How This Retail Roofer Dominates & Spends Only 3% on Marketing

Get more leads, but doing it in a non traditional way. Join me in this interview with RSRA member Taylor Spears, who shares a distinction between relationship driven marketing and transaction driven marketing. This is how most roofers think is how do I get more leads. And in this interview, Taylor's going to share with you three different strategies that you can use, including scripting at the end. But it's really important that you stick around until about 10 minutes in because he really reveals the golden nugget. Like this one idea could be worth a lot of money to the company who execute. So without further ado, let's welcome Taylor Spears and jump right into this interview. So Taylor, you approach marketing just in a really different way than most. Like I, I see most, I'd say most like the traditional roofer. They think I need more leads and, and that's it, right? How do I find the right marketing agency where I don't have to talk to them, I have to think about it. Leads just show up. I'm good at running my company and that's what I need to do. And through our relationship developing inside rsra, you, you know, we were sitting at our annual event and you were in the room as a new committee member and there was a very clear distinction that your approach to marketing is a relationship driven marketing where most is transaction. It's not that one is or they don't both have their place, but you are just absolutely wired in a completely different way than the norm. So I just want to start off by asking you, like, what is your mindset when it comes to relationship driven marketing as opposed to the more traditional transaction marketing? Money in, money out. That's how we measure success. So what does marketing mean to you and how do you measure success of your marketing?

Yeah, so the way that I like to attack marketing is more on the residual income aspect rather than the initial return on investment. And I think a big part of that comes from just my personal life because I'm into investing, for example. So when it comes to an investment property, the easiest way to show the difference how I attack marketing versus the typical where you want to pay for a lot of ads and buy leads. That's when real estate, if you want to buy and flip a property, you're looking for that instant gratification, looking for that money up front. I just spent six months working on this property and instantly get a return, the lump sum of cash and I can go on to the next one. I'm not looking for that short term. I'm more looking for the Long term investment. So my investment properties, I buy and hold properties. I'd rather buy a property, invest money into it, and then let it sit and rent it out that way for years to come. I'll get that residual income from the rentals.

Mm.

So that'll. That's able to continue to grow 10, 20, 30 years from now where I'll still have that investment property and it'll keep every month bringing me in little bits at a time. And yes, you're not gonna make an instant. You're not gonna get an instant lead the for my method of marketing, but you will continue to get that residual income to the point where you don't have to constantly go out hunting for the next flip for the real estate market. In our case, with the buying the leads, we don't have to use Angie, we don't have to use networks, we don't have to use those different type of sources because we are investing into the people that buy from us. And that's our community. Our community is what we focus a large amount of our efforts and our investment dollars. So for example, right now we are doing. Can you see that?

Yep.

We are doing an fight hard, kick butt sympathy. And what that is for is to support breast cancer fighters and breast cancer survivors. And we do that every October. We push it real hard, but we continue doing that throughout the year as well. And what we're looking for is we're looking to do in exchange. If you can give us a dollar, here's a sweatshirt to show your support. If you can give us $100, here's a sweatshirt to show your support. And what we found is that we have these sweatshirts like this floating around. You walk into a shopping center, you walk into the movie theater, the hardware store, you'll randomly see one of these sweatshirts. And the people that are wearing these sweatshirts aren't necessarily somebody that used us in the past. They could just be somebody that's supporting the effort that we're supporting. And what that does is it really ties it together on a higher level and it puts it on an emotional standpoint rather than just that initial snap reaction. When somebody, when somebody is looking to buy a lead and those bought leads is because somebody is online and they're looking up a company and they get funneled to you. This happens through conversation, this happens through. Through an emotional standpoint where people can see that and they're like, that's. Why does that logo look like that? Why does it say that? What is this for? How did you get that. And when somebody's told that you have to donate to get this sweatshirt, they. They kind of get thrown off because, like, no, I want to buy it. No, these aren't for sale. You can't buy these sweatshirts. I buy the sweatshirts. That's my investment. You can donate. So we let people donate in exchange, and then 100% of those proceeds go to a survivor or fighter that's in our area. We look for somebody that's local. Currently, we're supporting a girl in Brigantine, and it's Tara Chafe, and she's currently fighting, and we are giving back to her. So right now, that's one of the opportunities that we are utilizing for our community standpoint, how we are supporting them. And now we also have a bunch of walking billboards. We have people floating around that are proud to talk about where this sweatshirt came from. And they're also speaking about our company as well, about what we do and other events that we take part in. So that's one of the biggest things that we. That we take.

Yeah, I love that. And I love. By the way, I'm sure people are curious, like, okay, great. You know, you got people walking around our shirt. I know it's a charitable cause. How does it work? Which we will get there in a second. But before we do, you know, at the annual event, Mike with Rufal, Mike Goldstein gave me one of those little playing cards, his Guru Khan cards. I don't have one because you have it. And it was really fun. This is an impromptu thing. It's something I think you and I connected with is charitable causes. So there's a charity we support called Resilience 1220 that gives mental health counseling to children aged 12 to 18 and high suicide area risks of Denver metro area. And anyway, so at the event, we, we. I just impulse, like, we're going to auction this off. I want to thank you again. You know, you were the top bidder and literally donated thousands of hours of counseling to children in need and to support a really awesome cause. So I, I commend you and I thank you for that. And. And then it led to Mark Herd, one of our other members, donating. And then I said we'd match it. And then through all of this, we are now able to donate $16,000 to. To the cause. So we are parking where we've pledged our donation. We're waiting because there's another donor that's going to match ours. So we're timing it, and I think it's going to Be in like a week or two weeks. That's a double check. But, but anyway. But what I'd love to get into because obviously like great people are in this for more than, than just making money and just putting on roofs. And when you can link the two together, because I know that there's skeptics and let's be real, the purpose of any business is to make money. And anyone that, that argues that as full of crap, because that is, that is like welcome to capitalism. If you don't make money, you don't have a business. And sadly we're seeing a lot of roofing companies fold right now. But as you've linked these charitable causes with marketing for the skeptics, how do these shirts, when you say you have walking billboards, talk to me about the returns that you experience and then any other organic relationship driven marketing that you're doing that supports that.

Sure. So two of our other ventures that we take on that are similar to this is we do a hoodie that is incorporated with an Eagle and that's supporting the Eagles because we're based out of South Jersey. And what we do is we have those in a green and a black and we give those away to Eagle fans. So we have the, that it as well. So every Eagle Sunday they send us pictures or they'll tag us on their profile or in their story and they'll be at a football party and they'll be the one with the bright green sweatshirt with the Eagles and the veterans roofing logo. And then also we have where we donate roofs in the form of baseball dugout roofs. So we go to the local high schools, the local townships, and we seek out dugout roofs that are either deteriorated, falling apart, they have active leaks, or just need a facelift. And that started off originally with myself and my partner Paul. We decided to replace the dugout roofs of the our local high schools that we both graduated from. And with that getting done, both of the schools showed a tremendous amount of support and return. One of the schools actually had us do all their larger buildings on the property. So that investment, they, they loved us so much that they actually then in turn invested into us and bought from us. So that right there alone paid for both of the, both of the schools. And also they all always offer us either a plaque or a banner that they leave up indefinitely. And what that does is it's a, it's a one time investment on our part where we show up and we're giving back to our community. We're showing support for Our local schools and our local sports teams. And we're doing something that affects people more than just us. And once again that, that hits the dynamic that we are a company that is community driven. And with that our top providing lead source is word of mouth. It's hard to track where the, where our leads come from at this point because everybody just says, I just hear about you guys all the time. Even my girls on the phone when they call in the AI that answers the phone or my human girls or anybody that sees us at a job site or just walking through a store say, oh, I love your company. Or I hear so much about you guys. And they're not speaking about my company in particular. They just see veterans roofing and they're like, oh, we hear so many great things. And every time we ask, you're like, oh, did you use us? No, but my, my cousin did. And I've never heard them speak so highly of a company. I'm like, oh, that's great. And, and we also heard how you went to North Carolina when the, when all the floods were going on. And so it's just like a bunch of things just, just combine and the com. Compounding interest once again, taking it back to the decided the investments that compounding interest. When you have so many people that have so much positive, it drowns out anything negative that could possibly happen. And we have a strong base of leads that they literally cannot explain. How they hear so many good things about us that there was no other option but to use us.

Yeah, dude, that's so special. And it's again I. When you first shared the dugout tactic, which I'm going to guess there's a handful of folks who are either watching or listening. That one left before that golden nugget and that could have been a multimillion dollar idea or two. Heard it and it fell on deaf ears. I mean it that alone. I remember, you know, during the annual event we came up, we gave awards. You got an award for, for how giving you've been in the community and leading with that. I remember getting you on stage, I was like, dude, you got to share this with everybody. And one, this says a lot about you and kind of what we represent together as a community in RSRA is that level of giving. Because I know when we prep this, it says you can share whatever you want, you can leave whatever you want out. And that nugget like that level of vulnerability to lead is such a, such a powerful strategy. And there's only so many dugouts that need Roofs. But as you described, like being a giver. In fact, there's a book from Joe Polish I don't. I think I might have given.

Yeah.

My extra copy I actually gave away at the event. What's in it for them? And it's a, It's a, It's a fantastic book about approaching relationships around what, what. How can I bring value or add value to other people? And when you and I attended that, that AI event that Mike Koenigs ran, you know, Mike overdelivered all the time and he kept talking about, when I show up, I use AI to figure out how I can add value to this person's life. And you've done that here. I love that. The dugout concept that you have a permanent billboard. And it is probably the cheapest form of advertising objectively, like every other billboard you rent and that's a billboard you own. So. One other comment that I would. Would like to add is so many people now, like, there's this branding buzz, right? And there's a big agencies that will make your cartoony logo and wrap your trucks and all that. Which by the way, I think is. Is phenomenal. But branding works. When your customer acquisition cost goes down and with what you're doing, what it's creating, you're like, it's so hard to track. It is physically impossible because if you were to run paid media, whether it's on pay per click or meta or even direct mailers, and it's someone's first touch on veterans roofing, they're like, who the heck are these people? But all those other touches make them more receptive to responding because there's a no like and trust factor. So. And if you don't have this number off the top of your head, that's okay. What percent of your revenue do you spend on marketing?

On marketing was 3%.

3%. That's so ridiculously low. That's incredible. And you are. And I know the answer to this. But for everyone listening, storm work, retail work. What percentage of each?

So retail work takes just shy of 100%.

So I figured almost 100%. Well, I can do. Let's just call it 100% retail. 3% marketing budget. Dude, that's phenomenal. Do you spend any money on transactional marketing methods?

So the only time that we use any type of transactional, aside from yard signs, that we post when we make a sale. So every homeowner, when we make a sale, we post a yard sign in front of their home. Aside from that, there's a Couple just silly ads that we run. But if you view. I know you can go on Facebook and view them and you can see that. I mean, I'm not proud of it, but we could put a lot more effort if we, if we took it a little more seriously. But we just. There's only so much focus that you can give to different areas. And we truly do pour 100% of our energy into the community aspect where it's for us to hang out with the local community or go to a school or when. When we've done the dugouts. So we did a football dugout or their, their equipment shed in app seek and, and that was about a little over a month ago. And they invited us out to the game. So it's like just being able to hang out. And we had our, our sweatshirts on and everybody was super grateful. And that was the opening game for them. So there was. Everybody was coming there and they had four different age groups, so four teams plus the, the teams that were coming to visit. And they had big thank you signs everywhere for veterans roofing that they all. All these communities, they invest the money into that they, they made sure to try to do as much for us in return. For example, we just did a, a company party the other day, and it was a thank you back to my company. We just went through the best of the pressing, got gold in roofing, siding and window install. And our community voted us the, the top for the last two years, so they voted us for gold. And there's roughly a hundred contractors in the roofing market right here that compete in that, that are actually competitive. And out of those getting number one and it's just an outpour seeing so many people just vote for them, vote for them. And then having one of the local towns that we helped out reach out to us and say, hey, you can use our baseball field and we'll, we'll make sure it's all set up so you guys can have your festivities there. And we had two local food trucks come out and they supported us and we had a big thing with our family and friends and it was great.

So congratulations, by the way. That's phenomenal. And you are like a walking example of the type of people that should, should, should be in rsra. I know Andrew and Sybil won best of their market three years in a row as well. And it's fun seeing those celebrations. You should post that in the app, by the way, so we can celebrate with you because I don't think I saw that one yet.

I have to put it on there.

Yeah, I'd love to see it. You know, I want to address some of the psychology behind this, because what I've found with helping people in getting control of their marketing, and I am far more. My expertise is really on the transaction side of marketing. And by the way, it doesn't mean we don't build relationships. That's actually. You know what? I have to take that back. I just had two members join our survey, and most of they were following along for years. And most people do. So my relationships is this. This is my relationship marketing. But when it comes to transaction marketing, I'm talking about spending money on ads and looking at traditional paths where I could say, hey, we invest this much, this is what you earn back. So I actually have to take back what I said, that it's not really transactional. Now I actually think it's the inverse. I'm really more of a relationship marketer. But when we get into the psychology of this, you will see people. When I. When we talk about becoming the GC or the general contractor, your marketing, someone latch on this idea. Be like, well, Taylor makes shirts and I'll just go make some cool shirts. But the missing link, like the secret sauce to this is giving a people a. Giving people a reason to wear it and pride. Everything in. In. In we. That we do unconsciously. Not everything, but most things are driven by identity and a sense of belonging. And if you just. Again, the folks that are going to drop the ball and use this strategy the wrong way are going to just like, go get some cool shirts made up, no one's gonna wanna wear. Yeah. And they're gonna hand them. I have a whole drawer. Like, people give me swag, and it's like, dude, I don't really just need to wear your logo around. But if I gave money to support a cause, like breast cancer, for example, and I wanted to wear that because it makes me feel good and it sends social signals to the world. I'm a good person. I care about this. The same thing when I talked about belonging and you're supporting the Eagles, which, by the way, I've never had good experience with Eagles fans. I was at the way back when Packers Eagle game at Lambeau. It was so funny. We were taking the bus in and I remember, like, having played for, like, hope it's a good game, and all the. All the Eagles fans were like, we're gonna destroy you.

Something else.

But. But anyway, again, belonging. And people want to wear that to be like, look, I'm an Eagle fan and I belong. And I know that there's. There's more to it, but I'm trying to break this down to a psychological level. So you've created, like, a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose that people will actually wear those shirts. And it. It's brilliant. And you're able to do it in a way that also fulfills what you want to do, like give to charity, invest in the schools, in your community and help someone or multiple people who are. Who are fighting cancer, which sucks. So, man, just freaking awesome. If you had to describe your philosophy, your marketing approach as a philosophy, how would you describe it?

That's a good question. So when it comes to a philosophy approach, I would. I believe that there is a higher calling in life. And when. When you do something for somebody else, when you are more giving than receiving, there is. It's going to come back around. And it's. It's really tough to put into two words, but I've come across a lot of business owners and I've experienced a lot of exchange of information, and there's a lot of people that are always looking for the instant gratification or what's in it for me. And this, as soon as you stop looking at what's in it for me right now, and you just realize that you're doing good and people gravitate to good because we're surrounded by so much bad, right? Everywhere you look, you look on the news, you. You talk. You go on social media, you talk to people. They love to talk about the negatives in life. So the negatives in life and things that are going wrong in the world consume like 80% or so. I mean, I'm not even sure what percentage, but they consume a lot of people's attention span. So when you throw off that mindset and you hit them with something positive and it catches them off guard. It's almost similar to when you walk into a store and you go up to the cashier and they look at you and they say, hey, how are you doing today? And your immediate robotic approach is, I'm good, how are you? And they say, I'm good, thanks. Nice weather. And you're like, yeah, nice weather. And you guys just look down and do the transaction and you just leave. But the second that that person says, hi, how are you doing today? And you just look at their name tag and you say, oh, hey, Jennifer, my day's going great. And I love what you have you guys have going on in the store. This is my first Time in the store, and they're like, oh, this person's like doing a conversation or something. You just compliment them or you don't do this. The status quo of just, hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Nice weather. Yeah, nice weather. It's like literally the same conversation. So circling back to the good and bad in the world, I truly believe that if you can just drown out the negativity and the bad, it. It will be returned tenfold. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will. Yeah.

Yeah. When you give to people, man, I love that. And I love that when you talked about bringing in positivity. Because there's a lot of research done, especially in the social media world, social contagion. In fact, this was done in 2014. And someone can fact check me if I'm. If I'm mistaken, but Facebook manipulated the News feed of 750,000 people to try to determine if the content would be shared more frequently and people would engage more if you fed them negative content. So they fed 750,000 people negative things, and they've engaged at a higher rate. And they also ended up experiencing more negativity in their life. And they proved the concept known as social contagion. And we get really agitated. And unfortunately it works. I mean, you can look at, you know, even YouTube video titles like clickbait, that makes you angry. Like, that's what you want to go watch. If I, if I was like, if I made a video, my life is amazing. I'm sitting back relaxing on my yacht, like, no one's going to watch that, right? But it would be like, like, you know, some political slur that so and so's policy change destroyed my business and now I'm stuck in and I have to rebuild everything. Like, now people want to know what's going on. But, but what's interesting is in the, in what do they say? Irl, in real life, when someone's in a store and they have this positive experience that is what connects on a. On a true emotional level. And immediately you're like, wow, that is so contradictory to what I experience day to day. I want more of that. You are good people. And I told you right before we jumped on that, my wife finished, she goes, I really like Taylor. He's a really good dude. He's got really friendly energy. But I still wouldn't want to mess with him. But. But yeah, dude, I love that. And the other point that I'd like to, to highlight, and I've been I've been, man, I've been sucking what I said, when I said the transaction marketing is not true. I'm, I've been in the, in the business of adding value. So when people are ready, they reach out. And it's wild how many people will join rsra. And I'm sure the same with you. Get a roof from you. They didn't need it three years ago, but when they do, it's like, hey, you're the good people. I know. You're the person who helped me. You're the person who helped my friend, my family member. You're doing good work. And if more roofers approach marketing in this way of how do I add value to my community? How do I be a positive shining light and be smart? Understand the psychology of why people do the things they do. You will be the first call when something comes up. So. Absolutely. Just beautiful. Taylor, what, what else should I have asked you about your, your marketing that I didn't?

So since the RSRA event, which was awesome, I made so many great connections. I was just speaking with Jim earlier today, actually.

Oh, nice.

One of the things that we were talking about was the relationships that get built from events like that. And sometimes it's not even the best part of the event isn't the, the knowledge that you learn during the, the seminars and during the classes and listen to the speakers, even though everybody that was there was amazing. Some of the best things is the things that you take with you when you go home and then you can keep that connection going. There's multiple guys from RSRA from that event that I met for the first time there. I think next year you got to do maybe one more day. One more day and it would be, I mean, that would make a world of difference. But the people that I still speak to to this day and the connection that we made from that such a short amount of time, it's. You're almost like a matchmaker, you know, because it is difficult. Like I can go around to local roofing companies in my area, but there's no guarantee that they're going to have a similar mindset. They're not going to have the similar thought process they could. But what you've done with RSRA is you've already categorized you. You've sorted out the ones that don't fit that criteria, which is great because it makes it so much easier to find a connection. I mean, the next thing you might have to do is like a dating site or something like that. This does work like, similar, like I don't know. I'm not on a dating site. But do dating sites, do they value values? Do they talk about that?

I've been with my wife for 14 years, so I couldn't tell you.

You might be onto something. I don't know. If I hear staff is single, maybe they can chime in and help you out. Yeah, but that might be a whole nother venture. But regardless, one of the cool things is being able to have ideas back and forth and being able to relate to them. But one of the most common questions that I've gotten since the event was people messaging me and asking me how, how do you make the connection with a local organization, a school, any of these public facilities? How do you get in to be able to get that opportunity to replace the roof for free? And I almost, it's almost too easy to answer and I always get a little bit of laugh and I just repeat it back to a lot of the guys and girls and what I say is, you're asking how you can get them to let you give them a roof for free. It, it's, I mean the, the, the first approach would just be walking up to them and saying, hey, would you like a free roof? And it always, it's going to get a little bit of like, what do you, what's the strings? Where are the strings at? And when you tell them that all you're looking for that in return is some type of just a thank you or an advertisement or something along those lines. A plaque does great or a permanent banner on the field. There's a couple fields that we are the only sign on because they don't sell banners. They don't have signage. So when you go pull up to a football field or a baseball field and veterans roofing is on the signage and there's no other signs at all. Everybody's like, how, how do they do that? And you have other companies reach out, how did you get your sign there? I want my sign there. Well, you have to replace the roof. Like the roof's already replaced. Well, you know, gotta be faster next time. But one of the easiest ways to replace a roof for free is just offer it. Just go to the school, ask if you can speak to the director of facilities or somebody along those lines. And you could pre sketch it however you do with your software as far as your, see if it fits in your budget. I mean, at the end of the day, I mentioned it before at the RSR event, you're, your square count is what, two or three square? If you can't replace a two or three square roof. I mean, you might have to raise your numbers.

Yeah, yeah, you might be questioning things.

But that's an investment and it truly is an investment that will bring you a residual income because it's proven that people's lives that you affect, the positivity that you bring. And something that. One of the fields that when we replaced it, something that we didn't even realize it when we were replacing it, their biggest problem was the bees. It wasn't even the leaks on the roof, it was the bees that were getting into the fascia. So that one we added in, we wrapped it in aluminum. We, after we got down the roof, we just wrapped everything. And that eliminated their problem. And they were more grateful for the fascia metal than they were the roof they really care about. They're like, you got rid of the bees. They were like, what?

That is too funny.

We were more excited about the bees being gone than the roof over, over their head for further gains, which is pretty cool. So. But yeah, just get out there and just pre sketch it. That way you know your numbers, that way you know that it fits in your budget and you can actually proceed down that avenue and just speak to people, just talk to them, ask them if, if they've had it checked recently. I mean, most, most of these areas are public and you can just walk on the field and go do a free inspection. You don't have to get in somebody's attic space. You don't have to get permission to get on the property for most of these cases. And you can simply go there, take a look at it and then just touch base of the school, touch base with the organization that owns that field and just offer.

Yeah, that's beautiful. If you like this video and you want to continue your journey on marketing, jump into this playlist for a series of videos to help you get in control and get more leads. Sa.