Randy Brothers – Homeless and Bankrupt to Roofing Magnate – A story of humility in leadership

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show where we encourage and inspire the next generation of free thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have

been there, done that, and are still out making it happen, building a life with their heart, their hands, and their hustle.

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But thank you again for joining us.

And

today we are super excited to have Randy Brothers joining us.

Randy is the founder of Elite Roofing and Solar, which has grown into a large company serving Colorado and into Wyoming.

He is also the founder of the Roofing Academy, a school and coaching program for roofing contractors

In addition to his business success, Randy has contributed to three different books.

So Randy, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me, man.

I'm grateful to be here, my friend.

Awesome.

Well, we will dive right in.

The first thing we do with all our guests is ask you to tell us a little bit about where you came from, what was growing up like for you.

Oh man, growing up was, I would say quite unique.

Um, in it from a number of different perspectives.

Uh, I am a third generation, you know, contractor, business owner.

Uh, but I never actually grew up with my, my real father and my grandfather.

just visited him, you know, in the summers and holidays and stuff like that growing up.

So I grew up, uh, where my mom remarried when I was 18 months old.

So I grew up in a mixed family.

with two amazing stepsisters who are actually one of them in which is my business partner to this day.

The other one is very successful in their own rights.

And I have two other siblings that came from my dad's side of the family.

So I grew up in a weird, very mixed uh family and traveled and went around and moved around a lot and kind of didn't really totally have uh a, I guess you would call it normal

upbringing if you will, from that perspective.

But it taught me a lot of things, taught me lot of things about being independent and, you know, kind of probably led to my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Early on, I was, you know, taught that, you we didn't have, we had enough to get by, which I'm grateful and blessed for.

But if I wanted, you know, the newest, latest, greatest toys or things that, you know, that all the other kids are getting, I had to find ways to make money to figure out how

get those things.

I.E.

the new bike or the new PlayStation or whatever it was, the Jordans, which I never could get when I was kid.

I had to figure it out.

So I was very entrepreneurial ever since I was real young.

Okay.

Are there any unique entrepreneurial endeavors that you could tell us about from your childhood?

How did you go about making money for those things that you wanted?

Yeah, so, as little as, you know, going and buying a box, a box of blow pops from the, you know, from the Sam's club, I would, you know, buy a box of candy and I put it in my

backpack and sell it on the bus from, but the big one, my probably my first official business, if you want to call it that, I figured out a way to hook and connect my

lawnmower to the seat of my bike.

And I put the cord for the weed whacker around my shoulders and I would, I would, you know, grab the weed whacker and the, the handles all in one.

And I would drive around and ride around the neighborhood knocking doors to set to, uh, to mow lawns.

And then once I got enough accounts, um, then I started hiring my friends to go do the lawn mowing while I went and sold more roofs or went and sold more yards and then, you

know, played on the new PlayStation that they bought while they were doing work.

Uh, that was early on.

I just found ways to kind of.

make money knocking doors from the neighbors.

And I did the same thing in the wintertime with shoveling snow.

So that was probably the early, early endeavors.

uh Went to college um and went in probably my second year in college that summer, a friend of mine decided that we wanted to do something in the business world.

So we decided to start a window cleaning company.

So once again, printed off a bunch of flyers uh at the, you know, where the school was.

We borrowed some paper and ink from them and printed out like 500 flyers and went and knocked doors and hung flyers all over place and lo and behold started getting some window

cleaning jobs that summer.

So that was kind some of the early, you know, just fun entrepreneurial adventures that I had.

That's great.

That's interesting.

Sounds like you really learned early the power of multiplying your workforce and you got other people working with you and for you pretty early on, huh?

Yeah, I think it's funny you say that but you know now as a mentor and a business coach I teach that's one of the first things any entrepreneur I deal with that's like a sole

opener or they're really trying to get out of their own way and really trying to make it to that next level or get get whatever that next level is I think you know nine out of ten

I'm gonna ask hey who's your integrator who's the person that can help you do the things that you aren't good at doing um and once we can solve that and figure that out it's

usually a

a pretty significant step in the right direction on unlocking and building a great business because you can't do without people and you can't put yourself in a position

where you can focus on your strengths and the things that you're really good and the things that the company benefits the most from your effort if you don't have other people

to work alongside you and that you can delegate to that can help you do all the things.

So uh that that symbiotic relationship with the people in the right seats as the cliche goes.

is vitally important in growing and scaling a business.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, you mentioned that you were in college when you started the window watching business.

What did education look like for you?

What level of education do you have?

Um, I got a degree, uh, right here.

It's just has dust on it.

I don't think I've ever actually showed it.

Somebody just sits there.

Um, but I did finish once I graduated from the university of Northern Colorado, went to business school there.

Um, I took every business and entrepreneurship class I could.

And I just wanted to learn business.

I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Um, I always had a high, low interest in the construction world.

And, uh, I actually worked full time for a construction company starting as an intern all the way up through.

for two a half years while I was still going to college full time.

So I wanted to get a lot of hands-on experience while also quote unquote learning business from the business school went to.

And I learned a lot.

I learned a lot of good financial strategies and uh economic metrics and things like that that are used to this day.

But really what I learned was social skills.

I learned how to connect with others and how to do group projects and work with other people.

And I've been able to take those.

into a career in sales, which ultimately led me into a career as an entrepreneur and a business owner and a business coach at this point.

Interesting.

So you think you're, even though your diploma is sitting there with uh dust on it, you feel like that was a good investment and you're using it in your business today.

Yeah, not in a way that someone would expect.

I mean, I never, I don't think I've ever actually put it on a resume or even it came into play at all.

just, I just said it.

But the thing is, I think that the underlying lesson here is, you know, I, again, I'm indifferent at this point.

I don't, know, whether my kid goes to college or not, like, you know, that's going to be on him.

I don't know what college is going to look, look like when he gets there.

ah

But for me, it was, set a goal.

made a commitment that I was, when I decided to go to school, I'd made a commitment that I'm going to go to college, I'm going to graduate.

And that was the mindset I had, regardless of the long nights and early mornings and the time I, the absolute times I did not want to go or I went to, I signed up for a class and

I'm like, this is ridiculous.

There's zero anything that this is going to do for my life.

But again, I made that commitment and I stuck with it.

And I think.

That alone as the tenacity to stay committed to something and making the most of the education that I could and making most of the social education that I got from it as well

was well worth it for my personal journey.

ah Now, do I work with and know and believe that a lot of entrepreneurs can be very successful with or without it?

Absolutely, because it's the type of person that what you learn from actually doing and working and figuring out and taking risks and building businesses.

But I definitely feel like I got a good strong foundation on all those aspects by by making that commitment to go to school.

Yeah, I like how you put that.

think that character trait of having the tenacity to set a goal and do what it takes to meet that goal, to see it through is probably the key factor.

I did go to school myself and ah I thought it was a great experience.

I developed and grew a lot, but I would not say that I use much from my education in my ah day-to-day business.

So it's just interesting hearing different people's background, like you said.

I know a lot of very successful people that either barely or even didn't make it out of high school.

And I also know a lot of successful people with some college education.

So it's interesting hearing everybody's take on that.

Yeah, that's definitely an interesting conversation.

You know, go up one way or another.

Go ahead.

there's a lot to it.

And not only uh where successful people have come from, but what does that look like in the next generation?

seems like we're kind of at a turning point where everybody is asking that question.

You know, was like up until the 70s, it kind of went one way or the other.

People continued school or they didn't.

And it seems like in the 70s, they really started pushing that you got to go to school, got to go to school, got to go to school.

And anybody that didn't, you were kind of going against the grain.

And especially by the time I got into school, that was just, that got drilled into us.

And now it seems like everybody's questioning whether that's true or not.

And, and there's a lot of people reevaluating that.

Yeah, yeah.

there's an argument that, you know, that well, it's already happening, but that the traditional, you know, four year college degree college program is going to be a thing of

the past and within our generation, you know, maybe in my kid generation, you know, because of the amount of specialties that people can do and just focus on one special area

in business or in life, um you know, technology and YouTube and AI and all the things that

you can get an education from these days, I think it's definitely shifting the dynamic of how we have kind of been bred and or conditioned to think of school.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, a decade or more ago, the person with the college degree, it really exemplified that tenacity you were talking about.

That was a goal they set and it took some effort.

It took some dedication to get through the program.

And I feel like over the years of funneling every student into college, it watered down those programs to a degree that the certificate really doesn't mean that anymore.

You don't have to be a person with tenacity to

get a college degree and it just doesn't hold the weight that it used to hold.

So, great.

for sure.

Well, you mentioned starting a window washing business when you were in college.

Now you're running a roofing company.

Can you connect the dots?

Did you have any other jobs in between?

So, yeah, it's funny.

Well, I worked full time for a construction company while going to college.

So that was probably my most real work, working for somebody else experience.

And I got a lot of amazing experience.

Both the owners of the small company that built houses, they built some light commercial custom homes, track homes.

And I came on originally as like an intern.

And by the end of it, I was their lead superintendent building homes from the ground up.

By the time I was 24, 25 years old, I had already had a dozen ground up bills under my belt that I had been heavily involved with.

I remember going out and plotting out land, finding the landmarkers and putting stakes out there and measuring everything and really staking out a property before we ever even

started digging.

So from the ground up all the way to certificate of occupancy.

And that was my goal originally.

I wanted to be a builder.

I wanted to be a

you know, custom home builder and build a name for myself there.

And, and this was right during the time that the, you know, the big crash happened in 2007 and eight.

So, uh, that, that whole dream got, got shut down and I had to pivot and change, uh, drastically as to what my outcomes and what my goals were.

I had to make adjustments to the point where, you know, my, that experience led right into, um, you know, I kind of, I attempted to take a real job.

right after college, you know, I had a little bit of a gap between, you know, when I was working for that company and they, basically were telling me once I graduated that they

didn't have any current projects and they just bought some land and it's gonna take a little while to develop before I'd have some projects to manage, which was my job as a

superintendent.

um So they basically told me like, go, you know, see what the market's like, see if you can find something else.

So I went and got a job as an outside sales rep for a lumber company, lumber yard.

And that was short lived, but

The key thing is I built a lot of relationships through this whole process of working for this company and building a relationship with the subcontractors.

And a friend of mine that had built a good relationship with owned a drywall paint company.

And he knew I knew what I was about, knew my experience, knew I was interested in starting my own thing.

And so he came to me with the idea of, man, I got this lady who wanted me to do an entire basement finish, but I just do drywall and paint.

Do you want to do the rest and we'll kind of partner on the deal and, and figure it out from there.

like,

Why not?

So we ended up landing that deal and that was the official kind of unofficial launch of my business.

And that time I just went all in on basement finish and remodels and know, decks, fences, anything I can do to make couple of dollars and somewhat keep the lights on while I was

trying to build up to where I became that home builder that I always dreamed of.

But the market shifted.

The market completely collapsed and the banks stopped lending and the people were doing basement finish.

completely stopped doing that.

So the entire market fell out right from underneath me.

And I didn't didn't couldn't pay attention because I was too busy doing all the things didn't have help.

This was just me doing all the things, trying to run a business doing all myself and didn't have enough time to pay attention to the market around me.

And ultimately, you know, I had that business, I lost that business, I ultimately went bankrupt over.

So I learned an incredible amount of lessons through that whole process.

And that's, you know, part of what I wrote about in the in the book I wrote.

uh

And then from there, it was just apply, you know, all the lessons I learned and quote unquote, do it the right way.

And, uh, you know, when I took a little hiatus and became an, it became an insurance adjuster for a little while.

went and worked for a fire and water restoration companies for a little while.

They got a lot more experience through that.

And then ultimately three years later, circle back and launched my roofing, the roofing division kind of rebranded the company into a roofing company in 2010.

So that's been 15 years now and we've just been trying to master roofing and be as good of a roofer as we could possibly be.

And we were able to see a lot of success.

I surrounded myself with some good people, got some good leadership, good partners.

We started documenting everything from the beginning.

Like luckily my mom started working for me early on and she was the type that was like super organized and detailed and anything she had to do more than once or two, three times

or if it was a repetitive thing, she started writing it down and creating a...

standard procedures and documents.

And 15 years later, we have a massive archive of that, a very well established, one of the biggest brands, most sustainable brands in our market, in really competitive market, which

has allowed us to then take that model, take all of the challenges and all the things that we learned.

then, I wrote a book about it just because I felt like a calling to kind of share my journey with others and to help other young, young Randy brothers of the world that wanted

to make things happen that were

you know, know, smart enough to go after it, but dumb enough to not know what they didn't know.

And so now my mission in life is to just help those and help other contractors succeed and avoid a lot of the pitfalls that I went through as much as possible.

So that's what kind of ultimately morphed into the coaching company that we run now today.

Okay.

Yeah, I've got a copy of your book sitting on my desk.

I kind of hit the chapter highlights.

haven't dove in real deep yet, but it's on my reading list.

It'll be coming up soon.

So that's something, that's something I wish we would have done a lot better job of is, uh, when you find yourself doing the same thing again and again and again, that's

something that instead of just doing it all the time, there needs to be a system built around it.

needs to be documented and

I think that's something that's something I definitely missed in my business.

And I think it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs miss is they're so busy just doing the work.

They miss the opportunity to build those systems, to make forms, make templates, put it into a process instead of just taking care of it.

So that's great that you're making those resources available for everybody.

Yeah, absolutely.

just, you know, I again, I stumbled into it just because I happened to have people around me that that that felt that as important.

And I actually realized that like, wait a minute, there's something to this, like, let's actually be very intentional, but but like, I'm very, I mean, but there is some, you know,

real, like personal responsibility there as well.

Like, I'm a I've become a very, very structured systematized systemized person in personal life, business life, everything and

everything is repeatable, everything's measurable, everything's trackable.

You know, I get it all the time.

Like how do you run an eight figure multi multi-million dollar roofing company and a, you know, a highly successful, highly growing coaching company and have time to play golf and

pickleball and coach your kids and all the things.

It's like, well, you got to be worn.

I'm like obsessive about my time.

Um, and I'm very, very intentional with every hour I'm putting in, I'm making sure that that hour can be multiplied because

I leverage that by surrounding myself with a great team of people who are executing all the things, which allows me to stay in my strength zone, stay in my, you know, kind of my

superpower of being a high level of visionary um and being able to facilitate things with a lot of people versus trying to do a whole lot of things by myself.

And I said, just get out, I just present the challenge, present the issue.

Like this is the goal.

This is the benchmark.

This is what we're trying to reach.

This is our

where we're going and I need you to help fill in the blanks.

And I just empower the people around me to do that.

And then I become a support system and a facilitator of those challenges and of those things.

And all of a sudden you start to see a lot of things happen.

But more importantly, you see people grow around you.

And that's why I love it because I can create an opportunity to allow others around me to grow.

And like, I am not ashamed to say I have a whole bunch of partners and leaders.

and people in all my organizations that are way better than me, and I'm okay with that.

That's hard for a lot of people to truly grasp and admit.

It is.

I find that's true for a lot of great leaders though.

They really care about the people around them and they want to see the people around them growing and developing and getting better.

So that's awesome.

Great.

Well, you

when it happens, you know, when, yeah.

yeah, even at the lower levels, I always say I'm in the roofing business as well and I don't jump out of bed in the morning like super stoked and excited to go put some roofs

on.

Like I like my job.

I'm pretty good at it.

I can make good money at it, but that's not what gets me fired up and passionate.

What I really get excited about as a business owner is being in a position to offer people the opportunity to move their lives forward.

So

Absolutely.

that works for me accomplishes a life goal, a milestone, or even if it's the 18 year old kid that saves up money all summer to buy his dream car in the fall, like heck yeah, like

good for you.

And I got to be a part of your story.

You get all the credit, you did the work, you put it all in, but because I was here and doing what I'm doing, you had a job that allowed you to chase your dream, whatever that

is.

And that's the most exciting thing about being in business, I think.

Hey man, yeah, you nailed it, I love that.

Yeah.

Cool.

Well, you said you shared your real dream was to build custom homes and kind of to be in construction.

And that went flat when the economy tanked on you.

What caused you to focus on roofing when you tried again?

Um, well, I spent a lot of time doing remodel work, uh, basement finish work and you know, and numbers don't lie.

Okay.

Numbers don't lie.

And when I realized when I analyze the numbers from a perspective of time, you know, it'd take me six to eight weeks to do a basement finish or a remodel.

It's oftentimes longer.

And by the time it was all said and done, I'd make maybe a little bit more or the same amount of money I could make.

in doing one roof that took a day or two days.

Once I realized that, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I like, wait a minute, I am way better to specialize and be really good at one thing than trying to figure out and be, you know, average of the whole bunch of things.

And when you're you know, remodel work as a general contractor, I mean, there's a number of certain elements I would do myself, but there was so many things I had to outsource and

use subcontractors for.

And I'm just like trying to pull these pieces together and trying to keep jobs on task on budget.

And it was a lot of work to do with with lot not as much as not as much juice to squeeze out at the end.

So I realized that if I wanted it and I'm always I'm a big dreamer.

I'm a big, big thinker.

And I wanted to build something I could scale up.

You know, I was like, I'm going to be able to do 500 roofs or a thousand roofs a lot faster and a lot quicker, a lot more efficient than if I tried to do 500 basements or

whatever.

You know, so

Um, that it just dawned on me that, you know, it's specialized, become a specialist, be really good at one thing.

And, and then I can, you know, rinse and repeat again, systemize it, create systems around it, and then create an environment where I can scale that up and it worked.

Yeah,

that's great.

You hit on something there that I think has always been unique to me or a way that I look at things differently is when I'm bidding projects or putting together pricing, I don't

just look at a markup or a profit margin, but it's dollars per day or dollars per hour because time really is our limiting factor.

So even if you're making a huge profit margin, but it's not a lot of dollars.

I'd rather make a lower margin on a something that has a bigger number tied to it.

So that's great.

add in your time, energy and effort.

know how much here's something that I think is I've been processing a lot lately.

This is the time of year.

It's the end of the year.

This time of year, I'm always I always tend to take a seat back and do a deep dive on the year that I just got through like good, bad and different.

What we went on, what we lose on, how do we improve, how do we fix, what do we got to do to get better and

I mean, that's come up a lot is the factor of mental bandwidth.

And a lot of us, mean, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a visionary.

At one point, I probably had seven, eight different businesses I was involved in, you know, it takes, it's funny because someone just the other day, I'm sitting in a, you know,

I sitting in a little workshop with a, with the guys, you know, consultant guy coming in, teaching, talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs.

And he asked in the room how many people are working 60 hours a week.

And I can ask the audience here, I, when I speak in front of roofers, I can ask that question and everybody 60 and 70, when I get to 80, you got guys like, yeah, I'm working

80 hours.

They kind of measure their own success based on how much effort they're putting out there.

And he was like, well, who's working less than 40 hours or 30 or less.

And I'm like, right here.

But the next question, what who's mentally working more than 60 hours a week?

That's the challenge is like I've successfully gotten to a place where my physical hours working are very, manageable.

I'm very balanced, very grateful to have that time.

I'm going to get off this call with you.

I'm going to go, my kids get out of school in a couple of minutes.

I'm going to go out and go across and pick them up from school and say, what's up?

Go play some basketball with my kid in the driveway.

And I'm grateful and blessed for that.

Right.

But at end of the day, the challenge is the mental bandwidth.

When we're trying to build a whole bunch of things and

and have a lot of moving pieces in our business, takes a lot of your mind to be able to manage that.

And it's hard to shut it down.

It's hard to shut it down at night.

It's hard to be present with your family.

It's hard to shut it down on the weekends and stuff like that.

And I think that's the real challenge that we don't talk about enough is like, sure, can reduce your time, physical time you're putting into a business, but what are you doing

mentally?

How do you reduce that as well and still be successful?

And I think for me, it's like narrowing my scope.

It's like, what can I take off of my plate?

What are the things that I've been putting time, energy and effort into over the last handful of years?

And what is the fruit from that?

What is the upside?

How much money are we actually, profit are we actually making?

But also what is the mental bandwidth?

What is the mental tax that it's taking on me and or my leadership team?

And that's helping me like really look at my business from a different perspective.

That's huge.

That's gold right there.

think, uh, I've not heard somebody put it in that terms before, but that mental bandwidth is huge because yeah, even you, you might limit your work to 40 hours a week, but I know

for me personally, anyway, my mind is spending a hundred hours a week at least.

And when I'm at home, I'm not all home when I'm having a conversation.

I'm not always there.

There's always an idea, something spinning.

So.

finding ways to limit that or, or I guess leverage that for the maximum impact is that's huge.

I'm going to, I'm going to spend some time thinking about that.

great man I would highly encourage you need the listeners people listen to this you know maybe I bet you I put lots of money right now saying somebody's like sitting in their

truck or or watching this on tv they're like whoa like that it's hard and that's I'm just that I'm just sharing where I am right now in this place I literally last week I took like

almost an entire day cleared my schedule and just thought just got in try to get into deep thought I you know my sauna my cold plunge and like

just doing the things going on a really long walk and like doing the things I can to like just get into a flow state, a mental state to just think and analyze and really reflect.

And I don't think we do that enough as entrepreneurs that actually take thinking time for ourselves.

And I did it for like an almost an entire day.

And it's just like so many of these things like, wow, it hit me.

And I made some really significant changes in the last week within my business.

that are pretty drastic and like we're removing complete divisions and stuff and it's like it's a lot but you take that time and really analyze the you know what is the opportunity

cost and the mental cost of trying to chase something that might not be the best outlet for your time and energy.

Yeah, that's great.

That's some good advice.

Thank you.

You you mentioned that your sister is a partner in your business, if I caught that right, and your mom works for you.

ah What is it like, I guess, running a business with a partner, specifically uh a partner that's a family member?

And how does that work?

You guys all in the office together, family running the business together.

Yeah, man.

Great question.

Long, I'll try not to be too long with it because it's been a long journey of this dynamic of working with families and as a coach, I've with hundreds of companies and a lot of them

have some sort of a family dynamic, especially in roofing, right?

A lot of us start a roofing company and hey, brother, sister, mom, dad, come work for me without really understanding what their skill sets are.

We just throw them into a position and hope it works out and sometimes it doesn't, oftentimes it doesn't.

And in our case, my mom was an incredible asset early on and helped me build everything.

She's office manager, did all the things that allowed me to go out and sell roofs and recruit people and build my sales and make it rain.

That was my job, right?

And she became an expert with bookkeeping.

She got really, really good at it to the point where when the company outgrew her to where we had to outsource and bring in CFOs and financial support, um she was able to create a

consulting company, which works right alongside with my coaching company.

to where now we do books and bookkeeping and strategic, you know, financial strategies and stuff for other contractors, specifically in roofing.

And then she ended up selling that and retiring.

So she's been with me this whole journey.

I helped mom get retired and she still does, you know, a few things here and there for me, but it's, been a, that's huge because she helped me build the thing and now she's retired

and just get to be a grandma and hang out with the kids.

And she's a big part of my life.

And then my sister,

She just came on as an admin for my mom early on 15 years ago.

And she's just the type of person that you put a challenge in front of her and she hits it head on.

She learns, she grows, she gets better.

And then she really became a great leader.

And through a lot of the process of figuring out the leadership and figuring out what we needed to do in our business, we were blessed in a sense that I have another partner who

was my original partner.

He's still with us.

There's three of us.

And he was my best friend since I was 11 and we just were both really good at sales and trusted each other.

We're like, let's build this business together.

But there was a missing element.

And I mentioned this early on, you got to have an integrator, somebody that can take your crazy ideas, weed through the crazy ones, figure out which ones are really good and

actually help you implement those and take them into the end zone.

I am really, really good at getting to the red zone.

I am really good at getting an idea.

I'm going to take it to take it to the 10 yard line, but punching it in, not my thing.

Right.

I'm on to the next idea.

Right.

So I had to, you know, and she is incredibly good at that.

She's, she's become our, she's a CFO now.

She's works in my coaching company and she runs the coaching department.

Like she's, she's, she's helping companies all over the country from a, from a fractional CFO level, C-suite level like coaching perspective.

And she's having an incredible like, you know, impact because she's done every role in the business except for nailing a shingle on.

but she's built out all the systems, all the processes, all the backend from the financial side to the operations to production management, hiring and onboarding.

And she's mastered all of that through trial and error.

We're 15 years of doing it with our business.

And now she's manifesting that and helping others execute that as well.

But we don't, she lives in a whole other state now.

Both of us work remote.

We have a hybrid working environment where we have a few people in the office every day.

other partner is our general manager and he's in the office quite a bit.

um

I'm in my home office right now and I get to work here most of the time.

I was at my office earlier for a bunch of meetings, but you know, it's a, it's beautiful thing when you're able to build a, build a business that can run on its own, where you sit

in a leadership position where you're making strategic moves, making strategic decisions and you're supporting your team, but they're the ones executing on all the strategies and

doing all the things in the day in and day out,

you know, operations.

That's great.

Wow, that's impressive.

So in your guys' business, do you uh handle the installs in-house as well, or do you use subcontractors for most of the installs?

So

residential, our main kind of reroofing division, that's mostly subcontracted out.

So our service department is all in-house and we have a solar department that's all in-house as well.

So solar is all employees and our service department is all employees.

Gotcha, so pretty good mix, a little bit of both.

Yeah, so it helps us with quality control, right?

If I have to go do, you know, quality control or we do QC on every job after it's done and I'll send one of my in-house service technicians to double check to make sure that the sub

crew, you know, installed the job to our specs and how we expect it to be done prior to the city inspecting it.

em And then with solar, just, we did it all in-house, all in-house electricians.

We have a whole DNR department.

So we're doing the detach and reset for our company.

But we're also it's branded separately.

So it's it's its own entity that does detach and reset for a number of other companies all over the state as well.

Wow.

Okay.

And you've brought up your coaching company a few times.

Can you tell us how that started?

What gave you the idea to launch a coaching company and what was that process like?

Interesting.

Well, it kind of happened on accident because one, just built relationships as a networker naturally, right?

I build a roofing business.

go to all the shows and all the conferences and I connect with different vendors and different people.

And it was a friend Ronnie who invited, at the time he was working for Job Nimbus, I just see my sweater here, I'm sponsored, we're a certified uh coaching partner for Job Nimbus.

Nowadays, it took a long time to get there.

But I built a relationship and they wanted me to start doing this, sharing my story and inviting me to come speaking to small groups.

And that just was...

It was really inspiring.

And at that time, I kind of remembered that when I first started my construction business, I distinctly remember driving all over town.

This is before the Google and Amazon showing up 30 minutes after you order something, right?

This was...

You know, there's no drone showing up with a book on how to build a construction company.

So I remember distinctly like looking all over the place to try to get some sort of book on how to run a dang construction company.

And it didn't exist.

I, you know, long 10 years, fast forward 10 years, I just, I felt in my heart to that, you know, I reached a certain point where people were wanting me to share my story and there

was some value there.

And I was able to, really felt like,

really a calling to give back to the industry that took me from a bankruptcy of phone plays.

was literally homeless when I got into roofing.

I just felt that calling and I just so happened to have made a little bit of money to where can invest with some people to help me, you know, write the book and organize

everything.

it just the stars aligned and I had this idea.

So I took about a year and I spent, you know, I blocked off some time every week to focus on it.

And so just about a year, I got about a third of the way through it and completely scrapped the whole thing and restarted it.

then finally got an end product that came out.

once that book came out, um that's when there was starting to be a little bit of a craze or a little bit of a demand on people doing online courses.

Like, wait, I can just basically take this book and go a lot deeper and take all the things I've learned and break down my business and all these sections and film it all and

create an online course on how to build a roofing company.

Like, let's do that.

So then I turned it into an online course and then we created and duplicated all the documents and all like the things that we learned all that stuff I talked about how we

tracked it all.

Then I created templates and documents and SOPs for everything in the business.

And then, you know, and then I realized that there was a, which was great.

And that's what we kind of launched the Academy.

And then we realized that there was a big demand that people really liked the one-on-one coaching.

They wanted someone to talk to.

They wanted some, they wanted accountability.

And then we also saw an opportunity to build a community around it.

So then we kind of worked our way into a full service coaching, one on one coaching company.

So that's our bread and butter.

I have a team of coaches now.

There's seven of us total on the staff, on the team.

And we have, can do everything from building out your CRM system to implementing a sales system, to building a production department, to, you know, to high level C-suite level of

financial strategy, CFO level strategy.

on building a company and getting ready for exit.

So we can basically take a company from inception all the way to exit based on wherever you are in your journey.

And we have a full team and a full curriculum all built out that we can help with that.

So that's what we ended up doing.

And it kind of evolved by, you know, passion and desire and calling to give back, but also like responding to what people needed and they wanted, you know, help with.

We just kept building and finding ways to serve and help others.

And it kind of manifested into something that's actually really special.

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Do you have any close competitors in your market that are using your tools?

Yeah.

Well, so there's, excuse me.

There's an, I mean, I'm in a big market, man.

There's probably five, I think it's, it's been, who knows?

It's not documented, but it's been said there's over 5,000 registered groupers in my market.

And, uh, and I've worked, I've worked with, you know, probably dozens of them at this time, at this point in time, but active, uh, there's definitely probably a good handful of

contractors that are direct competitors of mine that I work closely with.

And we all work together.

support each other.

help each other.

And it's great, man.

We have these private group chats and mastermind groups that we get together and we help each other.

And, you know, the I look at it is one, we hardly ever, if ever, compete against each other because it's such a big market.

But if I can help a handful of ships rise, you know, the tide rise, the handful of ships, it'll make our market that much better and it'd make it harder for others to come into our

market.

So that's how I look at it, man.

I'm more of a collaborator.

in everything I do.

we get way farther collaboration, you know, in collaborating and learning from one another than we do, you know, holding our cards to our chest and not sharing.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, you guys have a huge market down there.

Every time we head south towards Denver, I'm just blown away at the amount of construction and the growth and everything that's happening down there.

Yeah.

And in a market where there's lots of growth, but also with, you know, hailstorms, it's feast or famine.

So right now there's a lot of companies that are really, really hungry.

The whole market's down significantly from the last two years that it was.

And we haven't had any storms this year.

So, you know, you just got to build your business in a way that you can try to survive that and, and live a comfortable life.

And then when you get storms, you capitalize on it.

Yeah, I know 23 was huge down in your guys's area and I knew 24 had been light.

I hadn't heard much about 25 yet, but what does that look like in your business?

How do you prepare for that downturn or do you have any strategies to try to keep sales up on the years when you don't have the storm?

Yeah, so in years that you do have storms, I we put a lot of energy into into going as linear as we can with our projects.

So we're going to try to book out into the spring.

So we know we have a big, huge storm here storm year instead of like squeezing every single roof we possibly can.

We'll put anybody that's willing and able like a lot of homers like I don't want to mess with it.

Okay, cool.

We'll book way in the future.

So we'll try to book ourselves up all the way into the first or second quarter of the next year, which kind of spreads out that cashflow and the cashflow challenges.

At the same time, we're really focusing on retail and training and teaching all of our sales team how to sell retail, building relationships around retail sales, building

service department, commercial department, solar department, some of these other departments that are ancillary that can kind of lift us up and make sure we stay stable

financially and win those bad.

or quote unquote down years happen.

So it's like, you know, when you're in the, when things are really great, you prepare for the down and when things are really down, you want to prepare for the up, right?

The cycle of business.

And that's another thing you just learn as an entrepreneur.

After you go through a few cycles, you know, and a cycle, you know, as I look at it, and I've been mentored and taught this is about 10 years.

So in 10 years in business, you're going to see two years that are like,

next level amazing, right?

You're just like, I'm king of the world.

This is great.

You're going to see two years that are like, holy crap, what I'm going to with my life.

It's the bottoms falling out, right?

And then you're going to see six years that should be pretty standard, pretty decent, steady growth and who knows where they're going to come.

But in that 10 year cycle, that's what kind of generally will happen.

And I've been through multiple of those cycles at this point.

So when you go through that, you kind of just get the experience to be able to anticipate

the ups and the downs and not get so emotionally charged with those ups and downs, right?

That, that roofer that's three years in business that he catches a big storm and all of a sudden makes all this money, goes out and buys the multimillion dollar home and all the

things they're not preparing for the down.

Guilty as charged.

I've been there, done that.

Okay.

I'm not judging.

I've been there, but I just learned my lesson.

And in the downs are like, Oh my God, I'm fire selling everything.

My life is over.

It's like,

you prepare for the down and the up and you prepare for the up and the down.

And then in the long run, it actually bounces out and you can build a really nice life

for yourself and all those around.

That's great.

There's some huge wisdom there.

I know we've seen that for sure.

And, uh, yeah, when things are booming, don't pretend like it's going to last forever.

And, when things are down, that's where you learn the new skills, new strategies to maximize the next boom.

So that's great.

Sharpen the saw when the blade is dull and the market's down and prepare yourself and put money aside to get through the next down when it comes, when the business is up.

Amen.

That's how it's done.

So, well, can you tell us a little bit about the process of building your business?

What was the most difficult thing you've faced so far?

The most difficult thing that I have had to face is downsizing my business.

Again, we just talked about it, right?

We saw some major booms.

We've got an ink 5,000 three years in a row and we scaled our business from, you know, I think in four and a half years went from 2 million to 20 million in four and a half years.

And scaled up like crazy, lots of opportunities, storms were happening.

We thought we had minuses touch.

We were all after it.

And the mistake of the challenge was we weren't intentional about, you know, monitoring and measuring the, the

mean and the overhead based off of what a mean average year would be.

So we kept hiring and hiring and hiring people to all these positions and built out this super detailed, super sophisticated business process that we can withstand all this

growth.

And then COVID hit.

We also went three years with no big storms and I had to drastically downsize my business.

So having conversations where you're laying people off and letting people go.

because of one economic factors that sucked, like weather factors that sucked and also just naivety and mistakes that I made and that we made as a leadership team.

That was probably the biggest challenge I've ever gone through.

And I would hope that others don't have to go through that because a lot of us, you know, on them teach their own, but the credit goes like a lot of good successful entrepreneurs

lead with their heart and they care a lot about their people.

And I genuinely do.

And I'm one of those.

But I had to I had to learn to separate and detach myself just enough to still make financial and fiscal like decisions based on the longevity and the sustainability of

business and not just what my heart wanted me to do.

Right.

That's a hard pill to swallow.

It's a hard challenge to overcome.

So don't just throw people at problems when you're scaling your business up.

Like, again, it circles back to you kind of figure out that mean is and don't you know, don't make a

top heavy company if you don't have to.

And now I dedicate a whole lot of my energy and my team's energy to helping companies, you know, prevent themselves from having to get that to getting that into that situation.

However, on the flip side, to finish the story, blowing up the business, going scaling it up like crazy was fun, exciting.

We learned a lot and then having to downsize and then restructure the second time around.

We scaled up and scale bigger in a shorter period of time was much better.

We did it with a lot less people.

a lot better people and a lot more intentionality and a lot more profitability.

So there's that.

Yeah, that's great.

All those financial metrics matter.

It's more than just the top line.

You can't just throw people at it and keep making sales.

You have to keep track of the overhead and man, the net is what matters, not the gross.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

it comes up.

It's starting to come up more and more, which is good.

But I think, you know, in the world we live in, you know, I obviously roofing but entrepreneurship, we all tend to go to these events and everybody like opens and closes.

The only discussion is how much revenue did you do?

How much are you going to do?

all we just measure, have a peacock feathers are out all talking about much revenue we're doing like, who cares?

Revenue is vanity, man.

Like that doesn't mean anything.

Just cause you can put $20 million on a, on a, on the top line of a balance sheet or of a, of a P and L.

What does the bottom line say?

That's what's more important.

Like I envy those that can do like a few million dollars and put a million dollars to the bottom line.

Way more than those who can put up eight figures and make no money.

Right.

It's not about that.

Like, and I think that's the experience that's the shift that we're starting to see in this industry.

And you can tell someone who's been around the block a little bit and knows their numbers and knows their business from an intimate level.

We're not talking about how much revenue did you do last year?

It's like, no, how much time did you take off?

Did you get any vacations?

What investments did you make?

What kind of net profit did you have?

Like those are the conversations I want to Not how much revenue did you do?

Cool.

I bought a new boat.

Congratulations.

I use it twice a year.

Don't care.

You know what mean?

Like that's not my thing anymore.

Granted, at one point it was.

I could say these things from a place of being a little facetious and kind of picking at people out there a little bit.

I can say that because I was that guy.

And I made all the mistakes, lost my ass, I went bankrupt, and it changed who I am.

It changed how I think and how I operate my business and how I coach others as well.

That's great.

Again, a lot of wisdom there.

I that point gets driven home for us really well because we don't live in that massive market that you guys have.

We have a pretty limited market.

If I just totally took over our market 100%, I wouldn't be able to build a business the size that you guys are.

We have to really maximize and capitalize on the market share that we have and do it as efficiently as possible, especially a business like roofing that has such high liability.

Man, you don't need to take on more liability.

You don't need to do more work for less money.

You got to make sure you're finishing with more than you started with.

Yeah.

And every market's different too.

I mean, and I work with companies in all different shapes, sizes, know, retail, insurance, commercial service, metal, all different specialties and niches all over the country,

literally every corner of the country.

And not one market is the same.

Even within the smaller market, even within the big markets, like how I do business in Aurora is different than how I do business in Boulder and Colorado Springs.

Every market is unique and different.

And that's the key is you got to figure out where the opportunities are in your specific market based on what your market is telling you.

You know, if I work with a smaller company in a bigger in a small company in a small market, I'm not going to give them the same advice.

I'm going to give a company in like a big like in my market.

It's like just only do roofing and nothing but roofing because there's that much.

There's that much opportunity there in a smaller market.

You can't survive that way.

So you have to diversify.

and really focus on the things that help build the business up a little bit and create a great solid bottom line for you is a different market.

Again, every market has a unique opportunity and unique strategy in building your business.

That's great.

I love that you, uh, coach people with that kind of dynamic.

was talking to another contractor friend of mine just yesterday and he had hired a consultant and the consultant was telling him he had to specialize, had to specialize, had

to specialize.

And he's like, man, if I specialized as tight as you're telling me to, I'd have like two jobs a year because he lives in a pretty rural area.

He's like, they're just.

If I did 100 % of the market, I'd have no business.

I have to do more than that to have a real business.

So that's great.

and that's, you know, that's what

the textbook is going to tell a coach to tell somebody, you know, and get doing wrong.

It makes sense.

But again, you have to factor in the market dynamics.

And I think that's where a lot of people go wrong because a lot of these, you know, it's funny.

And now I get to make fun of myself.

You get to make fun of coaches, right?

People coach because they can't do right.

It's like you can't actually figure it out.

You can't actually build a successful business.

So you read a few books and go get it.

You know, we talked about degrees earlier, whatever.

You get a YouTube education, you buy some program and then you become a coach.

Um, it doesn't work that I don't look at it that way.

Like, it's, that's why, like, I think I might be the only coach left that actually owns and operates and runs a roofing business or one of the only ones.

And I keep it that way on purpose because the dynamic of it changes.

There's so much volatility in the industry is evolving.

My business is constantly evolving.

And it's like, I don't feel right coaching somebody and like giving them advice.

That's not from a place of true experience.

just, this is not my style, right?

So I try to make sure to, to maintain that, that level of attention to my own business.

So then if I'm coaching and consulting with others, that's, can be more real and genuine as you probably tell.

I'd shoot you straight, man.

That's cause kind of how I roll.

Am I, what you see is what you get.

I'm going to shoot you straight.

And, and most of it's coming directly from my own experiences.

That's awesome.

I really appreciate that.

Cause like you said, we live in a world and a time, seems like especially the last few years, man, everybody has stood up an online coaching program or consulting or is putting

out how to videos on social media or whatever.

And who are these people giving you advice?

Have they ever built a business?

Have they ever put on a roof?

Have they ever had to have those hard conversations where

You have to let somebody go.

And if the answer is no, the guy that's just out getting it done, working hard at it, he's probably better off without the coach.

But if he can get a coach like you that has been there and done that and built something durable and learned some of those lessons and is actually in the market, that's a really

valuable thing.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Yeah.

um When were you most afraid as a leader?

Was there a time that really had you scared?

I'm probably similar time.

mean, having to look at your business like when you when you feel like you've reached the pinnacle on the top of the mountain and and you start to really see the writing on the

wall of like, holy crap, like I got to make some drastic changes in order to survive.

There's definitely a lot of fear that comes along with that.

um But as a a believer, I feel like I've worked really hard in my whole life to

to really offset fear with faith and just believe that faith overrules and takes over when fear tries to debilitate me, if you will.

We all live in fear.

And if you ask my biggest fear is failure.

um But to overcome that and all other fears, in business, I truly believe that's faith.

Okay.

Yeah, I think that's probably true for most entrepreneurs is their biggest fear is failing.

You don't do this without having some of that tenacity and the refusal to give up.

And if there's not a little bit of fear in there, it's too easy to give up.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

And then you then you learn at some point, I think like a switch gets turned on where you learn what that really means.

And, you know, like, I don't believe there is such a thing as failure at this point in my career.

And I don't fear failure because I just learn and get better.

So every mistake, every challenge, every obstacle that we face as entrepreneurs, as humans, as husbands, as fathers, as you know, all the roles that we play in life.

It's just another learning opportunity.

So if we master the art of learning and growing and just in getting better at being the best version of ourselves, there's you don't fail, you just learn.

And those who push harder and quote unquote fail frequently just learn faster and get better faster.

You so it's not really failing.

It's just you're just failing forward to just learn.

I like that.

It's not that I fail a lot, I just learn faster than others.

There we go.

Ha

I know you talked about the difficult time a few years ago where you kind of had the perfect storm of an economic change, a market shift, the storm cycle hitting all at once.

Has there been anything inside your business, not an external factor that delayed your growth?

And if so, what would you have done differently?

Um, I would have to go back to the early stages of my business and we grew pretty fast each time we've grown.

We've done it fairly quickly.

Um, again, a lot of that has to do with the market we're in.

You get a big storm, you got to grow quickly.

m but earlier on, I think I didn't have the systems in place that I wish I would have or wish I would have known.

I wish I would have had like a roofing Academy or some sort of coach, not just touting my own thing.

Wish I would have had something like that early on.

because I would have avoided a lot of issues and not being systemized, especially in sales.

I didn't have a sales system early on.

just went off what I thought I knew and what I had been trained on, which wasn't that much at the time.

So I didn't have a sales system.

I never had a hiring system.

didn't have training for staff and I didn't have a lot of these like fail safes and things in place early.

And I think that kind of inhibited our growth.

and definitely inhibited our profitability growth.

So we grew our top line, but again, didn't grow the bottom line like we should have.

And we got, you know, reached diminishing returns, which means you have your, your cost is growing at a higher rate than your margin.

and so that's probably it, like not having the dialed in systems that helped me that, that to this day helped me be very attentive and very intentional with profitability and

efficiency instead of just

adding more revenue.

So sales system is very key.

Having a way to hire, train, and develop salespeople and bringing them from outside the industry was huge.

Once I figured that out, that was the game changer for us.

Awesome.

That's a lesson I learned very slow as well.

I'm just now starting to figure out was I do the same thing a thousand times and still did it.

And I could have been building systems, forms, templates, videos, training programs and done it a couple of times to get it dialed in and turned it over to somebody else.

And that inhibited our growth in a pretty significant way.

is there something about your business or your market where you have changed your mind significantly as you've grown as a leader?

Maybe something that you thought pretty firmly and have uh shifted what you think about it as you've gained new information and grown as a leader.

Um, probably a couple of different times.

I'm constantly growing as a leader, but how to allocate that towards my market.

That's, that's a challenge.

Um, but I would say, you know, kind of reverting back like early on, you know, when I, we saw our first kind of little quote unquote explosion of growth, you know, me as an

entrepreneur and confident young dude, I was like, Oh, I got this.

I got the Midas touch.

So then I started thinking I was a

good entrepreneur and I knew what I was doing.

then I started branching off, opening other businesses and going to partner up with other people in different businesses.

And I tried to expand too fast and I went to another market and opened another office.

pretty much every one of those things were just taking me away from focusing on the core thing that got me to where I was.

And I diluted myself and ended up learning a lot and taking some big hits there.

So I learned that, you

Um, less is more and you know, bigger is not better.

Better is better.

And, you know, and just because I saw some success, doesn't mean I'm God's gift to entrepreneurship.

So I'm just, everything I touch is going to turn into gold.

That wasn't true.

So I had to like reset myself and reset myself as a leader to, to refocus and refocus on the really, things that matter the most and, just be really, really good at a few things

or one thing and then a couple in, in order to grill.

grow successfully, like healthily versus just trying to expand and add too many things to my plate, thinking that I had, know, had with God's gift to the entrepreneurship.

Yeah, there's nobody more confident than a young guy that had a couple early wins and hasn't hit one of those hard times yet.

They got it all figured out.

They know all the answers.

Yeah, I reverted to my like, you know, my kids 10 and almost 11 and he knows everything right.

So I reverted back to that.

I was, you know, in my 20s and I built a, you know, multi handful of millions of dollars in my first few years.

I'm like, Oh, sweet.

I know what I'm doing.

I'm no, I didn't know I didn't know crap.

That's great.

Have you ever made a beneficial mistake?

A mistake that hurt you at the time, but allowed you to learn a lesson or shift things in a way that it ended up being a significant benefit?

Yeah, definitely.

um I wouldn't call it beneficial mistake though.

think strategic move was more appropriate because I had to make some hard...

Again, when I was downsizing my business, I didn't make some extremely hard decisions, which jeopardized relationships that I had for dozens of years.

And it was hard.

mean, it's hard to put the business and the longevity of the business over a 20-year relationship.

And that was hard to let people go that I truly really, really cared about.

But I literally just didn't see a path forward with the business, you know, in that relationship maintaining.

So those are hard decisions.

And it was hard at the time because I had to kind of restructure and rebuild my my company.

But in the long run, it was a fantastic decision.

It taught me a lot about who and how to hire people.

also taught me a lot about making good, equitable

decisions when it came to structuring deals and structuring employee agreements and how to hire and train and put people in positions to succeed.

So I learned a lot through that, but I lost some really, really solid relationships during that process as well.

So that was hard.

Yeah, that was probably a pretty lonely time.

Were you able to maintain a leadership team?

Yeah, luckily I've

had a great team around me, you know, for pretty much my whole career after the first Epic fail that I did on my own.

So I've been able to share in that, right?

And we have a very tight leadership team and we share in those wins, we share in those losses and those challenges and, you know, and every time you lose really good people over

a long period of time, that's always challenging.

But you learn, right?

Every time I've gone through those things, I've just learned again.

Like I said, I keep circling back the broken record, but I learned a lot of lessons.

And if you're not always self-diagnosing and self-looking in the mirror first and foremost, um you may not learn a lesson quick enough or in time to see the next

opportunity when it presents itself.

in going backwards the way we did,

It was really hard at the time and really stressful and on the whole family, everybody, you know, but what we were able to do in the Valley in tightening up our team and tighten

up our systems and tighten up our brand and gaining market share and really systemize everything allowed us to reach new heights that we never even thought we could get to.

um And we put up the best revenue and profit numbers.

We did two years after that, we put up the best revenue and profit numbers we'd ever seen in our business.

So

it was well worth the heartache to go backwards.

You sometimes I say, you know, one step backwards can let you go two steps forward, you know.

Okay.

Can you help us understand how big of a step back that was?

What, I mean, how much of your business did you have to scale back?

How much did you lose in order to then bounce back and grow again?

I think it was like 60%.

wow.

Wow.

One year, you know, so or about maybe 18 month period of time.

So, you know, we dropped from for numbers.

We peaked around about 20 million and we dropped down to like seven and half at our lowest couple years after that and then worked our way back up to north of 20 million again last

year.

So it's it's a wide spectrum of man.

Yeah, that's a big hit that, uh, I can understand why you talk about it so much.

That was, I'm sure that was a process.

Yeah, it's definitely challenging and it's frustrating as an entrepreneur, especially, you know, when you have seen success and you feel like you have a great team.

And then you're in an environment where the market, you know, as an entrepreneur, I want to control things.

I want to be able to control my own destiny, my own outcome.

That's why I better myself when I started my business, you know, but when, the market completely shifts and you have zero control over the demand that's out there for your

services.

That makes it very difficult, emotionally difficult.

It makes you start questioning yourself and your own abilities and all that.

I've been through it number of times now and it's quite difficult.

But again, it's an opportunity to sharpen up.

It's an opportunity to get better.

It's an opportunity to evaluate and become a better leader, more humble and more faithful as well.

The valleys teach me way more than the peaks.

Amen.

I love that you can articulate that so well and

I guess have resisted the urge to be bitter about it.

You seem to have accepted that and really moved through it and are excited about the ways that it's allowed you to grow.

Yeah, thank you, man.

it's been to enough valleys to the point where I was homeless.

So it's like you don't get much lower than that.

So um everything is everything in life is a blessing at this point, my friend.

Well, if you had the chance to start all over and build a roofing company from scratch again, would you?

Yes, absolutely.

Roofing saved my life.

I mean, I owe my whole life, my family, my career, you know, my family, like it created opportunities for my immediate family and my external family.

So absolutely.

I'm very blessed and grateful that Roofing found me when it did.

And that's why I dedicate a lot of time giving back to this industry because it's been such an incredible journey.

I've been so blessed to be a part of it.

uh

And I just, want to share that with as many good people as I can.

That's great.

Yeah, I know roofers kind of have a reputation almost like used car salesmen.

Nobody expects the roofer to be a high quality person or they kind of keep them at arm's length thinking that there's some shady people out there.

And there definitely are, there's some contractors that we have rightfully earned that reputation.

But the more time I spend in the industry,

Man, there's some phenomenal people that are doing it right.

Loving people, loving their communities and serving their communities well also.

Absolutely.

Well, there's a lot of really good people that have all the best intentions that just don't have the education necessary to reach their full potential.

So if I can help that person, I'm all in.

That's great.

What has been your biggest win as a leader?

What moment are you most proud of?

It's hard to narrow it down to just like one moment, but I would say the moment that I, we officially made my sister a equity business partner was incredible.

It was just such a cool moment in the history of our business because you know, it wasn't a buy-in.

was, it was.

absolutely well deserved and hard earned.

Like she poured her heart and soul into this business and helping me chase my dreams.

And we couldn't have got there without her.

And when we went through a little bit of a challenging time through all the down that I talked about a few times, um it really showed us who we were as leaders and as siblings

and as colleagues.

And it just made it clear that this is...

you know, well deserved and being able to see someone come from and she's got an incredible story herself where same thing she she dealt with addiction and a number of

different things and to come to be like an absolute executive high, high level production.

I mean, she's one of the most sought after coaches in the industry right now.

Um, and, to see where she came from, to be able to just create an opportunity that allowed her to see her for full potential.

And same thing with my business partner.

mean, creating, creating this business and seeing

both my partners grow as leaders and as my family.

It's been so cool to just

see how we've all evolved as executive leaders of a pretty large, pretty successful business.

That's great.

Sounds like we need to get your sister on the show sometime too.

That sounds like a great story.

She has an incredible story herself as well.

Very articulate.

She teaches.

She speaks all the time at different events and webinars and stuff like that.

Cool.

Well, it sounds like you guys have a really close, strong relationship.

Has it been that way your whole lives or is that something that's been rekindled in recent years?

Oh man, good question.

No, growing up, we weren't super close.

I mean, I was the older brother.

was five years older than her.

You know, so I never got to really go to school with her or anything.

She was always, you know, lot younger and younger than I was.

you know, by the time I went off to college, she wasn't even in, wasn't even a freshman in high school yet.

So, or she was just going into high school.

So we weren't, we were connected, but we weren't like super close.

So it wasn't until.

after I started the business and she came back to work for us, she literally left, got out of, know, let's share her story, but she got out of, you know, some really difficult, you

know, personal situations and came to work for us.

um And that was the first time I had really interacted with her.

And now, I she's my sister and one of my best friends in the world.

I talk to her every day.

So again, when I say I owe my life to roofing, there's another reason because...

Roofing brought my family together, brought me and my sister together, my mom, my best friend.

This industry created so many cool things that I just, I can't give back enough.

That's really cool.

uh Awesome.

I can tell you spend a lot of time trying to grow as a leader, giving back to the industry.

Are there any resources that you would recommend that have been really influential in your leadership growth?

man, so many of them.

um If you're gonna podcasts, you know, podcasts great like Craig, Craig Groschel, Pastor Craig Groschel is great.

He's written a couple books and has a great podcast.

um I think anything by Dr.

Benjamin Hardy, those are probably the first books I would recommend to people.

He's got a new one out called the science of scaling.

But he did 10x is easier than 2x who not how um and and what's the other

Yeah, and the gap in the game.

all those are, mean, for those are start there.

If you haven't really dove into books, you're learning to want to grow your business, want to grow as a leader.

Anything that Dr.

Benjamin Hardy has written, I would start there.

Okay, I've heard some of those titles, but those are ones I'm not real familiar with.

So in addition to your book, I got a few more that I'm going to have to work through.

There you go.

I like the audio versions too, because he kind of does this like interview with Dan Sullivan, who's like the founder, you know, that he worked with and collaborated with in

those books.

And, and it's just, like a little, there's like a podcast in between every chapter.

So he's real dialogue and it's just, it was powerful.

I've listened to him multiple times.

So, you know, as I'm mentoring, coaching people, those are the first books I recommend to people, but I have a huge list.

mean, yeah, pretty extensive list of books.

So we've talked a lot about some of the hard things you've been through, uh a business going bankrupt, being homeless, having to scale back your business and let go some of your

team.

What is it that motivates you and keeps you grounded, keeps you pushing forward when things get hard?

Um, gratitude.

You know, I think, you know, if I try to practice gratitude day in and day out, regardless of the difficulty of whatever it is I'm dealing with.

So I think, you know, being just grateful for what I have at whatever phase of life I'm in, um whatever emotional state I'm in, if I can just be grateful for it, there's always

something I can complain about.

Things could always be worse no matter what.

So I just feel like if I just...

practice gratitude each and every single day and I teach others to practice gratitude each and every single day, like the ups and downs start to become like little waves.

uh And just you just you can just live a know, life of gratitude is takes a lot of factors, lot of idealistic factors out.

And I think it, you know, it's a place that I strive to be in, on a regular basis.

And not always easy.

That's for sure.

Life's tough.

Things happen every day.

But uh

If I can just always wake up and end the day and begin the day with just a little list of gratitude, things I'm grateful for, it makes everything doable and manageable, regardless.

Can you give us a little mini lesson?

You listed it a little bit there, but what does it look like to practice gratitude in those difficult times?

What are maybe some practices that you use to maintain that mindset?

Yeah, and it's funny because I mentioned it, but he talks about it in the gap in the game, the book that is referred to about you could do a gratitude journal.

I have actually a friend of mine in the entrepreneurial world who created his own.

He's got these things.

It's called oak.

It's actually oakjournal.com.

can go and get one of these and it's a three month journal that has like literally at the top of it, three things of gratitude, vision for the day and what's your three most

important goals each day.

But I think just getting yourself into the practice.

As one of my, you know, one of my, one of the guys who, one of the guys I work with that runs our main kind of coaching program coaches a lot of our clients, you know, he talks,

he always says you bookend your days with gratitude.

So at the end of the day, write down three things you're grateful for.

And then in the morning, reflect on those and write down three things you're grateful for, and then write down three, the three most important things you want to get done that day

and keep it simple.

like starting and ending your day.

with writing down what you're grateful for, even when it's a shitty day.

And it's like, there's always something to be grateful for.

And especially at night is a great way to do it because you tend to carry, you know, whatever happens throughout the day or what the last thing is that you put your, that you

put into your mind before you go to bed carries into the nighttime and then can carry into the next day and then can manifest itself.

you know, those, there's a, there's a lot to be said about this and Ben writes about a lot of things, but like,

You know, you see those people that just look at nothing but like doomsday scrolling or before bed, they're always in a bad mood.

You know, right?

They wake up grouchy.

They're like, Oh man, the world's ending.

I just watched too much CNN last night before I went to bed.

Like, no, what you fill your mind with at the end of the day, especially for the last 30 minutes is going to manifest itself overnight and into the next day.

So if you end your day with really thinking about the things you're grateful for in life, imagine what that does to

your attitude and your energy in your sleep.

in your habits when you wake up and go into the next step.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Was there a point where you feel like you really turned a corner either in your business or in your leadership and felt like a significant pinnacle?

Maybe not a I finally made it moment, but a like, we're here.

Probably multiple times what I think may be the best one for the audience is, you know, I talked about the, you know, the ego earlier and like early on in my career, man, I just

had this like, before I got started growing up college and I just kind of had this chip in my shoulder that I wanted to prove everybody wrong, right?

and I was, I'm a very competitive person, but I was to the point where, you know, was, I was driven a lot by like ego and what others.

of me and like, it's all, you know, self fulfilling, right?

So all the action and all the things I did, and as a leader, as an entrepreneur was basically to feed that own my own ego and to, you know, and you keep, you know, you

measure by money or how much money you can blow or spend or whatever, how you can look with the trucks and the boats and the things like that.

And I think early in my career, I was driven by that quite a bit on like the facade that I put out there as far as who I was and

what I represented as like a successful person when the reality of it was broke as shit.

um But this perception persona I put out, I think after losing everything, I was like God's way of saying, hey, bro, I've given you some really amazing gifts, but if you don't

use them the right way, it's not going to benefit you or those around you.

And it made me shift my eyes and my mindset to really caring and creating opportunities for others and seeing how I can help.

other people succeed instead of just leveraging to help myself succeed.

That was a major mindset shift.

That was a huge turning point in my career and created the

direction of success that I've been able to have.

That's great.

Nobody ever says when I made this much money, it's always great leaders always look at their own development, their people.

That's a theme we're starting to see a lot.

That's great, man.

You got a good thing going.

Yeah, I can't even tell you like, cool, you know, you big bonuses or big years or making money or whatever.

It's like that doesn't move the needle for me emotionally, spiritually or physically.

It's, you know, cool, grateful, right?

No, you know, try to be be responsible with success and with money.

But like early on, I wouldn't I wasn't responsible enough and I'm glad I didn't.

you know, make a lot of money early on because I would have been irresponsible.

I would have done way stupider things than I already did, than I did do.

So, you know, I think it was also God's way of kind of teaching me how to be a fiduciary and how to be responsible with his money.

You mentioned you coach people through starting their business all the way through an exit.

Do you have an exit plan in mind yet?

Is that something you're looking towards?

I'm watching man.

think there's still a lot of volatility right now and what's going on with all the firms and roll ups and different things happening.

And, you know, I have a beautiful thing right now and a beautiful business and beautiful life that I don't know if I'm ready to disrupt that too much.

So um I'm, I love supporting others and we've helped others exit and we help get their books and get their systems dialed into where they're going to maximize their exit.

And I love doing that.

I've

I literally can't even open my email anymore.

The amount of people reaching out that want to have that conversation with me, but I'm not there.

I'm not there,

Okay.

All right.

So what is next?

You're running your business.

It seems to be going smoothly.

You've got some limits around your time.

You got the Roofing Academy up and running.

What's the next big thing on your radar?

Um, I don't know there's a next big thing.

I think it's more of the same and doing better with what we have.

think there's still incredible opportunity to grow our roofing business and really sharpen up our retail side of things.

Um, there's definitely a lot of opportunity to really grow our service department.

So those are the, that's where we're focusing on our efforts.

But the main thing right now and the next big thing, so to speak, is we, we just reached a pretty significant milestone with

you know, with the Academy and we're able to serve at such a high level now that I think there's an incredible amount of growth and scaling opportunity with that.

You know, we've, systemized everything and now we have like a full curriculum and the step-by-step proven model.

I I was like, I literally was almost in tears last week because we got a review, you know, from a client we've been working with for a few years.

And it was like, you can go check my Facebook right now and see, was like, Whoa, it's, it's just, you get something that the words that people say about like,

how much of an impact we had on their business.

It's just, it's amazing.

And that's, want more of that.

So really trying to push and grow the coaching company.

Okay, cool.

I'm gonna have to look into that a little more.

I had not heard of...

uh It's Roofing Academy, right?

Yep, The Roofing Academy, theroofingacademy.com.

You can go to YouTube.

We have a YouTube channel with hundreds of videos and I've done my podcast, the Start Build Grow Show for six years.

We have 300 and some episodes or something like that, different interviews, different contractors, all different shapes and sizes, very similar to what we're doing here.

I try to share the entrepreneurial journey and the construction and roofing space and just share through good stories of good people and I love what you're doing.

So as far as like when you mentioned, like, yeah, let's do it.

it's kind cool to be on the other side because I'm the one doing the interview.

So yeah, in doing all that, you can find us on YouTube, you can find us on all that Lipsyn and all the podcast channels and then also at the Academy itself.

I take scurvy calls of a team, you can book call directly with me and I love to just chat and learn about business and learn about your business and your goals and your vision and

what you're trying to accomplish.

if it makes sense to have a team and join our community, then by all means.

So that's kind how we do it.

Great.

Well, we'll make sure we linked all those resources in the show notes so they can find you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

okay.

This is my favorite question.

ah You alluded to it a couple of times, mentioned you're a person of faith.

How has that shaped your leadership journey and how has that affected the way you run your business?

man, it's everything.

it's funny enough, like when I first started my roofing company, kind of facetious, kind of a funny story, but you know, I was working for another roofing company and I'm storm

chasing.

I'm in a whole different state, like 15 hour drive away.

And, and I see, you know, this, Aurora, Colorado gets hit with baseball size hail.

And I'm just like, I'm literally living out of a hotel doing knocking doors for somebody else.

Like I just,

It just dawned on me like, man, I already had this business sitting there.

have a registration.

can rebrand as a roofing company.

like, you know what?

I just, my heart was just like, you gotta go do this.

Okay.

And, uh and at the time my mom was actually helping me because she had been unemployed, living with my sister and kind of in between jobs and was helping me do job submissions

and keep my own life organized.

Cause I sold a lot of roofs and

And I called her on my way back.

You know, I was in Ohio at the time, coming back driving back to Colorado overnight.

I was like, all right, mom, I'm starting a roofing company and I need you to come work for me.

I'm going to do my best to get you paid eventually.

um Are you willing to come help me with this thing?

And, you know, and she said that I will do it as long as you put your faith first, right?

She raised us and you know, she's very faithful and went to church and she's been the spiritual rock for our whole family for

my whole life and during college and I was plenty of times where I, you know, even at that time, I was just still just like kind of ego driven, like I'm just gonna do them.

So of course, man, she was like, absolutely.

Yeah, sure.

Whatever you want, mom.

And, you know, it was, I'm grateful she did that because it did put a, you know, make that it helped me really make that a foundation.

But it's been a 15 year journey day in and day out of learning.

the ins and outs of what that really means and what it really means to have 100 % faith that God is directing me and directing the business and teaching me the lessons I need to

learn as a leader versus me just doing what I want to do, want to do and giving him credit every once in a while.

And also when things go bad, like praying, man, God help me out of this.

But when things are going really well, it's like, look at me, I'm the man.

I think that's the ultimate lesson is to learn to have faith no matter what and to understand that I'm just a steward.

It's not my business.

It's not my entity.

It's his entity.

It's his business.

And I'm just the steward.

I'm the one that's being directed.

And I have to be reminded of that constantly.

And I surround myself with people of strong faith and good mentors and to be reminded of that on a regular basis because it's an ongoing thing.

Great, thank you.

Okay, who would you like to see on the show in the future?

Well, the problem is guilty as charged.

haven't seen I don't necessarily know who you've had on prior.

I mean, I've interviewed over 300 people.

So, you know, I could probably help somewhere.

But definitely, you know, my my sister Brianna Reese, Bri Reese.

She's an incredible, high level integrator, CFO for multiple companies at this point in time.

And she's got an incredible story, too.

So that may be a good one for you.

Okay, all right.

Well, I might have to see if you can connect us offline here.

um Last question to either settle or fuel the debate.

If you're doing a job and have to use a cordless tool, which brand do you prefer?

to all.

DeWalt?

All right.

Bro, was raised on the other end of a, on the other end of a saw and, and, you know, my dad was, like I said, I'm a third generation guy.

watched him build stuff.

used to be a cabinet maker.

He used to build furniture and had this shop in his basement.

And, and he, he ingrained in me when I was a little kid is the yellow and the yellow and black and the Walt tools all day long.

That's great.

I'm a DeWalt guy myself and up to this point, think Milwaukee has been edging us out.

So we got one more in the win column there.

No one says Harbor Freight.

Yeah, that has not been an answer yet.

That's good.

Oh, awesome.

Well, Randy, thank you so much for joining us.

It's been a pleasure having you

and thank all you guys for joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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