Ep. 134 - Getting To The Core Of Your Company’s Culture | Michelle Boykin

I think that if you took money off the table, most people, if they're looking for a career— because they're looking for a career, not a job— okay, if they're looking for a career, what do they want? They want to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to feel like they're a part of a family. They want to feel like they are contributing to this, to the world. And so it can't just be you're going to make X amount of dollars per you know, hour, you're going to work X amount of hours. No, it's bigger than that. Who are you? What are you going to bring to the table? What are we going to bring to you? And really creating relationships. But it's also about transparency.

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle. Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan from G4 Marketing Group. And with me today is Michelle Boykin from Rackley Roofing. Michelle, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me, Brian. I'm excited.

So I was just telling Michelle, so Addie went to— I'm gonna get the name wrong— but a couple weeks ago at IRE, there was a special breakout session just for the women in roofing. Women in Roofing.

Okay, that's the Women in Roofing.

Yes, simple as that. Women in Roofing. And, um, she met some very cool people there, one of them being Michelle. And, um, you know, one of the things that we've been trying to do here is, um, find you. Um, and I speak of you in general terms because, um, women run out— I don't know, I think that women rule the world, women run everything. But, you know, in a lot of cases, especially in this industry, you guys are behind the scenes. We don't see you, right? And so it's awesome that you guys have, you know, you're getting together, you're meeting others, and it's awesome that you are coming on here so we can get your great perspective on what it takes to be successful in this business. So with all that buildup for you, Michelle, Um, how did you get into roofing business? How did you run a big, huge roofing company?

Well, I started from the bottom. Um, I started out as a receptionist, and actually I was looking for my husband a job. He is in real estate, and the market crashed in '08, and I started looking for him a job and found myself one in the process and became a receptionist. I have an accounting background. I went to school for accounting. And really used that information and sort of the skills that I— skill set that I had to grow and have since grown our service division pretty, pretty large and just kind of moved up. So I went from receptionist to service coordinator to service manager to vice president of service to chief operating officer. So I think finding, you know, what you're good at and then using that is is very important. Our owner is, in EOS terms, a visionary, and he is a visionary's visionary. And so he needs someone to sort of ground him and root him. And we sort of have a good relationship to do that, that I take his ideas and make them a reality, or I take his ideas and say that is not possible in the human realm. So try to make sure that those things happen. But yeah, just, um, just organically, really.

Yeah, all of us visionaries need a you. Otherwise we— it's, it's— I like how you said that.

Also vice versa though, you know, we would have nothing to do if the visionaries didn't come up with the thought.

So interesting. Tell us a little bit about Rackley Roofing. You are a commercial roofing contractor, which we don't have very many of those that are like almost purely commercial. But tell us about your tell us a little bit about the company.

Yeah, so we've been around since 1974. We are on a third generation owner, but none of them are related. Typically you see family businesses and that's not the case for us. Each time they were bought out and yeah, so we've grown organically. When I started here in 2010, we had less than 40 employees. We had one service crew. And now we have over 230 employees. We have about 25, it might even be 26 now, service crews. So we've grown a lot.

Wow.

We are the largest roofing contractor in Tennessee. We're the official roofer of the Tennessee Titans. Uh, we're on the top 100 roofing contractors list every year. So, um, we're, we're just trying to do what we can.

Yeah. So, um, Let's talk about— so I was telling Michelle before we started the recording that, um, I don't know, it was either last year or the year before, I saw an article where— I don't know if they were featured or they were part of— I'm sure you've been in a number of articles, but I remember the one, um, and I tore it out and I meant to reach out to them and, you know, things got in the way. And, um, but the article was about a training, that you guys are starting to develop your own in-house training. And before we turned on the recording, we, we talked real briefly about how I think that that's something we got to start doing is we got to start to develop our own people, create our own people. Can you talk a little bit about the idea behind that and kind of what it, what it looks like?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that everybody in the trades sort of knows that there's been this gap. You know, there was a time in school where you would learn about how to, how to do certain things. It wasn't just math and science and all these other things. You were doing hands-on projects. You know, here we call them co-ops. But anyways, so there's this gap where that stopped happening, and it was an expected thing that you were going to go to a 4-year college. You were going to go get some sort of degree. And you were going to go do something fancy with your life. And that's not reality, right? And I have the 4-year degree, so that's coming from someone that tried to do something fancy with her life and ended up in roofing. But so, so we realized that there was this lack of skilled work. We had a lot of people that wanted to work, but they just didn't know what to do, or they didn't want to work in the trades because they thought it was something different than what it really is. And so we said, you know, we really need to be teaching people people how to install roofs, how to repair roofs, how to do all these things hands-on. And there's no formal training for that. And we've got some folks that are working on some, some bigger things, but that takes time when it's a national thing. The NRCA, which is the National Roofing Contractors Association, is working on certifications, which is another piece of that, but we're still missing that training piece. So we said, well, why don't we just do it ourselves? So we took a building that we have on our campus here already and we repurposed it. We turned half of the building into sort of a conference room slash education area. So we've got a large TV, you know, we can do testing, we can do, you know, video education, classroom learning, whatever you want to do on that side. And then the other half is set up for hands-on training. So it actually is a roof deck. We've got low slope, we've got steep slope, we've got corners, edges, anything that you would really need to do to learn. And it's sort of twofold. We can use it for education, but then we can also use it to determine how good someone really is. So if we get somebody that comes in and says, hey, I've got 20 years of experience, pay me all this money. Okay, that's fine. Show us what you can do. And so it's something that we can look at also. So we're working on having— right now we have one person that's sort sort of set up in that education role. He's a superintendent with us on our service side, but he also can come in and do education. He's bilingual, so works out great for anything that we need to do language-wise. But he's gone through some formal training. He's gone through the John C. Maxwell leadership training. He's gone through some other trainings through the roofing industry. And so he can come in and he can teach Roofing 101. And he can kind of keep that going. So really trying to make sure that we're training. We can also use it just for one-offs. You know, you started the conversation talking about how I got to meet Addie at National Women in Roofing Day, and National Women in Roofing does its own trainings. And back in May, we did a hands-on training for women that was how to install shingles. And we're mostly commercial. Yeah. So I don't really know much about shingles. Put me on an EPDM roof, I'm good, but shingles, not so much. And so we did a hands-on training where we brought all of the Tennessee council ladies in and we installed shingles, but we were doing it remote. So our group was meeting in person, meeting remotely with two other councils across the country, and then that was being broadcast across the country. So everybody got to learn at their own pace and it was a really great event. And having that space available made it so easy to do.

Yeah, that's interesting. So how does it— I mean, obviously, you know, the first thought is going to be for somebody listening, well, yeah, they're a huge company, they can do all of this. I think you got to do it regardless of size, whether you're a huge company or a small company, I think you've got to do this, especially with— I mean, right now, backlogs, labor being such a big issue, you know. Yeah, we have material shortages, that'll get worked out. The labor issue is going to stay with us for years. And so this is a big problem that everybody's got to solve. So do you mind if we kind of unpack that whole thing a little bit and talk a little bit about how do you— first off, how do you get people interested? You know, that's a marketing game. It's like, yeah, Right? How do you get people interested? And are you going after younger people? Who are you kind of targeting?

So I would say, first of all, when we started really looking at this education piece, we weren't as large as we are. We've grown a lot in the past few years. So this was something that really, once we started to look at, has— not that that's the only thing that's affected our growth, but I think that it has affected our growth because when employees feel empowered and they feel like you care enough to, you know, to pour into them, then they're interested and they want to, they want to be employed with you. So I wouldn't be afraid of the number there. But I think that we've done a really good job of developing a culture. And so we're getting a lot of referrals from employees that we already have. We were, we were having a county fair a couple of months ago, and one of the daughters of one of our service technicians that's been with us since I've been here, she, I remember when she was like 4 and she would come into the office and, you know, she would play with whatever was at my desk. And now she's 16. And, you know, she's like, hey, you know, I think when I turn 18, I want to come work for you guys. And she's dead serious. She wants to come work for us. And she's asking, what can I do now to work on that when I turn 18 to come work for you guys? So I think developing a culture where people, people's families want to come work for you, and your friends want to come work for you is important. And I don't mean that in that, you know, sort of unicorns and rainbows sentiment. Really pour into your employees, let them know that you care. And that will bring folks along. Now we do do some job fairs and marketing. We do a lot of television commercials, and we don't do commercials that are, hey, come buy a roof from us, or, you know, we've got the special going on. It's more about who we are as a company. So currently we're running an ad where we have our employees talking about they, meaning the world, they said. So for instance, I say they said a woman, or only a man could be a roofing executive. You know, that's the world is saying one thing, but we're doing something else. And we have a guy that's, you know, he got over a pill addiction and work really helped him do that. And so he says, you know, they said that an addict will always relapse. Well, he's not. And, you know, different things like that. So we're talking about sort of what the world says we are and what we say we are and putting that out there to the world. And so really looking at who you are as a company and what kind of employee you want, and then just being really honest about that, you know, I want this kind of employee, and I want, you know, this kind of relationship with them, and growing that.

Yeah. It's interesting that you talk about culture. Culture has become a big thing. I quite frankly, didn't really quote unquote get it until we really got into EOS 3 or 4 years ago. And, um, it's kind of like— I'm not sure how you would define it, but to me it's kind of like the personality of the company. These are our values.

Absolutely.

You know, kind of like your home, right? You know, when I walk into your home, these are your You know, it's going to become pretty obvious pretty quickly what your family's values are, right? How do you go about— if you're a smaller company, how do you go about figuring out what your culture is and then creating a culture that is attractive?

You know, we felt the same way when we started EOS. We, there was always sort of this, this thing in the air and we never had a name to it until we started doing EOS and we figured out what our core values were. And I, but I think that from day one, it was very apparent that we had a culture of respect. You know, I am a woman in a male-dominated industry, but I never felt like I was being held back because I was a woman. And I never felt like I was being mistreated as a woman in this industry. Because we had a culture of respect. And we didn't have a name for it. And we didn't have our— because we have 6 core values now. We didn't have the 6 core values listed, but they were always there. And we did the EOS exercise where you list off the, you know, 2 or 3 or 4 people that you would clone if you could. And what are their personality traits that really, you know, intrigue you? And we did that. And we kind of all came up with, you know, some of them were the same people, some of them were different. We all kind of came up with the same or similar words. And we're a huge Patrick Lencioni fan, read all of his stuff. And so 3 of ours are from the ideal team player: humble, hungry, smart. And, and we really just built on that. And so I think that it's a lot— I'm making it sound more simple than it is. But I think it's a lot easier than you think it is too?

Well, I think it's simple in coming up with— I mean, really, we could sit down for a couple hours and we can do some exercises and we can figure out, okay, these are our quote-unquote core values. This is who we are as a company. I think the hard part is living those values Yes. And doing it in a way where people see it and, and it, it's like, what am I trying to say, like obvious, that's so obvious. What were, what do you think are some of the things that started to happen for you guys, or what did you do intentionally that started to make it really obvious and then started to attract those people to you?

I think that, um, you know, we, we do the— and I don't know how many of your fans kind of know the EOS systems— that there's something called a People Analyzer. Yeah, that's a piece of that. And so we really focus on the People Analyzer for anything that we do. So it's not— one of our core values is accountable. You do what you say you're going to do. So if I'm late to work every day this week, I'm not going— you know, my boss isn't going to come to me and say, you've been late to work. You know, every day this week, he's going to say, you're not being accountable. And that's one of our core values. And that's why this is important. And so everything sort of has a shift in how you're talking about it. And so that core value sort of gets ingrained in whatever you're discussing. And I think that we realized that we were doing a good job of that when, let's say we had a new hire that somehow passed the sniff test and got through, but maybe didn't meet all of our core values. And other people were coming to our leadership team and saying, this person's not hungry, or this person is not humble, or whatever core value that they weren't meeting.

Yeah.

And that's when it was like, oh, they're getting it. They're understanding what's happening. And when you make the focus the core value versus the behavior, you're making that behavior fit the core value in the way that you want it to happen versus you know, sort of an attack on the person. You know, if I come to you and I say, well, you're just lazy, that's one thing. But if I say you're not acting as though you're hungry, then that gives you a different perspective and you go, oh, now I need to fix that problem versus, oh, why are you attacking me? So it's a little bit of a different way of going about it. And it really makes the employee feel like they have the empowerment that they need. They have the language that they need, and they can sort of go, okay, I know what, I know what my employer expects of me. And now I can run with it versus here's a list of rules that I need to follow. So it's a little bit of a different.

Yeah. And they're actually serious about it because it's because that's one of the things, you know, I was going to ask you is, so you and the visionary are like a partnership. In a lot of ways. How important is it that the owner lives those values? Because a lot of times, a lot of times, you know, you sit in a room and you say, okay, we're going to create a culture and we come up with our core values and then we just kind of let it, you know, you just let it go. And it's usually because the owner is not living the values and everybody's looking at the owner.

It is the most important thing. If the owner is not living it, then you might as well not have them. And I forget what the saying is, but it's something like your culture is whatever the worst employee is. I know I'm messing that up. But yeah, whatever that behavior is that you allow is what your culture really is.

Right.

And that goes for the owner too. So it can't be a do as I say, not as I do mentality. And you have to, especially if you're doing something like EOS, and you've got that visionary, and you've got that implementer, or I'm sorry, integrator. You have to have an integrator that's willing to call out the visionary, because that's a big piece of it. And both people in that role have to be humble enough to take feedback and go, oh, Yeah, that one was about me and I need to do better and be honest about it.

Yeah. And that for all of the owners was some really, really, really good advice. You know, the humbleness of it. Let's pause here for a quick break. In today's world, getting a 5-star review on Google from every single one of your customers is critical. This is something that G4 Marketing Group helps hundreds of home improvement and home services companies with every day. So we put together a free 5-star customer experience checklist to help you ensure every one of your customers are getting an experience that will turn them into raving fans. You can get your copy of the customer experience checklist today. Just go to g4marketing.com/CEX. The checklist will walk you through 30 points in your customer journey that you can improve today. That way you'll be able to turn today's customers into tomorrow's leads, sales, and profits. Just go to gfourmarketing.com/CEX. That's gfourmarketing.com/CEX to get your copy of the checklist today. Then when you're ready to automate your relationship marketing so that your customers grow your business for you, Just give G4 Marketing a call at 305-856-8788 and we'll give you a free demo to show you how your future business profits are hiding in today's customers. Now let's get back to the episode. We, we, so my original question going back was, you know, who are you, who are you looking for? How are you attracting them? So I think we've got a pretty good idea. What, you know, one thing I was going to ask you about, are you looking for people in any age category? Are you looking for, are you like going to high schools or community colleges or not necessarily? It's just, we're casting a pretty wide net and people are coming in.

I think we are casting a pretty wide net. I don't think that there's one necessarily demographic that we're trying to reach. I mean, obviously in this industry it's an aging group of people, and so we are looking sort of a younger demographic. I think that one of the things that we started to do very early on was, um, was look for females. You know, I get up on roofs, so why can't somebody else? And so We have right now, I think we have 4 ladies that are on the roof every day, day in and day out, and others that aren't on the roof, you know, periodically depending on their job title. But, you know, that has opened up doors for us. And I think that having that initial culture of respect and really focusing on our core values has helped because we've never had, you know, a male employee say anything negative about a female employee. So The women that are with us feel very comfortable in those roles. And we actually had a lady that was in the office as a service coordinator that said, you know what, I think I want to be out in the field and she's loving it. She's killing it. So, you know, trying to be open to different ideas and not just assuming that, you know, the person that's coming in for the receptionist role is only going to be a receptionist. Maybe they're going to be something else. We do a lot of promotion from within, so You know, moving folks around a lot is big for us. And I think that that's helped us sort of cultivate more employees that way. But yeah, I mean, as far as truly recruiting, we do try to cast a pretty wide net.

What is the messaging? Like, how are you getting them to, you know, like with when we're doing advertising for homeowners, it's, you know, you think you got a problem, you think you got a roofing problem, or, you know, for selling windows or whatever the hell, we got to come up with some benefit-driven headline. What's in it for them? What is the— what's the version of that for bringing people into, you know, people that have not done roofing before? And, and look, I mean, you're— we're up against— I say it all the time, you know, when we're marketing to homeowners, um, nobody wants to buy a roof. So if you're advertising to homeowners, you got to get over that hurdle first. Well, to get somebody to come and work for a roofing company or a window company doing manual labor, like hard manual labor, how are you convincing them that, hey, this is a really good career path?

Well, I mean, I think that if you took money off the table, most people, if they're looking for a career— because they're looking for a career, not a job— Okay. But if they're looking for a career, what do they want? They want to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to feel like they're a part of a family. They want to feel like they are contributing to this, to the world. And so it can't just be, you're going to make X amount of dollars per, per hour. You're going to work X amount of hours. No, it's bigger than that. Who are you? What are you going to bring to the table? What are we going to bring to you? And really creating relationships. But it's also about transparency. You know, as, as business leaders, it's our job to be transparent with our employees. Now that doesn't mean that we have to tell them every nickel and dime and all the stresses that we have going on. I mean, they, gosh, I can barely deal with that. Why would I want to put that on them? But I want to be honest. Here's where we plan on being in 10 years. Here's where we plan on being in 5 years. And here's why it's important that you fill out that form that you hate to fill out every day. Because here's what happens to it after that fact. So being really open and transparent with, you know, with everybody from every level so that they know what's going on, why it's important, makes a difference. So I think that if you can convey that to the outside world, then they get a better understanding of, of why it is that they should come work for you.

You know, I love it. And by the way, when you see me turning and going somewhere else, I'm writing things down. Yeah, I've got my notes here, but I just wrote, career, not a job. I think that's very powerful of what you said. I think that answers that, that really tells me how you think about it, which then means this is how it's translated as it goes down the chain. And I think that that's really powerful because that is a problem. I think a lot of people are hiring for a job. We're looking for somebody to do a job. We're not helping them create a career. And I— it's funny, I was talking with somebody the other day who has an older crew, smaller company, and wants to bring on new people. And he was talking about one of his people on the crew that has— he's, um, I want to say in his 50s or maybe early 60s, and he's slowing down, and you know, he's got an expiration date. Yeah, but the guy has been with the company for his entire adult life. He's paid off his house, right? He's obviously got some money put away because he's slowing down and he knows he's got an expiration date. And I said to the— I said to, to my client, I said, wow, why aren't we telling that story? You know, you come and you work for us. Not only can you buy a house, but you can actually eventually pay it off. And I think that's exactly what you're talking— I didn't know how to— I didn't know how to actually, like, say it concisely and easily like you just did. But think career, not just a job. That's really, really good. Okay, so you get them, they come in, um, and you guys have a training center. So let's, you know, whatever she says about training center, I say it like with the call center, whether you have one or you have 100, you have a call center. So whether you have 100 square feet for training or you have 100,000 square feet for training, doesn't matter, we're talking about the same concept. So How long is your training program?

It depends on the person. So, you know, we do get a lot of employees that, you know, are experienced, and so there wouldn't really be—

Let's say they're not. Let's say they're not experienced. How long is it?

I mean, if I had to put a number to it, because it's not a standardized thing, I would say probably 6 months.

6 months.

Okay. Yeah. And most of that would be literally on the roof. I mean, it's not like we're going to have somebody, you know, just kind of feeding off of our, you know, payroll for 6 months.

But they're starting in the training center though.

Yes.

So how long are they in the training center for before they go out and actually, you know, make you money?

That's a good question.

Um, ballpark, is it 2 weeks? Is it a month? Is it 2 months?

I would say a week.

A week, okay.

Yeah, yeah, because I mean, most of the, most of the things that you're learning, you don't want to learn in a sanitized environment, okay, um, because that doesn't make sense. You know, you're, you're doing something that can't necessarily be sanitized because it's raining or it's hot or it's cold or, you know, whatever. So you don't want to have somebody sort of in a room that doesn't, doesn't equal reality. So it's more of a, here's how it happens, or here's how you do it. Now go do it.

Yeah. But it's also a way for you to kind of judge whether or not you could put this person out on a roof, because I would imagine you can't put everybody out on a roof.

So yes. And so 5 minutes into their orientation, they're actually doing a virtual reality safety course.

Okay.

Um, it's, um, it's through the American Society of Safety Professionals. And, um, so they, they put on this, um, virtual reality headset. It's an Oculus for people that are gamers or whatever. Um, but yeah, they put this headset on and they're virtually on a roof and they're the safety manager. So they point out safety hazards. It takes about 20 minutes. So they point out safety hazards. They actually outfit their coworker in this, you know, simulation with a harness. They inspect the harness, they inspect the lanyard, they inspect all the things, they decide what you're going to tie off to, and then your coworker falls and you see if you save their life or not. So that's like number one. Um, and most people pass it and do well. And then if we have the folks that don't, then we kind of retrain and talk about the importance of knowing what you're doing, especially when you're on a roof. So That's like minute one. And so yes, when we see something like that, we would definitely deal with it immediately.

Okay. So safety, and then kind of what's, what's next? What comes after safety?

We spend most of our time on safety. You know, being on a roof, you have to make sure that people are being safe. And I think that's probably another thing that sort of helps us with, with recruiting is they know that we take safety seriously. We You know, we have a zero tolerance policy for fall protection. So we see somebody that's outside the flagstands, it doesn't matter if you are, you know, supervisor, you've been here 30 years, you're gone, you're fired immediately. So that's something that we take very seriously. Um, and so I'd say the next—

wait, wait, wait, hold on, let's back up for a second. Okay, I'm, I'm a supervisor, I go to a job, I don't— I, I've been with you for 30 years, I don't buckle in at all the ways I'm supposed to. I'm done. I'm out.

Wow.

That is real zero tolerance.

And you know it. And we've had some folks that that's happened to and they were like, yep, I knew better. Yep.

Yep. So these are— it's, it's things like this that makes companies great, not just really good, right?

You have to. You have to, and as much as it, it just sucks. If you have to lose someone great, you can't, you can't make an exception, right? When it, when it comes to safety, because it's the exception that's going to get somebody killed.

Right. Wow. Okay, so safety, safety, safety, then what?

Then, then depending, it would depend on the role, some sort of you know, technical training. So if they're going to be a TPO installer, there would be some sort of TPO training. If they're going to be a service technician, then they're probably going to be learning about the software that we use, because that's kind of the key component on our service crews. So really just sort of depends on the role. You know, if you're an estimator, then you're probably going to spend some time learning the estimating program that we use. So really, it's at that point, it sort of splits off into whatever role the person's going into.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Interesting for— in the book even, um, I say in, in secret number 4 that, um, you really have to understand the business that you're in. We're in a sales and marketing business, but that's only up to— and I don't say it in the book, but it's only up to a certain level of business, and I'm going to say about $20 million-ish I think is where that, that cutoff point is where you go from becoming a sales and marketing company to really becoming a people company. We're in the business now of developing people. We've got— we've kind of figured out how we're going to get leads. We kind of figured out how we're going to convert those into sales. We kind of figured out how we're going to get it done and we're going to get paid. Now we got to feed that engine, and the way to feed the engine is cash, which hopefully, if done right through the right profit model, that's not the issue. We can grow internally with cash flow, but we need people. And it's really interesting more and more to, to hear about what's happening because companies are growing. Where we've got some really, really big companies out there in the roofing space and the window space and all of that. All right. So I'm looking at the clock here, and I think I want— we were going to talk a little bit about EOS, but it came up, and I want to ask you, if you don't mind, I want to talk a little bit about women in the trades. Um, women are most— have historically kind of been behind the scenes. Um, it's, you know, I, I, I don't know how many clients we have where husband is always out front, you know, it's, it's— he's the person that everybody's always talking about, but it's his wife that's in the office that's actually doing all the work. That's just— she likes it, she's back there, she's, you know, doing the paperwork, dealing with the people, dealing with the office, dealing with all of that stuff. Um, and then we've got owners, then we've got executives like you, and we've got— and all across the board, and it's becoming more and more. What is, what is kind of your advice to women that are involved in this business? What advice do you have for them?

You know, it's funny, I've been in the roofing industry for quite some time now, and I'm fairly well known in the roofing industry just because our company is out there and I'm so involved in National Women in Roofing. But it's still, if I go somewhere with my husband who has nothing to do with roofing, they always start talking to him, you know, how do you do this? And how do you do that? And he says, I don't have any idea. She's the roofer. And I was actually at the trade show, um, this, you know, back in Vegas, and I was at one of the booths and I thought I saw this really cool product and I was so excited. I was like, oh, this is great. We're going to use this. And the guy handed the pamphlet to my boss. And to another gentleman that was with us, didn't hand me a pamphlet. And so I said, hey, just so you know, I'm the roofer here. And I said, this is just a lesson, you know, for you so that you don't— because it bothers me, but I'm not like offended by it.

Yeah, that's good.

And so, you know, and so I said, but somebody else might be. And, you know, I'm teaching you a lesson here. Just give the pamphlet to everybody. You don't know who the roofer is.

Yeah.

But I would say for women, You know, we've got this great organization, especially in roofing called National Women in Roofing. But if you're in a trade, find an organization that you can join that's going to have women that are going to empower you and that are going to collaborate with you. You know, we have this organization and we have local— we have a local chapter, the Tennessee Council, and I walk in the room and my competitors are there. But when we step foot in that room, we're no longer competitors. Yeah, we're friends, we're allies, we're there to support each other. And some of my best friends are people that are in this group with me, and I can call anybody anytime and say, hey, you know, I need help with this, or, you know, do you have advice, or just, oh my gosh, today has been terrible, can we just, you know, take a breather for a minute? And so really just finding women that you can connect with or that have done it ahead of you that you can learn from has been really great. I've got some great mentors that have really sort of helped me through this space. But I do have to say to the men, you know, support the women that support you. You know, my boss is a man and he has been nothing but supportive of me. In fact, he's really pushed me out of my comfort zone. There's no way that 10 years ago I would have been doing this podcast, even if I was in this position. I am an introvert. I don't like, you know, the spotlight. And he said, no, you need to do this. This is important for us. It's important for the company, but more importantly, this is important for you as a person. And so if you're a man and you're listening to this and you have, you know, a right hand and she's a woman, or really if it's a man too, if you have a right hand, that's really getting the things done for you, support them and empower them because that's the most important thing there. Then they're going to support and empower the next, and then they're going to support and empower the next. And so on and so on. So, you know, yes to the women, find some women to kind of lean on, but really more importantly, support the people that support you.

Wow, beautifully said. Michelle, this has been great. I thank you so much for, for taking the time. And wow, I, I don't get impressed very easily. Um, but I'm— I, I took a whole bunch. Look, I got a whole page of like Michelle-isms that I think are just awesome. And, um, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. By the way, um, does the National Women in Roofing— is there a website that people can go to?

Yes, uh, national— I'm gonna mess it up— I think it's nationalwomeninroofing.org. Okay, uh, I believe we'll look—

you know what, we'll look for it and we'll put it in the show notes. But it's the womeninroofing.org. Just do a search for it, it'll show up.

Okay, wonderful.

All right, so again, Michelle, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And, um, everybody listening, great episode. This is one to go back and listen to. Career, not a job. Culture, referrals, the training program. This was just loaded with really good stuff. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, Did it help you look at your business in a different way? Did it spark an idea or ideas that you hadn't thought of before? Do you have a list of action items that you can take and implement into your business or your life today? I really hope so. If it did, I'd like to ask you a favor. Would you leave a 5-star review of the podcast? By doing so, you'll help other contractors find the podcast more easily so that we can help them achieve more success, wealth, and happiness. Freedom. And before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast so you get access to the latest episodes as soon as they're available. We're always striving to provide you with great content, so you don't want to miss what's coming up. In fact, if you haven't already, make sure you go to thewealthycontractor.com and get your free copy of my latest book, The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor. Just pay shipping and handling, and I'll take care of the cost of the book. And finally, a big thanks to G4 Marketing for sponsoring The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. For over 12 years now, G4 Marketing has been the secret back office relationship marketing team for hundreds of home improvement and home service businesses just like yours. You get the customer and our proven system turns that customer into 5-star reviews and profitable repeat and referral business. If your home improvement or home services company completes at least 10 jobs per month, they have a solution that will work for you. To find out more, sign up for your free, no-obligation, 10-minute discovery call at www.gfourmarketing.com/strategy. That's gfourmarketing.com/strategy. Set your discovery call up today and and they'll help you set your business up for long-term profits and success. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan.