Running Into the Fire with Brian Farr & Brian Walton of B. Farr Roofing

Hey, everybody, it is Jim Josin, your host here with Contractor Radio and the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors get control of their business so they can grow that business and hopefully find that personal and financial freedom they were chasing in their business. And I've got some pretty cool guests on today. We're doing this contractor summer series where we are interviewing a bunch of contractors and sharing with you some of the obstacles and challenges that they've needed to overcome, some of some of the success stories, and hopefully something unique about each one of them that will help you to better run your business. I had a chance to talk with these guys a little bit before we got on the podcast, and this is going to be a special one. There's a lot on the what do we do with this cool vehicle that we've built? We've built this business. It affords us the opportunity to do some pretty cool things. We're going to talk about some of those cool things. And so I want to bring in our two guests. Not one this week, but our two guests. Want to bring in Brian Farr, the president, the CEO, the mastermind that started this whole thing, and then his managing partner, Brian Walton. Welcome to the show, guys.

Thank you.

Have you on? Because I really wanted to make sure that I had a contractor that had some partnership stuff going on. But before we get into that and what that looks like and how that goes, Mr. Far, I'm gonna go with Mr. All right. I don't know what to do with that. That's the first time I've ever had that happen to me on a podcast. But, Mr. Farr, can you kind of give us a little bit of background, like how'd you get into this contracting game that we're in? And then bring us up to speed on how the business started and just a brief snapshot of where it is today?

Well, actually, I started roof when I was 13 years old, and it was the only, only real type of construction or business I could work at at that age. A friend of mine's family owned a roofing company. I did that through college, and I made good money. When you get paid by the square, you get paid by your efforts. So it's not, you know, it's not an hourly type position. And I thrive. But it's hard work. And it was every summer in Florida, which is pretty brutal. So after college, I got into flipping houses, Left roofing, flipping houses, started to grew into doing a lot of work for other owners, homeowners. And I got my general contractor's license. I got my general and I got my, my roofing. I got sick of working inside people's homes. The stress, the cleanliness, the, you know, access of in and out of their home and worried about possessions and, and whatnot and having too many different types of trades that I was involved with. I decided to get outside of the house and get on the roof. And roofing, you do a good job if it doesn't leak and it looks good from across the street. So it's kind of one of the things where I. Instead of having homeowners on their hands and knees digging through everything that you did on the project, it was a lot just, you know, not. The stress is still there. I mean, you got open, open roofs in the middle of summer where it rains every day. But it was a different kind of stress and I could handle that. I wasn't having to deal with homeowners in six month relationships. You know, roofs, a two or three day relationship where a complete whole house remodel could be six, seven months. So I shortened the relationship.

I have a question for you.

Yeah.

So working inside home, like I went through this same route. Did you do the same thing? I did like you gave them blue tape and said, hey, mark the spots of anything that you need.

I have one.

The overhead on my blue tape was outrageous. Like, it was like, okay, I don't want to work inside anybody's house anymore.

I had one homeowner that walked in and there was blue tape everywhere and we weren't done. It just made me live it. So give us an opportunity. You have two bad homeowners a year and the rest are great. But those two way on you heavily.

Yeah.

And so that's why I tried made the move out of it. And I took on one favor for a friend about a year ago and I'm almost done with it building a new house and we're done. I'll never do it.

So. So we decided to go from working inside of people's homes, kind of general contractor remodeling type thing to just straight roofing. I get part of it like, hey, outside versus inside. But it sounds like there was a bit of a, like a speed aspect of it too. Is that, is that fair to say.

We'Re doing more a week than I was doing in months now? I mean, we're, you know, the dollar volume per day per crew far exceeds what we could do in a week or two weeks in one single day and remodel. So.

It'S a lot of our coaching advice you know, we. We will get involved with these contractors that we're working with that are, you know, general contractor, remodeler, or maybe they're. They call themselves something like a roofer, but they do, you know, 50 different trades and that kind of stuff. We're like, hey, let's, let's get good at one, maybe three max, and, like, keep it there and get that perfected. And then if we want to add something to it. Look at that thing that we add and go, is it just like reefing? Is it something that we can do like that, like maybe fencing, like, or maybe garage floor coatings or something like that, where you're, you're in, you're out, you can do a good job and repeat that thing over and over, and you have a workforce that's reliable.

Have you got the one thing that was. That was the hugest thing? I saw my subcontractors come in and out, and their production was. Was good. It was fast. Their dollar amount per day were high. And I said, you know, I need to get good at one thing. Exactly what you said. And the roofing is what we chose.

So we got started about seven years ago. Tell us a little bit about what that's looked like over the last seven years.

Well, seven years ago, it was a little bit of both. It was still general contracting and roofing. Right now, the only general contracting we're doing is a commercial client. We don't bid it out. We bill it out when we're done. It's just been a good relationship. A big lawyer in town is just growing, so can't give that up. But outside of that, we started with three people. Those same three people are still with the company. Our turnover is very low, and it's grown. Now I think we're at 32 people in house, plus subcontractors.

So what kind of revenue are you guys driving on an annual basis?

Double. Well, close to double each of the last four years. So we were at 2, and then at 4, and then at 8, and then at 14. And this year we should break 20.

Wow, that's. That's some pretty serious growth. We're going to ask some questions about how do you facilitate something like that. So, Mr. Walton.

Yes, sir.

Tell us a little bit about your story. Like, how did you get involved? Why'd you get involved with B like this?

It's funny. So. So my whole 20. So I'm 38 now. My whole 20s. I've been in the industry for nine years. My whole 20s. I was a surf Instructor moved to, to Costa Rica for a couple years. Bartended. I was just kind of this wild guy. Met my wife when I was 29 and I realized real quick, I need to tighten up. Got into roofing. Didn't know anything about roofing. And so I actually worked on a crew for the first three months. And I remember driving across the beach. I live in Cocoa beach, so I remember driving across and seeing my buddies with their surfboards and I'm like out my way to a roofing job, you guys. But anyways, long story short, so I got into contracting like the first three years and I was in manufacturing. So I was actually a, a shingle rep, a local shingle rep. And that's how I met Brian Farr. And I remember meeting him and hearing about what he was doing at this point. Before I came aboard, you were doing. Brian Farr was doing a lot of interior and additions and all that stuff. And that's just something I didn't know. And I remember kind of mentioning, hey, like, hey, I come work for you for free, by the way, just to gain the knowledge that you have. Well, a year later, from that conversation, he had a right hand man. And I kind of let Brian tell the story, but you know, from what I understand, the guy wasn't doing exactly what he was supposed to with Brian. And that's where, you know, he kind of brought me on as the general manager of VFAR. That was January of 20, 23 years now. Yeah, we had this lead source, LSA, lead source. It was like, man, we, it's just like printing money here. I mean, we could get 15 leads a week and that's $40 a lead. And then Covid happens, you know, about a month after I came aboard, we both, I remember we had so much time. We were able to go like ride our bikes around the bike trails and stuff. You know, there was a few weeks we just really. We put on zero roofs. And then we decided the rest is kind of history. But we decided like, okay, let's start putting money into branding and marketing and who Beefar is. And it was a slow process. And I remember seeing some of my friends who were also. I got to know a lot of the roofers being in manufacturing, I got to learn how the back end of the manufacturing process worked too. But I remember some of those guys kind of going out there and knocking doors and stuff and watching Brian Far and I take the slow road. And then, you know, it's almost like with the branding at this point, you can't turn it off is what we're seeing.

Man, I got a lot to talk about. Yeah, that was good. I really hate interrupting these videos, but I've got some important information for you. If you haven't tried out Atlas Shingles, you should, because they put you first as a contractor. They want to give you a competitive advantage out in the field so that you can win more sales and be more profitable. Check out Atlas in your local area, find your local rep, get hooked up with them today and start making more money tomorrow. Let's talk first about this. So Brian Walton gets involved. Obviously, he must have done something that said, hey, this guy's 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 to answer. Bad interviewer. Sorry. I'm still trying to figure this thing out. 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 him a piece of the pie. They went out and started their own and became compet. And I saw a lot of talent in Brian and what he is, I wasn't. And vice versa. In so many different ways, it 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 what is it that Mr. Farah 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. To it.

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, their, their side of it, to say, okay, you know, I trust you. And so it's always worked out well.

So that's, that's what, 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 big over. 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 made you guys decide that branding yourselves was 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 you go out and try to chase being a community member. And the branding side of it made our phone ring instead of lead source, lead generation. But 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 the problem with. 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 marketing 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 a pay to play situation. 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 onto 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's 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.

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. It'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, you know, 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 is never to learn it. And I'm glad now that we're 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 he's great. We're 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 it all started, it was like fall of 2021, and Jessica kind of came to us with this Angel Tree idea. And 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 the Salvation army and all that. And they would put our ad on the screen. Well, we said, well, hey, 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, given Brian Farr's situation in the Mattie 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. Held. 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 are 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. 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 the that type of idea, but for the homeless. Right.

Right.

We're going to talk about the Mattie Farr foundation here in just a minute, but how would an.