Transcript of He Lost His Company as a Minority Partner. Then Built It Back From Zero.

I was talking to my dad and I was like, man, if I don't sell at least 10 jobs next month, we're going to have to close. We were able to sell exactly what we needed to keep limping along. Then it's like, okay, now what are the processes we've got to change? The thing I did not do well was I did not understand how to price in overhead. Even as a startup, I'm just not afraid to talk about the struggles. It's real and let's talk about it and let's not hide it and help each other out. There's enough business to go around.

Welcome back to the Home Service Expert Podcast. I've got Justin Feicher here. He's an expert in roofing sales process, pricing strategy, social media content, homeowner education, blue-collar entrepreneurship. He's based out of St. Cloud, Orlando, Florida. Founder and operator of Providence Roofing. Started his first company at the age of 13, and Providence is his sixth. Three-generation roofing family. His dad Rick was roofing before Justin was born, and his son Miles is already part of the business. Nearly went under one year in one year and had to completely rebuild how he prices, sells, and operates. Now focused on speed, transparency, and educating homeowners instead of pressuring them. Still in the field every day running jobs, selling roofs, and managing crews. Uh, active content creator on Instagram and TikTok. Shells shares the real journey, including mistakes. Faith-driven business. Uh, the episode thesis is not every great podcast guest is someone who already made it. Justin is in the trenches right now building a roofing company in Central Florida. Nearly going under in a year and rebuilding everything from pricing to process to content strategy on the fly. This is a real-time look at what it takes to build a blue-collar business from the ground up, plus a deep dive into how one roofer is using social media content to grow without a massive marketing budget.

Justin, I started following your stuff, brother, and I was like, we gotta get this guy on. He's funny. He's amazing. He's, uh, he, you just make me laugh because like, The fast food shit. Like, yeah, I brought my own chicken nuggets. Um, you know, I was wondering if you could give me, oh, I don't like the burger. Can I bring it back? It's like no other business other than home service, home improvement does this.

Yeah, it's true, man. It's true. Thank you guys for having me, honestly, super, super stoked to be here and also get to learn from you, man. It's going to be good.

So have you ever heard of the podcast? Oh yeah.

Yep. Read your books.

Yep.

Listen to the podcast. So it's pretty neat to be reached out to by your team. And I was like, this is crazy. At first I was like, this is probably spam. And I looked everything up, I was like, "No, it's legit." So.

Now it's great, man. You know, I think content is such a cool thing when you just, you don't even have to be, you're great at it, but you don't have to be great, you just gotta be consistent.

Yeah, it's true. What's funny, so your bio is pretty good. Just to clarify, so my dad, he was roofing before I was born. He roofed mobile homes actually in the factories. So he would put roofs on mobile homes as they were being built in factories. But then he migrated out of that and he's been a pastor now pretty much my whole life, moved from construction and farming to being a pastor. So, but one thing you said that is fascinating that I think we need to shift in perspective is used to be contractors would fight over neighborhoods and then now the marketplace is we're fighting over attention. And so, social media is critical like you said.

Yeah, so tell me a little bit about the business. What's going good? What's not going good? What got you into it? What you're excited about? What you hate?

Yeah, that's good, man. No, um, so I've always been entrepreneurial. Um, grew up, was homeschooled, uh, and, uh, so I've got a younger brother and then 3 older sisters. And me and my brother, uh, we started a couple businesses similar, similar to you. You started pushing lawn mowers, and I think you said shoveling snow. And, um, similar, I mean, I'm here in Florida, so landscaping. I just asked my mom today because I I wanted to make sure I had my timeline right. But I started picking oranges for an orange man down the road when he had an orange grove when I was like 9 or 10. And mom would drop me off and I'd work there a couple hours on the weekends and stuff. And so just work ethic has always been something that my parents ingrained into us and always knew I wanted to start something. Didn't know exactly what that would be, but got into construction. Been in construction and in sales pretty much my entire career. And, uh, and so finally made the jump kind of really around COVID time. And I was like, this decided I'm going to start something and I know roofing.

And so I started another roofing company with two partners. Uh, and that actually, um, we built that up pretty quick. It was successful. Uh, and then kind of got pushed out of that cause I was a minority partner. And so kind of forced me to start Providence Roofing just over a year ago. Uh, and to your point, yeah, we, uh, first 8 months in, like realizing this— I got my pricing all wrong. Like, I don't have the systems in place that I need yet. But now, I mean, we've been in business over a year, done over $1.2 million in revenue, which revenue is vanity, profit is king. But we're, we're operating at about a 10% EBITDA, which is okay. But there's— we've had a lot of stupidity taxes that we won't be repeating next year. And so That's kind of where I'm at. Um, I don't know if I answered all your questions.

Yeah, so 10% profit, and that, that's after you pay yourself a good salary, right?

Yeah.

So you're paying yourself instantly?

I kind of, um, obviously it's this first, first year in, I'm pumping a lot back into the business. So it is, yeah. Um, so I mean, not as much as I want to be making eventually, obviously, but good enough to pay the bills. So, and I'm unemployable. I think any of us entrepreneurs are like, we just— people forever have said, stop trying to reinvent the wheel, stop trying to change things, and done it this way forever. And we're visionaries, we want to change things. And so, um, if I don't pay myself great money, I could, I could make more money working for somebody else for sure, but I wouldn't be able to be in control.

So I always say, look, If you, if you do this quicker, power to you. But usually the first 5 years is full of mistakes, long hours, and hard lessons that really, you know, my dad always used to tell me, I wish I knew then what I know now. And I'm like, just tell me. He's like, you know, I wish I was that— I wish it was that easy. But you're gonna have to make the mistakes. And each mistake, as long as you don't make it again, you start really building momentum. But it's like, shit's gonna go wrong. Your suppliers are gonna screw you. You're gonna get stolen from. You're gonna get lied to. You're gonna get canceled at the last minute. Like, what could go wrong will go wrong. Until you really sit back and say, I'm going to be a systems guy and I'm going to start the business by saying no. You know, you're going to have an opportunity to be a supplier. You're going to have an opportunity to go after new construction. You're going to have an opportunity to go after storms. You're going to have an opportunity to go after retro.

You're going to have an opportunity where someone's going to say, can you do the siding? Can you do the windows? And you're going to be like, well, I'm not going to do windows, but you know, I'll do it for $100 grand. And all of a sudden you're going to go, man, $100 grand, it only cost me $40. And then you're going to mismeasure some windows. And then it's going to be like the aluminum siding is going to have an issue. It's going to start falling apart. 'Cause you tend to say yes your first couple of years. And my best advice is stay focused and say no and realize where your profit's coming from. They're going to say, man, I'm making a fortune doing storms. I'm making a fortune doing this and the insurance work. I'm making a fortune doing this. And I started doing commercial instead of resi and I'm making a ton of money until I had a buddy of mine do the commercial job and dude, he damaged 4 cars. It was a cluster. There was warranty calls up the yin yang. I feel bad for the guy. He got it all taken care of.

He paid for everything, but It was out of his, uh, out of his normal business. And you just got to learn to say no more and really figure out where your profit is. Um, yep. When you were—

that's good.

What were you, you know, what were you pricing jobs at and how, how far off were you when you, when you first started?

I mean, well, it wasn't just pricing, right? It was, uh, just seepage. Um, miss— even mismeasuring, not ordering correctly, being overcharged by suppliers, finding different suppliers. So my pricing was really initially— I mean, I was $70, $80 a square short of where I needed to be to actually make a profit, breaking even, sometimes making profit, but a lot of times just, we weren't high enough. And then you go the other way, which happened for about 2 months, August and September of last year, which also the market has been a little bit unique. But then I raised my prices too much. And then now every job you're going into, you're the highest bidder. And it's not that that can't be done, but when you're a brand new baby company and you're coming in trying to be the top dog with no reputation, it's hard to sell. And so I have to find that easy medium. So now I'm right around about $490 to $500 a square for shingles, and it's about the sweet spot. And I don't do any insurance, it's all retail. Too much, too much opportunity to— you can't— one, you're building a business dependent on something out of your control.

Uh, in my opinion, you're, you're waiting for storms. Like, if you're building an insurance-based business, you— if a storm doesn't happen and you don't know how to do retail, you're in trouble.

Yeah, I, I love that.

You guys do much insurance work, Tommy?

No, we don't do any. I mean, in the future we will. I mean, look, at this point we service 28,000 jobs a month, 28 houses. No commercial, no new construction. So we're in 24 states, about to be in 25. And, um, you know, we keep doing what we're doing. I mean, we're already number one in the industry. Question is, how do I get to 100,000 homes a month, and how do I add value, and how do I dominate on the LLMs and the lead source? Which we're going to talk a lot about leads. Um, was there a moment when you realized, I'm doing this completely wrong? What was the, like, epiphany? That you were like, dude, my life, I got to make some drastic changes?

Yeah. I mean, I think I— it was definitely summer of last year. I was just like, we looking at numbers and I can't give you the exact moment, but I mean, looking at numbers and just realizing we are— if we do not— actually, I remember the conversation now. I was talking to my dad and I was like, man, if I don't like sell at least 10 jobs next month, we're gonna have to close. Like, that's our minimum, like, to get us out of supplier debt, like, that we had, we had built up from a net 30 account and didn't— or wasn't paying them on time. And, uh, and I was like, if we don't, like, we won't have the money to keep going. And so, but we did, and we were able to sell exactly what we needed to keep limping along And then it's like, okay, now what are the processes we've got to change? What are the systems we need to implement? Um, hired a key person who's now doing— I, I'm very much, uh, I'm a big thinker, um, long vision, right? Uh, strategic, but I'm not a numbers guy to, to be the guy to sit down and do the paperwork and, and do the detail, detail things.

It just— those types of things I'm not great at. So I hired a gal who's phenomenal at that. She's great at numbers, she's great at keeping the details in order, and that has been critical. So, she probably is the key person that I brought on that like, man, has just changed everything for me because I'm not wasting 3 hours a night when I get home from running estimates or running jobs trying to do paperwork. Now, I can let her actually delegate that and let her do it and do it better than I can do it. So—

No, it's great. I mean, keep an eye on the money, man. I mean, there's 2 things you can never let go of is marketing and your numbers. If you keep those two things only, you'll be a success. Hey Colin, can you come in here for a sec? I just— we're gonna edit this.

That's what my question was. So how does this, how does this normally work? Do you guys like this whole conversation?

You edit it together up and chopped up and it'll be great. And if we screw up or want to redo anything, we could do it. Do you think he should put a light on?

So, um, on my screen, yeah, he definitely doesn't look that dark on my screen.

Okay, good. And then secondly, is there a way sometime in this that we could play some of his videos and he could comment on them? Yeah, yeah. Can you pull those up and then we'll just do a session of that where he could comment after? We'll play a bunch of his top 5 and then he'll be like— because I remember when you were at an estimate and you're like, dude, I didn't even want to get this guy's business. Like, I, I think we should play some of those. Okay, so we'll cut right back into where we were.

So, um, cool.

Um, so you started your first company at 13 and Providence is your 6th company.

I don't know where you got that, actually. Oh, that's not true. So you better edit that out. No.

Okay, so we're gonna edit that out. That's a mistake. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, no, this is, this is this, this first solo, uh, like company I've started. Um, well, my dad's— my dad's a partner with me in it. Um, like, he helped give me the investment to start. Um, but I run the company. Uh, but as far as, um, yeah, I mean, apart from if you count your lawn landscaping as a kid and random stuff like that as businesses, then sure, maybe.

No, I don't.

But, um, real business, uh, this is my second business I started roofing. Uh, the first one was the one with two partners that I got pushed out of. I was a minority partner. This is my first business I've started myself. Myself.

Who do you look up to? I mean, who are the— do you go seek out answers? What made you want to do roofing? What, what was like— who do you look up to? What books do you read? What podcasts? What are you trying to do with the business?

Um, yeah, uh, so mentors from afar is what I call a lot of the, the authors that I listen to. I really like, um, obviously you, I like your stuff, uh, Grant Cardone, um, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss is a phenomenal book. I'm, I'm naturally a sales guy, so I listen to a lot of sales books. I also really enjoy marketing. So Build Your Story Brand is a phenomenal— Don Miller. Yeah, storytelling. Obviously, the classics, Think and Grow Rich. But so we in blue collar and in the trades, we have a ton of drive time, at least I do. So I, I spent I was on the road 80,000 miles last year in my truck, put 80,000 miles in my truck just driving around like crazy. And so it's a ton of drive time. So I listen to a ton of audiobooks. But your question, where do I see this going? It's a big question, right? I think that this industry, home service and the trades, with the exponential growth of technology and AI, displacing a lot of intellectual jobs, I think this is the new goldmine. I think that we will see, in the next 2 to 3 years, I think we'll see 50% of median middle position white-collar jobs just eliminated.

But it's going to be a while, I think, before robotics and AI can put a roof on. Right.

It may happen one day, but let me ask you some questions though, because yeah, you know, as these white-collar jobs disappear, the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists, you know, they've got a lot of money in their 401. Where do you think they're going to go? You don't think they have the potential to learn about some of the trades like us and get into them?

No, they do.

Absolutely. And so, uh, you know, I know a lot of private equity guys that are like, I'm just gonna go start a business. Unfortunately, it's not for the faint at heart. I mean, 9 out of 10 businesses fail. There's a lot to do with how to treat a blue-collar person that didn't maybe have a good childhood. Maybe they didn't pass 10th grade. Maybe they need— they need their confidence built up. And, you know, I just had 70 guys next door that, that are in our training program this month alone. I had 40 8 guys last month. We got another 70 coming in next month. And I do a 3-hour orientation. And I think, unfortunately, I've seen a lot of these white-collar guys go try to start in this industry, and they don't have the grit, man. They think it's easy. They're like, man, if I could work in somebody's mouth and I went to school for 12 years, I could handle this. And power to them, man. I hope they could. But I know that there's going to be a lot of competition. So it's how do you stand out in a crowded world? And I think you're doing the right thing by building content But it's like getting great reviews every day.

How do you go from 3 reviews a day to 20 reviews a day? And how do you get multiple Google My Business pages? How do you win awards to feed the LLMs? There's a lot of things to think about and we could dive into some of this stuff, but I want to pivot to your dad here. He was putting on roofs of mobile homes. Uh, what, uh, he was a dairy, dairy farmer before that.

And, um, he's, he was just, he was a, he's a hardworking man. Still is like, He moved us to Florida when I was just really young from Indiana to start the church that he's still pastoring today. And like I said, my mom homeschooled all 5 of us kids. So, I had a phenomenal upbringing. Like, much of my success and who I am is attributed to them. They raised us well. They raised us to respect people, to work hard.. And that's it. Your question about doctors, lawyers coming into blue collar. Yeah, they can. But I think most, like you look at software engineers, right? No shame on them. They are very smart. Um, and, but the, the, the job that they have is work from home behind your computer and it's all mental. Try to get that guy to come out in the field and do 14-hour days. 5, 6 days a week, and that's just life. Like, yeah, I just— I don't know if— I don't— it may happen, but I don't know.

80,000 miles in a year, that's, that's a tough one, man. And I will say there's a lot of— you know, right now our biggest probably opportunity as a company is capacity planning, because when you graduate 70 technicians, that means you need 210 new leads the day they go out in the field. If you get 250, crazy, you're burning them. If you get 180 It's not enough. So it's, it's a lot more complicated than people think. Like, when you start a franchise like McDonald's or, you know, Subway, you can control what's in those four walls really easy. When you got supply houses, gas, driving, insurance, camera systems, reviews, um, there's just so many outliers. It's, it's a lot. It's managed chaos is what it is. Yeah. And you're gonna learn, man. I love that you're in this. I'm rooting for you, brother.

Thanks, man. That means a lot. I think for you, like exactly what you said, all of those things become, they float to overhead costs that in essence can be tracked and are somewhat predictable. But that's where I screwed up. Anybody that's listening that like is starting out, you're new, like you don't quite understand your pricing, Like the, the thing I did not do well was I did not understand how to price in overhead, even as a startup, like a small company, couple months in my startup costs were like crazy, like buying equipment, like getting the truck, getting the truck wrapped, like, and then you waste money on stuff that you don't need. But then as you're pricing out month to month, how much does it cost to be in business? And it's not— you don't price a job by materials and labor and profit. You gotta include the overhead. And I think that is hard to sometimes figure out, uh, and, and figure out what that number is. How did you guys do it?

Well, I made a lot of mistakes.

And how do you continue to do it?

Well, I'll tell you this, there's a couple good books I think anybody listening should read. One is How Much Should I Charge by Alan Rohr. And the next book is Where Did the Money Go? Because I think everybody gets to the end of the year, the CPA calls them, says you owe $200 grand, and you go, I don't even have that in my account. And pricing is probably the hardest thing because, you know, my clients are buyers. We started advertising to the people that aren't trying to— your advertising sources make a big difference on what kind of talent you're going to attract. If you got a broke-down truck with just stenciled letters saying, "We do roofing." If you don't stand out in a crowded market for quality, it's like I'm building a really, really nice house in Paradise Valley. The tile work is $17 a foot. Now I know where I can go to get it for $1.50 a foot.

Yep. But you know, you know what kind of work you're going to get for the $1.50.

I mean, look, at the end of the day, I know what it's like to buy premium, and that's, that's how I buy. I used to, you know, I always say my favorite place costs $1,000 for a couple to go eat, but guess what? They're booked out 3 weeks. And guess what? It's hard to get a reservation, but you're gonna get your martini shaken 3 times. You're gonna get— is there any special occasion? The, the plates are 400 degrees. And when I go to McDonald's and eat like a king for $30 with my date, you know, my fiancée, so— but I don't want that. I want an experience, and I want people— like, when I buy something for my house, I want the warranty. I want stuff not to leak on a roof. I want to know that it's quality. I want the people at my home to be safe around my family. And do you, do you fulfill all your stuff, or do you have a team, like a team, another team to kind of fulfill it?

Um, me. You do all the— whatever. I don't Uh, no, sorry, no, install labor. I've got crews, yeah.

And they're 1099s?

Yep, yep. So my crews are, uh, 1099. Um, it's the same two crews, uh, that I consistently use, but I've got more available as I grow. Um, but yeah, other than that, as far as like logistics though, like ordering, um, even PMing jobs. I trust my guys though, known them long enough that they do good work. But homeowner management, that's, that's all me. So for now, obviously, as I, as I continue to grow, I think there's a point when every business owner, I think, comes to the point where they realize the biggest, the biggest hiccup or bottleneck in their business is them.

Yep.

And, and so it's like, you've got to realize, the business is only able to grow to the level and capability of the leader. And so got to get better every single day and then learn to delegate, have the money to hire the right people. And that's when scale comes.

Yeah, no, you're right. One of the things I tell people all the time is you're probably underfunded and you're going to put the sweat equity in for the first 5 years, which I had to do. I mean, I, I started— really started the business in 2007. In the first 5 years, I was running the vast majority of the calls. And then the next 2 years I was kind of the on-call guy if we were having trouble with payroll.

There you go. Yeah, is you can work cheaper than the rest of the guys.

Higher conversion rate, higher reviews, and higher tickets. And I could run more calls because I'd work till midnight. I didn't care.

Exactly.

Yep. Now, how do you handle a homeowner?

Go ahead. I was gonna say, one nice thing, yeah, for you guys is you, you can work inside and you can work late. It doesn't— darkness doesn't matter for you because you're inside a garage. So you probably have crews that actually have— do you have— how do your crews work? Are they on revolving shifts, uh, your technicians?

Um, well, right now we're testing some stuff out on a split shift, but you know that we've got guys that'll work till, till midnight. We got guys that'll start at 6, so Right now we're running a 6 AM shift, an 8 AM shift, and then one that starts at noon, and it's a 10-hour shift. And that allows us to be a lot more fine-tuned on the capacity planning, and that's very hard to do. There's a place in Charlotte called Morris Jenkins. They run till midnight 7 days a week, and they do HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and they murder it because people know that's their claim to fame is we'll be out there same day till midnight. And they absolutely—

do you guys have— you guys have on-call rotations or not?

Yeah, we've got on-call. We pay the guy an extra $100 to ring the doorbell, and, um, most of the time we could do it. Uh, I don't really love the on-call shift. I try to get— that's why we're trying to schedule up to 10 PM, because if an emergency shift comes out, we could pay the guy extra to stay out till midnight. Most of my guys are fine doing it. Um, how do you handle it when a homeowner says your competitor is a few grand cheaper?

Yeah, uh, for me, the moment we as businesses start negotiating on price, I think is the moment we lose. Uh, so it's always a matter of, I, I am so sorry, um, I, my value that I'm providing you, could I build your roof for $2,000 cheaper? I can absolutely build you a roof $2,000 cheaper. I won't do it because it's my reputation and the materials and the quality of that product. I can't warranty it. But if that's what you're looking for, I mean, probably not the contractor for you. So I call it the takeaway. So basically they say, can you do it for $2,000 cheaper? And you don't say you're an idiot, which is what a lot of times we want to say. But, um, it's, that's typically the route that I take with it.

So there's a book I want you to read by Joe Crisara. It's actually right here. It's called What Should We Do? And you should read this book as soon as you could, listen to it on audio— Audible. Um, and he came in and taught us a lot of things, so I'll throw it off to him. But well, what I figured out is to start giving options instead of ultimatums. Do you want the builder grade Do you want a good warranty or do you want top of the line? And I've got 5— I've actually got 6 options for garage doors now. I got 1 through 5 star in our Signature Series, and I got 3 different styles, style springs through 2-year, 5-year, and lifetime. And when they go, that's just more than I wanted to spend, I said, let's just pick another option. I'm here to earn your business.

Yeah.

And I want to be your garage door provider for life. And what I've learned is little things to add value So instead of giving that $3,000 discount, say, I'll tell you what I could do. We do a coating on top of these shingles that'll give them an extra 10 years. Normally we charge about $3,500 to do this, but I'll go ahead and I'll go ahead— if that's what's gonna— it's gonna take to earn your business, I'll go ahead and include that. Now that might cost you $200. You just spray on a— you know what I mean? But a conversion rate is so important because if you paid $500 to get that lead, which If you're not paying a great amount of money to get leads, they're not great leads. You could go to LeadX, you go to Angie's List, you could go to Nextdoor, you could do a lot of cool stuff. But if you're getting quality leads, you want to figure out a way to build an experience, give them options, and earn their business. And instead— and I appreciate the fact you're willing to walk away because that's what you should do if you only got one price.

But you know, I offer three. Offer— you offer three? Mm-hmm. And then when you're going to the cheapest one, they still want it cheaper.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I think that's just free market and people that don't know how to, don't know how to properly price. There will always be cheaper, cheaper people, cheaper companies, but it's Chuck in a truck. And so normally when people say that, it's like, did you get a price for $3,000 cheaper? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, why didn't you hire him? And then they start to sell themselves, and it's like, well, you just had this feeling, and it's like, well, I mean, you had that feeling for a reason, and I'm here now. So if you want it done right, grab your driver's license and we'll get this taken care of. Extend your hand and close the deal. So yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool though.

They do sell themselves when you ask them, you know, why don't you go with them? And a lot of times we'll be like, I've got a— I've got an uncle's buddy in the in the industry, and he could do it for a better price. I'm like, I'm just curious, where's he at? Like, well, he's out of town this week. Yeah. And I'm like, that's typically how it goes, is a lot of times these guys are hard to get a hold of after the work's done. And what's interesting is my favorite clients— and we get these dozens by the day— is the client that calls me up and they go, I've had the same company out 3 times in the last 6 months. 'Can you guys just come fix it correctly?' And it's just storytelling. And you say it happens all the time, is they don't show up. We'll come out nights, weekends, holidays, doesn't matter for us. We've got availability. We're here when your door has an issue. We run warranty calls ahead of new, new clients. And I mean, the lifetime value of you as a client means much more to us than picking up a new one.

So yeah, you get, you get kind of what you pay for when it comes to this stuff. And I think we're a far better value than the cost. And we believe that the value should by far exceed the cost of doing the work. So that's where we win. I mean, and by the way, all of our messaging, our TV, our radio ads, everything, even the way we wrapped our vehicles, is that people understand that we're not going to be the discount company, but we're going to be out there right away, and it's going to be fixed right with somebody that you can trust in your house with your family.

Absolutely. And I think that's, that's the really the, the key mental shift that has to, has to happen is we, all of us, like, as, as home service companies, we got to realize— and you talk about it in your book, Building a Fence Around Your Customers, and I love that— but we got to realize the roof, the garage door, that sale is just the first transaction The relationship is the actual asset. Yeah. And so that was going to be my— one of my questions for you, Tommy, is how when you're selling, what's your warranty on your standard garage door?

It's 1 year.

Like, but what are you selling? Like, what are you telling them? How long will this last?

Oh, garage door, depending on the use. And hopefully your kids, you know, when your daughter turns 16, we might have an incident. But as long as You know, I try to make the clients laugh, but yeah, yeah, I like to say, look, if you get a service agreement, we come out each year, we lubricate, adjust, tighten everything on the door, make sure it's balanced, and that's going to give you a warranty as long as you're under the service agreement. And, um, it's our parts. So, uh, we try to build— we got 50,000 service agreements, which is not near what I want to be, but, um, they pay $15 a month and, um, you know, the lifetime value is there. And then we credit all that money they spend on the monthly towards a new door.

Yeah, that's amazing. And for you, so $50,000, you said $50,000? Yeah, $50,000 right now is how many you have. That's awesome. It's nowhere near where I need to be. $750,000 though in annual recurring revenue a month.

Yeah, a month.

Yeah. So that's awesome. That's what I was going to say is like my thing I've been really thinking through and trying to figure out is when we're selling these products like a roof, supposed to last 20 years. So repeat business is hard, right?

Yeah, but the average person moves every 5 to 6 years, so that's how you—

5 to 6 years. Yeah, if we're staying in front of them.

Um, and I think that's like— there's data you could buy from Valpak. At any given moment, as your database starts to build, 15% of them are moving. And to just be able to move in and give them a free inspection on their new roof would be super powerful. I mean, there's so many opportunities where people don't know where to look, but those aren't the things that'd be focused on now. I'd be focused on getting more leads, getting a higher conversion rate with a bigger, higher average ticket by building value. Be focused on that simple funnel and getting a 5-star review with a video and a picture in it. And just using your social media skills. Like if you go hard in the paint for 3 years, you're going to have a very solid business.

Yeah, absolutely. And one cool thing, um, me and my brother-in-law were building my own CRM. Which I'm stoked about. So we're building it ourselves and building a customer portal to be able to force that fence around them so that all of the photos and everything can— they, they have access to it. They download the app, which is something that I'm pretty stoked about. So, and I think if it's built specifically for roofers, there's a couple out there already, but it'll have processes in place that guys can just immediately plug and play instead of having to get it customized or do long onboarding calls. So that's one thing that's pretty exciting.

So we'll talk, we'll talk in 6 months. I think it's very difficult. You know, a guy I know that's got a very successful roofing company, they've really— they've used ServiceTitan and changed a bunch of things with a bunch of APIs, but it literally it literally automatically bids the job. It literally, like, it knows when you opened it, it follows up. It knows if you looked at financing, it auto-finances. Like, some of the technology now, I mean, you could rebuild anything with Claude and Open Claw super quickly.

Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

And, you know, it'll be interesting because everybody that I know that builds a CRM, the one thing that's interesting— the guy I interviewed yesterday, super successful guy, he built his own CRM for this He's from Israel and he built his own merchant services, built a big company. And he goes, when I sold it, I was the only one that knew how to use the software, so it devalued it. Like the big companies in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, flooring, you know, specifically Groszner's HVAC, plumbing, electrical, when they're not on service time and they go to sell, they'll lose a lot of value on the multiple because they're not on a CRM that's always being worked on with a full-time team. But you're right, if you could build something custom that makes sense for you, I mean, I think it'll be really impressive if you pull it off.

Yeah, that's for sure. As far as the, um, the competition you guys run into, I'm curious, do you feel like, uh, a lot of your competition is adopting technology, uh, even remotely the same as you, or do you feel like that's a big piece of your guys' success? You have leaned into technology adoption heavily.

Yeah, I think that's part of our success. I think the bigger piece of our success is the way we recruit. It takes 50 people to hire one, 50 interviews to hire one. And then we train, we train, we train, we train, then we train again, then we train again, then we train again. We record every conversation in the field, we record every phone call on the call center. We use dispatch tools to get the right technician out for the right job. I mean, we're running 20 5, 25 or 27 different technologies right now in the background. I mean, from recruiting to what we do in the trucks to how we take inventory to how we— one of the coolest things that I look into if I were you is Mantle. Mantle's an amazing software, and I mean, the guys are killing it in the roofing HVAC industry. We started using that, our conversion rate went up 15%, our average ticket went through the roof, and it's just People hate to buy. People hate to be sold, but they love to buy, and the presentation takes care of it. And the presentation tool really matters. The best roofers I know spend 90 minutes on the proposal.

There's a guy named Rodney Webb, used to do gutters, and he kind of trains on how to take a GoPro, look at everything, and talk about the differences and circle the video and really walk them through every little detail. And it's a, it's a big purchase, and you got to use the right financing. You know, if you can't get it financed, I, I don't know a lot of people that have an extra 20, 30 grand lying around just to put into it. So you got a second and a third chance finance company to look at it if their credit's not above 600.

Yeah.

That's true. You figured that one out?

You guys, uh, yeah, I've got a pretty, I don't have 2 or 3. Um, I have 2, one option. I got rid of one of them. I won't name them. Um, but one of them was a financing partner that standard, they charge you crazy high dealer fee. It's like 10% of gross. And so that's just, you can build that in, but it just hurts every time. So now I'm working with a local credit union, rather, and they're local here in Central Florida. And they're actually, they don't charge me any dealer fee whatsoever. They'll actually pay up to 2% of the finance amount to me if they have good credit. So that's been pretty good. Surprisingly though, like I don't actually run into as many finance deals as you would think.

So— Well, the way you do that is—

Clientele.

Well, there's 3 types of buyers, no interest, low interest, low payment. And your average ticket will go up by about 40% when people use financing. And the question I'd ask is, did you want to use your money or our money today? Because, you know, gas prices are through the roof. Who knows when this Ukraine-Russia— now we got Iran, you know, a lot of uncertainty in the world. The good news is there's no prepayment penalty. I can get you the Taj Mahal installed for $149 a month, pay it off whenever you'd like. And all of a sudden, the conversion rate on that higher end, that best unit you're selling, your best shingle unit, you'll have a much higher closing rate.

I love that.

Who makes the most money at a car dealership?

I think the finance manager.

The finance manager. You're right. At every major company, the guy that is the best-selling financing. And I don't have a problem with that because if I financed a Harley-Davidson, I know you're losing 40% when you drive it off the lot. When I finance a roof, that's an investment into your home, your family, your, your house's home value. That's an investment versus a cost. So I don't think you're doing anything shady by offering people a promotionally— promotionary offer to make it affordable for them.

Mm-hmm. I guess so. You would say just simply in your experience, for the sake of closing more deals by offering financing or almost pushing financing, that's kind of a must.

Well, what's going to happen is you're going to run them through a quick thing and it's going to say you qualify for $60 grand. And then all of a sudden the client's going to go, well, look, how much is it per month? And they're like, let's just do that. And everybody's coming into money in the next year. So they're like, yeah, I'll pay it off. And the average person that does a 10-year is paying it off in 3.6 years. So you don't have to feel bad about it, but it's a higher conversion rate. They're going to pick better options and you're going to have happier clients. I just know for a fact the biggest, best roofing companies, 80% of their jobs are financed.

Mm-hmm. That's great.

So something I think about.

Yeah, absolutely. No, great, great feedback there. What do you say to, uh, you guys? Do you guys do your own, or are you planning to do your own actual in-house financing? No. At some point?

No, I don't. No, unless we get with another partner that has that. Like, this is the problem, is saying no more often. Like I said earlier, saying no to everything you could. I used to wrap my own trucks. I had my own wrap company. I used to have two full-time mechanics. I used to have a team to go ahead and take the metal apart with the aluminum and the chopper. And all of a sudden I'm like, I'm just gonna be the best at one thing. The one thing. Gary Keller wrote a book. I'm gonna get rid of all the crap. I'm gonna lease my trucks to own. I'm gonna turn 'em in at 100,000 miles or 4 years, whatever comes first. I'm gonna get the highest value for them. So if I pay $65,000, I'll turn 'em in at $45,000. Still get a high value. My guys are always driving new trucks. It's all under warranty. It's got a fresh new wrap on it. They feel great. So their mood's great. The culture is great. The clients love our trucks in the field. They're always clean. And I said, then I learned about accelerated depreciation and just the tax advantages.

And that's why I got a great CFO and controller and FP&A team. And when you're small business, you're like, I'm just gonna run this truck till the wheels fall off. I mean, I was buying $3,000 Dodge Dakotas and wrapping them. That's all I had to start with. And I didn't realize the tax ramifications. And under Trump, accelerated depreciation on the weight of these vehicles, 6,200 pounds or more, and It just makes sense to play it like we're doing it. You know, out of the Fortune 500 companies, 598 lease their trucks to own them.

I did not know that.

That's crazy. Freaking companies. These aren't like mom and pops because they understand the tax codes.

Yeah, which taxes, man, that's, that's the other thing. It's, it's amazing like how much you gotta to your point earlier, keep, keep on the numbers and realize anybody that says, oh, it must be so nice, you must be making so much money, it's like taxes alone, you end up spending 35% of everything on.

That's not even close. You pay a sales tax, you pay a tax when you buy a vehicle, you pay taxes on your W-2s, you pay taxes to the 1099s, you pay taxes on the insurance. You pay taxes and taxes and taxes and taxes to where it actually comes out to 70%. I mean, people think you take the money home, but then you got to go spend it and then they get taxed when you spend it.

Yep. And then if you buy an asset with it, like a house, when you go to sell that, you're taxed again. If you invest it and your investment grows, you're taxed on the growth. So it is crazy.

It's— there's, there's two tax codes and the rich people live off of one and they understand depreciation. They understand tax advantages. They understand things like In the stock market, when you sell something for a month, you could keep forward those losses. So it's called tax loss harvesting. And these are the things that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and, and some of the larger companies know how to do is it's mostly the wealthier get wealthy, the wealthier, the wealthy get wealthier because they understand the tax code. And that small business, we don't really get these lessons. So you learn the hard way until you get a really good person to understand tax strategy. I mean, a guy like you, I mean, your kids should probably be under payroll. They should have a trust. There should be— I mean, you could write off your gym membership, you could write off every meal as long as you're talking about— I mean, there's a lot of stuff as a small business when you're on cash accounting versus accrual that you could kind of do that's legal. It's just there's a fine line in the sand where, you know, you want to be audit-proof, but, um, taxes are a big deal.

What do you say to, uh, what do you say to in the first 60 seconds when you get to a homeowner's door?

Uh, hey, uh, whatever their name is, um, Justin, we spoke on the phone, here to take a look at your roof. Um, real quick, remind me, was it leaking anywhere? Let them talk. Um, and what I actually do, I, I don't tend to go inside. I make the first interaction pretty brief. Reason being, I want to get on the roof because if I warm up too much in the beginning, when I'm done and I'm done with the roof, they'll say immediately, so what do you have? Or so what's the cost, right? Because we didn't— we already— if we warmed up too fast before, like, I actually got up on the roof, I've just found that then you can't really have any kind of a warm-up, a relationship build. And so that's what people don't really know. Homeowners don't really know if they bought a good roof. They don't really know if they bought a good garage door, but they know how the experience made them feel. And that's what they're buying. So they're buying that trust that you're able to build. What about you guys?

So we offer coffee on the way. So let's say I'm offering you coffee right now. Hey Justin, Tommy Mello here. You probably got my profile from our software. I'm running off— I'm running to your house right now. I'm gonna stop at Starbucks. Can I grab you anything? So go ahead.

Sure.

Yeah, you're probably gonna say no. Most homeowners say no, they're like, I'm fine. So go ahead and say no. No, no, you'll say no, I'm fine. Listen, Justin, you come to my house, my fiancée Bree she's gonna feed you. This is just the way I grew up. I grew up in the Midwest. Don't make me guess, are you a green tea guy or a caramel frappuccino? Because I'm bringing you one. And then you'll be like, oh man, just bring me a double espresso. I want to bring you something. And then we expense that onto the job. The technician pays nothing. And then when I show up, I knock the door because strangers ring the doorbell. I've got my tools with me. I look like a worker. My breath smells good. I've got a big smile on my face. If a dog comes out, I'm playing with the dog. And then I'm going to start asking questions. You know, there's a beautiful home. How long have you lived here? I'm actually— we now, we look at, um, Zillow to find out when they moved in the home. Have they been there for 2 months or 10 years?

And usually they'll walk us through the house. I'm looking for their family pictures. I'm looking to see if they got a Nest. If they got a Nest, they're into home automation. So they probably want an automated garage door. And then I walk in the garage and then I say, so What's going on out here? And then I see their Harley-Davidson and I'm like, how often do you get out on the Harley? Now listen, I'm genuinely interested. I never want my guys to talk about something they're not interested in. If they're not into it, if they got a Razor or fishing poles or whatever it is, we're in their garage, so usually there's some cool stuff out there. Never pretend to be something you're not. And usually I want to spend a half an hour saying, how often do you use the door? When's the last time it was looked at? Who sleeps upstairs? Do they, do they wake up when the door goes? And I'm just trying to learn who else. So how many kids do you have? How often do they use the door? Do they use the keypad to get in? Is the noise an issue?

When you come out here and it's, it's the wintertime, does it get freezing in here? Does it actually stay a pretty good warm temperature? And same thing in the summer. And we're just asking questions, and then we ask what's going on with it, and they'll say, we heard a loud bang and whatnot. And we'll say, okay, well, listen, We'll go ahead and do a little bit of an analysis on what's going on. It looks like you got a broken spring. Let me go ahead and do some measurements, then I'll come grab you. And then I only want to start with what they called us out there for. I don't do the huge inspection to just startle them with the price, but you got to get to know the clients, be friendly. If they offer you an iced tea, sure, I love an iced tea. And smiling's free. Smiling's free, and it's contagious. Yeah, it is. It's contagious and well-mannered. Absolutely. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. No, call me Tommy. All right, Tommy, I appreciate that. And now you use their first name. Hey, Tommy, can I grab you for a minute? Come take a look at this.

And let them be the detective. Show them the good parts, the bad parts. Show them why. Never say things like recommend. That'll kill you. Like, I say, this part's— these parts are no longer good. They're unsafe, they're dangerous. They've used— we've used their, their cycle life already. And, um, and then we start the process. It's a little bit different than I would do on a roof, but the roof, I'm going to spend at least an hour and a half. I'm going to show them what we do, what makes us different. I'm going to show them testimonials. I would have a written notebook. I'd have every single client write me a written letter, and I'd go through and just read out some of the letters with them because no one else is doing that. I showed them some before and after, show them a couple videos, and I said, look, I just want to do it the right way, not the easy way. Here's some lawsuits that have happened. Here's some of the guys in— I'm not— I've kind of blurred out their name because I'm not going to let them— make them look bad. But I'll tell you what really matters to me is not only do we do it the right way, but if you do have an issue, we show up the same day.

And if you do it correctly, you know, I know guys, their average roof is $60,000. In a neighborhood, in areas that the average other guys are $25,000.

Yeah, crazy. Yeah, my, my average ticket size is about $16,000 right now. $16,000? Um, yep, uh, for shingle. Uh, metal roofs, uh, which I do, um, that's closer to $30,000. Um, so, but yeah, I mean, there, there are definitely some, some competitors that I know of, um, that are 40% more expensive than me. And I think they're busy one day. I— what's that? And they're busy. Yep. And they've also been around 20 years.

I bet you the, the one— if I had to ask you who's the number one company in your market, you could probably think of the name, and I'm not going to ask. And I'd ask you who's the most expensive, and they're almost always the same.

Yep, pretty close. Yeah, it is fascinating because you guys are also— you guys are the most expensive in your market, but you're also the best.

Well, I wouldn't say we're always the most expensive because we give the options. And, um, you know, the difference is we carry custom parts and we've trademarked the parts. It's not like other people couldn't get them, but we build a Frankenstein out of the garage door. We don't just give you the factory parts that every other garage door company does. We literally add in all kinds of value.. And you know, if you want something plain Jane, flipping the, flipping the house, we can compete with our competitors, but apples to apples, we sell oranges. And if you can't be different than everybody else, then you're competing on the same stuff. What's the point?

Nope. I think that is the key, figuring out what your differentiation is when a homeowner just expects a roof. How often do you guys get, how often do you guys get, we don't need the Cadillac, we just need the basic initially, right off the cuff. You're like, okay, know what I got. No, all the time.

We get that. And then we say, did you know the garage door adds 268% value? 268. So if you spend 10 grand, you're gonna get $27,000 value when you go to list the home. Every time I go to the casino, if I could put a dollar in and take a 270 out, I'd keep playing that machine. It's 40%.

You never lose.

You know the garage door, Justin? It's the smile of your home. We trademarked that.

That's awesome. That's cool. There you go. Yep.

I mean, I love what I do. That's awesome. And I'd love to be back out in the field. I mean, I, I'm just so busy, but if I had an opportunity to go back in the field for a week, I would freaking love it, man. I miss the days I've even been thinking about calling clients up that we don't close on and just saying like, look, I want to figure out a way to earn your business. Here's the deal. My vendors, they have extra shingles, they have extra doors they can't sell. You find— you— I would go with my vendors and say, listen, the vendor's got this shingle, best warranty in the field, but they actually brought in a new type of shingles. This color is probably not the coolest color they've ever carried. But they're willing to give it to me. If you're willing to do this and you just wanted to get the shingles put on and you wanted a really good roof, I'll show you what it'll look like. I make my vendors play game. Like, they gotta, they gotta play ball with me. Like, if they got 20 doors that are 16 by 7, a 2-car garage, I want to take that list of doors.

And we get a list every day. And the clients that don't want to buy, I say, listen, I got 20 doors that the vendors like mismeasured, uh, wrong color, whatever it was. These are awesome doors. They got the best insulation. 'These prices don't work for you. Let me call them and let's see if one of these will work for you.' Like, I gotta figure out a way to earn their business because I paid for the lead. I sent a guy out there, you know. Make your vendors play ball. Say, 'Hey, do I got another— do you got anything that I could sell that you typically don't carry that's going to give a good warranty?' You don't have to degrade the value or the warranty. Like, sometimes they have all kinds of stuff. Yeah, you know, you go to SRS and some of these places, they have all kinds of shit lying around.

Oh yeah, absolutely. They really do. You're right. And that's the thing I think is figuring out, the more I'm realizing, the more smooth your operations are and the more you understand every aspect of the business, the more you can cut costs that don't need to be costs, which means then your profit just immediately goes up. And I'm still figuring that out. Like every day learning new things.

And so I got some people— the best advice I could give you is I got some people in the industry you could go out and visit. And it's hard to do when you're in business, but if you could add an extra million dollars a year by making a 2-day trip and just— it's hard to do it when you're, you're running solo. But I went and I spent— I probably did 40 trips to go visit HVAC companies, and I was in and out in 24 hours. I'd fly there go with an empty book of notes, walk with it, walk away with a full book of notes, and just learn so much. I learned about service agreements and financing and how to hire and how to do a really good tune-up. And I took all HVAC because garage doors were all losers. They didn't have their shit together. There was no big companies that were doing things the right way. So I said HVAC's kind of got it figured out. So I went to every $100 million shop and they all let me in. They said, you're just a garage door kid, come on out, dude. And I'd buy them And that was how I got educated, is success leaves clues.

So if I were you, anytime you want to meet somebody, I could set you up with some really good people that don't take advantage of their clients, but they offer value and they get to make a profit. Because why go into business if you can't make a great profit?

Absolutely. And that's the funny— that was one of my videos I think you had seen, was, uh, just letting you know, construction companies are not non-for-profits. We're for-profit businesses. But every homeowner thinks like— they're always like, you're making money? And it's like, yeah, I'm making money. This is my job. Like, they almost get offended when they find out we're making money. I just think it's hilarious.

Well, I went to Home Depot and I priced it out and I could do it for this. Yeah, but then you'd have to do it. And what if your, uh, what if your particle board underneath is rotten? And what if this? And what if this? And you know, if it doesn't go right, and think about the tools you'd have to buy. And what good is a better price if it doesn't get done on time, or if it's got a leak? Or there's a great book called, um, It's by Janie Smith. Um, there's one called The Competitive Advantage, and there's another one called Relevant Selling. Read the book Relevant Selling, it'll change your life, by Janie— J-A-Y-N-E Smith. Janie Smith, Relevant Selling. Okay, kind of explains the pricing model. Uh, so if a homeowner—

what I love to do when, uh, when I actually just had one, uh, the other day, an old couple. And, um, for this sake, let's call them John and Mary, right? And, uh, talking to John about the process for the roof, and, uh, and he's like, well, a little bit more than I was expecting. I really just keep thinking about— I know I can do it myself. And he, he's like 69. And I looked at Mary and I said, I was like, Mary, I bet he said that about that light, that he'd fix that for about 2 months, hasn't he? She's like, yeah, because the light was broken. And I was like, yeah, John, I think you need to just let me get this done for you. And just bring him back to reality. And we did. So, but it's just funny when they say that because, you know, in their mind they're like, yeah, good stuff.

I've got a guide that shows all the injuries of the garage door. It's, it's literally 40,000 reported a year, and that only that tenth of them get reported. 400,000, you'll lose a finger, you'll break a neck. Like, this is a loaded weapon with, with 200 pounds of torque on it. I'm like, you do not want to mess with this. That's why handymans don't touch springs, because it is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

Um, yeah.

What, uh, how do you handle the, the homeowner that wants 3 quotes before deciding?

That one is actually, uh, twofold, right? Um, I don't— I understand it as a buyer, right? Uh, but when I set the appointment, if I go there and they have other bids coming and I didn't know that, part of that's immediately on me for setting, setting the appointment wrong. I didn't do enough, uh, research on the call. Um, when I call him, uh, it's Justin, I'm following up with you regarding your request here for an estimate on the roof. Get to talking to him a little bit, and just so I'm not stepping on anybody's toes, have you had anybody come out yet? Um, no, we, we have two more guys coming out, uh, on Tuesday and Thursday. That's actually perfect, I don't have any availability until Friday. Um, would it be okay if I came out on Friday? I, I prefer to be the last guy in. That way they have nothing to say that they're waiting for. But I could be wrong. I know some guys definitely want to be the first guy in because they'll sell on value. And that's great. I— sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I found that if they have less excuses to possibly have being the last one in the door, they have zero reason not to pick me.

But I'm curious to hear you learn from you.

I used to be the same way. Now I'd rather be the first one, and I'd rather— I, I can tell you I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of quotes where they said, I always get 3 estimates, I'm a smart shopper. And I say, of course, that's what you should be doing. That's what everybody that's smart does. But listen, I'm here right now and I want to just really guide you through how this is going to work and where other companies could cut corners. And then I try to build The little things that add a lot. This is what Rodney Webb does so well, is if I were you, I'd have other things like, look, number one, we're gonna replace the boards underneath the drip edge. Number two, we're gonna make sure this is sealed right because this is where we get a lot of the problems. Number three, number four, number five. And then they're like, you know what, that kind of just makes sense, especially if it's finance, because if you get them at a good rate, they're like let's just do that. I could afford that. Because listen, most guys, you're going to spend 3, 4 hours by the time they get on your roof, come down.

Look, I know how important your time is. Let me just figure out a way to earn your business today. And they're like, you know what, we really like this guy. Let's just go ahead and go with him. Let's just go ahead and cancel. And a lot of times I'll say, you know, if you don't mind, who else is coming out? And a lot of times they don't want to cancel because they already set the appointment. I go, look, you already gave me the names, great companies. I'm just going to go ahead and cancel for you.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. What's your close rate?

That's just depends on the lead source. If it's a— if it's an Angie lead, it's about 30% of leads I get a hold of. If it's a referral, upwards to 65%, 70%. But if it's a— if it's a lead through social media, those are actually closing about the same as my referrals, so 65%. Um, but what's been really cool about social media, and one, the networking has been awesome. Like, I can't tell you how many, how many small business owners reach out and just get connected with guys. And a lot of guys that are just getting started out, I don't have all the answers by any means, but I'm just not afraid to talk about the struggles. And so people naturally just are like, dude, what are you doing? I'm just I'm just living, like it's real and let's talk about it and let's not hide it and help each other out. There's enough business to go around. Um, so yeah, but Close Rate, uh, Angie has— is hit or miss though. Um, you guys use Angie too, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I had the CEO at my house last month.

Really? Okay. That's awesome. Um, it seems like I don't know exactly their, their model, but the forms that drive leads in. Some months, like it— like this past month, it's like all of my leads were mobile homes for the most part. It was amazing. I was just like, huh. So like, but so, and you just— and you don't control the quality necessarily. So I think you said in your book, every lead is— I can't remember how you word it. Didn't you say something in your book? Every lead is either trash or every lead is fire.

Uh, you know, for me, at least in my industry, every lead's a good lead because, you know, the only ones that are bad is landlord tenants. Um, you know, they're not the decision maker. It makes it hard. But when I go out there, I used to pride myself on going to the cheapest, worst neighborhoods, the brokest areas, and I just— I know how to get those jobs done and they don't mind spending the money. And I don't Like, look, end of the day, our ticket's not $50,000, $60,000, so it's a lot different. I mean, on those calls you might walk out with, you know, $1,500. Our blended average ticket, including zeros and door sales, is about $1,200. So it's a much different sale. And plus I'm going to people that are stuck, so, you know, it's, it's way different. It's apples and oranges. Um, but, uh, I love my industry. I just, we got to run 28,000 jobs a month, so Lots of infrastructure. If I was doing HVAC and I was good at it, I'd already be doing $2 billion a year of revenue. We're going to do $410 million this year. So, uh, still got a shit ton of jobs.

And, you know, anybody that thinks you're gonna get in the garage door industry, you can make a great living, but it's going to take 10 years. Like, to rebuild this company, you give me $500 million, it would still take me 10 years. Unlimited money, because just camaraderie, building the sales programs, the KPIs. Now with technology, like, the good news is through the podcast and all the speaking I do, people come to me when as an answer. Like, the software companies put me as a priority. They build things directly for me. And yeah, I've got pretty deep access. You know, you've, you've done a lot on social media. What, what made you want to start social media?

Um, I think just realizing that, uh, it's— well, really, actually, it kind of just started out with— it was an avenue being a business owner is lonely. Like, I think you probably, at least in, in the early days when you're in the, the hustle phase, everybody's like, hey, you want to hang out? And you just, you lose friends, you lose people because you're working all the time. And like, I got a wife and 3 kids, and so it's like the free time that I have, I'm trying to spend with them. And so it's like, um, I didn't have really anybody to necessarily talk to, so it kind of became almost a, a video journal starting out. Is what my social media was initially. But then, I started realizing, "You know what? This is where people go to consume nowadays." People still watch TV but primarily social media and we're fighting for attention. And, it's so funny when I go out to a job and I made a video last year, me hanging from a roof and acting like I was falling off this roof. It was a marketing video and happened to go to a guy's house an hour and a half away from my house here.

It's just a random guy that called in. He was an Angie lead. And I went to his house and he looks at me and he's like, "I think you're the guy that I saw a video hanging from a roof." And I was like, "I am." And I pulled up the videos like this. He's like, "Yeah, that's you." I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "That's crazy." And so, that moment, I was just like, "Man, it's so powerful." Because if you can build a presence where people actually recognize you, you're building a brand at that point. You're up and you're not building a job.

I love what you're doing, man. And you just need, if you double down on that, there's a guy, um, Roger Wakefield, follow him in the plumbing, follow that guy. He ranks number one for everything. And he's a YouTube sensation. Um, here's what I want to do, Justin. I want to, I want to play some of your videos, just have you react to them and walk through it. So I'm gonna have Cullen pull some stuff up and, uh, we'll watch, we'll watch a few of them and we'll have, we'll have some fun here.

Sounds good. And then you have to tell me which ones you're— you have to tell me which ones you're going to remake.

I don't know yet. I got, I got some good ideas.

Do you hear sound?

Not yet. He's going to get it coming now.

We'll edit all this out, right?

Yeah, he's, he's going to edit the shit out of this.

That's good, man. This is actually so much fun. Seriously, thank you for having me on. It's always— you're such a wealth of knowledge.

Yeah.

Will you guys happen to send me any clips from any of this that I can post online?

Oh yeah, we'll send you a bunch of clips. Yeah, it'll be great. We're gonna highlight you big time.

All right, now if you get a chance though, do you guys have any kind of— do you do any, uh, you do some TV commercials and stuff or not?

Yeah, lots of TV.

If you guys— your team probably already knows about it, but Suno, which is how I made this song, it's just this AI app that you just type in the lyrics and type in the style, and it's free, and it'll spit out options of immediate songs. And that's how I made this.

So that's great. Let's listen to this one.

That actually happened.

That's so So what made you think of that?

Really, it was just a moment. There was a trend actually going around of people doing that with a text from their wife or their husband. And I was like, dude, we should do this for business owners that get all kinds of crazy texts from their customers. And some of them are just insane, but we get them all. So put it to song.

So that was pretty fun. I'm going to make a good song. Let's do this next one.

Bros, like, you ever miss being an employee? Like, no, I'll never go back to a 9 to 5. I love working the 132 hours a week whenever I want.

132 hours whenever I want.

A little bit exaggerated, but yeah, pretty much, man. It never stops. We don't turn it off.

Let's keep going. These are great.

Welcome, can I take your order? Yeah, hi, I want to do a double cheeseburger. Uh, but can I just get the double cheeseburger for the price of the single cheeseburger? And then I'll do a 10-piece nugget as well. Um, but since the fryer is already on, you guys already have the nuggets, can you just drop in like 6 more for the same price? If I just bring you guys nuggets— buy my own nuggets— can you guys just stick those in the fryer for free? Before I order it here, I want to make sure— can you guys supply me proof that it's real meat in your food? And then if I don't get full after I eat the food, um, you guys give me more food, right?

Or drink?

You mean the drink's not included? I have to pay for that? My grandpa told me that you remember his order in here when he was younger, and he only spent $5 for his meal. Can you guys match that same price? All right. Thank you for the free information. Can you just give me a receipt? I'm going to take it down to the restaurant down the road and see if they'll beat the price.

So good. Oh, man, this hits home, dude. Let's listen to a couple more. So what made you do that? Was just the fact is that—

I think, yeah, a lot of it is service. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's just objections, right? It's the objections we hear all the time. And also just I think what the industry needs is, we talked about it earlier, but kind of retraining customer expectation in minds because you don't go to the doctor and talk and ask for the same things that people ask for contractors. Like no other industry.

You don't go, I'm going to need a few estimates on that.

Yeah, exactly. You're coding and before they zap you, you're like, wait, I got to get 2 more bids. Like, no, if there's a problem, you're going to say, yeah, doc, fix me.

You know, let's go ahead, let's do a couple.

So just so busy, like I've got to hire somebody, like the phones won't stop ringing, the work just keeps coming in, like everything is terrible, no work, nobody wants to buy anything, nobody has any money, I'm gonna have to close. This month is crazy, like I think I'm gonna have to get like 3 more offices and just like expand across the nation. Like, this is so cool. I'm terrible. This is terrible. I'm just gonna go be an employee.

Oh, it's so true, man. When it's hot, it's hot. When it's cold, it's cold. Especially those early years.

Mm-hmm.

I like this blue collar math one.

So you've heard of girl math. Have you heard of blue collar math? This is for you wives. When you ask your husband what time he's getting home, you gotta add 2 2x4s, a broken drill bit, 2 Monsters, 3 trips to Home Depot, an oh crap buffer, equates to roughly 3.5 hours later than what he said, or simply until the job is done. Welcome.

Yeah, and add a couple, uh, a couple Kansas in there.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

We're good, brother. They— hey, listen, you keep making magic. How do you— you just follow trends and stuff, or how do you, uh, how do you stay on top of what you're gonna do next?

Honestly, man, it's, it's— some of it's trends for sure, but a lot of it's just I'm driving and I'm like That's a good idea. I'm going to do that. And I just shoot from the hip on most of it. And I'll throw a lot— like, I'll throw a lot of my ideas. Like, I've got a whole thread on chat. Just anytime I have an idea, I throw it into chat and it remembers it. It's saved in memory. And then I just reference back to that and then kind of build out my idea for it and then ask chat to help me build out a kind of a content map for it, build out a little bit of a script. And so it's amazing, like, what, what AI can help you with. So yes, sir, I love it.

I love it. Well, listen, what's the, uh, what's your goals? What are you going to change this year? What, what is, what is the next steps? What's 2026 going to be?

Uh, well, we're gonna do, um, uh, I think we will actually hit $3 million this year pending we don't get a storm. Um, if we get a storm program, $7 million, very, very easily, just because demand flies up. If a storm comes, that's awesome. But we haven't had a hurricane now in Florida in 4 or 5 years here on the East Coast. So we're overdue, but doesn't look— El Niño, I don't think we'll get one. Biggest thing for me is kind of have a goal to work through the summer. And I'd love to, I'd love to get to a certain number here in the bank for the business and then hire some key hires. I need— I've got another sales guy that's starting, got one now, and then another sales guy that's starting as also 1099 here in 2 weeks, start pumping them with leads and then get me out of the field, out of, out of project management. Sooner than later, but probably in August or September. Um, but that is a hard cost. Sales guys are 100% commission. So there's still an opportunity cost and a marketing cost that is associated with them.

But, um, I don't put them in a truck until they've done a million in revenue or been with me 6 months.

So I like your goals, man. Dream for the stars and, uh, keep making great content, Justin. And, uh, look, I'm always here. I'll make sure Phil gets you, uh, my cell phone number. I'll send you a couple books. I think the, the What Should We Do would be great and Relevant Selling. Um, and I think you need to listen to them because you drive so much. But, um, yeah, yeah, I mean, Will, and then if you ever want to contact, you ever want to go out to a different market, I mean, I know guys in Florida, but if you ever want to see like some of the technology, see what they're doing, see how they're getting leads, um You know, the more I pay per lead, the higher quality it seems to be. And, uh, that's just the nature of the beast. I mean, it's a big industry. I got 570 competitors just here in Phoenix. There's 13,000 garage door companies. So I mean, a cost for a lead for me on Google is about $300 just for an appointment. I mean, so it's not much. I mean, I'm sure on Google you might pay $300, $400, $500.

Uh, so if you, if it takes you 3 to close a deal, It's still not a bad combo. You just got to build that into the pricing. But $1,500, $2,000, not a bad ratio. But you just got to get good at closing, man. And I'll tell you, the bigger you get, the more you can negotiate with your vendors. And that's where you really— the buying power makes a huge difference.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's the thing though, that like you guys are big enough now. Do you have anything you're building out to build out your own um, your own lead aggregates and build out your own lead networks? Yeah. Are we just relying on—

Yeah, we're working on that right now. I mean, there are great companies. The problem is if you get too reliant on those, uh, they just got to be a fraction of the business because I like to own the marketing channel. So if you get somebody that's really good at providing leads, you'll grow with them. I mean, now that we're in 24 states, it makes a lot of sense. But, uh, we do— I mean, look, we spend 4.5 million a month on marketing.

It's so crazy. Yeah, absolutely.

And I—

and is that across—

that's across primarily—

is that paid-for leads?

And by the way, half of that campaign goes to TV and radio.

Hmm.

I want to—

what's your attribution? Which one, which one converts more for you guys?

I mean, radio is the cheapest way to own clients. I mean, if you blast, but I don't own Own one station, own one demographic. A good— you know, if you go to Larry John Wright, my buddy Sam, I think he's one of the best in the business. He's like, this is what it'll cost to own this station, and there's no competition, and this is your perfect avatar. Like, you got to hit the right stations and channels and literally put the money in to own those. And, uh, you know, one of my favorite things is to get an amazing— one of the best sponsorships of somebody that's got a great reputation. And then the first thing I do is go to their house. I mean, I had a guy at my house this past weekend, and I go to their house and we just give them a bunch of free stuff. And I say, look, if any of your clients that ever call up and we don't take care of them, I'll give them 100% money back. And the deal is, when you go golfing with those sponsorships and you take them to a basketball game, they're talking about you 90% of the time for free.

They got all day. They're on a 3-hour program. They're like, dude, I went out with Tommy Mellow, man. The guy's cool. Like, we went out, we watched this, we did this. So There's a whole strategy. I mean, look, they're very cool people. They're very networked. They'll bring you a ton of clients. It just, it costs money to make money. There's this guy I met like a decade ago, and behind his desk said, whoever pays more per lead will win. Because that's cool. It's like, look, if you could afford to pay more per lead, you know, there's eventually Grok and ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude. They're all going to have a paid model. It's going to start at $100 grand a month. And when they do, We're going to be the first ones on. We're going to make a lot of mistakes, but we're going to make them quick. We're going to fix them.

Well, I think that's awesome though, because yeah, SEO is still, it's still a thing, but AI optimization is really, people, people now are going to ChatGPT or Grok and for Gemini even for sure. But, and they're asking questions there like people used to Google and Google's still being used, but I think very much. It's going to migrate that way. And figuring out how you own that channel, like you said, that's the future. That's awesome, man. It is, brother. Seriously, this has been awesome.

Justin, you're, you're a real treat. Listen, anything else? How do people get a hold of you, Justin, if they want to reach out?

Yeah, so check out our website, uh, providenceroofingfl.com. You can shoot me an email, justin@providenceroofingfl.com. .com, or you can call us 407-338-6106 and we'll answer. So yep. Happy. If you're in Central Florida and you need a roof, we're your guys.

I love it, man. Well, look, you're great, brother. I wish you all the success in the world. Let's make sure we follow up and keep putting out the great content. And, uh, just don't make the same mistake twice. That's the best advice. Fail fast, fail often, but don't make the same mistake twice and you'll, uh, You'll do amazing things.

Thanks, man. Yep.

I believe it.

So thank you for the wisdom and the insight here. So it's going to be pretty, pretty exciting to continue to build. And maybe one day I'll be at $100 million, $200 million like you very soon.

Easy, easy peasy. Those are small goals. Dream a little bigger. Yeah, I appreciate you, dude.

Awesome. All right. Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you, guys.

Take Take it easy. it easy, brother.