Scaling a home service business from 2.5m to 20m in 4.5 years with Randy Brothers | Ep 82

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we are diving into scaling a home service business from 2.5 million to 20 million in four and a half years with Randy Brothers. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Randy, man, I'm glad to be here, brother. Looking forward to it, my man. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was on Randy's podcast a couple days ago and it's just like I felt like we vibe so good and like I love the conversation that we had. So I'm excited for this one. So quick, quick bio. Randy's the founder and CEO of Elite Roofing and Solar, which scaled from two and a half million to 20 million in four and a half years. He now runs a consulting business called the Roofing Academy, helping contractors build sustainable companies. He's also an author of the best selling book Start It, Build It, Grow it, which is the contractor's guide to success. After navigating both explosive growth and difficult lean periods, he now dedicates 80% of his time to his passion of coaching and mentoring contractors to build businesses aligned with their core values. With all that being said, Randy, can you tell us this initial business. Two and a half million. How did you get to this point of owning this business? What was it? What did you do?

Oh man, Love it. So I want to say it was some intentionality, but there was also just, I was kind of forced into it because I had to survive, right. So I was blessed to get an opportunity to go to college, went to school, went to a business school. And, and through that I've always, you know, people who know me like, you actually went to college. I'm not exactly like a studious type of guy. I don't love college or sitting still for five minutes, but went to school, studied business, you know, took as many entrepreneurship classes as I want. I always knew as a kid that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to have my own business one way or another. And when I, during college is when, you know, you come to that, that, that point in life where you're like, I gotta like make a decision and decide like, what the heck am I gonna actually do? So at that point is when I really decided, you know what, I do wanna figure out how to run a business at some point. And I just, I'm a third generation contractor. I grew up kind of watching grandpa and dad and, and people kind of build things. And I've always just been drawn to construction and contracting. So I decided that, that's what my path is gonna be. I was gonna figure out how to be a contractor. Originally, I wanted to be a custom home builder. And I thought that was kind of like the, you know, my ego driven way of being the top of the food chain when it comes to construction. Right? I'm gonna be a custom home builder. And, you know, back then, a lot of ego decisions, unfortunately, but that got me into it and I studied and I worked full time. While I was going to school, I went and interned for a construction company. I wanted to learn everything I possibly could about construction. So I spent years learning construction, learning design, learning how to manage projects, learning how to build a house from the ground up, from the plan stage all the way to, you know, certificate of occupancy, and learned a lot about that. And then school got out and I was working for a company, and they had just bought a bunch of land, and unfortunately they were kind of like, well, it's going to be a while before we have any projects for you to manage. I was a superintendent at the time, so. And I had built a lot of relationships along that journey. And I had a friend of mine call me. He's like. And he knew I kind of wanted to be, you know, at some point, go off my own. And he called me and he was like, hey, he did drywall and paint. So we had built a relationship. He did all my drywall and paint. So he's like, hey, man, why don't we kind of team up and, you know, we can start doing some basement finish remodel work. Like, you know me, I can handle all the drywall and paint. He's like, you can do the framing and the trim work and. And we can sub out all the trades and, and kind of start a little business off of it. And I spent about 48 seconds figuring out my decision, and here we go. So I went and somehow we bid the project and, you know, I somehow landed my first one. And away my entrepreneurial construction career went.

Wow, very cool. So started with some remodels. Were you like, gcing residential stuff or was it commercial stuff? What were you doing?

When I went off my own, it was primarily, primarily residential. So I did. I got into a lot of basement finish in the. In the area of country I was at. And, you know, there was a lot of homes that got built over the previous handful of years, and a lot of them got built without basement. So it was a big market opportunity and a lot of basement finish remodel, some bathroom remodel, some kitchen Stuff, but mostly a lot of basement finish. So I did. I started kind of focusing on that quite a bit for the first couple of years. And. And the. The goal was to get to building custom homes, but, you know, I wasn't quite financially ready to be able to go there. Yeah, but that entire vision, the entire goal got closed real quick because that was right during the. If there's any of the. Any. Some. Any old dogs listening to this podcast here, you know, this. I started in 2006. So, you know, fast forward two years to middle of 2008. You know, bank stop lending. The market crashed and people just overnight, the entire business model, everything I was trying to do just disappeared. Nobody was wanting to do any more. More remodeling work. They couldn't even get funding to do remodel work. And I was in a. I was in an area of the country where at the time they had the highest foreclosure rate in the country. So they had overbuilt, put way too many homes that overbuilt that market, that area. And it was a lot of oil in the area. So it was kind of all the, you know, the. All the rocks begin to kind of fall down and. And the whole thing kind of the bottom dropped out of that whole industry, the whole market. So I had to kind of. I had to completely reset everything. Wow.

And so did you reset into roofing from there, like, or how did you get over to roofing and solar?

Well, so I kind of. Again, I. I stumbled into roofing. Roofing kind of found me. And I talk about this a lot when I'm on stages and doing things and coaching. It's like, I didn't choose roofing. Roofing chose me. Roofing found me. And at that time. So again, here's the takeaway for anybody listening to this. No matter what you're doing. I mean, even when I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken, I made friends. I connected with my audience. I connected with the people that came in there and built a network. Like, you can never do enough networking and connecting with people. Right. So throughout this whole journey, I just connected with people, made friends and got to know people, got to build trust with people and get to connect. So I seem like every time I hit a major roadblock, something would happen or I'd connect with somebody or reconnect with somebody that I knew in the past and, like, a new idea would happen. So through that journey, I. I was able to land a job as a superintendent for a fire and water restoration company.

Okay.

So that was Kind of my first and only like real job post post college. And so, so I, they handed me a ton of projects. I was doing a bunch of superintendent, you know, project management, you know, doing fire and water restoration stuff. And through that though, is how I got connected with. They had an internal kind of supplementing department there. So, you know, there's two guys in there, good old boys just always talking about the good old days when they were traveling, working, working hurricanes and working they were used to. They both ex adjusters that came on and start working for the construction company. So I learned a lot about that and, and through. And then by this time, what I, what I failed to mention is building my business. I leveraged everything personally, all my finances and put everything in my credit and tried to build this business. And when the bottom dropped out, I was left with a lot of debt and a lot of challenges, you know, so trying to build a business, you know, with, I mean, I didn't have silver spoon. I couldn't just call somebody and say, hey, give me money. It was you figured out or you don't, you know, and I had to figure it out. So I ended up having to go bankruptcy. I ended up going bankrupt throughout this whole process. But leading up to that, it's a good job as a, as a fire and water restoration kind of superintendent. But it was not enough. I mean, I was making pennies compared to what I needed to get myself out of the hole. So I worked my way and I, you know, learned about what insurance adjusting was. And I was like, all right, that's it. I can, I can travel for a couple years. I'll go be an insurance adjuster. I'll make enough money to kind of get, climb myself out of this hole I dug myself into. And that was a good idea. So I upped and I moved to Texas and got a license as an adjuster and traveled around doing that a little bit. I did it just long enough to learn a lot, but also realize that, man, that lifestyle was not for me. I'm from Colorado. I love Colorado and my family. So I'm a major family guy. Like, I just, I needed to be around my people and, and, and traveling and being told what to do. Like, hey, you get 48 hours. You got to be in this random town in this random state in 48 hours, and who knows how long you're going to be there. Sounded appealing when you're desperate, right? But when I really thought about quality of life, I was like, wait a minute, whoa. What did I sign up for? So yeah, that last, the whole process lasted about a year. I learned a ton. But through that is where I started getting experience and getting connected with the roofers. I'm like, what's going on in the roofing world? And then at my fire and water restoration, there was a tornado that we worked and they partnered up with this roofing company that brought in a bunch of guys knocking doors and all, bragging and talking about how much money they're making and all this. I'm like, interesting. So all these little like things that like pointed like, hey, roofing, hey roofing. And eventually I was like, you know what? When I decided to leave the assignment I had with as an adjuster, I was living in Austin at the time and I went back to Austin and first truck I saw that had a roofing logo on it, I called him and I was like, hey, I'm an insurance adjuster, a contractor, licensed contractor, and I'm interested in roofing. Interesting roofing sales. Before I came and finished my, my sentence, I got a job. They're like, whoa, they must like me. Yeah, but no, I was a guy calling them to ask them to, to go sell roofs for him. So little did I know if you can fog a mirror and you're willing to go knock doors, you can get a pretty good job in roofing. So I got that job, right? I had no training there. Just here's a, you know, a 3 inch binder to go sell roofs. Figure it out. So I, I just kind of thrown into fire and somehow started figuring it out and then got a call from a friend of mine that I knew in college again, network. He's like, hey man, I know you. You know, you're from Colorado, you're from Denver. There's a big hailstorm happened in Denver, I heard, you know, we just stayed in touch and he's like, so I guess you're, you know, in the roofing insurance world. My, he's like, dude, you can make a bunch of money, knock doors and sell on roofs and you know, come work for a big company. I'm like, what else do I have to lose? I mean, at this time I was in a really kind of a deep state of depression. Like, couldn't pay any bills. Like, I was like really frustrated, didn't know what, what the heck to do. So I packed everything I owned in my truck and strapped the bed, strapped my bed to the top of the bed of my truck and off I went back to Denver and within six months I sold a whole bunch of roofs and Learned a lot about roofing, and I also learned what not to do. So ultimately that gave me a lot of experience. Traveled a little bit doing some storm chasing, worked for that company for about a year. And then ultimately in 2010, I decided to rebuild the same company. I decided to kind of re. Establish that company in a different way. And that's where the roofing brand and roofing ended up evolving from my original construction company. And we just decided, let's be all in on roofing. And then that's. That's when we started. Went all in.

Okay. This is an amazing story, and I want to really highlight this, is that you didn't get trapped in the technician mindset of things. You elevated into the sales process and learning the sales side of that. But then also you took the step up to actually, like running a business, which I'm sure had a big impact in the growth trajectory of the company. I want to talk about there's kind of two parts of this. The first one is the 2.5 million, because most people listen to this like 1 to 10 million, but they want to get to the. That big pop.

Yeah.

How long did it take you to get to 2.5 million? And then what did you kind of like get set up in the business so that way you could get that next pop?

Yeah. So, um. Yeah, great, great question. So we started. I started in like the middle of the year, and when I first launched, relaunched the roofing brand and we were able to do about 500,000 in the first six months. And that was, you know, just possible. Me and my. I brought a partner on and a couple guys knocking doors trying to sell some roofs. And I had an admin in the office. My mom was actually helping me in the office with the business. And, you know, we. We just went at it right away and try to get, you know, whatever, you know, opportunities we could. And with no brand, no nothing, no money, we're just like, let's knock doors and kiss some babies and smile and make friends and see if we can sell some things. And we did okay. And then that next year we started to get a little more, you know, we instantly, right away, I knew that if I wanted to grow quickly, I needed to start building a team. So I started bringing on. Trying to bring. Bring on a sales team, like, right away. I know a lot of people tend to kind of wait a long time for that. I started right away with it. I brought on an admin right away. I brought on a service technician so I can sell repairs and handle you know, kind of diversify my business model a little bit and do that right away. And that second year, we tripled. We went to, well, not quite triple, but we went to like 1.3. And it was a third year. We actually went to 2.9 million is what our gross was that year. So it took us two and a half years to get to nearly just under $3 million.

Okay, great. So with the sales team, you said a lot of people, it takes them some time to get their feet under them and get admin. Sales team. Can you talk a little bit about the sales team? Is this like door knockers? Is it?

What.

What does the infrastructure look like for this?

Early on, all I really knew was, hey, you got to knock doors. So I tried to recruit and hire sales reps that could knock doors, and I also just hired door knockers. Like canvassers.

Yeah.

And the world has changed since then. I mean, this is 15 years ago, so things are a little different nowadays. But back then it was, hey, I'll pay you 500 bucks to go knock some doors, you know, And. And it was, you know, it was very raw. We didn't have much systems. We were just hustling, man. We were just grinding and hustling and trying to make things happen. I didn't. Wasn't super structured. I just. We were trying to be. I mean, in the office, we were trying to be structured with office type stuff because that's what mom helped out a lot with. But from the front end sales aspect, it was just hustle, grind, and me trying to sell salespeople and to come work for me and. Yeah. And get them out there working. Right. And. And there was no struct, but we did okay. We managed to do okay by just throwing as many people and trying to hustle as much as we could. And I think that's a part of what you have to do. It's right of passage, like the first couple million, like, it just requires a lot of grit and hustle and determination, you know?

Yeah, and that's exactly why I'm asking, because I think a lot of times people get stuck at like 2 to 3 million because they are the best salesperson or the salesperson and they have, you know, minions delivering admin, maybe some marketing going on. But then they're the ones that still the salesperson and they get stuck and they can't get that next pop. Nowadays, like, how would you coach someone if they're in that, you know, 2 to 3 million range? They are the best salesperson. How do you coach them? Like what do you, what do they do?

You got to duplicate yourself. Yeah, you got to be able to find a way. And here's the thing, you're not going to duplicate yourself. Exactly. But you like hiring a coach, hiring a platform. Like we help people and there's a number of great people out there in the home service business. That, that and I started leaning and that's leading up to where we are in the story. I'll get to that in a sec. But I realized that if I ever wanted to grow my business or really, you know, really scale the business, I had to get myself out of the sales role. Even though I was great, I, I mean, I love sales, I'm good at sales. I can, I mean it's one of my favorite things to do and I was really good at it. So it was like, oh, but, but I knew as an entrepreneur, I had to make a shift. I couldn't be a salesman, I couldn't be an employee. I had to be a visionary, I had to be an entrepreneur. I had to be a leader. That's where the shirt comes. It's like I had to learn how to lead. Yeah. And I'm still learning. I'll always be learning how to lead. But the more I focused on leading and, and taking my, my God given gifts that I have to then find other people and help empower and create opportunities for others, things started, you know, moving at, at a lot greater clip and we got to get through some of those thresholds of that couple million dollar mark where a lot of people end up at. But I had to build a sales system, had to implement a sales system, had to implement training and coaching and I had to learn how to hire good quality people. And you can't do any of that without understanding and establishing your core values first. Like a lot of people think it's kind of gimmicky. You're like, oh, do core value. But no, it's, it's, it's, it's so, so, so important. And this is when we're coaching or consulting with people and the first things we're going to do is really dive in and help you understand your mission, your vision and your values. Because if we don't have that, how can you expect to hire really good people that are going to be a part of your organization for a long time if they don't align with your mission, your vision and your values? If you don't even know what that is? Start there. So I figured that out somehow. Reading books and diving in and listening to things and going to conferences and listening to speakers and church and all the things that try to influence me in a positive way. I figured that out and, like, I've got to really understand and establish that. And we did that. We spent a lot of money. We probably shouldn't have, but we learned a lot on coaching and building a sales system. We built our own. Then we decided to build our own. And once we were able to do that, that was the defining moment. Like, we started really professionalizing our hiring, onboarding, and sales training process, and that's what started that trajectory. So we went from. Well, there's a little blip in this story. Okay, I'll share this part. Because we hit 2 million pretty quick. Two and almost 3 million pretty quick. Two and a half years. We're like, man, we got this. So me as an arrogant ego entrepreneur, you know, young kid, I was 24, 25 at the time. And I thought I had. I thought I had the mightiest touch. I'm like, I got this, you know. So then we decided we're going to expand. We're going to start opening new offices. And a lot of contractors do this. A lot of people make this mistake. Some people are successful with it. So we kind of split forces and we went to work in my old hometown where I was born. I had family down there, and this little small town in New Mexico, we just got a hailstorm. So we're like, we're gonna go work down there. Which was cool. It was a great experience. But it left. I left. I was so thin with my main core business and my main core area that, like, the amount of time, energy, money, and effort that we had to put in to, like, go and try to grow and expand the business ended up dropping us a third of our revenue. So that third year, we end up going down to just above 2 million. Wow. So really the story is like, that was the starting point that we 10x in about four, four and a half years. From there. So we went down. I learned like, okay, keep the main thing. The main thing, refocus, stay focused on this market. I spread myself too thin. I wasn't ready. Learned my lesson, implemented sales system, really, really focused on selling the one thing, being really, really, really good at one thing. And then at that point, that very next year, we tripled. We went to 6 million. And then the next year, kept rinse and repeat, like, being really, really good at what we do, hiring a couple reps at a time, trying to really get good at training and market opportunities take advantage of that. Then we went to seven and a half, then went to 12 and a half. 17, and then 20, just under 20 that year. 19.

One thing that you said when you were talking about to make the leap, there's a good quote that to get to a million, you have to. A hustler, to go to the next level, you have to lead. The hustler has to die, and the leader has to be born.

Yeah.

And a lot of times, I feel like business owners in general, you can hustle your way to 2 million, but then you have to shift your entire mindset of who, not how, and you have to start leading people.

Yeah.

And I think for you, that that was a pivotal moment. I want to dive in on this sales system because you mentioned it several times of what that is. Maybe unpack it of, like, the core parts of it or what you implemented. How you coach people on doing this.

Yeah. And at the core of it, again, like I mentioned, vision, mission, vision, values. Right. Very descriptive. Very, like, intentional. Because that's part of what we're implementing into the sales system. One, we had a. We had to create a presentation, a way to present the information and have the same, you know, key information delivered to every single customer every single time. That was important. It's our program. It's seven steps, Right. So all the way from the first step is set up, all the way through closing and asking for the sale. But a couple key things is the story. Okay, I won't go through every step. You know, I wrote about it in my book, started build a grow at the contract guide to success. You can read about there or get a lot of stuff online about it, but one of the key elements of it is the story. And there's two parts to that. So there's a whole step called the story step. And this is where we are after. We've connected with our audience, we've connected with the person we're trying to sell to. We haven't even talked about what we're selling. We're not talking about bass. We're not talking about H Vacs. We're not talking about anything. We're connecting with them, building relationship, getting them to know, like, and trust us. Right. Sales 101. This is where the story comes in. This is where the mission, vision, values come in. Because the sales rep now gets an opportunity to share the story of the company. How this company became what the story of the company is like, what makes this company different. And then they tie that story into their own story. Because the reality of it is I'm in a market, there's 5,000 roofers. So if I'm a salesperson, I'm sitting across trying to sell you a roof and I tell you a story of this company and all the great things they're doing. Which is cool, right? It establishes a baseline, but then I correlate it back to my story and it's like, you know what, I've been in this business, I was used to be an insurance adjuster. But you know, share my story. My story and like kind of the things led me to this. When I tell you as a homeowner, there's 5,000 other contractors that I could have gone to work for, but I chose to come work for Elite Roofing and Solar. And these are the reasons why their values, I align with their values, their faith. Family driven. They treat every customer like family. They want to. They go above and beyond to make sure that when we make mistakes, we fix them. We give back to the community a lot. We're always getting back to the community and all the things that make us different. And those are all the things that I align with. Yeah, do that. Yeah, just do that. And see how well your sales get. See how much better you get at sales. Okay. And another component is the process. Okay. Every company, whatever it is you're selling, especially this home service podcast, right? Whatever is you're selling, whatever the widget is, there's a process. Okay. And you should be able to articulate that process in a way that helps ease your potential clients mind. Because at the end of the day, home repairs and making big decisions can be overwhelming, can be stressful. Right? And there's a lot of companies out there that don't have any process. So obviously they're not talking about their process during their sales process because they don't have a process. Right? Did I say that right? Somebody got confused. I just got confused. But the reality of it is one, have a process, a production. So there's three keys in our, in the roofing. Okay. Roofing, yeah. There's three elements. Two of them are all across home services. Okay. One is a production process. Explain to the client, to the customer, to your, to your person. You're trying to sell, to explain to them the process. Once you make your decision, decide to work with us, this is what you can expect. We're going to do this, we're going to pull permits, we're going to order the materials, we're going to do this, we're going to the crew's Gonna show up. I'm gonna show up. The project manager can show up. Like, you explain that process. Have a. Have a slide with, like, step by step to explain that it makes people feel really comfortable. Like, wow, this company actually knows what the heck they're doing. I didn't just call Chuck in the truck. Right, yes. Establishing value. So explain the process. The next component is the billing process. We gotta be able to explain, like, how did the money work, what the expectations are. This is where I know people in my field, man. Average roof's 25 grand in our market. So someone who's 18 years old never even seen a $3,000 in their bank account ever. They're like. It's hard for them to ask, I need $20,000. I don't even know. They're like, oh, the most money in the world. I get it. So you got to get comfortable with that. And the more you can explain, like, the expectations and how the money works and your. Everybody has a different process there. Like, I don't even half down. Once you're 100 satisfied, we'll get the rest. Offer financing, all the things you should be doing during your sales process. And then for us, the third component is explaining the insurance. If you're doing insurance work or restoration work, we explain that thoroughly. We explain those three processes. We sell the story, personal story, and the business story. Then we filter in the other components of, you know, doing a great inspection and doing a product demo demonstration. And then, you know, all that should. Throughout that, you know, whole process. I hate him saying the word way too many times. But throughout that whole, you know, your transaction with the homeowner, you're communication with them, you're establishing value, you're getting rid of as many objections as possible leading up to where they're comfortable. When you ask them for the sale. Yeah. And then you ask for the sale. And if you don't, you follow up like crazy until they either tell you to pound sand or they make a decision. Yeah, that's my Reader's Digest version of it.

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Get to the yes or no. There's no undecided. That's my philosophy as well. I would say the story piece is what most companies miss, especially as you scale the sales process process out from the owner, because the conviction the owner has is very easy to articulate. But when you have new salespeople coming in and they don't know the story, the mission, the values of the company, and it's not built into the actual process of coaching them on Say these things and how to say it. That part is missed. And I can see the impact that it would make in a sales process for sure.

Yep.

Next question I have for you is about the scaling, actually the leads. How would you coach someone? You know, you got 2.5 million, you get your sales system dialed in, but you still need the leads to like go actually run the sales calls. Was, was this, do you, is it canvassing? Is it a bunch of things? Is there anything in particular? You're like, hey, we unlock this and this is what helped us.

First and foremost, you gotta run your business by the numbers. So you gotta have a budget, figure out what the budget is, you know, and if you're brand new starting out, okay, you're gonna be tighter, but you need to have some sort of a budget. You know, maybe it's 5 grand, 10 grand, 20, whatever it might be that you have early on, know what that budget is and be very, you know, particular about how you spend that budget. Never get into early, especially early on. Never get into any sort of long term contracts or anything like that. We want to beta test, we want to be able to do AB testing, we want to test this, see if it works, double down. If it doesn't work, stop and do something else, you know, because every market is different.

That's right.

I work with contractors, roofing companies all over the country and everyone, every market's different, every company is different, they're all different nuances. So there's not just one blanket statement here. Right. What works in my market might not work in your market.

Yeah.

So you got to figure that out. So that's, you know, I don't want to kind of.

No, I agree.

Beat around it, but the key is you got to be able to cast a wide net and try multiple verticals and multiple marketing avenues without breaking the bank and measure and track things. And once you can track data and you can make more educated decisions, then you can double down on the things that work and back off of the things that don't work. But you, you, if you don't prioritize building your brand and your online presence with that brand, good luck. Yeah, I mean, we're in the age of technology, man. They're in the age of information. We're in the age of AI. Like, there's so many companies out there, it's like, you know, we have 590, I think five star reviews. You know, no offense, but good luck going to a market with somebody with that kind of reviews and competing with them. Yeah, you have to prioritize it early and often. Google reviews having a great website, a really, you know, website that works properly, that converts well, that, that, that really engages with your audience. That's not just the same old crap. Everyone else has free inspection, blah, blah, blah. Like everyone has the same crap. Like do something different, make it appealing, make sure everything across the board is looking the same. Right. If I look at, if I see your truck, your website, your yard sign, your door hanger, whatever I see, I need to recognize instantly that's the same company, it's the same brand, the same imaging, the same logos, the same colors. All the things need to match. And it has to be the same messaging because we, what we, at the end of the day, we have to do to build a brand and market it. It takes the average consumer 7 impressions before they even remember who you are.

That's right.

So they need to see your company seven different times. And if all you're doing is one thing for marketing or two things for marketing, you're not casting a wide enough net to then get that brand built. Takes money, it takes time. It's not going to happen overnight. So you got to understand the difference between marketing and branding, but you got to be able to invest in both and then try different marketing campaigns if they work, double down if they don't try something different.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. Most home services that we see is like they're spending 3 to 10% of their revenue on marketing.

Yeah.

That will give you that monthly budget of what you're saying. And then any money that you spend. I face this a lot when I was in the trades, is that you need, if you're spending money, you need to be able to track your return on ad, spend on that money to make sure that you can double down on what's working and then fix whatever's not working. A lot of people just throw money at the Google gods and pray that it works and they have no idea if it's working. And that's the thing that you need to fix, which I think is right. I also, I want to ask you about, did you, I guess at some point you added solar onto your service offering?

Mm.

When did, when did you decide to do that and how did that come about and roll out? Because I would imagine it's a different technician, different stuff.

Oh, man. Solar has been interesting. It is a whole different world.

Yeah.

Two words, Covid. One word. Yeah. So, I mean, honestly, it was kind of, you know, we were in a market where we thrive. I mean, I hate to even admit this, but the reality of it is in my market, I'm in Denver, Colorado.

Yeah.

You know, anyone in the country can know. Can. If I were to just ask anyone in the country that's in the hail or in the restoration world, in the home services world, they're going to say Denver hail. Like it just go correlates, right. Which, hey, we've built a great business, we've been very blessed over it. But when we don't get hail, it's like feature famine. So we went through like a four year stretch where little hail and like less and less. Like we had pretty much four years with no big significant hail storms. When we built an entire business doing $20 million. That's the story. The headline is one thing, but the story that is untold is like, how do you go from 20 down to 8 back up to 20?

Yeah.

That's maybe part two of this session because that's a whole other world that I'm living in currently. So Covid, I mean it took us out like from that perspective. Like not only did we not have hailstorms in our, in the biggest hail market in the country for multiple years at the same time, we had Covid. So it just, it, it hurt the retail market, it hurt a number of things. And through that process I realized there was a bunch of incentives and things in there in our market. We're in Colorado, it's super sunny here. And it was a big push for solar. So I was like, hey, we got to do something to diversify our business where we're not solely relying on hailstorms and got some opportunities to try to dive into solar. So that's when we, that's when we decided to launch our solar department. And since then we've revamped it four different times and now we've landed to where it's, it's thriving, it's, it's crushing. Right now we're on pace to do some really big numbers and some with some really big growth this year. But it was just adapting, adapting to the market and having to figure out another way to put food on the table of every single person in my organization. And if you keep doing the same thing and you're going to keep getting the same results and when there's no, when the market demand is gone for what you've built your business around, we had to start diversifying. And that's what we did. That's kind of where we landed on solar. And I mean, that's a whole other conversation but you know, a lot of companies get into solar but they try to hack solar. Right. They're just doing sales and trying to epc, trying to send someone else to do the installs or they say they do installs and they're subbing out a electrician. I'm sorry if I'm calling you out right now, but hey, it is what it is. We decided to do it right and we want to take the steps. Like I hold probably a hundred different licenses in my market now between electric, solar, GC roofing, all the things we need in our market. I have an in house master electrician, in house solar expert, team of six service techs that are awesome driving around really sweet vans and stuff. So we've built it into something pretty cool and detach and reset has been a big part of our business. So we do a lot of that for other roofing contractors we've rebranded to where it's not even a roofing. You just, you see, just solar brand.

Yeah.

So where we're working with other roofing contractors, we can help do the re and R. We're not trying to steal roofs from them. We just want the solar and built a whole different division out of it and now it's self sustaining and takes care of itself and now it's, you know, it's a big growth curve, growth area in our business.

Yeah. And I would argue that the solar side, from what you're explaining to me, there's a lot. It's not just reliant on the weather, there's a lot more other avenues of lead sources, whether it's B2B partnerships or ongoing maintenance or ongoing repairs that need to happen. That it's not just like, hey, there's a hailstorm, let's go out and replace this.

Yeah. There's a lot of different ways to attack that one.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. I think that's awesome. And I was going to ask you about, you know, a lot of roofers just say I do solar and it's just like upsell and then bring this guy in. But you definitely did it right. What would you say as far as like to other companies that are thinking about bringing on other services of maybe mistakes that you made, like you know, an H Vac guy wants to bring in electrical or in plumbing and like kind of build this thing. What would you encourage people or talk about maybe to help them.

Do it at within the right timing. Keep the main thing, the main thing, make sure you're really, really, really, I mean that's the key to My success early on, we fumbled around for the first couple of years because we try to do everything we wanted to be the gc. We go to a homeowner, like we'll do all the things that's on the hail claim and a lot of us do that and it makes sense in different markets. Sometimes I tell somebody you want to do that because there's not enough roofing market there. But in our market there was enough roofing. So once we decided we're only going to do roofing, we're just really, really, really good at one thing, master that one thing. Once you've mastered that one thing, then start to do the add ons and the bolt ons. But when you try to spread yourself too quickly, you start spreading yourself thin and all of a sudden you're not really great at anything. You're just marginally average at a bunch of things. And it's really hard to build a truly profitable business that way. And you know, I'm a, I'm a major advocate of freedom. Right. And with my coaching, consulting and we've talked about this, but like at the end of the day, like I want freedom. I want to be able to do what I want when I want with my family, handle the family, do the things I want to do and run a successful business and empower and create opportunities for people all at once.

Yeah.

And it is possible you can do that. But when you spread yourself too thin and you don't, you know, focus on growing as a leader and growing as an individual, it's. It's very, very, very hard to do.

Yeah. I think one key point that you hit on was you brought in a master electrician. Right. And you asked who, not how, even though you can get the licenses, but you're building the team so that way it can support you. And it's not just you, it can support the company to deliver the best service, but also then it frees you up to go and have the vision. And I think a lot of people get into how and they're like, oh yeah, I could, I could install these, I could do that. And they get so fragmented that they're not an expert on anything and they're not running a business 100% well.

And here's another business side of that. To do it right, it costs a lot of dang money.

Yeah.

And if you're not really, really good at one thing, making really good profit on one thing, you're going to half ass the next thing and you're not going to make profit There either. Right. So in order for me, here's the story that you don't hear on these shows and you're listening to people like, not talking about this is like, maybe you do hear it. But how much money I spent, how much money I lost learning the things I had to learn to then implement and build the system. You know, we, we committed multiple years, four verticals right now. Okay. Residential, commercial service, and solar lost money pretty much in all four to build them.

Yeah.

People don't realize that, like, I don't just start it and next thing you know, make all this money. No. I spent multiple years building out my commercial department. Lots of overhead, lots of people on staff, lots of mistakes, lots of lawsuits, and all the dumb things I had to go through to learn to build my commercial department. But we have a thriving commercial department.

Yeah.

Solar spent two years trying to figure out the business model, investing in different people that didn't work. Some of them did. And then spending a lot of time, a lot of money on different. Multiple master electricians to land on the one that works really great for us. Multiple technicians and trucks and things that we had to figure out. But I mean, we invested a lot of money in that and lost money for multiple years before it started becoming a thriving business. Now, I'm not saying that's, that's everybody's trajectory. Somebody, probably a lot of people out there just better at business than me. I'm okay. Congratulations. High five.

Yeah.

But in my experience, I'm willing to see the vision and see something through and understand that it doesn't happen overnight. I'm willing to spend two years building something to do it right. Because I'm looking at 10 years. I got a 10 year vision, 5 year vision, 20 year vision. And that's what we're thriving towards. It's not about, like, how much money I can make tomorrow. It's about setting up a life for not only myself, but everyone involved in the organization and everyone involved in building the process.

Yeah, I think that's a really important part, is that a lot of people see, oh, I could just get into solar and make an extra $500,000 and just slap this together. But you're you. And I mean, obviously it's correct is like you got to see the big vision of like, no, there's a huge opportunity here to serve our clients, to serve our community, and to help our team members make more money. So how can I set up the company to, to do all of those things the correct way? And yeah, it might fall apart it might be issues here, but at the end of the day, I know that we can get there just about how long it's going to take and how much money we have to allocate. So I think, I think a lot of people miss that piece of. They just see the dollar signs.

Oh, yeah. Money makes people funny, bro.

Yeah, that's right. Cool, Randy, but this has been great, man. Where can people go to connect with you? Obviously read your book, but as far as your, your coaching, consulting, what, what should people do? What is that program like?

Yeah, I mean, we're full service, man. There's five key pillars in building and we just do roofing. Right. You know, I'm more than happy to have conversations. I love the service business. Like, I'll coach and talk to anybody for free. Just shoot me, shoot me. A DM on Facebook's probably the quickest way, best way to get ahold of me. But with coaching, I mean, there's marketing. Marketing, we talked about marketing. Branding, that's one pillar, right? You got sales, Sales leadership, that's another pillar. Operations, production, that's third pillar. Then you got, you know, finance and numbers and running your business by the numbers and being financially responsible for the business. Then you got people you got to be able to hire and train and develop great people. So those are the five key, you know, pillars of a, that I see of a, of a successful roofing business. And we teach all five, but our focal point is the operations, the HR and people and the finances. So we teach contractors truly how to run their business by the numbers, how to hire great people, and how to build a sustainably profitable business. And in doing that, we've empowered and helped a number of contractors to become really successful and grow well over $10 million. So that's our focus and that's what we're passionate about doing. So. Theroofingacademy.com Simplest way to get ahold of us. There's, you know, lots of content on there. You can check us out on YouTube. My podcast is the Start, Build, grow show. You can put it right next to this one and we can, we can listen to both and get some good content and pretty much anywhere else on, on, on the medias of social, you'll, you'll find me awesome.

Well, Randy's been great to get a connect man, and I really appreciate the transparency and honesty because it's hard to find that. And you, you know, you showed us where the bodies were buried and it's always good to hear. It's refreshing to hear a success story with built on a bunch of issues and mess and it's actually turned out great. So kudos to you man and I appreciate everything.

Grateful man. Glad to be here and hope everybody has a fantastic day and hopefully you got some good value from it. Thanks man.