Own a Roofing Company? Watch This.

Fighters, today I have back my buddy, Adam Sand. You're going to want to check out this interview. He is CEO, founder, all that good stuff of roofing business partner. You can check him out@roofingbusinesspartner.com we talk about life and kids and marketing and ideal clients and how to attract more of the right people in the trades, how to make more money. It's a great conversation. So without further ado, here is my interview with Adam Sand.

It turned into like, okay, don't fire me. Let me fix your CRM. And then we started doing that. And I mean that. And that just became what we do now because it was more sticky, it was more money. And then, and then I had to change the entire business up when I had a baby here in November.

Well, first things first. What's your baby's name?

Atlas.

Atlas. And how is Atlas doing?

He is, you know, he's four and a bit months now and he's got his activity center the other day and he loves it and he's teething early and he feels, I feel like he's going to walk any day now, even though it shouldn't be. But he's just growing. Like, I, I don't know, maybe it's that vaccine, you know what I mean? Like, we had to get it across the border into the States and now I think he's just like a mutant or something. So strong and he's growing so fast. Power.

Power lifting and all that already. That's cool.

That's crazy.

Where do you live?

In between Hawaii and Canada.

Okay, yeah.

So Edmonton area in Alberta and then we have a place out in Hawaii and that's where we were for a long time. But then once we had the baby and we went, came back to Canada to, you know, do the tour. Right. For everybody to meet him. We went to cross the border back in the States. The border agency was just like, so you have an American born kid? I was like, really? Yep. Right. Because Allison had some complications or whatever. And then so that just immediate red flag. They put us in the back right. Where they put all the crying people. Right. And then we had to go through the whole process and they denied us to come back in. And we've been working on a different visa for about a year and a half. We put 100 grand into it. We should have had our interview actually while we were, while we were here. That, in that phase, that eight days, we timed coming back with our interview time, but then it was late so we had to get back to the States because I had two conferences to attend. And then they, and then they just denied us. And like, we have to wait for your interview. So we waited for interview. The girl said, yep, I think I want to prove you today. And then they put us in administrative processing. And it is the government, it is slow. And they're like, I mean, they're just pulling a straw. It's like they really kind of are, are projecting that their thought process was that I built, went and built a multi million dollar company in the United States, hired, traveled the country, went, attended conferences, paid for booths at those conferences, paid my medical bills, hired, paid taxes. Also that three years later I could have a baby accidentally in the states so that what he would get Obamacare. Like, like, you know, it's like. And then when you're in my position and I haven't seen my dogs in two months because they're still at my house in Hawaii. I have a babysitter just hopefully giving them some care. But then I got to watch the news every day and you know what's on the news every day?

Well, I was.

And you sit here going, I'm the problem.

I was going to say, you screwed up. You should have gone to the came through the southern border. Yeah, it wouldn't have been a problem.

Yeah, it's. It's like I know you, you see people, like I see people on Tik Tok bragging about, you know, this stuff. And I see, you know, this stuff that's hap. Like, you know, people beating up cops and getting released and flipping off cameras. And I just go, I'm your problem. You have a screen door on a submarine and you're putting your finger over top the hole and I'm trying to go through and you think you're solving the problem.

That might be the best analogy I've heard. Man, I love it. I love it. Well, I'm sorry you're dealing with all that. It makes no sense. And it's, it's just wrong. It's flat out wrong. We all know it.

And yeah, you know, God's teaching me. God's teaching me something. I don't know what it is yet. It'll make sense.

Something. Something's coming, right? Yeah.

Submit to him and it all works out well.

Dude, maybe you're just going to create the next software to fix this in the government, you know, and then you'll. You'll own planet Earth in a few years. So there you go.

No kidding.

I don't think you could do it, Adam. I don't think you could create a software that would fix this problem?

That's how you get me going.

You probably couldn't do it, you know.

You know, the problem is I'd be done in six months, but the government would want to spend $12 billion on it, make it three years late.

Oh, good stuff.

And then I'd get dragged into a senate hearing for how I overspent the money.

Right? Yeah, that's. It'd be your fault again.

You'd be the problem. It's always the private contractor's fault, not the bureaucracy's fault.

That's right.

Yeah, man. So cool businesses. But it's. It's fun going to business, right? And then this is just part of the. Part of my challenge. And I mean, I. I love America. And it's worth. It's worth fighting for.

There you go, man.

It's worth fighting for the opportunity to continue to be able to live and do business in that country.

Yep, I hear you. Let me turn that off there. Okay, cool. I want to make sure we're good. Well, you get through this stuff, like you said, you're learning something. Who knows what it is, but you'll figure it out and, you know. Well, congrats on Atlas, Man. Hope. Hope you're enjoying it. It's. We have five kids and it's a. It's a riot. So, yeah, ours are all out of the house now, but it's. It's pretty cool.

So, you know, it's kind of. Kind of neat. You start thinking about yourself. You start thinking of yourself as the ghost of your kids memories. Like, you think someday he's gonna remember this and it's going to anchor him to some behavior that he's going to choose to have. And it creates, like, this whole new perspective. Right. Yeah. On like, how. How you behave and conduct yourself. Because now you're thinking, this isn't just like my choices. These are gonna be his. His template.

They're watching, man. Like, you know, if they don't know what's going on, they're watching and. And they pick up everything. It's pretty crazy.

Yeah. So I. So you had a. You were. You. Did you end up doing a TV show or did that get kind of thrown off? Basically, we.

Yeah. Covid kind of screwed it up a bit. We did. We. We filmed four episodes which they called season one. It was called Unfinished Business on hgtv and then didn't renew it. You know, they just didn't get the feedback they wanted. They were. I was an experiment. They never had Like a coach. And so it was a little bit unique where I had a builder and a designer, and I would go in and coach people, basically, that started a master bathroom remodeling project 11 years ago, and it's still not done. And so I'd go in, and I'd be like, you know, Adam, what's. What's going on inside your head here, man, that you can't finish this thing. You can't see this thing through. So I'm coaching them, and the feedback they got with their, you know, focus groups and stuff was I. I don't go to HGTV to get coached. I go there to escape. And so. And there were some things, you know, I. I'd never done a show before, and I. I didn't realize, like, there was some. Some input that I had that I didn't know I had as the host. You know, I just was kind of. I just. I was like, hey, I'm just the hired hand here, you know, the host. And I was just being me. And then they edit the crap out of everything. And, you know, it's. It's. It's pretty crazy. But I. You know, it was great experience. Overall. I think if I could go back, knowing what I know now, I think I would have been a little more vocal about some things. You know, not like being an. But just, like, I think the way they set up the episodes was. Was kind of jacked up. We. We should have done it differently.

And nice thing is YouTube, people go there to get coached all the time.

Yeah.

And you already know how to do. How to do content media. Like, we're experimenting with that ourselves. We started this thing called Building the Sandcastle because, like, our journey is so crazy. From two years traveling the country, living out of our, like, living out of our car, but, like, going from city to city, city or Yukon with me, my wife, and my dog for two years during COVID to, you know, everything we're trying to do with the business now. We started this thing called Building the Sandcastle because Allison was pregnant. And we just thought, you know, like, all the content that I wish I could see, like, my heroes, like the Alex Ramosis, the Grant Cardone's, the Gary Vee's, the Tony Robbins, the. You know, even, like, go back, like, to, like, the Warren Buffett's, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. Right. I wish that they would just, like, how cool would it have been if, like, when Jeff Bezos was putting books and boxes on his hands and knees, Right? There's A story about how they're all in their hands and knees in his garage, putting books and boxes and so busy. And then Jeff stands up and goes, stretches back. Oh, guys, we need knee pads. And a guy who's now, like, a senior vice president worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but he was in the garage with him that day, says, no, Jeff, we need desks. And how great would it be if you could go back and see, like, Jeff Bezos pull out his Facebook Live? Like, so the funniest thing just happened. We were on the line, and then he said, this guy here says, no, Jeff, we need. We need desks. Right? And. And the. And the crazy thing is, is once you get successful, you get haters, right? And they say you're fake and you didn't really do it, and. Or, you know, like, you don't pay enough income tax or, like, whatever, right? Like, everybody. We have this weird thing in America where everybody wants to, like, tear down heroes once they made it. Like, it's like the minute you make it, all these people want to tear you down. It's almost like you don't want to be an exceptional person, because the minute you do, they'll just tear you down. It's like, who wants to be president? You know, like, the great, the best and greatest would be stupid to go be president. And. Go ahead, I was just gonna say. And so we decided that we wanted to make that content, even though it was financially burdensome. So we actually, like, started vlogging about our life. And we have, you know, Allison's home birth, Right? We did that, right? We have, like, her yelling at me in the shower because the dog knocked over a coffee. And I wasn't as sensitive to it, how we had to deal with it. We had employees quit because of the show, because we, you know, we started out talking a little bit more about, like, stuff we were dealing with with employees and they were comfortable with. And so the first episode caused two people to quit. Like, you know, we went through. But we're showing, like, what it's like to build a business when it's new. And now I get. My highest episode is 4000 views. My lowest is 180, has no views. But my hope is that, you know, when. If I believe in what I'm doing, right, If I believe that I'm going to get to where I want to go, right, Then I owe it to the entrepreneurial community to make the content that I wish I could consume so someday someone else could.

Yeah, right.

And so that's. That's. The thing behind it. So when I hear you say what you just said, I just think, dude, like, whether you own the naming rights or not, whether you, you know, name it something different, like, if that's what you want to do and if you believe in what you're doing there, if you believe that you can help people with that. Yep. I say do it, man.

Yeah, it's a. You know, the. The other issue that we ran into, so, like, give you an example, is, you know, everything I do in the contractor fight is stop stealing from your family. Right? It's like, it's about, you know, charging more and charging appropriately, and most contractors don't make money and all this other shit. Then I'm on hgtv, and we're in the kitchen, and the network is telling me that I need to give this budget for what this kitchen is going to cost.

And you're kind of going against your core values with that.

And so. So I. I just chose to be me. And I said, so, like, one. The first time we did it, they were like, yeah, we want you to say that this kitchen's around 28 grand. It's going to be about 28 grand to do this kitchen. And I'm like. I texted a buddy of mine. He's a kitchen remodeler and stuff and builds kitchens and this and that. And I'm like, hey, I'm shooting all these pictures. I'm like, how much is this kitchen? He's like, it's like a hundred, you know, And I'm like, so. So on the show, and they edit it in a way that not everything comes out too. You know what I mean? Like, you don't.

Oh, my buddy was on Made Naked and Afraid Twice.

Okay, well, there you go.

So, you know, I've heard all about how it goes.

So I said. I said, what was the woman's name? Shit, I forget her name. But anyway, really nice lady. I said, hey, listen, I've got some good news, and I got some bad news. And she's like. And I said, let's start with the bad news. This kitchen is $100,000 kitchen. To do this, to do it right. And. And I said, you ready for the good news? She goes, what's that? I said, the good news is you already have the cabinets. You already have, you know, some of these appliances, and you've already shared with me that you have a bunch of people, including yourself, that are willing to put some sweat equity into this. And so the majority of your labor is covered. So it looks like, you're going to be out of pocket around 28 to $34,000. So that's how I framed it. But it was still bullshit. And it felt icky, you know, because it's just not. So I had to walk this line. And it was, and I was very clear when we did the, the, the interviews to see, like, they reached out to me for, like, I don't know, several months. And they're like, we want you to host the show. And finally I did a zoom. And I'm like, guys, I can't go on HGTV and talk about how contractors are ripping people off. Okay, yeah, most of them are fucking broke. Most of them are not making any money. Most of them don't know their numbers. And you consumers think that they're ripping you off and they're not. They're starving while you fucking retire. And they never retire. And like, this whole thing, I said, so I will do the show under one condition. And how it was supposed to be was I was going to bridge the gap between unrealistic homeowner expectations and contractors and show that, like, because I, you know, me, I call bullshit on the contractors as much I call them on the homeowners, right? People, you know, I just call it as I see it. And so that was the intent. I think it would have been a lot better had it been on another network. I think it would have done better because HGTV is a little fluffy and so, and so the, the, the not, not like the fuck you in your face, Tom Reaver, but, like, the little bit more intense version of me would have probably been accepted better on Spike.

Because it would have been you. You.

Yeah, so, so I've, my team and I, we, you know, the last year and a half, two years, we keep, my wife and I, and they said, we keep throwing around the idea. We know some now I know a bunch of people that produce and I could pull a team together and do it. It's really, at this point just going, what's, what's the angle that people give a shit about for something where. Because it. I would want to do it where. Why HGTV works here. Here's the biggest thing. They. Here's the problem. Create some drama. Oh, my God, can we get this done? Here's the reveal, right? The show is always about the reveal. And so I picture, like, just as an example, like a bar rescue for contractors, but there's no reveal and bar rescue, there's a reveal, there's a grand opening. There' people in A restaurant, you know what I'm saying? It's more visual. So. And I help, I just help make more money, save their marriages, you know, be there for their kids. You know, it's, there's not this big visual reveal and, and so we're just kind of working around like is first, what would that look like? And second, is the juice worth the squeeze? Because it's as you know, you've done the YouTube thing and this and that. Like it's, it's a lot man. You know, and, and it's a ton.

Yeah. If it doesn't, if I wasn't passionate about the project.

Yeah.

Like, I don't want to film a, I'm not like for my like business content. You know, we don't spend a lot on production value, right. Like we spend enough to be relevant and like, and be taken seriously. But like the building the sandcastle to actually create like a lifestyle type, you know, TV show quality thing that runs 11 minutes, that's like, to do a weekly episode cost us like 10 to 16k a month.

Right.

Like it's like that's a serious investment if you're trying to get an ROI on that. Like I'm not getting ROI on that other than like I'm putting into the world where they thought. But you know, kind of speak with, speak to what you said, right. You know, you're, you're helping people spend more time with their families and help them make more money and live better lives and spend more time with their kids. The, the contracting industry is really like, you know, America's forgotten sons, right? Like that's who ends up in, in this especially now. Like that the youth doesn't have like a pride in the trades. It's kind of like where they end up. You know, you kind of got America's forgotten sons. And the biggest thing that I've noticed was like, you know, prior to having the baby, our business really just became like, you know, people in the roofing industry would tease me and say, you know, we're a luxury of the rich, right? Like that because we were building like, you know, 100,200 thousand dollar systems for large enterprise level roo companies. But it required me and my team to be there on site because you got to stare at 50 Doe eyed salespeople who are now getting their commission cut, their roles changed, the tools they're using, changing, the whole business process is changing. To adopt, you know, to move from some kind of, you know, base model system that's built for like, you know, the 60,000 roofers that are between, you know, 3 and 8 million and going to like an enterprise level system. And these guys, you know, like they don't need another boat or another car. Like the marginal utility of money in their bank account has had a decreasing rate of return on their happiness for years. Like you're running a 46 million dollar company doing 10 net profit. You got 4.6 million, you bought a building, you're investing in real estate, you're in, you know, you got a ranch, like your wife's got all the bags, you go on vacations, your kids are set up. Like that wasn't making them happy. They just wanted their business to run the way they envisioned it in their head because it's kind of outgrown their hands. Because in a contracting business, you know, Walmart has 60,000 cameras inside of a 60,000 square foot store, right? And yet, yeah, as a contractor, you got a, you know, a 600 square mile store and you got no cameras, no insight, no tracking, no nothing. And then when you've got 100, 180 sales reps and you know, stuff like this, like it's, it's too much. But then when I, when the baby was born, my wife was like, well you're a business consultant, so consult yourself and figure out how to not travel anymore. Yeah. And so I had to spend about six months with a crayon figuring out, you know, how to turn that into a new business model. And we found a way to like scale our services to appropriately serve. We had to use some technology enablement and nerdy stuff, but we found a way to serve three to $8 million contractors. And what I found, because I hadn't talked to them in years and what I found is like the version of me now, right, realizes like these customers are families. Like I got a client that's, you know, husband, wife and both sons, that's who's running the roofing company. And this stands to change the family tree. Like it's a really more rewarding place to live, right? And helping these like 3 to 8 million dollar roofers. And just even to get to 3 to 8 million, you have to figure out a lot of stuff and step on a lot of landmines, right? And if you, when you say that it's a juice worth to squeeze, you know, there's a portion of you that at this point, right, you have legacy, right? Because you men typically go from making money in business to some kind of creative work to legacy and changing the world, right? Like talk about Trump, right? He went from building businesses and making money to the apprentice to president. And so what is your version of that? Like, you've done a lot of creative work, but then now, what is the legacy you leave behind? So the juice might be worth the squeeze if you can find a way to tie it back to what does it mean when Todd Reaver's gone?

Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that.

When I was trying to ultimately say, okay, how do I train other consultants to do my job? You know, it was, okay, first, we have to operate on the theory of constraints, right? So if you're trying to run from point A to point B and get there as fast as you can, you can try and improve your gait, right? Your process, right? You can try and change your shoes, get better systems. If there's a rubber band holding your ankles together, right? That's the constraint. Cut the rubber band. The shoes in the. In the running and the breathing doesn't make sense. Like, doesn't change that much. Then you have to get to a place where you can collect data, right? You have to collect data and then be very pragmatic by saying, the data is telling us something. What is working? Let's do more of that, right? Yeah. And you have to think, like, is it outperforming the average? You do more of that, and you do. So, like, you kind of were talking about you could. If you're doing direct mail, right? You spend $10,000 in direct mail, you get a million dollars in sales. Well, if you do 20,000, you get 2 million next quarter. Well, great. If you did. If you spent 30,000, do you get 3 million? Oh, you only got two and a half. So you reach, like that asymptote, right? Decreasing return. So then you have to say, well, can I do it better? So the better offer, better targeting. Better, better, you know, more colors, bigger postcard, right? You know, where. Where do we do it? How do we do it better? And then once you get. If you've exhausted more and you've exhausted better, then you do new, and you have to do new based on the experience of everything you've done, right? To say, is this going to be easy with a big impact? Is it going to be easy with a little impact? Is it going to be hard with a big impact, or is it be hard with little impact? And you start at the top and work your way down. If you get to the point where it's hard and has very little impact, then there's probably a new constraint that you're not seeing. You should probably Refocus around that. And when I showed the consultants that I was hiring that, that methodology and then just tried to like build infrastructure in these businesses, allowed us to get the data so we could be pragmatic about it, all of a sudden really getting anything to go wherever you want became kind of easy and predictable. Like it almost felt like a cheat code. If people could just memorize that, like whatever how many sentences it is, yeah, I probably wouldn't have a job, right? Yeah. And so whether I think it applies to pretty much anything. Health, right. Like marriage, content, business sales, like just constraints, more better new, new based on impact. And then be just ridiculous about executing and be honest, right.

So, so what are some of the constraints that you're seeing just at the, you know, higher level, bird's eye view with the contractors you've been working with, you know, when you get your hands on them, what are some of those things?

So, you know, by the way, I'm.

Starting the interview now, so yeah, I.

I kind of, I kind of saw that. We, we, we. When I look at the, when I look at these roofing companies, right. I saw a really good interview today where a guy's actually being used as an example, right? And for most people he is because he's running about $46 million roofing company. And so somebody's doing an interview because it's a clickbaity headline. He's well known. So it's like, here's this guy now, I've worked for a lot of these people, right? And the very beginning of the interview, he's talking about how he has 100 reps now he has 180 reps. He's talking about scaling into busy season for roofing, right? He's saying that, you know, but they get into talking about how salespeople have this like natural happiness set point. That wasn't the language they used, but it's. I. How's interpreting it? It's like, yeah, sometimes like salespeople is like pushing string, right? Because they get, you know, some guys get to 75, 000 or a hundred thousand something to 150,000, but that's really where they're like belief lid pops out. And that's, that's where it's like, that's where they're happy making money. But the problem is the company is generating leads. So then you have to hire more salespeople to accomplish the leads. Because if he takes these 100 and 100 reps from last year, he says, yeah, their average is worth 300 to $500,000 in annual sales. And sometimes you get a million dollar producer, but they're hard to do. So we really focus on personal development, but they kind of circle the drain a bit on this conversation about the difficulty of it. You know, you have to motivate them and you have to try and create competition. And these are project managers. They're doing like cradle of the grave style sales, right? So they get the lead, they sell the job, do the work, order material, order, you know, and then kind of like run the job, you know, tell the subs what to do and then collect the check, right? So I call it like cradle to grape. Most people do. And then we've been big. Like, we've done the data because we had to figure this out during COVID right? Which was like, now you couldn't meet people in their homes. You could sell. You had to kind of sell more and get more appointments out per day. And I had a client reach out to me and said, adam, I want to do 25 million easier than I did 20. And this will explain why this came up. So he flew me out there for a month and said, I got to figure this out. He said, I got some sales guys that can quote some roofing materials, some that can quote all. My sales manager basically has to die because he's not doing bad because we're growing, but he's not doing great and he can't really, like, qualify. These sales guys really call, like, quoted the right stuff because he doesn't know all the materials, but I don't want to fire him and I don't have anybody to replace him. And he said some sales guys are really good at follow up and they're like, you know, they're not good at closing the deal and they discount before they even come out of first pencil. But, you know, they close a lot of deals and follow up when they're really good in the CRM. They keep things organized and their deals are good. Now I got these other guys, man, they're killers. But gosh, like, they, you know, they don't close that many more deals than the other guys. They just one call, close a lot more and. But they're always cooking up heat. Their jobs are disorganized, and there's so many leads in their bucket, they're not taking care of it. That's what this Guy on this YouTube video says. I paid for 10,000 leads last year. We got 2,500 sales. I got contractors in my market say, oh yeah, we're happy to Pick up your slack, you know what I mean? Like, they're happy to be the second guy because they know they're because. And so he's being modeled as the example. But then, you know, I look at the data on that. So with that customer, what we did is we drew a circle on a whiteboard and we said, okay, what are the skills that are needed? Be a good, a good salesperson. It's like, well, you got climbing on roofs, taking pictures, site conditions, inspect, like finding leaks, you know, like just knowing how to kind of scope a job. And then there was got to be able to kitchen, kitchen table, kneecap to kneecap, closing deals, presenting demo. You got to drive, you got to be able to climb on a roof, right? And then you got to go. Then there's like the inside stuff, which was like follow up, setting up deals, putting the things in the CRM, you know, creating the company cam, creating the, the sumo quote, like the ordering the measurements from the satellite company, all that stuff kind of stuff. And then handing off the job to production, like the notes to give to production. And then there was like estimating, right? And then, so when we were finished, this circle kind of looked like a Covid thing, you know. So we call it the amoeba. This was during COVID so your brains were all just thinking. And so we call up the amoeba. And so what we kind of theorized was, what if we could just split the role up, right? Have inside people and outside people and like maybe an estimator for when the jobs are complicated. And so I flew back home and then I went and built the CRM that would allow for this. And we came up with a different compensation plan where we're like, okay, outside guys will get like 5% instead of the usual like 10 to 12. The inside guys will get 15 bucks an hour, $150 a deal and 1% if they get over this many deals. And we experimen with like what the team should look like. And we looked at it was like one inside to two outside. Because every lead that comes in the inside jobs incur about an hour of work, right? You gotta lead intake put together, you know, the notes, set the appointment, order the measurements, set up the deal in the CRM. You gotta follow up, follow, follow, follow up. And then you gotta like sign it and then you gotta write some notes and push it to production. And then outside incurs what, two hours with work, right? Because you have to drive there, do like your 20, 30 minute inspection checklist pictures that kind of stuff. Then put together a proposal, walk in, do your dog and pony show, overcome objections, sign the deal, get back in your truck and start trying next month. That's what, two hours of work. So we really realized there's one inside to two outside. Because if you get eight leads a day, the inside person accumulated an hour, eight hours worth of work, and the two outside people included incurred four hours each, or sorry, eight hours each. So this would like scale and pause, right? And well, that company ended up doing 46 million that year instead of 20, right? And so when I look at that guy, he's got 180 reps, he's doing 46 million a year. He's getting 10,000 leads, close around 25%. And he's paying a high commission rate because these guys got to do all the work. And what are they thinking? I got to do all the work for this guy, right? And he's paying me 12 or whatever percent commission, but I got to do all the work. And for all that work, if I could get paid like 100 grand a year and I could work six hours a day doing all these different things. Some things I'm good at, some things I'm not good at, some things I like, some things I don't, I'm good making 100, 120 Q a year. So when he says, oh, we got more leads who can run more appointments, he's like, man, hire somebody else. I'm good, right? Whereas this model actually decreased the cost of sales and because it split the role in two, so then it split. Decreased the cost of sales and split it. They kind of had to do a little more as far as volume to make the same money. But they were doing the things they're good at. Like one of the best inside salespeople I've ever met is actually in a wheelchair, right? And would like be doing Verizon tech support. And so then we, this will be rolled out across the country for two years. So I look at this guy, if he split those 180 people into 63 person teams, right? Our pods typically do two point. Like the average is 2.7. Our record is 7.2. The next highest is 5.7. But the average is 2.7 million per pod. You know me like I love.

And a pot is three, right? Pot is three. Two outside and one inside. Just to be clear for everybody. Okay, yeah.

So Our average is 2.7 million per pod. And so if they just did that, there's a couple other ingredients that go into making this work, right? You get some tech and stuff like that you got to do and some processes that change. But if they just did that, the math that I put out, that would be $146 million company, right, right. And so they wouldn't even have to do, like, they'd probably lose. Like, we had one client, 15 of their 17 sales reps quit the week after I left. They hired back eight, but they went from 1.2 million a month. 60 days later, they're doing 3 million a month. And they kept doing that. And the employees are happier. And so a lot of what I see at the high level is that, right, it's not looking at the data and seeing that, like to make the work your people do more rewarding and engineer a better customer experience that aligns. If you show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcomes. So align the incentives with the outcomes you're looking for. Big companies would be a lot more efficient. And if they could, I have this thing that I said that I'm not done until roofers are respected at the bar and the bank. Because these companies blow so much money to these sales guys who get paid 2, 3, 4, $5,000 to sell, you know, 20, $30,000 project. And we're not against sales guys making money. But then you see the whole crew gets paid $4,000 to do backbreaking work in the hot sun for 12 hours, risking their lives, right? Missing their families and, you know, having unexpected dates when they get like, those sales guys say, I'm good, I'm good. You know, I mean, but the roofers, they got to get the job done, get the roof watertight. They told their wife they're going home for dinner, but now they're not showing up till 7:30, they're going home, their wife's disappointed, their kids don't like them, they get divorced, and the cancer of the contractor's family persists. And if we could decrease the cost of sales, increase net profits with a few other operating frameworks, we could pay the tradespeople more money. If we pay the tradespeople more money, when they walk into a bank and ask for a mortgage, and they write down a roofer on their application, the bank isn't gonna go, this is gonna be a waste of time, right? And if a roofer walks into a bar, sees a girl, she goes, wow, you're in shape. I like your chiseled jaw on your beard, right? It's like, what do you do for work? I'm a roofer. Goes, ah, I'LL go date the fat banker, right?

Yeah.

And yeah, it's like, if I can, I'm not done until I can make roofing companies run so efficiently that the roofers are respected at the bar in the bank.

Again, dude, I love that. And, and here's it's funny because one of the other things on my list to talk about was hiring, right? And I have a belief now. I'm. How old are you?

40.

40, okay. I'm 54. Ever since I was a kid, as long as I can remember, it's been drilled into my head, you got to go to college, don't go to the trades. The trades are a fallback. It's if you know a trade that's good because you could fall back on something, it's always a second option, right? And so, number one, I think culturally, just that messaging for decades has made the trades less attractive to people, right? And just on that macro level, however, I'm about. As you. I'm about like, all right, well, what do we have control over, right? Like, fuck the circumstances, you know, what do I have control over? What do you have control over? One of the things that drives me is I believe that the hiring issues in the trades, one of the things that's going to help those go away is when the average contractor is kicking his kicking ass. When they have a good marriage, they have a good bank account, you know, they're not just broke, tired and dirty like my dad was my whole life as a tile guy coming home, you know, it's where the contractors are living in the gated communities, not just the customers of the contractors. When contractors are going on vacation. Vacation. I mean, dude, I, I never went on vacation growing up as a kid. So I spent my whole life and listen, my relatives that are in the trades and stuff, I love them to death. They work their asses off, right? All the respect in the world. But like, as a kid growing up, the last thing I ever wanted to be was in, in the trades. Because, yeah, all my buddies, dads were doctors and engineers and, and they were on the outside, you know, you never know what's going on. They were killing it. And so I, I love that mission that you have because I think it resonates with me because I'm sitting here going, you want to make the trade? You want people to come into the trades? You individually have to be attractive, right? Like it's. How about instead of being the fat ass plumber with plumber crack, be the guy that's on 75 hard, who's in shape and making bank, you know what I mean? And has a great marriage and all these other things.

A big truck and a quad and kids that he gets to play sports with and he has the body that he can still place right with his kids. And it's like if there's. And there's elements to this that need to be fixed, right. And I think the responsibility is, you know, it falls on the, on the employers who want to bring respect to their trade because who else is going to do it? And like when I had my roofing company, you know, it was sergeants roofing. And so what we did to try and impact this, right? Because I used to say this when I was owned a roofing company too. I said I'm not done until roofers are respected at the bar in the bank. I said I, I look my place like I know like most you guys growing up doing this job, if you guys manage to hold your marriages together and your kid grows up a roofer, you'll be like man, I worked my ass off my whole life. Your mom stayed off the pole. How the hell did you end up a roofer, right? Like that's your perspective. We have to change that from the, from the employee. We have to give, we have to teach them how to take pride in themselves. And so we had sergeant's boot camp which is where we cross train them on the different parts of the different jobs in the company. We had sergeant support, which was a huge test of me because I would, I would, on Sundays when I had time off, I would meet with them for an hour, hour and a half at the time I had a condo downtown. Like. Yeah, big fancy kind of thing. And we had the rec areas, right. We had like the golf thing and the, you know, pool tables and stuff. And we would, you know, book it out for two hours and I bring them food and they'd tell me about their girlfriend that was a, they're the girl that was a dating a hell's angel that he got pregnant. But she can't tell her boyfriend that she got knocked up when she was cheating on him because he'll shoot her. The drug addictions, they have the drinking problems, they have the money problems, they have their dreams. And then we do sergeants goal setting on, on the first Monday of every month at 5am I bring them in and we do, you know, work with the book the One thing by Gary Halpert. Try and drive them towards the long term goal. And then we had Thursday which was just the company meeting where everybody got together. And I would always pay a lot of respect to the roofers to try and say, look, it's this sergeant's roof. And ain't sergeant sales any sergeant's accounting. It ain't sergeant's marketing, it's sergeant's roof. And. And they called it roof church. Because I would try and take like, I would take like straight up, I would take Patrick Bet David's videos and I, yeah, He talks like 21 rules for young men. Like, get off porn, don't watch this, don't do that. Like, remember this. Don't get yourself involved in that. And I would straight just like take the content, rewrite it into a notebook and I'll go and present on it, right? Because if I put them in front of a video of some rich billionaire that's like talking about insurance, it's that it wasn't going to hit them the same. But they looked at me as a certain kind of way, right? So I would do that. And I think that, you know, unfortunately I was in northern Canada, it's not a great market, you know, but I would encourage business owners that if you have. And the problem is it's so much subcontracting and roofing. Like the business owner doesn't actually. Right. Have that. And I think that this new law from the IRS is going to change a bit of that because they're actually coming after contractors. If you make 90 of your income from one source, you're technically employees. So I think you're going to see some disruption. They basically modeled this in California, Hawaii and Idaho and Washington state. So they're kind of rolling it out nationwide now. And this is going to change a lot of way people have to do payroll and systems, but they're also going to have to change the level of leadership that they have because they're going to have to actually bring these guys in who drink a bottle of shampoo for breakfast and come to work. And then they're going to have to like get. And they have to take Americans, America's forgotten sons and they're going to have to extend the level of leadership that they have. And I think that the people who will win right in the changing world where every. All the currencies digital, the government's got to pay off the COVID debt. They're coming for their money, right? They're coming for their tax base. They're letting everybody in across the border like they want there. They know what they're going to do. There's gonna be a big immigration Reform. And all these people we grant to temporary foreign work visas or some like that, and they're going to tax them and they're going to pay off all this Covid money. Right. Like they. Like the math tells us that this has to happen. They need to increase the number of people that are paying taxes so they don't have to campaign on raising taxes. They have to raise the number of people that are paying taxes. And so that is going to translate into more in house crews. And I think that if someone, someone with a bigger voice than me can teach business owners in the roofing or in construction. Right. To teach contractors that they can and should take pride in themselves, that and find ways to make their businesses more efficient so they can make the trade more attractive, we will solve the labor crisis. Yeah. And we will make America a better place. And the children of these contractors will become better fathers, better husbands, and better citizens. And America will be a better country for it. 40, 32% of the national GDP is home services. That means 30% of the income is going to people who are broken homes, broken families, broken social structures. You know, they've lost. You know, I don't want to make this preachy, but, like, they don't have a relationship with God or something that gives them like, a moral code that exists beyond the legal laws of their state. Like something that says like this and my soul's on the line. You know, like something, something that gives them a moral code that goes beyond getting yelled at or getting your hand slapped or getting going to jail. Like, that shouldn't be the only consequence. Like, if you can get away with it, you're good. You should be like, someone's always watching and it matters.

Yeah.

I think, man, I think it's a value we're striving for. But I'm. I know, I'm. I know that to a lot of people who are just trying to figure out how to get to $2 million in revenue and make 40% gross profit and 10% net, and they're just trying to figure out where they can get leads. Right. I think that there also has to be a realistic perspective of yourself and say, like, are you really a business owner? Like, 80%, I said I have this, like, thing that pisses everybody off. But I say 80% of roofers don't deserve to exist or selling the same shit installed the same way by the same people, the same tools in the same amount of time for more or less the same price. There's no Louis Vuitton of gaf. Shingles is ten times the price. You don't have models. And on skirts, you know, on the roof. Installing roofs, it gives the, the Ruth Chris steak experience of asphalt shields. Like, yeah, it's pretty simple business. And so if you're installing a commoditized product and you don't have anything that stands you apart as a leader, you might not necessarily deserve to, like, buy the invisible hand of capitalism to be successful because you don't have the right ingredients. But if you have a part of the business that made you want to start your own company, why did you leave? Shitty boss. Right. So what'd you go and become a shitty boss?

Shitty boss.

Maybe there's just me, less shitty bosses. And, and I think that more professionalism in this industry is a little more a good economic, you know, disruption. Right. Like, we've had a lot of expansion for a while now. I think we have a soft landing going on, but if we get a real hard, you know, bump coming up, like another 2008, you're going to see, you know, a lot of people found to be caught swimming naked when that tide goes out, as Warren Buffett would say. And, and I think that that's going to create a rise of great leaders running great organizations. And these people who are struggling aren't struggling because they're not. They don't have access to you. Like, you're putting out so much content. The answers are out there. Like, it's never been easier to get. The answers is, will you do it?

Well, and that, that's, that's hands down the thing right there. Like, it's you. How many times you, you probably do see this when you consult people and stuff, like, you say something, they go, yeah, I know. You know, the, the curse of the. I knows, okay? And I'm like, well, if. And I, I believe you don't really know it unless you're doing it.

Like, the intelligence is not whether you know it, it's whether you do it. It's like if you get this intelligence is same, same stimulus, different reaction. Right. Like Alex Hormozy puts it really simple. If I hold up a red card and I slap you, and then I hold up a red card and I slap you. If on the third time I hold a red card, you don't duck, you have learned nothing. You know, I'm gonna slap you, but you have learned nothing. Yep. And this, this is true in all matters of life.

Yeah. So I want to, I want to talk about, I want a little bit of the marketing stuff because I Mean, there's, there's so many things I talked to you about. I told you that before we hit record. And it's, I'm looking at this list just going, okay, what, what's going to be the most value for people here? So are you, are you cool if I throw a couple things at you and we just kind of rapid fire them?

I know I can usually, I can usually yap a bit, so I'll try and do some rapid fire.

Yeah. So what's your thoughts on how to figure out who your ideal client is?

Really trying to figure who you're best built to serve, right? If you figure out who you're best built to serve, what is unique about you as a company? If you, if you're bilingual, maybe targeting people who are from a different country, right? If you are, if you focus, if you're really good at metal roofs, do that. If you're good at multi trade, do that. Right? If you're, if you're, if you're like, I have a client forever. Metal roofing, like they only do metal roofs, right? They literally turn down business every day. All right, so trying to figure out who you're best built to serve will then determine your ideal customer avatar. Because if you're just trying to say, oh my ideal customer avatar is rich people that have big budgets and, and they want to trust the contractor on every decision they make, like, yeah, you and everybody else, slick. And I'm like, right, who are you best built to serve? Right? And then, you know, then you might find your bird. If you're really smart, maybe it's commercial roofing. Like if you can do the paperwork, if you can do the do, like if you can handle all the bidding and qualification and contract management, like if you can, like, I know guys, that's all they do. They're one man roofing company making 5 million a year. They're doing contract management, bidding and estimating they're doing four roofs a year. You know, I mean, like, maybe that's you, you know, but yeah, who are you best built to serve based on the chemical makeup of who you are? I'll try and go faster on the next one.

No, that was fine. That was good. And because it reminds me back, you know, with our painting company, we had a couple different ideal client Personas. One happened to be the wife of a high level executive who was being transferred from the east coast to the Chicago area where we were at. And they had moving trucks on the way and they had a deadline to hit and they appreciated the Fact that we had a big crew, we get in, we get out, and we would make that house in a couple days her home. And never miss the deadline of the movers coming because she had a bunch of other things on her plate with moving the kids, schools. It's really good sushi place and whatever. So we went after the higher level relocation companies is kind of who I would prospect. And we never got, never had, never were out to bid on those projects. Whatever the price was, the price was because they at the east coast to the Midwest, the big key there was, is always more expensive on the east coast.

So we were price conditioning.

We were priced quote unquote high in our area. We were always higher than every other contractor for the most part. But the people that were being relocated, they never thought we were expensive.

So it was like easy in turn is who are you best built to serve high touch, fast, right? Because you always say cheap, fast or good, right? Fast and good, right? But you ain't cheap, right? And you built a company around being able to serve that, you know, in my roofing company said we were Bob and Betty who were professionals, military or business owners. And they, they had a 612 roof, about 30 bundles, suburban home, and they had teenage kids living in the home. And they typically had no fence and nice landscaping. And I knew that that was my best customer because professionals, business owners and military people, we had the hero discount. But they typically look at things through a lens of liability, and they didn't want to take a risk. It was like a mechanic would be like, well, my boss charges me out 140 an hour, pays me 40. If I could find the version of me, then I'll just hire that guy. But that they don't look at terms of liability, no fence, nice landscaping. When we did the data on it, what we found out is people with no fence, they live in more community with their neighbors, and they want to make sure they're not the bad apple in the. In the group that hires a contractor makes a mess everywhere because they're the ones that have. And the nice landscaping means like. Like, you know, the guys, like make the checkered pattern on the lawn, right? Like these guys like, hey, John, you're gonna take care of that weed, right? Don't be mowing that dandelion. Make sure you pull that out and spray it. So all these little, like. What you're talking about is personality traits and how they align with who you are. Because we were like militant about tarps and property protection and all these kinds of Things, they'll do that. And so if you have teenage kids living in the home and pets, you know, you care about your backyard being clean.

Yeah.

If you're living. If teenage kids, you're probably not moving them soon. So you're gonna be the primary beneficiary of the lifetime product that you're trying to sell. So we just gave two very good examples of exactly how you make your. Who are you best built to serve? And align your product and service offering around that. Continue trying to prove the product for.

Those people you brought up pets. It's funny. One of my buddies had a amazing remodeling company, and among other things, the number one ideal client check box that had to be checked was they had to be dog owners. They. They found through the years that every project that it was a dog owner, the people were easier to work with. They did not. If you were a cat owner, they were like, quadruple in the price. Cat people are a pain in the ass for the most part. This was their data. But dog people were a little more easygoing, and all the jobs that were dog jobs had higher gross profit on the. On the production side.

That's beautiful.

Just kind of. Kind of fun.

As a dog owner, I'm proud.

Yeah.

Proud, but also wanting, you know, making sure I'm checking my. Checking my. My bills.

That's right.

Yeah. All right.

Sticking to marketing. Stupid marketing mistakes. Things that annoy you when you open up your phone today or you see contractors driving down the road, Anything that jumps out from a marketing branding perspective that just drives you crazy right now. Mistakes, stupid things, whatever.

Poor targeting and poor offers, right? Free inspection, free estimate. Right? Like. Like, that's not an offer. That's what everybody's doing, right? So try to create real value. It has to have urgency, opportunity, Scarcity. Go read $100 million leads by Alex or Mosey and figure it out, you know, or anybody else who talks about, you know, who's reputable but, you know, poor offers, right? You got to have something that makes the customer say, I don't want to miss out on this postcard, this Facebook ad, this billboard, right? Having a good offer and then having good targeting, like targeting the wrong people. Targeting outside of your target, like just not knowing the platforms. Like, you got to know enough to be dangerous if you're going to do it yourself. And you got to manage the people who work for you. Because faith, people who run ads make mistakes all the time, right. They're constantly in these platforms and simply a wrong number on a zip code or just not realizing that Louisiana is different than another state. Like the two letter digits, right? Like Wyoming, Wisconsin. Just like simple errors, right? That they could make Washington and Wisconsin, right? Like, like these things. All of a sudden now you got people advertising you're blowing money and you're not managing your marketers. So like the last thing is like you can't really see it outwardly, but it's the symptom disease thing. Like meet with your marketer once a week and focus on KPIs and optimization. Like what are we doing right now to make this better? Because marketers get to set it and forget it thing, right? Like they just, they got 30 accounts. They can't give everybody an hour of their time every week because they also have to do their job. So they wait for the squeaky wheel and you just have to set the relationship terms early. And it's like, look, you're charging three grand a month. I want to make sure I'm meeting with you once a week for 30 minutes. How much now? 35. Done. Because that 500 will save you 50,000.

So what, what's, how do you. For the person who's just trying to run their contracting business, they just want the phone to ring. They want to sell shit, right. And produce stuff and blah blah, blah. And they're, they don't roll out of bed. Like you think in marketing and, and data, how, what do you tell that person? Like how do you know you have the, the right or wrong marketing agency company? What are some indicators?

I mean. Yeah, I mean if you're, if you're not getting out of the bed thinking marketing, I'm thinking like you're talking like 12 million dollar contractors, like guys, three, three employees or, or less kind of thing. Yeah, right. Like you're like three office employees or less and they probably have more workers, right? Then you know it's true. You're probably not thinking about marketing like because the guy who's 5 10, that's probably all he's thinking about, right? But the, but those guys, right, you just want the phone to ring. We have to think in terms of. You have to look as if you're a 10 million dollar company. So you have to do a few things right. Google my business has to be done right. So you got to have someone who can help you with that and you got to pay for it to be done right once. You don't have to continue to pay for that forever. Like if that's a checkbox is like the also thing. It's like no pay for that to get done. Right. Then sign with an agency for a retainer. Your website does not have to have 73 pages. You don't need $20,000 a month in blogs, right?

Yeah.

Your website has to look like you didn't make it, right. It's got to look like a good, you know, spend. Yeah, 10 grand, right?

Yeah.

And get a decent website. It doesn't have to be constantly updated. But when people look at you, they gotta think they've they showed up and made to me to look serious. Right. And then from there, right, you know, you're not probably gonna win on a lot of search engine pay per click type stuff. I would really be focused on direct mail, right. I would really just be focused on direct mail or canvassing, you know. But direct mail, it's super effective for small guys. It's cheap. You spray and pray and then you just have to focus on your offer. So just do direct mail, find your ideal customer avatar, target those neighborhoods and you know, hit direct mail up because you can control your costs and you can run tests. Tests. But you know you're going to test with like 3,000 postcards, right? They got to think, yeah, we're going to test with but you know, you can create a very clear offer and get really good real business intelligence back and then just be consistent, just be consistent with it. Like don't market when you don't have customers. Market when you have customers. And the last thing is like you're not again you're not going to out there's guys were spent out spending your what you make a year in marketing. So you're not going to win on that. So you have to treat it your business and your customer like you're not ever going to get to advertise because the advertising you're doing isn't that effective anyway. So you treat your customers like fucking gold and just focus on referrals. Because if you can get a referral, referral from every single job and Google review from every single job, like if you just treat it like you could. Marketing was now banned. You know, I mean like it was considered a poison to society. It was banned. What would you do? You damn sure make sure every customer told you told their friends, right?

So that, that's an interesting thing you bring up because I talk a lot about, I've done trainings and talks and videos and episodes on. You got to market your business, you got to build your brand, you know, and that can look like a lot of different things. There's shit you have control over, that you can do. There's things you could pay for and everything in between. And every now and then you get that guy who weighs in on the comment. You know, he's like, I've been in business 43 years and, and all my work is word of mouth. And it's. But he's still a one man show making 63,000 bucks a year and he's still got the tools on when he's 64 years old. Right. So it's.

And so that because you can't control what they say, who they say it to, when they say it. Like if they're saying, oh yeah, I talked to this guy, he was a cheap. This. That's terrible marketing. Yeah.

So like I guess what's like every one of us 100% wants the word of mouth referral lead to come in. But again, not always controllable. And so what's that balance that you would tell somebody? Because we both acknowledge, like of course you want the word of mouth. Right. But you gotta, if you have any ambitions of, of scaling your business and your team.

Yeah.

Now we're talking about to spend some money. So what's.

Yeah, so now you're gonna have to chart that line.

Right?

Yeah. So I say that the next thing you do, right. Is then you have to go to a target rich environment. Right. If you want to make a hot dog stand, make a lot of money, what's the number one most important thing? It's not the hot dog, right.

It's hungry people.

It's hungry people, right? Yeah, we've all heard that. So it's hungry people. Where do you find a starving crowd? Home shows. So you start by spending a big chunk of money at a home show and you make your home show booth the most fun booth in the whole thing. You appeal to kids, right? So have like the Las Vegas or the circus, the carnival, right. Some, some kind of theme to your booth. You get, you know, get your logo, use chat GPT, make your logo look like it's something on the Vegas sign. You get, you rent some stuff to make some games, you know, one of those like spinny roulette games or something or poker. You, you give away card decks with your logo on them and you, and you make it super fun for kids. You have cotton candy and you make it the most fun booth at that show. And just be memorable, just be memorable at the home show for the starving crowd that's come to look for your service. Don't talk about your products and Your you know how great you are because that's what everybody's saying. Yeah, just be memorable and give people a good experience at the home show that allows you to spend a good chunk of money to a starving crowd that you get to try and become memorable. And you're gonna get and just gather leads and phone people and try and follow up on those leads. Then you do that once or two times combined with some stuff like direct mail and yeah, you got BNI groups, but that's high effort and low output and all this kind of stuff. Right? But then that should get you a bit of cash flow, right? And then once you have cash flow, then you have to say, okay, now I'm going to invest in marketing. And now's where you have to say I'm going to commit to spending 5% of my target revenue and as realistic that I could grow 20%, 30%, 50%. So if I'm making 2 million a year and I want to make, you know, grow 50%, I want to do three. Well, then I'm going to have to say I want to spend 5% of 3 million. I'm going to spend $150,000 this year on marketing. And then you work the community and you look for again, how would you hire a contractor? You look for referrals, word of mouth, recommendations, just same damn thing. Hiring a services contractor in the marketing world and you say who's going to help me spend my $150,000? The best. And you ramp it. So you start at maybe it's 150 over 12 months is what, like that's going to be.

12, five a month or something? Yes, five a month.

Yeah. So now you're gonna start with six and then go seven, then go nine, then go 12. Right. And you're gonna ramp up, right? But you, and you base it on results and you have to again work with your agency weekly after you find something recommendable. And you know, don't focus on the hoity toity stuff like long term things like SEO. That's when you want to build a moat around your business. Right? SEO is a good long term play and you should be investing in it. But at first you need cash flow so you're doing lead generation efforts right off. Take your offers that worked in direct mail. Conveniently. Postcards are shaped like Facebook ads. So just run those as ads, right? And then pay per click Google guaranteed, right? Get it or get it. Or you can go with lead aggregators, right? Like the Angie's lists and the thumbtacks. And yeah, they're ripping you off and taking your money. And you know, it's competitive so you got to have fast response times. So then if you're going that route, you got to invest in systems to make your calling people back in 3.5 minutes. Right. So when you look to scale, you have to kind of go from consistency to windfall to consistency. And it helps if you have a little bit of luck and you spend invest a little bit of time going from I'm waking up not thinking about marketing every day to waking up, I'm thinking about marketing every day. Like you have to eventually make that switch because 40, 50 million dollar guys, that's all they talk about. Right. I want $300 leads that close at 30% at a 40% gross profit. And I'll spend to infinity if I find that.

So I got two more questions. One's piggyback on the marketing thing and the other I'll plant the seed for you now is you got an audience of several thousand contractors here. I'm just going to ask you what do you want to close out with for them? Okay, so that's, that's the last question.

So.

Roofing, solar, pet, not pet, pest control, those types of things are known for their canvassing and door knocking and stuff like that, where other trades are not. When I, one of my painting companies, at one point, I think I had four or five college guys out there in the summer canvassing and over two summers I think we got one job. Okay.

Yeah.

And, and so because I, I think I'm obviously biased, but I, to me it's interruptive, you know, it's, it's a very interrupted market, interruptive marketing tactic that is not tied to something like roofing where insurance is in play and energy bills and some things like that. Right. So, and I'm not an expert at all in the ice, I actually door knocked one day for an alarm company when I got out of the Marine Corps and I said fuck this, I.

Am not doing that.

So, so I'm just curious, like.

Do.

You, when I think of roofing companies, I think of, you know, I got A buddies got $75 million company, you know, he's highly tied in with the insurance world and things like that. Are there roofing companies that are crushing it, that are not playing the insurance game and are they doing the canvassing having the same luck? I'm just curious what that.

Yeah, some are right.

And if you move to a new city tomorrow and started a roofing company, would you, would you go the insurance game and all that.

Or if I had, if I had no money, probably. One thing about roofing that people don't get is that they're spoiled. Right? Like you're like, there's not many industries in this world where you can, I mean, you want to open a yogurt shop, you're buying desks or like tables, chairs, bathroom, handicap bar, you got to pay. Painting signs, freezers, the spinny thing on the wall. Point of sale system, 16 year olds, you got to have licensing and permits and occupancy and food sections. And then you got to get a parking lot and you got to pay for a lease the whole time. And after you spend $200,000, Susie and her kids walk in and spend 38 bucks, right? Roofing. If you can get a ladder stuffed into your vehicle and you can park it a block up the road, go knock on some doors, find somebody who will trust you, get them to sign a contingency out. Just do retail. Get them to agree to get a roof from you. You can get the material. You get a $5,000 cash account at any roofing supply house. The subs get paid two weeks later. You can make 40% gross profit on $15,000. 20 in 36 hours. Yeah, right. Yeah. So if I was going to a new market, like, yeah, I mean, I don't know if I do insurance right away because I don't have the capital to float the jobs and wait for insurance to pay me. You might get like homeowners to pay. Like, you usually get a immediate first check. But you know, if you don't know the insurance game, like, that's a quick way to get your ass handed to you, right? Yeah. But you, and you can sell anything door to door. If you're good at selling door to door, because the tool doesn't matter as much as the process and the process doesn't matter as much as adoption. But like, I mean, there's door to door coaches that go around selling no soliciting signs to prove a point. You know what I mean? Like, like, I mean, they, they, there's. So there's. You can like, they go and sell stuff. But again, it matters how good you are at it. And most people, I bet when you went and sold door to door, they probably gave you three minutes of training. Here's a contract going outdoor. See if people sign it, like, you got to be trained. But you're right, it is interruptive. And it's not my favorite marketing method. However, it's the freest marking method. There is, but I also think that roofing has a bit of an advantage in that. Yeah. If you got the capital full of jobs and you've got an insurance market, there's a huge need that you can see from the street. Solar. You can kind of see it from the street. I don't know how pest control does it, but I think they go on volume. Right. But there's. And, like, you see more. Right. Political canvassers. So there's an entire canvassing industry and those people know how to do their job. Right. Like, it's storm season for canvassers because of all the political pulling. But I think that could you. I mean, there's college pro painters. I think they do door knocking, but it's not exterior painting. Probably more so than interior. But if you're. It is a way. It is a way to make money. It's a hard way to make money. You're going to get a lot of people kicking doors in your face. You're going to knock 100 doors to get one to open, and that's when the game starts. So.

Right. Right.

It's not. Not. It's like, it's not for the feeble, for sure. And most people don't give good training. So people who would otherwise probably be good at it don't get a chance to be good at it because no one gives them, like, the rundown where it's like, hey, you're knock 100 doors today. Every single person's gonna be mean to you. Like, because I did it. I do. I knocked doors and sold vacuum cleaners. Like, you know, I mean, like I told. It was a 2800 air air purifier at first.

Oh, my God.

Give them a free knife set, and then sometimes they chase you out with the free knife set. It was terrible way to make money. Right. But it's just. It's just again, it's like anything. It's. It's. How good are you at it? And I just. I agree with you, though. Like, if someone knocks on my door right now, I'm like, oh, man. Like, I'm. I'm gonna come up there and be a dick. Something like, man, I was on a good podcast. I was doing really good. Me and Tom were having a great time. I wasn't sure what it was. And now you're trying to sell me an alarm system. Like, get out of here. Right?

Yeah.

That guy's gonna go home, be like, I can't do this job. Right. Why? Because I'm pissed off. Like, so it's it's, it's a mixed bag. And a lot, but a lot of people, that's the only way they know how to make money is go. They say, you know what? I got two feet in a heartbeat. And I got a guy willing to pay me 10% of a $15,000 contract if I can get these people to do it. And then there's not. And they have the, they have the juice to do it. Other people, you know, they couldn't do it to save their lives. But if you give them a warm lead, they'll go in, present the value and excessive price and walk out with a signed contract. And you can find more people like that. So you, as a CEO, it's your job to try and find your best approach to the market. And if you can't, if you haven't done door knocking, if you can't teach it, guess what? You got to find a way to get warm leads to your people and teach them how to present on value.

Bam. Yeah, it's. I used to have, I'm just reminiscing right now. I had those college guys that knocked for us and then I would have my kids at the time, I'd take them on on a Saturday morning, I'd drive in my company truck and I'd have my two boys and my daughter, three of them on, you know, each side of the road and they'd have our door hangers and they would go knock on doors and hang it on there because nobody was mean to a little kid. Yeah, but we did it on a Saturday morning because a lot of people were out doing yard work and stuff like that so they would see us coming and, and dude, it's funny, my, my kids got me more projects than my, my four or five college guys ahead knocking doors. It's kind of funny.

Oh yeah. So I mean they could, they could sell you on buying a chocolate bar when you didn't want to buy a chocolate bar. So don't count them out.

When my daughter was about right around a year old, I had this customer, she was totally pissed at our crew for something. She called me. She's like, you need to get right over here and basically you're an asshole and I hate you. And you know, that was the vibe of the conversation. Right. And I made a detour, I swung home and picked up my daughter and she was a year old and, and she's adopted from China. She's got the two little pigtails and she's in my arms and I knock on the door this lady opens the door all mad. She sees my daughter. She goes, oh, my God, you're the most precious thing in the world. Can I hold her?

And problem solved.

So I. I have used my children several times through the years.

They have a pretty good dad, and I'm pretty sure they got pretty well set up, so that's good for them.

So I was just trying to coach you up there on how to use Atlas in the future.

You know what? I'm definitely. I gotta get them. I gotta get them on content. People love dad version of Adam. It's actually really funny because people are like, this is like, I. The whole joke went out around the week when he was born. This is like, this is 100% irrefutable truth that Adam is not actually a robot.

Yeah, they change you, man. That's for sure. So in addition to. Where can people find you and. And what can you do for them? What. What do you want to close us out with? Something that may. Might be on your mind that we haven't talked about or something you want to reiterate? What do you got?

You know, you actually are a fantastic interviewer, right? This is the second time you do a great job. There's really nothing I would want to add. Like, I really got to meander through a lot of, like, really good thoughts. And I think that, I mean, if people could just do what we talked about, I think that, again, the contracting space in America as a country would be better. But, you know, like, we, you know, my business, right? We just. We focus on being a consulting company that deploys the operating frameworks that we know work in the roofing industry. And then we build technology as infrastructure to support that, to make sure it's measurable and it. It can and it's consistent. And, you know, if they want to hear more about us, like, we try to be everywhere. So we have a YouTube channel, right? We have our website, we do webinars, and. And I regularly go to conferences. At the end of the day, I love connecting and talking to people. So, you know, you can always hit me up on my personal Facebook at Adamsat, because at the end of the day, my friends are few, my relationships in the industry are many, and I like to. I like to treat that those relationships really well because again, there's a mission behind what I'm doing that makes every connection worthwhile. So I'm happy to connect with anybody anywhere, whether they're paying me or not. I just want to. Again, I want to contribute, right?

Yep, absolutely.

What's your website, roofingbusinesspartner.com.

There you go. Keep it simple.

Boom. Yeah. Very simple.

Awesome. We'll make sure to drop that in the show notes and all that stuff. Dude, it was. It was good catching up again. It's been a few. Probably four or five years, I think, and like you said before, you. It was kind of a different conversation. It was all geared around Facebook ads and some of that stuff, which I know we didn't get into. But bottom line here is, you know, I appreciate you sharing, you know, some of your wisdom. Like I said, I think before we hit record, I. I view you kind of as a mad scientist with things, which is a compliment. Like, it's.

Thank you.

You're one of the first people I think of when I think, like, I need somebody who knows how to. How to get data that matters. Like, that's just the brand you have built for me on the outside looking in. That's one of the things, like, I've. Because I've watched the journey through several years where you've kind of. You've kind of become a beast in that space, man. It's pretty cool to watch, so.

Well, I appreciate it. It's hard, hard work, hard earned.

Yeah.

I appreciate the opportunity to connect. And, of course, if there's anything that was a value to this, I. I hope that it helps the show, and I know it helps the people listening, and if they reach out to me, I'd love to talk.

You got it, man.

We'll.

We'll make sure to put all the stuff in the show notes. And guys, give us a rating, give us a review. And Adam sand, thanks for being on the show today, man. Appreciate you.

You bet.