In this interview, G4 Marketing Group’s Brian Kaskavalciyan talks with Victor Smolyanov, owner of Victor’s Roofing, about how the COVID‑19 stay‑at‑home orders in Michigan have forced his large roofing company to shift from a high‑volume operation to a minimal‑activity mode. Victor frames the situation as a "temporary pause," focusing only on essential leak‑repair jobs while preparing for a post‑lockdown surge of pent‑up demand. He outlines concrete steps the company is taking during the slowdown: implementing a better expense‑tracking system, reorganizing the yard and shop, and training the sales team to sell virtually via Zoom. Victor also discusses the company’s financial health, noting an $800,000 pipeline that cannot be acted on now, and emphasizes the importance of cash reserves built up from previous profitable years. The conversation ends with Victor’s advice to keep morale high, conserve cash, and view the pause as an opportunity to improve processes, assuring that the business will rebound once restrictions lift.
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Hey everybody, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and today is April 2nd, Thursday. Having another one of these quick conversations with my client Victor Smolyanov from Victor's Roofing. Victor, I said it wrong, didn't I?
Viktor Smolinov. Close enough.
Oh, I did say it right. Okay, cool. So Viktor is in a really interesting situation. He owns one of the largest roofing companies in Michigan. Up until, what, 2, 3 weeks ago, you were busier than busy and things have slowed down. Obviously, Michigan is on pretty strict lockdown orders. So I just— we were just having a conversation and I asked him if he wouldn't mind jumping on and letting me record him, his answer to the question I'm asking all, you know, all of the people I do this interview with is, what are you thinking right now? What are you feeling right now? And what are you doing right now?
I mean, thinking, feeling, I think that we share the feelings with a lot of the people. It's, you know, it's times of uncharted territory. You're not really sure what's gonna happen tomorrow, the day after. But my outlook on it is it's a temporary pause on what we're doing, right? Like we were Typically we're doing 50 to 60 jobs a week, and then about a week and a half ago we have a stay-at-home order. And what we decided to do is we are only pursuing projects that are actively leaking. And if that means that we're only doing one roof a day and one repair a day that are considered essential, we will. But to me, it's a temporary pause. You kind of put your business in idle, put it in maintenance mode, and once the stay-at-home orders are lifted, my gut feeling is that there's gonna be a pent-up demand. I was telling you earlier that our website is seeing more traffic on it than it did last March of 2019. And I think that people are spending more time at home, they're doing the research. And I do think when people start feeling, I guess let me say, safe again to be outside or to be doing things, I think the demand will be there. So temporary pause, working on projects, putting new processes in place. And for, especially for the management team, for the leadership team, it's, hey, let's get things in order that we, you know, we're putting off before because right now is the time to do it. So I think it's a temporary pause that's going to be recovered later.
Yeah, and I like what you said about that is doing the things that you've had on the list of things to do, improving processes. Do you mind sharing any, like, specific things that you are are working on?
I mean, uh, something simple, right? In finance, a better way to track expenses, right? Because there's not a lot of things to process right now. You go from 50 to 5 jobs a week, so now we have time. So let's get a better expense tracking system in place. On the sales team, you know, let's use that to train our guys, coach our guys on Zoom calls, right? And even when this is over, I think the consumer is going to be a little bit hesitant to let us in the house. So unless we pivot and we change and we say, hey, if you're comfortable having us in the house, we'll be out. And if you want to do a virtual appointment, we'll do that as well. And, you know, we're coaching guys right now, having trainings on, hey, how do we get better in selling virtually? Because selling via Zoom is very different than selling in the house. You can't do a show and tell, right, as good. You have to keep people engaged because it's really easy just to zoom out That's actually funny, zoom out on a Zoom call, right? Because you don't know, you don't know if they're watching you, you don't know if they're paying attention, are they texting, what are they doing? So it's just, it's practice, practice, practice. So yeah, and even, even our own yard, like at our shop, you know, we wanted to organize it better, we wanted to grade it. So we have only one guy working in the yard right now, he's the only one there, but he's moving things around, getting everything organized, and to make sure when we get back into the swing of things that we're prepared for it.
Wow, awesome. Great advice, great attitude. Again, thank you for doing this. I'm gonna keep it short 'cause I know you're busy, you got stuff to do. What a great message. I appreciate you, man. Thank you very much for doing this. Any parting words?
Keep your head up. You know, a lot of guys, and I know that a lot of our competition will be out of business. Based on how they do business. And keep your head up, we will all get through this. I mean, I was telling you earlier, we have $800,000 in the pipeline that we just cannot produce because we're not allowed to, right? Right. And I think that for anybody that's, you know, listening to this, for future actions, you know, for future things that you can do differently in the future, man, save your money. Because what I did is, you know, in 2018 we had a We had— it was a great year. It was, you know, we grew exponentially and we kept money in the business. You know, we kept returning earnings in the business. And right now that stuff is crucial. So having money in the bank and knowing that, hey, this is just a pause, gives— definitely gives me a lot of, I guess, comfort and peace of mind that, hey, we'll just put a pause. We might lose a month, we might lose a month and a half, but the business is nowhere near to being in jeopardy. And just, you know, we'll get back to it as soon as the government says we can.
