This is a Contractor Radio podcast episode (YouTube) where host Jim Johnson interviews Brian Farr (founder/CEO) and Brian Walton (managing partner) of B. Farr Roofing. Farr describes moving from general contracting and interior remodeling back to roofing (he began roofing at age 13), and the company’s deliberate focus on specializing in roofing. Company growth: started ~7 years ago with three people (same three still employed), now ~32 in-house plus subcontractors; revenue progression stated as 2 → 4 → 8 → 14 with an expectation to break 20 in the current year (units not specified in the transcript). Walton (age 38) describes joining after working as a shingle rep and becoming general manager; the pair emphasized branding/marketing and specialization as keys to growth.
Chapters
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 amounts 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.
