He Takes Every New Hire Skydiving on Day 1: Ryan’s Roofing Sales Story

You're about to be moved to tears or inspired to go jump out of an airplane. That's what Ryan's story will do for you. Now, before we jump into this interview, I want to share with you two things that I believe make Ryan so special. Number one is that despite the fact that he came from nothing, battled addiction is making life changing money. Money is not his primary motivator. And then number two is Ryan's incredibly out of the box and wildly unique approach to conquering his own fear and why he makes every single new hire he works with do this thing too. Thanks for joining me in this video and spending your very valuable time here. If you're new, welcome. If you're not, welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman, and everything that I do here is designed to help you and your team outsell, outgrow, and out compete the rest so we can stomp the scum out. And I am truly honored to work alongside people like Ryan and Carl, who you'll also see in the interview, who are a spitting image of the values of the people that I love to work with to bring that mission to life. Now let's jump into Ryan's interview.

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 first. Thank you both. And Carl, thanks for sending setting this up. Ryan, the little bit I heard about your story is awesome and I'm just really pumped to hear more about it. So, Carl. Yeah. Kick things off, man.

Cool. Hey, thanks, Adam. Always great to see you, man. So really part of the reason why I kind of reflect on our team and I was telling this to Ryan, you know, I think, you know, leadership is one thing. Like we got a leadership team and we're the leadership team. And I think if you look at like a professional sports team, you got like, coaches, but then you have like the captains. You know, the guys are like on the squad and, you know, they're. Everybody else thinks of them as a captain and they're doing all the little details like, you know, on the sidelines and like in practice and in the locker room and the coaches aren't there and the leadership's not there. And, you know, if you have really good captains, I think the team can be really successful. And so, you know, I think of Ryan as like being one of our captains, if not the captain. And so it's so fun for me to take a guy. We just got a guy start at PR I guess about a month ago, and he was coming from another company. And actually, he's the car dealer guy I was telling you about.

Adam. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He sold my wife the Tahoe. And then I called him back, said, hey, I wanted to buy another car. He said, you're never going to believe this. I'm in the roofing industry. And I said, hey, if I can ever help you, let me know. But. And then he called me back, but he was having an experience where he just wasn't getting paid like he was supposed to get paid. So he called me up and asked for some help, and I said, come on, man, let's just get you going. And I paired him up with Ryan. And you got this guy that is, you know, struggling with, like, resentment and, you know, still a little fear just leaving this job and going into the industry. And then I pair him up on day one with Ryan. Ryan sends him the address that he sends every new guy, which to the airstrip for the skydiving place. And he rolls up and he's like, what are we doing? And Ryan's like, we're going skydiving. And he took him skydiving, and, you know, he called me up, this big smile on his face. And then Ryan took him out for a couple hours, and, like, it was, you know, I don't know. Five hours later, he filed his first claim of Birch Builders. And so for me, that. That's, like, what gets me so fired up on a daily basis. And, you know, I'm just so grateful to have Ryan on our team because I could give you. I've had to. Ryan is the first guy. The only reason why he's not a sales manager is because he would make less money, and that's the only reason. But I've had to rip Ryan off of guys and say, hey, you've helped that guy. Now he needs to help himself because Ryan is just so giving and just. He just can't stop. He just. It's in his nature to help other people. And so I get emotional talking about it. And me and Ryan have a personal relationship, too, and I'm just glad to have him as our captain. So there you go, Carl.

Thank you, Ryan. You're bringing Carl. Man, that's got, like, oopsie doodle. That's. That's really the most rewarding thing in the entire world is. Is helping other people get ahead, and you guys are helping each other get ahead. How cool is that? You know? And then, Ryan, you're paying it forward, so.

So it.

It's absolutely amazing. And I. I was given a really strong example from. From our leadership team and from the men that I have around me initially when I came onto this company. I. Should I just jump into this and tell you exactly what happened. Okay. To. To be completely honest, for the. For the last. For the last 25 years of my life, I have. I've been in more trouble than you could possibly imagine and just went through the.

The.

The absolute trenches of addiction, you know, And I. I came to Wilmington when my. When my better half got pregnant, right. She was smart enough to leave and. And she got into recovery and. And I ended up following her out here and. And got into recovery. So, uh, I tried recovery many times, relapsed many times. It just never worked for me, you know, And I. I thought that. I thought that mentality doesn't change, you know, I thought that. I thought that I was stuck and I'd worked myself into a position from the negative choices that I had made in my life where I had absolutely zero options. And. And it was all my doing. So it was. So it's just super easy for me to cop out and hide from that in. In addiction. And. And that's where I hid. And it. It destroyed my life and it destroyed all the people's lives around me and it destroyed my family. And it was.

Bro.

It was awful. You know, So I came to Wilmington and I got in recovery down here and. And I met. I met these guys. Birch Builders didn't even exist yet, and. And I met these guys that just kind of surrounded me and started carrying me and. And loving me and showing up for me and. And teaching me recovery, you know, and it.

Bro.

It absolutely changed my life. Like you were talking about the. The blessing of helping other people, you know, so. So I watched. I watched Burrish Builders form because of the owners undying desire to help other people.

And.

And that's what. That's what I watched him do as my sponsor. It's what I watched him do for me. And then as I continued to grow in. In my program or recovery and I continued to work steps and I continued to follow his suggestions, my life started to get better. And this. And this company formed the. The same way. Carl, I don't think I'm wrong. I don't think British Builders was a plan. I think. I think our. I think our captain had full intention in doing this on his own. But he couldn't stop helping people. And people would ask for help and he'd let him in the truck and more people would ask for Help. And he'd let him in the truck, and all of a sudden, the truck wasn't big enough, and the company just wouldn't stop growing. And. And I've watched this over the course of years, just this. This blessing pour out over this company directly because of Burrish's pure intention to help people, you know, and these men literally carried me into wellness and loved me until I could love myself. And. And gave me all the suggestions that have brought me to where I am today. And you were one of the first suggestions in the roofing industry. They told me to watch everything that you put out, so I started watching everything that you put out. And you said that. You said roof sales is personal growth and development in disguise. And I clung to that. I was like, you know what? That. That sounds exactly right. And. And. And when I. When I tell you I was nowhere. Like, I was nowhere. It was so bad.

It was.

It was so bad. I. I stayed in a recovery house for almost 30 months, and I slept on the back porch of that recovery house for about a year and a half until I got the suggestion to move on. And I. I started in Bursh Builders and repairs, you know, doing repairs, and did that for about a year. After I was sober for a year, Burris let me have a job here. And then I went into repairs, did repairs for about a year. And Carl called me in the office one day and just kind of forced me into sales. And my life hasn't been the same since. Took off like a rocket. And all I did was follow the suggestions. The men around me. And the. The roof strategist Battle pack was one of those suggestions. So I bought that battle pack and I poured over it and I studied it, and I printed out all those templates, and you told me not to change them, so I didn't. I just put my name on them and my phone number on them, and. And I started getting with my. With my girl. And we would. You know, we would address thousands of letters and mailers and send them and send them and hang letters on doors and. And we stayed after that consistently until we caught traction. And. And we. We started getting. Build. Started making deals. He taught us how to leverage referrals. The. The Gospel on Burch Builders, you know, all share with each other sales techniques, strategies, ways to work referrals, stuff like this. And. And we just implement those things and stay consistent with it. And now it's like, man, I almost feel terrible for everybody. Like, I went, like, I wake up in the morning and perspective is such A huge thing. You know, it's a perspective, and how you frame things is a huge thing. And initially, I was extremely intimidated by knocking doors. Like, extremely intimidated. There was a lot of fear there. Just, like, there's been a lot of fear and a lot of things throughout my life. And. And Scott Ovens helped me tremendously with that. That grew out of Burst Builders as well. One of the. One of the guys had a birthday, and he wanted to. He wanted to go tandem skydiving for his birthday. So I was like, great, we'll do that. You know, sounds great. We got up in the airplane, and I don't know if you've ever been in an airplane that they opened the door on, but I was.

I had.

I didn't think I would be. But they opened that door, and I was absolutely terrified. I was terrified. I didn't want to do it. I was like, forget this guy's birthday. This is stupid. I don't even want to be here, you know, And. And then these guys start falling out of the airplane, and my sponsor is right behind me. And, you know, you don't want to be the guy that was like, no, I'm not jumping. You know, like, you don't want to be the one that landed, because the boys are going to give you, you know, a hard time.

So.

So I went ahead and went. And, man, they had been telling me for a long time in recovery that I needed to pick a hobby. I just wasn't interested or passionate about anything, you know? You know, and, man, when. When we came out of that airplane for the first time, it was. It was the quietest my mind has ever been. It. It was just absolute peace. And, man, when we landed, I signed up for AFF and I started trying to get a Scott Alvin license a month later. And now, you know, because of the freedom that this job creates, after you stay consistent for a while. I wake up in the morning, and everybody's got different views on it, but I personally don't like to knock doors before 10am that. That's just how I feel about it. Well, the drop zone opens at seven, you know, so. So I try to sell all of my jobs in Southport so that. So that I can go to the airport first every morning. And it's like. It's like meditation for me. It's like morning meditation. And Matt told me. He. He told me, if you just do what I tell you and you just follow these suggestions and you keep working on your recovery, you're gonna grow and your head's gonna Fall off with the result. And it, it's falling off on a daily basis. I'm having so much fun, I can't stand it. And like we were talking about perspective just a little bit ago. The, the longer I, I worked on talking to people at the door and the more I watched your trainings and the more I talked to the guys and worked with them, the better my sales pitch got. You know, till it, till it just kind of got honed in to a point where I feel like it's beautiful, it's extremely comfortable, it's really quick. You present exactly, you know, who you are, why you're there, what you're doing and what you can offer in a, in a very short period of time. And they either let you up there or they don't. And if they don't, that's great. Have a nice day. I'm going to the next one. Right. And by, by continually doing that, it, it's just absolutely changed my life. So now I've kind of framed knocking doors like a game, you know, like, like it's just fun. And if, if for me, knocking doors was the worst part of the job, you know, because I didn't like doing it, now framed it as a game and I get to do it with my friends and if nobody's available, I get to do it by myself. And you never know who you're going to meet. I mean, we end up in these homeowners house playing ping pong, flying flight simulators, looking at their cars, eating cookies. It's. I can't tell you how many people have baked me cookies and given me brownies while we're doing the roof. We're just, we're just having a blast. So. I can't believe that this happened. Roof sales absolutely changed my life and I'm just getting started. Like I can't imagine. I mean, I can see the guys that have been doing this for years and I can see their lives and it, it's kind of just like, just like in recovery, you know, the, the people in recovery that led me to wellness had a map that was proven and they gave me the suggestions and I followed them and it worked. And it was the exact same thing with the, with the battle pack. There's a, there's a proven plan. Here it is, it's right in front of you. Should you choose to follow the suggestions and do the work, your life's going to explode with wellness. And that just works really well for me, you know, being able to follow someone to wellness and I Feel like that was just laid out in that battle pack that you put out and I'm just super grateful for it, man. So, yeah, like, ultimately, what I was telling Carl earlier, like, you, bro, you changed my life. You did. And, and we're, we're just having an absolute ball today.

Man. I'm. I'm like legitimately speechless. I just don't. I am, I am basking in your excitement and life transformation because it's the most rewarding thing in the, in the entire world for me and it's moment, but forget that. I'm happy as hell for you, dude. I mean, talked. There's a few things that you had said. One is the word love. You know, people being around you that love you. And it's one of the things that I think is often overlooked with roofing companies when we look at culture is this idea of love. Probably because it's a pretty bro y industry, you know, but it's important, you know, love it. For those who've gone through recovery, know that it's important. And for those of us that have had addiction, self. Love is something that, you know, for most of us, we lacked in our life and having to find it is through other people often loving you first. And I think there's truth that love heals. And Carl, this is a testament to you and what you've built in your culture and the fact that one of the first things that Ryan shares is love is fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic because if we. I just finished reading Payoff by Dan Ariely. It's a book about motivation. And at the end, the book sums up with motivation is love, meaning and connection. Those three things. That's what keeps people motivated. Love, meaning, and connection. And it sounds like you have love in your life and you're paying it forward. You have meaning in what you do with the people you're surrounded by and you feel connected on a level starting internally with, you know, tapping into your yourself through. Through personal development in this whole roofing sales world, through skydiving, connection with the customers you serve and connection with your team. Like, what more could you. What more could you ask for, man?

And. And now we get to take our customers skydiving all the time. Any of them say that'll say yes, we put them in airplane and throw them straight.

I don't know if our insurance covers that, Adam, but yeah, I don't think it does actually. But.

Personal choice, they sign waivers that they're social outing.

Yeah, well, I think, I think and I might add to that Adam, I don't want to take, you know, like, I just want you to meet Ryan. You can tell how genuine he is as a person. This is a conversation we had. I had with, you know, our owner Matt, probably a couple, I don't know, about a month ago, because you're just. When you're building a sales team, you're going to have. We got 35 guys across all our markets. And so, like I said, we're really lucky to have Ryan as a captain, but, you know, we've got some guys that are struggling and personalities, and you're not gonna have, like, 35 guys that you just. Or, you know, some of them are going to drive your bonkers. Right? So that's just for the other owners out there, managers or whatever it might be.

So.

But, you know, Matt had told me about three weeks ago that, man, thank you so much for dealing with X, Y, and Z sales reps all the time. And. And my response to him was, hey, you know, if. If me dealing with X, Y, and Z gives me the opportunity to deal with Ryan, guys like Ryan, because you get. If you're going to have, you know, you're going to have to have X, Y, and Z to have a Ryan Walker, it's worth it. Every single moment's worth it. It's, you know, so as you're building your sales team, like, I. I really feel a lot of gratitude and love that I get to come show up to work every day with Ryan. And, you know, it's like our guns are pointing in the same direction. We're on the same team. I know what he's doing. He knows what I'm doing, and I don't know, it's just really cool experience for me.

So, yeah, man, I really want to dive into the skydiving thing. So you're taking.

You're.

You're taking new reps, and the first address you give them is to go skydiving.

Why, Period? Don't call my phone. Why? I. I think the. The why for me is because it completely changed my life. I've been scared my whole life, and. And there was a lot of. A lot of fear for me initially in skydiving. If the. If the guys hadn't have been there, like I said, I wouldn't have done it. I know I wouldn't have done it, because, you know, nobody knows what's in the back of your mind, you know, but you do. And what was in the back of my mind was overwhelming grip and terror, and I never would have done it. Alone. I never would have done it alone. And then as I started a F progression, the, the very first time I ever climbed out of an airplane to, to do like a initial EFF jump with two instructors holding you like training wheels. So you climb out, you check in, check out prop, and then leave the aircraft. So I checked in, checked out, went prop, and I got stuck, I mean, just engulfed in horror, scared to death. And one of my instructors is shaking me. He's going, oak Island's that way.

You gotta get off the airplane. We're not gonna make it back.

So I closed my eyes and I let go, you know, and I mean, thank God for both of those instructors. I'll never forget them as long as I live. One snap, John. The other one's named Baron. And, and, and they help me, you know, and eventually I opened my eyes and eventually I pulled the cord and, and it worked out, but it probably took seven, seven, seven or eight jumps before that fear started to subside. And, and when it subsided, it was replaced with a absolutely overwhelming sense of peace, love and joy. And it's extremely consistent. So, so why do I take new guys skydiving? So solely for the, for the experience. You know, I, I feel like if, if you can do that, you can, you can definitely knock doors, right?

Yeah.

So, so I'll just take the new guys and, and jump out of airplane with them and then, you know, maybe knocking doors will be a little less scary. It's not really a big deal now, right?

Yeah. Dude, the comparison. So how do you think. I want to ask you a couple follow up questions on the skydiving thing, starting with where did you find the motivation to face your own fear that intentionally, over and over and over again.

From, from the, from the men that are around me through following the suggestions of the men that are around me that physically carried me to wellness. I, I wouldn't have found it on my own and I didn't come up with it myself and, and I wasn't looking.

Yeah, it's amazing. There's one, there's one word that you've said that's really natural to you, the word suggestions. And I, I, I know that there's intention behind the use of that word. Instead of they didn't tell you what to do, they suggested it and it was, the onus was on you to do the thing or not do the thing. And when you, and then before you had mentioned, I forget where it was in these notes. Hold on a minute. But yeah, I believe you said plan and roadmap. You know, why. Why reinvent the wheel? Other people have done this before and takes a humble person. And Carl, you mentioned this starting off. You know that you said Ryan's a humble guy. It takes someone humble to just follow and put. Follow the lead. And it's amazing the success you've had by letting. Being open to being led. But then also, once you figured it out, now doing that for other people. So where do you.

We haven't even. We barely scratched that surface at. I mean, that's the cool thing that I watch Ryan do every day. Like, you know, I'll see. I almost know it's instantaneous because every now and then, I'll have to have conversations with guys that are just in a slump or not doing what they're supposed to be doing and just say, hey, you got to ramp it up. I need you to recommit. Like, let's write out some goals for the next 30 days. And then, you know, we kind of get them. Get them fired up, and maybe they're going through a slump or, you know, some days it's easy to get out of the truck. Some guys get out of the routine of getting out of the truck, and the fear kind of comes back. And so I just think it's hilarious that I'll have conversations with those guys. Well, map out a plan. And then I called in the next day, and they just happened to be in the truck with Ryan. You know, it's like, Ryan didn't know we were having that conversation. But, yeah, you know, our team thinks so highly of him that, you know, Ryan's right. And, you know, the thing like being a sales rep, when you take a guy out and you're training him like Ryan, you know, this is something I've had to tell Ryan to stop doing. But Ryan has a neighborhood opened up, and he will take a sales rep that's struggling in the neighborhood, knock doors, file a claim, and split it. And I'm like, ryan, that's your neighborhood. You got it opened up. Take him to a different neighborhood, you know, but he just doesn't care. It's not about the money. It's about getting back, passing it on, and you can tell how much it means. You know, just. It continuously fires him up, you know, and. And Ryan, in and of itself, I mean, you know, I think his first year, he did about 1.5 million, 1.6 million. So even though he gave away a lot of business, we're kind of working on that. You know, he still had an amazing year, right. For a First year sales rep, so pretty cool.

That's phenomenal. You know what started this? I just pulled up the messages that you and I exchanged in RSRA through our. Through the app, and you. This started off with you sharing some really significant successes with your team, specifically sales reps that had no experience and what they've been able to do. Are you comfortable sharing a little bit of that? Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think that, you know, I didn't want this to turn into an advertisement for Burst Builders, but that being said, I think, you know, it's really cool for me. Like, we've. We've, you know, like I said, We've got roughly 35 guys across all markets. We've never run a hiring ad. In fact, it's funny, every time we tell people we're not hiring, it seems like great talent just falls in our lap. You know, one of those skydiving instructors works for us now. So his main gig is, is selling roofs with Ryan. And he had called me and said he wanted to sell roost. And I said, we'll just get in the truck with Ryan, ride a little bit. We're not hiring. And he didn't have a business. He didn't have business cards. He didn't have an iPad. He didn't have a CRM login. He's just rolling with Ryan and knocking doors. And I think he put in like, I don't know. What, what did Chris put in? Like seven claims in. In like three days.

He's been. He's been here right. Under 90 days. And he just filed his 30th claim today.

Yeah. And so he's like. He's like 10 claims in. No training from sales management, no business cards. Right. Brian gave him a shirt and a hat and a ladder and sent him on his way. And. And he's calling me and I'm. And. And so long story short, after he put in, I don't know, it's like 10th claim, I was like, well, I guess we gotta hire this guy. So, yeah, can't not hire this guy. So, you know, it's just really cool. But like, our top. I'll just share a little bit about our top two sales reps. Adam Alexander, who's kind of my counterpart, he runs South Carolina, had zero experience. He was a mattress. He owned a landscaping business in Sumter, South Carolina. And he works in a mattress warehouse that built mattresses and came down with us. He started right before I did it, actually, but I was hired as kind of like a general manager. He was hired as A sales rep. No experience in sales, no experience in construction, especially not roofing. And Adam did 3 million bucks in his first year, so just took off like a racehorse. He was all about consistency. Same thing, follow the plan. But he made, you know, 10 times the amount of income for him, his family, in that first year. You know, Travis is another one of our guys. So I love to mess with Adam and Matt because Travis is a guy that I've known for a long time, but I like to mess with Adam and Matt. Adam and Matt, who are kind of the other two prongs of our leadership team. We just make decisions together. There's no ego. So if Adam has an idea on something I do handle and it's a better idea than what I have, by all means, let's do it. And that's just kind of how we do things. But. But I still give them a hard time because they didn't want to hire Travis. They thought he was too quiet. Because he is. He's quiet. He's kind of introverted. But I've known him for a long time. He came from a logistics company. He's just a hard worker. And then, you know, he kind of has the Mr. Fix it mentality. He's. He loves to, like, I call him the woodworker because he likes to do woodworking. So he's just one of those guys that kind of fix stuff. And so because you kind of need sales guys or guys that can. Not even sales guys, but guys that can be consultive sellers, but also they got to get on roots, so they got to kind of have a certain profile to be successful. And so. But Travis, same thing.

He.

I think Adam sold $1.32 million his first 12 months. Travis sold $3.1 million his first year. So two guys that are just, like, knocking it off. And then, you know, you follow that up with guys like Ryan, who, like I said, probably could have been well over 2 million, maybe 2.5, if he was just purely laser focused on his own sales. But that's just not what brings him happiness. So he's focused on, you know, his happiness, and. And I'm excited for him. He's got a young kid, so, you know, Ryan was. Ryan was our repair guy. And he'll think this is funny, but he was. He's really good at repairs, but he was really good at talking to customers. And he was so good at talking to customers. He was kind of slow at repairs. So the repair list was kind of bulking up a little bit. And. And we Kind of like he had one foot in and one foot out of sales for a little while, but just couldn't fully commit. And so, yeah, I brought him in my office, and I was like, hey, good news and bad news. Bad news is you're fired from the repair team. Good news is you're on the sales team and, you know, go let it rip. Don't turn back. Which he never did. And he came from a repair job making, I don't know, maybe 500 bucks a week, something like that. But he took off so fast that he never even took a draw. We would have gladly given him a draw to get through his first, you know, two or three months, but he just worked so hard, took off so fast that he didn't even.

He.

He didn't ask for one. He didn't need it because he was. From day one, he was knocking down claims, you know, So, I don't know. It's pretty cool. You know, we got a pretty cool group and lots of cool stories, and I feel very grateful that Adam knows a little bit about my background and so feel lucky that we kind of keep doing this thing.

So.

Yeah, Carl, you were one of the interviews on the channel that I. I've gotten a lot of feedback on. And I remember when you first. First got into the business. Dude, I still remember details. I remember you being. I. I was so. I admired your vulnerability and realness about your fear of knocking doors, the failures that you faced coming home and having to choke back tears when your daughter would come up and ask how work was, and you had had to try to find a way to tell her it sucked. I didn't do well. And I vividly remember you sharing an absolute golden nugget that I've shared with people ever since. And I've given credit to you, but you said, hey, you know, when you're afraid of knocking doors, you got to just get the first one out of the way. So just show up at a house where no one's home and knock that door first, and that way you're out. You're already out of your truck. And I was like, that's so good. Like, it's so good, and it's so simple, and it's such a practical piece of advice. So anyway, that. That interview, which, by the way, we'll put a link up here for that, but really, really touched me. It was. It was like, that was as real and raw as it gets. And I'm. I am betting folks that watch that and then watch this are going to be like, who the hell was that guy compared to who you are now? Like, I remember when you. When we. When I saw you in the onboarding session for. For. For rsra, I. I was. I, like, barely. I mean, I recognized you as a human. On how you look. I didn't recognize the person that was there because of the.

The.

The growth and the confidence, certainty, and comfort in your own skin. But not just comfort in your own skin. Like, confident of how you got there and just this. This very sincere and deep purpose behind what you were doing and with who you were doing it for, which you don't see from everybody. You know, a lot of folks are really excited about the. The numbers they put up on the board, and I know that you are most excited about the people that you work with. So. Yeah.

And I think a small, funny tidbit about that, Adam, I send that video. Yeah. I don't send the video to everybody. I'm happy. I'm ashamed of it. But I do send it to guys that are struggling. Right. So that's the point. And. And I appreciate some people have reached out to me over the years and kind of talk to them quite a bit. I think you forward in my way, but. But I do love. There's this one guy that has this comment under it that says if I said. If my sales rep said as many times as he said, I would have fired him on the spot. I just want to thank you, whoever that was, because you've taught me a lot about speaking on camera. And just like, I just did it. I just did it, but I'm aware of it.

Yeah, it's.

I will say that, you know, my owner now probably feels a lot differently. So, yeah, I think he's glad. He's glad that he didn't fire me.

I think so, too, because I said, dude, there's. There's. In the comments, there's. You just have to take everything with a grain of salt. And I think things land when they land when there's truth behind it. And it's good to. It's good to have an open mind. And at the same time, you gotta be discerning on what I call the keyboard commandos, the people that have it all figured out, that don't have it quite figured out. But. Yeah. So, Ryan, if you were to give advice to yourself when you just got started in sales, what would you. What's the number one piece of advice that you'd give to yourself, knowing what you know now?

Don't buy dumb stuff. Invest.

Don't buy dumb Stuff. Invest. That's funny. That's probably one of the things I tell myself too.

We're working on.

Yeah, yeah. Speaking of investing, I did the math on how many. So I think I've had like 27 vehicles or something like that. I'm only 38 years old. That's way too many vehicles. They're fun, but, man, when I looked back, I was like, started to do the math and like, loss, loss, loss, loss. What would have happened if I took that money and invested it? I was like, that'd be worth seven figures right now or.

Or more.

So what was. At least, what was the fun stuff that you. That you blew money on? Any. Any fun things? Yeah.

Oh, oh, yeah. Dirt bikes, Crotch rockets. Skydiving. Skydiving's not cheap.

Yeah.

At all.

And anything with an airplane is not cheap. I don't know.

Especially not cheap to take people skydiving.

Do you pay the bill every time you take a newbie skydiving?

Yes, he does. Yes. And you know, I would give Ryan some kudos too, because. Yeah, this is kind of like we have sales reps that start all the time. And it's like before they get their first sale, they go to the dealership, they buy a $60,000 truck. Thousand dollars car payment, right. And you know, Ryan called us and said, what should I do? And I think, would you buy a $15,000 used truck, Ryan?

Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't afford it and you guys told me how to get a loan. So I took that suggestion and I went and tried to get it and I got denied because I've never had anything and my credit was right. And I came back, you know, with my tail in between my legs and was like, $15,000 and I don't have it, and they won't let me have it, and I don't know what I'm gonna do. And, And Matthew Burris told me to just come get a check, and he wrote me a check for $15,000 and let me have it. And he was like, you can have 5 years to pay me back.

Yeah. Yeah. Well. And I think. And I think that's. And that is, that's why we love working for Matt, because that's who he is.

And.

I just say that, you know, Ryan is, you know, he's certainly has spent some of his money and he's on the right trajectory now, but I think it's. It could have been a lot worse. Right? You know, he's driving the same truck, same fifteen thousand dollar truck.

I love that truck.

Yeah.

And Matt and Carl told me how to pay it back and he gave me five years to pay it off, but it was paid off in 90 days.

Yeah, he did. Yeah. That's awesome, man.

Stress free.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Dude, I am so grateful for you guys sharing your story. Ryan, your story with me and Carl for you setting this up. Carl, is there any. What's the one thing that you would tell yourself getting started from where you are today?

Yeah, I think Ryan said it best. Right. Is, you know, you really don't. In a couple different programs we're involved in, but the roof strategists and kind of how we operate personally and professionally. It's like you don't really have to reinvent the wheel. So it's not about reinventing the wheel. It's just about, you know, following the path. Right. It's like the, you know, the trail is cleared. There's no reason to go through the forest. Just go down the trail and as long as you do that, you'll be fine and you can stay consistent. So you get up and treat it like a job and you, you follow the path. You don't try to cut your own path too early, then you'll be fine. So I think Ryan said it best.

Awesome, man. Guys, thank you both, man.

Thank you. Thank you so much, man. We have a blast watching your videos, man. They help so much.

So much.

Really did.

It's weird. I have a hard time with compliments in receiving this stuff. And one thing that I haven't shared that that much. I'm starting to now. This entire thing was an accident. Everything. I got burned from the roofing industry. I had made a handful. I was only working with clients one on one. I had a handful of videos because I was really tired of owners that we'd meet and I'd be like, hey, did you talk to your team about this? No, I got busy. So I was like, I need to get you out of the way and I'll just make some videos for your team. So I didn't know anything about the Internet. I put them up as unlisted. I called my web guy. I'm like, hey, can you just make these on a website? Make the password roof. Everyone had the same password. All my. All my clients. And then I got burned from roofers again. And like, screw this industry. I'm done. I went on YouTube and I made my channel public and I said, I hope they help somebody. I'm out. And then people started finding them and then saying, make more. My wife's like, you should do it. And I was like, why? She's like, because you're helping people. And I had. Dude, I didn't. I didn't have a product. I had no monetization plan. I just started making videos to help people out and then people were getting help and I'm like, man, I could, like, these take time, you know, how could I do this and make it make sense? And then I was like, oh, I could. I could take all the stuff I used to help get leads and just package that up as my first product and then the rest is history. So anyway, and we're super.

I don't want to cut you off just because, you know, I've obviously told you over the years how much it's made an impact on me and obviously us as a company. Right. It just. It started with me individually. It's rolled up into us as a company. We're just super grateful for you. And, you know, pound for pound, we tell every new rep, right, that this is the starting point. You know, we're going to train you. But if you want to watch some, you know, watch some content, sign up for this program, we're glad to be a part of the roofing and solar alliance and got guys rocking and rolling there. They're still to get the battle pack, but it was really cool. What's really cool for me is to see the expression on Ryan's face when I said, hey, Adam from the Roost strategist is gonna reach out to you because he wants to email you. And Ryan's just like, what? You gotta be. Gotta be kidding me. Be like, if you're a basketball fan and Michael Jordan just showed up at your house, you know.

Yeah.

So that's really cool to me. And the same thing with, you know, I've been telling people all day or not all day, but everybody said, what are you doing? I need something or whatever. I said, well, Ryan's actually doing an interview for Adam at the Roostratist. And people are just like, what? Their heads? So. So it's just really cool, man. We just appreciate you having us here. And I'm glad he could meet Ryan and.

Yeah, yeah, me too.

To spend some time with him. We're super grateful for what you do, Adam.

Yeah. Thank you, guys.