What's New with the SRC Summit with April Hall

Hey everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro with this week's episode of Contractor Radio. And this is one that's actually kind of near and dear to my heart because I've been involved with it from the very beginning. And it's super cool to sit down each year and talk with this person that we're going to have on today. We're going to be talking about the SRC Summit. It is a conference for storm restoration contractors to come and get better at what they do to learn from some experts and speakers, breakouts, some great motivational type people doing some keynotes. And I'm honored to be able to be the industry keynote again this year. And so I'm going to bring on my special guest. Her name is April Hall. She is the president of Storm Consultants llc. She's also the president of the SRC Summit and she's a best selling author. And most of all, she's one of the most influential women in our industry. Welcome to Contractor Radio, April Hall.

Hey Jen, thanks so much for having me on today.

It's always good to have you. I always like want to kind of check out what's going to happen at the SRC Summit. I'm honored each year you asked me to come and speak, so I must be doing okay with it. I have a good time doing it. I do like getting together. You know, we had a conference here a couple weeks ago that was amazing. It was really good to like see people again. That was, that was the cool part. Like we got to hang out and you know, it's just different in person. And so we've got the SRC Summit, but before we get there, why don't you like let everybody know who you are and kind of how you got to where you are with running this conference that you do. You do such a good job with it. I don't know how you do it all. I go crazy trying to put together small ones that we do. Just be a little bit.

Yeah, it's a lot of work to put these together. So yeah, I mean if people don't know me, my background really is in construction. So my family has built custom homes my entire life. I grew up with that. I've built several homes myself as well. I worked with them for, for a while, but it was kind of cool. It was just an easier transition when I was in college. My business partner then and we opened up our first roofing and construction company then, gosh, it went really, really well. We did a, there was a Hailstorm to work, which was great. So we did a lot of residential, but we also got into commercial, and we did some newer commercial, like new construction commercial, and it went really, really great. I mean, we hit it off big, you know, even when I was still in college. And so after the storm kind of dried up, we decided, well, do we want to chase storms or do we not want to chase storms? And so we got back into home building, and so did that for a few years. But really, like, the niche and what we saw is we wanted to be back in roofing, such a great. Such a great industry. So several years later, really found that there was a huge need for a standardized training for roofing salespeople. And so it hadn't been created yet. And so we came up with the verse insurance restoration sales training, and opened that up here in DFW back in 2011. So my business partner and I ran that, and it was just strictly sales training. And so after about four months, contractors started to fly in from other states, and we had to keep getting into bigger training places because we just kept out growing. So from that, you know, I talk to contractors really on a daily basis, and, you know, they tell me their pain points, their needs, the things that they want to gain more knowledge on in the industry. So I just started, you know, hearing a whole bunch of things of, gosh, you know, this is needed in the industry, or this is needed in industry. And so back then in 2013, I came up with the Overhead and Profit Summit. And that has helped so many contractors, you know, nationwide hear yes when they get OMP or ask for it. So we just wrapped that up. My annual overhead Profit seminar was on Friday. It was awesome. It sold out right away. We had contractors attend from 14 different states. It was. It was awesome. So I'm so glad to do that one because, you know, I'm already getting feedback of, you know, people getting overhead, profit paid. So that's the goal. And so that one is what I do. And then, you know, came up with, you know, gosh, there's so many other topics that we can address in the industry. So created the IRC Summit, which is now the SRC Summit. And so you'll see that we have so many different expert speakers over a couple days. You know, there's a full trade show. We'll bring contractors in, PAs, anybody to do with the restoration industry come together for two and a half days of just learning, networking, and fun. I'm big on creating huge value, so it's great when I pull contractors out in the end, you know, I always hear, like, two things. The top two things are one, Wow, I had no idea I was going to learn that much. You know, they've been maybe the industry for years, and they're able to take back so much information and knowledge that they can start applying right away to their business. And the second thing is the networking and being able to make connections not only with, like, the vendors, but other contractors. So I love doing that each year, upgrade it. And I'm super excited to have you back for the 2021 SRC summit. And there's new things as well.

Yeah, we'll get to those in just a minute. We'll talk, we'll cover, hopefully this a little bit in depth today. So before we get there, though, I got a question for ask every one of our people that join us for a podcast on Contractor radio asking the same question. So I'm interested to kind of hear your answer. What's your greatest achievement to date? Not including any family stuff, no kids or family or that type of thing. Like, we know those are the easy ones. Right. So what's your greatest achievement? Achievement?

Oh, my gosh, that's a great question, Jim. Of course it's gonna be my little boy. But outside of that, I guess really greatest achievement is just to keep moving on and going forward in business. People don't know me. I went through a huge, messy divorce, and I could not do the IRC summit for a while, so it kind of just sat down for two years. And that was kind of like my second baby. You know, I love bringing people together to help them succeed, receive and learn, and make a difference, not only in their business, but in their life as well. And I couldn't do that for two years. So it really hurt me. And, you know, it took, like, a big leap of faith and just to go back and, you know, build that confidence back up to. To do it again. And so I brought it back in 2019, rebranded it, and just made it bigger and better. And so each year it keeps growing, and I. I love. I love doing it, but that's probably going to be my biggest achievement, accomplishment from. For now.

Yeah. You know, you mentioned it. You went through some struggles, and you took a leap of faith to start this thing back up. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that kind of doubted you, to be honest with you, and it's a joy to actually see it do it well. And you have done a good job with. Was my pleasure to be there the last couple years. I'm excited to be there again this year. It just has a different vibe to it. It's very educational. It's high value. The group of contractors that are there kind of have a certain vibe about them, really good guys and trying to do things right. And that's why I kind of believe in it. I'm after that type of push in our industry is that this understanding that we can actually do things right and make just as much money, if not more, by doing it right for a lot longer time. So. So let's talk about the SRC summit. I hear you have a big announcement for who your real keynote is. I'm just kind of that little dude that happens to be in the industry, but we got a real keynote guy. Do you want to talk about that first or do you want to talk about maybe some of the content first and kind of save that for later?

Let's talk about a little bit of the content first. And so I'm big about, you know, bringing people together to do the industry the right way. You know, we don't waive deductibles, we don't short side things. We do things the right way. And so I speak about integrity. So this year, really focusing on different things. I know that you're going to be talking about leadership. So we're going to do, you know, different things that are not only going to help contractors succeed, you know, with the specifics, the industry specific stuff, but also personally in their lives. And so I've been bringing in keynotes outside the industry since, you know, 2014. So it's always good to get a different perspective from other people who've had success in their own industries. Right. So we're really going to be focusing on leadership. We're going to be focusing on strategy, overcoming adversity, your inspiration, and of course, industry experts, you know, giving their best knowledge and information and techniques to help attendees succeed. So I do have a few different keynotes this year. Jim, you're the industry expert keynote. So I'm excited about that. Hey, why don't you tell people a little bit about what you're talking about? Leadership.

So, yeah, we're going to talk about leadership. Last year I did this concept on champions. Right. I want to talk about that. And that was super cool. I got a cool little selfie at the end of it. I'm still using that today. That was a lot of fun. But we want to take that a little bit further with what type of leaders it takes to run one of these types of business. So we're going to get into the different types. There's three different types of leaders. We're going to get into the personalities of leaders and there's four different main ones of those. And we're going to break that down and then we're going to break it down on how you build this capacity, which is what we're all after. Whenever we're contractors, we get in this business and it quickly gets out of control on us. Kind of one of those things where we end up starting to work for it instead of it working for us. We end up employees. We really have to position ourselves as leaders, but we have to understand there's a lot of skill involved there. There's also a lot of growing of other leaders. And so we're going to talk about how to accomplish those type of things so you can actually work on your business instead of in it. Actually wrote a book about it for a couple of weeks and that's going really well. I actually have a little bit of an announcement as well. I can't divulge who it is yet, but I have a C level executive from the industry that's going to be a co author in the book with me. He liked it so much, he's like, how can I get involved? And his content's really good as well and so super excited to bring it. Kind of delayed it a little bit because now we're putting all this stuff together, but it's going to be amazing. It's going to be a really good book.

So is it src?

What's that?

Will it be ready by src?

Yes, it should be ready by src. That's, that's the gameplay. That's actually like our release date. We're trying to get it done.

That'll be awesome.

So, yeah, yeah, we're going to bring it home there and this guy will be there. People will know who he is. He has actually, there's something that's associated with him that everybody in this industry knows, but they don't know that he's the guy behind it. So it's going to be really interesting. Interesting to kind of let everybody know about that. Yeah, we gotta nail down a few details first. But he's like, hey, hold off on that. Let's, let's keep that a little bit in our pocket for now so he can get himself positioned where he needs to be. But it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be really good and I'm excited to share some of the content. I'm just going to share the part about leadership. We have other parts of that book that is this order of how you do things in our business. And it's the first time I've ever seen put it in this type of order. And he said the same thing. He's like, I've never seen this. This is fantastic. This is what people need to do. So it was pretty cool. But enough about what I'm going to talk about.

Congratulations. I can't wait to read it.

Yes, it's exciting. It really is. It's been got to be a lot more work than I expected. When you try to take one other. We got another person's content, you got your own content. You're trying to meld them together. It takes a little bit. There's been a little bit of this back and forth between us. Like, well, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. But we challenge each other and through that challenge we're making the book better, which is super cool. So who else you got speaking? Me. So big deal, but actually important people.

So another one. So we're like I mentioned the different type of keynotes that we're having. So one that I'm really excited about too is Scott Riopell. He's going to be sharing his story. It's overcoming adversity. If anybody knows Scott and a little bit about him, it's wow. It's just going to be so inspirational to hear his story and how he's overcome certain things to be where he's at today. So very looking forward to that. You know, we're going to be talking or doing leadership. Sam Struthers is going to be talking about company culture, which is very important. Chrysler is an amazing company called culture. And so he'll be sharing that. John Maroon is going to be there as well. You'll have to check back on the website in the next week because there's a lot more updates that will be happening with the speakers. But one thing is I'm really big on personal development and I've been in a mastermind group and I think it's good to whether you're in the industry doing this or you have outside help. I mean, I have a business coach as well and so I'm in Keith Crafts mastermind group and I've been going to elevate Life Church for some time and. And so Keith Kraft is actually going to open up the SRC Summit. And so he is so big on mindset and getting your mindset right. So it really flows well into business owners and just general in your life as well. I mean, when you hear him speak, he is so direct and inspirational. It's like, you know, you're motivated and you're like, wow, I have something I can go back and take and use right away. So it's going to bring a little bit different change to the src And I'm super excited and honored that he's going to be speaking there about Mindset.

You kind of clued me in before we hopped on. I'm like, I'm excited to kind of see this guy speak. I've heard about him. I haven't had the opportunity to engage with him personally, but I'm excited to hear him speak. I hear really good things. So that's a big get. Well done.

It's gonna be great. So I'm. I'm super excited, and I'm honored that he'll be there to do it. So very excited. So we got that going on. And so really, it's January 23rd through 25th, 2021. We're seeing that at the Frisco, Texas Convention Center. Got several hotels that you know in the area that have group blocks on, especially even on site. So it's going to be very easy to be close or be on site when attending. And Saturday is something pretty fun. I was going to share this really quick. It's something that I did, and then you probably may have seen it online or not. But since the whole Covid thing, like the last two events I had, I had to kind of social distance people out. And so for the SRC summit, when I booked it, you had to negotiate more space just to make sure that where we were was safe. So if I have to really have everybody social distance out by the time January rolls around, I have the space to do it, which is great. So to make everybody feel safe, what I did is the last couple conferences, I instituted a bracelet system. And so when you check in, basically you pick the bracelet that you feel most comfortable with. So there are these right here. There's red, yellow, and green. So what this does is it shows people where you stand. If you wear a green bracelet, it means, hey, I'm good with shaking hands. We can talk one on one. Yellow's like, hey, I'm keep a little bit of distance. Maybe fist bump red. Social distance. Right? So this has worked really well. It's been a big hit, surprisingly. It's really cool that with contractors, like, working with them for so long, I know my market. People who want to Be there, they're there. I mean like 95% are going to pick green, right?

We need to have these at all conferences.

Like this is the end happen in life, right? Know where people stand.

Don't go, this is my introvert bracelet right here. They'll talk to me, they'll mess with me. This is my extrovert bracelet. Like super cool. Hey, that's a great idea.

At least two of them, right?

It's a great idea. And, and nobody should be feeling one way or the other, like, respect what everybody else's viewpoint is on this thing and be cool about it. It is, it's a trying time for all of us. From everything I've seen, from everything I've seen, the events went fine. I didn't hear anything from the one we went to that there's been like some big, massive Covid breakout or anything like that. So that was good. And I feel confident that these things are going to go on. We need to go on with our lives anyway, at least in my opinion. And it's good to get together and do these things.

Can't replicate that online. It just, it's, it's so difficult. You can try, but I mean that personal contact and meeting people and the interaction, I mean, I always say that live events change lives because that's, that's where you need to be if you really want to see and grow and get to know people. Right? It's about community.

I would maybe, I would maybe argue that we're doing ours online and really it's not because of the COVID thing, although it's a little bit of a factor, but more of it is because of how intense ours is. Our strength conference that we do is we're covering so much content, we need to give people like a week to work on it before they come back. So.

Interacting with people and if you're a one on one when you do that, oh my gosh, you can do that online. But when you do a really big conference, it's just so hard because you can't.

Yeah, that's why, that's why we limit it to 50 contractors. That's all we can handle. Keep that focus and that ability to work with each one of the contractors is important.

I'm the people person, so it's like I have to see and interact with people.

Yeah, me too. I kind of like hanging out with people too. And it's, it's one of those things where every year we do that conference and there's never enough time to get everything done. So we think that doing it this way we're going to be able to give people time enough to get things done and they'll will walk away with like, here's my plan, I'm ready to go. And that's, that's a good thing for everybody.

Good idea how you spaced it out because I know how much content it's.

It's pretty intense. It scares some people. I think some people don't come because they're like, man, that's gonna be a lot of work. But you get that workout and the rest of the year is so easy.

Right.

I have a question for you. Are you gonna be doing any breakouts or anything like that? I know some years you have and some years like, I. What's going on with that?

Yeah. So Saturday. Okay. So Saturday is the opening day. We open it up in the afternoon. But so I'm doing a couple new things this year, so I'm super excited. I'm gonna do my first ever women's welcome brunch. So that's gonna kick off on Saturday and the vendor trade show kicks off that afternoon, like around 2. There's a schedule online and then I'm also hosting the second annual Roofing Olympics. So we're gonna be doing Olympic like events, but with a roofing spin on it. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We're still going to play for the gold, silver, bronze medals, cash prizes go to the gold medal winners and then we match that to charity. So we'll be doing the ping pong was so much fun. I had a fun time playing that.

It was intense, was serious.

The golf simulator, that's fun because I mean, it's the longest drive you get up there and it's pretty easy to do.

I get to do it this year.

Yes.

Last year people don't know. I was just torn my Achilles. It was one of the first events I'd done. I was on like this cart. I couldn't swing or doing that. I was so disappointed. So this year I'm gonna, I'm gonna go get that gold medal on that one.

Nice. And then we did the nail up competition. It was so much fun. Everybody got into that. It was GAF sponsored in. We had their brand new shingles come out. It was cool because my event was the first one that they showed the htz shingles on. So we did the fastest and most accurate to nail. It's not a square of shingles, but it's a platform. And so it was a lot of fun. So we'll be doing that again. It's just to kick off the event. It's fun because you get to meet people right away breaks the ice and then you know, for the rest of the conference. So Saturday we'll have some breakouts during the day and then Sunday is the main day. We'll be speaking Sunday morning, main day with all the speakers and into Monday half day. But what I like about SRC is really cool is all the vendors, they're part of the show. So they're in the same room, they're just back a little bit further. So they get to be part of it and everybody likes it because they get a lot of traffic to the booths and so really looking forward to it. If we have a new thing too I'm going to be initiating this year is we'll have a couple different times to where attendees can meet the speakers and so be more a little bit, you know, one on one they need to ask you a question or get to know you a little bit better. So I'm looking forward to that.

Me too. At this other conference we went to, we actually did coaching sessions, little bitty tiny, like micro coaching sessions at our booth and we gave a walk something to take away with them to help kind of keep that mindset going that I went to this conference. I learned this thing, I'm going to go implement it. And I think that's key whenever you go to a conference. So I got a question for you. What's the most difficult thing about putting one of these on?

Where do I start? Oh my gosh. People see, they're like oh wow, there's a big conference. Look at all these people here. Must be so easy. People don't see like, you know, the whole iceberg thing, you know, it takes a lot of time setting it up. I mean you gotta, gotta be. Have a trust, trustworthy name, right? And I mean from the vendor part, I mean that's like a full time jobs vendors to getting the attendees and just putting it together so it flows smooth. I mean it's just, it's a different animal. It's you know, majority of tendees that register within the last month. So you're like oh, I have several hundred coming and like okay, well it's a month out and then all of a sudden they all come in.

So I would say that's the number one challenge for us in conferences with contractors. They wait until the last second. Like 20% of people do it prior to the last two weeks and 80% of people sign up the last two weeks. The only problem you have with that is you might run out of space. And that has happened before where you have to go, hey, I can't let you in now because we've gotten filled up. So contractors, you guys are listening out there, get signed up, get on board with these things.

And the earlier they sign up, I mean, you get, you know, better rates. My rates keep going up as we get closer to the event. And then if you're traveling, if you want to make your travel plans, you're going to save more money if you plan early. I have great hotel rates, but I think they end by, gosh, I think January 15th. And so, yeah, just make sure you're booked early.

You're doing this with partners and things like that. You know, you've got the vendor vendors that you work with that's like us, but you also have these vendors that are the food. And they were like, hey, how many people? You're going, well, I think it's going to be this many. This, how many actually registered. This is what's going on. And then at the last, you're like, hey, I need 300 more meals. And they're going. That's why the rates go up, though.

Yeah, the rates going up. So I mean, yeah, when you. So we do, I always do like a very nice plated lunch. People always say it's excellent meals. So that's always right by the number. So I have to have that number in way early and I kind of update them as we go. But there's a lot of plan, especially like any marketing stuff. I mean, if you're printing anything to give out, that has to be done well in advance. And so with last minute signups, you know, sometimes if you don't print way extra, some people may miss out on it.

Yeah. So. So the point of that, get signed up. We got comments here. Somebody says, hey, what's up, Jim Johnson, Abrahal. I can't tell who they are just as Facebook user, whenever it comes in here, unless they clear it and say, yeah, I can show my name. And there was somebody said, I like the bracelets. They actually have gone to another conference that was in Florida a few months ago and it worked really well. Great idea. It should be really good. Any final things you want to say about SRC Summit before I ask you the final question?

Oh, gosh, what are you going to ask me? I'm just looking forward to it. I mean, each year I upgrade it. I make it bigger and make it better. Really the goal in mind is to bring contractors together, give them, you know, stuff that they can take back and use right away to help them succeed and, you know, inspire them to be better. You know, what they do in their job, but also in life. So I have a lot of fulfillment, you know, putting these together to help contractors succeed.

Awesome. All right, so final question. And when I let you go, will you hang out for a few minutes? I want to talk with you afterwards. Would you mind doing that? Okay. I'll put you in the green room over there. So final question. We all only have so much time on this planet. We all know that, right? At some point we're going to go, and on that day, lots of friends and family and everybody are going to be there. What do you want them to remember about you? What legacy do you want to leave behind?

You know, that's a great question, because I've been talking about that a lot lately, and a lot of times people are looking at legacy as what it is when you die. Okay. I look at, you know, legacy is now as living your best life ever. Right. Legacy, you know, also gets confused with inheritance. Inheritance is inheritance, right? Once it's gone, it's gone. So legacy is, for me, is living my best life now and, you know, trying to be better than I was yesterday. Right. And so being a great example to my son, you know, I always bring up SRC showing him, you know, why mommy works so hard, right? In, you know, he was right in.

The front row of my picture. It was great.

I love it. So really to be a member by somebody who, you know, went out of their way to help people be their best person that they could be, that.

Is a great way of looking at it. I think a lot of people do legacy, like, once they're gone, what do people think? I think it can be looked at as both ways. I hope that through that effort of you living your best life daily, that when that day does come, they go, hey. She lived her best life daily and helped me be a better person because of it. So, yeah, that's super cool. Great answer. That's a new one, so that's good. Thank you for joining us today. I'm excited for the SRC time. I can't wait to speak there. Can't wait to see the contractors. Mostly. I love to hang out with those guys. I love all my vendor friends. I love seeing you guys. You always have such a great team. That makes it easy for us, and we really appreciate it and looking forward to SRC Summit 2021 January 23rd through.

25Th and yay, it's going to be a new year. We'll be done with 2020.

Let's get through 2020. I'm just done with that. All right. Hey, I'm gonna let you go for just a second. I'm gonna close this out, and then I got a question for you afterwards.

Thank you so much, Jim. That's great being on today.

All right, thanks. All right, guys, so that was Contractor Radio for this week. A little bit different episode. Whenever we. We talk about conferences and stuff like that, but we're here to educate you. We're here to help you develop your strategies so you can get control of your company, to grow your company so you can find what you really are looking for as a contractor when you start your business. And that's freedom. We have this vehicle that we get to choose how we want to drive it, which is our businesses. And that business can be a vehicle for us to achieve something even beyond that business, to follow our true passions. Maybe it's something that you want to travel, Maybe it's something that you want to speak. Maybe it's something you want to teach. Maybe it's something you want to impact the planet with. This vehicle that we have in contracting allows us to get there, and that's what we help with. That's what we do every day. And we hope that you guys are finding the ability to get control of your business so you can grow it and find the freedom that you're looking for as a contractor, not only in business, but in life. That's Contractor Radio for today. Thank you for joining us. If you need anything from us, you can always find us@contractorcoachpro.com make sure to subscribe and download these podcasts. They are valuable for you as a contractor. That's all we got. We'll see you later.