Advice for New Roofing Business Owners Who Are “Wearing All The Hats”

You're wearing all the hats and you are working all the time. This is the life of a new roofing business owner.

Now you know that you need to.

Hire your way out of the day to day, but it is so much harder than people say it is. Now many business owners start to try and hire the wrong roles.

They say, hey, well you need to.

Hire a production person or salesperson first.

Well, guess what? I personally, I think it's all, it's all garbage.

So what you're about to watch is a conversation that I had with Blu Ray, who runs a new roofing company. He's a member of the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance. And like many, as you'll see in this interview, he is bombarded with phone calls, distractions and burning the candle at both ends, running sales, running production, running absolutely everything. But what you're going to see is how I coach him through making certain hires, not in the way that most people do. And I hope that this video helps you, the growing business owner, navigate who to hire and why so you can get yourself out of the day to day and go from having a high paying job to work an actual business.

Now let's get started. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. So I am all ears. We got 30 minutes dedicated to you and my goal today is to help talk through whatever roadblocks are standing between you and me, making magic happen in the next 12 months. So you drill me with questions and I will do my best to drill you with answers.

I think my biggest roadblock is and I, and I think I told you this before in our introductory when I came on board is tight. It's not time management. I don't have any time to manage, frankly, I'm so busy. But it's because I'm wearing too many hats and just a little background of that, you know, I was doing, I was a consultant to a national solar company, there's roofing division. While trying to keep this business going, I was doing roofs all over the country for these guys. They were paying me too well not to do it. Truthfully, I wasn't doing it under my band. We created a different entity under there that and then at one point in time I had a position with actuarial so I was really rolling three jobs at the same time. This has been a side project since 2018 and now it's my only project. So what has happened is I have literally managed Every step, every process for the last six years going and haven't gotten the help that I need to take that load off of my shoulders. So I put an Indeed ad out yesterday, as a matter of fact, and I am, I'm actively looking and searching for a. A badass, pardon my French, who is gonna take. No, it's gonna run the. He's gonna help me run the business as if, you know, and protect me, protect my family and protect our best interests as a company. That's the person I'm looking for. And I utilize your. As a matter of fact, I copied and pasted it your template and threw it on Indeed. Made a couple slight changes and boom. So. So I'm, I've taken the first step towards helping myself.

Yeah. Do you have. For that role that you're going to hire, do you have the. A job description and. Or roles and responsibilities identified for them?

I have, I basically took your template and rolled it over there. I do have another one. But I do need to sit down and really specify a process and I, and I'm struggling just to do that, truthfully. Yeah.

Okay.

Really, when you come in, I want, you know, these are the day to day expectations, the responsibilities and you know, because it can be overwhelming and I don't want that person to become overwhelmed and surprised by what they, you know, what they're going to be coming into. Especially now when you have salespeople come in, canvas are coming in. You got all these different personalities, you know, and I need to be able to shield them or at least prepare them for that.

Yeah, yeah. First, you're doing the right things, man. I love that you started running the ad. There's, there's a couple ways. It's funny, I was just filming a video yesterday on this. One of the mistakes that owners make is staying in, in the business too long, wearing too many hats. It's a growing pain that, that, that just happens, you know, and we got to get out of it. So before I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this new hire on the back burner for just a couple minutes and I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. Question number one. Where do you see as the. If you were to look back and say, oh man, that one thing consumes so much time. If only I didn't have to do that. What comes to mind?

Oh boy. Payroll commission. Yeah, payroll is a big one. Vendor payment management is pretty easy. Yeah. I'd say it's ar, AR and ap. I get so far behind. I don't. I mean I've got a hundred thousand in AR out there that I should have collected a week. I just don't have time to go, you know. Yeah, that comes to mind. You know, it's the little things they, everybody, they come to me for. We need paper. I mean, it's simple all the time. And I just really need to be in the position to manage the sales team and be able to lean on that individual and say, hey, you know, you are as big a part of this company as I am, effectively, because I want you to control the house. I'll take outside, I'll take care of everything. Yeah, got it. Lack of salesmen. I'm working on that. My time is. I'm consumed by running appointments. I need to be more consumed about growing my business, not running my business. I have so many opportunities, Adam, it's sick. I've got commercial opportunities, I've got apartment opportunities. I just can't. I can't do it. I'm not gonna, I can't overextend it.

I'm just taking some notes here. So off the top of your head, without skipping a beat, you basically said all things payroll, bookkeeping, ars aps and everyone coming to you.

Right.

The way, the reason I asked that and the way that I've always phrased this, because I remember on the onboarding call I talked to you about hiring an executive assistant, said it was the best thing I ever did and I shared kind of my process on that. And it doesn't sound like this particular role needs to be an ea. However, an office manager, this would be kind of the umbrella of that responsibility. An office manager, as you grow, these grow into their own dedicated roles. You know, having payroll, that can be done obviously by a third party company. We use gusto. I know a lot of folks in RSRA use gusto. I saw someone post the other day about another one, which I could pull up, but it'll probably take me a minute. But anyway, that's just an option for you to write down. Gusto. They'll. They'll do payroll for you. It will save you a bunch of time. It's stupid cheap. I don't know how they do it so cheap. Actually, I do, because they're. What they really want is, I think your business elsewhere, benefits, insurance, et cetera. But same thing with arap. At some point that will grow into its own dedicated role. But for now, office manager can do that. One thing just to be very mindful of that is the blood of the business. And there's the age old Saying trust but verify. So get someone on that and create a system in place for them to follow. Again in RSRA we had a discussion on that recently. I believe that was in the owner's discussion board talking about processes and systems to stay up on ars. So I'd refer to that. I can tag you in the post. Let me make a note. Tag.

What do you mean by that Adam?

Specifically I'll give you an example. We had an aging process for our ars. So for for us and with what you're dealing with right now on insurance claims, having a process to make sure that as soon as humanly possible when that job's done, the depreciation is filed for certificate of completion assigned etc. That that is documented and submitted and then we have a pro we defining a process to confirm with the carrier and then if there's no response from carrier when to get a homeowner involved. So for example within and this is, this is off the top of my head just some rough frameworks. Within a handful of days call at 7 following up with the carrier to confirm that they received it. They're never going to tell you whether or not anything was sent because the money is going to go to the homeowner. But you can just say hey I, I just need to make sure you got the certificate of completion with offer depreciation. Then after 14 days getting in touch with the homeowner, did you receive those funds? If not at 21 days reaching back out to the homeowner. Do you receive those funds? And you know at 28 days getting the homeowner involved, hey we need this done. And then creating that, that's what I mean by having a system or a process. So instead of just like hey get our money collected like that's never going to happen.

Now I'm a process person and I've gotten, it's gotten so out of sync for me. There's so many things coming at the same time. It's. It's honestly drives me crazy.

Yeah.

So I love it.

So getting that in place would be huge. And the other thing is with this person's role needing learning to rely on them and train the team to be your bodyguard so everything will run through the person you hire. Bob, Bill, Jan, Peggy, don't care who it is, say hey, they're your new go to for all day to day needs. The only thing I want you to come to me with is sales questions or whatever it is that else that you're doing. Just define that because getting we'll Talk production and some other things in a second. But the reason that I asked what are the where are you spending the most amount of time? I've been in your position and many people have. When you are doing so much and you're juggling a million things and you're also trying to say holy crap, there's opportunity galore. It's feast or famine. I got to take advantage of this. It's like a chicken or egg thing, you know, it's like, and it feels like whatever you choose, you lose. You're like, I'm gonna get myself out of the business, but then I'm going to give up these deals. If I take these deals, I'm not going to be able to get myself out of the business.

I swear. We lose money by being over busy and not being able to really focus.

I would agree. The way I've always approached these hiring decisions is, is I solve time problems first. So where you're spending your most amount of time, free that up. Because once you free up that first batch of time, you're going to have more breathing room to then turn to the next thing. So I always solve problems personally as a general rule of thumb based on time. So every. I'll give you an example like sales, that's a, that's a full time job. Get yourself out of sales as fast as humanly possible.

Try it.

I know it's, it's not a. I recognize it's always easier said than done. It's not flipping a switch. And then magically people do as great as you. It takes time for training that's in and of itself full time job. The transition for when you hire or train people to do what you do takes longer to get a result that's not quite as good as your own.

I.

There's, there's a cost to it but by the time they're ramped up, even if they're doing 80% as well as you, you just freed up 80% of your time. It's worth it.

Yeah.

So I would, I would look at which we just started. Where your time leaks are payroll, vendor arap, everyone coming to you, you have a gatekeeper. Next thing on the list. There's two on the list. When you said still running appointments is scary and hard as this is. The only appointments that you should run are commercial and big deals and key relationships. So as soon as you can punt everything else to your team as you're growing and training them gives them something to learn on and soon you will even get out of Those.

That presents another issue I guess is and I need to present this to the group. I'm sure it has been as far as finding who are they looking for. Like I. I got a couple guys right now. I really like got them from the gym industry. They work at the rec center and they're good dudes, learn fast. I think they might work out but we've had a lot of in and out, you know a lot of that recycled tread if you will. What a good or where have you found success hiring quality salespeople?

So I just finished talking with another RSRA member, Carl and Ryan. Carl has a 35 person sales team and he has never once run an indeed ad.

Damn.

Now does everyone do it that way? Absolutely not. But there's. There's a few things. One recruit from your day to day life.

Yeah.

That is the most valuable piece. He he so his team which he hired one of the guys. Ryan and his team love skydiving. They recruited a skydive instructor. The guy sold 30 jobs in 90 days with being brand new. They hi. He hired a car salesman when he went and bought a vehicle. What was the other ones? They're on the tip of my tongue. Long and short. They were people that he encountered in his day to day life. There's a lot of. A lot of members that do that. So that's number one. Number two I've done a video which I can link to. You actually put a link up here. 9 best industries to recruit from and every company. I shouldn't say every. Many companies find that they have a sweet spot. And I'll give you a few examples. One of my clients when I very first clients. It's funny David, he's actually an rsra. He was my very first like company that flew out to Colorado to meet with me many years ago. And David does incredibly well with teachers and coaches almost as teams. Teachers and coaches. What was that?

Summer. Summer jobs. Yeah. Yeah.

Well they're full time now because they obviously made more money doing this than the other thing. Next company, almost their entire team was from Best Buy. They got retail sales training. They were all younger folks who were hungry and almost all of them came that way. Another company, they have almost all of their people. They live in a more I won't say rural but a very small secluded metro market. And they have conversations with all of the career counselors at the local community colleges, tech schools, et cetera that want to place people. So he gets young college graduates and his whole team is fits that niche. So there are Folks again, that do well with police and EMS and firefighters, athletes, salespeople from other industries, car sales, cell phone sales, pest control, door to door, you name it. I hired a guy that sold shoes like he was. He was. I don't even remember the. The name of the store, but he was shoe store guy. Let's see, where else are we going on the list? Door to door sales is its own category. Sales from another, from outside is an entirely new category. Teachers we already hit. Coaches we already hit. Students we already hit. And then athletes. So that's just a handful of key areas to look for. And you want to find who's a good fit for your culture. But getting. Peeling back a layer or two when you said that there's a lot of turn. I want to ask what you're selling them on and how you're supporting them.

And I think that was a big reason. I'll take full ownership on that. I, you know, I'm. When people need help and they need training and they need the time, I don't have been there historically to give it to them the way they need. They. I haven't nurtured the sales department, which is why I'm hoping and praying and I find the right fit for me and my. In our culture that we want to create in this office position to allow me to do exactly that. Because that's exactly what I need to.

Yeah.

And I. I take full responsibility. We've had. We've had a few opportunities to have some good people or. Yeah. Yeah. Could have been good people. I'm proud of the ones that I have because I gave them more time. So I, I know it's. We were capable of it, but the bottom line is, Adam, I've got to be available to really grow and nurture the business.

Yes. And that there's. I know now is a tough time to bring this up, but I ran a session on developing a powerhouse team, and what I found is that there's two of the main reasons for turnover is one, overselling people on the opportunity. You know what, Whatever. You're going to make all this money. It's going to be amazing. And then they go to work and they're like, dude, this sucks. I'm knocking doors in Houston. It's hot. I'm getting yelled at all day. I haven't had any traction. My wife wonders what the hell I did. She told me this commission job, you know, that I took on. Indeed. With no experience necessary. Like it just when you tell people about the roofing industry, they're like, is this some sort of Ponzi scheme? Like, is this a scam? Is it real? So overselling them and not being truthful to say, hey, you can make a bunch of money, but by the way, you're going to hate your job at times. By the way, you're going to want to quit. By the way, your spouse or significant other is going to question you.

Yeah, I definitely don't oversell the opportunity. I let people know flat out say it's going to take 30 to 60 days before you get a check. I mean, you got to be prepared. You got, you're going to sweat your ass off. You're going to need three shirts a day. I mean, if anything, I try to talk them out of it because just in there, they're still in there. I'm like, all right, let's get you on a ladder and see what you're made of. And yeah, yeah.

So that's great. So that, that, that is a good sign. The next thing is obviously getting in the trenches and giving them everything they need. And what I mean by everything they need is, is sales reps need. The, the old school way was bringing a bunch of people, see what sticks, see who sticks, see what works. It's a very, it's a very dated model. I personally find it wrong from a variety of angles. One, you're messing with people's livelihood and it's our responsibility to hire the right people and help them be successful. So you've got access to everything in rsra. Go through the management rollout guide again and bring the team into the office. If you're not office positioned yet, co working space or rent a spot at a local hotel, you can get a room for 100 bucks, conference room for the day. And the reason that you bring everyone in and you don't have them train on their own is they won't do it. I've watched this happen more times than I. We've put thousands and thousands and thousands of people through our platform and I will tell you, the people that fail are the ones that say, here's your login. Go get yourself trained.

And I don't do yeah, bring them in front of me. We're talk about it. We're going to go step by step.

Awesome. So get them through there and get the team joining us in the trenches. You know, getting, get them on my calls, posting questions and the app in the community. Joining John Cenac and Daeshn Bryant and making it not an option is very helpful to making sure that they're successful. But what I think will make a very big difference is as soon as you free up this first chunk of time in getting your new hire onboarded and trained up, taking that responsibility off your shoulder, then being able to invest the time where you need to on your salespeople because once they're up and going, you get to get out of sales.

Yeah. 100.

And then once you're out of sales, you are going to have more time than you know what to do with, by the way. It'll get filled up instantly with new things and then you'll solve the next problem of I'm too busy on this. And then you hire that person. Then you say, I'm too busy on this. And then you hire that person and then we rinse and repeat.

Beautiful thing. I've got a couple more minutes of your time. I know that. I have a quick question in regards to the. We are all so busy right now across the country with all these storms. Our group hasn't been able to get together yet. I've got one or two maybe in our group. I'm talking about the.

Yep. Mission control team.

Thank you. The mission control team. I'm going to send out a message again. And I guess if I don't hear back from the ones that responding, I'm gonna just tell you flat out, hey, dude, let's. Let's get somebody else.

And I'll get. I'll get new folks in. We've done this in the past. We've kicked people out. The whole idea is it's an accountability group. Life gets crazy. I get it. And if we can't do it, like, that's the whole thing. It's not. We're going to meet and we're going to meet. So if people can commit, that's why we got six teams right now. Or this would be the sixth team. And if you miss more than two, they're booted. And then someone else comes in and that's okay. That's what people want. And it's not a dis. I mean, we have members that have been kicked out that still are great members of the OF rs. They just, you know, can't commit to that one piece.

And.

And so be it.

The gang.

Yeah. And then obviously I can get you. If you want to do it, I can get you set up with a different group. So that's a. Okay. You just let me know where you're at. If they're not responsive, then. Then we'll. We'll adjust course and I'll make Sure to get you taken care of. Okay.

Yep. I'll let you know if I hit any hiccups or speed bumps. You'll be the first. And I will go from there.

Sweet. Sounds good, man. I appreciate you squeezing this in. I still have five that I had on the books. Doesn't mean we need to take it all. I just want to make myself available to you. And then if you need to just get the hell back to it, I also totally get it.

Appreciate it. My wife has called 10 times in a row. I think I need to call her back.

That's an important one. Go do it. I'm good. Glad to see you, man. Post any questions you got and go take care of family.

Likewise, buddy. Be good.

See you. Bye.

Bye.

Quick update. I just got off the phone with.

Blu to hear what unfolded since our conversation. And congrats, Blu. He successfully hired the office manager, and it could not have come at a better time because it freed up so much time that he could capitalize on the opportunities that landed right on his plate.

Which, by the way, first was a.

Hailstorm, followed closely by a tornado and then a hurricane right after. Now, Blu told me that because he got so swamped that when things slowed down again, he's going to be making his next moves and next hires.

But I don't know what he would.

Have done without having this office manager in place. So if you run a roofing company and you want to get yourself out of the day to day, get started for free by clicking the link in the description below or go to adamsfreestuff.com then I want you to jump right into this very next video because I'm going to teach you the 11 bankrupting mistakes that many new roofing company owners make. So you don't make them.

We'll see you soon.