TIB214 FROM THE VAULT: How Does Someone Who Knows Nothing About Roofing, Come To Own A Successful Roofing Business?

Welcome to the Tradies in Business podcast with your hosts, Warwick Bidwell and Nicole Cox. Divert your phone and grab a brew as was. And Nick, unpack tips, tales, secrets and stuff ups from guests both inside and outside your trade, helping educate and inspire you to break the cycle of gut busting and money stress and create a true trade business.

G', day, Popsy.

G'. Day.

G'. Day.

It's a bit warm here today.

It is a little warm.

It's a lot warmer than where today's guest is sitting.

Polar vortex? Is that what it's called?

I don't know what's going on, but minus 40 Celsius.

That's freezing.

That's. I can't even wrap my head around that.

No. I can't even fathom.

I hate when it's like under 20 degrees.

It's so spoiled here.

So I was listening to Adam talk about that. It's like he was literally in the video because we. We have the video hookup so we can chat to our guests as well. He was sitting inside, obviously with central heating, wearing a big jacket because it's still cold.

It's just. That's so cold.

And I'm here in shorts and a T shirt and it's hot.

It is hot.

Anyway, that's enough about the weather. Cool guest today, Coxy.

Really interesting. Really interesting. You know those. Sometimes you have a guest on and they just absolutely surprise you with how much knowledge they're prepared to share. Sometimes not so much, but Adam was amazing. You guys are going to get such value out of this.

I literally found myself sitting there for probably the first 20 minutes. I don't think you. And I said more than three words, laughed a couple times, and Adam was just off. And not just rambling garbage, but I was. I was actually wishing I was taking really good notes because, like, man, we could use some of this stuff in our business.

Absolutely. There's just bombs of knowledge all through this, but straight up, there's bombs of knowledge. There's no lag. Adam was really into it.

So if you've ever had any questions around. How do you go from working hard on the tools to running that true trade business as Coxy and I talk about. If you've got any questions about how to use Facebook to market to your customers, how to find the people who are going to respond to your ads, how to do testing. Yeah. How to. How to inspire your staff, how to share ownership and profit with. With great team members and how to build them up to that point. It's all in there and a whole lot more. So have a listen to today's episode and if you're not part of the group, the free group that is Tradies in Business, head over to Facebook and join the group and jump over to the website and subscribe because we're going to start sending out reminders about cool podcasts like today and let you know when some good stuff goes up. So hit the website@tradiesinbusiness.com, subscribe there and we'll just let you know when there's some cool stuff that you can go and download. So enjoy today's episode.

Enjoy.

Alrighty. Welcome to the show. Adam sand from Sergeants Roofing.

Yes.

Mate. I try not to do lengthy introductions for our guests because I usually make a meal of it. And I figure you probably know yourself better than anybody else. So, Adam, can you tell our listeners here at the Tradies in Business podcast a bit about you and why are we talking to you today? And maybe you don't even know the answer to that question, mate.

Well, my name is Adam sand and yeah, like you said, I'm from Sargent's Roofing in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. So for our Australian friends, it's another part of the Commonwealth. You know, we're all, we're all friends. So I. So essentially about six years ago, my best friend, he was, he had a baby on the way and his, about a year prior to this date, actually, his, his company sold. So he worked with these guys from day one, right as the business opened. From the very first day, for very first year, he was beside the owners as they went from like being on the roof, helping their guys on the roof, you know. And Joe, my best friend, he'd be right up there tearing the roof with the owners and everything like that. As time went on, the owners would show up in the morning, help tear, they'd leave and, you know, Joe and the rest of the guys would shingle the roof and finish the job, clean up and these guys would come and meet up at the end and then as time went on, they wouldn't even show up in the morning, you know, it would be just Joe. And Joe eventually took over as a foreman and this company grew into something. They sold for 8 million. So I don't know what that works out to in Australian dollars, but 8 million Canadian dollars. So they sold the company and they sold it to a guy whose parents own an insurance company. And because they own this insurance company, they kind of thought, well, they'll take all the commercial construction with the Commercial roofs with the apartment building and all the residential re roof they were getting. And they thought, okay, why don't we add in insurance to that? And the guys who sold it, essentially their pitch was, there's the yard, there's the trucks, there's the tools, there's Joe. He runs it all. And here's our contract with this apartment company and this apartment company and this builder. Here you go. We won 8 million bucks, and that was it. And so Joel was like the intellectual property. Right. And so he's Joe Sergeant. That's where Sergeant's roofing comes from. Because I was in the military and his last name is Sergeant. So I mean, you couldn't come up with a better name.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was. So we. So. So he was working for this new guy, and they just did not like this guy because he was sold as the intellectual property. But as we were talking about just here when we first got on the call, it's minus 40 degrees Celsius right now, which is actually the same as in Fahrenheit. Minus 40 Fahrenheit. So it's bloody cold. There's no roofing going on right now. And Joe would be a lot more hand to mout in the winter. While this owner obviously has quite a bit of money, being that he just came off, you know, he just bought this company for however many millions of dollars. Yep. And because he wasn't a real tradesman, he was just an insurance guy that bought a roofing company and just kind of figured he'd plug in the roofing. When he was doing estimates, he was making all kinds of poor decisions that would put Joe in a bad will, put Joe in a bad position, because then he'd be choice making the choice between a something that's bad for the customer or something was bad for the company's budget. He'd be forced to either cut a corner or cost his boss money. And a tradesman, as you know, doesn't ever want to do bad work. But when it comes to, you know, push comes to shove, the dollars do have an influence. And he was just unhappy. Right. Like he was getting an indoor. An indoor. Like, I don't know if you guys call them a genie boom or a zoom boom or a telehandler like. Or extending lift or whatever. But they would be using. This owner would be saying an indoor one should be fine because we have a parking lot. So we'd use an indoor zoom boom lift thing to work from. And every time it goes like one degree off level, it would shut the motor off, you know, so that they couldn't like tip this thing over. All these kind. Rather than like an all terrain lift that was made for outdoor work, this would do. This guy would do like stuff like this to Joe. Right. Which would slow him down, put him in a bad spot. Me being his best friend. You know, we have this relationship where we talk all the time. And I owned a business before, totally unrelated to construction, sold it. Then I took a management job working in a company with a boss, and I kind of missed the entrepreneurial life. So as I started to put the pieces together and realized that Joe was both the brains and the brawn of this company, but making barely enough to pay his bills and then seeing that how much that company sold for when it became successful, it wasn't long before the, I guess maybe the money hungry part of me that said, hey, why don't you go start your own business? And then he said, I don't know how to start a business. Like, I don't know about payroll and taxes and marketing and websites and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, well, I know stuff about that, so why don't we do it together? And we did this. And you got a picture. This is like. This is like six years ago. So, I mean, back then, you know, the concept of advertising online for a construction company was around, but, you know, it was really just like, you want to make sure you have a website and it's on Google when people search for your stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

And me, there's a really good story that I'm kind of well known for. But to summarize, I really like Facebook as a marketing tool from an organic perspective from my previous business. And for the job that I had, roofing was not as sexy as those two industries. So I wanted to use Facebook, but I didn't know how to do it. And I went out and like, the world that we're in today is nothing like the world back then. I went out trying to find a guy to hire to do Facebook marketing because I had a website team. I know how to do it, but I just don't want to do all the SEO and whatnot. I don't want to do coding. I don't want to do any of that stuff. So I hired a guy to do that. I wanted to hire someone to do the Facebook marketing because I knew it would make. It made sense. There's so many people on Facebook. We have to advertise roofing on Facebook. This just makes sense. Plus, there's no One else doing it in our area. So why aren't we doing it? And so I went out in search of, like, how to use Facebook ads because organically we weren't getting any traction. And I was like, okay, there was no gurus. There was no, like, Nowadays, everywhere you look, there's like the plumbing, Facebook ad guy, the roofing, Facebook ad guy. They're everywhere. Back then you couldn't find anyone, and now there's a guru everywhere saying, we'll sell you how to do it. We'll sell you how to do it. Here's a $99 masterclass. Here's a $300 a month coaching course. There was nothing. And everybody in online marketing was selling dog toys or personal training or weight loss. Because you could just put a buy now button. And it was easy. Just like, here's a dog toy. Buy now. Download my free ebook on how to lose weight with a good diet. Hey, by the way, would you like online fitness coach training or vice versa? Here's my workout plan. Hey, would you like online diet coaching? You know, and then that was the lead magnet and then the upsell. That was it. Here's my 10 top tips for training your dog to come when you call him, right? And then here's my dog toy. That's great for training dogs. Here's my extending dog leash or my fun chewing dog toy or whatever. And everybody in marketing was doing that. And there was some people that were starting to do like, oh, this is. You can use this to sell, like chiropractors because you do free tooth whitening, right? Or sorry, dentists for free tooth whitening. That'd be interesting.

Going to your chiropractor.

That'd be an interesting store. Well, yeah. Or like, you know, we're starting to get some stuff like that or $5 off a pizza, right? And I looked and I'm like, you guys have. I'm like, I'm asking, hey, does anybody know anyone that knows how to do it in construction, in roofing? Because I can't. I can't give away something. Exchange for a lead to get a, to get a roof. If I give 10 per, like, you know how you get $5 off a pizza or 20% off a pizza? I can't do that. I have no free tooth whitening. It's not like I can go, I'll replace one shingle for free and then maybe I'll get the whole roof.

It's not very sexy, is it?

No. And yeah, and you're right, it's not sexy. It's like. I could put. It's not like you're selling a truck where you take a Chevrolet or a Holden and go banging it through the. Bagging it through the outback. And then people like, wow, look at the way that truck took that beating. I want to go buy. Like, there was nothing interesting. People watching a roofer doing his job. They don't even know if he's doing it right or wrong.

That's right.

Yeah. So I was. So I ended up getting in a big argument online on the. It was like 20. It was like 20 minutes till this cart was closing on this online course six years ago on how to use Facebook ads. And it was from a guy who ran a podcast and everything. And I got this argument with him, and I said, you know, you guys are all a bunch of hacks. You're all a bunch of losers. You don't know how to run a market, a real company. You know, I kind of got in his face bit, and he said, listen, I get where you're coming from, but Facebook ads is about learning how to test. Everybody will tell that. They tell you that they have a system, and they'll sell you a system, and they can get, you know, they can get leads for 5 bucks, 10 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever makes sense for the market. But it's all at the cost of testing. You have to know how to test and then know what's working, what's not working, and then you can sell anything on Facebook. And that resonate with me. So I took his course, and. So good sales pitch. Anyway, yeah, we. So we. So I took his course, and it was exactly that. Nobody knew anything. There was. I did the research. I spent six months trying to find the guru. Couldn't find one. And so I went through the process of learning and testing and trying different things, and I actually ended up stealing a bit of that personal trainer, weight loss, dentist, dog toy stuff. And I went out and I tried some different things. And as I got some success, we ended up growing our business 40% in a year with Facebook ads, the next year, 149%. So big, big, big difference. And. And the guy who ran the course and the podcast, he was like. He heard my results. He's like, whoa, this is awesome. And I was. You know, I thought, yeah, I think so, too. He's like, how'd you do it? So he says, hey, come on my podcast and tell other people about your story. So I did. And I go through and explain this whole story about what happened with the Facebook ads. And how we did it. And I'll get to that in a sec. But then the guy who did this, he was like, wow, that was awesome. And so he ended up creating a course for Facebook ads local, using what I did as his whole recipe for the course. And I love him. He's. We're still great friends. But then all of a sudden, because of the podcast and because of the number of times my project was referenced in both his sale efforts for the course, I could learn how Adam sand did this is his roofing company, you know, like, and in the course, in the curriculum, it's showing my plan. So then when he did that, all of a sudden a bunch of people started coming saying, yeah, but I just want someone who knows how to do it for roofers. Can you just do it for me? And at first it was like, oh, that's kind of cool. This is like a warm and fuzzy feeling, you know, like someone wants my help. You know, it's like, you know, it felt really good. So I kind of. I became buddies and started helping a bunch of people for free. And then all of a sudden, I was like, hey, I wonder if I could maybe charge some money for this? Because I'm, like, not paying attention to other things in my life because I'm helping all these other roofers, and it feels really nice, but it's not really. It's not really paying the bills or doing, you know, like, I should focus on other things. So I said, hey, would you guys want to, like, join a private Facebook group? And I'll just charge you guys 300 bucks a month, and you guys can ask me all the questions, and I'll, like, jump on your ads manager accounts and help at times. And they're like, yeah, sure, we're making, like, thousands of dollars off your work, so why not? So I started learning how to not undersell myself. But we. So that's how we ended up. We ended up starting my other company, roofing business partner. But essentially, the recipe that I learned for construction, the thing that. Where I tied it in from all these dentists with tooth whitening and personal trainers with diet and weight loss, was that everything that you were giving was just something of value. You had to solve a problem for them up front. And in roofing, it's a challenge because they don't know even what to search yet right there. When you're looking to get a roof, they're so, like, they only do this twice. Twice in their lifetime. You, as tradespeople, you know, you know your craft and you do it every day, and when you show up to sell it, you're selling it. We have the curse of knowledge, where, you know, like, if I tap on my desk and you just hear tapping, but I might hear Mary Had a Little Lamb, like, I'm singing a song in my head because I have the curse of knowledge. So my taps a song, but to you, I'm just tapping on the desk. And tradesmen, that's what it's like, is that we're talking about things as if the customer knows why we do it that way. We're explaining our process as if customers understand why we're saying what we do. We're not saying why we do it and why they want us to do it that way. And the benefit of me having coming into the business with Joe was that I didn't have the curse of knowledge. I didn't know anything about roofing other than, like, seeing them do it and talking to him about it. So when we start a roofing company, and I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna go sell some of these roofs. So why do we have drip edge? What's that for? I own a roofing company. I don't know what the pieces are, what they do, right? And so I was. I was a roofing apprentice while I was a business partner in a roofing company. And so I'm like, what is drip edge? Because customers, every time we go to sell them a roof, they say, well, what's that? And then Joe kind of explains it quickly with his hand and, you know, kind of, you know, and they kind of think they understand, and sometimes they just kind of go nod their head and don't want to look stupid, so they just assume that he knows what he's talking about. I was like, you know, I could, like, we should, like, draw that out for people. And so I started making infographics. So I went, found a designer on 99designs, held a design contest, right? Cost, like 900 bucks. But whoever, I got, like 130 different versions of my infographic, and whoever, whichever one I like the best, got the prize of the 900 bucks. Meanwhile, I had, like, a hundred people working on it. You know, I went on there, and I was on there, like, for hours going like, hey, I got this cool project. You should come join and submit your thing. My prize is 900 bucks. Like, I got really involved, and I got all these designs, and I found the one that I liked, and it was about drip edge. And so I put that on Facebook, and I started Basically putting that out to homeowners who lived in my area, who in the areas that, like, I knew, like, where. We were always kind of doing estimates, like older houses. And I was like, hey, you need to have drip edge on your roof. And then I learned in my course that you could take anybody who engaged with that post and you could show them another ad later. And so we showed them an ad that said we were giving away free drip edge with any roofs that were estimated in the month of April or whatever. And lo and behold, that really worked. And I didn't really understand. I didn't really understand at the time why. So then we did another one, and Joe was talking to a customer about the difference between this kind of valley and that kind of valley and this other kind of valley. And so I was like, yeah, I don't really understand, like, what is the benefit between open valley, like a closed cut valley and a California cut valley and a woven valley, and then this metal one, right? And he kind of explained it to me, and I was like, geez, that's a little complicated for an infographic. So we recorded a video about it and kind of going over all the different kinds of valleys that were available and how you put them together and why and what happens when water goes in it. And we put that video up, and that was right when they started to allow you to build a custom audience on Facebook. And so just in case, I don't know where your viewers are at in their knowledge of Facebook ads. So a custom audience is just where you tell Facebook, hey, I don't need to know their names and their addresses and, like, you know, what size T shirts they wear. But these people who watch this video, can you just put them on a list somewhere? I don't need to know their names. But can you just, like, make note that they watch the video? That's a custom audience. You're telling Facebook, if they do this behavior, whether it's they visit a site or they're interested in that, or they watched my video on Facebook that I put up, you tell them, if anybody watched half of this video or more, can you just put them on a list for later? And call that list People who know about Metal Valleys now. Call that list that People who know about Metal Valleys Now. And we put that video up, and then we did another one about ventilation, and we talked about. And I'll use ventilation because I think a lot more people understand the benefits of ventilation on a roof. But ventilation, especially in a climate like ours, it means less humidity in Your attic space, your shingles last longer. Your attic insulation works better. Doesn't get any moisture on it so it doesn't get damaged over time, reduces leaks. And then it also makes it so your air conditioning doesn't turn on as often in the hot summers. So when we talked about the vents like that, we put them on a custom list, right? And that's all I knew was that you could take video viewers and put them on a custom audience and use them for later, right? And then I got an email from my distributor, and they said, hey, we're doing a big. We're doing a big sale on these vents. We got. We bought way too many. We got too many. They're gonna be sitting outside in the rain. The boxes are gonna get damaged. So we want to clear out these vents. And they were like these upgraded, kind of nicer vents. They're like 80 bucks for one, you know. And so I said, hey, we should, like, kind of see if we can do a deal for that. So in my Facebook ads, course, right? I said, hey, you know, I got. I did this video on vents, and now there's a sale on vents. I think I could do something with that list. And they were like, well, yeah, you can. And I know this might sound totally retarded today. Back in 2000, whatever that was, 2012 or 13 or whatever, like, this was like magic, right? And so again, if there's a bunch of Facebook ad experts listening, I'm not claiming that this is, like savant level knowledge today, but back then, this was pretty quick and even. And to be honest, today it's even pretty quick because there's thousands and thousands and thousands of roofing companies that don't even have a Facebook pixel on their website.

And there's still lots of people and probably a lot of listeners going, well, I don't know about that. So it's still. It's not common knowledge yet.

So essentially, the strategy was is that on Facebook yout know, there's so much interesting stuff going on. You know, like today, you know, you want to watch a video about Trump or maybe that Ken Block guy is drifting his car around some other city or a cat video. Right? I mean, there's so many interesting things to see on Facebook. Listening to a roofer talk about vents on a roof and why they're good is probably the most boring thing that you could talk about on Facebook, except maybe life insurance.

I think painting would be up there.

Painting would be up there. But painting, at least, like, if you talk to a wife and Say, hey, you know, I'd like to get the kitchen redone and paint the walls. Or we could do the roof. She's gonna pick the painting that. Painting the house every time. Absolutely right. Because roof is boring. It protects the whole bloody building, but it's boring. And so if someone watches a video for two and a half minutes of a five minute video about vents, the only reason they would do that is either one, they're a roofer and they just want to hate on your video, or two, they're a homeowner and something has given them an indication in the recent past that they need to be thinking about roofing, Right? And so they're watching this video because they're like, I should probably pay attention to this because my neighbors just got their roof done. And I should probably pay attention to like something about roofing because my roof looks like it's getting kind of ugly. And so when we did that, when we got that opportunity to buy those vents on sale, we said, hey, anybody who we set an ad that said we're doing free vents for anybody who gets an estimate done in March. You can buy a roof anytime this year, but as long as you get the estimate in March, you get free vents. And so we got a ton of leads because we only showed it to the people who watched 50% or more of that really boring video about Facebook vents or about roof vents on Facebook. And the results were incredible. And that's what caused this big boost in business, was that we was. Because now what I understood was that if I tell you, say, hey, we're gonna give you free vents on your roof, just totally cold. We just met and say, hey, if you buy a roof now, you get free vents, you're gonna go, well, how much is a vent? Oh, it's like 140 for all vents on your roof. Well, that's not that good of a deal. But if you've been price conditioned with a video talking about how much vents can save you on your heating and air conditioning costs, how much they can prevent damage to your insulation and leaks, make your roof last longer, and make your house more comfortable to live in, well now the benefit of ventilation is in the thousands. The cost might be 150 bucks, but the benefit is in the thousands. So when you next week, by some magical Facebook wizardry, show them an ad that says free vents, when they just got taught about how much free vents are of value to them, well then boom, of course they're going to, they're going to say, honey, we Got to get the. We should probably get the roof done because we got a chance to get the free vents. And that's the conversation that happens at that kitchen table. And that's when we really realized what was happening because at the time we didn't get it. But again, Facebook ads was all about knowing how to test and how to look back and react to that information. And they say, why did that work? And then when you communicate with your customers, you figure it out. So then that became everything we did was. We did infographics all the time and a few videos, and now it's moved into more videos and we've created some scripts that, you know, make it really easy. But it's all we created, we raised. And then we combined all of our infographics into an ebook and called it like the 21 mistakes to avoid when Roofing ebook. And that slaughtered like that was the best because then it was like we could literally run around saying we wrote the book on roofing and people shared it with each other. And when we wrote this, when we did this, and it was filled with these really, like I said, they always had to pass the 14 year old girl test. Right. My neighbor had a 14 year old daughter. She had no interest in anything other than One Direction, the band, and like her friends, that was it. So if I walked next door with my iPad and said, hey, Amy, can you read this? Okay. Can you just. I will give you $5 right now if you can tell me what that means. And if she could explain it, then I knew we had a winner.

Great.

Because that girl has no interest in roofing. It's not. The girls or boys are different. I don't want to go and get the Internet mad at me, but I'm just saying that a 14 year old girl who has no interest in roofing and all she cares about is One Direction and Snapchat. If that girl can spend a minute to three minutes looking at an infographic and then tell me why you need to have underlayment on your roof. Right. That's a win. Because now that means that anybody can digest that information and understand the value. And that's what I understood, that the my teeth whitening to get a dental client for life. My teeth whitening was teaching the customer how to buy a roof. Yes. And then letting them know where they could buy one after. Yep.

And that keyword there, Adam, is, is teaching. It's about education, isn't it?

Yeah. So we, so we say teach first, sell second. That's my thing. And so that's essentially how we, how we came to grow our business was just finding newer and better ways to continuously teach better because the selling became easy and the side benefits were incredible from we got better staff because people in the trades business, they want to work somewhere where they can see themselves growing. They'd like to learn the next position. You know, Shingler wants to be a foreman, a foreman wants to be a production manager, A QC guy, a QC guy wants to eventually get in the office. And so as we, when we were online doing that, a lot of guys were like, you know, my company is kind of stagnant. My boss is like, you know, kind of a Cracker Jack, you know, and I want to go wait somewhere where things are exciting and things seem new and fresh and different and you know, so when and because we were generating a crapload of business, we were able to give raises and promotions and we wanted to acquire more people. So we were able to align ourselves in a way that we could acquire the best people in the business. And then from that other point that leapt into roofing business partner, which was like my marketing business, which essentially was just other roofers that needed help. And because I look at Joe and I see how when we started the company, he believed in me. When I said, yeah, let's quit your job. I know your wife's like seven months pregnant, but yeah, quit your job and let's go start a roofing company. Yay. I don't know anything about roofing. What's drip edge? He trusted me when I said I knew about business and I knew about marketing and I knew about sales and I knew about how to take his trade and scale it. I said, I know how to do everything, I just don't know how to do the roofing part. He believed me and I saw how hard he worked. You know, we'd be up till 11 o' clock at night after a long 12 hour day of roofing, you know, diving in and doing like financially diving into the job and saying, see, this is how much you made, Joe. And I'd be teaching him, but I saw how hard he worked for his whole life to learn this trade and I seen how so many and I worked on the oil rigs, so I'm not afraid of work. I've done hard work. That's why I went into business because I didn't want to stay in hard work forever. But I learned it and I seen how Joe worked. And then when these other roofers came to me and been like, and they'd share Me their stories, and they'd just be like, man, like, basically, I work to pay for my truck payment and my kids and my wife. And, like, there's very little left over if I get a vacation at the end of the year. It's great. And, you know, I'm just subbing out to all these builders and these other roofing companies that, like, sell the job, and then they just give me the job, and then I only get paid to install it, you know, But I'm never actually, like, building my own business. It's always their sign out front of the house, not mine. But it's my hard work that makes their company look good. When they came to me with those stories, it was like, man, like, if I don't start an agency, I'm leaving those guys behind because I know how hard it was to find somebody who could help with something like that. And so that's how roofing business partner came to be. And I believe that anybody who knows something about how to help the contractor build a business that doesn't leave him disproportionately working harder for his money than the guys out in Wall street, so to speak. You know, just to use that cliche, you know, I think that they owe it to the industry to get out there and put out value. And that's why was really excited about getting on your podcast, because you guys have 200 episodes of. I've listened to a few of them. Of really good value. That can leave roofers and other trades workers in a position where they can truly build a business that's a little bit more able to give them the dream life. They may not own a yacht, but maybe they can own a motorcycle and a snowmobile or a boat or go fishing or take their kids on vacations or whatever it is they want to do. And that's. That's why I love this business.

So do you still have the roofing business, Adam?

Yeah. Yeah. Not still running strong.

And is Joe still involved?

Yeah, no, he's. Yeah, he's more involved than I am.

So has his headspace changed at all throughout all of this? Has his point of view or attitude shifted at all?

In what way? Because I would say absolutely, but I'm not sure in what way you're asking.

Because one of the big challenges that we see, and Nicole and I talk with listeners and members of our group and everything, a lot, and there's. You described that whole hardworking approach that a trades person has, and, you know, there's some of the hardest working people on the planet. But the hard work that they do is not necessarily going to grow them a business, obviously, because it's, you know, they're good at their craft. And one of the big things that I see as being the differentiator between a successful trade business and just a great tradesperson. I shouldn't say just. But a great tradesperson is that mental state around how they see themselves, how they approach decisions in the business and even their involvement and the sorts of responsibilities they take in the business. So I was just curious to know if Joe had sort of had some shifts around that himself.

Yeah, he's recognized that, especially this last year. But he's, he's, he's recognized that his role is more around teaching other leaders. So last year, you know, so one thing that we always said was that we don't want to subcontract jobs, we want to always do our jobs in house. And so one of the people that we brought in, he's 46. When we met him, he was, I mean, I could say that I'd say this stuff to his face, so I'm not saying anything behind his back, but he was a mess. You know, he was typical trades guy. Substance problems, aggression problems, didn't know how to talk to people. You know, worked at 38 different roofing companies in his life. You know, kind of just was a scatterbrain, you know, no money, no. Didn't have a car. Right. And Joe recognized that his role in the company was about create. Like I did all this other stuff. His job was to create other leaders to replace him. Right. In sales, in the foreman position. And this. And what we understood is that every time we train someone good, they end up going and starting their own subcontracting gig. And they're just. And they end up in the same position. Right. Where they're. Yeah, they train someone. But the fact is if you just treat, if you create, if you create someone that's good enough to run their own subcontracting company, it's because they want a piece of the pie. Yeah. And I'd rather, I'd rather own 35% of a 20 million dollar company than 100% of a $1 million company. And I understood that the reason Joe was willing to trust me to leave his job of 10 years or 11 years and come start his own roofing company, you know, and throw caution to the wind, was because he wanted a piece of that pie as well. And he recognized his own value. And the mistake that I saw that those other guys made that Sold the company for $8 million to the new guy. They sold it because of burnout, because they were constantly hiring and training new guys, and because Joe, to be put it bluntly, was one of the only guys dumb enough to stay.

Mm.

And. And that's not. And again, that's not. Not a dig against Joe. He's loyal, he's hardworking, and he didn't believe in himself. And I think that that's one big part of the mindset shift. And so then these guys go and start their own subbing agency that work for us, and then all they're doing is subbing to other guys. Their logos never out there. Nobody cares. They just own a job and pay more. Like, pay their own taxes. That's it. And we recognize that the reason we lose good people is because sometimes we make it look easy and we don't. They don't see all the other stuff that I'm doing behind the scenes. They think I just drive a nice truck and show up every once in a while to say, follow the process. And so what we decided was that we were going to create a plan of progression where when people cross a certain milestone, they would get as piece of ownership in the company, a profit sharing. And last year was the first year where we got to give that to somebody. So this Bob guy, who was a mess, he became a foreman, ran his own crew, generated a ton of money for us, developed other leaders, developed one of the fastest shinglers we ever met, turned a girl into one of the fastest shinglers we've ever seen. And she's almost as fast as Joe. And the girl's 120 pounds, and Joe's like 6 foot 6 in black and built like an athlete. You know what I mean? So for her to be almost as fast as him was really stressful for Joe and really excited. Bob trained her to do that. And if I could hire 10 more girls like her, I don't think I'd hire guys again. Yeah, but she. So he did all these things, and it got to the point where there was other leaders wanting to come up and we need to create a vacuum to give them a place to grow. And Bob was not getting any faster. Right. Six. And so largely what. So what was really transformational for Joe, when we actually got to do that, where we gave bob a big F350 dually lariat, nice truck, and put him in that truck and said, okay, now it's your job to deliver the bins, pick up trailers, drop off the tools when they need Them your logistics now and your part owner. And we recorded a video of it and he was crying and we're all crying. It was a pretty big day. But it was great because now we know that Bob was never gonna get this delusion where he was gonna go run out and try and start his own roofing company. And now we've got him, you know, in theory for life or for a long time. And if we ever sell the company for 8 million bucks, well then he's gonna get his piece of that.

Yes.

And that piece to him represents so much more than he'd ever be able to do on his own with his skill set. Because you don't get an MBA on the roof. And mba, I don't know if you guys have those there. You just call it that there. Yeah, you don't get an MBA on the roof. And so we've created this retirement plan for Bob. And Joe recognized that his job is to create more of those.

Yeah.

And that's his path to wealth and into financial freedom. And so that's what he does now is he focuses on how do I create more leaders and how do I continue to improve the operational processes of the company. And while he still takes, he'll still grab a shingling gun, he'll still go sell a roof, he'll do every job, he'll never ask anybody to do something he wouldn't do. But he understands that the mind shift that he had to have was that it used to be what we called the Joe Show. Joe loved being the fastest, Joe loved being the best. Joe loved being the guy that everybody looked at and said, man, Joe's the best roofer alive. But that wasn't going to do anything for Joe other than pad his ego. And so between a 46 year old man getting a piece of the company and 120 pound girl being almost as fast as him shingling, he understood that there's power in duplication of yourself and focusing on the right things. And so to answer your question, I believe that you're right. Everybody has to have a shift and start focusing on the right things. Even if they have to have a full time job during the day and a part time job at night, doing the right things to make it work, they have to do it or else they're just going to own a job for the rest of their lives.

That's right.

I'm interested to know, Adam, how you both came to have that mindset. That's not something that we traditionally see particularly in tradies, the understanding of the way to retain the staff. The understanding of the way to grow the business and ensure your own success is by creating a path for others to have their own success within your organization. How did you come to that mindset?

Well, I think that I came. I brought that to the company, but I brought it because with the experience. But essentially how I got to that mindset was reading a ton of books, learning, education, surrounding myself with other mentors, you know, just. It was just education. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time around. And if you're hanging out with your. If you're hanging out with your laborers after work, you're both reducing your sense of authority with them. And you're not growing yourself. You should be spending time with people above you. And that's what I did. And that's why, as best friends, I rose to a level that he wasn't quite at yet. And it's no fun getting rich without your friends, because then you don't get to go do fun stuff together. I wanted to bring. Bring him up, and now he's learned that he's bringing other people up rather than hanging out with them after work. He's teaching them at work and learning what to teach them after work. But that mindset was from education and being surrounded by other people who did it.

Brilliant.

There was, I remember, like, a good story is like, there's a guy I know, he started a demolition company totally unrelated to roofing, but he started a demolition company. He had a partnership. Partnership went south for things that could have been avoided. It was called D. Downright demolition. Yeah, he liked it because it was double Ds. That's right. And tradies. Right.

Yeah.

So then he had that and that company. That company flopped. Right. And then he went and started another one called BNB Demolition. Bigger and better. Right. Because he was on Bigger and better, did it by himself. Right. And. And I watched his company go right. And where I had my previous business was in Canada's largest shopping mall. And he did all the demolition in the mall. So anytime a store closed, he demolished it. And then someone else put a new store there. And I talked a lot with him and maintained contact with him. And it's ironic because now he's actually one of my competitors. But, you know, but I learned so much from him and how to run a construction company properly, the good principles. And I really learned that, you know, rather than shying away from people like that because they make you feel dumb and they always tell you what to do. And they always like, no, no, no, that's dumb. This is what you need to do. And sometimes you want to be like, but you don't understand my use. Unique situation. It's like, no, no, no, no. I understand it enough to know this is what you need to do. That can sometimes be hard to surround yourself with and you can be prone to being defensive or being like, he don't know me. It was like these kind of, I don't know, all these immature reactions. And I just learned very early that listening to them, finding out the times that they were right when I didn't listen is. It was something that I would take forward. So now I continuously try connect with and collaborate with people who are better than me because I always have someone to be served by, and there's always someone for me to serve. And I know that anybody who's successful is the same way. They're serving others and then they're being served by others.

Yeah.

And that's just how the world. That's. That's how the world goes. That's how strong people are built.

And having that humility to take feedback from others is such a key part of that, that growth and the, and the shift in, I guess, the mindset and the behavior around that. Because so often we take feedback from others as a personal slight against us and, you know, we push back against it rather than saying, well, you know, that's interesting feedback and just accepting it as data. And you talk about, yeah, and that's testing Facebook ads. It's kind of like testing my.

That was just saying. That was like, as you were saying that, I was thinking that, I was like, yeah, it's like marketing. Marketing doesn't lie. If this headline works better than this headline, of this headline, twice as many people click on the ad and go to your website as this many. Doesn't matter if you're emotionally attached to that headline. No, if this headline brings in $420,000 with a new work, that's the headline you leave. It doesn't matter what you want. It matters what the customer wants. And that's the beauty of using things like Facebook for advertising is because, you know, a lot of guys that are in the industry, especially the older dogs, right? Like some of my clients that are like, you know, 2, 5, 10 million companies dollar companies there, they remember the good old days when they could make one or two good decisions, like, oh, we're gonna put a full page ad in the yellow pages and we're gonna do 38 bus benches and that's all the marketing decisions they make this year. Yeah, they're done, right? No, we want red letters this year instead of blue letters. Like, SEO back then was naming your company A1 Roofing because then you were at the top. That. That was SEO back in the day, right? And now SEO is like. You mean, like, so you talk to some guy who's owned a roofing company for 13 years or 35 years, like, yeah, so now you got a blog, and you should really think about Facebook. You might want to start paying attention to Instagram. And if you're thinking of being around 20 years, all the kids on Snapchat are gonna eventually have credit cards. And he's like, screw that. Right? And that's why some of these guys right now are losing 90% of their traffic overnight, right? Because. But the young people or the dynamic companies that can pivot, they don't look and say, oh, now we have to do all that. It's like, no, now you can. Your tiny little roofing company, like we were back then, you can just put out messages every day for free. You have a production studio on your iPhone and you can record professional videos that used to cost $25,000. You can record for free. You've got a distribution network. You used to have to show up to the television station, find out about ad recall lift and how many times you could get on between the sports games, how much that cost at primetime versus off prime time. And if the TV guide. Now you can experiment and test and you can get real time feedback. You can spend $13 on two different ads and say, okay, that headline works better. Now let's work on the copy below that. Oh, now this picture gets more clicks than this picture. So this picture, this headline is best. Then we go to landing page. Well, this color button worked better than this color button, and it actually does. There's colors of buttons that make differences. Who would have thought? And you can do all this, and there's nothing romantic about any of it. It's just what is resonating with your audience and what is getting results. And you couldn't do that with a newspaper or you couldn't do that with your Yellow pages ad. You put your yellow pages ads, full pages there for the whole year. You don't know how many times people flip by it and go, yeah, something doesn't feel right about that company. And then the guy on the next ad says, serving Edmonton for 34 years. And then you can't look at. You go, oh, I guess next year we're going to have to say serving Edmonton for 34 years. You know what I mean? Now you can make that decision in a day.

Yeah. And Right.

And so it's a two double edged sword. It can cost you and it can build you, but if you're smart and you surround yourself with good people or you hire good people, boom, you're set.

Adam, do you think that's why not as many people are taking advantage of this? Because as you said before, you know, it's, it's kind of boring doing all that stuff. It's little things every day or every hour of every day rather than the big flashy TV ad which, you know, I've spent money on TV advertising in previous businesses and you know, we spent 30 grand on a TV ad and it tanked. But you had no way of knowing until you ran the ad.

Yeah, it was brutal. I did the same thing with radio in my business prior. I did this big radio ad and I got so excited by the way it sounded and it didn't work. And the cost of failure was, you know, $8,000 for that, for that radio ad. And it was like, I don't really want to spend another $8,000 to try and hypothesize what might work better because it's not like, it's not like there was anything in the car telling me, you know what, what it would work. What we're working back and back in the days when I started Facebook ads, geez, you didn't have the tools you have today. Yeah, like I feel like the old man. That's like back in my day, I had to walk uphill both ways. Snow with paper shoes. Like I'm starting to turn into a crusty old man. But, but. So you mean. Yeah, it's boring, but geez. Try looking at power editor in 2012. You look at ads manager today and you got or ad espresso. The nice tools that you have to make it give visual. I mean, back then I was looking at a spreadsheet. Now you're looking at graphs and stuff. But you're right, it is about making the adjustments. A lot of people go, they spend money on an ad and they never try, they never do any scaling and optimizing. I was just talking to a contractor yesterday and he's paying a guy 700 bucks a week to run these ads. And, and the guy, admittedly, he says, well, he just doesn't really know. He's kind of learning, but he's learning too slowly. He's spending 3, $400 on an ad before shutting it off, when you can spend $13. But he needs to know what to look for. And then from there you have to like the Facebook pixel. That's the thing that drives me bonkers. Like I have a free thing on my site. If you have it on your site, they'll go download your thing wherever they can get it. But if you're ever, ever, ever, ever thinking of sooner or later getting around to the Facebook ad thing, get the pixel on your site now because you're starting to generate and season that pixel the minute you put it there. You can always go back and say the next, the last six months of website visitors, I want to target them with an ad. You can always do that later. But you have to get the pixel on there now.

Yes.

Yep. Well, Adam, my brain hurts. I don't know about our listeners, but I'm sitting here thinking how am I going to ask this next question which is, it's a bit of a wind up question, mate. You'd be used to that. But all good. But, but you're not going to be able to summarize this into one point. But I have a favorite question I like to ask and that is if you had a thousand tradespeople, tradies, contractors in a room, what is one piece of advice you would love to leave them with?

Map out your, your process, your customer's journey.

Good one.

Map out your customer's process from the minute, from the minute they submit a lead to the minute they end up, they pay you the invoice. Map out that process. Walk through what your ideal customer journey is because you're going to learn so much by actually walking through it. Because so many tradesmen I find are. It's almost like it's new every time they do it, even if they've been doing it for years. In that process you're going to find a number of really important things that are going to transform your company. One, you're going to find out that your process serves a specific kind of customer, whether it's residential re roofs or storm damage or insurance or builders. Right. Then you're going to find out what customers you tend to gel best with. Whether that be say it's residential re roofs, you gel with people who are moving or selling their house. You're going to see you'd work better with a certain demographic, maybe first time home buyers, maybe people who are selling their home to retire. Or you're going to find that you work better with people who plan to live in their home for the next 30 years, you can take that and then turn that. That determines your marketing, because you should always begin with the end in mind with your marketing, and go back and make your marketing specific to your ideal customer. Then throughout mapping out your process, you're going to find out that there's certain places where you're doing a repeated task over and over and over again. And either you get distracted and then you don't do it and have a negative customer experience, or you do it and you're trying to juggle too many balls. And then you can learn. You can say, okay, which are the eight things that get screwed up the most often? Who do we call? Or how do we find the right person? Or where do. What do we Google to automate those things so that those things don't happen anymore? And if you can automate at least a chunk of your buyer's journey and if you can get a really good, clear picture as to who your buyers are, then you can use that to build a system and a process to allow your business to run a little bit more on autopilot so you can focus on the right things. So, like we talked about being in the. The beginning of this phone call, Stacy's a part of that process.

Yeah.

Right. Yep.

Yeah. It's about literally getting off the tools as we talk about Coxy.

Absolutely.

And. And into that business owner role. So, Adam, if. If listeners want to find out a bit more about you, either roofing business partner or the actual roofing business, what's the best way for them to go and stalk you, mate?

So they can. Sergeants roofing to my roofing company. They can check it out@sergeantsroofing.com all the leads they submit. When I see their area codes is in Edmonton, I'll assume they're trading because that happens all the time. And then. And then they can also check us out on Instagram, Facebook, they can watch what we do and copy what we do. And then. Roofing business partner, roofingbusinesspartner.com same thing on Instagram, same thing on Facebook. And they can listen to my podcast as well. Roofing business partner. And I don't know. That's about it.

Nice, mate. Well, there were some epic knowledge bombs in there. Adam, thank you so much for your time and for spending some of your afternoon. I think it is there in Canada.

Yep, yep.

Snowy cold afternoon for spending some of your minus. And it's. It's heading to +35 here again today. So.

Yeah, you like my friends out in Vancouver, we have A. We have a. We have a Vancouver island in Canada where everybody. They're all the jerks that have nice weather all the time. They call when there's a massive blizzard out here, and they call them. Oh, my gosh. I heard there was a. It was a nasty snowstorm. Are you okay? And you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. It's fine. You know, I just had to wear a jacket today. Like, oh, yeah, jeez. I was like, I was just in the garden. You know, I was just gardening, and I was picking the flowers, right? And then I heard it on the radio, because I had the radio outside. I was doing the garden. So I put my flip flop pops on, and I ran over to the phone right away because I wanted to make sure. Okay. I'm like, click.

That's awesome.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate you letting me on the podcast. I hope your audience got some value out of that. I'd love to connect with you guys again. And if anybody does have questions, honestly, I. I answer a ton of questions for free. I. I love just helping because, like I said, I see how much hard work these guys do and girls and. And I want to make sure that they get what they need. I don't do it only for money. I love it to just help guys out for free. And I really appreciate you guys helping me get that message out there.

That's awesome, Adam. Thanks again.

Okay, keep it up, guys. Talk to you later.

Well, there you go. Holy crap. My head is literally hurting. I was sitting here at one point, Coxy, just thinking, Adam's. Adam's, like, doing our job for us.

I know.

He's literally educating our listeners, which is, you know, what we look for in a great guest. And, you know, he's out there doing it. There was so much in that episode that I can't even begin to summarize it. I loved his thing about you. The average of the five people you spend the most time with.

It's one of my favorite sayings.

And. And his thing about hanging out with not. Not just successful people in that sort of wankerish kind of way, but people who are pushing boundaries or doing things differently or, you know, asking better questions of themselves. And here is my really cheesy segue into the trade desk, because we have a bunch of super successful tradies who are. Who are already doing it. So if you don't know what it is, the trade desk, you should go to our website and check it out, tradiesinbusiness.com and go and have a look at that. But you get to hang out with a bunch of traders and you get to hang out with Coxy and I.

I think we're fun.

Well, I think we're more than fun. We bring a lot of value to the table.

Oh, we do, for sure.

And we've worked with a whole bunch of Tradies. So yeah, fantastic episode. Definitely have a look at the people you're spending the most time with. Would be my. My big takeaway from that. But yeah, that was great.

Was you've been listening to the Tradies in Business podcast with Warwick Bidwell and Nicole Cox. Find out more about today's guest tools for your trade business and other cool stuff@tradiesinbusiness.com.