The Passion That Drives You - Hunter Ballew - RoofCON

Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro with another episode of Contractor Radio. And I am super excited about the guest that we're going to have today. He has been somebody over the last couple of years, has really stepped up and started to lead in our industry and has really worked hard at building other leaders in his organization, really working and putting his people first. And so we're going to have Hunter Ballou from Cornerstone Construction and the. The big mind behind Roofcon on today. We're gonna find out a little bit more about what drives him, the passion that's there, the purpose and kind of how he got to there. So today, let's go ahead and welcome in Hunter Ballou.

What's up?

Good to have you, man. Good to have you. You know, you and I have had some opportunities to talk over the last couple of years. I've gotten know you a little bit better, and you're genuine. You're the real deal, man. It's not like some kind of gimmick or anything. You see a lot of that kind of stuff out there in the world, but, man, you. You genuinely want to see your people do better. Tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you got started in all this stuff and. And we'll get to the rest of it later.

Yeah, man. First of all, I appreciate those kind words and, and having me on the show. And for me, you know, I'm from a small town here in South Carolina called Travelers Rest. There's about. I think there's about 4,000 people in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. Might be more now. It kept getting voted on those best small towns of America. So it's kept growing. But, yeah, small town, Travelers Rest, Greenville, South Carolina, upstate, for those who know the area. And, you know, I just came up through high school and through elementary school and middle school, and I was always pretty active with school sports and pretty competitive and wanted to be the best. And after 9 11, I was in fifth grade when 911 happened. I knew I wanted to go to the Marine Corps. So when I got into middle school, when I got into high school, I really didn't care too much about the work. I was just, hey, whatever it takes to get out of this place. I'm not a structured education type of guy. Get out of here, go in the Marine Corps, come back, spend some time. And I think that, man, it was. It was being a part of, for me, a brotherhood. And that's, you know, a little bit about the story with bold brotherhood and us Growing that movement, which then spun into roofcon, with Peyton coming to speak at Bold Brotherhood, the event. And so it's just being a part of something bigger than myself and helping other people develop as leaders. And really, I don't think that I really bought into leadership and understood that that was one of my callings in life until about two years ago. And that's when I started taking it extremely serious, Started caring about our team developing as leaders, not only so that they can make more money, but so that they become better spouses and better fathers and better people in the community. And so it means so much to me. And I remember about a year and a half ago, I was deciding, like, all right, I'm passionate. I really care about people. I love people. I've always cared about youth. And honestly, before that, youth was kind of what I considered one of my callings. I wanted to be a youth minister for a while. Just found myself at the fire department. That never really panned out, but still wanted to help where I could be able to fund mission trips, things like that. I've done stuff like that. But I was trying to decide, like, youth, the water crisis, kids without fathers, leadership. What is really my calling? Like, what am I going to focus on in life? And I thought on this for months, man, and one day it just hit me. I was driving down the road late at night. I just thought, leadership is the answer to all of that. Because if you create more leaders, they're all going to be passionate about their own thing. Then you're talking multiplication. John Maxwell talks about that all the time. If I focus on one thing and I help 10, 12, 15 people, that's addition. But if I'm creating 10, 12, 15 leaders, and they create leaders, now we're talking multiplication.

That's super awesome. I'm a big John Maxwell fan. I believe a lot in what you believe, and that's why I wanted to get you on the show. We have a very similar outlook to things, and I learned a little bit more today. The thing about youth, that's a. A big thing in my world. I've been on several mission trips with our youth at church. And I'm after something in the long run where I want to help kids that are between, like, 5th grade and 11th grade understand there's more to it than going to college. It may not be the calling for everybody out there and that there's still opportunity out there. I didn't finish college. Doesn't sound like you did. And we've done okay in life, and I Think there's too much of, like, that's the only way to be successful. And just some of us aren't wired for that. So, Bo Brotherhood, like, that's kind of where it all started, right? Like, is that. Was that the first, like, event thing? Tell us a little bit more about that, what that was like.

Yeah, it was our first actual event that we threw and there's several things tied and you just hit on kids again. And I think a lot of people know that we have a nonprofit we started here at Cornerstone called Cornerstone Kids Alliance. We call it CC Kids. You know, for sure, we have shirts made up, we have all this stuff logos, and a percent of every dollar that comes in goes towards that. And you mentioned, you know, what you just said, you say 5th to 10th grade or something like that, 11th grade.

It seems like that group right there is the group that kind of gets lost in maybe, possibly if they're not on this path, like this path to go to college, when you make the grades and do all that stuff, they kind of get set aside. And I want them to understand that when they think they can't, they actually can.

And ours is pretty similar. You know, we focus on, we say 12 to 18 years old. And that doesn't mean that we won't help kids that are 8 or 11 or whatever. You know, we have kids that come in and we've heard about their house burning down or maybe they need food and they need sponsorship to go on a mission trip, whatever it is. We just paid for a dozen upstate proms. When the state shut down school and seniors weren't going to be able to have their last prom, we paid for a dozen proms, so a percent of every dollar goes back into that. So we still care about youth. And that's one of our missions here at Cornerstone. But that's what I'm saying is it's so powerful when you get your team to focus on one mission and they know that, hey, they've got their individual missions and we challenge them on that. We say, hey, what is your mission that you want for yourself collectively as a team? We came up with Cornerstone Kids and we all know that, hey, when we've got to run that last call and at 6 o' clock at night, I really want to be home with the family. Maybe I'm out on Saturdays banging doors and it's hot. Whatever it is, you've got that extra mile that you can go because you know you're helping someone beyond yourself. When you just think about you and you just Think about your family. That's so shallow. And I say that without trying to be critical of people or them thinking that I'm a jerk, but it's just true. Like, our family is our responsibility. We married our spouse, we had our children, it's our responsibility. And of course it should be a reason that you work hard. It should be part of your why, part of your why always. But what beyond that can you do? Go deep on that. And so bold brotherhood, when we came up with that, it was how do we help men develop as leaders? How do we help them stretch their mind, push their body and grow their legacy? And so even though bold brotherhood has kind of faded into roofcon and we don't really focus on bold anymore because it turned into roofcon. And we found that many men wanted women involved because women in the industry, you know, help, help their husbands a lot. It was never like, oh, we don't want to talk about women. It was just, how do we help men become better leaders for their spouse and for their families and for their community? So it just kind of morphed into more than that with roofcon and saying, alright, well, let's take on women too and let's help as much as we can. And we still integrate mind, body and legacy. You know, we talk about high integrity people and want to create something different in the industry from maybe some other events or retreats or masterminds that are going on. Leadership and legacy are so important to us. Roofing is cool. You know, nobody grows up, says, like, I just want to be a roofer. Maybe you got those random guys, their grandpa, their dad, their great grandpa was a roofer. But most of us don't say, hey, I want to be a roofer. So I tell these guys, don't be embarrassed of it. It is a great vehicle to make amazing money where you can serve hundreds and thousands of people. And there is nothing to be ashamed of when you talk about that. It's just a vehicle. And if you can enjoy it, if you can enjoy your team because you have a good culture, you can enjoy your homeowners and your clients because you know you're giving them the best product. It makes it fun, man.

I like, I couldn't have said it better. It's like listening to myself talk because I've been preaching the same thing for the last seven years. There's more to it than the money.

Listen to you. Jim and I scripted, I've got right here.

I wrote that down. It was good. Yeah. So it's, it's this thing, right? Like, this industry, it's a low barrier of entry. It tends to have a bit of a focus on greed, right? Like, it's. It's one of those things. Like, it's been that way for many, many years, and there's more to it than that. And there's some good people. And the cool thing that I've seen over the last seven years as we stepped into this coaching thing, is the growth there. To see more of that. There's so many good companies now and good leaders and folks like you stepping in and saying, hey, I'm willing to help. I'm willing to share, I'm willing to, you know, give, you know, some of the things I know or walk the path with you until I do know it, which is super cool. We're gonna. This is gonna be an industry we're proud at some point to say, hey, I'm a roofer, man. And I used to remember, like, I used to say I was a. Either a GC or a storm restoration specialist or something. Like, I never said I was a roofer, right? And then later on, as time went on, I went, you know what? I'm proud to do what I do. I changed thousands of people's lives. I changed the lives of the people that work for me. And I'm super happy about that stuff. I'm proud of what I've done. And so I'm not so scared to share that thing that I'm a roofer anymore. And so when people ask me, I still say that. I don't say, I'm a coach. I'm a roofer. That happens to coach other folks on how to do this. So let's talk about roofcon for a second. So this bold brotherhood thing, it kind of caught fire a little bit. I can remember this a couple years ago. If I remember right, you guys were last year, maybe. Maybe it's only just been a year, year and a half, something like that. What was it?

I didn't even start till last June. We had our first event in August, and then at the. At the August event, we followed that up with the retreat. Pate was at the retreat, and we started, hey, let's. Let's do a little bit more of this, and let's serve the roofing industry specifically. And. And then it turned into, like I said, not just men, but also women. And so we planned the event last November. I think we had like 60 days. I think it was sub 60 days by the time we got into September. September, October, November, and had a Decent little event, nothing big, like 100 people. And we said, hey, this year let's do bigger and better. We got a ton of feedback from the event. People liked it because it was extremely personal and we didn't want to lose that touch by going big. But we also wanted to be able to serve more people. And, and so we're trying to integrate a lot of the same things that we had at the last event.

Yeah, it's in this mind, body and what's the third?

Legacy? Yeah. And so, yeah, stretch your mind, push your body and grow your legacy. And with Roofcon, you know, we care about bringing in high integrity people. We're not looking for the guys that just want to come for just business related stuff, just to come out and get drunk, go get high, you know, just time to get away from the family. That's not what it's about. You know, we'd encourage you to bring your spouse. We want to talk about things that are going to make you money, like sales and marketing and supplements. We're going to talk about all that. We want you to have an instant ROI. Last year we actually offered a 100x ROI on the, on the trip. And I had so many people come to me within a week and say that they got that return on investment from coming to the event. Just from some small stuff for me, from Dale Childress, from different people that spoke. And so we're going to talk about those things, but we're also going to talk about stuff that might not be as sexy. People don't talk about the industry, the stuff like legacy, the stuff like leadership and culture and relationships and accountability, but those are the things that really move the needle. You know, we're going to start off with a challenge to open your mind and listen. You know, Ryan Groskin talks about that. Day two, you're going to open up and you're going to talk about goal setting and what it takes to take all that information from the event and actually apply it and use it in 2021. And then we're going to end it with John Dime and Randy brothers with a challenge to implement. Go out there and do the work. We can give you all this information. You can build 100 relationships and it's all fine and dandy and there's $100 million worth of value. But if you don't execute, it don't mean squat. People can pay you $100,000 a year, Jim, and you got all this knowledge, you've been doing it for so many years, but it doesn't mean anything if they don't actually put in the work.

100% agree. That's the difference, right? That's the difference between these great successful companies and then the good or average companies is they implement, they grow, they learn, they take the stuff that they're getting, which is available. There's all kinds of resources nowadays for this stuff, and they got to find the one that fits them, do that. That was one of the things. Whenever I first started doing what I'm doing, it was out of frustration. Go to events, sit there for a day or two, get all kinds of really good information, and it's all written down. And I took good notes. I'm big on that kind of thing. I've been to seminars since I was, I don't know, about 17 years old. Events, conferences, those type of things. And I got to be a really good note taker because I knew that if I just listened, I wasn't going to retain enough of it. So I took tons of notes and came back and I was able to implement a lot of that stuff because of that. But there was, you know, business got in the way, life got in the way, time got in the way, and just so many things you just let go off into the wind and pass where I swore that whenever I did this and if I ever threw an event, which we do, we do some small ones and stuff like that, but they're very intensive. Like, it's work. We're gonna be there, we're gonna work, we're gonna put it together, we're gonna, you're gonna walk away with this thing. All you gotta do is do it. And that's. That's it. And so that's what I like about this, this roofcon thing is going to be that it's going to be, here's the stuff, here's what you need, here's the steps. All you gotta do is take them, take that first little step. So yeah, man, this is. I'm super excited about it. I saw the bull brotherhood thing. I admit I was a little disappointed. Like, I didn't even know what was going on. Like, geez, I wish I would have. I just showed up and hung out with you guys. At least. Listen, But I get to be there this year. I'm super pumped about my keynote because I'm gonna put a little different spin on goal setting than what most people have probably imagined goal setting to be. It tends to be this thing where we as leaders say, hey, let's, let's set some goals and we Kind of usually put those marks in place, but we don't usually ask a whole lot about what their goal is, which you're pretty good at that. I saw you guys just came back from a retreat, and I think there was some of that there going on. But we don't sit down and really, like, dig in. Like, not money. Like, money's. Like you said, the business is a vehicle to do great things with. Money is the same thing. It's just a vehicle.

We got a simple form I made. I actually have it right here. I don't know if it. Is this showing, like, straight or reverse?

Yeah, you got it. Perfect.

So it's called fulfillment. 40, you've got your 10 blessings, your 10 reasons for what you, why you do what you do, your 10 targets, what you want to hit in your 10 excuses. You can see some of mine there. I've got family and friends as part of my blessings. The Cornerstone team. A financial situation because I'm able to give back to other people simply that I live in America because I have so much opportunity available to me. Then you have your 10 reasons. I want to help as many people as possible, see what is possible out there. Right? I have my 10 targets. And one of those being, you know, I ain't gonna lie to you. One of those being materialistic, Like, I really want a jet at some point. By the time I'm 40, I'm not quite 30 yet. I don't want to talk about the 30 words. By the time I'm 40, I want a jet, you know, and not just selfishly. If there's a little girl that has cancer and she wants to go to Disney World, she's got three weeks left. I want to be able to say, hey, take that little girl wherever she needs to go. If she needs to go. Get a cat stand for CAT scan from this top cancer doctor in California. The reason I say this is we had a situation like this recently, and instead of having the jet, I was like, hey, I'll pay for it. But to have the jet have that power would be amazing and fulfilling to me. Those things are what's fulfilling to me. These stories. It's cool. We started off, we said, hey, let's do seven figures. It started as a case study with Cornerstone. Let's go to 2 million, 5 million, 10 million. And we were blown past that this year for our goal. And then we want to go to 50 and 100 million and keep impacting lives. And the numbers are cool. You know all about the numbers. They're cool. And you're like, man, I never should have been doing this in my life. Eight figures, I'm going for nine figures. We're coming out with an app. But I promise you, Jim, there's nothing more fulfilling than the stories of my guys right through those doors. A guy that's, you know, 27 years old has been building chimneys for years, making $26,000 a year, busting his butt. And in the last 12 months, he started June 20or July 25th of last year, the last 12 months he made $127,000. Never sold anything. A 49 year old man that sat on a yacht. We rented a yacht his first weekend last Memorial Day weekend. And he told me his goal at Cornerstone was to be able to take his wife on a vacation because he hadn't gone on vacation in seven years. And within about four months they went to Costa Rica. And so just little stories like that, man, that there's nothing better than that we could do 100 million and that's cool. And of course it's a goal, but there's nothing better than that more fulfilling than that. And I think if more of our owners would start thinking like that, more people in the industry would start thinking like that. And how do we develop leaders and take a step back and say, hey, the money's not that important. We're kind of in a position of power. We can make several hundred thousand dollars, maybe even a million dollars a year. You start getting up into 30, 40, $50 million. But how do you empower more people so that they can better serve their family and the community? Because together you compound all that effort and you're going to change a lot of lives.

Well, that's one of the things I've really been, I don't know, self contemplating on right now is this idea of community, right? Like I want to change the world. Like that's one of those things. I want to change the world. I want to make this a better place for all people, not just in roofing, but just in general. And sometimes we feel a bit powerless, right? Especially with the division and stuff that's going on in our world today. I'm like, I want to snap my fingers and solve all those problems, but really where it starts is in that community and having leaders like yourself working with the people that you have direct impact with, that will have direct impact in your community, which will then spread. And the more of that that we can create, we may not be that top guru guy, that's this superstar that everybody sees on tv, but we may make more of an impact by being involved in our community, having those relationships and that communication in our community that isn't really there right now. I think. I think we're struggling with that. So that's super cool to see you guys do it. And I think you're right. More owners need to take that into consideration because if they really want to build their business, this is the craziest thing to me. The more you serve others, the more your business grows. But you shouldn't do it for that reason. You should do it for genuine, authentic reasons that you want to help people. But it's amazing. Like, I decided that's what this was going to be.

You said that. Was it Zig or Jim Rohn or somebody said, if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get anything you want.

Zig, this is Ziglar. You help enough people achieve their dreams, you'll achieve your dream. And I've lived by that for the last 15 years or so. It's really what I'm about and what I try to get, get through to others. And to see those people that I've worked with over the last 15 years in various different situations to grow and become those leaders is super cool. Nathan, I used to call him our coach, and then he was my co coach. Now he's the lead coach. Like, he does most of the coaching and he does a great job of it. And he knows this insight. He's better than I am at this point, to be honest with you. And that's cool. That's what I want. That's what I want.

See?

And the more people that I can do that with, I think the better impact that we have as individuals on this planet because we only have a short period of time here.

So hard for most of us as leaders, as owners, to give up that power to empower someone else. And just hearing you say that, Jim, we've talked about Craig Groeschel. I think I got a man crush on Craig Groeschel, man. He's like, he's up there with Maxwell for me. I love his podcast. If you don't follow his podcast, Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, he says all the time that it's tough to do, but when someone's at 80% of what you are at any given task, empower them, delegate them. You can interchange those words. I don't like the word delegate. It sounds a little more demeaning to me. Empower them. Let them do that task. I promise you that as they do it, not right away. But as they do it, they're going to become better than you. Jim just said it. Jim's trained hundreds, maybe even thousands of contractors at this point, and he's saying Nathan's better at him than something. It's because he was willing to give that up. And I know it's hard. The last thing in this business, really that I'm having to give up is some of the branding and marketing. And I always joke with people and say, I'm a brand Nazi. I care about our brand so much. So, like, it's going online. I want to see it, I want to know what it is, and I want to make sure that it's not going to be a conflict for what our mission, what our vision is, what we put out to the public. And so I'm starting to back off of that. That's the hardest thing so far for me to do. But I'm doing that because I want to see us grow. Something I said on a podcast a few weeks ago, man, and it just really hit me after a situation happened in an office I was in. I saw an older guy making fun of a kid for being annoying because the kid was just running around acting crazy and that particular kid didn't have a father in their life. I told that particular guy that you have an opportunity to lead right there. When you want to nitpick and you want to make fun and you want to say how that kid's out of control. Anytime you have an opportunity to make fun of someone, it is truly an opportunity. Do I do that all the time? Absolutely not. But now it's top of mind. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm trying to be much more aware of that. Understand that, hey, if there's a guy that's messing up, maybe he says the wrong lingo in the roofing industry. Maybe he's talking about football and he don't even know what he's talking about. I mean, think about how many situations you come across where you want to make fun of a 35 year old man. But it's really an opportunity to be a teacher and care for that person and love on them and show them some respect and kindness that probably no one else is.

Yeah, it's something myself. Like I used to be really bad about it.

I was the Marine Corps, so I know all about getting made fun of.

Well, well, I was. I was a little bitty guy in high school, so I got picked on all the time, like ridiculously. And I was super shy. But I also had A big mouth like that was a part of my problem too. And so, you know, when people picked on me, instead of handling that well, I did not handle it well. As I've gotten older, I, instead of learning from that and doing the right thing, I said, oh, now I'm, I grew up, I got bigger, I'm badder, I'm more powerful, so now I can make fun. And that was just the wrong way to go about doing things. And I went through this. It was a kind of a Bible study deal that was called building bridges and how to have those conversations with people that you may not agree with. And it was such an opportunity to learn how to lead. Like that was one of the best leadership things I've been to is because whenever somebody's in that type of place, whether it's a kid that's acting up or it's a 35 year old man, is maybe not doing things the right way. One of the best ways to have that interaction, start asking some questions because you've never been in that guy's shoes before. You don't know what he's dealing with or why he's saying what he's saying or the way he's acting. And until you figure that out, then you can't really have this relationship or communication. And if I could preach just one thing, just one thing, do this, ask people why. Why do you feel that way? Why are you acting that way? What's caused this to be this situation? And as you ask why, more you're able to ask, what can you do about it.

Forever. But yeah, I mean, just diving into this, we're talking perspective, right? Like it's tough to relate to someone or to give advice when you don't have that same perspective. So another thing I talk about a lot on these podcasts, my team, is that when you have a bad situation come up. For me, the example I always use is me and my wife had a miscarriage. And for me it wasn't nearly as tough because I'm the male, I don't have any connection yet versus my wife. That child's inside of her. It wasn't nearly as bad on me. And just leading her through that comm, it was, it was Maggie, hey, this is an opportunity. It sucks. You know, it is not our time to have a child, but it's an opportunity for later on down the road for us to be there for someone who's experiencing the same situation. Because if one of my friends has a miscarriage and I have not, why is he going to call me. I don't have any experience in that, you know. But within six months, man, six months, we had two of our friends have miscarriages, and guess what? They called us because we were open about it. We talked about our time through it. Anytime you have a bad situation, you gain that perspective. Look at it as an opportunity. Look at it with just like coronavirus, man. We were on a podcast together four months ago talking about coronavirus, and I'm saying, dude, I'm pumped. Like, this is 2008, baby. All these old guys like Jim talking about 2008. This is my chance to prove myself. Our goal was 1,000 contracts for the year. And we're past. I think we're past 1100 contracts now. And it's just like, just keep a positive mental attitude. Lead your team well. They're going to feed off of your vibe. Like, if you come in here, like, I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know how we're going to make it. We're going to have to play people off, come in and lead well, and create more leaders so that when you have that off thing, you can't be 100%. You're not going to make 100% shot. That's the old saying, Wayne Gretzky. But have those other leaders that can step up to the plate when you're on an off day.

Yeah, just take a lot of shots, right? That's the idea. That was Michael Jordan. Well, I can't make them all, so might as well take a bunch. First off, you call me old, so thank you for that. I appreciate that.

I'm pretty sure your daughter is the same age as me or something.

Yeah, I think she is. I think you and her 29, right? Yeah, she's about turned 30 in August. She's turned 30 August 22nd. Super proud of her. She's really turned out to be a rock star. And I'm proud of all my kids. It's. They've all done very, very well.

So.

Coronavirus hit and you went. Opportunity to prove myself. When all these other guys have proved their self through these other times. What. What was that? Where did that come from? Why that attitude?

Yeah, man. I mean, it's really just summed up into what I just said. I've heard so many of my mentors talk about 2008, how rough it was, and I'm not necessarily comparing this 2008. I don't know that it's been necessarily as bad as that. Maybe in some ways it's worse in some ways. Longevity? Not yet of course, not as bad as 08. But I just looked at it as like my first true test in business of where the economy is struggling, gonna struggle. People are getting on to you for being out and about. And for me I just looked at it and said hey, you know, until we're governed to stop going out, I got 50 guys that have to feed their family and I'm not going to be the one to tell them they can't feed their family, you know, so getting resourceful, using Facebook more, using social media, generate more leads, whatever we could to be out there less but still do our job. And so man, for me it was, it was awesome being able to get on so many podcasts. I don't even know how many podcasts shows talking about stuff but it's exciting and you know, get people on there and get buy in and having people that do believe that you can push through it even when the odds seem excited against you, you know, it's easy. If you're a negative person, you're gonna have negative reactions. It just is what it is. If you have a positive attitude and you look at it and say, alright, this is like my life slogan right here. We'll figure it out, we're just gonna figure it out. When everybody else is like, oh man, we gotta lay people off. Some of my best friends laying people off and I'm just like, dude, there's no way. I mean I freaking mortgaged my house before I did that. I love my team, I want them to be successful and everybody else laying people off. I went and got 20 more trucks and wrapped them and spent money on wraps and all this stuff. And we're donating $40,000 to Proms and just doubling down on business and it paid off.

Yeah, that's the thing, like when it hurts and you serve and give, the payoff is even bigger than you expected. I can remember a time in our life where we, we had gone through some rough times. We were down to not the number I would like in my bank account, but there was opportunity to give. And I didn't have much but I gave what I could give. And I can remember the stress it put on my wife. Like she's like, dude, we got to make our house payment and we got to pay our bills. I got a car note coming up. How can you be given 200 bucks to this situation? I'm like, because it's the right thing to do. I have it, I'm going to give it and that attitude has just really taken hold now. And it's taken hold with her, it's taken hold with my family, and it's starting to spread. And seeing people do cool, like watching Eric Hunter do what he did during the coronavirus thing to give away, you know, stimulus checks, that was inspiration to me. We started doing the same thing. And, you know, there's this fear part. Like, hey, man, I don't know if I want to give away 1200 bucks because, like, I don't know that it's going to be there. Yeah, that's not what I'm worried about. I know. God's got me. We're gonna do this thing, we're gonna help others as much as we possibly can. And so that's what this roofcon deal is all about, right? You want to get these contractors together. One thing I noticed, like, you're not charging a whole lot of money.

Yeah, yeah, you got on to me about that. You remember last year, this year you're like, dude, you got to charge more money to qualify them. And I'm like, I know, but we gotta at least give them a taste. You know, we gotta get them in there and let them understand that were different than everybody else. It isn't just about the flashy cars and making money. It's about changing people's lives, changing your life. And it's not some jump around, rah, rah, scream, all this crazy stuff. I mean, it's real life stuff that works. I've seen it work in my life, in my team's life and the community working. John Dye, Troy Kleimer, all these guys, man. That's why they're bought into it. I mean, it's literally everybody. We want to be a part of this movement. It's part of the movement we've got over there. We figured out somehow to squeeze all these people on the stage and get value so that they can give back to the community because they've learned the hard way. So when you get to come to these things, whether it's the keynote or the shaking hands in the audience, you're creating a shortcut because you're meeting people that have already been through that hard stuff.

So I had a question for you. I get asked this question all the time.

You're looking like you're on a test.

Yeah, yeah. I might test you a little bit. How'd you learn all this stuff that you're sharing?

Just hours and money. Lots of money. Probably too much money. I always joke that I spent too much money, but I don't guess it's possible, you know, I think between just courses, masterminds, events, coaches, consultants, and then when you like throw in ad spend and stuff like that, testing things, figuring out the hard way, maybe not making my money back, probably over seven figures at this point. I feel sure with all the testing and stuff, I've done over seven figures in just courses and things like that. Probably pushing half a meal, but just, you know, long nights. I've just recently, man, in the last couple months actually started setting an alarm on my phone at 9 o' clock to where I try to make myself go home at 9 o' clock because I got a little boy now he's a year and a half and you know, that first year it was. He's not old enough to remember, so I just keep getting it. But he's getting old enough, you know, so that I need to be there and spend those times with him. And that, that's a big thing to me too, is that I want Turner to be so much better than me and I don't want to force that on him. But I expect, you know, I have to lead him well so that he wants that for himself, so that he reaches more people than I could ever imagine. Because we think we've got all this technology now. We do. And we can do way better than when you were a 29 year old man. But imagine when Turner is a 29 year old man, access he's going to have. I mean, I can't even imagine. Maybe I'm crazy, but maybe you go to China in two hours on some crazy rocket ship, right? So imagine the access that our kids, your grandkids, are going to have to the world and lives, they can change. It's really amazing. And so, you know, I talk about this. One of the subjects I love and I talked about last year at Roofcon is work life balance. I'm not a big fan of work life balance. And the pivot point being right dead center. I think that it is completely dependent on your spouse's understanding of your why. For me right now it's still pretty far to the right and I focus a lot on work, but I'm able to do that because my wife understands my why. And as Turner grows and he sees that, hey, dad might not make every single baseball game or every football game or every, you know, award show. And I want to, it's not that I don't want to, but I'm out there helping people. And if he understands that and he doesn't come from a Selfish place. And he gets that dad's helping other people. Hopefully that fuels his desire to do the same thing. Instead of saying, well, my dad doesn't show up to all my football games, but, you know, Bob's dad does. So I think that it's all in how you lead your kids, man.

Yeah, there is no such thing. There is such thing as balance. It's just not a 50, 50 balance. It just doesn't work that way, especially as entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs, business leaders and stuff like that. While our family is our number one responsibility. You just mentioned it. You have responsibility for 50 guys and probably a bunch of administrative people and some production folks. And like, there's a broad responsibility there that takes that balance and shifts it just a little bit. I knew that early on that work life balance is going to be way out of whack. I was going to have to put in a lot of hours, a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of energy. And I'm very fortunate. Married to amazing woman, my wife Michelle. I can remember going to her when I first got into this industry. I was like, wow, I got a tiger by the tail here. And I was a sales guy for somebody else. And, and I said, I've never seen anything like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Never seen an opportunity like this. I am going to jump on it and you're not going to see me for the next two years. Like, I'm going to work from time I wake up till I go to bed. I'm going to be the best that there ever was at this. And. And I said, you cool with that? We had two little bitties. Like little bitties. And she goes, yeah, do it. And because of that, that support and that being behind me, we've been able to do some pretty amazing things over the last 22 years or so. Yeah, seems like, seems like a long time, but it goes by like that. How do people find out more about roofcon and coming to this event? Maybe expanding their minds and growing a bit more as a leader. And you hit the nail on the head when you spend time there. All that money stuff just happens whether you want it to or not. How do they find out more about roofcon and what's going on there?

Yeah, man. So you can just go to the link. Roofcon.com it is simply roofcon c o n.com one word. No spaces, no dashes, anything like that. Roofcon.com you join the Facebook group as well. Roofing and sales community. I'M sure that Jim probably have a link. I think Kayla hooked you up with your own little special promo link where you can save a little bit of money if you follow Jim, because he's awesome and we love contractor coach pro, what he's doing over there. So we hooked him up with a specific link. If you don't have that yet, I'll holler at Mikayla as soon as we finish up to get it for you and you'll be good to go.

Not yet, but get it to me and I will get it out there. I'm actually putting rifcon.com on there right now. So that went out to everybody watching us. It is easy. Like, great name, by the way. Great branding. You know, I always kind of giggle a little bit every time I see it. I was like, hey, you know, anytime you put con after something, I. I did the same thing with D2D Con. Like, hey, it's kind of funny. And it sticks, though. That's. That's what there is about branding and it sticks. The cool thing about it is the environment. This environment that you're creating for the betterment of roofing contractors and people. I think that's outstanding. I'm in full support of it. I can't wait to get there. And I don't know, are we able to high five or is it like air high fives or like all that.

Kind of stuff and jack pencil. We're huggers, so.

Well, hold on a second. Hold on. I'm not a hugger. I'm like a fizz. Knuckles and the high fives. It's even hard for me to like, do a handshake.

April did something smart. She had like wristbands where you could wear like red if you didn't want people close to you, yellow if you were fist bumping or elbowing, and then green if you were. That was pretty cool. So I like that a lot. But yeah, man, you know, we'll see what happens. We're two and a half months, October 15th through the 17th in Houston, Texas. So we're two and a half months from the actual event. Hopefully it dies down a little bit by then. And we'll see.

Numbers are going down in Texas. Just a heads up. As long as we're smart, be social distance and do our thing, you know, do it right. It is going down, so that's good. We just kind of saw those results here lately. So I'm. I'm thumbs up on this deal. And we're a bunch of roofers. And so as roofers we're like kind of hard headed about this kind of stuff. So we're like, hey man, we're gonna do our thing. Anything special that you want to say about Roofcon? You know, you got Michaela there. I want to mention her. She's been great at communication and getting things done there. I want you to know that about her. Maybe go talk to her today and give her a high five. She's doing a great job there. Is she somebody that people connect with as far as if they want to sponsor and stuff like that? Because this is going to be a great event to sponsor. Going to be a lot of roofers there, a lot of networking. It would be one of the first things that's really going off since this whole coronavirus thing. Is that who they want to get in touch with?

Michaela Freeman. Her name's kind of hard to spell, so I'm not going to tell your email, but you can look up Michaela Freeman in the Facebook group roofing and sales community. Also, you could just, you could email goofcom.com if you're interested in sponsorship. I think we're almost full. She's supposed to have me a count today on how many sponsorships we have left. But some great people coming out, great booths, going to be there. Many leaders in the industry, not just industry experts, but also guys that own roofing companies and they're doing it, figuring out the hard stuff and they're able to relay that. So I would just, like I said before, challenge you to come. And don't just bring yourself, bring your team. It can be life changing if you're going to take some time and have a retreat for your team. Something we do here at Cornerstone is we'll pay for the tickets and we'll pay for the Airbnb. We'll put everybody together in the house. It's pretty hard now with 50 people. We just did it in Gatlinburg about three weeks ago. We went rafting everything together. We got this huge house. Man, it was like 15,000 square feet. It held 88 people. So we actually had some room left over. But I would encourage you to come bring your team, whether it's your admin, if it's your salespeople, your operations people, I promise you that it will impact them. For me, it's not about the money. If you truly think that at the end of the event it was not worth it, you didn't get any value, someone on your team didn't get any value, you just come tell us and we will Give you your money back, no questions asked. I don't care. I know everybody says that, but you can ask Jim. I. He'll vouch for me. I really don't care. I want to make sure that you get value and that it changes lives.

Yeah, I do the same thing on my stuff and money back. If you didn't get value from it, man, hold my feet to the fire. Fire me. Like, seriously, like, that's the way I feel. Like I. If I'm not bringing value, I should get fired. And so that's. That's super cool. So I got a few more questions I ask every guest, and so if. Is it cool for a few more minutes?

Yeah, we're good.

All right, so number one, what's your greatest achievement that does not include getting married or having kids? No family stuff.

Yeah, I think it's. It's building this team, man, just such a blessing. And sometimes it makes me emotional because. Because of the stories I talked about, you know, like, it's so cool to see guys come up from working so hard, busting their butt, blue collar jobs, and not know what's possible to go into making six figures, which is cool. You know, it's the number. But now realizing, like, hey, you know, I'm a big hunter. We're in Greenville, South Carolina. We got a bunch of hunters, you know, a bunch of rednecks on our staff, blue collar guys. And so seeing a guy that's like, man, I wish I could afford to lease 200 acres for hunting season, to go hunting. Same guy now saying, wow, I can afford to buy 200 acres. And just changing that mindset, realizing what's possible. And as this team continues to grow and our numbers grow and our branches grow, we know we're reaching more and more and more people. And we have, you know, at our retreat, we had a group of all these guys around. I think we had 35, 40 people at the retreat, something like that. And you have this round, round circle, everyone talking. And you see grown men just open up and crying and talking about relationships and kids and things that have gone wrong. And then you have older guys giving advice to younger guys. And it is powerful. It is something that most of these people have never experienced before. And I love that I get to be a part of that and create that. So I can't wait to see Cornerstone have 200 people. I can't wait to see Roofcon have 2500 people next year, 1000 people this year. I can't wait to see Kicktap grow and to Help contractors in the industry and help homeowners and just continue to grow, man. Business is my addiction. I tell people that all the time. Everybody's got some kind of addiction. For me it's business and it's helping people and growing teams. I love growing teams.

Okay, that's awesome. I knew there was going to be some excitement there. So. Okay, question two of three. What's the big thing you're after for you right now? Self improvement.

Man. He made me call himself out. This is something I'm always working on. I think as an A type, as a leader, as an owner. A lot of times we're real critical of people and taking a step back and not being so critical, but like you just said, being a little more level headed, coming down to their level and trying to understand their perspective, which if I had to sum it up in one word, I think it'd be empathy. Actually this week I've been kind of studying the difference between sympathy and empathy. Empathy and empathy just being. You've got to try to understand it from their perspective. Not necessarily feel bad for them, but try to understand it from their perspective and not be too critical.

That's, that's really good. It's, it's a thing that I went down that path a few years, about 15 years ago to be exact. And I try to do a good job. I don't, I don't do it great. I could do much better, but yeah, that's, that's cool.

Stuff doesn't get done, we're like, why didn't it get done? It should be done. I don't care if you gotta stay up till 2am I just want it done. And so sometimes it's, you know, realizing like, hey, there might be stuff going on at home. And that's an opportunity for me to lead or to help or to point them in the right direction if I can't do it.

So last question. The third piece of your roofcon thing is legacy. So I want to talk about that a little bit. We all only have so much time on this planet, right? We're all going to go. And on that day when everybody's there to celebrate Hunter Baloo, what do you want them to remember about you?

Yeah, man, we're going to talk for another hour here.

Sometimes this question is really short. Sometimes it is a little bit longer.

Yeah, man. This is something that, yeah, I'm just super passionate about. I tied into everything I do. You could take Cornerstone, you could take roofcon, you could take all my money, my house, just Everything that'd be okay. You know, I've got the knowledge that I've learned through the years, I've got the relationships. At this point, I could duplicate all that. But the way that I treat people, the way that people remember me, the legacy that I left, the people that I impacted across the world, that will never know my name, never know how hard I worked, all that is what matters to me. And, you know, I probably think about it, same thing I said earlier, like, investing too much, probably not possible. I think about it every day, man, Like, I really do. I think about dying. I'm not afraid of death. I'm a Christian. I'm, you know, I'm not jumping for joy to die. But it's not something that scares me. What scares me is really. And I know it sounds cliche and other people say this, but I don't want to not accomplish what I'm here to do. You know, I want to help at least a million people improve in leadership so that they can help other people improve in leadership. I want to speak to 10 million people live. I want to speak to 100 million people through online platforms. And I may be selling myself short on that. That number may grow next year to a billion. One of my goals is to have a billion dollar company because I feel like with a billion dollar company, I can just serve so many more people. And it's not about the number. And I've heard people say for years now, since I stepped away from the fire department of business, like, oh, Hunter, you're just greedy. You're just after the money. None of them give their time. None of them give the amount of money that I give. And I'm not saying that pat myself on the back by any means. I'm just comparing apples to apples. Don't say that about me. When and for years I've said, hey, I'm going to take the minimum amount I can from the business just to survive and give the rest of it back. Invest into our people. You know, that's one big thing too, Jim. We didn't really hit on this is talking about culture at Roofcon. And to me, you've got all these owners that say, I want a good culture, I want to build a culture. And they don't really understand what it means. And that's okay because we're in a new time. In the 2000s, prior to that culture really wasn't a thing. This is kind of a new, oh, let's have a good culture. If I had to sum up what culture was like, if my definition of culture would be an investment into your people, they know that you're investing into them. Whether it's the facilities, whether it's how much you pay them, whether if it's personal development, training one on one, or training that I pay for them, they know that you're invested into them, and you view them as an asset and not a liability. And so for me, man, when I leave this world, I just hope that people look at me and say, 99% of people look at me. Because you're always going to have those haters. I know you experience that all the time. As you grow, as you get bigger, Cornerstone gets bigger. All these roofing companies out here spreading lies. Oh, Cornerstone's going out of business. Cornerstone screen damage. All this talk as roof lines growing. I'm hearing this stuff as this is. You always hear these talking heads. But for the most part, I hope that people look at me and say, man, he really actually put in the work and was focused on people and not profit.

Boy, that's a good one. Focus on people, not profit. I think if more people, especially owners, focused on people, not profit, their profit would be something they could never imagine before. Powerful stuff. Hunter. I cannot wait for Roofcon. It's in Houston, Texas, the 15th through 17th. Is that right at NRG Center? Right. Home of the Houston Texans. There we go. My hometown, Houston. What's that?

Sean Watts, man, I'm a fan.

Yeah, there you go. Okay.

Hello, Brian on Facebook. God, why don't they just fire?

Yeah. I cannot stand that guy. J.J. watts, my guy lived in Wisconsin for 18 years, so got to watch him grow up through the football program and then play for the Texans. But Texans are my second favorite team. Green Bay packers first. So there's a story there I'll share with you at some point.

Think they're making a move? They get Rogers in the next year, too.

They did the same thing with far like, they. They plan ahead. They don't. They don't wait till the last second. And it's. What's that?

How old is Rogers? He's not quite as old as Fard was. Was he?

I think Rogers is 36, 37, something like that. And so he's getting up there, and he's still good, and he's gonna get another couple years out of him. But I think it's time to kind of start thinking about that stuff and. And to learn underneath somebody that, I mean, even if the guy didn't want to help you to learn just by watching, so far, wasn't much of a help to Rogers. I remember that. So. Hey, man, glad to have you on. I know you got other things to do. I gotta hop on another call, too. Great having you on contractor radio. Can't wait to be there for roofcon. And we will see you in October.

Appreciate you, brother.

Talk to you later, man.