LIVE With Adam Sand, Possibly The Smartest Guy in Roofing

Welcome to the American Contractor Show. The show that's all about American contractors living the American dream. I'm your host, John Dye. Each episode, we'll introduce you to contractors just like you who have beaten the odds and leveled up their game to become the dominant force in their markets. Together, we'll explore the tools and tactics that unlock the secrets to their success. Join me as we begin the journey that leads to the realization of your American Dream.

Type and whole crap.

I did this again. I'm the worst at this.

I was actually looking at it and wondering. I was like, I think those go.

Up, but these, these faders here. Okay, so first off, let me, let me come back for a second. We're, it's nine o', clock, we're in the studio and my whole team has gone home for the night. And I'm here by myself with, with Adam sand hanging out and so let's. Let me re. Let me restart this real quick because I'm, I'm so sorry to everyone watching this that you guys have had to endure this, this dumb mess up of mine. Once again, I'm sorry. So for those of you guys that are now watching this and trying to.

Second time.

I know. But I'll do it again because I'm really excited about having you here and thank you for hanging out with us. Adam sand is with us. And Adam sand is by far one of the most incredible minds in our industry. Probably one of the smartest guys I've ever met. I've been following his career really for, for a long time, since we started, since I started podcasting back in Art of the Supplement Days. You were one of the first guys doing it too. And I was, I was listening to you and I was always like, man, this guy knows what's going on and he understands this industry in such a really unique way. And that's why I'm really, like, excited that we're having this conversation tonight and able to have you stop by the office and talk about what the industry looks like and what it's going to be and how it's, how it's moving and so, yeah, thank you. We'll talk about that in a second. But thank you so much for being here and for, and for allowing us to, to, to learn something tonight.

Well, I appreciate a lot now that I got a second chance. Yeah, I appreciate the compliment and I'm tough at taking compliments. I'm usually a pretty, pretty introverted guy and you know, loneliness is just an atonement price that you pay for just Having kind of a unique mind, and. And I don't know if that's good or it's bad, but, you know, it's something that someone I look up to, you know, appreciating it, recognizing it, whatever, it feels good. And I just hope that something about this conversation might help, because, you know, I'm part of this generation that everything I've learned I got from, like, stuff like this. You know what I mean? Like, I grew up, you know, basically listening to audiobooks and tapes, and my mom's. My parents were fighting as a kid, and I would listen to tapes because it was a way to drown out the sound of my parents. And listening to stuff like this is something I started very young, like, just putting on tapes at night. I listen, like, Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory, Anthony Robbins, like, anything I could use. Parenting tapes while my parents were fighting outside my room to drown out the sound. And then to be. And then that turned into, like, podcasts and stuff and audiobooks I would listen to at night. Everything I've learned, I've learned from something like this, where I would listen to stuff and I'd find somebody that I connected with and that inspired me to, like, pursue things that I felt good about or that I felt I had an advantage at or things that just made me feel like I wanted a project that I could work on. And so I just hope that, like, I don't know if there's any value to me being here. Like, one dude is gonna be like, man, that guy said something that's kind of interesting, and I like to do that kind of stuff.

Well, my goal, you know, in ACS's goal, is not just to inspire, but to educate and to give people. Like, I want to. In a weird way, like, this whole journey, entrepreneurship, construction, not just roofing, but, like, in general, contracting, everything else. It's a journey, like you said, and if we can shine the high beams on for a minute and give people a view of what's really out there that normally people aren't seeing, we might be able to spark some things in people that might make them alter their course and maybe in some ways, not feel like they're so far behind.

So with the people that are listening to this podcast, you know your audience far better than me. So, like, when we're talking here, I don't want to, like, flap my gums or promote myself or anything like that, but, you know, if I was watching something, I was like, okay, I want this. I want to get value from this right away. The Bulk of the people are on this thing. What is the main constraint that they're experiencing? Because poverty. And we stay broke until we learn all the lessons that positive poverty teaches us. And we build a billion dollar company when we remove the constraints to making a billion dollars. So somewhere along the lane, somewhere along the line, we go from learning lessons to removing constraints. Right, Right. Because you can't remove constraints until you understand how to create, you know, to get the context of the circumstances you're in. So at first you're just getting bloody beatings, you know what I mean? And just learning lessons. And then eventually you learn enough lessons that you start to get pattern recognition. And then pattern recognition leads into, you know, the ability to identify constraints and then work through them. So, you know, is your audience, like, in a stage of learning lessons or are they removing constraints? Like, how. How could. What is, like, the main problem that the people who are watching this are usually facing?

Well, let's talk from a macro level. We. We talked about this last night at dinner. We had dinner last night and we talked about, you know, the percentage of contractors that actually do over $3 million a year in revenue.

Yeah, it's 97% are under 3 million.

97% of contractors do under $3 million a year in revenue. That means that most of the people that listen to our show, the majority are in that world where maybe they don't think it's attainable or they don't want to grow or like Ryan Groth said the other day, like, it's like a lifestyle business or it's, you know, maybe that's just. They're happy with that. But I also believe, though, that there's a. There's a large percent of the population that maybe I. If we could wake something up that just says, hey, look, there is an opportunity right now right in front of your face that you are not even really considering. That's what I would like to do.

So that's something that actually is really relevant for me just in the moment. So, you know, this is kind of something that I'm dealing with with two customers of ours, right. One, actually, I was on texting him on the way here, right. And he was considering doing this rev Ops thing. And I don't care about promoting the thing that we do, but basically it's a thing that we do to help people like him. And the problem was is that, you know, it comes down to that pattern recognition. I look at his market and I'm like, dude, you're closing 30% with zero sales skills. You're getting leads for less than 1% marketing spend. You're in a town with four other roofers. The biggest parking lot in your town is a private jet. Like is the parking lot for a private jet hangar. You have two communities nearby that are massive, but they're like 90 minutes away. No roofers show up when we tried to secret shop your market and we helped him build his HubSpot CRM and, and there's four roofers there. They're all basically old and about to retire. Like if you don't strike while the iron's hot, someone else is going to figure out what you have and you're going to have just, you're going to go and spend the rest of your life living another year of almost. And I was just like kind of beating on him because he's scared to like invest because he's finally doing a little good, you know what I mean? We did some stuff for him over the course of last year. I'm like, do you see the opportunity that's in front of you? And he doesn't. And then that ties into another customer that I've been working with this week who family run business taking over for his parents. Right. And he's been in the business for a few years and the whole business is kind of surviving on love and trust, right. There's a lot of people there where it's like, oh, we need a guy to do this job. Does anybody know anybody? Yeah, I have a friend who needs a job. Okay, so we need a person, that person needs a job. That must mean they're good enough. There's no like standards, expectations, you know, measure of magnitude of impact that we're expecting. Like there's just no statement of qualifications. It's just we need a person, they need a job. Great. And then now you've got six people and you're afraid of losing people. And there's all this like small business problems because of small business thinking and that transition, that leap from like 0 to 1, we were just trying to figure out what are you going to do? Then from one to three we were just figuring out how do you do it? Like how do you do it, how do you do it profitably, how do you do it consistently, how do you not do the things you don't want to do? And then from 3 to 8 you're figuring out who's going to help. And then from 8 to 15 you're figuring out leadership and duplicatable processes. Well, he's in that like just about to cross that break point, right between like 8 and the 8 to 15. So like the 3 to 8, the 8 to 15. And again, it's about recognizing the opportunity. And so much of what we talked about this week was like, if this thing or this person couldn't perform at twice the size that you are now, a lot of what you're investing in right now is to make yourself twice the size. Marketing, sales, you know, if you're out there and you're buying a sales coach, you're buying a software, you're trying to get some kind of leadership course, you're going to the conferences. If the things that are going to be downstream from that thing you're working on aren't ready for it, or that process won't handle it, or that person isn't ready for it, well, then you shouldn't continue doing it. So like, for example, the guy who's basically running production is always out in the field. He's driving from site to site to site. He's in control of the crews. He's basically holding it all like this, right? And it's like, well, if you doubled the number of crews, he couldn't do it, right? So you have to move this person into the office eventually. So why not now? Why not do it when you're not busy so that when you're busy, you're not scrambling to get him in the office and then dealing with the consequences then. And so I think that, like, I think people need to have increase their lid of leadership. And I'm stealing this from John Maxwell, but he says like the law of the lid, right? So you know, if your, your business will, will succeed to the level of your lid. So if you're a level five level leader, then when people hit five, they leave, right? Because sixes won't work for a five. So they just keep keeping here. And your lid is really built on your management ability, your effectiveness, your leadership skills and your belief. And I think that actually these, you know, these folks that you might be talking about are in this position where their belief lid is actually their main constraint. So we talked about like, what is the constraint, right? So I think that like, as we talk about it and I kind of meditate around it a little bit and what you said, I think that the constraint is belief, right? And so they don't believe in themselves, they don't believe in the opportunity, they have the scarcity mindset. And I think that this ultimately hurts them because then they fail to put infrastructure and things in place or they don't move at the pace of improvement that's requisite to grow in accordance with their opportunity. And then sometimes they let things slip them by. And that's sad.

That is sad. And that's, that's the. But that's the, the common age, old, old dilemma amongst small businesses and health. And as they grow, like, they're just always going to struggle with those things unless they talk to the right people and connect themselves with the right sources. And essentially it's going to be trial and error until you figure it out or you pay for that knowledge, or you pay attention and actually listen to someone that's going to tell you the knowledge.

Well, and that's where I think that, like, a lot more people need to work to buy knowledge. Right. And people might say that I'm biased because I'm in the business of selling knowledge to some degree. But I just look at it like if you're going to go to Disneyland, right? And if you went to Disneyland, some guy said, hey, pay the 1500 bucks for four of these super VIP ultra passes. You're not going to have to wait in line. So you're going to like it way better.

Yeah.

And you go in and you spend. I don't know, that seems pretty scary. And so you buy your four ultra super VIP family passes, but then you go, there's no lines. You get like, your kids got to.

Go on the fast pass. That was called the fast.

I don't have kids old enough to go to Disneyland.

You know what? Sidebar. Disneyland is not for kids.

Whoa.

Disneyland in Disney World is for adults. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Well, I mean, just when you go, you'll experience it.

You'll be like, dude, this was, this was. Kids don't appreciate it.

Really?

Absolutely.

I'll have to check it out. I went to Universal Studios and that was pretty cool, I will say. They have like this Harry Potter ride. And the amount of engineering that went into this Harry Potter ride, it was absolutely unreal. Like, it, it was like augmented reality mixed with like physical movement and everything like that. And I was just like, holy crap. Like, this was like when I was a kid, I went like, Splash Mountain. You got soaking wet. That was the experience.

I love that that's where went.

When you were there.

You're like, how does this all work? I gotta, I gotta, I gotta completely reconstruct this in my mind right now.

You're damn right I did. But the. So then when we. If you were to go there and get your Fast pass. And you were to say, all right, you went in there, now you didn't have any lines. Your kids got to go on the ride they love. Three times you have to walk past all the peasants in the normal line, right? And then you come out. What are you gonna say? Talk to that guy. That guy's gonna make your Disneyland experience better. Well, that could be, like, your business life, right? Because you're gonna pay the price either way, right? Like, whenever I' looking at, like, think of yourself like if you had been presented with a hard decision in the recent past.

I mean. Yes, okay. Very commonly, typically.

What the problem with that is is that people have a hard time making decisions because. Have you ever heard of, like, cognitive behavioral therapy? Right? It's like, basically, this guy basically summarizes that we have three distortions of reality that hold us back from being empowered and making decisions. So we basically just go circumstances, others, and then self. So whenever a difficult decision is presented to us, the first thing we go to is circumstances, right? And you'll. And this will feel a lot like sales coaching, but it's not. It's really about making hard decisions. And sometimes in sales, that's really all we're trying to do is just get people to make a decision. I don't care if you buy stuff from me. I just want you to make a damn decision. Because I don't want to have to fucking follow up forever. But pardon, I don't know if I'm allowed to. I apologize, but you start at circumstances. So this is, I don't have time, right? I don't have money. Or it's like, this isn't a good fit for me, right? So you want to lose weight and like, I don't have time, so you think you need liposuction or I don't have the money, so you want to get a $9 ebook. That'll just teach you how to do it yourself, right? It's not a fit because I have hypothyroidosis or something like, you know, I mean, this isn't a fit for me, right? And so then we have to break down these distortions. And so a lot of times when people are trying to work on their belief lid, they have to ask themselves, you know, a lot of guys will think, oh, you have to have money to make money. It's easier if I had a rich uncle who could have just like, let me, like, buy a hundred thousand dollars worth of material up front or something, you know what I mean? Or got my truck and all the trailers and whatever. So they blame circumstances. Right. And we have to get past this. We have to think something like, okay, well, money. I don't have the money to do this. Well, what's the difference between a self made billionaire and the rest of us?

Yeah.

Nothing is resources, not resource. It's resourcefulness, not resource. That's why that show's so popular, the Undercover Billionaire.

Undercover Billionaire.

Because they were resourceful. Right. It doesn't matter if it's Grant Cardone, you know, figuring out a way to sleep in an RV or that other guy sleeping in car, but then figuring out how to get the Small Business Administration help them, then they go to others. Right?

Right.

So my wife, my parents weren't good enough. I can't. I have a business partner. You know, I grew up in the wrong country. Canada. I did this too. You know, and then, and then we eventually get to the self and we have to break through the circumstances and the others and get to the self because then we become an empowered person. Right. The, the, the unfortunate reality is that a lot of people experience trauma and trauma is a thing. And I don't mean to get all psychological, but a lot of people in our trades have experienced some kind of trauma. They, you know, I always kind of said back in Canada I was dealing with when I owned a roofing company, I said, these roofers are like Canada's forgotten sons. You know what I mean? They're like, they're usually people like someone a hard upbringing or, you know, raised by a single mom and an underprivileged economic circumstance. Like there's not many people who grew up in a gated community and they grew up playing AAA hockey and they had a Corvette to drive to school and then they end up shingling. You know what I mean? It just wasn't really what I was dealing with. And it was Canada's forgotten sons. And I watched this movie called the Wisdom of Trauma and it really talked about how, you know, we, we have these traumas. But the insidious thing about victimhood is that you're right. But then how does that truth serve you? And so that kind of leads into this guy, Tom Bilyeu, who said that he got a whole bunch of trouble because he wrote this blog post that said if you go out at night and get hit by a drunk driver, it's your fault. And it pissed a lot of people off because like, obviously it's not your fault. You know, they knew like blah, blah, blah, they were drunk, so and so. Yes. But the exercise of Taking personal responsibility over everything, including things that you could claim victimhood over, will give you so much control over your life that the few times that you maybe could have been a victim, it didn't serve you anyway, so you might as well just take responsibility for that too. And so that's when we get to that self, right? And then, so, wow, usually it relates back to something else that happened. So, like, let's say the example that they talk about in this movie is he says, okay, tell me an example of like a time that you got angry or frustrated and unreasonably upset. He's like, well, I hired these people to come in and do a bunch of stuff around the house, you know, do remodel and put. Hang some curtains and do this stuff. And, you know, they. They showed up late and they didn't get it all done. And I came home and I was really frustrated. He says, why did you get frustrated? Well, because they didn't do what I told them to do. But like, why did that frustrate you? Well, because they didn't listen to me. Okay, but why does that frustrate you? Well, because it means they don't respect me. Ah, so this is about you. You feel like you're deserving of respect. Why do you feel like you didn't get how come not being respected is the first thing you mentioned is name five other reasons why. Name five other reasons why they might not have done that. Car broke down, wife got upset, mom got sick, couldn't had your credit card failed and they had to go get pull out cash in the bank. So a lot of reasons why they could have showed up late and not got everything done, but you immediately went to you and that they didn't respect you and that made you mad at them because they didn't give you respect. And this is something related back to trauma because someone else didn't respect you and how much that hurt you. And so we use that as a basis to say, is there a possible example out there where someone with my exact circumstances accomplished the things that I want to accomplish? Then we empower the self and we increase our belief lid. And so that enables everybody to start looking out and saying, okay, you're right, it is trial and error, and I might lose everything, and I might be a victim of circumstance or a lack of the education or a lack of the lesson. But you know what? You walk away from every single one of those things. Smarter, better, more educated, more empowered, and like, this isn't Afghanistan. Nobody's gonna chop off your hand, you can go bankrupt, lose everything, and you can basically be back where you started nine months later. And generally the more you lose, the faster you can get back there and exceed. Because at least people knew that you did it once, you could probably do it again. So there is quite literally no logical reason to not just blank, blank, go for it. You know what I mean?

No, you're right. And that's the, that's the, the problem that most people have though, because they don't. They lack, I think, the vision of understanding. And not only that, but we're also cursed by this, this deal where, and I don't think social media has helped us, but everyone's comparing each other and that leads to paralysis. If you're small, you're. How am I ever going to be beat that guy? Or how am I ever going to become them? How would they, how would I take business and market share from some of these bigger companies?

Because you get to give the personal touch.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But, but, but that paralysis that still exists though between amongst those people because they're still like comparing themselves and thinking that they're less than, even though there's nothing different.

So that reminds me of this. Have you ever watched a movie, Ted Lasso? Yeah.

What's the show?

Or show, sorry, show, Ted Lasso. I get nervous on podcasts, especially with celebrities.

Whatever.

Yeah. So then Ted Lass, at the end of one season, there's the main character, Ted, right? He's kind of like an underdog, kind of a goofy guy, right? And then he's coach of a, of a football team. And the owner of the football team is this high powered wife. She had a high powered husband who divorced her and started dating a 20 year old. And he keeps taunting her by coming to the games. And he also bought another soccer team that happens to be kicking her soccer team's ass. And he keeps coming to the field and kind of driving her crazy. And so Ted keeps getting made fun of by the high powered man, right? And he's playing, the high powered man's playing darts and stuff like that in this bar where they're all, where they're all at. And he says, you know what, if I beat you at darts, will you not come to the games anymore? And the guy makes fun of him and basically just kind of just treats him like piece of garbage, right? Because he's broke, his soccer team's losing, all this kind of stuff. So they play the game and Ted's basically like just not doing well at all, right? And the other guy's kind of winning, but he's also not doing that much better. He's kind of like a C level player. And then at the very end he says, you know what? There's a funny thing is I used to get picked on all the time, right? I got. You get picked all the time. And people looked down on me and disrespected me. And I used to always take it personally. It used to really bother me. And then I read this that said this, read this quote that said that. Don't assume, be curious, right? And he said, you know, I realized that a lot of people, they didn't. They were. They were judging me because they were making assumptions. They didn't know me. They weren't even really. They weren't even really caring about me at all because they weren't curious about me. Because, you know, if they were curious, they would have said, play much darts, Ted? Ever played any darts, Ted? And they tell him how much he needs to win. And it's like some super impossible feat. Like two shots in a perfect spot here in a bullseye. And he, as he's saying this, he throws three darts and like hits the exact spots and wins the game. And it's kind of like this poetic justice that, you know, he was underestimated and then he beat him because the other guy made the mistake of not being curious. And I think that if, if anything, a person who has fear and has low belief in themselves needs to be curious. They need to just be thinking, has there been anybody else ever in my circumstances who's ever done this? So rather than comparing themselves to the people who are already where they want to be, they should instead be incredibly curious and comparing themselves to other people who have done it. And go find it, because you can find someone. Did someone with one leg ever become successful? Did someone with cancer ever become healthy? Did someone with who grew up in a poor area in Bangladesh ever? Like, whatever it is, this is America. That's why I moved here. This country is just incredible for the amount of opportunity that gives off. And I mean, we're also living in the best time to ever be a person ever. It's like, there's a lot of stuff that creates fear and uncertainty and doubt. But, like, here's a thought exercise that might help. So this is what helps me. Like, whenever I'm having, like, a tough time or I'm feeling really beat down, which I felt a lot, traveling around the country for 18 months in my car, trying to move to the US and build a business, there were Days when I want to quit. There was days when I felt it was too hard. I slept in my car sometimes because we were too far in between two places. I was too tired to make it to the next destination. So I was parked, pulled over, and slept like it was crazy. There was a time when we went to a place, worked for three months in Hawaii for a customer, had a little guest suite because there's no hotels, no Airbnbs, because it was Covid. And then I tried to order a mattress, and we couldn't get in that mattress for a month and a half. So I slept on a floor. So there were days that sucked. And this is what helped me. And it might help someone else. So think you're born in 1898. Y 1898, you're born, all right, 1914, war starts breaking out in Europe. You're 16 years old, a bunch of your friends volunteer for king and country and glory, and they go overseas and they go fight a war. By the time you're 18, it's 19, 19, you're joining in. Or 1917, 16, 17, you're 18 years old. You go join this war. You're not old enough to drink yet, but half your friends are dead. And now you go to this war and you realize it's a meat grinder and there's no glory, there's no for king and country. This isn't the wars of the 1800s where people are wearing blue tassels and gold and all this stuff and charging into the cavalry. It's just a meat grinder, people jumping on barbed wire so the back guy could jump over top, run over top of him, like, just terrible, right? You got people, you got your buddy in a trench, he's been blown up. You're basically in his helmet, right? Getting bread thrown to you from three trenches back. It's soaking wet, and you're basically eating moldy, soggy bread and pissing in the corner and smelling it for the next three weeks while people are trying to blow your head off every time you reach out to grab the bread. Okay, well, you managed to make it through that, and you managed to come home. You get whatever shell shock from three months of shells. There was one period where there was a shot. There was a shell going off within a three kilometer line every 13 seconds for three months. What does that do to your brain? All right? But then people wonder why they came home with drinking problems. So then you come home, things start to get good. Oh, Spanish flu. The half the friends that didn't die, now they're dead because they couldn't figure out how to stop that flu. You're having to wear a diaper on your face, but you can't stop this virus. So then all the other people die, right? Then just things start to get over. With the Spanish flu, it's 1920 now. Some people are doing okay because there's a little bit of Wall street wildness. People are making some money, but for the most part, you're still living like kind of an average person. And anybody who did do well, if you did do great, well, you were just basically because you're so obsessed with material wealth that you were literally borrowing money to buy stocks in the anticipation that went up like it was. That was it. You're just buying it on the expectation that would always go up. 1929 comes. If you weren't part of the people who are making money on Wall street and getting rich, well, then you were just still poor. And if you were part of the people who were on Wall street getting rich, well, you lost so much money that you jumped out an effing window. But if you managed to restrain yourself and not commit suicide, because the suicide rates are the highest they ever were in 1929 when the stock market crashed, well, you were lucky enough to make it to 1930 just in time for the. For America to have to try and figure out a way to make like to try and right the wrongs of everything. So they created all these tariffs on other countries and all these imports to try and support the farmers because they figured agriculture is going to be our thing. But, oh, we have the worst drought in 300 years. And we don't have. We have some. We have this thing called the Dust bowls for four years, right? So we have the. We basically have farms that just don't grow anything. It's just tumbleweeds. Right? And so we go. We continue this great recession. But it's great because you know what Great Recession brings about this war. So now, before you were a soldier in the war, but now you get to watch your kids go to this war, too, and you have to go to the war as some kind of senior leader. So now you go to a war that's twice as bad. Yet, like, what, now you're 1935, 1937. No, 1939.

40 years old.

Yeah. So you're about 40 years old, right? 40. 42. So now you're 42, you get to watch your kid go to war, too. Hopefully he doesn't die. Right. And then you go to war another half of your friends die, the ones that didn't die in the Spanish flu or didn't jump out neffing window on Wall street, right? They go, now one of your kids dies. The other one lives but loses an arm. And one in your daughter's home. But your daughter lost her husband, so now she's back living with you. And you come home now, you got a real PTSD problem because it's 1945. Then you know what they celebrate with when you come home? Prohibition. So now you can't drink because it's because they have too many people with drinking problems after they sent them to two world wars, and then 1953, they come out with a color TV, and you get to plop your ass in front of the couch and have the first good year of your effing life. Now all of a sudden, after reading that to myself and whenever I kind of walk myself through that, I realize I've never had a bad day in my life. Yeah, I've never had a single bad day.

Half their life, man.

Yeah, half their life. So, like, Allison will reach out to me some days, like, oh, I'm sorry you had a bad day. Cause I'll tell her something crappy. I was like, kids went from the beaches in Normandy to Berlin with leather shoes and no socks and one bag of food and some water. And I'm like, my was not that bad. Drives her crazy. Drives everybody crazy. My employees, the ics, have told them. But I just think that, like, let's just put, like, if you can't be curious about people, that. That about to find opportunities. If you can't focus on being resourceful instead of worrying about your resources, if you can't be curious enough to find other people who did it in your circumstances, then at least realize that your life ain't that bad, even if you stay broke for the rest of your life.

That's the truth, man.

Like, no matter what, that's the truth.

And that's what I think people just lack that understanding of. They need to position themselves. Like, at the end of the day, it's. It's not that bad. And life is good. It's just.

It's like a whole Gary thing. It's all about perspective. I just want you to be happy. Don't you want to be happy?

Well, and I. And I think they do. And I think most people do. And most people watching this are in that same boat where they want to figure this out, I think. And I want to reach the ones that, if you're watching this. And you're like, you know, I really want to figure out how to. How to make my life better. What. What are the opportunities? I want to share some of that today because I want to kind of like, shed some light on the industry and on the realities of the industry and how this industry is evolving much quicker than what.

We were talking about yesterday a little bit.

Because I think that that conversation goes hand in hand with what we're talking about here. You know, when you. You look at this, in this evolution of the roofing industry or just construction industry in general, over the course of the last, I don't know, I'm fifth generation. My, my, the way my grandpa got work and the way my dad got work and the way people get work today is very, very different. Okay. Over the last 20 years, it's evolved into more of a sales and marketing game for those that want to grow and scale and those that have grown and scaled to the level that they have. Most of their businesses revolve around sales and marketing and acquiring customers and customer acquisitions. Big thing that people talk about and all this other stuff. And while that's fine and dandy, I think that if you are watching this and you're thinking, man, how am I going to compete with all them people? I kind of want to change your perspective a little bit.

Well, one big thing that I kind of get a little flack for saying, thankfully, my ideal customer avatar is one where the marginal utility of money in their bank account has diminishing rate of return on happiness because they have enough. They could buy another boat or car.

Yeah.

Go on a vacation. So I'm not trying to sell 50,000 people a $50 thing. So I'm lucky enough that I get to say this because I think it's the truth, but it doesn't make me very popular. And it's that 80% of roofers don't deserve to exist or be. Be successful at the very least. I don't believe that we need 107,000 roofing companies in America when we've got five airlines, you know, five auto manufacturers, three postal companies for, two credit card companies, five phone. Again, this does not make me popular. I'm waiting for the comments to tell me I'm an asshole. But I mean, the reason that I say this is because there just isn't that much unique market differentiators and roofing. You're selling the same shingles for the same price, using the same tools, installed by the same people the same amount of time. There's just not that Much different. There's no Louis Vuitton of asphalt shingles. That's ten times the price. And there's no Walmart. That's one tenth the price. So then I look at the people that are in this business and I wonder, why did they start a business Business?

Yeah.

Probably because they had a bad boss and they thought, well, I could do it better than this jackass. And then they either found out how hard it was and they found they weren't that much better. Yep. And so they. They really started not. They didn't start a business because I have a dream. They started a business because they just didn't like the job that they had. And half the time they couldn't get a job doing the trade that they learned because everybody was subbing. So they kind of just had to go start their own business. And then they tried to show up and say, hey, I know how to roof. Will you give me a job? And they said, show up with five more guys, a business license and a tax ID and insurance, and ye, I'll give you a job. No, I just want a job now. We don't hire people with jobs. I mean.

Yeah, they don't hire people.

Yeah. So you had to go work for a guy who was owning a business out of his truck to do the trade that you knew how to do. So really, like, your only choice was either work with for a guy who was basically running a business out of his truck or start your own business out of a truck, or not do the trade because they don't hire people in house to do it. So that's why a lot of guys start roofing companies. And then eventually they get sick of being on the roof. So then they try and figure out how to sell roofs, and then they figure how to try and market the business. Then they try and figure out do accounting. Then they try and figure out who sales, Then they try and figure out how to get multiple and they finish favorite software. And all along the way they pay dumb tax, ignorance tax, and slow tax because they're just dealing with all the things that they don't know how to do. And they're too cheap and scared to pay for help because they think that everybody's just trying to be predatory on them. So then where do we end up? Well, we were kind of sharing the story, and so I don't want to hurt the feelings of anybody in particular, so I'll just name like, I got two friends named Mike and Dave. All right? And Mike and Dave love to do videos about Their roofing company and they're great, fantastic at making videos. Now I know their business. They have struggled to be around the 5 to 6 million mark. So they're right in the middle of that three to eight break point where they're just trying to figure out who's going to help. Right? 0 to 1, what do you do? 1 to 3, how you do it. 3 to 3 to 8, who's going to help? And they're in that who's going to help phase. They can just never quite seem to get the people. It's probably got something to do with leadership. It's probably got something to do with their ability to acquire enough business. Right. So they, what do they do? They do a lot of video and they're fantastic at it. And now what are they left over with at the end of the year? I would peg it around 100k. So they're both paying themselves 100k. They're stressed out and a lot of stuff in the business that they hate, a lot of stuff. But they're great at making videos. Fantastic. Well, they don't see the real value in their skill. They could go to someone like, you know, private equity acquired, roof company X, you know what I mean? Doesn't matter. But someone who's got $150 million and they would kill to just somebody to work for them who loves making content that much. And look, we operate in 17 states. We'll pay you each $250,000. We'll give you both a credit card and an Airbnb membership and an Uber membership. And you just travel around to all of our locations and record a piss ton of videos just like you're doing for yourself. But you do it under our flag. They would make more money after tax take home, no stress, no dealing with production, no fighting with insurance claims, no supplementing, no safety, no business taxes, no nothing thing. But they don't see the market value of their skill because they don't have the belief. Right? Or I met another guy who I was talking to about stuff and he's so frustrated and mad because the guys that are in the name the shingle group are always answering wrong. What type of shingles is. He talks about how he spends three hours a day in there and he's a business owner. He talks about, he spends three hours a day arguing in the name that shingle group about what the name of the actual shingle is and who's right and who's wrong and nobody knows what f they're talking about. And I'm the best. And I'm like, so your business is struggling, okay, who's making your business not struggle while you're fighting on Facebook with roofers and that make you no money? Who's taking care of your employees visions? Is your vision big enough to fit all the other guys vision inside of it? Am I making anybody mad?

No, no, no, not yet. Not yet. You're good.

And then I don't want to anger anybody and I don't feel bad, but.

Truth is truth, man.

Let's do this. But this guy, right? There's probably a roofing company in a matching state. So like what? Minnesota?

Minnesota, Ohio? Well, Ohio's kind of borderline, but yeah, Minnesota is a great example though, right?

So if there's probably a big huge company in Minnesota that would love to have a guy like this who literally would be willing to argue about what shingles are discontinued for free for three hours a day, they'd probably pay him darn good money.

Oh, absolutely.

Right. And I see this over and over and over and over and over again. Guys who love Facebook ads and all they want to do guys who love automations. I have a client who just, just, he was just all, he would always want to do his own stuff. Like he would ask me, we would talk about it. And for like 4 years I tried to sell him a CRM. Took me 4 years to sell this guy a HubSpot. But for the four years prior to that, he kept doing it himself, doing it because he loved zapier and go high level and just click funnels and just love building automations. And it was always just like DIY stuff, like hacky stuff to a person, like a professional, right? Like when you watch a homeowner do their own roof. I was watching a roofing business owner who struggled, who did hacky DIY stuff to his own business because he didn't want to pay me to do it. Which is fine, I don't care. But the point was, is that I watched it and I'm like, dude, your business needs you to be a leader. Your business needs you to be a sales manager. Your business needs you to be a production leader. Your business needs you to be a coach and emotional support and have a vision that you should not be doing my job, which is worth at most $10,000 a month. You should be out there generating a million dollars a month, but instead you're playing with zapier. You know what I mean? Because you think it's cool. Well, if you think it's cool, then why don't you go work for someone who thinks it cool?

Well, and I think that's. That's.

I think it'd be cool to have you do it.

No, that's a very good point. And with all of the private equity money that's coming into the space right now, I don't think people realize, like, how that opportunity really looks. If you think about that, like, this is something that happens in every industry at one point or another, and those that get caught up in it, and especially early on, are the ones that reap the biggest rewards. Right.

Yep.

At all. And this isn't. This is an opportunity where you can reap some very, very large rewards. If you were to put your skills in the right hands and in the right. With the right backing, you could, you could walk away from there. Not just. This is like the, the dot com bubble.

Yeah, let's.

Let's equate it to that, because I think that's relatable to most of the people that are watching this right now. Everyone remembers.com bubble and they think, man, I wish I would have been able to get on that somehow and get into the tech bandwagon. When all these tech companies were getting bought out thing was happening and, you know, everyone was. All these valuations were going crazy. Now it's kind of cooled down and it's kind of, you know, tech is kind of going a whole different direction. A lot of consolidation that's happened. All this other stuff. Well, that consolidation is happening right now.

Yeah.

But people are still focused on running their businesses, and they care about that. When they're not focusing on what is your actual skill, what are you actually good at, and how is that valuable to someone with a lot of money that's trying to build a large corporation and bring all these companies together and roll them up, which is. Is extremely difficult to do, by the way. I don't think they get enough credit. Everyone's villainizing them and thinking this is the worst thing that can happen to our industry. They're destroying it. These guys are doing this and that, because I hear that all the time. But at the same time, it's like, no, you got to understand, like, this is an opportunity for you to cash out on your skill set that you truly have.

Yeah. If you haven't built a business that's worth buying, but you have a skill set that's worth paying for, you should probably just go do that 100 because they need people like that. There's a lot of guys who are super proud installer types that you know, don't sell roofs for enough money because they think that other guys charge for things. There should be dust, John, for free. Like, we deal with this all the time in the sumo quote side. We're like, that should be an upgrade. No, every roof should have that. So I just give it away for free. I'm like, good. And now what is the income of the people that work for you? Probably pretty shitty. Why? Because you don't sell for enough money. So then it's like, if they could. This whole thing that's happening, there's an enormous amount of opportunity and Patrick. But David talks a lot. In his book five, you know, Five Next Moves, he talks about being an intrapreneur. Like, there's a lot of ways to get rich, right? You can marry rich, you could sue rich, you could divorce rich, you could, you know, you can become an influencer, you can, you can be an investor.

You can have a trust fund.

Yeah, there's a lot of ways, right? And one way to do it is to be an entrepreneur, right? I think there's a higher propensity to be a millionaire as an entrepreneur than actually as an entrepreneur. Like, I think the volume of people who are like CEOs, CTOs, people like that, people who have good exits from companies, people who are VPs of things, there's actually more millionaires in that category than people who own businesses or like high ticket salespeople, like stocks or selling private jets. So, you know, there's a really good chance that like, like, I mean, you, you, for example, right? If you weren't passionate about what you're doing and if you weren't successful at what you were doing, but with all the skill sets that you have around media and all this fantastic stuff and your ability to create ambiance and make me look good on camera, you, you could probably run media for a huge company and do that. In fact, I think you do do that on some contract basis with stuff we were talking about, right? But like, you could probably say, like, if everything went to hell tomorrow, you know, I mean, let's say something terrible happened, caused a big medical expense, God forbid. But if something were to happen, then if you had to go get a job, your skill set is incredibly valuable. And a lot of times people need to see that, like, they can stack their skills, right? So it's like if you, you know, you, you first, like this is example that Alex Hormozi uses. He talks about Jay Z, right? He says, like, first he learned rhythm and then he learned beats and Then he learned lyrics and then he learned, then he learned how to make good, then he learned how to like produce songs and then he learned how to make a label and then he married Beyonce. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

The very top step is where it all paid off. And he became a like, like super, super, super rich. But only by marrying Beyonce with all the other steps that he went through was this able to be good. You don't know what your life has, but if you keep moving in a linear path, stacking on top of your previous wins and skill sets, right. It doesn't matter whether you own the company or whether you're a high value employee, as long as you keep to. As long as you keep trimming away your, your weaknesses and stacking up your skills in a way that makes sense. You can't always see the dots looking backwards, but if you keep going in that direction, you know, sure, you might go work and like work for someone else for a while. Like I did. You know, I had a business, I sold a business, I had a business, I sold an app, you know, and then I went and got a job in car sales. And I learned so much from this guy, Bob Harms. Yeah, I learned so much. And Ryan McDonald, like the whole thing, like, follow the process that like I got known for. That's only because Ryan McDonald beat that into my head and he threw things at me when I didn't do it. Like, I mean, so I have some follow the process. Like I had trauma over not following the process. That's why I had struggling to be average, failing to show improvement because they don't know, haven't been trained or don't care. If you can't change your people, change your people. Like that was stuff they said to me all the time as they're teaching me. And that taught me when I went back to being an entrepreneur again. So don't ignore that you might have an extreme if you're not quite achieving your dreams and you're not going to do all the stuff we talked about at the beginning of this, about being curious, about being resourceful instead of worrying about how much resources, not letting yourself cower down because of what other people are doing and realizing you've never had a bad day in your life, working past the circumstances to the others, to the core and empowering yourself. If you're not going to do all that and you're just going to still sit in your like little negative Nancy stage, well then maybe just recognize the valuable skill sets you do have. Don't keep taking Ls all day and continuously having another year of almost over and over and over again and take what you have. That's good. Whether it's productions, production, safety, marketing, videos, content, blogging, website automation, go take it. Go work for a company who will pay you the most amount of money to do it. Learn something and then maybe you go and start something seven years from now and there's a whole new industry that comes out, you know, and that's what.

That'S, that's the whole part of having that self awareness of understanding what you actually are good at. And, and there's no shame in that. Like I, I felt like we went through that, that transition with Balance, you know, several years ago when, when we sold Art of the Supplement and to Balance and became a part of their team and became their marketing director and that's what I focused on. And that was my, that, that was such an eye opening experience because I got to be part of that leadership team and part of a buyout and like I would have never had that, that opportunity.

And how much do you learn going through an exit?

Oh, so much. You learn so much. But besides that though, like the opportunity though, you think about it like there wasn't, Google wasn't going to hire me to do this job for them.

Yeah.

Like I'm just telling you, like just so you guys know, like there was no one knocking my door telling me, hey, I, you, you would be the perfect candidate to come to this Fortune 500 company and, and to join our, our leadership team and be our marketing director. No, it wasn't happening. Right.

Yeah.

My only way to do it at that moment was to go work for a company that was in that in between space, the vendor space of the industry and then watch as that exit happen and to go through that process. And now I look at it and it's like your skill is so valuable because it's connected to roofing right now. And roofing is the hot ticket in the private equity world. And the fact that you don't understand roofing, you could work for a company that could potentially be the next equivalent of whatever large, you know, services company we can compare it to.

Yeah. And then what happens when you see another industry, right. That starts having this. What, what is the next darling of P Exactly. Was because the whole thing about asking the question, was there someone else that went through this? Right, right. So who did this in H Vac? Right, right. So like a good story is like, oh, what's his name? Parker and Sons. Parker And Sons. What the heck was his name? J. Oh, gosh, I can't remember. He owned Parker and Sons Air Conditioning, and it was like a $100 million company. Ended up hiring a CEO and using it to go into the tech space, learning what he learned. And when he went into the tech space and started something kind of like Angie Roofing and called Pulse, and he learned a ton from that. And then he ended up bringing that education back to his company. But I guess the big thing is that he meandered in and out. Right. You learn so much from basically having your company be acquired than exiting from balance claims. So what happens when the next H Vac used to be the darling. Right. Of the PE World and now roofing is the darling of PE World? What happens when you've leveled up your skill sets? You surrounded yourself with people who are 100 times smarter than you. Yep. You've learned something that you never would have had the opportunity to learn being some podunk roofer in South Dakota. And now you've learned this stuff, and then now there's a new darling, and now you can offer the experience of having beef through it because you chose to put your ego aside. And so, I mean, because there is so much opportunity, like if you're 18, yeah, you can probably just pick up a hammer and go learn some stuff about the trade. But if you're 27 or 38 and you've been in this industry for a long time and you're watching this show and you're not quite getting where you want, now you're looking at Covid's over the. The whole construction boom of COVID is kind of undone. And. And you didn't quite put enough away, and you kind of thought it was going to last forever. And, you know, you. All these things, you know, oh, yeah, we're pandemic proof. Yeah. But you weren't just pandemic pandemic proof. You were pandemic successful. And now.

And there was a lot of money that came in during.

Yeah, exactly. Like, there was a lot of money.

A lot of that PPE money and.

Whatever else, you know, so it's like you like. And so now a lot of people realize, like, that there's 30% of the market that's just falling away. And if you didn't quite figure that out because you didn't have the finance background to see it, well, then, I mean, maybe there's something you'd be really good at. Because I just. I see it every day when I talk to people that I Would consider unqualified leads in my business. And I'm like, this isn't quite our ideal customer avatar, But I try and give as much lessons away for free in the hopes that they might get past the level one and two problems so that I can come and solve the level three and four problems for them. But in the meantime, you know, sometimes I just want to give the hard dose of reality, which is that it's not a bad dose of reality. It's just that there might be a place where you'd be way happier. I was so happy when I walked into that car dealership, and I realized that, wait a minute. I don't businesses since I was 20. And I was like, someone else paid for the paper, the cars, the printer, the computer, the desk, the lights to stay on, the inventory, the girl that's answering the phone. I don't have to do anything. This car is worth $40,000. They're selling it for 44. If I sell it, I get 600 bucks. Bucks, plus 3% if I sell more than 20 of them. You're gonna have to pry me out of here with a fucking crowbar. I had the most fun of my life, and then I became number one in the country for my brand. And then because of that, I got an opportunity to do the finance thing. And then because of that, I got an opportunity to open a new dealership, and I was the number one sales manager in that brand. And I learned so much, and I had so much fun. Like, it was a blast. If everything went to hell, I would just go find a car brand that was making. Had a really cool, like, kind of evolution of their models lately, and they were kind of hot. I would just go find that. I'd completely stomp the sales floor, and then I'd smoke the sales manager, and I'd have the most fun of my life. I'd always have that to fall back to. That's the other thing. It's like you. You get things like that whole stacking thing. It also means that when you go up a step and you suck at it, because at one point, you're like, in the. You start out, and you're like, the 80% of this group, right? Those break points, like, that 3 to 8. Well, when you're at, like, 7.8, you're at, like, the. You're in, like, the 1% of that group, right? Like, you're the best one, and then you go to the next level, and now you're the loser of the next group. Right?

Right. And Then you gotta level up.

Yeah, you gotta level up. Right? So you start the loser, the next group, and then you get good, and then you get bored and then you go to the next one. Right, exactly. It's like, well, the nice thing is, is that when you fall backwards, right? You fall backwards to something you're awesome at.

You're at the top of that.

You know what I mean? Like, it's not like you stumble all the way down to the bottom and you're like, oh, yes, I gotta go work at McDonald's. It's like, no, if I go backwards, I go to a sales manager making 200 grand a year. Like, I mean, I'm not. I'm not falling back down to like working in a Trust plant at 16 years old making trusses.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. Like, it's still, it's still skills. And, and I love that we're having this conversation to people within that segment of the industry. Like, I think you got to be really, really self aware and cognizant of what your skill set is, what your available, what your availability is, and, and opportunistic. My gosh, there's no better opportunity than what is happening right now, this second in the industry.

Yeah.

Because that's just a fact.

Because there's like. You ever heard like a Venn diagram?

A Venn diagram?

Yeah, the two circles that overlap.

Okay. Yeah.

Right. So like, I have, like my employee. That's really hard to find. Right. If you want to find a way to make yourself really, really, really valuable, find the three things that are hard to find that you can all do and that you become that, like, three circles that overlap. Right. Video guy.

And you're. That. You're that middle guy, and you're that.

Middle p. Because like, my Venn diagram of success at RBP is like, have you worked in a leadership position at a roofing company doing $10 million or more? And are you decent with technology? Like, can you learn, like, how to make. How to, how to like, make the CRM do things and how to work in zapier? Like, if your brain can understand that? Because I can. Like, people finding people who can do zapier and HubSpot do stuff, though. Like, they're not dime a dozen, but I can find them. You know what I mean? And if I can. And like, there's people who run roofing companies that are, you know, that have been in senior leadership positions, roofing companies, but I can't always find them. Be good with technology. So when I Find one that can do both. Well, then that's awesome. Now if I could find one that could sell. Right. Technology, then they'd be really valuable because right now I'm the only person in my company that has both run companies that were successful, been, you know, able to do anything with a computer and can also sell. Right. Because I can find one, maybe two. Very hard to find three, they're very hard to find. So what can you do where you're, you know, at an above average level skill set that overlaps to something else, and then find out where that skill is extremely valuable. Because if someone out there is watching and you run a roofing company, $10 million or more, and you're good at technology, call me because I'll pay you more than the place you're getting paid and you'll have more fun. But, you know. Yeah, it's like general little.

Yeah, let's just throw that one out there.

Yeah, no big deal. That's kind of the thing, right? Is that. Is that there's. There's. There's so much opportunity. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of people who are worried about AI taking over the world or, you know, Russia, China, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that'll get this YouTube channel turned off. But like, I mean, it. It's like they're all worried about this stuff. And I mean, I'll tell you a funny story about how the world's really going to end, but before we get to that, it really is just a matter of. Of finding ways to. To believe in yourself.

Yeah.

If you can just dare to believe in yourself, you'd be amazed at how much the light kind of shines a path because. And then you can just go find ways to motivate yourself. But do you want to find out how the world's really gonna end?

I do. I do want to find out how the. I would love to hear this.

Is there any. Anything else you want to talk about before I really make everybody sad?

Let me slip one more thing in here and then we'll make everybody sad. Is that cool?

Yeah. Okay, so might scare people. Might be exciting. It might be. There's a lot. People might have a lot of very different reactions to it. Some people might even get a little weirdly turned on. But I mean, don't worry, it'll be completely PGish. All right.

So I have one other thing, and I want to talk to the macro here of the industry. Okay. And this is, this is to everybody, like, I don't care and some of you guys already know this. Some of you guys are really, really blind to this. So I want to talk to everybody about this because I think this is also really, really important to discuss. And we're discussing it as much as we can right now because I think it's really, really important for you. If you're trying to be opportunistic and grow your business right now in, in any way, shape or form, or you want your business to survive and be acquired someday, we got to talk about this. Because the way that people buy and sell and transact is changing rapidly.

Right?

And what used to be, you used to be able to get away with a lot of stuff as long as you had strong sales and strong market marketing. But I, I 100 believe that 100 believe that the future is much more along the managed repair path. And this is from the insurance guys from the retail team. It's going to be a lot more of direct sales and online quote systems and, you know, that kind of stuff. And manufacturers getting involved in that is a big deal. And I think that from the, you know, the grand scheme of like home ownership status, there's also the side where people are just not going to own houses and you're going to have to build roofs and do services, whether it be roofs or whatever, for these conglomerate companies that own hundreds of thousands of houses. All of these things, while most people are like, I don't want to deal with that, I want to stay away from that. I want to stick in my little retail realm or my insurance realm or whatever I'm good at is going to disappear. If you don't understand that process is what is going to actually make you valuable and not sales and marketplace.

I agree. Decreasing the unit economics of processing unit of business will be probably the biggest indicator of success going forward. It'll make you either the most desirable target acquisition or it'll make it so that you will actually enjoy running your business.

Because so to say that in layman's terms right now most people just figure out this is the cost it costs me to build a roof, whatever that means. They tack on their margin and then that's their price and their price is a retail price. But your price is going to be determined by outside factors, which in turn means that your efficiency in your process is what's going to make you more money than actually like your sales price.

Yeah, because if you think about it right, they were in terms of revenue per capita. So a lot of people talk revenue per employee, but in roofing, that's tough because you have all these subs and stuff like that. So I just like to think of as revenue per capita capital. So revenue per person that does not put nails through roofs. Right? Right. And so you take, it's like most of the industry is running at like 4 or 500,000. Right. And then you take your 60% out because it's just pass through money. It comes in, comes out, and then you're left with the 40%. So then you know, you're doing 600,000, you got 40%. So then you're making $240,000 revenue profit, right. Gross profit per capita. And that gross profit per capita, your average salary is 85 grand. So now you're left over with what's that, like 175 or something?

Right.

And so you're left with that 100. That's how you have to grow. We really need to focus on building processes that decrease the human efforts. When I say the unit economics, this is like the human efforts, right. That are required. Right. So how do we create the leverage that allows us to do that? Right. There's only like really four points of leverage in business. You've got capital, right. The ability to use money to make money, which most of you probably don't. Right. And that's okay. Then there's collaboration, right. Labor, people. Right. But you can't get that at a, at a disproportionately low cost compared to the market. There's pretty much a fair market value for collaboration. Then you've got content, the ability to garner attention at scale. Right. At a minimum or low price. And then code, the ability to use computers to essentially replace labor and do things more consistently, more often 24 hours a day. I find that the easiest one to get to that's most accessible is code. I find it's easier to get there than it is to get capital in some cases. And so code. What is that? Well, well, you know, there's a thing in Popular Mechanics was talked about a long time ago and said, what is the most efficient animal over a hundred miles? Have you ever heard this? Okay, so what do you. If you had to guess, what is the most efficient Animal to travel 100 miles as far as like energy used, pound of body. I don't know.

I feel like a camel would be because they get so much water. But that's probably not the, the correct answer at all.

No. And it's funny how many people guess camel, but it's actually a condor. It's a bird. Right? Okay, so it's the most efficient at traveling 100 miles as far as the calories per body.

That makes sense.

Per body weight as a ratio. Right. And it's a condor. Right. Human beings are actually in like the bottom third. We're terribly inefficient at traveling over that long distance. And so the interesting thing was the minute you gave a human a bicycle, they became more efficient than the condor by a factor of four or eight or something like that. So, so basically the bicycle was the leverage that increased. Like, how do we create bicycles for the mind? Well, that was computers, Right. How do we create bicycles for our organizations? And that's me systems and processes. Right. How do we duplicate or remove human effort from our processes and our business such that we can increase the revenue per capita, like, you know, to like a million. Right. And so if we can put things in place that can provide, that can make the work that people are doing more rewarding because they don't have to go in the CRM, do the thing, and then also check a box saying they did the thing thing. But just the fact that they did the thing makes it proven. And then we can also track how many people are doing the thing, or they can. You can track. You can make your CRM track the things that you are doing and all the people who are doing it. And then if you can eventually say, hmm, we're starting to fall behind between stages seven and nine and we need to hire more people there because that's actually causing the bad experiences of business. And we can see that on our dashboard. If you have something like that, well, then what you find happens is then you invest in the right places at the right time. You're not just throwing people at problems. The revenue per capita goes up. And then you create this really attractive business to either be purchased or to own. And so you create all these kinds of opportunities as a result, because then they have the capital to pursue some of the things that you're talking about. Like, I love managed repair program. It doesn't make me popular, but I just look at it and say, if you're a 60, 70, 80, 140, $250 million company, managed repair program is just a great way to add volum volume. Right? Right. And there's people in your business that you can rethink the way that you do business. Most of the guys in the in that are watching probably have a 2% pay on time discount, a dollar a bundle that are getting back from the manufacturer or something like that, which just.

Goes right into their pockets. And they don't talk about it.

Right. And they just go. And they use that as like Morocco money. That's what they go on vacation with. But then you. But then when you get to be a big company, 10, 20, 30 million, that money, that starts becoming like 100 grand a year. Right? Right. So then you just start saying, well, I don't need to spend 100 grand a year just because I have it. That's stupid. So then they start counting it as pretty profit. And then you get to another level where you start to realize, hmm, there's people in my business that would be motivated to the same degree that I was by doing that. And I need them to do things that are important that are directly impacted by this. Like, you need your ar, AP and accounting person to essentially make the right decisions all day to create liquidity in the business. Well, why is it that you don't give them half of that 2% pay on time discount if they make sure it happens? Well, all of a sudden now you're using the stuff that motivated you when you were small to motivate your people. People. Because leadership's all about influence and finding ways to make success easy and to create reasons for people to be successful. So these businesses are finding things like, not just process, like how do we process our job, but they also find new ways to think about incentives and the things that exist in the infrastructure of the industry to give their people a piece or a stake or some kind of ownership. Because, like, one of the most successful companies that I've seen is actually not doing pen. They're actually wanting to do an esop. They can sell their company to their employees that'll be financed through the bank to the employees. So essentially the employees take a loan which then pays out the owner tax free and he's got bullets in his gun to then go pursue whatever he wants to do, which then he'll pay income taxes on and all that kind of stuff. And meanwhile, then the employees pay off the loan with the profits from the business. It's a perfectly structured deal because the bank invests in it to make it right. And then the employees own the company. Company. And then he will be able to then go pursue other things and his legacy gets passed on to his employees rather than getting packed up, crunched down, twisted up, packaged, squeezed and integrated into a bigger thing and potentially lose the culture. Wow. So like, there's just so many cool mechanisms that's so cool that are being put out there. And it's like, it's like what what is it that like, or you talked about like those large packages, right? Like, people complain about how Zillow is like basically buying a house, buying 10 houses, then what were they doing? Like jacking up the price so then the rent go up and then.

Yeah, eventually they are, but they're talking.

About like they hated that Zillow's buying all those houses. But you know what that means you can, like, you can find a way to market to the property management firm that Zillow is paying and you can then land yourself $2 million or $4 million worth of work in one fell swoop and you can create opportunity for your team because now you're not paying 10% to some, some chiseled jaw, good looking sleeve, tattooed salesman to get that $4 million of work, but then he expects to get, you know, seven weeks vacation in a free truck to do it. You know what I mean? Because you landed all that work and now you created opportunity for all the people in your office and you create opportunity for all those roofers and then the roofers get to be respected at the bar on the bank because now you can pay the roofers more instead of giving it all the damn salesmen.

Yep. And that's the point, like I, I think that it's, it's rethinking this whole model and what, what's actually important for over the course of the next 10 years and what's going to set someone apart if you, if you're struggling with this idea where like I said earlier, like you're comparing yourself to other companies, you're trying to figure out how do I do it better focus on this side of it where everyone else is focusing on that. Let the ones that are, that are fat and having fun making a lot of money with sales and marketing, keep doing that and focus on how do you build a business that's super, super efficient and that's going to have the leg legs.

Yeah. Like, one of the best roofing employers in the country that I've met is Guy Brennan Leong. He's 31 years old and he says that just, he's not quite 31, but he says if I can't hire a roofer and keep him working for 40 years, I don't want to hire him. Like, my goal is if I'm going to hire someone, I want to keep working for 40 years. He hasn't been alive for 40 years, but the way he looks at it is that the tradespeople, right, are the real soldiers of what we're doing. Like, they're the real people behind the business. Like, he, He. I've routinely heard him say to people like, look, we didn't. We. The roofers didn't show up because we had a job. We have a job because the roofers show up every day, right? And so they're the ones that we're here to serve, right? And so I look at it and I think, you know, it's kind of silly that if you are some banker who has terrible personal habits, you cheat on all your girlfriends, you have a drug problem, but you drive a nice car. When you go to the bank, the bank will give you a loan. You go to the bar, the girl will give you attention. But if you, you know, go fishing on the weekends, you wear car hearts and leather boots, you, you know, stink on Tuesday, but you can smell just as good Friday night as the other guy. You're in great physical shape. You're a simple man, salt of the earth kind of person. And you make 100 grand a year. But, you know, you can make 100 grand a year if you find a great employer. But you're a roofer. You go to the bar and a girl's like, ugh, roofer. No, I'm gonna wait for a blue check mark guy on Instagram. Instagram. And if you go to the bank, people are going to be like their first impression. I'm not saying that some of this isn't deserved, but what I am saying is that if employers realize that we don't have to pay the salesman 3, $500 to sell a $35,000 roof with two hours of work, maybe we could make. Pay them 1700. We could pay a thousand more to the five roofers, give them extra 200 bucks, and have 700 left over for the owner to go buy a new boat every year, I think that'll be a fair rebate reallocation of the fundamental. And that would make it so the roofer could be respected at the bar, in the bank again, and nobody would have to make unreasonably less money. Because if you make your. Your revenue generation engine more efficient, paying that roofer 1700 bucks, twice as often he's making the same money. And if you can make it easier for him to do it, then why not?

Yeah, exactly.

And that's going to come from systems and processes.

That's what it comes down to. And that's why I wanted people to hear this, because this is what, number one, this is what Adam does extremely, extremely well. And, you know, just learning about watching how this industry is progressing. I was excited to bring him in to introduce him to, to my audience and to, to the American contractor show people because our audience is, I feel, well positioned to take advantage of what you do. And Adam's a friend. Like, I want to help him help you guys because you guys are all my friends too. And I want our industry to grow and become better at what they do and processes is the future.

So absolutely.

We have some questions, actually. So first off, Conor Roddick, he would like to have a job, you know, Connor.

Connor, absolutely. Hire me. I would hire him in a second. He can definitely can be a financial advisor for RBP's clients.

Yeah, for sure.

My clients are rich and they would love to have Connor help them stay rich and make more. Make themselves more rich.

This Demetrios, he's asking, what do you like to ask installers on interviews? He's an H Vac.

I like to. You know what, I take a weird approach to when I want to hire installers. I want to. I'll just say, so tell me your story. Because everything else that they're used to answering is bullshit. I want to hear his story, right? And then I want to hear his personal, professional and financial goals. And that sounds like some lip service from some leadership book, but I really don't care as much about the professional goals as they care about the personal and the financial because I want to know what he's working on and then I want to. And then they say that you're supposed to help these employees when they tell you their personal, professional, financial goals. You're supposed to help them make them, you know, smart goals. Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. I really like to focus on the relevant. So if I tell them, what's your story? You know, how'd you end up in this position? How'd you end up looking for a job? Like, just tell me your story. What's, like, what's going on with you? Right? And then I try and ask them, like, so what are your personal goals? What are you, your professional goals? What are your financial goals? Where do you want to be in one, two, three years? Like, then if I just try and ask them why they want that. Like, you want to build your own house? Why do you want to build your own house? Where would you put your bedroom? Is it a wide house? Is it a tall house? You want to travel? Are we talking African safari or Europe? Like, why Europe? Oh, you're a history buff. Oh, I'm a history buff because it allows me to find out a lot about who they are, and then I'm going to be able to connect with them earlier on and be able to really get them into the business. Business. When I was at Sergeants roofing and I owned that, I. I had this thing called sergeants goal setting. And every month we would get up and do goal setting on the first Monday of every month. But then we also had sergeant's boot camp, which is like cross training, so sales people could learn about installing or production management.

That's really cool.

And then we. And then we had sergeant support, which was every Sunday we. I met with these guys and, you know, we would talk about everything. Drinking, drug problems, porn addiction, and dead kids, like, whatever. You know, we. We cry. You know what I mean? So I think that understanding the human element of the people that are working for you, especially in the trades and giving them that support, it creates so much leverage in your business to just To. To deploy people who care because they know they're cared about. Right? Because, like, the people in those positions, they need to know that if you get rich, at least you cared about them. Right?

No, that's good because that's so, so needed in the trades. So. Wow, that's good. Well, I hope that helps. Demetrios, we have another one here too. Christy Sanders Poe. I don't know if I put this up there, it's going to cover up our screen. She's a saleswoman for a roofing company, and she's also their invoicer supplementer for three years and previously owned a masonry company for eight years, earned a bookkeeping certificate, and now she's bored, trying to figure out what the next level is. All her kids have moved out a year ago, so now she can focus on her career for once in her life. Really looking forward to what's next. Your perspective on building on your past to move up.

I love this. Talking about the stacking.

Love listening to y' all learn so much.

Okay, so let me just quickly read this. Okay, so roofing company, invoicing, supplementing for three years and owned a masonry company. So she's a bookkeeping certificate. And I'm bored. Okay, so saleswoman, masonry, eight years, bookkeeping.

I'm always going right to here to the supplement.

Of course you went for the supplement. But here's the thing. A little while ago, I saw that there was a company that. I can't remember where they were, but they basically just completely dominate, like the chimney, refinishing, chimney business, like just all things chimney, and they made A fortune. And I'm wondering if. If she couldn't find a way to get the roofing company to open a chimney division. If she did masonry, she probably knows something about the chimneys she's supplementing. And so she knows a little bit about estimating, and she has to know about estimating. And she was invoicing, so she understands that. She, she.

Now, now imagine putting that in the hands of a private equity company.

Right.

That's what I'm saying. Like, this would be.

But like, like, I just, I learned a little. I just, I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole learning about, like, the chimney business. Business. And it's like, I look at, like, why do roofers get so naturally gravitate to gutters, which is basically, literally a metal printing machine that prints $10 bills that cost $6. Right. But chimneys are way more profitable, way less competitive. When people search for it, there's nobody there to help.

Right.

Anybody who does chimneys is usually some, like, rickety old website or it's the 13th thing on some list. And really all they do is like the chimney cap heart. And it's like, if you could find a way to make your roofing company open a chimney division, and you could maybe be an intrapreneur and say, hey, your current growth rate of the company is. Is 11 a year. I. If it grows at 25 a year, I just want ownership stake in the 14 difference, and I will do that for my current salary plus a budget of X dollars. And you already know the financials. That's probably what I do. If that's a little too advanced, if that's a little too advanced, I don't know, but they think that that's a good one.

I don't think it's too advanced.

I think, I mean, she's. She understands the trade, she understands supplement issues, so she knows estimation, she understands the books, she knows the financials of the company. She'll be able to budget something to do this, and she knows how to sell. This is it.

I know that she covers all those circles.

Yeah. That's the Venn diagram.

Yeah, the Venn diagram.

So, yeah.

Chrissy, I hope you're listening to this because you have an amazing opportunity. Don't sell yourself short.

Yeah.

Just because, you know. Yeah. This is the time to focus on your career. And I'm. I'm just gonna be real. Like, I don't think there's a better time.

Your kids are out of the house.

Well, not just that, but I'm saying, like, from a general General timing.

Yeah. Like, how interesting of an acquisition are you if you're a roofing company that also happens to be ridiculously profitable in chimneys? And then all of a sudden, how.

Valuable are you to a private equity company that already exists.

Yeah.

That you can bring this skill set to their company and add this very. You're right. It's a. It's a very. It's already on the roof.

Under. It's like.

Well, the vertical is connected.

It's connected.

We always see gutters as. You're right. Gutters is always the vertical. And then chimneys are never. I don't know anyone that owns a chimney that does chimney repair work, but.

Yet it's extremely profitable. And there's a lot of rotting chimneys out there.

Yeah, 100.

So.

Well, hopefully we help Christy out. Oh, yeah, I do. So I'm ready to hear about this. All right, so we're gonna get into end of the world.

How the world's actually gonna end.

All right.

Actually, how humanity will end.

Okay. How humanity ends.

So I. I'm a religious person, so this probably ties to Revelations in some way. Way. But I think. But. But the way I envision it is it'll probably have a more biblical answer. But the way I look at it is way back in, like, the 1600s, people thought California was an island. It was actually mapped correctly once, but it was incorrectly mapped later. For about 200 years, people. People thought that California was an island. You can watch a video by Johnny Harris, talks about California, kind of, California is an island. Island. And it's all about how these sailors read this book about a Queen Khalifa. It was a storybook that was kind of like an adult novel for men on a sailboat. Right. It's basically a book that was sold to sailors to read while they're on a boat.

As a sailor, I can appreciate that.

Yeah. And so it was about Queen Khalifa from the island of California, which was an island of Amazonic tall, well, bosomed, beautiful women. And there was no men on the island. So these guys basically float their boats over where California is. See a bunch of dark, bosomed, beautiful women. Don't see a guy somewhere. And then they just wanted it to be like. Imagine if you were on a boat floating around and you saw a castle and you read Hogwarts on the boat, and you wanted to believe so badly that you found hogwarts that for 200 years, you convinced everybody else that you found Hogwarts and that's where it was. That's how California got its name. It was thought to be an island. People had evidence to be otherwise, and they literally just didn't want to believe it. There's a whole story about equality. Go watch the video. But basically an adult novel, right? Made people so fascinated that they wanted to believe that a thing that wasn't there was there because they wanted it to be. So. Fast forward 500 years when the adult film industry was in the OR. Yes. When the film industry was putting tapes on Beta and vhs, there was two standards for tapes, right? And one standard had to win. Like, eventually VHS became the standard. The thing that decided that was the adult film industry, because they were the first to really make a lot of tapes, right? And so that was when that industry picked it as the standard. It became the standard. Then the same thing happened in laserdisc and dvd when the adult film industry basically only adopted the one the rest of the industry and all films followed. And then when the Internet was trying to figure out what type of videos to stream, there was different codecs, different compression algorithms to decide how to compress, compress the videos for streaming. The codec that they chose was the one that was won. Eventually it became Vimeo and then eventually it became YouTube. Right? And so we're going to see this again in VR and AI. And the problem is that you've seen anybody who's played with ChatGPT and stuff like that knows how freaky good it is. It won't be long before this thing can recognize you. Put your apple headset on and you're going to measure pupil dilation, your breath, your perspiration. See basically into your soul. And this thing will know the voice that you like to hear this, the jokes. They'll laugh at all your jokes. They will be able to put this thing on your face. And basically you say eight hours. And you're gonna. You're gonna sleep for eight hours. You're gonna go in the box for eight hours. You're gonna do whatever the hell I tell you for eight hours, but then I'll put you back in the box and you can have everything you want. You cannot. What happens when the children today, who are used to picking the back of their parents, kneecaps, following them around the store, or anything they want inside this screen, and that's been their existence. And then they end up being 22 years old, old with credit cards, no social skills, and conditioned to either have real life, which is boring and sucks, or anything I want. And right now, girls, you used to have a local dating market. If you're in this tiny town of somewhere around Indiana, an hour away from here, right? And you're dating the prettiest girl in town. That was your girl and you got lucky. You got the prettiest girl in the little tiny town of Indiana. But now the dating market's global. So you're dating her one month, she goes on Instagram, blue check mark guys, talks to her. Next thing you know she's on a boat, you and in Dubai, you know what I mean? And so the dating market is global. So you're left with whatever you're left with or like 20 years from now, anything you're left with or anything you want in the screen. You've been conditioned that anything you want is in the screen and this is where your happy place is. And so then someone comes along and says, put this on. You'll have everything you want. You'll believe that this beautiful girl loves you. All this kind of stuff. She'll say what she wants, she'll laugh at your jokes, she'll talk to you anyway, she'll never be mad at you. And they'll probably find some way to trigger something in your mind and your hormones and in your body to, you know, take it all the way. And these things will basically screw us into extinction because we will have the choice of anything we want or that. And we won't want that. We'll want that. So then we will stop procreating and we will cease to exist and we will get screwed into, into extinction by AI.

Except for those that don't do it and disconnect from it and understand that. And the, the elites of the world.

Yeah, maybe.

So we'll just have.

We'll only have hot people. People.

Exactly.

They'll only have blue check marks and Instagram girls. That's it. See, there you go. You disprove my theory. But it's fun to think about even.

No, I think, I think there's a lot to be said there. And I think, you know, these are, these are.

It says a warning to people because they look at it and go, this stuff is cool. But I worry about what happens when you give a 22 year old that used to be a 7 year old a credit card who was con, who grew up. Because me about to have a kid, I'm starting to think about this stuff that's.

And I'm like, that's scary.

I'm about, I got. I'm like, I don't want to be a parent. Like I worry about what school to send kids to, I worry about what they're being surrounded with. And I worry about the fact that, like, what happens when I'm busy or I don't want to give them attention, and I want to be, like, here. And I basically condition them that I don't love you. I don't want to connect with you. I don't have time with you. Here's a screen with anything you want. Just have it. And then if I do that, how does my kid grow up to believe that anything I want is in that screen? And if it thinks that everything it wants is in that screen, it doesn't get to connect and get its love from me. So instead it gets the next best thing, which is dopamine, serotonin, from that.

That.

Then what does that happen when it has a credit card? No social skills and no love. And so I think that everybody should try to find a way to create time and space and success in their life so they can give back to their kids, because I think that our children are getting really messed up. So I kind of had this weird way of going about this conversation by talking about screwing ourselves in the end of the world. But I told you yesterday about my story about, you know, finding my path and connecting. And I don't know how much you talk about that other kind of stuff on here, but. Because it's personal. But it's really just. I've had a renewed faith in humanity through the gifts given to me by others and showing me things in my life. And I. And this industry has so much to give. There's so many people like you, like all those other people with the name Jay that I talked about yesterday. And I would not be where I am. I would not be who I am. I would not have the life that I have, and I would not have my. My positive belief on the future, despite my story, if it wasn't for all the people in this industry who helped me so truly. Like, thank you for bringing me on this show. Thank you for putting the time, the work and the energy into creating this show and creating this community with your plan of your thing that you're coming out with that I don't know if you talked about. Thank you from the bottom of my heart because you're making the world a better place. I loved your analogy yesterday about the musician thing and that. That. And I thought about that a lot today, and it means a ton to me that there's people like you out here. So thank you so much.

Thank you. And I'm saying, guys, and go follow him. Listen to his Podcast. His podcast is amazing. Roofing business partner. And if you are looking for a business partner like Adam sand, he is a business partner for hire. He's basically a gun for hire. If you're looking for a good business partner, this is the guy right here. And I'm. I'm serious. Like, everybody should have a business partner like Adam Sand.

Thank you, man.

And I mean that. Like, this guy knows what he's doing. He can help you grow. He can help you. He thinks so outside the box of what? What. When I say that we had an amazing dinner last night, I sat there and was just, like, blown away like, the whole time. So I'm like, man, this is the stuff that people tell me I'm crazy if I talk about. And with Adam, it's just like, he.

The whole mission thing, he talks about.

Things that's even more crazier and, like, way more better, and it makes my life way better. So guys like him are really hard to find. And we're so, so blessed to have you in our industry. So thank you for investing in our group and. And, you know, taking time to hang out. I know you were in town for something else, but thanks for stopping by the studio and hanging out.

This is awesome, man. I'm glad I got to work out on the tonal.

Oh, yeah, he. He maxed out my tonal, by the way.

Screwed up all his.

I literally.

He.

So if you understand what a tunnel is, it's. It's. It's. It's sitting over here on the wall. It's. It's bolted to the wall. And I literally could hear the wall, the bolts coming out of the wall as he was lifting this thing and max the entire thing out. It was incredible. And I should have videoed that. I might video it just to send to my cousins because they love to use my tonal and they would think that was cool as. I'll get out.

So do another one.

So anyways, Jonathan Carter, can we make sure we get the raw video? Absolutely, man. This is going to be. This is going to live forever. And we're going to drop this back out and send. Send it.

Probably want it for a couple reels for me. Probably.

There will be some reels that come out of this for sure. So no. Thank you so much, everyone, for watching tonight. I know it's a late night and thank you for hanging in there and being a part of this. And thank you, Adam.

Dude, thank you.

Great. So thank you, guys. Have a good one. Yep. See, everybody. I gotta remember how to make all this work, because this is all complicated for me. The Internet. This is why I need a team here. All right, see you guys. Thanks so much for watching today's show. Make sure to like and subscribe our pages so that you can stay up to date with every episode. And by the way, this show is all about you, the American contractor. Be sure to comment. Let us know what you want to hear about and what subjects you want us to touch on. We'll be sure to include them in a future episode. Thanks again, and I hope you have a great day.