything's filled out. Making sure that the communication between the rep who's out in the field driving every day.

Between appointment to appointment or knocking doors, climbing roofs, everything that lives in their head ends up being somewhere to communicate to the next team member. And so we saw that breakdown happening very quickly. And you know, luckily for us it was like it was me and my brother working together.

I. And so we, we vibed really well. It was really easy for us to connect and make sure that those communications were happening, overcoming when it didn't happen, but it's still something that we're seeing as an issue as you bring more people into the organization, I. You know, you still have to train to your processes and then make sure that that communication happens consistently.

I mean, right before this call, we, I hopped into our CRM to do a couple audits, and I could already see a couple things that were minor details missing, and it's just about constant training to make sure that that happens. So I'd say that's probably the biggest breakdown we saw immediately. It's gotten a lot better.

Especially since putting SOPs into place, but every time you have new people come in, it's just more training that has to happen and retraining for the old reps and just continuously making sure that we're not an organization that just sits there and says, all right, here's a new process. We're gonna train you one time and now you have to know it.

Oh, if you want, I have questions. Here's the SOP. It's in this folder. Right? It's, it's a

Pete: Yeah.

Jacob LaRue: We have to be a training organization who is always trying to get better and better and better, and that means revisiting things that we may be doing really good at. We don't want to be complacent and forget.

Right. So communication is a, a huge thing for us, um, that we're overcoming, uh, a lot of those concerns right now, especially with automations in Roofr. But it's definitely something we can always get better at every day.

Pete: It's a great uh, point. You know, we used to always say, my former company, you get, you get out of an A CRM, what you put into it,

Jacob LaRue: Mm-hmm.

Pete: the more information and stuff that you can feed into that CRM, the more valuable it's gonna be to you on the backend. And I think that's, like you said, I think that's a big gap for a lot of people is like, you know, they're wanting a lot out of the CRM.

But they don't have their team trained to put this stuff in, right? And so you go into these jobs and they're lacking information. They're lacking photos, they're lacking documentation, right? So it makes it very tough to garner the data and things that you want on the back end. If you don't take the time to put all that stuff in or, or not, not even necessarily the time, but the right training and the right process in place to make sure that everybody's doing what they need to do and putting that stuff in.

So, um, speak a little bit. You brought, brought up automation yesterday. Nick and I did a, um, masterclass. I saw you jumped in on that and it was about more or less talking about referrals and, um. We, we touched on automations in there, but I know you're a big automations guy, so speak a little bit about the automations and what they've done for your business.

Jacob LaRue: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it right now what we've built out successfully has been a lot of automations around keeping the team. Um, just on track, making sure that they know when certain things need to be done and something as simple as, you know, when I send a proposal, it moves to the proposal sent bucket, right?

I mean, it's, it's super simple stuff that we can do, but it makes the job so much easier. You know, that was like the first automation I set up was I sent a proposal. It moves to that bucket and once it's sat in that bucket for more than two days, it goes into proposal follow up, and the sales rep gets an email that says, Hey, touch base with this customer. Right.

Pete: Nice.

Jacob LaRue: it's, it's something to make sure that we keep them at front, the front of our minds. Especially like right now we have all this hail that just hit and we're just getting inundated with, with leads from all of our sales reps knocking and from, you know, our different lead sources. Making sure that we don't lose every customer in the minutia of doing all the little things, but actually making sure that we're staying on top of it is really crucial.

And just those little simple automations help us do that. Um, but we're, you know, doing a lot more with customer communication. Uh, I finally started playing around with a lot of the text communication and stuff like that, and one of the things we talked about, and Amanda with Maven exterior, she. up in the past about the open rate of her proposals, and you guys mentioned that yesterday and, and her automation sends a text right away that says, Hey, we emailed you a proposal, and her open rate went through the Roofr. One thing that I, I looked at that and I said, that's an awesome thing. I wonder if I can tweak it. And I changed it to sending the proposal via text as well. There's a company out of, uh, Arizona Reimagined Roofing that, uh, they do everything virtual. They don't have a single outside sales rep, and they always did it through a different CRM that they custom designed or they, they used a platform and then customize it. And they would, they were teaching us that they would always text their, um, proposals. And I was like, that's an awesome thing. Nobody does that. So when I started diving into the automations a little more and the text prompts and, and all that, and I realized, you can text a proposal in Roofr, I was like, why in the world would I not do that? So, you know, I went into chat, GPT, put together some witty little text messages that goes with it, uh, just to be fun, try and, and get the customer to laugh a little bit. Um, you know, we, we put that together and, and now, you know, our proposals get opened so much faster. And, you know, we had a customer the other day.

First time in six years, they didn't have an email for me to send to. Um, it was crazy. Normally if they're like, Hey, I don't have an email, they're like, well, here's my son's email or something, because they might be a little older and we can still send it. We still sign it. It's not a problem. But this

Pete: Yeah.

Jacob LaRue: she was like, no, no email at all. You can't email it to me. And so I was like, well, all right, I can text it to you. That's not a problem. So I texted it to her. Um, and so. You know, just diving into those and realizing that there's so much more to the CRM that I didn't even know as I'm diving into the automations is awesome. Um, we're currently starting to build out a few more follow up automations with our homeowners as well.

I. We use a third party service for our guarantee called Contractor Directory. Um, and uh, so one of the things that I built out recently was a video about our relationship with directory, and that's now a follow-up text and, um, email to our customers once they've been in, uh, I forget which stage it is, but once they've been in there for a certain amount of time, it's a text says, Hey, are you sure you found the right Roofr? got that video tag to it and talks a little bit about it. Um, so

Pete: Okay,

Jacob LaRue: building those out a little bit more as well. I definitely need to build

Pete: cool.

Jacob LaRue: more around invoicing to make sure that people actually pay their invoice on time. Um. But yeah, automations are amazing. I love 'em. There's so much we can do and, and I feel like I'm almost, I'm just scratching the surface, you know, I think I have 56 or 57 automations right now.

I'm,

Pete: Wow. Nice.

Jacob LaRue: to own the title of most automations. Um, and, uh, there's so many more that I have listed out that I just haven't had time to build yet.

Pete: Nice. Nice. So you, you hinted a little bit about it earlier in the ultimate goal for honeydew. Uh, touch on where you guys are looking to go with the company over the next couple of years. Like obviously you guys have found some good success here in the first year. Sounds like you definitely have got things dialed or you're getting things dialed in, um, running pretty well.

What are you guys looking to do in the next three to five years with honeydew?

Jacob LaRue: So right now the biggest focus is profitability. Um, you know, we, we definitely. are profitable and you know, year one can always be the easiest for profitability or the hardest depending on how you're wanting to scale your business. Right? A lot of people. To say, Hey, I, I just wanna make enough money to support my family.

And they'd grow a little bit slower. And some people say, I wanna put it all back in the business. And, and we went to put it back in the business row. Um, and so we are aiming now that we've built a little bit of a good foundation here. We've got some good team members and. We're getting a lot of traction with our name here in San Antonio. The first step is profitability, making sure that we're showing really good profits every month. Um, that way we can actually, you know, take care of our people, uh, grow the business and, and take care of the customer ultimately. Um, I mentioned earlier, you know, we, we just opened our Frisco location. Um, so we are opening in Austin and in sco.

Um, our teams are kind of. those two areas kind of covering Austin together. Um, but we will probably open an Austin office within the next year or two as well. So when we're talking three to five years, it's definitely just establishing all three locations and making sure that they're running smoothly. And then from there, uh, deciding all right, what, what's our next direction for our next home service? then kind of having that snowball effect of once one's profitable enough to buy one, a second one, then the two can work together to buy a third and fourth. And it's just a snowball effect from there.

So,

Pete: Nice.

Jacob LaRue: you know, we, my business partner and I really have a desire to just build really amazing businesses that people can come and, and have a career at, and really a long-term growth plan and, and become financially free. And, um, you know, I think we're, we've got a really good plan to do that with, um, you know, the honeydew name.

Pete: I like it man. Well, it was great talking to you today. This has been some incredible, uh, insight. I think you guys are doing some great things there. I'm looking forward to seeing how you guys progress over the next couple. Years and, uh, I'm glad roofer's on board for it. Uh, I know you guys are a great user of ours.

So excited to see you guys grow and see Roofr grow with you. And, uh, congrats again on being our Roofr of the month. And uh, thank you for jumping on, man. I really appreciate it.

Jacob LaRue: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's been a blast.

Pete: Alright, man. Thank you. And, uh, good luck in the future and like I said, we'll be keeping an eye on, uh, honeydew if you guys are in the Austin area and, uh, need a Roofr.

He's your guy, man. This is, uh, Jacob and Honeydew Got it going on. So check them out. All right. I thank you everybody. Thank you for joining us on the Roofr report and uh, be sure to join us next time. And like I said at the beginning, be sure to check out some of those past episodes. If you haven't, you can access those on our website and, uh, get on there in the.

Resources section. You'll see a link to the podcast and you can see all the podcasts that we've ever done. But, uh, definitely check out some of these Roofr the months. They're, uh, fantastic. Uh, bit of information. Everybody dropped some good gold nuggets in there as how, you know, they've figured out, uh, some things to do and, and some things that they're doing that are adding to their success.

So, uh, be sure to jump on there and check out some of those episodes. And, uh, look forward to seeing Jacob's episode out there as well. And until next time, we will see you on the Roofr report. Thank you everybody.

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