Can roofer's make much without advertising? | Roofing Business Partner Adam Sand

They're not building a business that they can sell. They're not building a business they can give to their kids. They, they just own a job. Right. And there's nothing wrong with it. Those guys, they're going to need to invest in marketing because the people who work for you, they're counting on you to create expansion.

What do you think limit is for someone who don't Want to spend $1 in marketing? You know, want to rely on word of mouth referrals, like just, there's a lot of people out there, they don't believe in marketing. What a true limit because amount of roofers doubled in the last five years. You know, almost the most busy cities like roofers keep coming up. You have to compete. What's the limit? Million dollars, 2 million. What's the biggest companies you've seen who don't advertise that?

I mean, I don't think I get exposed to a ton of companies that don't advertise because it's like that's kind of the gate to talk to me is, are you going to spend money on advertising? But I would say that in a way there is no limit because some companies do a lot on the experience side and there's some really innovative companies out there making relationships. You know, there's commercial roofing, right? There's networking, there's getting in touch with insurance people, realtors. So I don't believe there is a limit to what you can do without advertising. But what is advertising or marketing other than just getting out into your market and trying to acquire market share?

Well, what I'm referring to, I see a lot of guys who says, well, you know, I have work and I don't need to advertise. And those guys usually do half a million, 2 million. I mean, they'll do 100 roofs a year for sure.

But they're not creating, they're not creating an opportunity for themselves. They're not, they're not building a business that they can sell. They're not building a business they can give to their kids. They just don't want a job. Right. And there's nothing wrong with them. Right. Roofing is full and construction is full. Really, construction is full of, in a lot of ways, I call them America's or Canada's forgotten sons. Right? They, you know, they, they're, they, they, they come up and a lot of them end up where they're at, not by choice, but because they ended up there. Like they, they don't even necessarily. You ask them how they end up there. Well, I started roofing out of school and that's what I do now. Like they didn't necessarily make the conscious choice. And that's not all of them, but it's certainly a huge chunk of them. And everybody who bought it, and the fact is it's a trade. Like trades are in demand. Everybody who bought a roof would have rather bought a boat, right? Everybody who replaced the roof probably could have waited another month and probably could have done it a month ago. And everybody lives under a roof. Half of them work under a roof. And yet we aren't sitting around saying son, you know, son, daughter, doctor, dentist, roofer, whichever one will be proud. So if everybody lives on a roof, half the people work under a roof. Everybody has to do one sooner or later. Nobody who bought it, bought it because they wanted it, but bought it because they had to. You don't have to advertise to earn a good living. You want to make ten grand a month and buy a house and live, you can do that, just go put roofs on, hire four or five guys, go out, take the hill every day. And if that's the lifestyle you want to live, like, that's awesome. Every time I get on the plane, I look at the guy with the cones and I think, man, that guy's got it simple. He just gets up, puts his lunchbox in his car, goes to work, 11:45 comes out, opens his lunchbox, eats his food, goes back, puts it away, goes out, puts his vest on his hat, goes, does the cones. 3:30 first, yeah, gets in his truck, goes, gets in his three year old truck, you know, no leather seats, goes home, has wife, two kids, you know, hopes for a vacation every year. And it's a simple life and there's nothing wrong with that. But you gotta be self aware, you gotta know what you want. So if you're jealous or angry or bitter and say, oh, those guys advertise, they're just sales companies. All they do is sell and subcontract. Like if you're gonna be a hater, well then there's something in you. You're not self aware, you're jealous, you want that, you want your company to grow, but you're hating the player instead of hating the game because you don't know how to. And the industry is constantly evolving and there's a place for that guy who just wants to get up and roof and doesn't want to bother with business and stuff like that, you know, not to try and plug you, but directory is a place for that. You want to just get up, slap a sticker on the door and go roof and just get opportunity. Go pull your cash out of the real estate market by having a piece of it in the roofing industry. The real estate art industry is going to constantly keep evolving and needing maintenance of property. It's not going away. People are going to continue to live in homes. You want to show up and just go and do a trade. Go plumbing, go roofing, go tiling, go whatever. You know, there's platforms like directory that'll just say, listen, you pay us a penance of what it is. You have no investment in your brand or anything. You just do good work and you'll be fine. You'll have an income for life. You will not run out of work ever, ever. You always have a job. You'll be in good shape, you'll be good with your hands, your kids will be proud of you and you're going to pay 3%. Like you drop 3 pennies out of a loonie, you're not going to or out of a dollar loonie, you drop three pennies out of a dollar, you don't, you don't notice it, right? So it's really about being self aware. But if you want that bigger business, you're gonna have to invest in systems and processes. You're gonna have to invest in coming up with innovative campaigns. You're gonna have to invest in operational, you know, basically mapping out how your company does business. You're gonna have to invest in leadership, right. You're gonna have to invest in payroll. Right? But those guys, they're gonna need to invest in marketing because the people who work for you, they're counting on you to create expansion. That shingler wants to be a foreman, that salesman wants that sales manager wants to be a commercial project manager though the commercial project manager wants to be a general manager, the general manager wants to eventually have an equity stake. They want. Somebody wants the general manager to die or for you to open a second location so he can be the general manager of the second location, right? People need to see expansion and growth, progress and success brings unity, right? That's what brings, it brings a united team. But if you're just saying, oh, I don't like marketing because I don't like marketers and I don't want to spend money on our systems and we can just do it off of three post it notes, well that's greedy, that's selfish. You're not creating opportunity for your team and you will constantly have churn and Then you'll sound like these guys that are saying, oh, it's good. Help's hard to find. It's no good. People wanna go somewhere where they can see the company expanding. And marketing is about expansion. It's a market. You're going for more market share, right? You have to go attack more market share, and that means you have to spend money on marketing. The industry is spoiled in that we now have guys like me who have run around, say, click through rate and opt in rate and conversion rate and cost per lead and cost per acquisition, cost per thousand impressions. And now there's this base level of understanding that marketing should report back that we didn't have 20 years ago. You had the phone book, you had the newspaper, you had billboards, and you spent money on it, and people showed up and you were lucky if someone said, yeah, I'm here to use code SAVEROof10. Because that was your way of tracking back that your postcard worked. Right? And you never went to the postcard guy and said, what was my conversion rate? He's like, did your postcard get delivered? Okay, what do you want? Right? And now we have this marketer that's beholden to every little step along the way. And it's like, how do you control Facebook? The president of the United States couldn't control Facebook. How is some marketer like me supposed to know every little detail of an algorithm that even they can't figure out that backfires on them from time to time, that allows things that they don't want to go viral to go viral? Right? That creates a bad experience for their users. They can't control their own algorithm, but yet I'm supposed to. Running a tiny little boutique roofer marketer shop out of Canada. Right?

Guys, give it a. Like, I'm pretty sure someone out there needed to hear this message. Comment below what you think about Adam's take on it. Absolutely amazing answer.

Sam.