In this monologue, Adam Sand argues that most roofers abandon marketing too quickly because they expect immediate, short‑term returns and view advertising as a waste. He illustrates the problem with a personal anecdote of spending $3,000 on Facebook ads and demanding $90,000 in 30 days, then quitting and disparaging the platform when the goal isn’t met. Sand contrasts this mindset with the massive, sustained ad spend of global brands like Coca‑Cola, Apple, and Google, emphasizing that every dollar of advertising generates a long‑tail benefit that far exceeds short‑term attribution. He shares a referral story from Sargent’s Roofing, showing how work done years ago continues to generate leads, proving that a strong brand creates ongoing value. Sand then walks through a concrete calculation: with a $400,000 budget at $50 CPM, a roofer can achieve 8 million impressions, reaching between 400 k and 1.6 million people depending on frequency, and that exposure yields lasting brand equity. To cement his point, he uses a gym/weight‑loss analogy, likening marketing to a 300‑pound person who must persist beyond the first month to see results, noting that 95 % quit early. The overall message is that roofers need to adopt a long‑term, brand‑focused advertising strategy rather than chasing quick ROI.
Chapters
90% of roofers on Facebook, that's what they sound like. I spent $3,000, and if it doesn't make me $90,000 inside of 30 days, I'm not gonna do it again, and I'm gonna talk bad about the guy on the internet and tell everybody that that thing doesn't work. Like, that is like what 90% of Facebook is. 95% of people quit doing hard things because hard things are hard, and small businesses stay small because they look at advertising like it's a waste of money. And then meanwhile, Coca-Cola Let's Google how much money Coca-Cola spent on advertising last year. You know about Coca-Cola. Everybody in America knows about Coca-Cola, yet they spent $5.4 billion. And we can just keep going down the list. How much did Apple spend on advertising in 2025? $7 to $9 billion. How much did Google? Google literally owns the thing that you advertise on. $14.72 billion. Like, Every business pays a tax to get customers. You're at a place where any dollar of advertising has such a long tail of benefit for you that like you almost shouldn't even worry about attribution. For example, like I got a referral for Sargent's Roofing 2 weeks ago to my phone. Somebody texted me and said, hey, my friend needs a roof. What I mean is that the work that I did 5 years ago. Like, I haven't touched that company since 2020. I'm still getting referrals, and my ex-business partner still has to make videos on his personal Facebook to try and say, like, stop going to Sargeant's Roofing if you're like my friend, you know, send them to me. So that brand is still generating opportunities. So my point is, you've spent next to nothing on advertising in the big picture. Let's say you spent 10% of revenue, did $4 million. Way too much money. You spent $400,000, right, on marketing. If you're getting a terrible price on cost per thousand impressions, so let's say you're paying $50 per thousand impressions. So you go $400,000 divided by $50, that's $8,000. Now you divide that by 1,000, okay, that's 8 million impressions. You'd probably get some overlap. Let's say you have a frequency of 5, right? So everybody saw one of your ads 5 times, divide that by 5, you've reached 1.6 million people. If it's 10, you've reached 800,000 people. If it's 20, you've reached 400,000 people. That's 400,000 people that saw your logo 20 times. You are going to see a benefit from that for a long time. In fact, my ex-business partner actively tries to put into the market to not go to Sargeant's Roofing and Exteriors. Because he thinks he was the company, not the brand. People are referring to the brand, not my name, and yet they are still doing it. So it's like your brand is a 300-pound fat guy. That guy has to go to the gym and not see results for a while, and then all of a sudden it's gonna lose 10 pounds. So how many 300-pound fat guys quit because they go to the gym for a month and don't see results? And they go to the gym for 3 months and they're unhappy with the results. Probably about 95% of them. 95%. Planet Fitness built a business around it. $10 a month will feed you pizza on Fridays to make sure you don't turn into one. But if you just go to the gym and walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes and then go find something heavy and pick it up for as long as you can for 30 seconds and then wait 90 seconds and then go pick the heavy thing up for another 30 seconds straight and then put it down and do that for another 30 minutes and don't even look at a scale or look look in a mirror for a year, you know what I mean? Like, that's how you should think about marketing.
