In this first‑person YouTube short, Tommy Dobczyk recounts how he became a "million‑dollar roofer" by age 24 after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. He explains that college wasn’t for him, so he moved straight from high school into roofing contracting. Realizing he couldn’t sell roofs himself, he hired a struggling salesman, promising the salesman higher earnings than running his own business. He also rejected the common "free estimate" tactic, noting its low conversion rate, and instead placed a massive, eye‑catching ad in the local Penny Saver newspaper that highlighted "best pay in the state" to attract both workers and customers. This unconventional marketing and sales structure, combined with the post‑hurricane demand, allowed him to scale quickly and reach million‑dollar revenue within two years.
Chapters
At 24, I figured that out and I became a million dollar roofer. I learned at a very young age going to college was not going to work. And so literally right after high school, I went to Florida and became a contractor, a roofing contractor in the state of Florida. It was a hurricane that made me very popular. It was called Hurricane Andrew. Some people might remember it. I know how old you are if you do. But what happened was I went down there and I. I went to work and I was listening to a couple guys earlier, like Mike, talking about how to recruit and stuff like that. And it brought me back some memories. When I had a roofing company, I was 22 years old. You know how hard it was to go out and sell roofs to people and look like I was a baby face, like they immediately judged me. I'm the owner of the company. And then something happened. I realized that I need to hire a salesman. So I went and got what. Went and found a guy that was struggling with his company. And I told him, I said, I will make more. You'll make more money in a year working for me than you're going to working for yourself. Come work for me. Come sell roofs for me. Because I can't sell them. I can run the crews, but I can't sell the jobs. Because when I went out on the job, I was 22 years old. What else it did was talking about the recruiting. I never ran an ad one single day for a free estimate at one time. And I was like, I seen things my dad did, and I'm like, I don't want to repeat that. Don't want to do that. So going out and doing free estimates, you know, a contractor writes 10 estimates, he only gets two contracts out of that. At 22, 23 years old, I had all this knowledge. I was like, I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do it. You know, do it better than my dad. That was the goal. Do it better than that. And so what I did was I took out an ad and I say ad. A lot of people, like, you know, like a Facebook ad. No, this was called a Penny Saver. This is a piece of paper, a document that came to your house called a newspaper, and it got delivered to your house, and people would read it and there would be ads in there, there would be stories in there and stuff like that. It's basically the. The print version of Facebook. And what I did was differently than my competition, because my competition were running little column ads. You paid for them. They were about that big. They were paying for every single word right there. Help wanted, or I mean, you know, free estimate, you know, a free service, you know, 50% off, whatever. They ran some little gimmick, and it was only about that big. I had an ad this big on the page next to him, said, help want to add? Like an old dude sitting there with his finger, I want you best pay in the state. That's what I put. Best pay in the state. I had more calls on that ad for estimates than I had for people that wanted a freaking job. And at 24, I figured that out and I became a million dollar roofer.
