In this interview I’m visiting with Wayne Miller, the owner of WM Commercial Roofing in Ohio. Wayne started his commercial roofing and roof coatings company in 2012 when he was just 24 years old, after getting fed up with working at a factory. Owen:I have with me here today, a good friend. I’m honored, Wayne, that you're taking time out of your day to share with contractors on this series, what they can do to get through challenging times and how they can set up their business to run more virtually. Wayne:Thanks for having me on here and looking forward to our discussion here. Just helping other contractors during this time, that we can all grow with each other. I think it's very encouraging as contractors are helping each other, so looking forward to it.  Owen:You run a good-sized company in Ohio doing Commercial Roofing, mostly using Conklin products. Full disclosure, you and I both are Conklin independent distributors. That point aside, let's jump right into; what do contractors need to have during this time when it comes to mindset? To get through a challenging time, not only like we're having right now, but even in the future, you know, whether it's financial, whether it's health, whatever it is, what kind of mindset should contractors have?   Wayne:I think for number one, Owen, I'll share a real quick story. And I think it kind of ties in with mindset. We have a client that they own multiple different plants. And even though we're in with this company, and we've done work for a lot of their different plants, it's like to try to get into a new plant is almost like trying to get into a separate business just because most of the people don't know each other. They have different plant managers. But I got a call from one of the plant managers here about a week ago. And his first question was, he said, “Hey, are you guys still in business? Are you doing work during this time?” And I'm like, “absolutely”. You know, we're open for business. We're here to help you and take care of you. And he said, “well, you're the fourth contractor that I'm calling”. And he said, “the other three, didn't even as much as pick up their phone or return my message”. Because they're not doing business right now. That just completely blew me away. I mean, in their mind they're taking this, and they're like, Hey, we're shutting down, we can't do anything, etc., etc.  And that's not the mindset us contractors need to have. I mean, we're here, the community needs us, the essential businesses that are still open, they need us. I connected with a client of ours that they have a lot of commercial properties. And I connected with him about two weeks ago. And he said, unfortunately, a lot of their buildings are retail buildings. So, they're shut down right now. But he said, I know that as soon as we open back up, I'm going to be walking into a lot of our buildings, and I'm going to have surprises. I'm going to have waterlines that bust, you know. All kinds of things. And he said, just know that, when that happens, you're the first one I'm going to be calling to take care of my roofing issues. So now more than ever, we have to be connecting with our clients, with prospects, because even though you know, during this time COVID-19 people are working remotely. They're not in their corporate offices as much. But like, people want to talk to other people right now. They want to interact. And so, I think it's very crucial that we keep that mindset that, hey, it's not a time to pull back and retract. We have to push harder than we've ever pushed before because those of us that do that now, at the end of this, we're going to be way further ahead than those guys that decided they're going to shut down temporarily, because they gotta get their ball to start moving again. It's going to take a lot more momentum for them to keep going to start up again. Then for those of us that just kept pushing hard. Owen:Let's talk about some things you're doing as a company to let your customers know, and prospects know what you're doing during this time. What, if anything, are you doing; like social media posts or guidelines for your people going on projects? What are you telling customers when they're saying, hey, come take a look at my roof? Wayne:Obviously, roofing is a little bit different. It's not a product that we just package and ship out, that we're selling online. It's a service related industry. So, that kind of brings it’s own challenges on, how do we separate and do the social distancing and everything. But a few things that we're doing is number one, we're providing inspections and reports that can be done where we don't actually have to meet anybody on site as long as they give us permission to, you know, set up a ladder and to get up on the roof, we don't need to meet somebody there to get us on. So, we're doing the entire inspection where we're doing that physically, like actually doing an on the roof in person inspection. And we also provide drone inspections, which I think drone inspections are great. But sometimes you want to get a little bit more detail where you actually have to do that in person. But then the other thing we're doing, we're sending out reports after the inspection. And we're going over those reports through a Zoom meeting. The nice thing about that is, we're still face to face. We see each other's faces, just works a lot better than just over the phone. And the other thing we're doing maybe if we back up before we actually go and do the inspection. I think this is partially it just helps build trust. But before we ever go out and do that inspection, we'll set up a Zoom meeting with the prospect. And we'll just have a brief introduction, you know, it might be 5-10 minutes, but just connecting with that customer face to face where they see our face, we see their face, that it helps build trust, where they can then feel better to let us up on their roof and not actually meet us on site. So those are a couple of the things that we're doing. The zoom meetings, we're also using those for the actual presentation as far as our proposals. So, once we do the inspection, we show the report to them, we go over everything in detail. We can put a proposal together. We can either email that to them, or we can just simply do that on a screen share through a zoom meeting. And we'll just go line item by line item and cover the entire proposal to them and we don't need to actually go into their office and meet them. I still like the actual face to face interaction. But during this time, this is some of the things that we've started doing. And it's worked really well.  Owen:Awesome. What about contracts when it comes to signing contracts, which a lot of companies, they have the computers, the software to sign them and email them back. Wayne:We had already started doing a lot of the DocuSign. And they just sign them and email them back, and then we'll invoice them. You know, a lot of that was already done through email and software previously, where we didn't change a lot on that in.    Owen:Let's go back a little bit; when someone visits your website, fills out a form or calls. Do you have a CRM? How does that work? Wayne:We have a CRM where it automatically books the appointment to one of the sales guys. But then he's responsible to actually connect via phone with that prospect, and then set up the Zoom meeting, etc., etc. Because we still handle it on a case by case situation, just because I'm a very strong believer in still getting face to face if we can. And we don't want to take that away and force them into doing a Zoom meeting, things like that, if they're not comfortable with that. So, we kind of take case by case whatever they prefer is what we'll do through our cloud-based system that we use to store our photos. Like literally any project that we're on. Anybody that takes any pictures, takes the picture through this app. And a quick shout out to CompanyCam. I mean, that's who we use. We really love them. But the nice thing about that app is you can go into the project and you can select a few photos and you can share them either via email or text message. We've been doing that even before the whole social distancing started taking place, but it's just a really good way, if you're working on a project, you might not be able to connect with the maintenance guy or the project supervisor before you leave, he might not come up on the roof, but it's just a good way to shoot him a couple pictures and say, Hey, you know, this is what we got accomplished today. Helps stay in contact with him. Yeah, we really love that.  Owen:What would you say made a difference in working with the Conklin organization and their network of contractors as far as getting started and working through hard times. Do you think that made any difference? Wayne:Well, I think one thing that Conklin definitely has an advantage is, you know, even during this time, when some building owners might not have the financing or the capital available to do like complete tear off systems, or whatever it might be. Conklin has all these different roofing systems where a few of them are actually more in the restoration process where they can provide a really good warranty. And you can help save the business owner a lot of money. And I think those systems are going to be huge during this time because roofs still need to be done. You still need to put some kind of waterproofing system out there. I looked at one this week. And it's an old EPDM roof, rubber is in great shape, nothing wrong with the rubber. They just have some small leaks here and there.  And every other contractor that came in there to offer an option, they're giving them an option of doing a complete tear off down to the decking and a brand-new system. And I told him, we can if you want to, but it's going to cost you more money. This is what I can do. We offer them the fabric reinforced roofing system, which we can install over the existing EPDM rubber. It's a system that is manufactured specifically for these single plies. And it's going to save them a ton of money. And they were excited about that option. So, I think options like that are going to be huge during this time. And then also just with the network of contractors that are involved in Conklin, it's like a big network you work with, and it's just the overall positivity that comes out of that. There's opportunity in difficult times like this, but it all comes back to the individual leader and his mindset, you know, what is he going to do during this time? Is he going to freak out? Is he going to believe it? Everything that the newspaper says and the media says, or is he going to decide, you know what, I'm going to make the best out of this. And I'm going to continue to grow my roofing business and push for everything I've got. So, I mean that that would be kind of my input on it. Owen:If you could go back and give yourself advice, when it comes to business or life, and you could give yourself or a young person that's just starting in their career some advice, what would that advice be? Wayne:Figure out what exactly it is that you want. I don't care is that roofing related, is that personal, family; doesn't matter. But get a clear vision of what is it that you want, and then surround yourself with the people that have that. Don't spend your time with people that don't have what you want. That might sound rude. But, you know, I think number one is, you have to get a clear vision, personally, what you want. I just read an article from a friend of mine this morning, where he had a little post on Facebook and had a little video that he included in there. And it was what it was these two couples that were comparing their lifestyle based on the pictures that they posted on Instagram. And his comment was, he said, that's the number one reason why I don't spend a lot of time online on social media platforms is because everybody is comparing everybody else to each other. And, you know, it doesn't matter what the public wants or what the other person wants, like you have to individually personally for yourself, figure out what is it that I want and then surround yourself with the people that have what you want. And then I'd say the second thing is, don't procrastinate as much and don't hold back; like just go all in, you know one way or the other way it's going to work out, just jump in and you'll get there a lot quicker.

Roofing That Pays

Commercial Roofer Thriving Thru COVID-19 with Wayne Miller

Hear Two Vital Tips For Ensuring Success In A New Roofing Company In This Episode Titled "Failing Farmer Finds Future In Applying Commercial Roof Coatings"

05: Failing Farmer Finds Future In Applying Commercial Roof Coatings with Daniel Weaver

RESOURCES: Affiliate Link How To Win Friends & Influence People Google Earth RoofingThatPays.com/review Conklin Roofing Systems DISCLAIMER: These notes were automatically transcribed and NOT grammatically corrected. Read at your own risk! I'll say it again you know, if you don't focus on quality, you don’t focus on servicing your clients, you're going to go out of business in a year maybe within a few months. As a contractor, you know commercial roofing is an amazing opportunity that rewards hard work, but you also see huge issues emerging like finding time to bid jobs, hiring motivated employees, rocketing insurance fees and rising lead costs. On Season One of the roofing that pays podcast, experienced contractors will share their secrets to what's working in the exploding Commercial Roofing industry. Welcome to roofing that pays! Lavern and his twin brother operate a commercial roofing company in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be on. Let's go back to your growing up years, your family's occupation. How was it growing up? What did your family do? My dad, he was a landscaper and lawn care when we grew up. That's all we knew. Always after school. We always went out help them through the summer, we always help them till my brother and I we started getting to the age where we knew we were going to be out of school, we went for a private school that we were out earlier than most what happened. We lived in western Pennsylvania where they get a lot of snow. And he wasn't sure what to do with three or four boys that didn't have anything to do for the winter months, when we couldn't do lawn care. He sold the lawn care company. And we all started working for a storage builder storage shed builder there locally. And we worked there for a number of years, my dad actually worked there for between 10 and 15 years, my twin brother Linford worked out around five or six years. And I worked there for around two years. And then I moved on and started working for a construction company where we just did general contracting anything from building new homes, to putting driveways in almost anything you can think of. So that's where I got my construction background. I had five brothers, three sisters that we had a lively bunch of home how to get done at home, we worked hard. We had a little 10-acre farm tomatoes, had our own cow. You ended up running a garage door installation company, how did you end up getting into that? One of my uncles was working for a very successful garage door company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And he installed doors and he was like, Well, hey, why don't you guys just start hanging doors. He said, it's not that complicated to start your own business and starting a door company. That age 20, my twin brother and I decided we're going to start hanging garage doors part time, we did a weekend and evening that are day to day job. And we just slowly started building that up, we made a decision to just take a leap and we added general construction to our garage door business. Then we started a construction business alongside or door business. That's kind of the transition for when we work in our early age 20 we started a company starting garage doors and then slowly granted on marketing dropping within our business. You ended up getting into commercial roofing. And then as well, how did you learn about Commercial Roofing? It's kind of funny looking back and we had friends that were twins came to my brother and met him I think it was a at a church service after where they were just discussing why you always do you know, chat and wonder what we work and what we do. They found out we do construction. And they said, Hey, you know, you guys need to look into going Commercial Roofing. And we were like, We didn't even know there was commercial roofs out there. That's how small we thought back then we didn't even think Commercial Roofing. And I still remember saying, you know, talking to my twin brother Linford and saying, you know, is there even a flat roof around here, like, I mean, what kind of business that flat roofing, commercial roofing is or even works. During that time we were they were the ones that introduced us good. They came down actually had a meeting at my twin brothers house and just sat down, he kind of showed us the systems and gave us a number of you know, profit margins, labor costs and all that. And we were like, Hey, we don't have anything to lose. Let's look into doing this thing. We just slowly started growing into going from advertise. And that's how we got started doing commercial. What was the process you used to get up and running so quickly? There's a lot of different things. And I'm sure we could have grown faster. But we did have a really good year, the first year, we added the commercial roofing side to our existing business, we didn't just jump out and completely stop doing what we were doing. But we did have a very good year that first year that commercial roofing usually doesn't happen that fast. And I'll give the credit back to us following the plan. They simply told us spend some money on advertising, do some cold calling, and some direct mail campaigns and trade shows. That's what I would try to do, we basically follow the plan. And the plan was really simple with basically spend a little bit on advertising, make sure that people understand what you do that you do Commercial Roofing in front of people, and then bid as many as we can sell the job and then do the best quality work we can. And we kind of followed those three, four steps, it just took off from there the first year, we did really have a good year compared to previously just doing residential. Let's talk about one of your biggest challenges in a commercial roofing job or running a commercial roofing business. And the reason for this is so that we can learn what is something that we can learn from that you went through that and help us avoid mistakes. There we are challenges business, business or life when the light without challenges, there's a lot of different things that come into play. One of the biggest challenges we still faced, and I feel it's one of the biggest one that any company faces is communicating in the correct way with the people that they rub shoulders with. And if you really, really think about it, dig deep. Everything we do in business, in life, is communicating with people around us, it doesn't matter if it's in church doesn't matter if it's in family. It doesn't matter what kind of in life, it's relating with people. So communication in the correct way, I would definitely say is the biggest challenge. And if we don't learn how to do that correctly, your business isn't going to work. It doesn't matter if it's commercial roofing. And it doesn't matter if you're raising rabbits, it doesn't matter what you're doing. If you're not communicating in the right way. If you just look back communication starts way back, even before you start the project, like let's just say we are jumping into the commercial roofing project, the very first thing that our mentors told us to do was go out and make the very first phone call, we had to make the very first phone call we had to make is a communication skill. And then especially when it comes in the time to sell the job and getting the job that your communication skill isn't where it needs to be. You're not never, you're never going to sell the job unless you did on under project. So that would I would definitely say that's the biggest challenge is that learning how to communicate properly with other people. This is just a very, very simple thing. And this is an example. We've had times in the very beginning over the years in the commercial industry, if you don't communicate where they want you to set up and you drive in there, let's say it's a flat field, and you think it's okay, just to drive in there and set up, we've had the experience where someone got really, really upset with us just simply because we drove in the wrong spot when we came to set up at that job site. And he started that's just a very, very small example. But that was like the first day on the job, you made a wrong impression without building owner. And it's wrong communication. All we do at this point is before we ever get out with the employees, before we ever send anyone out to start the start the project, we make sure that we have exactly where the setup location is where they want us to set out where the water spigot is, you know, every detail the before you even get out to the job, just simple communication, a phone call and saying hey, Bob, this is Lavern here, without our roofing were you playing that we staged this area where we can work. So that's just one example. And just a little example, but just that example of not communicating properly before the roof was started, could have ruined our relationship with that building, or just because of that one little thing. Thinking back, what is one thing you did differently if you were starting over in commercial roofing? Following a little bit more of a roadmap, having some systems in place and having a better plan in place. And that even goes up to more even quality work back when we first got started. We were brand new in the commercial industry. And we just went out and put roofs on like, we just we decided there's no option, we're just going to, you know, do it and then learn from the mistakes. Looking back, I think we if we would just ask a couple more questions to our mentors, we will save ourselves a lot of headache, and build a lot better relationships by simply having a little bit more of a system in place. And by following a little bit more of a roadmap of people that lead the way before we were in the industry. What sets you apart from other contractors in your area? One thing that I think every one of us and we do especially here in our own roofing company is we focus very, very highly or very hard on quality, and focus on serving our clients to the very best of our ability even go past that. Like even if it doesn't make sense. If you think the client is off, you know, somewhere on the left leg somewhere, if he's not even right, we do everything we can to service that client and do the very, very best quality work we can, because if you really look at it, quality and service to the customer is one of the number one things simply because if you don't have clients, you're going to get out there's this take a look at your income coming in and keeping your business what's the number one thing is, it's not your office girl, it's not any secretaries. It's not the sales people, which I know they're all they all have their place. But the number one thing in setting yourself apart, and keeping the income coming is have a happy client to the very, very best of your ability. And like I said, you need to go 10 times further than you think that you should to make that client happy. I feel that's what sets us apart in our company. Our number one goal is to make our clients very, very happy and show them that we care about them and try to give them the best return on their investment by us being able to service them. And so we'll service a client will service a client will service the client service client. And when we're putting that roof on, we go far, far beyond what's required even for specs, because we want to give them the best quality roof that we possibly can. I recently put together a short ebook on different marketing ideas. And one of those chapters I just touched briefly on the idea of “gifting”, sending out gifts to your clients or using gifts even to start a relationship with a prospect. I know you do quite a bit of gift giving in your business, do you mind touching just a minute on what you do as far as giving gifts? It comes back to servicing that client making that client happy. And we feel we actually we feel they become a lot more clients actually become brand, we have done a lot of different things. But one thing we very consistently do at least once a year and it's usually somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we get homemade bread, which everyone loves homemade bread. And we'll get homemade jam from an Amish store Mennonite store and we'll put that together and usually either put a hat in or a couple pens or you know what we change that up a little bit. But it's always bread is always jam and every company different. There are clients that if we skip them that year, I'd say we had done a roof with them for three years or so. And we happen not to get up to their locations. And you know, we didn't do a roof with them for within three years or so. We've actually had clients call us up. Or if they happen to meet us or phone conversation, they said, Hey, you miss me this year, I miss my bread and jam, it just builds that that relationship with them. And it and like I said it doesn't have to be bread and jam, it can be anything that fits for you. But we feel it's very key to and we personally hand deliver those and I know different sized businesses, you won't be able to do that. But my twin brother and I, we split it up and we'll go spend at least three to five or even seven days on the road through winter to for sure. Make sure we actually personally hand deliver that we have a system in place. If it's five year old client, we might not get out a year, but we have life. But the key is you have to build that personal relationship with them. And then we're also very keen on writing handwritten thank you notes throughout the year. If he gets you to do a repair through the summer, we almost always and we don't like to miss this. But we'll write him a thank you card for giving us that work. And send it in the mail note, you know, after your job is done. In two or three days, we're going to get a handwritten note from the owners thanking them for the job that they gave you. You know, it didn't him. That's why we keep saying if they're keeping your business alive, they're giving you the work. It doesn't matter how busy you are, we should be thankful for every single job that comes in. And we need to show that thanks to them and just build that close relationship with them and they're never going to get anywhere else. You purchase your roofing products from Conklin, you're also one of the top contractors for roofing volume, Preferred Contractor title, you've earned a bunch of awards with the company; What would you say to someone that feels Conklin’s direct sales model ads cost to the roofing products? And those companies that do retail, spend just as much or more on advertising, doing it the conventional way that Conklin does by doing it with direct sales. And by paying us as distributors. That commission, if you look at those numbers, often actually pays a little less or almost exactly the same than like Walmart, Kmart, Sears and I know some of the going out of business, but the regular retail sales companies, they spend just as much or more if you break it down by percentage wise, that Conklin does by paying their distributors and doing direct sales. What has Commercial Roofing allowed you to do for yourself and your family, that you couldn't have done before? We do love the Conklin roofing systems. And we feel with the training that they do gave us and you don't have to use their training or whatever. But we really appreciate how much time and effort they put into training us and having training set up. And just simply the commercial world if I look at the Commercial Roofing, compared to the Residential Roofing, which we were big into; The profit margins consistently are bigger in the commercial roofing. And there's basically one factor that comes into play that makes that happen. If you look at one Residential Roof, you might have 5,000 square feet, you might have 10,000 square feet with a really big one. Commercial, we've had five-acre roofs that we worked on it with three or four people. Basically, the time that you spend per square foot on the commercial industry, compared to the amount of time you spend in the residential is way less, you get a lot more square foot done on a commercial roofing you do on a residential brief, like if you're charging per square foot or whatever per square, however you're doing it, the profit margins are just a lot higher, because you can do a lot more square foot in way less amount of time in the commercial thing you can in the residential. So that's one of the key factors. And then also Commercial Roofing. There's just you're in the commercial world and who doesn't want to be in the commercial world, the jobs are bigger, there are a lot easier to work with. Most of the clients are easy to work with because they’re business people just like we are residential, you're actually working with someone's personal home personal life. And they're usually a lot harder to work for than a real business owner that understands business understands profit and understands what you're doing. And all he wants is a professional roofer out there that's doing a professional job and making his roof not leak. So those are just a couple of things. The commercial industry for us completely changed our lives, the profit margins are a lot higher. And it's given us a lot more time to do a little more what we want to do I have a family, I have a lot more time to spend with the family. If I just take it back when we were doing residential, like we literally cannot afford to take off. Now it's more of a choice, I just have to make the choice to take off. But we can easily take off if I want to take off next week with what the commercial industry is done for me. I can take off next week without feeling it. We have a nonprofit organization, we actually helped start here in Ohio. And that is another passion I have is with more income. And I know there's pros and cons here depends how you want to twist it. But I feel as someone making a good income that they should be sharing a lot more and a lot more if you get back to God and support some of the needs. I mean, there's so many needs in the world that we had kind of a calling to start a children's ministry here in Ohio. And that's actually up and running. Without the income that we're making doing commercial common roofing. There's probably no way not saying anything's possible with God. But there's probably no way that this children's ministry we are up and running at this point. Without L&L Roofing been able to, you know, supply the need, buy a house, you know there are a lot of expenses starting nonprofits. And without that without the commercial owners who without using the common products, I'm 99% sure that filter the ministry wouldn't be up and running. Appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule and your busy day. And just four short questions with four short answers. What I call the lightning round… Is your favorite product coatings or membranes? We love the coatings. What is a favorite app you use in your business? We use Google Earth a lot. What's your favorite business book? How to Win Friends and Influence People. If the trip was free? Would you rather spend time at the mountains or at the ocean? At the ocean. Thanks for listening to roofing that pays. before you go, can we ask a huge favor? The biggest thing that helps spread this message is when you rate and review us. That tells the platforms we're doing something right. Take a moment to rate and review us at roofingthatpays.com/review. That's roofingthatpays.com/review. Thanks so much. Until next time, do more roofing that pays!

04: How 8th-Grade Grads Use Commercial Roofing to Start Non Profit with Lavern Zook

DISCLAIMER: These notes were automatically transcribed and NOT checked for grammer, nor accuracy. Read at your own risk! make more money or profit in the fall of 2007 and I did all year working. As a contractor you know, commercial roofing is an amazing opportunity that rewards hard work, but you also see huge issues emerging like finding time to bid jobs, hiring motivated employees, rocketing insurance fees and rising lead costs on Season One of the roofing that pays podcast experienced contractors will share their secrets to what's working in the exploding Commercial Roofing industry. Welcome to roofing that pays. Today I'm visiting with a friend of mine, Mr. Simon Lee from Western Pennsylvania, we're looking forward to a very interesting discussion to work with contractors all across the nation. It was an idea like last year, how much volume did your team purchase or how many people to work with nationwide if you take the whole entire organization of my team leader Be over 24 million. That's all wholesale volume. So that could equate to well over $50 million in sales and roofing projects sold. I can tell you the one guy that's just this is his second year in business is done over $2 million in volume this year in roofing so far, anything a year a ghetto, and it's still we're still we're still in the last stretch here where that could change. That number could change. Let's go back into your growing up years your family's occupation. What did your family do? How did you get into running your own business to start with? The first thing that I remember doing he was milking cows. I grew up on a dairy farm. I was on the dairy until I was 16 years old. Got my first job in out in Montana, my first job away from The feeling post, I was making all these fence posts that everybody gets that are treated Vince Posey, that's what I was doing. got out of there. And when I lived in Kentucky, and I was working with my brother in just general construction, and then when my brother moved, I was 19 years old at this time, on my brother move. He had a few jobs that were not completed or not done and they said, Hey, we need to do this job over here and put a rich cap over on this job and get a shingle and his other job while on the last job that I was on. A guy stops and he saves. So who's the boss here? You know, I'm a 19 year old, scrawny little dude, you know, and but I got the wise idea to split second and I said that would be me, you know, he said, Oh, he said, I guess if you can do this job like, I can trust you to do mine is like Yes, sir. I go over. That's how I became the owner. So They're on I kept doing residential decks pole barns shingle job metal guy anything I just general construction anything I could to make a living. I was about 24 years old at like six seven guys working for me and I'll tell you that's your that is a busy life the most I had working for me at that time was nine people was trying to keep people busy on the job. And I found out what is what a headache is. I mean, I'm telling you, you got to stay ahead of the game. You got to keep the jobs ahead of him because these guys you know you got nine people you can have you can have a full bar and Bill done in two days you know, so there was a lot of bidding at night and through today I was working with the crews and bidding my jobs at night my and keeping them lined up. Well, I finally figured out that I can have four people working for me and make just as much money as I had with nine people. So I kind of got back a little bit like that. And boy, I thought that was better. And so I got this wise idea, man, if I had all the money in the world, you know, like, if money was not the issue, what would I do? Well, I would stay home and grow up with my family, right? My kids instead of my grandkids, and I realized that I'm in debt, and by the time I'm out of the dead, my kids are out of the house. So I thought, well, I'm gonna build myself a veal barn. So I built my meal barn and all I did there was you think I quit doing my construction? Oh, I just got up an hour and a half earlier in the morning and worked in our half later at night. didn't really change my lifestyle. In 2005. A friend of mine Lolo out in Missouri, he told me I should take a look at the commercial roofing. So what was intriguing about Commercial Roofing or what piqued your interest about Commercial Roofing? See at this point. I got four guys working for me and I'm doing calves and feeding in on on I don't have time in the weekend. You got to go home and you don't do chores and I don't have my evenings and and I just became busier the rat race just became bigger. And when he told me about the Commercial Roofing, what piqued my interest was the ability to make the same amount of money on one roof on a 110 thousand square foot roof, I have the ability to make the same amount of money. That would only take me a week. That's what it did on my cash bar for five and a half months. And I said, Dude, I could just do a roof and make the same amount of money as I did. losing all my evenings and my hour and a half sleep in the morning. I said, Man, why would I just go do that it on. So I took a look at it went through training, very low investment in my training and the wholesale package that I bought, and I got the training and I said but you don't want you don't want it was very unfortunate. Even after I took the training. I got excited. I came home and I send out email Bit of advertising on it now you have to understand I was up general contract for residential. And I never advertised that any. And I had a very, very hard time understanding that I need to spend a little bit of money to advertise because in the residential industry, it was word of mouth. boredom. I couldn't keep up. It was all word of mouth. And I was like, why should I spend money if you know for advertising? Well, commercial is a big time difference than residential. But I did I send out like 2500 flyers. I got a couple leads, got one little job that was 2500 square feet. I did that job and I paid for my flyers. It paid for my training package. And I said, What at this point, you ain't making no money and I got stuck in the rut again, of residential. And I stayed from 2005 until 2000 of fall of 2007. I get a call from somebody and he said, Hey, I'm here while back already Save your fire. Hi. And I just couldn't believe that somebody kept my flyers for two years. And so I got his address and information went out, looked at his job, and he had a whole plan of building but he only wanted the one done. And so I gave him a contract on that. And I said, Now if I have more square foot than this, I can even get a better price. He looks at that. He says, Oh, that's not too bad. He said, How about you take that road from that roof back to that did the whole plan. He said, I let me let me look at this call in the morning, in one day, he signed that contract, and I made more money, more profit in the fall of 2007 than I did all year working. Then my eyes open up the light came on right and I said I better listen what Andrew was telling me all along that I need to be doing. So that's how my advertising got started. I started advertising 10% of whatever I want to make that year and you went on to run a very successful company for Many years later on, ended up selling that company, which we'll touch on later in this interview, let's talk about something that you might not enjoy talking about, which is struggles in commercial roofing. Can you share one of your biggest struggles in roofing so that we can learn from that and one of the hardest things is to get good quality workers to work for you any like two or three guys is all you want. You don't want more than that, because we are not trying to do a state state. We're not state workers. We all need two or three guys. You know, on a on a roof, probably the hard thing is I believe that the owner of the company should show up on the job, get it started, make sure it's being done right and then he should be able to leave and go and give customer service to the new client that called and and be there quickly. If you don't have good workers, it's hard to leave them on the roof and go and bid that other job if you can't demand that they do the job. Right, get at least one guy that you can truly depend on it can lead your group so that you can go and build these jobs within 24 hours after you got that call. If you go out and you're walking that new potential clients group within 24 to should be done within 24 hours after they first called you. If you do this, you have separated yourself from a huge mass competition out there. You would be surprised how many times I went out and talked to the building owner to say, dude, you're the first guy that showed up out of five or six that would call man that's easy to separate yourself from the competition right there going out there and give that customer the customer service that they deserve, and then get the contract back to you know what, that's another thing that I heard a lot of complaints from building owners. They say they come out look at the job. It's been six weeks and I still don't have a contract. Why you waste your time to look at a roof and not get the contract doing within the next 12 hours. Why not get the contract job while your story with the building are still fresh in his mind? So what would you say to someone looking at getting into commercial roofing today, you know, either as an add on to their existing business or even as a new business, what would you say to someone looking at this? If you're a new person, and you do not own a business at all yet and you have a job, my recommendation is don't quit your job. If you don't have to quit your job, don't quit your job. Send out flyers. Maybe you're allowed to take a week off every two weeks. And in this case, you might not be able to go out and bid the job within 24 hours, but you bought one day full of looking at roofs and you ask for one day off in two weeks and you send out these flyers and let the flyers do your work. You know when these people call you call them, they might leave you a message. You call them back and you set the appointment for two weeks ahead. It's going to be a little harder baby but it's a way that you can do it if you are an existing roofer. A Maybe a shingle guy or a dude metal or you know Residential Roofer, by all means we're not asking anybody to stop doing that. It's this is just roofing Do you know it's perfect. At least you're not fishing in a little farm barn where there's only blue gills because you could go fish in a big Blake border, you can get some blue marlin. Both of them are the same amount of effort. If you're already an existing contractor, and you're already doing roofing, commercial roofing is just part of it. We're just asking to maybe have another tool in the belt gives you a great chance to kind of merge from residential to commercial. What is one thing you would do differently if you were starting over? If I had to start this whole thing over I would give it all that I got? I would do it today rather than tomorrow because oh, and wouldn't you agree with me that if this actually works, it'd be better to do it sooner rather than later. I would stop thinking about it so much and start doing when you had your roofing business. You are buying your commercial roof coatings and roof materials from Conklin. Why Conklin's? I've checked out a lot of different companies out there I'm not here to knock anybody, there's a lot of coding companies out there, okay? And there's a lot of other ways that you can make money. But when I searched into the content company, I realized that they had a very high integrity, I met the owner and I realized that this is a lot deeper integrity there and and the minute most of them, it wasn't, you know, everybody needs to make money, but his number one goal was quality, quality over quantity just made sense to me that, that I should want to go with that. And then the next bigger thing right after that was that I realized that I don't have to be in my business here by myself. I yeah, it's I it's for myself, but I realized all of a sudden that I have a team of support people that are willing to show me the way Tell me what doesn't work and what does work. You know, we're living in a dog eat dog world and I was like, man, nobody wants to give you their information. But when I got involved with this, everybody wants to give you What works for them and what doesn't work and and a it's a team effort. You know, it's called customer support there that I was not permitted benefits and reasons why would somebody else when you first earn Conklin's preferred contract or title, you reset volume level. How did that make you feel? They when I first started roofing, I wanted to be a High Quality Roofer I wanted to be, I mean, yeah, we all got roofs out there property that we wish we did on a little different called the learning curve. But once I achieve the preferred contractor status, you feel like a million bucks. And guess what you do when you feel like a million bucks, you go make a million bucks. Right? for one of our last questions here. Today. You're mostly coaching training other contractors. As a coach and trainer, where do you see Commercial Roofing as an industry and let's say five years from now, where's the industry headed? When I first started most of the people that I would go talk to in the commercial roofing building owners They would, they'd say, Well, what is content? They didn't know what it was. And then I have to sell myself, including the product that I'm using. Now I got people that are calling me saying, dude, this building owner calls me and said they want a complex system. I mean, they're they're literally asking for the comm system, not just a waterproofing system, but they are there now naming the brand that they want. And while you know we go from what was it 11 million in 2000, and then 15, and by 2017, it was 15,002,000. I'm this is just my little leg. It's just my team. This ain't the whole Conklin. And by 2018, we were at 19 million and total organization volume 24 million. I see this in the next five years it's going to be 24 million is going to be a small number. From what we're going to see in the future is exploding And I'm telling you, I'm gonna say this. We are the luckiest people are the most blessed people to be allowed to be part of this company in this small stage that we're in because once we hit that hundred million, I mean it's still gonna be really good, but being allowed to be in it now. Now's the time to get started now is the opportunity is wide open, because I'd rather be a part of it plans still under 100 million. I have a few short questions I call the lightning round is your favorite roofing product either coatings or membranes. coatings by far and why is that because it's I pump it up on the roof and I sprayed in place rather than carrying it up and nailing it in place. And I found when I sprayed in place, the flashing everything fits really nice. It wasn't Your favorite app you used in your roofing business? Yeah, weather app. gotta know what the weather is, though on. What's your favorite business book? Probably the How to Win Friends and Influence People. Would you rather go to the mountains or to the beach? If the trip was paid by someone else? I'd go to both. If you could leave one sentence of advice for another person that could make an impact, what would that be? Find out what your passion is, and then pursue that with all that you got. Great interview. Thank you, Simon for your time. Yes. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to roofing that pays. Before you go. Can we ask a huge favor? The biggest thing that helps spread this message is when you rate and review us that tells the platforms we're doing something right. Take a moment to rate and review us at roofingthatpays.com/review. That's roofingthatpays.com/review. Thanks so much. Until next time, do more roofing that pays!

03: From 19-Year Old Amish Kid To $50M Commercial Roofing Dream Team with Simon Lee

EPISODE NOTES RESOURCES MENTIONED: https://roofingthatpays.com/review https://www.conklin.com/product-catalog/roofing-products https://www.doublerroofing.com **Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors ** As a contractor, you know commercial roofing is an amazing opportunity that rewards hard work, but you also see huge issues emerging like finding time to bid jobs, hiring motivated employees, rocketing insurance fees and rising lead costs. On Season One of the Roofing That Pays podcast experienced contractors will share their secrets to what's working in the exploding Commercial Roofing industry. Welcome to roofing that pays. Welcome back to the roofing that pays podcast. This is Episode two. And we're digging into the archives, visiting with Conrad Raber of Western Pennsylvania, a successful Commercial Roofing Contractor and roof coating contractor. Please enjoy. My brother and I own a company called Double R Roofing. Before that I was hauling barns, actually had a truck and trailer and was hauling portable sheds around then, five, six years ago, I got into the commercial roofing market and bright and I've been doing that ever since. What would you say were some of the biggest issues you were facing at that time? I would say lack of money and time, I was on the road a lot. At end of the year and look at the numbers. And it was like the only way I'm going to improve these is being on the road more and do more of what I do. And I was pretty much maxed out already with time away from home and just the numbers just didn't really add up in the year, I guess, pretty much what would happen is I was calling whatever the company sold, I had no option of going out and selling more sheds for them. So I have more work. And even if I did, it would have took a lot more time. And I got to the point to where it was like I'm pretty much maxed out. And in order for me to go any any further. There was not there was no further I guess, when I thought of getting into the commercial roofing industry that my brother and I we got in and we started hiring some guys, it really just opened it up because I was in total control at this point versus this depending on someone else to bring in the sales. So that was a huge step for me, I guess. My older brothers actually kind of introduced me to this, I saw their success that they were having in a roofing company. Eventually, my brother Brian, I actually ended up taking their company on when they kind of moved to bigger and better things. I saw my brothers working with other guys, residential guys that they were bringing into the commercial market, helping them be very successful, much more successful than then what I was being just on many barns. So it kind of gave me the hope in a little bit of belief in myself and knowing that they were there to help me through this, it really gave me hope that I could at some point have what I saw them doing for other guys, no doubt about their new their industry and how they were able to help people. Obviously, they knew knew that what they were talking about, once he about getting involved in the in the roofing industry, any industry for that matter is you have to know how to do the projects, you know how it happened to how to get the projects, you have to know there's so much involved, but the structure they were bringing into their guys, and the success I guess it brought a lot of resources to us. I remember in our early days of running the company, they kept telling us; You gotta spend more money marketing, you gotta you gotta push into any of the state after is in the able to help us if it wouldn't have been for that, we would have got comfortable early in the game and not moved to bigger and better projects and growing the company. So where we were comfortable for a little while was my brother and I. And we had one guy working for us. And we made a good living doing it. But it got to the point where we said, why not push into it more, we start hiring guys. And we were able to grow the company like that. One thing I really like about the team aspect of things is we get to do trips together, we get to do some fun things together, different times, meetings and stuff, we interact with each other. And it's helped me incredibly already just hanging around some of these guys and some of the big players, and seeing how they do business, how they structure things. Honestly, that's been huge for us, you know, bouncing ideas off of them. That's really where I got started catching the vision of hiring guys starting to delegate and growing the company. So that's a big deal for me. That training, it really helped me to a couple things. For one, we learned how to do the projects, you got to have some hands on experience, to the quality of the materials. But it also just gave me an idea of where I guess I open my eyes to the possibilities. And why these products and his company has to offer really got me excited to go out make it happen. So we got home, I wanted to spend some money and some marketing, dropping flyers to building owners. And honestly, I didn't have the money. So I talked to my brother kind of begged him a little bit and loaning me 2500 bucks, and we dropped 5000 flyers. And off of those fires, I got, I believe it was 13 calls off of those fires ended up selling four or five jobs off of it. It was totally different winner from what we'd be experiencing the previous winners because hey, loosen things that were able to pay some bills and have a little money left over. So that was a big deal for us right out the gate. The team has really helped us avoid a lot of failures. There's so many things when you're starting your own business and running your business. Things that you have to learn either on your own on your own, or you have to learn from other people. And that's what we've been able to do is really learn from other people. Sure, we've learned some lessons on our own. But enjoy, we've been able to bounce some things off of our brothers off of other guys in the industry. And in our team here that we interact with, that we're able to learn from them new ideas, things that they're doing implementing in their business. Maybe they've made failures that they were able to help us but it's really helped us to avoid a lot of those, which in the end keeps more money in our pockets. So as a business owner today, I look at life totally different. For one, I can dream I can I can set goals and make those things happen. Whereas because I'm not capped out, I don't have somebody telling me what I need to do, and how I need to plan my day. To be honest, I have a lot more self discipline. today. I get up every morning at five o'clock I go to the gym and workout. Some I would have never used to do if I could sleep in the nine o'clock in the morning. Absolutely, I would have done it today. Now, I have a different a different mindset. And it's helped me to grow personally, it's made me really step up my game as a leader, you know, the guys working for us our company, I believe it's really helped me to develop Personally, I would say if you're looking for something different in your life, or if you want something better, this is the deal. I mean, the support that you're going to get here is huge. Don't ever limit yourself. Because where you're at today doesn't mean you have to be there in five years from now. It's incredible. When I look back even five years, what we how we've grown in five years. It's a good shift to be on. in America today, looking at the roofing industry, there is no company out there that you will get near the support and have the structure the way things are structured with Conklin. There's no doubt in my mind, a young guy can go out and have way more success, way more success with this company than you will anywhere else. There's just a ton of support a ton of energy and you're covered on all on all areas. I'm super excited about what we're going to do in the next year and the next several years. Timing is great right now we're going to go out we're going to making things happen. We're going really up our sales this year in the next couple of years a little bro thing so I'm just super excited to see all that happen. Thanks for listening to Roofing That Pays! Before you go Can we ask a huge favor? The biggest thing that helps spread this message is when you rate and review us. That tells the platforms we're doing something right. Take a moment to rate and review us at roofingthatpays.com/review. That's roofingthatpays.com/review. Thanks so much. Until next time, do more Roofing That Pays.

02: Why You Would Launch & Scale A Commercial Roofing Company with Conrad Raber

RESOURCES MENTIONED: https://www.jobnimbus.com/ https://www.ziglar.com/tom-ziglar/ https://www.ziglar.com/product/choose-to-win/ https://slvroofing.com/about/ https://roofingthatpays.com/review Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors As a contractor, you know commercial roofing is an amazing opportunity that rewards hard work, but you also see huge issues emerging like finding time to bid jobs, hiring motivated employees, rocketing insurance fees and rising lead costs. On Season One of the Roofing That Pays podcast experienced contractors will share their secrets to what's working in the exploding Commercial Roofing industry. Welcome to roofing that pays. Welcome back to another episode of the roofing that pays podcast. In today's episode, we will visit with Paul J. Gingerich, a successful contractor from Missouri. Owen, it's good to be here. I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to be on here. And I look forward to the interview. Let's start go way back to maybe your growing up years. What did your family do as an occupation? You know, what kind of environment Did you grow? And then how did you get into running your own business? Because I know you had a business prior to getting involved in commercial roofing. So how did you end up in that business in and what did you do there? I grew up on a little farm outside of Carrollton, Missouri here. My dad he was he was not a farmer. So he had us boys do it. We actually enjoyed it. It was back in the day when there was a lot of little dairy farmers all over the country. And my dad was one up and was 15 years old, my dad decided that it was better that we get rid of the dairy cows, we would start focusing on doing something in the line of some production type work. We sold the cows that bought some equipment, and we started making some landscape stakes. My uncle also put in a sawmill. He recruited us guys work there during the day and then we work went home and we work making landscape stakes and evenings rather than doing chores. So that's kind of the barn I grew up in. And 2008-nine came around. The economy went south. We were on our own by that time. I mean, we were 21-22 years old me and my brother move will work for my uncle. Thanks for a really bad I mean, we were working 10 to 15 my uncle was wondering what we're going to do next and we had the opportunity come up some the log suppliers, he was looking for somebody to cut his own law. He thought less you put in the solid mail he said, I'll bring you the lumber. So well we lost 25% 25 to 30% of the lumber industry when disappeared in 2008-nine. These guys put one in. It was it looked really backwards. It was kind of rough for a few years, wake up logs for him. we process them for three and a half years and then we branched out on our own. We did pretty good at it. When we decided that we were going to move to Colorado. I found a job doing lumber again. But there was a transition that happened in me between being employed by somebody else. And being previously being employed by myself. There was just things and atmosphere going on in that operation I didn't like, and it just ate me up. There was just a thing of people having a bad attitude. I mean, this one guy even kept concert, you know, saying well, he doesn’t care. He said we'd come back tomorrow and finish it when they could have finished it that day. I mean, it was just they were goofing around. It just ate me up. Let me go back into, touching on the sawmill, the experience you had there. Give us an idea of the size of the sawmill. I don't know how many guys were working there or how many board feet per day or, you know, revenue numbers or is there anything you can give us on just what size operation you had? Before you ended up moving to Colorado and quit the lumber industry? in revenue wise, we were right at 700,000 for the first couple years. And then after we branched out our own. We were actually buying and processing. We were at 1.5 to 1.8 million. And then I think the last year we were running it, we were at 2.59. It was not a huge operation, but it turned a lot of dollars. That was four guys in the operation that ran it. Besides me. I was buying the inventory. Then you moved to Colorado, the ends you didn't have the sawmill anymore. You started working for someone else. And that's where you ran into some of these issues, you know, with coworkers and so forth and decided to look at having your own business again, as far as a commercial roofing what intrigued you when it came to commercial roofing roof coatings business? What intrigued me about the roofing industry as a whole was we've had some background in construction because we grew up in the lumber. So the roofing thing wasn't like something was that was totally brand new, but it was brand new. And what intrigued me about it was just the opportunity. Ready to have something that doesn't have that was kind of more of a low investment getting into. But it also had the potential of making a really good income. Not a lot of overhead not a lot employees. I mean, if you look across in roofing industry as a whole, in the residence of part of it, there's a lot of turnover that goes on in those places. That's one thing. I'm not a guy that likes to have a lot of turnover all the time turnover is actually hurts your business. employee retention is what you want. Sometimes it's hard, you have to let a guy go But then again, you want to do your best. If you have good and boys, it will show up on the job. If you have employees that don't care, it's going to show up on a job so employees are very important. Doing this type restoration work really allows me to kind of keep your hands involved to make sure the process is done correctly. And that eliminates a lot of problem if you get spread out to you. Much and you lose that you will have some warranty problems, you'll have to go back and fix. And whenever you have to do that, I mean that's costly to I don't care who it is, and they were already there. They could have spent 15 minutes and not had this happen. In other words, with commercial roofing, and especially with roof coatings, you've got enough margin available that you can make a really good living without having a huge number of employees as basically what you're saying. Yeah, yes, that's right. You then ended up moving from Colorado back to Missouri. Anything you'd like to share about that? When we move back to Missouri, half of the revenue for that next year was actually in Colorado. There was still projects we had given some quotes on and proposals on that we actually got and so half of our revenue came from Colorado that year and half came from Missouri. It was basically having to start over in Missouri. One of the things that I found the difference between Colorado, Missouri was there. There's a lot more buildings in Missouri than there is in Colorado. So that gives you the opportunity to grow in Missouri is actually better than in Colorado, but there was actually more revenue involved with projects in Colorado than they are in Missouri. Because the competition, Okay, yeah, not quite as many contractors for the square miles probably because in Colorado, a lot of projects are a little bit spaced out compared to Missouri. Yes, plus, the projects are spaced out. But there's also the people actually know each other out there a lot better than they do here because of the population. Let's dig into some of the struggles just for our listeners. So we can learn, grow, get better at what we do. In the last several years, is there anything you'd like to share that you would do different, you know, that we can learn from today? There’re actually three things I think that's very important that you want all the time. That's marketing, profits, and cost of if you buy a piece of equipment, and you actually take out a bank loan on that, you want to make sure that you have enough work for that piece of equipment. Because you can actually hire somebody to do it for cheaper than owning a piece of equipment. If you don't have enough work for it. We bought a phone trailer which we went and bought a satellite phone priority. It had power Jacks on it, it had tanked It was a Cadillac phone ring, the work we thought we had coming for this that was between a verbal agreement, it never materialized. So that left us having to make the payments on a phone trailer that we weren't turned into revenue from it that we had and just pay that leaves you having to pay for something that's costing you money at that point because or for that year, if you don't run enough dollars on that piece of equipment. So that's, that's the thing that you want to be considered of. The second thing is profits. If you don't know your numbers, and you think you're making this much money. You don't really know, you're actually shorting yourself. So you need to be able to track those numbers. And you need to do it accurately. And you need to do a quarterly inventory and do a state. And the next thing is you got to watch sports and marketing. I've read them my website three times. I mean, you lose money every time you have to redo it. So hiring somebody to do it right the first time, you might have a little bit more of an investment up front doing it right. But if you do it right, you will actually save you money over the long haul plus, you'll get more better leads, better quality, lead generating leads, they're all expensive. So you need to make sure that whatever you do is actually bringing you the results that you want. Let's dig into the numbers a little bit on marketing what all the attract I mean, lead source jobs sold, did what all the attract when it comes to tracking like you're marketing versus revenue, open jobs, things like that. If you track your jobs for an instance, you know how many leads you get, you know what those leads were where they you know, what type of a building, we actually categorize them out into, like 1234, and five. As we want to know, the importance of that job to us. Every job is important. But some jobs are bigger than others, we track the side of the job, we want to know what the dollar amount of that did was, because the more that bid, the higher the dollar amount on that project, the more the importance of it goes up just because there's $1 amount associated with it well makes you want to follow up with that person. You want to serve that person to the best of your ability. If you don't track those numbers, then you won't know you want to know where that lead came from. Because as you're tracking it, you know it's coming from your website, or is it coming from a direct mail face? Is it coming from a cold call you did? Is it coming from a referral as you've tracked all These things you can start seeing where most of your leads are coming from. And as you track those, you'll be able to know where your money should go to. If you track your marketing what you did, and you know where the leads are coming from, you can know the ones that you need to tweak or change, maybe change something and see if that works better. What is your biggest lead producer or a couple of the ones that used to produce leads? There’re three main sources I get my leads from. We do a direct mail campaign, we got a number of those, then we also get a number from our website. And then we have a lot of referrals. Have you noticed anything in referrals, the quality of the lead being better than leads coming from website or direct mail. I love referrals because if you have a referral, you actually your chances of getting that project is just way up. There's a credibility that comes with them when you're referred by somebody and they give you a call and It just changes the game drastically. Give us an average of time between when someone calls you for proposal versus the time it takes actually get the sign contract. Is it fast in commercial roofing? Or does it take a long time? What are your thoughts on that? There is a percentage of the vape call you they are ready to do something. But there's a percentage of them that are looking to put something in their budget. And some of them, they're just curious how much it would cost them to do it. And then they figure out that it's not what they want to do, I use your fine during the year of the all the leads, we get you close, let's say one out of five, and then you'll close a percentage of those will close the next year. And some of you will not get for a couple years for one lead for an instance I'm thinking of right now. We actually bet this project over two years ago, and it's now just come through. So, you buy your commercial roof coatings and material from Conklin, can you share with us why Conklin? I really love Conklin’s products. They're easy to work with. And but their quality we know without about when we get that product in, it's going to be good. If there's a screw up on that project, it's not going to be confident it's going to be as contractors, your employees or somebody did something wrong. It's not the company's fault plus, with the National Contractor’s Group, and just being a preferred contractor, and just having the opportunity to rub shoulders with those other bird contract, you learn so much, you learn little tricks, little tricks make a big difference, and it's a little thing that lead to big things. And so, I enjoy every moment of those contractor trips that we take, and we get to be a small part of we just enjoy those and we learned so much. There's so much value and energy that goes on at that place like that. They It's unbelievable. So, you mentioned that preferred contractor title; To earn that title is pretty significant. How did that make you feel when you earn that title for the first time? It was a goal we had and we ran hard for it. It made me feel really good. I felt like I hit a major milestone. But then again, there was something that it did inside me of knowing that I can do this. There's just something that it was it was literally like it triggered something. And I asked myself, why did I believe it was this was going to be so hard once it's a goal and you go after it. There's something that happens when it's something that you don't know if you can do it and you get to do that there's something that happens in you that grows. It was a really good feeling. And yet there were it was kind of a it was a humbling feeling in a way. Just being able to know that the company actually wants you to succeed. They give you a discount, a product discount. If you hit the You are preferred contractor wisdom that tells me something. I mean, that's something that they are excited to see that you have invested this much money with them and they're willing to give you an edge having that profit margin just a little bit bigger. They know that as you grow, you have other expenses. And that just helps build that crack. And the second thing is we get to go on then preferred contractor trips and just being around those other contractors is just it's, it's awesome. I mean, the food's great fellowship, good for something that they was cold and being on the beach somewhere but your feet in the sand it's kind of not. In wrapping this up, what would you tell yourself if you could go back five years or for someone new that's interested in getting into commercial roofing or starting or their own roof coating does this is there anything that sticks out in your mind that you would share? With someone like that, there is not a better opportunity to get started. You want to be teachable, and you want to listen to your upline, if they can't help you, they know somebody they can. And there's so many people that would be willing to help you. If you're not teachable, you can do it, but you're exposing yourself to their blind spots that you can't see. So being involved with your upline director, and just asking them because they could they see other contractors, they work with them daily, they know, the struggle, what they could face if they do certain things different or not did or they do something they shouldn't do. So if they would just communicate when they have a question. Some of us get really enthused about something, and we just go out there and we do it. And then we later we will ask ourselves, why did we buy this piece of equipment, like we prematurely bought it? So there's things like that. I believe that If just working together gives that person the edge an advantage, he can hire a coach. And that can be really expensive. And the coach is still not directly involved and doesn't know as much about it as what the guys do right in the field. I just don't see how another company could have any better benefits. You've shared a lot of great things here. Paul, where do you see your company in five years from now? Well, I just see in five years from now, as we grow out, there's things that in five years from now, from the day that's going to be very different. One of the things that I see happening as the riffing industry is just it's a booming industry coming out with a new to product, we're going to be getting into new construction. There is no better chance to get involved with commercial roofing industry than it is today. I see ourselves growing and some of the struggles that we have today will be gone. Oh, and I actually don't think I even have any idea. How biggest on faith. We kind of get in our heads that we kind of know. But we actually don't know until we, as we go along because as you start growing I mean, you can grow if you grow 30% every year. Lightning round… is your favorite roof product, either coatings or membranes? Actually, like coatings the best. Is there a favorite app you use in your business and what would that be? JobNimbus. What's your favorite book? Besides the Bible, of course? Choose To Win. Choose to Win by Tom Ziglar. And the last question, if you won a free trip, would you rather go to the mountains or to the beach? It depends on what time of the year it is. I actually liked the mountains by at the 2.1 or the other it'd be the mountain. Today's guest was Paul J. Gingerich with SLV Roofing Service, a commercial roofing and roof coatings contractor from Missouri. If you'd like a copy of the show notes, resources and links, simply visit the episodes page at roofingthatpays.com Thanks for listening to Roofing That Pays! Before you go Can we ask a huge favor? The biggest thing that helps spread this message is when you rate and review us. That tells the platforms we're doing something right. Take a moment to rate and review us at roofingthatpays.com/review. That's roofingthatpays.com/review. Thanks so much. Until next time, do more Roofing That Pays.

01: From Logger to Roofer, 3 Keys to Commercial Roofing Success with Paul J. Gingerich

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00: Insider Secrets To Launch & Scale Your Commercial Roofing Company, Intro To the Podcast

On the Roofing That Pays podcast, experienced contractors and small business experts tackle today's issues head on – while sharing their inside secrets to launching & scaling a profitable commercial roofing company, helping you avoid the pitfalls our network of professional contractors have learned over the past 30 years. Be sure to download our free "Busy Roofer's 20-Point Marketing Checklist" at https://roofingthatpays.com/marketing

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