How Visionary and Integrator roles transform roofing businesses

So.

Let'S talk first about this. So Brian Walton gets involved. Obviously, he must have done something that said, hey, this guy is special enough to say, hey, gm and actually managing partner at some point. What was all that about? That would be to you, Mr. Walton.

Oh, that was to me.

No, no, I'm sorry, Mr. Farr, I'll have the answer. Bad interviewer. Sorry. I'm still trying to figure this thing. So, Mr. Farr, I'm back now.

I had too many friends who had had businesses and they lost their right hand guy because they wouldn't give them a piece of the pie. They went out and started their own and became competitors. And I saw a lot of talent in Brian and what he is, I wasn't. And vice versa in so many different ways that complimented each other. We get along, we do things after hours. So we're alike, yet different. And it works, you know, just really.

I got a question about that. So. So what is it that Mr. Far is good at? And then what is it that Mr. Walton's good at? That's a good balance.

Have you heard of the visionary and the integrator?

Oh, yeah.

To a T. To a T. Far as the visionary and to a T, I'm the integrator. We're very strong on both ends and we've always respected each other enough, even if we don't understand, you know, their side of it, to say, okay, you know, I trust you. And so it's always worked out well.

So that's what played into this whole branding thing. So I'm visionary guy, so I can relate to Mr. Farr quite well. Like, hey, man, we're going to solve the world's problems. We're going to be the biggest company ever. We're going to do all these amazing things and it's going to be awesome and everybody's going to be wonderful. And there's a list of like 20 different things we want to do and everybody needs to get on board for them right now. And then you got this integrator guy over there. It's like, hey, slow down a second. And we got, we got bigger fish to fry right now, so let's pick the thing that's like maybe the most important thing. So Covid hits and what, what made you guys decide that? Branding yourselves with the answer to that?

Well, you know, there's a lot of lead sources out there that give them to 10 different people. They're not qualified. We're spinning our wheels, you know, with some of these people where we wanted to drive business to us instead of go after, go out and try to chase being a community member. And the branding side of it made our phone ring. Instead of, you know, lead source, lead generation. We do both. We got a balance of both. But by them calling into the office, they're here searching for us, they're wanting our services, and it's a little bit of an easier conversation to start. Our phone's ringing instead of theirs.

Yeah, that's a much better situation. So who had the experience at that? And if it was nobody, what'd you do?

Self educated. We went through our fair share of marketing companies and you know the problem with that and far as passionate about this. So if you got a lot of time, you want to let them roll. But the, you know, the market companies, you didn't know who was good until you had to give them, you know, nine months or whatever to kind of gain traction. Like, oh no, all right, let's start over.

And.

And then so far, started learning the stuff on the back end. He started learning marketing.

I learned the PPC program. I had to. We were hemorrhaging money. You know, it's like, just give me more time.

Give me.

It was, it was a pay to play situation and I was getting so frustrated and so I had to figure out what they were doing right, what they were doing wrong, and I didn't ever want to do it. I had no interest in doing it, but I didn't have a choice.

Desperation.

Yeah, well, we could have gone out. I mean, it was running us out of business, you know, it was really running us out of business. Wasting thousands of dollars a week. And the returns were very, very minimal. So the tracking, everything, tracking phone calls, tracking leads, tracking conversions, closing rates, that was big, but just trying to hold on to the money. So when you're looking at the PPC and strict lead generation, you're basically paying for all that to come in. And the branding is the same, but it builds upon itself over time and making sure we capitalize on every customer that we're doing now and growing off of that and ask.

So you guys have used two acronyms. I just want to make sure listeners understand what those are. So lsa Lead Service aggregator.

Right. Or lead Local. Local Service ads with Google.

Local Service ads. Okay, so local service ads. So I didn't even get that one right because there's two different. That's why I want to get some clarity on it because there's lead source aggregators out there too. That's also the same acronym. And then you use CPC Cost per click, right?

Yeah. Pay per click.

Ppc. Yeah.

So that was. Those are two of the advertising platforms. But then it goes down to the tracking side of the cost per clicks and everything else to figure out where to put, where to take.

So you took on this idea of actually learning it and you didn't want to, but you did it because you weren't getting results. This is a track that a lot of contractors follow, by the way. They hire these marketing companies. All the marketing companies say, hey, it's going to take three to six months to see any results. You got to hang on with us. And so three to six months adds up. When somebody doesn't do it right, then you get the next one another three to six months, next one another. And so you go, hey, I'm going to learn this thing. What'd you do to learn it?

Well, I got into the back end on the admin side of the PPC and I saw the adwords and how much they were betting on each word and the campaigns. But my goal was never to learn it and I'm glad now that we kind of, I've forgotten about it and don't have to look at it. We got partnered with somebody who's done a great job for us and we now have backed off 100%.

Yeah, I think that was the hard part far was when we did have who we're working with now for the last couple years is like actually turning it off and just saying, okay, now I now I find the person I can trust and I don't have to go into the back end and check their work.

They hated me at first. I'm all over them, you know. And it was one of those love hate relationships and it's actually kill your competition. Jessica Reyna and she's great family. I do stuff with them on weekends and their kids and it's just, it's a good relationship. Not just business. It became a personal friendship that's so important.

Like having a relationship with, with that marketing company so that they actually understand you, understand your brand, understand really what your goals and aspirations are, really what route you want to go. Because there's so many different routes. There's SEO and there's pay per click and there's, there's a million different ways to generate leads and understanding what that contractor wants from the marketer side is a big challenge sometimes. Did you find it hard to get the right information to them early on?

I think they asked the right questions.

You might be a little frozen. Yeah. When you think about when you think about it, Jessica, and kill your competition. They're the ones who got us into a lot of this branding with the Salvation army and Angel Tree. She's the one who kind of put us in these opportunities with the news, and then we kind of took it from there and ran with it.

So opportunities with the news. What does that look like?

So, so it all, it all started, it was like fall of 2021, and Jessica kind of came to us with this Angel Tree idea. And it was, it was through one of the local news stations, wkmg, and they were doing Angel Tree and we could, you know, we could get airtime with, with the Salvation army and, and all that. And they would put our ad on the screen. Well, we said, well, hey, what if, what if we come and volunteer our time and help with like, you know, collecting the toys? And what if we, you know, what if we adopt some of the, some of the kids, better yet from Given Brian Farr situation, the Maddie Farr Foundation? What if we adopt all the special needs children that year, all 40 of them form Angel Tree? And what if we go and show up when you guys are doing the phone baking? What if we show up and, you know, and donate our time when you're actually passing out the gifts to families? And they were so blown away by the fact that we didn't want to just have our name posted on there. We wanted to participate and everything that was going on. And we actually met one of the main guys there and he says, hey, by the way, every Tuesday, if you guys are interested, we pass out food in Orlando. It's called Paris. It's a lower. It's, you know, like the homeless people in Orlando. And so we still do that to this day. There'll be people going tomorrow, on Tuesday to ride with these folks and pass out food and blankets and clothing and hygiene kits and things like that to the community.

I got so many questions. You guys lead me to a bunch of questions. This is good. What does branding mean to you?

It's just letting the community know who you are. Obviously, it's your logo and whatnot. People want to understand what your logo means and represents, and it represents the people that are behind it.

I think branding to me is the service that we offer to the community and to our clients. To me, that's branding.

Yeah, I always think of it as this reputation thing. Like it's what people perceive about you is your brand the way they see you. And so you've taken it this because there's a lot of different ways to do it. Some people do it with this top of mind marketing approach where it's like billboards everywhere, TV commercials everywhere, and you just can't avoid it. So it's just embedded in you all the time. Others do a little bit like what you're doing, which is this giving back and being really involved in the community. You said two words that were put together that really kind of meant something and it was showing up. Like you actually showed up to go do something. And I think so many people look at this opportunity of generosity, especially in our world, but we do okay. Like as a roofing contractor or a painting contractor or, you know, any kind of contractor that's good at what they do, they do pretty well financially. And they tend to look at as their way of getting back is like, here's some money, now go help whoever. Right. Because I'm busy doing this other thing. Why? The show up approach.

Kind of felt natural. I mean, it's brought the company together. We do it together. It's something that everybody adopted. You know, we're all in. Everybody's all in. And it's something that's really kind of held the culture and strengthened it.

Was that something that was previous to the whole Covid thing? Like, you guys tended to lean that way anyway.

It's all organic.

Wow, that is wild. Like, there's so many negative things from COVID Right. Like everything. We don't like to be around people anymore. I can work from home and hey, I can sell stuff online. There's all that stuff.

Right.

And there were so many people that were damaged from it. From a mental health aspect, you guys almost flipped it on its head and found something inside of yourselves that wasn't there before.

I think what people need to realize is there's vehicles out there that they can partner with. They don't have to do it all themselves. And we didn't realize how much Salvation army did. So we're there to support them, we're not there to run it. And so with a small amount of help, we can give them the teamwork. The partnership together can be. But us together trying to put something together would probably be a bit of a.

Okay, how would somebody go about finding the thing they're into? Like, it sounds like you guys Salvation army, you do some. It's not really Meals on Wheels, but it's similar to that type of idea but for the homeless. Right, Right. We're going to talk about the Maddy Farr foundation here in just a minute. But how would another contractor out there if they're thinking about this, I actually want to get my hands dirty approach.

There's a lot of organizations out there, but what we found, and just the first one that we partnered up with, that Salvation army does all those. I mean, they give aid to the elderly. They give aid to. They have a women's shelter. They have a, you know, rehabilitation shelter. They have, you know, they have all of those avenues and their boots on the ground, too. So if you're looking, we found that if, you know, if we were looking to kind of figure out what made us drive or what we are passionate about, that was such a great place to start. Because there are so many different avenues that the Salvation army could lead us.

We put it out in front of the team to find something to do to other organizations. We said, is there something that's near and dear to your heart that we can help contribute to? So it was kind of a team effort, and Salvation army is the one that stuck over time. We're two and a half, three years in with them now, but we put it out to everybody, and we've done some other things outside of just this.

Do you find that it has an impact with your client? Like, do you talk about it, like, how this business facilitates your generosity and your ability to give back and hopefully in an authentic way? Like, we really just like to do this.

We hope. We hope. I mean, I hope that they see, you know, we do get a lot of calls and stuff like that around Christmas time when we're, you know, doing the angel tree. But what we did last year, it's starting about. We actually from. From May till May of this year, May 1st, we, we donated. It was $50 from BFAR and $50 from the homeowner. And we clearly stated it in their proposal that this cost of your roof, whatever the price was, includes a $50 donation on your end, and we're matching that $50 for you. And at the end of the year, we're going to give basically $100 per roof to the Salvation Army. So December of last year, on top of donating to the angel tree and on top of, like, you know, adopting the 40 angels, we were able to give a. I think it was $21,700 check to this small on a $15,000 roof. $50 is so small, but accumulated over the, you know, over the year, it was a big deal. And so, yeah, sa.