Mike Goldenstein – From Roofing Contractor to Tech Entrepreneur – The Future of Roofing Sales & Technology

And most difficult was not outworking your problems.

I took it to his house and I gave it to him because I could directly attribute

12 jobs to him. He knew that I went through that help and he was so happy with

the end result. He told every single one of his neighbors,

and every single one of his neighbors said,

if that guy can get a an a recommendation from him.

We're going with him. I'll always remember I was eight or nine years old

and and my dad had told me to change the tire on the bobcat.

You know, I could barely lift these things or I had over-tightened

it and actually broke the stud.

And like I'm nine. So I didn't break it.

You fix it. And so when you're grow up in a situation like that,

I mean that it it tests you, right?

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Today I am pretty excited. I have Mike Goldenstein with me.

Mike is a seasoned veteran of the roofing industry in a number of different facets.

He owned and operated his own roofing company for a number of years.

He has worked on the manufacturer side as a manufacturer's rep.

And now he runs Roofal, an online platform to assist roofers

in the roofing industry. So Mike,

I'm really excited to dive in and

learn from your wisdom, your experience,

and learn a little bit more about Roofle and what it can do for us.

So thanks for joining me. Yeah,

it's an honor to be here. And and yeah,

speaking of going from the ground up,

man, this is this is gonna be that story of of starting from the ground

up to to have a career that has now spanned what ~ thirty four years

in the roofing industry for me.

man. Well congratulations and w we can dive right in.

I like to start every show, ~ getting to know a little bit about your childhood.

What was childhood like for someone that grows up to start a roofing company?

So I was growing I grew up grew up in rural Iowa on a on a hog farm of all things.

So for those of you who ~ know me as you know Golden Stein,

sometimes I think I'm Jewish and I'm well I am on I grew up on a pig farm,

so

If anything, I can be your favorite Jewish pig farmer and people find

the the significance of that. But yeah,

I grew up on a farm really in the middle of nowhere in northeast Iowa.

Closest neighbors were about a mile away.

~ number of ~ sixty people in my kids in my class,

graduating class, I think maybe seventy or eighty people that lived in

the town that I grew up in, but I didn't know any of them because I was

so far away from that town that it was in a different school direct district.

So really it's it

It was just a very free childhood,

adventurous, but we always had work to do.

And that's kind of where, you know,

you hear that about kids that grew up on farms,

that's what we did. And so that track into entrepreneurial ship really starts when

you're, you know, six, seven, eight years old when you grew up in those kind

of a situation. Yeah, I know ~ Harvard did a study

I was gonna say two or three years ago.

It's probably closer to ten by now.

I lose track of stuff all the time.

It's all the same. They did a study really trying to drill down to what aspect

of childhood, what trait, what part of your home life was most closely tied

to success later in life. And you know,

they looked at where you live,

the type of family you grew up in,

all kinds of things. And the the greatest determining factor to success later

in life.

was kids that grew up with significant responsibility.

They had chores, they had a job,

they had somebody depending on them early on.

Those were the people that grew up to really succeed later in life.

And ~ I think the the farm farm life,

the ranching life, I see that again and again just anecdotally in my life,

the the kids I knew that grew up that way,

man, they they know how to get it done when they become adults.

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Yeah, whether it's hard or not,

right? And I I'll always remember I was eight or nine years old and and

my dad had told me that I was I had to change the tire on the bobcat.

And you know, I don't know, I've never changed the tire on the bobcat before.

You know, I could barely lift these things around and and he had set it

up and and as I was tightening up the bolts,

I had over tightened it and actually broke the stud.

And ~ like I'm nine.

You know, and and ~ so, you know,

he's angry and all the kind of stuff and everything that goes along with that,

but he refused to fix it. He said,

I didn't break it, you fix it.

And so when you're grow up in a situation like that,

I mean that it it tests you, right?

And you and you think what do you mean fix it?

Like I don't know how these things work.

He just told me to tighten the bowl,

I tighten it, you know. And ~ but you know,

i I can give you, you know, story after story about,

you know, these situations I put myself into and there was no easy way out.

You broke it, you fix it. Or go outside and do this.

You know, and that's w that's all you have to go on and you have

to figure out yourself whether it's fixing a fence or,

you know, rebuilding a shed that got blown over in a strong wind or,

you know, hey, we gotta re roof this,

you know. Okay. I mean, it can't be rocket science,

right? People do this all the time.

So you go out and just try and kind of fix it.

And when you do that for, you know,

eighteen years by the time I graduated high school,

I mean

Nothing was a risk anymore.

Yeah, I can relate to that. ~ I didn't grow up on a farm in the farm life,

but my dad was very involved in search and rescue and then running

a roofing company. And man, me and my sister,

we had big responsibilities at a young age and and there's big trust,

you know. If if you didn't do what you were told to do,

someone was gonna get hurt bad.

It it wasn't just, you know, sit here and play toys.

It was you know, you gotta pull the lever at the right time or you gotta

not push the button 'cause somebody's gonna get hurt if you do and

I think growing up with that level of responsibility really ~ prepares

you for adulthood. I'm always looking for opportunities to do that with my own kids,

but I'm not nearly as good at it as my dad was.

I mean, and that can be a double edged sword too,

you know, and ~ I do also like to tell the story 'cause I when I ~ by the time

I was fourteen in in Iowa, you know,

they had to you can't get your license till sixteen,

but at fourteen you could get what they call a school permit.

And everybody lived in rural and so you could drive to the to the school and

~ but you know, again, the entrepreneurial spirit was already well eng in

in and and you didn't have a talent,

so it's not like you were spending money.

So I had a fair amount of money sh saved up and so I bought my first car.

I was barely fourteen and my dad is also one that does we we had to go

get the best deal possible. So we weren't gonna go to the to the the actual,

you know, you're you already know which way I'm gonna go.

And you don't go on Facebook Marketplace,

they hadn't even invented the internet yet.

So this is you know, this is this is

late 80s. And so we drove all the way down to Leaves Summit.

It was like a four hour drive and to pick out at a car auction because

he had a friend. You know, we all have friends.

We know somebody. And they had a dealer license and they could buy

it directly from the car auction.

And so here we are in Lee Summit,

Missouri, looking at cars. I find the one,

we're bidding on it. Lit little did I know it's a stick shift.

I'd never driven a stick shift before.

And so as we're buying, I'm getting in and my dad

Takes off. He's like, We'll see you at home.

I was like, I I don't know how to drive this thing.

He's like, Well, you bought it.

You figure it out. So I'm driving it around the the parking lot just

to try to figure out how to drive a stick,

and then drove it four hours home.

And I tell that story because that's how I was raised.

Well, by the time I got to college,

this would have been, you know,

about six years later, kind of like the girl.

And she, you know, I had a truck by now,

and it was also a stick shift.

And so

Have you ever driven a stick shift before?

And she hadn't. And so I said,

Let's come on. I'll I'll teach you how to drive a stick.

And you know where this count this conversation's gonna go because I got

her in the driver's side and and and she's like,

I've never driven a stick. I'm like,

Yeah, but it's you just push in the clutch,

you pull it out slowly, feel the contact patches kind of feather it in

and and you go. And like, no,

no, you have to tell me how this works.

I'm like, No, you just do it, just do it.

To this day, like to this day I know that she does not know how to drive

a stick because she was so angry at that experience because she was so humiliated,

and especially being out in the campus and trying to get her to just

to drive it around a little bit and in front of front.

Like it was humiliating to her,

but I'm like, I don't know how else to teach you,

you just do it, right? Yeah. To this day she doesn't know how to drive a stick,

and I know it because she did end up becoming my wife.

But how do we, you know, these these experiences and what we were taught,

how we were taught, how we live life,

become part of us, and myself as a as a teacher,

trainer, and manager later on in life,

I have to keep going back and saying,

just because that's how I learned might not be the way that you're going to learn.

And how are we going to be successful together?

Because there are all kinds of different personalities.

And we all learn differently and we teach differently.

But we do have to get along if we're going to build this thing called a business.

Well, I guess that brings us up to college.

You mentioned that you you went to college.

Can you tell us a little bit about your education?

Where did you go to school? ~ what did you go to d school for and what impacted that

decision?

Yeah, which is interesting because when I when I was heading off when

I was making that decision later in my high school years,

really only looked at one college,

it was Taylor University. Was actually talking about that this week as I took

my my fourth child, my youngest daughter,

is now just finished up her freshman year at Taylor.

And thinking it back on how God brought that decision to me because I that

was the only school that I even ~ applied for.

And

w upon getting there, I I wanted to be I really was pursuing ~ computer science,

which is you gotta remember this is 1992.

Nobody even owned computers back then.

You didn't have a personal computer,

most people didn't. I didn't get my first personal computer until after

I'd graduated college. ~ I did love coding,

I loved technology, I loved this whole thing of building things electronically.

But I didn't love the dungeon.

That's what we called the dungeon.

It's where all the computer lab was and there was no windows there and

you would sit there for hours in coding.

I I kinda liked the coding, but I didn't like being in that room.

So after about two and a half years,

I switched my major because I was doing a minor in Christian education.

I ended up making that my major and dropping the computer science entirely.

And

Meanwhile, about a week after I graduated high school,

ready to go to college in the fall,

I also didn't have a summer job lined up.

And ~ so I contacted my uncle who also owned a roofing company.

And so I went on the road, living out of a suitcase,

hotel to hotel, traveling around the country putting roofs on salt domes.

And so that was my summer job for basically five summers

was roofing.

So by the time I graduated college,

that I went there for a computer science degree,

ended up with a c a Christian education degree.

But meanwhile, I I was then by that time I talked about it,

I got asphalt in my blood, and I just never could get that out.

And to this day, ~ thirty-four years later,

I'm still in the roofing industry.

Yeah, I have a close friend that says most people don't go into roofing.

You wind up in roofing, but once you get here,

it's not a bad place to be.

Yeah, it's it's it's kind of like the Waffle House.

You don't go there, you end up there.

So roofing is kind of the same thing.

Yeah, yeah. So y you mentioned that you guys were traveling the country roofing salt

domes. That that sounds like kind of a unique system or a unique application.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, they were they were built on tall concrete walls,

usually between eight and twelve feet,

depending on the dome.

~ could be thirty feet across,

could be, you know, eighty to a hundred feet across.

they could be very, very large,

but they were built in triangular sections.

So when you start at the very base of it,

it's about a twenty-one twelve,

if not steeper. And then slowly as it goes to the top,

it gets narrower and narrower to the very top where it it's about about eight twelve

at the very top of it. And that could be ninety,

hundred feet in the air. And

So we were carrying bundles all day every day.

We would start before light because it starts getting hot.

You know, if we were in Kentucky or St.

Louis or Wichita, Kansas, or you know it,

you name it. We've been in ~ December,

January during breaks, I would go and we'd be in Minnesota or or New York.

I'm like, hey, can we switch these over a little bit?

I'd rather be in St. Louis in December and in instead of Ely,

Minnesota. but that's kind of where we were doing we were hand nailing

Shingles, three tab shingles, two salt domes.

~ we would cut hip. And I don't know if do you know if cut and hip,

I know if you're you're a commercial guy.

I don't know if you cut hip on asphalt shingles before,

but these three tabs, you would cut the hip and ridge.

Yeah. you would have to do that by hand.

We would cut anywhere from twenty-five to thirty squares of hip on each dome.

That's ninety.

You know, anywhere from sixty to ninety bundles of hip had to be cut.

And so it was very manual. You mean your hands were bleeding and I mean

it was just there was nothing sexy about this lifestyle.

But it did get me into roofing,

did get me nerdy about, you know,

the the trades and certainly taught me the value of a of a hard day's work

and the value of just the satisfaction at the end of the day and going,

That's what I did today. man. Yeah,

that's

That's a lot of work. especially on steeps like that.

And yeah, I I don't envy that.

So through college, you're working for your uncle doing mostly the salt domes.

What happens when you when you graduate?

Did you immediately start your own company?

Did you continue working with him?

What did that look like? No, actually kind of it's so I got married right

out of college. So met met my ~ wife in college and then ~ so moved to Minnesota.

That's when I started ~ in Minnesota in nineteen ninety seven.

~ we did get married in February.

So I was in the yellow pages looking up every roofing company going,

I have nothing, I own nothing.

I I have a a pile of ~ college debt,

as does my wife. So let's get working.

And ~ so went through and and found a couple of roofing companies that would take

me on to you know, at that point it's in the middle of winter in in Minnesota,

so really the only thing available is is gonna be new construction.

But

You know, you you start your own company is what you do,

and you sub contract to a to a company.

And I did that basically for the next three years.

I did get a job as a youth pastor during those times.

And so I kinda did both of them,

one to kind of support the family and one to ~ you know,

my passion really was I did love being a youth pastor at those days.

~ and then in two thousand is when I started my own company as,

you know, getting license, doing the whole thing and then being the boss.

~ and I did that full time.

For the next twelve years. Okay.

man. So what was that transition like going from being a you know a subcontractor,

kind of just providing labor to actually starting a full roofing company?

Was that a difficult transition?

Yeah. So I appreciate that question because really it was not.

To me, it was so natural because again,

nothing is a risk anymore. Like how many times that I had been growing

up that I don't know.

Just go do it. Like I'm watching people do it all the time.

It can't be that hard. And so from my background,

it just was kind of my second nature to just do it.

Just go ahead and do it and see what it's like.

And if you fail, you fail. Not a big deal.

You know, figure it out and redo it or or do something else.

And so that was probably one of the easiest things to do.

And as you start picking up things along the way,

like it's really understanding the first time you get sued,

you know, and the first time that you had a leak,

you know, I'm like, I

There's and and you're the one that's responsible,

ultimately responsible, even so even though you didn't do the work necessarily.

And you you have all of these growth moments,

but the fact is the risk that it takes to take that step was probably

the easiest part of the whole thing.

I was 35 years old the first time I received a check from an employer that

had taxes taken out of it. Like,

what is this?

Magic. Like, where did my money go?

You know? Because I had been a s I had been self employed my entire life

and you know, and and so actually getting license and going through the process,

which Minnesota's a very highly regulated state,

having to do it in the right way,

was not a big deal at all. It really was kind of this is this is this

is the next phase of my life. ~ All right.

Well well, you said that

That getting started step was pretty easy.

What was the most difficult step?

the most difficult step was not outworking your problems.

So everything that I did, you know,

when you come up to a problem like this this house has a deadline or,

you know, the sun's going down,

there's a storm coming, like everything in every,

you know, we don't have the money to to pay the bills right now.

The answer to every problem was work harder.

And

That was the hardest thing. Again,

my so being newly married and then kid one,

kid two, kid three, kid four, you know,

you only have so many hours in the day.

And my choices in those days were to work harder,

work harder, work harder. And it really throws off your your work life balance

if there is such a thing. So that was probably the hardest part.

And then really understanding the way that I was doing it,

because in those days there wasn't the training.

You don't have access back in then.

You didn't have

all the events, the RoofCon, the you know,

the IRE, the, you know, the manufacturers that are bringing in speakers.

And you really didn't have any of that stuff.

That network of of information was not available.

You didn't have your Chuck Tokies or your Anna Bensmans your John Cenax

of the world back in those days.

And so you were literally in reinventing your own wheel,

which is great, unless you're the personality of me that was more of

the really the blue collar. I do it myself.

I work harder. I'm working

you know, 14, 15 hours a day installing most of my own jobs.

You know, I have crews working with me,

but it was not scalable. We were making good money and I was very

it was comfortable living and and it really got me a lot of a great base of where,

you know, even set me up to for today.

But it it was it looked a lot different twenty years ago than it does today,

that's for sure. The entire roofing industry does has evolved significantly.

yeah. Yeah. There's so many resources available now.

It

like you said, different conferences and podcasts and people willing

to do trainings and coaching and just the the feel of the industry.

Back then it it was pretty cutthroat.

You didn't talk to other roofers because they were your competitor,

you know, and yeah. Now it's a a very welcoming industry,

I think, where most contractors are willing to help somebody out,

help their competitor. They're they're interested in

raising the bar in the industry as a whole rather than just landing the next job.

And ~ it's been really interesting to watch even in my tenure in roofing that

~ I feel like it's changed a lot.

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Now we do talk about that a little bit because it is regional.

That that what you're just talking about is regional.

And so Minnesota, they don't mind sitting there,

they're very educational focused,

the contractors are, and they don't mind sitting in a room with their competitors

to learn the, you know, the best practices.

And you go to Kansas and they don't.

Like it's hard to pick get contractors to be together.

Chicago is very difficult. You get to Ohio

Columbus is very easy. You can get and Atlanta is very open to doing that.

You get down into Texas and they don't either.

Again, in the coasts, they don't.

So there's different pockets as to where,

you know, where do you feel you rank or your role within your competitors?

Sometimes it's like, I ain't giving them a time of day.

I refuse to, you know, and and and you're just

always a competitor and then there's science other just the culture

of the contractor in that area says,

no, I mean rising tide raises all ships,

you know, we're we're good. I mean,

anything that you can learn, I can learn,

we learn together is only going to make the industry better.

That's a regional thing to me,

in my estimation. Yeah, I could see that.

I guess I've not been as involved at that level.

It just seems to be a trend I'm watching.

So I could definitely see that being regional.

Yeah. So you mentioned that you were a youth pastor for a long time.

That was kind of your passion and roofing was the job that supported that.

Did you step away from the pastor job about the same time you started your

own company there in two thousand or how did that line up?

No, actually ~ the most so I was a youth pastor from basically ninety seven

until two thousand six, at one capacity or another.

So some that some of it was full time,

some of it was part time. ~

But it was it was about two thousand six is when my fourth child was on

the way and I was doing, you know,

nights and weekends with the church and my days were were with ambassador,

which was which's the name of the roofing company that I had.

And I was like, something's gotta give.

And so I gave my sixth month notice.

I said I I have to be full time at the church or full time at the business,

like 'cause I just I don't have I don't have it enough to to do both.

And

Unfortunately, the church wasn't in a position to be able to bring on

a full time youth minister at that time.

And so I went ahead and did a full time with the company.

But then, you know, I still volunteered a lot with the church,

probably too much still, you know,

because we still attended the same church for for several years after that.

And but yeah, you know, and one of the things that I and I do enjoy talking about

those years because ministry is not easy.

It really isn't. And and especially in the youth ministry,

you know, I I did come across,

you know, those

those parents that are just very difficult.

You know, it's you're you're you're ministering to their kids and and

and my wife talks about it. She she took some classes at Taylor,

you know, about being a coach's wife.

And she would always talk to me about kind of that she's the coach's wife because

people aren't always very kind.

Even inside of a church, they're not kind and and conflict resolution

is a real thing. And I thought that more than my roofing company

My years as a youth pastor prepared me for what was coming with my career

at GAF when dealing with angry or,

you know, upset customers, whether it's distributors or contractors,

my years as a youth pastor premier prepared me for those in that conflict resolution

much more than my history as a roofing company owner did.

That's interesting. That's ~ probably not an application that most people would

expect, but I can see how that would probably be beneficial.

yeah, and and and then just kind of piggyback on on that,

I did recognize ~ you know, ear later on in as I was,

you know, picking up ~ those days of GAF were very entrepreneurial as well.

They basically threw you a set of keys and said,

Grow market share, make your p plan and grow your engagement with your contractors,

go. And so, you know, you make your own decisions.

~ during that time. And and one of the things that I recognized was,

man, I wish I had access to these tools,

or I knew that I had access to these tools as they were getting more popular inside

of GAF culture. And so that really is was the the cry of my heart at that point

was to say, this is the type of sales rep that I want to be,

is I want to bring this value and saying,

hey, there's a better way. You know,

let's simplify this. There's a better way.

We want you to be successful. And so that training and educational piece to it.

I wanted to be their best advisor inside of their company,

inside of their business, and then grow the market that way.

And so I would double down into understanding the business growth piece

of it and and bringing those that educational piece of it.

So then when we started seeing like the when the storm come and,

you know, some more of these trainers,

educators, even influencers as as social media started growing,

I kind of leaned into those because it was just making my job better.

Yeah. And my customers' lives better.

Okay. So you you've kind of transitioned here in your story from running

a roofing company now to working for GAF.

What did that transition look like?

Why make that change? Yeah, I used to joke a lot,

you know, in it it I'm gonna be careful on how I say this.

I thought that it was too easy being a company owner.

I'm like, listen, as long as you have a nice truck,

you

wear a collared shirt to your sales meetings.

You brush your tooth in the morning.

You already separated yourself from your competition.

It was a rough industry in the late nineties,

early two thousands. Yeah. And but it was maturing and I you know

I could notice that. But there was a desire that came back to me and said,

man, and and I also turned 35 and my physically my body was just not

re I would still work a twelve or fourteen hour day.

you know, heavily physical, but I just my body wouldn't recover the next morning.

I was still it was hard for me to get out of my truck at night.

It was hard for me to get in the truck in the morning.

So physically I was breaking down.

So there's there's a lot of things that were going on at same time to say,

you know what, I think it's time that I would like to see a transition.

And was very grateful to be able to transition into an organization like JAF,

which is a, you know, multi billion dollar organization like that.

I don't take for granted, you know,

what that opportunity

looked like and how that happened and how that transition transaction actually

happened, a transition actually happened.

Quite quite unique. Okay.

And so what was your role then at GAF?

How was that structured and what did that look like?

Yeah. So it's I enjoy telling this story a little bit too because

~ in my territory, so my territory manager in in the Minneapolis area

got promoted to regional. And

So when I learned of that, you know,

I called him up and said, Well,

who's taking your job? And and I not didn't really even understand what that

job was. I mean, I knew him, I knew Jim well,

and you know, we were good we had become good friends.

And ~ and then Lance,

who was his partner, also got promoted at the same time.

So they went from ~ hiring one to hiring two people replacements

in the same territory. So then I'm thinking,

all right, this is cool. I really want this job.

And then ~ I didn't get either one of them.

So they hired two other people.

And it that was I remember driving home from a job and just exhausted and and like,

you know, that's when all the doubts and,

you know, I really thought this is where God was leading me.

I kind of felt like this was, you know,

but now that it happened and I didn't get it,

I'm really feel like those feelings of self doubt and and depression,

you know, kind of start setting in and

and really started affecting you.

And but about four months later,

~ I got another call that said their composite decking division is looking

for a ~ an employee. And so I put my name in for that one.

Like I I mean, I I built a few decks in my day,

but you know, ~ it's not roofing,

but you know, maybe I can get in my foot in the door.

And so I took that job and and that was my foot in the door at GAF.

And that's when I was started traveling.

My territory became

I was hired for like Minnesota and Northern Iowa.

And when I went to their national sales meeting like a month after I was hired,

my territory was basically Minnesota,

Iowa, all the way to Seattle. And I remember taking making that phone call

to my wife and going, 'cause I had four young kids at that time,

like, this is gonna be a beast.

And ~ but you know, that only lasted nine months because now nine

l months later they did they

Close down that division of the company and the number of calls that I

got from ~ the other guys on, what did you do?

So I tell you, all I do is break stuff.

That's my job. So I broke the composite divide decking division of GAF,

just so you know if anybody asks.

Well, that's something you can be proud of.

A little a little feather in your cap there.

doubt there's many people that can ~ claim responsibility for that.

Well, it was like two thousand ten,

two thousand eleven and the economy had crashed and they were trying to,

you know, trying to pull it back up.

But, you know, the composite that it's a that was a,

you know, high end product and the sales were just not there to support it.

And I think GF was probably looking at an acquisition and then noticing,

you know, the books on you know if you're acquiring somebody,

'cause there was a couple of companies that were for sale that were competitors that

that would have been good acquisitions,

but you know, the margins on that are just

For a manufacturer. So I think they went from,

hey, we really want to get into this,

double this down, and grow this to wait a second,

best case scenario, we're at those margins.

No. And they ended up instead of dumping more money in and growing it,

they cut the entire thing. And so it took us all by by surprise.

And by Christmas time, I was a week away from losing my job and like

I didn't know what I was gonna do next.

You know, my go back. I mean, it's only been barely a year.

That I've been out of and my company no longer exists.

Tried to call some distribution.

Maybe I'd do that. But and then about a week,

like it was between Christmas and New Year's,

a job did open up that I didn't even have to move.

I got slid into the roofing side of things,

which is roofing side of GAF is much more stable than the composite decking side.

So let's put it that way. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure that was a a scary experience.

And so it sounds like when you

Shut down your roofing company,

you just shut it down, you didn't sell it or pass it off to somebody else.

You know, it's again, that looking back,

you know, it's kind of interesting because that would most people are like,

that's ridiculous. How you could have sold that,

you could have done it. Because it was at that point it was a twelve year

old company. You know, surely it's worth something.

But in two thousand ten, the the landscape of the industry wasn't like that at all.

~ there was nothing really valuable to sell because there weren't really systems

and processes that were involved.

I was the company and I can't sell myself,

especially if I'm exiting. And so I did contact a business broker at the deal

at the time, and we put it on the market,

but there was no takers. Like there was no book of business.

It it wasn't it wasn't a mature business nor a mature business business.

environment exteriors just wasn't that in in in the 2000s.

So but like today, I mean, now the company is what,

26 years old. Of course I haven't done anything with it for 15,

but you know, you think about that.

What what's a what's a 26 year old roofing company worth today?

you know, it's a very different landscape today than it was,

you know, 20 years ago. Yeah. And I know you mentioned one of

the things you struggled with the most was solving problems by

not just simply working harder.

And that you spent a a good portion of your career,

you know, out of not only doing sales and running the company,

but out on the roof with the guys as you got towards the end of your time there,

did did the company mature past that?

Were you more of a business owner than a business operator?

Were you able to step up to that next level?

You know, not not really.

And and I don't really regret it either.

It's just, you know, my my level of attention.

It might have been ridiculous,

but it was there. You know, one of my sales pitches is I know where every nail

is going on your roof. I'm not one of those that just sells the roof

and then I don't see you until I'm collecting the check.

I was on every one of my my builds and you know,

my attention to detail was was to s such that it that's that's that

was my personality and that's how I did stuff.

And, you know, would I be able to just do it because but you think about this too,

but you think about the big names in tech.

Today, the Acculinks, Eagle View,

Hover, none of that existed when I when I actually closed down my business.

Like I'm telling you, this I don't even think data forma might have been around,

maybe in those days. You know,

so when there really wasn't a way to have a you know,

you would have to really be a ~ pretty astute businessman

and be attracted to the margins in that those days.

~ for roofing, which just the the margins weren't there back in those days either.

So yeah, it just it will it yeah,

it's just it's one of the things that that's one of the things I enjoy talking about

~ the most is because you know between ninety seven I was there when

we started using pneumatic nail guns.

Like I was pan nailing shingles and I'm like,

look at this thing. It plugs into air and you're gonna like there's

so many changes that have happened over the course of 34 years.

And

You know, but at the same time,

these changes are coming faster and faster and faster and faster and faster

to where now there's more that happens in a year than would happen in ten years,

you know, f in the nineties. Absolutely.

And I'm a a a little bit younger than you,

a little behind you in your career.

But I I grew up in the roofing industry and ~ I remember that.

I I remember sitting in rooms where the debate was

you know, can can guys really do as good of a job with an a air nailer,

you know, ~ hand nailing's gotta it's still better and there's a

lot of resistance to that. And ~ I know my dad and I both struggled with kind

of the the same thing. We were very attention to detail,

wanted to be on the job, wanted to know what was going on and even with some

of the technological advances it was difficult to get

off of the roof, get off of the job site and start really working on the business.

Yeah. Even some of the functionality stuff that like now you have to have what like

where do you put this monstrosity?

Like I'm way faster shelling nails with a hand with a with a hammer,

but now I got to figure out where to put this big old thing.

And not only that, but I'm dragging this hose back.

Well not only that, I got to buy a compressor.

Well not only that, it's got to probably have a motor because I can't just draw

it off the the

power in the house. Like there were so many complexities that this technology

brought. It was easy for your dad and I to go,

it'll never work. Yep. Yep.

I remember having all of those conversations and you know,

okay, maybe you can put nails in a little bit faster,

but but you're going to lose that time when you you got to set that thing down

and your hammer goes in your pocket and you know.

yeah. man. And now we're looking at these complex

CRM systems, these instant estimators on your websites where homeowners can come on,

put in their address. Now they have a quote.

Now you're automating a a text message or a phone call or or emails to them

to do this the and then you're entering them into a cadence to where,

you know, now you're continuing this and it's all generated by AI

and you're sitting there going,

dude, what happened to the hammer and nail?

Yeah, I want to go back to those days.

You mentioned that that technology is speeding up rapidly.

The changes are coming so fast.

It is just a a vastly different industry.

Do you see it going too far?

too far. Well, I don't you'd have to define what too far is.

I think, yes, contractors have to adapt.

They have to adapt. Now, what is too far?

So, you know, is it farther than your comfort level?

Is that too far? What's too far?

Too far for your homeowners. I think,

you know, your your consumers are always creating the demand.

You know, as business owners, the hardest thing for us to do is we've created this.

thing that's ours. And we want it to perform the way that we've created to perform,

but we have to stop, separate ourselves from that entity and and

put ourselves in the shoes of the consumer and say,

How can I fit your need? What do you what do you and then you have

to decide whether you want to or not?

Because some of them are like,

I just want the cheapest price possible because I'm leaving,

I'm selling the house and I'm out of here.

You know, well, you're probably not my person.

You know, whatever. Whatever the scenario is.

But the fact is we have to listen in and

adapt to the consumer demands and then also really understanding where the tech is,

you know, giving us additional efficiencies and effectiveness.

Because where there's tension and where there's inconsistencies,

that's where technology comes in and starts solving problems.

And you can't just turn your back on it and go,

it's not important or I don't want to go there.

Because somebody is going to go there and they're going to just take all

the j all your work. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point and a good way to look at it.

So ~ so in in kind of our storyline here,

you shut down your business, went to work for GAF,

they eliminated your job, you're a week away from losing your

job right before Christmas, and finally get into roofing,

which is where you wanted to be to begin with.

~ what what was your job at GAF and ~ how how long were you there?

Yeah, I ended up being there for twelve years entirely,

you know, for the entire experience.

~ right away I was in North South Dakota.

That was my territory. I did it from the Twin Cities.

So I would I I always remember I was so excited because the cars were always

a what was it, a Ford Escape,

which was just too small. You know,

I'm driving this all around in the middle of winter in North Dakota.

And then we we were able to, you know,

we had a good year and they kind of opened this up and they gave out gave

us an explorer, and the explorer was a much nicer vehicle.

larger went through snow better because again,

North South Dakota here, right?

I'm going up to Williston, you know.

and ~ but I only had it for a year because you you had to turn it in once

it hit 85,000 miles. I put 85,000 miles on my company vehicle in one year.

I just was a I was ~ I took my job very,

very seriously. And and again,

you take that from from when I was a kid,

six, eight years, I was I was comfortable when I was working.

That was my safe spot.

Just the family dynamics that I had were a little bit unique and and I always

I felt safe when I was working and I just that has always carried it through,

you know, you don't ha Mike, you don't have to work that hard.

Like I I get it. Yes I do. You know,

this is how it's gonna be done right,

you know. And so so two two years I think we're spent in North South Dakota

and then I got promoted to the Twin Cities and I was here for eight years.

Grew this market share significantly.

It went from about a thirty million dollar market to a hundred million dollar

market. ~ and then I got promoted to national accounts,

was there for a year before exiting and then joining a Roofle.

And I know there is a portion there we were chatting before we hopped online here.

You even ~ slipped over into like Montana and Wyoming and we found out we have

a a few common contacts and ~ a few friends in common.

So that was a again, maybe not quite the

two thirds of the country that you were covering with decking,

but a a pretty large area that you covered.

Yeah, and you know, and these relationships have continued to grow,

you know, and and that's one of the things that's that's really been

my favorite part of it is being a connector.

It's one of the greatest joys I have in my life.

And you know, you need to meet so and so.

And and ~ even you and I, we met because Chris Zimmerman said,

hey, you should give Mike a call.

See if you do it, you and these people that we're meeting around

the country are fantastic people and and and I've been

Appreciated that. And I've got a MacArthur that's two miles,

mile and a half, two miles from my house.

~ who again, you think about this,

like today still remains great friends and we do stuff.

Like I I've always relied on on Terry.

I like Terry, she's she's fantastic.

she saved me in two thousand eight because they opened up two miles from my house.

I'm still a contractor.

The largest hail storm that in my lifetime,

I know everybody thinks, two two thousand seventeen was the biggest hailstorm

in the twin cities. Wasn't even close.

Two thousand eight was. There was a shortage of materials everywhere,

but they had just opened up two miles from my house.

So I had opened up and I'm like,

whatever. I'd never heard of you before,

but I'll I'll open up an account because I'll probably pick up ice

and water shield or vents or whatever.

I really like my guy, who at the time was United Products.

Well

When this massive storm and we had a lot more national guys in those days flooded

the market, I got cut off at my main distributor.

My rep came to me like, I'm sorry,

Mike. I mean, you're my largest account,

but you don't rank. I mean, he was said it nicer than that,

you know. But the fact is, I I I lost my way of life.

I could not get materials in 2008,

except for my little MacArthur that's two miles from my house.

And Terry said, When do you need it?

And for that entire summer I never missed a delivery for the entire year.

She she saved my career, you know.

My ~ that was that was my only,

you know, source of income with my family.

So so that's MacArthur. And then I know so then when I started traveling with GAF,

I I thought I loved going to MacArthur because I've got this connection,

you know, and meeting with John down there and traveling with him and we're having,

you know, these three, four, five,

six hour drives down into Wyoming we're talking about John Piper and and ~ and old

old school theology and and ~ you know he he's got a brilliant mind and

you know but you you bring all of these faces and people and places together over

the course of time and you just keep having all these intersections

and it's been really a joy to be a part of of this this ~ this roofing industry.

It's been been fun. Yeah.

Again, you going back to what we were talking about,

I guess you said maybe more regional,

but even when I started my roofing career a little after you,

it seemed very cutthroat, very closed off.

And yeah, in the last decade or so,

it everybody's just kind of opening their minds,

talking a lot more, a lot more welcoming.

And ~ i I feel like that's shifting.

I've I've had a few talk to a few other people in roofing that are like,

Man, if if you're looking to get into an industry today.

There's no better industry than roofing because there's so many people willing

to help you, so many connections to be made.

And I love that. MacArthur was our primary distributor when I was in business,

and ~ they're actually a sponsor of the show.

So our listeners will hear an ad from MacArthur if they're listening

to this podcast. I have I have lots of similar stories where it's

a big enough company to really serve your needs,

but small enough that every customer matters.

You you don't hear that answer of you're not a big enough account.

You know, it's it's your neighbor,

it's your friend, it's somebody in your community selling to you and they make sure

they take care of you. So Yeah,

and and and you have the same rep.

Like I like the people, the same people that have been there when I

was a contractor are still there today.

And they have watched me from man,

I they remember me when I was opening up in two thousand seven.

they saw me and I was I was their rep for eight years when I was

~ territory manager here with JF and then now watch me and making fun of me for

you know, all the shenanigans that take take part when I'm traveling around

the country for Roofall. man.

Well that's a great segue. I know where you're at now is Roofal.

That's kind of a a passion and an exciting thing you got going on.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

How did you wind up at Rooful and what is it that makes you so passionate about it?

Yeah. So I had a contractor in town here in the Twin in the Twin Cities area.

They were always i very innovative as a company

They were doing virtual VR in 2015.

And some people are like, that doesn't really make sense.

~ you know, may not resonate. Guys,

they were doing VR in 2015. Nobody was doing VR in 2015.

And they would have a homeowners association come into their offices,

put on these VR goggles. They paid tens of thousands of dollars for this.

You know, again, now we pay 800 and we're like,

that's expensive. Tens of thousands of dollars for this equipment.

And they would have the association president and and their the group,

anybody who wants to, put on the VR goggles and walk through their association

and see their new window siding gutters roofing.

That's how they sold to multifamily.

Crazy stuff. Like they would just,

they would, they would sit, the executive team would sit down and go,

What's missing? How can we grow?

How can we innovate? Where does this industry need to go?

And a couple years later, they were sitting there again having that conversation

and said,

What's missing? What's nobody doing?

What's nobody looking at? And they said e-commerce.

When is e-commerce going to hit the roofing industry?

When is a homeowner going to go online,

put their address in, get a price on their project,

and decide within however and what does that process look like?

Decide to have a roofer come out and do their roof.

And it's about 100% online. And so they created Roofle This would have been right

about two 2020, about five years ago.

And ~ so they figured this out and they built out a ~

an entire website and they became a roofing contractor that was

a hundred percent online and e-commerce platform.

So homeowners would go online to Roofle,

which did not exist. They didn't have a permanent location anywhere.

They were in eighteen states and ~ and homeowners would come on and then,

you know, at any point they could hit talk to a pro and then somebody would come

on and they would go through the sales process and they would sell the house.

And that

Roofle would not see the roof in person until they came out to tear it off

and put a new one on. So it was 100% e-commerce.

Well, about it two years into that,

they were being so successful and growing so fast that ~ other contractors were

looking at it and their the demand started coming.

We need your website or build us one.

You know, we need it, we need access because clearly this is where

the industry is going. And that decision was made then,

I think it was like May of 2022,

that

They said, okay, we're not going to be a roofing company anymore.

They shut that down entirely, became a SaaS company.

So it was a we're a subscription technology that embeds on a contractor's website.

So they can basically have many of the components that we had as

a contractor put that on their website so that they can help bring this.

Because again, what are we doing?

We're putting ourselves into the shoes of the homeowners and because

the homeowners are the ones that are creating the demand.

This is how they do well life.

Why should roofing be any different?

You know, and so that that's where it came from,

which then became interesting because they they I started with them

in October of twenty twenty three.

So it'd be about six months after they had made this transition.

And then they launched two weeks later.

And what was fun about the entire experience,

and and we sit back and I actually had a conversation with ~ with Travis,

he was the CEO. when we were in that day,

we we we launched it at RoofCon.

Big booth. Nobody had ever heard of Roofle.

And when they came to it, that was what was fun about it.

Hey, have you heard of Roofle?

No. Well, we are an instant estimation software for your website.

And blank stairs, because people didn't know what that was either.

Like we've literally created a segment of the industry that nobody

had like say that again. You know,

and so over the next three years,

building this, building the brand,

doing the marketing, getting adapted.

adoption and then watching adoption not just from the contractors,

but you have to find adoption from the homeowners as well.

Because how many homeowners, and you've probably seen this too,

things that you're like, could you can you really get a price like this?

Or is this just a gimmick bait and switch where you're promising me a quote,

but all you just really wanted was my information.

We've all been through those funnels too.

So there was a process of adoption for even consumers to trust

this process that you are going to actually get a price with

a value proposition with it because that's important too.

I'm not I don't care who you are.

You don't buy price. Otherwise we'd all still be thriving geo metros.

You know, we want, we want to know what this entails,

you know, so I want my warranties,

products, good, better, best. I want to,

I want to understand this whole process.

And ~ so that's why we created it.

And this is why we're seeing such explosive growth to the point where,

you know, we were able to be so desirable that we were acquired in December,

which was barely past our three year anniversary of launching the product.

wow. So what did that acquisition process look like?

Have have things changed at Roofle?

~ what what was it like as an employee coming through that?

Yeah. So ~ depends on who you ask.

So it takes about a year or it took us about a year.

So from one of the the point where,

you know, started those negotiations and I was not much of a part

of that whole process. So if you ever want to have a conversation that'd

be entertaining, ask Travis. He was the CEO at the time and ~ he's

a VP of operations now with the new company,

but the amount of time and work and effort and you know,

like and you know this because you went through probably a similar situation.

How long did it take for you to Yeah,

I was gonna say mine ~

Mine was a good year and a half.

we ended up we we started down that path with two ~ different private equity

firms and and got right to the finish line with one of and finally ended

up doing an internal sale to one of my employees.

But it it took me a year and a half going through all the yeah,

and it could be brutal, right?

Because you're doing all of this stuff while trying to grow and scale

and and and run the company as well.

So that's where

We we but we had really we went we go above and how do I say this nicely,

like we were very intentional about the culture that we were putting together during

these three years so that we had the freedom that that Travis knew that

he could go work on his stuff and he knew that things were getting taken care

of behind him. So but yeah, it was a you know,

~ Kimmy and between Kimmy and Travis,

they pulled off a majority of this process and it's not easy.

Not everybody can do it. And so so I think I do want to kind of talk about it.

What's that? Sorry, I was gonna say I think I read a statistic.

I guess I didn't look at the raw facts.

This is an internet fact, but ~ sixty five percent of businesses that

try to sale never do. And it's it's just what you talked about.

It's such a process to go through the the legal investigations,

the quality of earnings reports,

the my gosh, it's just months and months and months of legal and accounting and

stripping down your books to we had to account for every penny forty years where

it went, what it was used for,

how much we actually made, where are the checks.

~ yeah it was a process. And that process is very different from a tech company

as well. And so that was even crazier.

yeah. You guys got a your infrastructure,

your software, does this actually do what it says it can do?

Or do you just have a fancy website?

Yep. Yep. Learning all learning a whole different

vocabulary because it it everything is everything is happening.

And like even it's you're not looking at EBITDA,

you're looking at you know, your annual recurring revenue numbers and your churn.

Like what's churn? Like there's all these things that you had to learn

in three years. And again, remember we're a bunch of roofers.

Like yeah, this is the executive leadership team for a roofing company that said,

hey, let's do this. And they put together this team and and frankly that's what what

I was ~ driving and talking with Travis again yesterday.

And we do this fairly often. Sometimes you just stop and have to think

you know, the team that we put together,

~ how it was done, the intentionality,

we we paid attention to every little detail from how do we treat customers,

how do we sell to customers, how do we treat our salespeople,

how do we treat our success, a customer success team,

how do we build this thing so that it is perfect,

you know, and I don't think we could have done a a better job cumulatively.

Like every single person that was part of the team had a role.

We truly loved each other to be able to to to have something that is a

a a high performing culture that is very respectful and and acknowledging that

we all come to our jobs, you know,

because there is still, you know,

this whole thing of work life balance.

And we all come to work ~ with baggage too,

you know. And so how do we how do we put all these pieces together and just have

a spectacular experience? And we really did.

To the point where we st we talk about it and say,

This is that we truly built a a unicorn.

as much as I would love to do it again,

I could work my the rest of my life.

Now I'm a little bit older, so it means a little bit different coming from me,

but my boss is I don't even think he's forty yet.

He could try this again a hundred times and not have the experience that

we had at Roofle. It was it was it was a unicorn.

It was perfect. That's incredible.

Like you mentioned, we've talked about a few times.

I think the industry is changing and the modern roofing industry,

there's an incredible amount of professionalism.

There's fantastic people. It it's awesome.

But like you pointed out, I mean,

back in the nineties, it was kind of a cutthroat industry and and roofers earned

a poor reputation for good reason.

There it was a rough industry and man,

a a standout in the roofing industry,

like like you said, I love that brush your tooth.

this morning. So yeah, if you ~ if you said let's let's gather up a team

to build an incredible SAS tech business,

a a tech platform, a bunch of old roofers is probably not but the misfits.

Yeah, that that's not that's not the A team.

That's not your first round draft pick is a bunch of roofers.

So that's awesome. Yeah.

So it's it's it was a it was a magical experience and and ~ so yeah so

now the part of the new company and and ~

I I describe it like this because I do have a lot of friends who are part

of the private equity roll-up.

Private equity in the roofing industry,

it's a big, big deal. And ~ a lot of my friends are we've been walking through this

this path together for for fifteen years or and I'm watching them.

~ and and one of my good friends is Reggie Brock.

I don't know if you know him. Yeah.

We're we're just crossing pads all over here today.

We got Chris and John and MacArthur and Reggie.

Yep.

So Reggie's a dear friend and and has been for ~ a number of years.

And and I was telling him yesterday,

I said, you know, this any kind of private private equity sale is one

of the unique experiences where you go through the divorce first in hopes

for a honeymoon. Because you have the death of an identity.

You really do. Like Roofle does not exist anymore as a single entity.

And as much as we want to hold this culture together and we're doing everything that

we can, and we did everything we could to prepare for this day.

And it doesn't matter if it's us or a contracting company or roofing or whatever,

but we're always seeing more and more reports of,

you know, since private equity took over,

blank. Right. And there's part of me that says,

I refuse to believe that that has to be the case.

As long as we can acknowledge that these times are going to be hard because we've

well, yeah, we've lost our identity,

but we're gaining a new one. And for every negative,

we probably have five positives,

but we have to build on those positives and keep those in mind.

It's coming.

You don't start with the honeymoon.

It would be nicer if we did. You actually start with a divorce where it's

the death to yourself. You're kind of the death to the company who's buying you.

And then there's this rebirth.

And then you look forward to the honeymoon.

I mean, that's really the goal.

The hard part is, and we just have to acknowledge it,

is getting through that divorce without too much collateral damage because frankly,

that that is the hard part. That's the biggest challenge is how

do you keep everybody together?

during this divorce and rebirth.

Yeah. Yeah. So ~ what has that looked like at Roofle?

And is especially you mentioned you weren't a big part of

the the transaction itself, but more keeping the company going while that

was all going on. What has been the most difficult thing for you as

you went through this transition?

I mean, on a personal level, ~ I'm not I don't know what to say how to say it,

but ~ I go through those same things.

I have those same self doubts.

I I'm going through the death of my identity.

I was I was kind of a very frontal piece.

I was a big part of Roofle. I was a big part of their story,

their go to market strategy, their business development.

I was a big piece of that. And I may not be that big of a piece of the new company.

And I have to come to grips with that.

I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a salesperson.

I'm driven to success. I want these high performing organism,

and I might not have the say. They might not be asking me questions anymore.

I'm just, I'm not that guy. And I have to come to terms with that.

I have to be at peace with that.

so personally, I go through the same thing and that every other person

at both Sales Rabbit and Roofful and Rooflink are going through.

Like they've we all go through the same things.

~ and that's kind of where I I kind of pull Reggie back into this because

we have been Reggie has been mentoring us as a as a ~ Roofle for years now,

three two to two and a half years of our three and a half years of existence.

And, you know, every week we meet with him and and he prepares us for these things.

And and a lot of it has to do with authenticity,

you know. Let's let's be real with each other.

~ let's

Let's make sure that we know that tension is going to exist.

We know that collisions are going to happen.

There's going to be personal friction.

Let's make sure these collisions happen in the parking lot,

not on the freeway. You know, let's keep a little the collateral damage down.

But, you know, let's figure out how to do how to work with each other.

And then and then how do now we have to enter and we're not now

our family just adopted a great big family.

So now how does how what those what are those dynamics going to look like?

And ~ and we have to do that.

in a in a way that we're creating ~ a better

and a new and a healthy culture on the other side of it as well.

~ because the last thing we need to do is is,

you know, having weird competitions and and ~

you know it it's it's not easy.

It's just not easy. ~ yeah. But it is rewarding to get on the other side of it.

Well I

I admittedly did not I didn't know a lot about Roofle coming into this.

I knew a little bit about you and your background.

I didn't know a ton about Roofle.

And so the more I'm learning, I've kind of got this ~ this internal conflict

of we talked about I'm e even though I might be a little younger,

I'm kind of that old school roofing crowd of man,

ha hand nailing is better than an air nailer.

Like there's the right way and the wrong way and the new way is the wrong way.

You know, it was very hard for me to kind of let go of that.

being in the field on the roof doing the work myself.

But I'm very much the tech guy.

In in my personal life, if you can buy it online,

there is no way I'm walking into a store to get it.

Like I love the simplicity. I love online and the tech.

My part of my education is actually computer science as well.

That's something else we share in common.

But there we go. So just hearing your story,

I'm I've kind of torn here of like

Wow, what you're doing here at Roofle is is so cool,

so revolutionary. If I was buying a roof for my house,

I want to get on your website and use it.

But then the roofer part of me is like,

but but that's not the right way to do it.

So I I I I see maybe a a similar tendency with you.

what has that been like coming from kind of the old school roofer that

did it the old school way to now running a a tech company that is at

the the cutting edge of

Kind of the new technology in the space.

Has that been a difficult transition?

Is that something you've had to reconcile kind of in your own spirit?

Yeah. So I absolutely have to reconcile this,

right? Because and I'll tell you a really specific story because I was in

I was in Rapid City, South Dakota,

meeting with ~ a Master Elite there,

and he was actually training his guys to go

out and drive by the house. And if you saw the car in the driveway,

just keep driving.

What we do is we leave the estimate in the in the ~ mailbox.

Don't talk to him. No reason to.

And I I'm looking at it and go like,

where's the value in that? Like what so you're saying that all you want

my customer to see is a price.

That's it. And so I started making bets with him because I knew it was better.

You know, so I said, Tell you what,

I'll be back here in in

Three weeks. And in that time,

I want you to do, and I gave him very specific things to do.

And I would train his sales guys to do it.

And we got rid of that process.

You're like, no, you need to hand it to them.

But here's the thing, other thing I need you to do.

I need to do across the board,

add five dollars a square to your price every single week.

So when I come back here, we're gonna look at your books and I want you to

be $15 a square more expensive than you used to be.

And we're going to tr we're gonna track a few different numb numbers.

We're gonna track your sales, your close rate,

your profitability. And I'm going to challenge you as to whether or not this

was a proper way. You probably know the end of the story.

The guy, ~ his his wife ~ was in tears when

I was because she was very much in the bookkeeper side of it.

So when I was asking him, the the whole story started because I said,

How much do you make on an average job?

And he told me it was like five or six hundred dollars.

And I said, It

Looks to me like you're at about somewhere between fifty and eighty-five dollars.

You know, and he got mad,

stormed off. She started crying.

She said, You're right. Cause you're seeing these big checks come in,

right? And they're coming in and he was one of the larger ones.

So it was always a lot of money coming and going.

He didn't realize he was not making nearly as much money as he thought he was.

And ~ anyway, so we started this process and and it was super successful.

So now let's forward let's fast forward.

Now, what did I just do? I'm joined a group that's just giving a price online.

Just put your address in, we're gonna give you the price.

So, how do you reconcile two vastly different aspects?

Well, so two things that you have to think about.

Number one, and you mentioned it,

this is what I want. But just because you want it doesn't mean I need to give

it to you because that's not how the world works.

However,

You also have to understand when I was teaching this guy how to do it,

what didn't we have? The internet.

The access to information now becomes the conduit by which you give your value

proposition. So, especially with the younger generations,

how do they value truth?

Where do they find truth? And then,

and then number one, like this is what I wanted to say:

is how do people trust?

contractors these days. Where does that trust come from?

How do you build trust? It looks a lot different than it did 15 years ago.

15 years ago, I came to your house,

I sat at your kitchen table, we talked about what we had in common.

We gave the value proposition.

You were in those days, and this is a stat,

is you were 20% of the way through your decision making process.

I as a salesperson came to your house,

gave you your your bid, and got you that 80%,

the rest of your 80% until you were 100%,

you signed the contract and we did your work.

In 2026, you are as a consumer 90% of the way through the decision-making process.

And how did you get there? Well,

through the process of going online,

looking at the contractor's website,

you see their about us page, you see their certifications,

you see their warranties, you see the all this value,

value, value, value, value, their you know,

the reviews. Are you local? All of these things.

And now you get a price to this.

But if you're not getting those questions answered,

guess what you're doing? You're going to the next contractor.

Yeah. And so everything has changed.

So yeah. Am I giving a price?

And my answer to that is I hope not.

Because if I'm giving you a price,

I want you to also see my reviews.

I want you to see my trucks. I want you to see the people.

I want you to yeah, it's going to be at 10 o'clock,

11 o'clock, midnight, but you're seeing it on my website.

I'm

Developing that trust, I'm giving you that value proposition.

It's just done, just done online rather than in person.

Now, does the transaction though,

and is e-commerce really the true?

Now we can start getting into and dicing this up.

Is e-commerce really going to come out of this?

My answer to that, I don't know because I think it's going to look a

lot like the automobile industry.

Is Carvana taking over the world?

No, not really. People still want to go.

Now they're doing all of their exploration.

Online, but they're not actually swiping a credit card to buy a car necessarily.

Carvana has what eight to ten percent market share,

something like that. They still want to drive that car just to make sure this

is what they're really looking for and and wanting to do.

I think roofing is going to continue to be like that.

They want to know all the information.

They want the price. They want to be able to shop,

you know, your options. Do you want a good,

better invest? And good, better invest,

which one is the most popular?

Well, they want all the information.

But ultimately they're going to end up doing that transaction in person.

Okay. That's an interesting take.

And yeah, I can relate to a lot of that.

Of yeah, I I love the used car.

Like you do all your research online,

but you still want to go see it,

feel it, touch it, talk to somebody,

hand them a check, just putting a credit card number in online.

There's some purchases that just doesn't feel right.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you're at that initial stage,

like

You need a new truck. Hey, honey,

grab the kids, put them in the car.

We're going to the dealerships.

And you're going to go to dealership to dealership to Julie.

You're going to spend a whole Saturday just to try to look at inventory.

What are you doing? You're looking for the exact same thing that you have

at the end of your fingertips.

You know, nobody's going to do that.

So that's why I take ~ regardless of if you agree with me or not.

The fact is, if you want to continue to be that used car dealership that

has no digital presence on online,

guess what's gonna happen? You're waiting for that guy who wants to

get the peop kids into the car with his wife and go dealership to dealership

to see inventory, guess what? You you you are going to cease to exist.

I'm sorry. That yeah it i that's what I was gonna say,

you know, Carvana might only be eight or nine percent of the market,

but

your average used car dealership down the street is point ~ one percent

of the overall market like eight percent of an entire market that's a

big market ~ if if Roofle could own eight percent of the entire roofing market

that's a win that's a big market and and that's an asset that people need

to be offering. Yeah. So really the the idea is that in in used

car markets ~ ninety-five percent of the

Process of buying a car for a consumer to buy a car,

95% of it starts online, 85% of it ends in person.

And that's kind of what the what we're telling the contractors as well.

So a roofing contractor who's a subscriber for Roofle,

we actually white label this, embed it right on your website because

the the homeowner has to deal with you,

not with us. They have no idea who we are.

So they come to your website, put your address in,

see that.

Now here's what most people miss.

They are also consuming 66 pages of content before they make a final decision.

66 pages of online content. Most of the time,

when I'm asking that question in a group of people,

they're saying one page, we have the attention span of a guppy,

you know, one page, half a page,

two sentences, whatever. You gotta remember they're watching videos.

They're watching, they're reading your reviews,

they're looking at a lot of things,

and because they have access to a lot of things.

So they're making their decisions based on all this information they have,

which is why 95% of it starts online,

but I think about 85% of it is still going to end up in person,

which is why you want those, you know,

not just getting that lead from your from your technology on your website,

but also doing the follow up to be able to secure that appointment

in order to finalize that contract.

Yeah.

It's a both and not an either or.

Right. So yeah. Awesome. Well,

that sounds like a great tool.

I guess my last question about Roofle is when is it going to

be available for commercial applications?

So it is already it is already and we do have some subscribers that are doing it,

but most people are, you know,

the the big chunk of our subscribers are doing it for single family because that's

that's where the, you know, homeowners are driving their ~ traffic

to the website and yeah.

It's a homeowner experience. Yeah.

Where we're seeing in commercial,

it actually works better for commercial than it does for residential,

frankly. Really? But okay. Well,

because it's a lot easier. So we have the ability to get number of squares pitch

and complexity in less than three seconds.

Well, we already know the pitch on all the commercial buildings.

Like it's it's flat, right? Here's where it's tough is that you're if own

a a large warehouse space, it's got a flat roof on it.

Am I going online and doing a search for

Roofer near me.

Maybe, but probably not. Right.

Yeah. So now where our subscribers that do a lot of commercial,

what they do is they will set up their their because you get,

you know, up to eight different options.

So if if you're doing flat roofs,

I want to give you a TPO, an E PDM,

a coatings option on a repair option.

So that business owner can put their address in and see,

okay, so I can do this and get an E PDM,

a TPO, a PVC.

at a coatings. And so now I have that ballpark price.

Generally speaking, what we're seeing though is in those applications

is they are actually calling their ~ contractor of choice.

So you would actually equip your inside sales rep or they're inside

any of your workers. So when a call comes in,

hey, I'm looking for a a estimate on this thing,

well hold on a second, get your information and then send it to them before

the phone call's over.

Okay. Again, homeowner the like the business owner that's got this warehouse doesn't

know is this a thirty thousand dollar roof or a three hundred thousand dollar roof?

I have no idea. Gotcha. And if I'm doing coatings,

maybe it's, you know, ~ a thirty percent of that cost.

But like there's a lot of information,

but I just want to know, get me started.

Help me get started. I I can I afford this now?

Do I need it in the future?

Okay. So it's more that getting in a ballpark or rough estimate rather than

a a firm, okay, I can click by,

put in my credit card number and be done.

Right. Yeah. Because in in commercial,

I don't know how many, you know,

I don't know how I don't know how many ~ refrigerator devices you have up there.

I don't know the metals that, you know,

the the trem metal. Exactly. That was the you know,

commercial gets so varied and ~ do you have four roofs up there already

and we gotta tear it off? Is it wet?

Are we talking new insulation package?

structurally sloped, tapered insulation.

You know, there's so many variables that you really can't.

Yep. But what if I can help eliminate some of those variables in

a way that's understandable to you,

Mr. Building Owner? We can do this on a quick conversation in the middle

in the midst of fifteen minutes.

Can I come up and and I need to just verify some of these variables for you?

Now it makes a lot more sense.

And what did I do?

You just earned my trust because what are you not doing?

You're not giving me a well, I'm not gonna tell the price until you and

I have a conversation and I waste three hours of your time.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. I can see some value in that.

So well, I w I wanna roll back and ~ you know,

you yeah.

Been in ministry, you've worked as a subcontractor,

you've owned your own business,

you've worked as a manufacturer's rep.

And now at Roofle, you just have a vast array of experience and knowledge,

kind of all in the the roofing industry and in in leadership

and dealing with people. So I want to tap into that a little bit today.

What advice would you have for a young person looking for a new career that that

wants to do what you've done, that wants to pick a trade,

an industry, a field, and just kind of advance and keep going?

What would be your advice? Education,

fields to look at. You know, when when your kids are headed off

to college or graduating high school,

what advice do you give them? ~ it's such a great question.

And yeah, and I do have ~ five kids.

So, my fourth one is a is a freshman and I just went and took

her to she's volunteering at a camp this in the off season.

My other son is actually he's in the middle of taking his MCATs right now.

So he's he's he wants to be a

Doctor. So yeah, my kids are all over the place.

I've got it. My oldest is a ~ is a roofing salesman for a local company here.

~ and my other daughter just graduated with her master's degree last weekend.

So they're all over the place,

right? Here's here's the point though.

What I I love about it is we have always encouraged ~ their effort,

not their results. So our kids if you know,

I don't care if they got a C or an A plus.

~ if they didn't do any work and they got an A plus.

We still encourage we we still celebrate the effort,

not the result. And when I look at my youngest,

I don't who knows if he's gonna go to college at all,

but he will always be a lifelong learner.

And that's number one. Always be a lifelong learner,

and that doesn't necessarily mean college or junior college or high school.

It doesn't matter. And I feel like when I learned the most in my life to where,

yeah, so you could go on Building Experts Institute.

Sounds really fancy.

It's an online course. There's it's all on code compliance.

I teach this class. I didn't learn that in college.

I learned that because 20 years ago I was

~ sued for $450,000 when I was just a one man entity and I was pretty scared.

And what did it make me do? It made me dive into

the manufacturer's installation instructions,

the pro field guide and code, and defend.

my processes of installing a roof assembly.

And so I dove into that stuff and I owned it,

right? And I I owned up to and then end up,

you know, there was it was basically it ended up being a a pretty frivolous lawsuit

that I had no problem getting away from,

but it's it was scary because this is my lifeline.

This is this is what I built my I gotta I gotta hit pause here.

And how do you I mean I'm assuming this is a a roof on a personal residence.

How does that end up being a

four hundred thousand dollar lawsuit.

Yeah. So I was doing a lot of new construction.

This would have been like two thousand two,

two thousand three. And I was still doing a lot of ~ new construction in those days.

So it was a it ~ it was a I think it was about

a thousand square between eight or ten ~ buildings,

something like that. Okay. So it it wasn't one homeowner,

one home. It was like a a subdivision that you're doing for a G C or something.

No, and it gets and he and this is good stuff to talk about,

right? Because it wasn't even something that they saw in my roof.

It was actually a I think it was like a three million dollar lawsuit against

the builder. And so they sue everybody that put a single ounce

of effort into this project. What was really at issue in my understanding

of it was the depth of the driveways and the privacy fence that

was installed that they didn't like and they wanted three million dollars

and so they sued everybody.

Everybody that did anything. So this is the politics of owning business.

You know, the joys of being a business owner.

So I get served papers and I open this thing up.

I'm a twenty eight-year-old that's got a three-year-old company that I'm still

up on the roof installing every single day,

and I get sued for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Like what do you do? Yeah. You know,

I've got I've got a two-year-old and a six month old at home.

And

So it took me back. I like, okay,

let's go back to the basics. Let's let's get everything I can.

And basically, you have to become your own attorney.

And so yeah. Through that process,

I I kind of figured it out and I was able to like mark a lot of stuff.

I took it to my attorney. ~ again,

it wasn't a big deal because what happens is they you have to give up your

so this is Minnesota. We're a highly regulated state,

and so I had to have, you know,

my insurances. So in the insurance company.

is the one actually getting sued.

of course there's limits to this,

you know, so I'm scared anyway.

But my attorney calls me. I come in,

I have this 40 page document demanding four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,

and I have a pro field guide and installation instructions in the code book

all marked up that's addressing all of their 30 or 40 page document.

And the attorney looked at me and said,

picked up the phone and fired his expert.

Said, this is way more thorough than I could ever done.

And he allowed me to sit in through the entire process.

So again, what did I do? I learned through that entire process because

I heard every conversation, every back and forth.

The judge came in, ~ you know,

as they were doing all the demands.

And and it was that that really said,

I am a lifelong learner. I am going to not just say what I think is true,

I am going to find out what's true and I'm gonna defend it in writing.

You know, what are the published and approved installation instructions from

the manufacturer? Because it matters.

Yeah. So I need to know what those are.

And and so that kind of springboard that.

So be a lifelong learner and is number one first and foremost.

And secondly, is is be a connector and for whatever however you want.

And and to me, that's about loving people.

If you don't like love, value people,

doesn't matter. I've never regretted having a relationship with somebody.

And I was talking to my son, my oldest son,

who

Called me last night. He was so excited because he's a he's a salesman

for a roofing company during the during the year.

And dad, I got invited to apply.

He's going to and he's got all these certifications.

He's like his his his life love is racing cars.

And he has the opportunity to maybe,

and he thinks he's gonna get it,

become a coach, a driving coach for exotic cars during the wintertime.

Tell me that isn't the coolest thing ever.

Yeah. That's awesome. Are they taking applications?

Right, right. So, I mean, it's a long process to get to this point,

but here's my response to him.

This is literally last night. It was like 10 o'clock at night.

I said, Peyton, do you remember how this started?

Like he's got this organization that has invited him to be part of this experience.

And he and I were on a retreat,

a men's retreat with our church.

And we were sitting there talking about,

I don't know, with a group of guys,

and I started making fun of this guy's shirt that was

Again, I'm a I'm a roofer. I'm like,

I'm this idiot, but it was had racing cars.

And I'm like, and I and I made fun of his shirt because it was something racing that

I didn't understand. And started,

but I started up that conversation.

And as my son was sitting next to me and this guy that I we'd never met before,

and we went back and forth, and turns out it's his father in law that owns this this

organization that does these things.

And and then they connect, they s they and this was a year and a half ago,

they connect.

exchange numbers and they've been talking for a year and he has been helping

my son throughout this last year and a half get to a place where he now

has a very reputable experienced log that he can do something like this.

I said, if I hadn't said anything about his sweatshirt at this men's retreat,

we would never know about this thing even existing or that we have a

you know put these pieces together.

So I don't care who you are.

If you're in high school, you're in middle school

I don't care. You're even if you're in college or not in college,

maybe you're in a dead end job.

Every conversation matters. Every conversation matters.

I was I was at an Owens Corning event and talking to this guy,

and I didn't know who he was. I and but we started making I'm again,

I typically I'm the guy that's just making jokes or making fun,

whatever. And

We were started talking about tech,

and I've so I kind of clearly this guy's from tech,

and we started talking back and forth.

And he asked me, I can't remember the question he asked me.

But I said, That's a really interesting question.

I got I got dead serious. And I said,

One of the joys of my life right now is I'm working with a team

and we're watching the success of a tech company.

We're a bunch of misfits, but we love what we do,

and we're very connected uniquely to each other and to the industry.

And we're watching it. And I'm telling you right now,

this thing doesn't happen without this exact group of people.

These this team is the only way to do that.

I said it's it's a surreal experience I've never experienced before.

And I watched him and he actually got emotional was like,

I swear I saw a tear. The guy was from E ~ he was from Acculinx.

Yeah. He's been there.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

He was one of the founder, not he wasn't the founder,

but he was like, I think he was like the fifth,

sixth, seventh, who was ever ~ employed there.

And he started, he told me his story of when he was there.

And he said, Acculinx never would have grown

if it not just that you had people there,

but you had those people there doing those things with the skill set that they had.

And ~ it's a rare thing, but it's it's just it's so much fun.

You know, when you start collaborating at that level and and feeling that level

of experience and and that level of success.

And ~ and those things only come from connections that you make

and relationships that you make and people that you invest in,

whether they're deserving of investment in it or not.

You know, I've never regretted having a relationship with somebody.

That is some fantastic advice,

and I can

Tell you, I have regrets sitting on the other side of the table.

I've kind of always or when I was younger,

I discounted the value of connection.

There are times I looked down on it.

they only got to where they're at because of their connection.

They didn't work for it. They that was handed to them.

They had an opportunity nobody else had.

And I just I put my head down.

I'm the guy that when I get on the airplane,

instead of talking to the person in the seat next to me,

like, you know.

Hat on, headphones in, clearly communicating.

I don't want a conversation. I'm gonna watch my movie.

Leave me alone. And the older I get,

the more I live life, the more I see the value.

It's not that you don't still work for and earn it.

You know, you have to do the work.

But those connections are just invaluable of just

Connecting the right people. And I mean,

even just us talking today, the the the mutual connections,

the mutual friends, people and connections make the business world move.

They make the world go round. And the more you can connect,

the more relationships you can build,

the the farther you're gonna go in this life.

And that's something I wish I would have done a lot earlier on.

I kind of had to I'm just gonna do my own thing.

I'm gonna put my head down. I'm gonna work hard and I'm gonna let my work speak

for itself. And, you know, people are gonna recognize my work and

You know, there's value to hard work,

but there's a lot of value to relationships.

Yeah. So I i you know, you say you you never regretted a relationship.

I often regret that I didn't build more.

So that's some good advice. Sometimes the harder ones,

you know, and I I learned that one early on.

You know, I was doing a a project and and the guy was ~ he was so hard to work for.

I mean, he was he was in the front yard,

sitting in his yard in his lawn chair.

You know, yelling and watching every single thing.

He went up, ~ and I swear he had a magnifying glass,

making sure every nail was exactly right.

I think I went up there and I'm and I mean the guys were just furious with me,

but I said, No, you do what he says and 'cause he would look and he if he even

saw a nail underneath a shingle,

he would and we took out dozens of shingles and replaced them at

his I remember coming to my my wife and like this it makes me want to quit.

Like I just want to fold the business.

I never want to have an experience like that in for the rest of my life.

I'll tell you less than a year later,

Home Depot was running a sale for ~ and this is in the days when they were starting

to come out with these really cool battery powered ~ tools,

tool kits. I think I got like a 11 pack or something like that.

Yeah. I could I saw it, you know,

it was like five or six hundred bucks,

but it was on sale, you know. I'm like,

This is awesome. I bought it. I bought one.

I took it to his house and I gave it to him because I could directly attribute

12 jobs to him. Because he knew that I went through that hell that

he put me through. And he was so happy with the end result.

He told every single one of his neighbors,

and every single one of his neighbors said,

if that guy can get a long get a recommendation from him,

we're going with him.

And so, you know, it it is. I mean,

the number of times that I want to burn a bridge because they're hard to deal with,

or I don't like ~ or they're mean to me,

or they're they're not ~ doesn't matter,

whatever reason it is, man, just keep you can.

Absolutely. It's your your choice.

You can burn that bridge, and maybe sometimes you should.

~ not saying that you shouldn't,

but I don't. And there's most times I just refuse to.

And I think I'm better off for it.

I agree wholeheartedly and I know I've actually reflected.

I think some of our best customers,

our raving reviews, are not the jobs that went perfectly.

They're the jobs that had problems,

but we handled it well. And it's stepping up to that challenge,

stepping up to do things right,

to love people. We had five core company values.

That was the first of our company value was we love people.

So when you love people, take care of people,

serve people, when you do the right thing,

even when it's hard, sometimes that speaks louder than doing a job with no problems.

Yeah. It is funny. I yeah,

so ~ one of my side projects, another thing that I just like I started doing just

because I I I think it's because I enter entertained myself,

which is kind of a a a bad reason to do stuff,

but I just do it. ~ that's why I started doing my Facebook and post social media

stuff. And about

Two years ago, year and a half,

two years ago. ~ we hired a a gal,

Tara, and we ~ and she's she's actually good at it,

you know. And so ~ she I was her supervisor,

and so you know, I was encouraging her to do more content because

and it just everything she did just worked.

And but it's like everything else.

Like we we all have our insecurities and we all have these things.

I can't really do it that way.

I get and one of the things that we joke about a lot is like

Tara, you just don't really like people that well,

do you? I don't. I r I just really don't.

You know, and just being real with that and encouraging her in that.

And ~ we we did again, it was this morning,

yesterday, two days ago, having that conversation.

I'm like, Tara, are you you're kind of loving people now?

I mean, is this kind of a thing?

She's like, I know, I really am.

And she started talking about how much her life has changed over

the last six months. She's like,

I just I like people, you know,

it's and ~ that kind of stuff is reflected in,

you know, even as silly as as social media can be.

People respond to authenticity.

People respond to, you know, everything from the kindness to the silliness

to the humor to the seriousness.

And, you know, when you put yourself out there and especially if you're being

a little bit vulnerable, specifically,

I think she took a screenshot and said,

Other girls post my post and hers had such a hideous look on her face.

Like it just caught her at a weird moment.

And she's like, that's funny. And that became the cover of the video that she did.

and I and I and I I I responded to her.

I said, I bet you you're going to get a lot of people,

girls like contacting you,

whatever, maybe in person or if you're at an event or or in DMs or something saying,

I resonated with that. I saw your courage in that because I feel pressured.

I have to look a certain way all the time.

And because I yeah, because I think her text was Terra's text was,

This is my biggest fear. And here I'm just broadcasting it.

And I said, It's not just yours,

it's mine. It's everybody's biggest fear.

And when you're being vulnerable in that way,

you're making everybody else feel like it's okay.

I don't have to be perfect. And and just this entire this life giving experience

that that comes out of that level of authenticity into where people are like,

All right, I like that. I want to be like that.

I wish I could be like that. I wish I had that courage.

And it just it it opens up a whole new adventure in your life.

~

I love it. We started talking about roofing kind of business in general,

and now we're just getting good life wisdom.

You're full of all kinds of wisdom.

That that's good stuff right there.

Is there an opinion that you once held strongly that you've changed based

on your experiences?

That's a question that's probably been asked of me like three times

in the last month. It's funny.

Really? Okay. Yeah. And and the reason is because I think there's a

lot of people that that they wish that they would,

but they don't. And when you're looking at especially religion and politics

in the America today, people don't change.

They don't change their minds and the things that they held fast as a kid,

they still hold fast to today.

And part of what happens is you close yourself out to healthy debate.

And, you know, in in biblical times,

the men of the city would actually gather in dirt certain places

and they would engage them each other in debate.

And I think it's a healthy thing.

And I think one of the things that I I I and I I Yeah it goes directly

to personal attacks. It has nothing to do with following a logical argument anymore.

And we are closed to changing our minds.

We will not change our minds. I feel like I've had a lot of things that change

in my mind. And a lot of that has been,

you know, a result of me saying,

I would never change that's not that way.

But then saying, But why isn't that?

And then challenging myself to wait a second,

back up, hear it out, let's figure it out.

So there's some pretty I subscribe to some pretty weird,

I think unconventional things that most people wouldn't ~

think of that I would be. So for example,

I was adopted as a as an in infant.

So I spent about three months in a in foster care and then was adopted.

And then we've done my wife and I have done foster care for thirteen years.

We haven't for the last couple of years.

My youngest son is adopted out of foster care.

We've had f between forty and fifty children through our home over

the course of that time. And I refuse to get political about foster care

or abortion.

Which is a huge change. My votes will reflect a pretty conservative

as you would expect. But I feel like

~ Jesus was so good at ~ getting to

the heart of questions. And when when the Pharisees specifically,

you see this a lot, when the Pharisees would say,

Is it this way or this way? trying to trap him.

Yeah. And he would you're you're thinking about it wrong.

It's not that way. You know, and he would change it.

He would create this new thing and say,

You're not even on you're not even asking the right question.

You know, and and there's some things that are like that where

our ~ the philosophy that has emerged in

in ~ American politics and and religion,

evangelicalism, no nobody's ~ immune to it at all.

~ has has come to different things.

So, for example, one of the stats that really changed my mind about all of this

is a ministry called Save the Storks.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this.

Matt Maher. I heard about it from a concert that I was at with him.

It is an organization that exists for one purpose and one purpose alone.

They have, what do you call it?

You get an ultrasound. They equip mobile ultrasound units so that anybody,

any pregnant woman in America can have an ultrasound with their.

And the reason why that exists is because once a woman has seen

~ ultrasound of their child, there is an 85% chance that they will

not choose to abort it. Yep. So you tell

me how important is my vote to have the United States federal government

define or the state government,

I'm sorry, this is new, so this is all the states.

Now it's up to the state. I don't care.

If as a Christian, if as a ~

Man of faith as a man who has values.

I don't care what direction you want to go to this.

If I know that internally,

if a woman can see their child in an ultrasound,

they have an 85%. You know what?

They don't care about the laws anymore.

They don't care that the federal government chooses one way or another for them.

It doesn't matter. So again,

that's just one example. Yeah,

I'm okay with being pro choice.

Because I don't believe that the government is the place

to regulate the heart of a person.

Now, do I vote one way?

Absolutely. I absolutely do. So as a person who has adopted myself,

I've adopted foster care, you would think,

well, you're pro life, pro life,

pro life. And I am, but I also know that there is value,

how should I say this? Authoritarian value in a government making that the choice.

That's good.

Well, it thank you very much for your service to our our culture,

our society, being a foster parent and and loving people that way.

That that's an issue that my wife and I feel very strongly about.

And w we we feel very strongly for those that choose to foster.

We we tried that in our home and found that just our home and maybe at that time

we were just not equipped and ready for it.

We might want to circle back and

and do that again at another time.

But that's a a topic close to our heart.

We love to support foster parent organizations and it's not

the the national organization like that,

but we support very strongly a a local organization that provides those same

services for women in our community to let them have an ultrasound

and see that baby. And so I guess just l let me say thank you for your service

to our culture, our community,

our nation in loving children that way.

That that's a big deal.

Yeah, it's an honor and and but it is.

I mean it's hard. I I don't we we ~ it's not it I don't know that it's always

~ you know it introduces chaos into your home pretty much a hundred

and ten percent of the time. So it's not for everybody,

but it is it is a calling and and my wife is is the absolute saint that that really

pushed this the whole time. Because again,

you've heard me, I was traveling a lot.

I've traveled a lot in my career,

and she has always been that rock that has really felt called by God to be a

a foster mom and she's really good at it and ~ and I thank God for her every

day for the effort that she's put in over those fifteen years or thirteen years,

whatever it was. we haven't been doing it recently just because we've

got a nine year old that's that demands a lot of our attention and it's hard

to introduce more chaos. That ~ that might be kind of where we were at.

We tried to do it ~ pretty early on when we had really young kids and there

was some disruption to the birth order and

~ we have to yeah, it might be something we have to revisit here as our kids grow

up a little bit. But ~ man, parents that do foster parenting and and love kids

in that way, ~ that's a special calling.

Those are special people and ~ yeah,

God bless you. That's that's amazing.

~

Is there a major mistake that you've made in one of your numerous careers

or in life that you wish you could have avoided or you would have done differently

if you could do it again? Whew.

So I am a colossal failure. I make lots of mistakes.

~ and there's a lot of reasons for the a lot of mistakes.

I think I'm one of the best mistake makers on the planet.

And I'm actually kind of okay with that.

And ~ do I

Do I have some regrets? I do. I I regret the way the end of my career at GAF went.

I regret it desperately. But at the same time,

would I do anything differently?

I just like I don't I believe that through that ~ you know,

God ordained this career that I have with with Roofle.

I do believe beyond a shadow of doubt,

because there were so many crazy things that were happening in that last year that

if I had done things differently,

I think it would have still been the same result because I believe that

God had ordained there to be a divorce in that relationship.

I was I really thought I was gonna be a ~ a career G AF guy and a lifelong

GF guy and and ~ and I there's not very many people on the planet that make

can make a mistake like I can make mistakes.

But they just become part of my story and yeah,

become part of the success later on.

I I would disagree. I think ~ probably all of us make those mistakes.

You might just be the one with the humility to recognize it.

I mean, I've made some pretty mistakes.

Yeah. I I yeah.

I made people like, okay, where did that come from?

I don't know. I don't know. I just yeah.

It made sense. Okay, so I'll I'll tell you one really quick.

Now this isn't like this isn't a really bad one,

but it's one of those that you so I

I had a guy from college ~ email probably a year and a half ago,

two years ago, something. He had actually kept a journal of high school years,

which to me this time, like 30 years later,

like that's that's kind of fun to do.

So I'm sitting here, I'm reading through this thing,

and and the number of times I actually come up in it because of all

the dumb things that I did. Like,

I'm sure that made sense at the time.

So I send this to my daughter,

who's now a freshman at the at Taylor at the MIL and the matter,

and she's reading through this and going,

Dad.

You were crazy. She's like, what about this one?

You guys were out camping and it was raining,

you're having a hard time with with getting fire.

So you thought it you you would start the fire in the bed of your truck,

drive it across the campground so that you had it.

And by the time we were getting there,

like it was blazing. I had this blazing fire in the back.

It like I'm sure it made sense at the time,

honey. Just relax. I'm sure if that had caught you know,

go I mean you

The bed of a truck is right next to the gas tank.

Like if there was an explosion,

can you even imagine what the report would be in the newspaper?

Like, okay, so there's this idiot who thought it was a good idea

to start a fire in the back of his truck and then drive it across so that they

had f firewood in their campfire.

Like I'm telling you, I make really bad mistakes.

Okay.

I have one. That's a good one.

I have one. Yeah. I think that's called being a adolescent male,

'cause ~ I can recount if you man,

if I start rethinking high school years,

college years, it's a miracle that I'm alive.

Right.

And these days it's all on video because somebody's pulling out their camera

and taking a picture. Look at this moron putting fire in the back of his truck.

That terrifies me. If I had been a decade later,

I I would be dead or in jail. Right.

The things that me and my friends did and got up to.

I I just thank God there is no video evidence.

If there was, ~ man, the these coming generations,

it's a bit terrifying for me. I think just

Being an adolescent male is gonna become a punishable offense because we

we all make we all make mistakes,

we all do stupid things, and now they're recorded forevermore,

they're on the internet, you can never get away from it.

It's terrifying. And not only that,

and we don't need to spend time on this,

I I'm not quite ready. I I'm really I love putting on the tinfoil hats,

but maybe not today, but then they can get cut and sliced

and and and manipulated.

And and now you have something completely different that's promoted

to the entire world. Lives are changed just with video editing.

And then we gotta start talking about AI.

I'm very grateful to have grown up in the eighties and nineties.

Cause that this is this is ~ this is a very concern.

This is a big concern for me. It is going forward.

It is. I we do our best to limit our kids' exposure to some of that,

but my only hope is maybe because of all of that.

It'll just be so overwhelmed and so unbelievable that it'll get back

to where it doesn't matter anymore.

Kind of I kind of think it might.

I really do. When you hit the point that you cannot trust,

cannot believe what you see with your own eyes on a screen,

there's gonna be a point where it all becomes meaningless and we can go back

to only trusting, only believing what we actually see in person.

~ man. ~

Well, know we're kind of bumping up against our time window here.

I don't want to take up too much of your time,

but I have a few questions I like to ask every guest.

we've talked about this a little bit,

but just to to bluntly state it,

let you kind of throw it out there for everyone to hear.

Are you a person of a particular faith tradition?

And if so, how has that shaped your life and your leadership?

Yeah, so specifically denomination,

I consider myself a mutt. I have been Lutheran Baptist.

Pentecostal. Been I've been pretty much all around and back because I'm

now back to Lutheran again. I'm a believ Bible believing Christian.

I ~ I I've been changed. My life has been changed ~ by doing a couple

of study tours to Israel. It will absolutely change your life.

It'll change the way that you read the Bible.

It really takes it outside of that,

just kind of the the I think the echo chamber that we can get into

as an evangelical in the in the Western United States.

It's it's there's a different flavor to it that

That brings the Bible alive when you put it into context.

And it's important to understand the geography and the philosophy.

What were the philosophers saying?

What were the teachers saying?

Why were they saying it? Where were they saying it?

~ you know, the geography, the politics is all really important.

And and once you see that, your life has changed,

your experience with the Bible has changed.

And so, ~ so that's kind of my my explanation of my history

of my denominational leanings and background.

Okay.

Awesome. Well, thank you for that.

And ~ I appreciate your faith and how bold you are with it and the

way that that's clearly impacted your life and serving the communities that you're

in. Our last question I asked most guests to either fuel or settle the debate.

If you have a job to do that requires a cordless tool,

which brand do you prefer? ~ that's not fair.

That's not fair. Cause I have to be embarrassed.

I was always a DeWalt guy.

I always was. And so today I have two DeWalt drills.

So I'm a DeWalt. But I know that my son,

who is a gearhead, and he has all Milwaukee.

And I understand Milwaukee's a better tool.

And it's he's got all of the tools.

And so yes, I'm insanely jealous of his Milwaukee.

But I personally own DeWalt. Okay.

All right. Well, those are our two front runners.

We've had a few people with other answers.

I think right now DeWalt is actually in the wrong those are the only two answers.

Like I could see someone go on one way or another,

but Awesome. Well, Mike,

thank you so much. This really has been a pleasure.

~ it's been a lot of fun discussing areas of life where we kind

of intersect and overlap and you just have so much experience,

so much wisdom in the r the roofing industry and the tech industry and just

in life in general.

I really appreciate you taking so much time to chat with us.

And I think it's gonna be a great benefit to our listeners.

So thank you. Well, I appreciate the time.

This has been a lot of fun. Thank you.

Yeah. Awesome. And thank you guys for joining us again here on From

the Ground Up Show. Again, if you enjoy the content,

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