Adam Bensman (YouTube, Jan 23, 2025) explains a decision framework for choosing which roofing conferences to attend in 2025: first diagnose the specific, high-value business problems you need solved; then compute the total event cost (hard costs plus missed opportunity) and compare expected return against a 5x rule-of-thumb. He demonstrates with a worked example (five people, three-day conference, $10k hard cost + ~$95k missed opportunity for a $5M company) and concludes with a recommendation to only attend events that clearly solve a high-dollar problem and to join vetted communities (RSRA) for ongoing answers.
Questions this video answers
Five people.
Five days (day before travel in, three conference days, travel day back).
$500 per ticket.
$500 per person (flights, car rental, etc.).
$200 per night.
Chapters
The best roofing conferences of 2025. Which ones must you go to and which ones must you avoid? This video is inspired by this recent post I saw. It says looking for some good conferences to go to next year to get inspired to see what's possible in this industry. It's a common question because as business people or salespeople, our success in life depends on two things, the information we have and the people we know. And that's the reason we go to conferences. And there's a plethora of conferences to choose from, which is a great thing. Options are awesome and the roofing industry has shown to have an appetite for quality content and education and information. Our industry is changing, it's changing quickly. This comes as no surprise. So as you're evaluating conferences like Roofing Process Conference or roofcon or IRE or Best of Success or the SRC Summit and many, many others, even down to the regional level or maybe the stuff that manufacturers are putting on the this video is going to help you figure out which ones to go to and which ones not to go to. I'll be evaluating these in a very non traditional way. But my promise to you is that if you watch this video all the way to the end, you're going to know exactly where you should be spending your time and sending your team and where you shouldn't be. My name is Adam Bensman. Welcome or welcome back. 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. All right, before we evaluate this, and by the way, this is very common, a common question that people ask which is like, which is the good conference to go to. But I want to close the chapter on this idea for a minute and I'm doing this gently and politely because I think it's great to challenge people. In fact, in RSRA we're aligned by values, but we're not like minded because like mindedness creates a cult and an echo chamber. So I've created a culture where we challenge each other and bring different perspectives. And that's what I want to do right now in a respectful way for many of us. We think through like, well where should I go? Where's everyone else going? It's not that simple. So let's first talk about how we should evaluate a conference. And I want to start with this first is figuring out what problems you need to have solved. So all the conferences are different and each year they change the theme, changes the speaker lineup changes, all that changes. So I'm going to think through my business and say, what are the problems that I need solving? And as a business owner or leader, it's up to us to develop the skillset, which I believe is the number one skill set that we need to develop if you want to be successful. And that is the ability to diagnose your own problems. So I want to use an example problem that many people are having right now. They've built a business based on insurance restoration work. And the insurance game is changing. Carriers are playing hardball, coverage is dropping, ACV policies are getting higher. Insurance companies are dragging out receivables, like in a big way. And paired with that, it's hard to find people who actually want to go to work. So many companies are having to pivot, or at least bolt on a retail division, which means learning retail sales, retraining the team, getting financing lined up, retraining the inside sales team or office staff to field those calls and set the appointments, and developing an entirely new marketing strategy. It's daunting, it's overwhelming, and it's scary. And if we look at this like, if I were to rank the problems I try to solve, I'm going to do them in order, similar to like the Yelp ratings, right? Three money signs for a really expensive problem, not as expensive, and then not a really big problem. And I want to focus my time on the really expensive problems to solve. With my luck, I'd get an orange tongue doing that. So I'm going to focus here. So if I know that that helping pivot to a retail division, which is quite common for many of the members of rsra, as we do this together, then I'm going to say, okay, which conference or training program or platform is worth my time? Can they help me solve that problem? Because now that we have clarity about why we're going, we can figure further decipher where we. Excuse me. We can further decipher which one we should actually be going to. All right, so that's step one. Step two is taking a look at what this thing actually costs us. And I'm going to break down. Some numbers may or may not ring true to you, but let's assume you're bringing five people. And I want to be under the assumption that it's a three day conference, but five days out of the office, because you're getting there the day before, you have three packed days and then a travel day on the way back. Five people. If tickets are 500 bucks, $2,500. If travel is 500 bucks a piece per person, that factors in flight, car rental, all that jazz, you're at 2500. Lodging, 200 bucks a night, about three grand. Taxes and all that jazz. And meals, you're at two grand. By the way, for those that like go out drinking or partying or go to nice places, that's going to be way higher. I just went on like a reasonable amount. So you're looking at 10 grand. Now, there's one other layer and that's where many people overlook and that is the missed opportunity cost. So you can actually figure out like every day that you're not in the office cost you money that you would have otherwise generated. So let's take a look at and missed opportunity cost. Let's go on an assumption that you're a $5 million year company. And by the way, in RSRA, we got folks that are like just getting started, which is not a huge amount of it. Up to folks who are doing over about $180 million as a platform company and everywhere in between, Storm, retail, coast to coast, you name it. So, 5 million. From my experience, we got about 340 roofing companies that we work with at the time of this recording. And this is a reasonable amount to assume that if you're an established company, you're about 5 million. So is that a fair assumption? 5 million? Adjust numbers as you need to. If I divide 5 million by 262, that's the number of working days in a year. So extract weekends out Monday through Friday. I understand there's time off. We're just getting an estimate. It's $19,000 per day. Okay. Of revenue. And I realize it's not profit, but it's revenue. And if I multiply that by five, that conference cost me $95,000 in missed opportunity plus the $10,000 of hard cost. I know that this is top line and that's bottom line numbers, but just for simple math, it's around two. Excuse me, it's around 100,000 for me to take five people out of their job and bring them to an event. So now I'm going to come back to this and I'm going to ask is that $100,000 problem that you're trying to solve? And if, if you are a company that's seen to pivot from storm to retail, the answer is absolutely. That is a make or break business problem that needs solving. Now, I do believe I just wrote an email about this. There's really only two types of roofing companies, aggressive roofing companies, and dying roofing companies in today's economy. And I know people, some people say if you're not growing, you're dying. I don't know if I believe that, but I do believe that if you're not aggressive, you're dying. Because things are changing and they're changing wicked fast. And those that are not aggressive keeping up with it will get, in my opinion, run out very quickly. So now we have a benchmark. It's $100,000 problem we're trying to solve. Is it worth us to go to the right conference? Who can help us achieve that goal? The answer is yes. If it's a nice to have, the answer is no. Now, my rule of thumb is I'm looking for a minimum 5x return. I'm going to use the top line revenue for this example just to make it easy so we're not blurring numbers and getting too grand. So for me, if I go to a conference, I would expect to take the information and people and to generate over the next 12 months at least a half million dollars attributed to the ideas, the information or the connections that I would make. So for this, would you guys agree that if you found the right conference or area or platform that would help you do this, it would be worth, you know, losing out on this money to gain the information? I would say yes if that was a clear problem. But if it was you saying, which is a cool conference to go to where I can learn some fun things and see what's possible, am I going to step away $100,000 learning opportunity just to see what happens for me? No. But your results may vary. So in summary, your next steps are first, identify the problems you wish to solve. Put a dollar amount to those problems to help you figure out your roi. Next, calculate your hard cost and your missed opportunity cost and figure out if by you attending that event you will profitably get a 5x return on your investment. If you do go to that conference and any others you possibly can get your hands on and surround yourself with the people who, who can get you those answers without having to leave. So if that might be you, check out our community. We don't accept everybody. It is application only. There's a link in the description below. I hope this video helps you evaluate not only which conferences you must attend this year, but have crystal clarity on which ones you must not attend. Thank you for joining me in this video. Join me in the next one. YouTube thinks you're really going to love it. Click here and I'll see you there.
