Dominick Fraser – Miami Vice Dishwasher to Top 100 Roofing Company

Find me a better job where you can work in the great outdoors

helping people and you can make the more money than doctors and

lawyers. Please tell me what that is.

And a recession proof business. Hey there and welcome to From

the Ground Up Show, the show where we encourage and inspire

blue collar leaders by telling the stories of those that have

been there, done that and are usually still doing it.

They've built a business with their heart, their hands and

their hustle. And today we are super honored

to have Dominic Fraser of Fraser Roofing joining us.

So, Dominic, welcome. How's it going?

Dominic owns and runs Fraser Roofing, which is a top 100

roofing company, a title they've held since 2009.

He has been in business since 2005.

So you guys hit the 20 year mark.

Congratulations. Dominic is a husband, a father,

and a follower of Jesus. So thank you for joining us,

Dominic. I'm super excited to dive in.

Thank you, Eric. I'm happy to be here.

Awesome. Well to start out we like to

hear where did you come from? What was childhood and growing

up like for you? That's that's how I start some

of my interviews, by the way, when I'm when I'm interviewing

was like, who are you and where did you come from?

And just so Dominic Fraser, I'm from Miami, FL, so go Canes.

Go Canes. Even though, you know, we had a

tough loss against Louisville last week.

My mom and my dad both met at the University of Miami.

So yeah, I I grew up in a crazy family, Irish, Scotch, Irish,

five brothers, two sisters. I was the middle child.

So yeah, we, we, we grew up in South Florida.

I just grew up on Biscayne Bay and just, you know, that's the

only thing I miss about South Florida is the, the ocean.

Yeah, everything else it, it changed after Hurricane Andrew.

It just thought, but that's a whole other story.

But yeah, just the middle child. I've been a a Jack of all trades

throughout my 20s and 30s and I ran into roofing.

That's a whole, I'm sure we'll get into the story in my mid

30s. So it's been, it's been a heck

of a ride and God is good and he is faithful and yeah, man, just

happy to help you in any way I can.

But you said your parents met while they were in college.

Do you have any formal college education or what did education

look like for you? Yeah, I feel kind of guilty for

taking, for doing five years of just having too much fun and not

enough study. So I, I went to Sanford

University and it's funny because when people were going,

you went to Stanford. I'm like, yeah, sure, sure,

sure. I went to, but no, went to

Samford in Birmingham, AL I was a football player.

I was, you know, I was a pretty decent football player in high

school, and then I wanted to go play college ball, but I

realized they were a lot bigger, they were a lot faster and they

were a lot stronger. So I was like, forget this, they

hit too hard. So I tried that for a year, but

went to Stanford University and did the typical football degree.

I got sociology degree which I've done nothing with in a

minor. In minor in Spanish which I've

done a lot with in the roofing industry.

Yeah, that probably comes in handy, especially down in the

Southern United States, so. Clano Casey porcia puesto

necesito abra espanol. Especially, especially Mente

when you're from Miami. So if you don't speak, if you

don't speak Spanish in Miami, you're going to get lost.

So. All right, all right.

And you said you were kind of a Jack of all trades.

You worked a lot of different jobs until your mid 30s.

Can you tell us a little bit about your work history?

Absolutely. I would.

I would have never hired me. By the way, if you saw my

resume, you would never hire me. I thought I was going to get

into the family business, so I'll start there.

The family business, I come from a line of really crazy, amazing

entrepreneurs. So my dad started a company

called Royal Caribbean. So Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines,

that was his. So it was his name.

So let me let me be very clear, the name was his.

So him and Uncle Frank young 20s, they had this company

called Royal Caribbean and this guy by the name of Ed Stefan,

this Norwegian says, hey guys, I really like that name.

Can I use it? I'm starting up this cruise line

and my dad being a an entrepreneur and risk taker that

he was, goes, yeah, I'll give you the name of Royal Caribbean.

But I would like to be your caterer.

I would like to cater all the food, all the beverage, all the

personnel, all the entertainment.

And Ed Stefan looks at my dad and goes, oh, Lou, that was my

dad's name, Louis Lou. What do you know about catering?

He's like nothing. But I know how to run a good

team in an organization. Give me a shot.

So for not so for nothing. My dad gave Ed Stefan the name

Royal Caribbean and he did build at one point in time.

After all the years of helping Royal Caribbean grow, my dad was

the number one caterer in the world and he was catering to the

United States Military, United United Nations, Brown and Root,

the list goes on. But at one point in time my

father Louis Frazier was the largest caterer in the world and

I was his Guinea pig. My older brother, my older

brother Lou Junior or Louis the 2nd, he was the president of the

company, 4 point O student, super, super sharp.

I was the C student, you know, 2 point O student.

And my dad sent me off to the, the war zones.

I was in the Haiti conflict, I was in the Bosnia conflict and I

was pretty much a, a Jack of all trades again, like helping my,

my dad set up kitchens because as a prerequisite to go work

with my dad, he said, son, you got to work two years on the

ships. I'm like, come on, dad, I got

this degree. I don't want to go work in those

ships. He's like, suck it up.

You want to come work for me? We're not doing, we're not doing

the nepotism thing. So I worked two years with my

dad for every single position on the ship from the pot washer.

I was a pot washer. I was a dishwasher.

I was a bartender, assistant bartender, excuse me, assistant

bar manager, bar manager, a provision master.

So I was like the only American working on a particular ship in

Italy. And I didn't even speak Italian,

but I spoke Spanish, so I can kind of BS.

But yeah, that that was my dad and I, I could I could continue

to go down the rabbit trail. My grandfather, Leslie Frazier,

there's a monument of my granddad in the Port of Miami,

and he was the founder of the cruise industry as we know it.

And that dude was a character. He hung out with movie stars

Marilyn Monroe and Earl, Earl Flynn was a buddy of his.

And they built hotels all throughout Jamaica, which, by

the way, prayers for the people in Jamaica.

They just got smoked by a Category 5 hurricane.

But yeah, total character. My grandfather.

So, yeah. So I started in the cruise

industry, did all those jobs. I came back from the ships and

my dad put me in charge of recruiting.

So I I used to go around all of Eastern Europe, India, Southeast

Asia. I was in the Philippines once a

month recruiting and there was literal, I was basically I was,

I was a headhunter and I would go and pick off the top chefs

and the top waiters and maitre DS at all these nice hotels like

the Shangri-La in Southeast Asia.

And I heard, I don't know if this is true, but I heard there

was like a bulletin of me in certain hotels.

Like if you see this guy, kick him out of the hotel because I

would go pick off all their top talent, bring it back onto the

cruise ships and you know, the rest is history.

But that was in my early 20s. It's so after that, I was like,

Dad, I'm out of here. I love you.

But it's, it's very, very difficult to work with your

family. I don't know if you've ever

experienced that, but I went and opened up a smoothie franchise

called the Juice Stop. You know, a buddy of mine out in

Southern California, I said, dude, let's take it out east.

We had all the rights for South Florida.

So we opened up a Juice Stop. Unfortunately, it did.

It didn't work out. And from there I just went on

just, I was a jumper. I jumped from one job.

You name a sales job, I pretty much did it.

The worst of them was I was a timeshare salesperson in Hilton

Head, SC. That's got to be by bar none,

the most dirty business, worse than a used car sales, way worse

than a used car salesman. But I, I learned all the sales

techniques and I was like, whoa, this is this is dirty.

And somehow, some way, I stumbled into an Irish pub in,

in Atlanta, GA and I ran an Irish pub called Mcduff's Irish

Pub. In between all these career

jumps, I was bartending just to pay the rent.

So I, I think I learned a lot of my people skills from

bartending. I was pretty much a shrink, you

know? And here's a hot tip for all

your, your entrepreneurs out there or future wannabe

bartenders. If you don't know how to make a

drink, here is the trick. You say these two things, would

you like the East Coast version or would you like the West Coast

version? And then the person will be

like, no, I like the one with the, the vodka and the tonic and

they, you know, grandinium. So any of you could be a

bartender now by asking, would you like the East Coast version

or would you like the West Coast version?

Or you can say, Hey, I can make that, you know, several

different ways. How would you like it?

And then the girl will be like, oh, you can make a Cosmo by

doing this, this, this. And so there's your bartending

tip of the podcast. But I, I had an Irish pub and it

was about to kill me right around this time.

I was a very, very depressed individual.

I had lost my little brother with a freak virus.

He, he had me visit. He's like Dominic, come visit me

at Florida State University. And his name was Michael Robert

Starbuck Fraser, but he didn't like the name Starbuck.

My mom's a hippie. Another, another story.

But he didn't like the name Starbucks.

So we all we all called them Buck.

And Buck was the best of us out of the seven kids.

He was the he was the Golden Boy.

But unfortunately, one night at Florida State University, you

know, and I was with him at the time because we were we were

inseparable. He's like Dom, I'm not feeling

well. I was like, let's go to the

student center, took him to the student center and the the

medical staff said he had bronchitis.

And I was like, OK, well here's your medication.

And I stayed with him at at his apartment at Florida State.

And I remember that night he goes, this girl that he always

wanted called him that night and she's like, let's go out.

And he's like, I can't, I'm not feeling good.

And the last things he said to me was that's just my luck.

He went to bed. He, he asked me if I would come

sleep with him that night. Like, hey, bro, would you come

sleep with me? I'm not feeling that good.

Went to go sleep with him. Woke up at, you know, in the

morning and I just reached over and he was ice cold.

He had passed away in his sleep of a rare, rare disease called

myocarditis. It was just a freak thing.

So that ties into the whole bar thing.

I was pretty much depressed. I didn't want to live.

I was trying to kill myself with Jack Daniels because I think I

was too cowardly to pull the trigger, which I had put the gun

up to my head several times because I just, I was miserable

with without my little bro. And yeah, yeah, I just, I

remember I was praying to God. I was like, can you please Get

Me Out of this mess? I was closing down the bar at, I

don't know, sometimes 4:00 in the morning.

I was like, and my, my relationship with God was hit or

miss. I was like, AI was a believer,

but I wasn't a follower of Jesus.

I grew up in the church, but I, I really wasn't serious about

it. I think I was a, a lukewarm

Christian at best. And I was praying to God as a

guy. Can you Get Me Out of here?

Please? Just Get Me Out of this bar.

I'm about, I'm not going to make it.

And lo and behold, I get a phone call and Hurricane Katrina just

hit 2005. And I got a buddy of mine.

He's like, Dominic, you speak Spanish, right?

You're from Miami. I'm like, yeah, Porso Puesto

Maso made us more or less. He's like, I need you to come be

a Gopher. And and basically babysit these

4040 guys. They're they're a hodgepodge of

Latin American guys from Honduras and Guatemala and

Mexico. He's like, you're going to be

their Gopher starting in East Moss Point, Ms. and put blue

tarps on heading towards New Orleans, which it was a

disaster, Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating

hurricanes ever. So that was my very long winded

response of my career path and an answered prayer on how I got

into roofing. OK.

Yeah. I have a friend that says nobody

ever plans to go into the roofing business, you wind up in

the roofing business. And I found that that's pretty

true. Yes, Sir.

Yes, Sir. I can.

I can attest. I can attest.

Turns out it's not a terrible business all the time, but

doesn't seem like that's anybody's Plan A.

That that friend is very wise yes, but now I think it's the

greatest business in on the planet.

I tell everybody it's it's a recession proof business like

I've been in it. I've been in this game for well,

yeah, 20 years now, 2005 and you know, it is a roller coaster,

but I can't, you can't tell me another job that where you can

work in the great outdoors, make 6 figures, listen to your your

favorite radio station in the truck and go help people tell me

a better job on the planet than being a roofer.

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

That's awesome. Well, it sounds like you came

from quite a line of entrepreneurs and interesting

personalities. How did that shape your

willingness to take risks and do something a little bit

different? Did that play a significant

role? Yeah, it's it's like that

question and somebody has posed this to me before.

It's nature over nurture. Like do you have it or do you

don't have it? I think you either have it or

you don't. You cannot.

You can't teach work ethic. You can't.

It's my dad called it the eye of the tiger.

And I think I had the, the privilege of learning from my

dad. I worked with him and he's like

Dominic. I could, I could tell if I'm

going to hire somebody within 5 minutes, right?

When the guy walks in his room, by the way he shakes your hand,

by the way he looks you in the eyeballs, you can tell someone's

got the eye of the tiger. So yeah, my dad was a crazy risk

taker and he gave me a lot of advice, like the, I think the

main, main take away was never surrender, never, ever

surrender. He was a big Winston Churchill

fan, you know, World War 2 buff. He loved Winston Churchill.

And I remember he would impersonate Churchill and say

this to me as a child. So I think it it's embedded in

me is when the Germans were bombing London, Churchill got up

and did a speech and it was something like never surrender,

never surrender, never, never, never.

And that was like the speech. And guess what?

The the English never surrendered, ended up winning

with the help the Americans and the Russians.

But yeah, I think it helped having entrepreneurial, a dad

like that who who took a lot of risks.

He took a lot of risks. And I think I just, it's in my

nature, I, I think. Yeah, interesting.

I think the the never give up, never surrender is a theme we've

been finding with a lot of entrepreneurs and people that

have really found success, especially in the blue collar

spaces, even military. We've been hearing that again

and again and again as you just keep going, got to keep going.

So. Yes, Sir, Yes, it's hard to beat

a man that doesn't quit. Yeah, yeah, that's one of my

favorite quotes is the man that cannot be defeat or the man that

will not be defeated cannot be defeated.

That's it, man. Like you got to be a dogged.

You just got to be I, I like the, the word if, if you want to

give me a word, my word is stick to itiveness.

And I it's, it's an actual word. I, I didn't think it was a word

of like stick to itiveness is a word.

But yeah, it's like dogged perseverance.

So give me that guy. Give me the guy that doesn't

quit over the Harvard grad or the guy with a degree all day

long. Give me the the the guy who's

the dog. Give me that guy all day.

Or the girl. Absolutely.

I can relate quite a bit. You were talking about working

for your dad, And yeah, I started working in my dad's

company at a fairly young age, and he didn't make me go work

for somebody else. But he said you're going to

start at the bottom and you're going to do work twice as hard

for half the pay because that's what you have to do to earn the

respect of everybody else. So I started out sweeping and

making dump runs and was the laborer and had to work my way

up. So I can relate to that a lot.

Yes, Sir. Yeah, they, they they took shots

at me because the boss's son, you know?

Oh, you're the boss's son. So I remember they mocked me

when I worked on the Wind Song. The Wind Song was a giant sail

ship and we went through from Miami through the Panama Canal

up to California to Tahiti. And they were making fun of me.

They made me a name tag. And I'm going to age myself a

little bit, but this is when Miami Vice was a big deal.

I don't know if you remember the show Miami Vice Nineteen 1980s.

So my title wasn't Dominic Fraser.

It was Miami Vice dishwasher. That was my, that was my my name

tag. Awesome.

So I know you've made the top 100 list for roofing contractors

a few years in a row. Can you tell us what that is or

what that means? Yes, Sir.

So Contractor magazine has a top 100.

And The funny thing was when I first got in the game, I met a

roofer out of Miami and his name, his name was Isaac with

Isaac's roofing. And when we walked into his

office on right when you walked in, there was a a display and it

was like top 100 roofer. And I was like, whoa, like these

guys are serious. And it was always in the back of

my mind. I mean, even when we were a

little mom and pop operation not even make we were losing money.

I was like, wouldn't I was like, wouldn't that be cool to have

that plaque that like that cool laminated whatever it was plaque

versus top 100 refer. So that was way in the

beginning. And lo and behold, I think it's

really because of God's blessings.

We we've honored him with our business and we've made this a

Kingdom business which we can get into that.

But lo and behold, slow and steady over the years of

grinding, we've become a top 100 roofing company.

And basically what they do is they do an audit on your books.

You can't throw out fake numbers.

So they do like a deep dive into your business to authenticate.

Like, are these legitimate numbers?

Are you fluffing your numbers? And I think the first time we

made it was like 3 years ago when we hit 36 million in one

year. And I think we were top like 80

like 8989. We were in the in the country.

But here's the cool thing that all the top, top roofers are

commercial guys like you. The commercial guys are the top

10, the top 25 because as you know, commercial commercial, I

consider commercial the big leagues like you can't screw up

those jobs that, that those can be career Enders if you screw up

one of those big Walmarts or whatever.

But we're strictly residential. We, we dabbled with commercial

and we lost our butts, lost a couple 1,000,000 bucks.

Actually, we, we literally lost 2,000,000 bucks in five years

trying to chase the shiny thing that we weren't good at.

And we're like, OK, let's stop. Let's stop touching the stove

and burning our hands. We are strictly residential.

So we're residential and we're gutters.

So anything flat, we will just, we'll just sub it out or send it

off to one of our sister companies, which we have a huge

network of really amazing sister companies that we refer the

commercial out to and they throw us a bird dog fee or whatever.

But yeah, the top 100 list is like the bragging rights, you

know, and it's funny because when you get in with some of

these other networks in the roofing industry, they're like,

oh, you're number 87 this year, huh?

Like I'm #67 so, yeah, come and come and catch me if you can.

I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to come get you.

And it's kind of like a fun. And that's the way I like it is

like make allies, not enemies. Too many contractors trying to

like battle. I'm like, you guys are doing it

all wrong. Like, you got to come together

and, you know, collaborate and, and help each other out.

So I've got partner, like I call them sister companies all over

the country that we, we call each other thought partners.

I'll give you one example. This guy, Sean Sedaris out of

Montana, him and Brandon Wagner roofing.

They're on the top, they're ahead of us on the top 100.

And I, we talk daily, like daily.

We share Bible verses from the, you know, the Bible app.

But I keep on telling Sean, I'm going to catch you one of these

days, buddy. So you, you, you better get to

work. All right.

That's awesome. That's great.

So you mentioned a couple times when you first started you were

losing money and trying to go into commercial, you lost some

money. I can really relate to the

specialization there. We've kind of done just the

opposite. We found that when we do

commercial, we do well, we make money.

I can. That's what my guys are trained

for and what they're efficient at.

And we start a branch into other products or doing steep slope.

That's when we lose it. So we've done just the opposite.

We send all of our residential or steep slope to somebody else.

But through those periods of losing money or, or is there

something else? What has been the most difficult

part of your journey in building your business?

That's a good question. The most difficult part of the

journey is, you know what it is? It's losing people that you

love. You know, this is a cutthroat

business, you know, and I'm a even though I'm not a big fan of

Alabama, the Roll Tide, I'm a big fan of Coach Saban.

Coach Saban. And he has an expression that

says mediocre people hate high achievers and high achievers

hate mediocre people. And it's my job to put the right

players on the bus and take the, and get the, the wrong players

off the bus. So pretty much the hardest thing

for me because I got a heart. I, I love my, my guys.

I love my guys and my girls. So when we have to cut somebody

and kick him off the bus because they're not, they're not

sticking to the, the process, the standard by far that's the

hardest part of this job is I'll look at the Christmas pictures.

We have a huge, that's like the highlight of our year is our big

Christmas party. This year it's going to be 80s

theme. So I will be busting out the

Miami Vice white suit and the So that's what hurts me personally

is when I see the Christmas picture, it's like a yearbook

picture and the faces that aren't there on the team

anymore. That's the most difficult thing.

But this business is not for the faint of heart.

So I warn people when they come in, like 96% of roofing

companies fail within the first five years. 9 out of 10.

There's a reason for that. This is not for the faint of

heart. You got to be a little bit nuts

to get into the roofing game. So that's, that's an easy

answer. Just losing teammates that you

poured into. We're doing that this week, as a

matter of fact. Let go of some, some really

people that have been with us from the, you know, for a long

time that that hurts. It hurts.

Yeah, that's a common theme I've been hearing a lot is most

successful leaders are not as worried about the numbers, their

success. They love their people and they

really pour into them. Yeah, that's, that's definitely

like if you ask me what my mission is, my mission is it's

Matthew 2819 and I forget all the degrees, man, This is this

is all you need right here is the Bible.

But we, we are, we are commanded.

If you're if you call yourself a Christian, a Christian, we're

commanded. We're not asked to.

We're commanded to go make disciples.

And my old pastor Buddy Hoffman used to say over and over again

with his funny accent, he's like disciples make disciples.

So that's what I'm doing here for my brief time on earth.

You know, it's like that's my mission is to go pour into these

guys, show them the love of Jesus.

And if you go to our main office, you'll see a neon on our

front window. Basically our creed.

And our creed is love. God love people.

And when I, when I send my kids out, I got a 10 year old boy and

a 13 year old girl said it to my son this morning.

Go love on somebody today. Go love on somebody today.

That's like, that's the mission. That's great.

I think that separates A mediocre leader from a great

leader most of the time. When were you most afraid as a

leader? Another good question.

When was I most afraid COVID was not fun?

COVID wasn't fun. That was a troubling time.

But it turns out even in those fears, like what's going to

happen next, we had one of their best years we've ever had

because people were home, you know, So that fear turned out to

be OK Ignore that. But I'm trying to think my

biggest fear. I'll tell you.

I'll tell you when this is. This is a good one.

When my wife and I7 years ago when we're trying to figure out

our numbers at the end of the year and we had no idea if we

made any money or not. So it just so happens best hire

of my life. I'm going to give her a shout

out. Best hire of my life.

Besides my wife who joined me from corporate America.

She was 17 years corporate America with a Fortune 500

company. So couldn't couldn't have done

this. I have to give my my wife a high

5 high 5. Sarah, I love you couldn't have

done this without her. But the scariest moment was at

when Sarah and I were trying to figure everything out and put

our systems in place. We hired a girl in by the name

of Connie Blannett. We called her our our franchise

quarterback. She's a feisty redhead.

She came from a very successful roofing company called

Perimeter, which a lot of people know.

Great outfit over there. But when she came over because

her and my my wife became friends, I asked her.

I was like, are we making money? Are we not making money?

You know, we're probably 3,000,000 ish, 3,000,000 ish

residential and she's like please hold.

She went back QuickBooks. So like you lost $67,000 last

year. That was scary.

That was scary because we thought we were doing everything

right, but we were actually losing money.

And she's like, well, this is what you got to do.

And she came from a company that already had a proven playbook.

So again, props to them. And she's like, this is what you

need to do. You need to bring in this CRM.

You need to do this with your cruise like super wise girl.

And we're surrounded. If you, if you look into our

office, it's all alpha females and there's a strategy behind

that. I, I gave my wife 51% of the

company because we were doing military projects early on.

So we did Fort Stewart down in South Georgia and we got these

jobs because we were female owned.

But more important than that, women have something that men

don't have. They've got the female

intuition. So we, again, we, we got some

alpha females in our office and when we bring in our recruits, I

can kind of look at the girls who go thumbs up, thumbs down.

They'll be like thumbs up. But if one of them goes like

this, I'm not hiring that guy. And it's turned out like, I

don't know, they're, they're good BS detectors.

But that's got to be the scariest moment is 7 years ago

when after we thought we had a successful year, we were told we

lost $67,000. That can be a bit terrifying.

I think every entrepreneur that doesn't have an accounting

background has been there where you're working your butt off,

working, working, working. The top line looks good and you

find out, oops, it's the bottom line that matters, not the top

line. That's it.

That's it, man. What you just said was gold.

It's gold what you just said. Because there's so many guys

walking around with their chests out and the, you know, they're

all and you'll see them at these conferences.

I did 100 million last year. I did 70, whatever.

I did 5300 million, whatever the number is like, OK, what'd you

keep? What'd you keep?

So the more I've been in this game, I don't care about that

top number. I want to, I want to see that.

Would you keep and that's something that I've recently

said to to my leadership team is I don't want to be the big

forget the top 100 list. Forget that noise.

Some of the best advice I ever got.

So this is for your, your, your entrepreneurs and your roofers.

This is for you guys. Forget that big number.

A wise man once told me, yeah, I I'm going to give him a shout

out. Nathan Thibodeau.

Nathan Thibodeau with contractor coach pro.

That's our coach. So anyhow, we, we definitely

needed coaching. Nathan said to me one time that

the best operation, $5,000,000 roofing company was 6 killers

out there in the field closing the jobs, not lead babies, but

killers. And you got a girl in the back

office netting 15 and he's like, so that's 750,000 bucks.

You can't live on 750,000 bucks. I'm like sure.

I can't. It's like, yeah, so don't get

that's, that's to your young entrepreneurs out there.

Don't worry about that top number so much.

Get that profit margin where it needs to be and let the chips,

you know, fall where they may. Yeah, I think that was some of

the best advice I got from my dad when I took over our

business was the the guys with big egos chase the top number.

But I don't need to be doing work for free.

Doing more work only counts if you get to keep more at the end

of the day. So efficiency, quality,

reputation, you never sacrifice efficiency for scale.

Always focus on efficiency first and then scale.

Your dad's a very wise man. So that that should be like the

theme of this podcast, efficiency.

Run a tight ship, man. Batten down, batten down the

hatches, especially right now. I'm going to Eric, I'm going to

give you some alarming statistics that I got yesterday.

And this is for your insurance guys, not so much, not so much

for your retail guys, but this is for your insurance guys out

there. Insurance claims, when claims

are down 57% this year, 57% down and hail claims are down 60%

this year. And at the same time that claims

are down, the insurance carriers are, are being way more tough

and they're moving the goal posts.

And it's like what they're doing is they're separate.

And I, I've heard from good authority that they're

separating the weak ones from the herd.

So it's a tough market out there.

On top of that, I've heard this from coast to coast.

I'm in some masterminds with some really heavy hitters in the

roofing industry. Coast to coast sales are down

30%. And I heard this from a local

Rep, they're down 20 million squares.

So you, you Add all these factors in with AI, with

everybody being scared right now with, you know, you put all that

together and you better have, you better be squared away.

You better be built for battle because it's not going to get

any easier. Interesting, I had not heard

that. It seems like you guys are still

growing even in this tough battlefield.

I think we're going to hit 25 this year, which it's so fun.

It's so funny because we set the goal for I think, I think the

last Christmas, every Christmas party, we set a goal and we put

it up on the big screen so everybody can see it.

You know, let's, let's aim for that.

Last year was 30 million. So we're going to be about 5

million short of our goal. So we're down actually 17%.

We're down. But if the industry is down 30%

and we're down 17%, I'll take it.

You know I'll take it. And again, battening down the

hatches, running a tighter ship with higher profit margins, for

me, it's a better way to live. Yeah, you don't need more

stress, more work for less money.

Amen, brother. I wish, I wish guys would.

I'm, I'm hoping one guy on your on your listening audience will

hear that because that will save you a lot of Gray hair.

See this Gray hair here? It'll save you from that.

Well, and you get into markets that are so competitive and you

have guys that are giving work away for free or even losing

money on it just to get the volume, man, if we all take a

more moderate chunk and do it at a reasonable profit margin, we

can actually serve our customers better.

We have more time, more energy to focus on the customer, take

better care of them. We have less stress, we're

making more money. I mean, grow, scale, try to get

bigger, get out there and do it. But we need to do it the right

way. Amen, brother.

And we, we got to unite. We got to unite the clans and

get rid of all the chucks in a truck.

So I'm hoping these these rough waters, I'm I'm sure you've

heard smooth seas have never, you know, you can't be a skilled

sailor on smooth seas. I actually kind of have the the

crazy sea captain mentality when it's rough out there.

I love it. I love it because I know these

chucks in the truck that are giving away deductibles and just

doing these big projects that cost so they can get the rebate

check. These dudes will be part of that

90. It might not happen this year,

but it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable.

They'll be that 96% that won't make it after five years.

So I, I share this with the team.

This is a marathon, not a Sprint.

Let those guys be crazy. This is the long game.

We're we're in this for the long game.

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

That's a big reason that we stay out of residential.

A part of just finding that we do better when we specialize.

It's in in our market anyway. In order to take on the big

commercial jobs, you have to have real insurance, do

everything legally, you have to be bondable.

It takes a fair amount of overhead and two guys with a

pickup and an air nailer is a shingling company.

And we just to be the kind of company you have to be to

compete on the commercial jobs. We just can't compete with two

guys in the pickup. But five years from now, those

two guys have different jobs and we're still around serving our

customers so. 100%. Yeah, well, I know you come from

a really unique family. It sounds like your grandfather,

your father, your mother, we're all quite the personalities.

I'm sure that instilled in you a unique personality and growing

up, one of seven kids and an Irish family.

How do you think your personality has played a role in

building your business, being a leader and a successful

entrepreneur? Great question.

My senior quote. My senior quote was blessed are

the peacemakers. As the middle child, I had to

break up a lot of fights and I had to be a chameleon.

I think probably one of my biggest strengths is being able

to speak to anybody on any level.

I'll talk to the janitor the same way I'm going to talk to

the CEO. So I think probably that is

being malleable, being able to adapt and improvise and

overcome. Even when the hits keep coming.

I don't freak out when the hits come.

I'm like, that's where I thrive. I love chaos and my my wife

doesn't, by the way, but give me give me the craziest customer

you have. I want that.

I want that when there's a fire in the building, I'm not running

away from the fire. I'm running into the fire.

And that's been my thing for I'm not afraid of any man.

I'll fight anybody and probably get my ass kicked, but I'll come

at you. I'm a bulldog and I'm, you know,

I saw this saying from Clint Eastwood, which I admire Clint

Eastwood dudes like very, very talented guy.

But he says don't, don't let the old man in.

You know, I'm, I'm closing in on 55 years old and I see a lot of

my peers saying I'm going to go retire and go to the beach.

I'm going to go retire and go ahead to the lake or wherever.

I'm never going to retire. I love what I do.

And yeah, I think probably the the number one attribute passed

down from my crazy family. They, they and I actually

thanked my mom. My mom just moved in with us

with her five Chihuahuas. That's another story.

That's another story. I'm not doing this podcast in my

office downstairs because I'm afraid you're going to hear the

dogs bark another, but bring it on.

Give me the chaos. Give me the chaos.

I'll use one small example. This is family related, so this

should be fun for your viewers. My mom called me two weeks ago

living in Miami, FL. She's like, hey, Dominic, she's

got this country accent from Arkansas.

Hey, Dominic, remember that time I said, you know, you said that

if things ever got bad, I can I can move in with you.

I'm like, yes, come and get me. So I drove down to Miami two

weeks ago and they said, oh, by the way, your brother, I need

you to drive him to Oklahoma City to live with his sister.

I was like, OK, so I adapted got I got my brother King and drove

him to Oklahoma City, turned back around, drove back to

Miami, picked up my mom with five Chihuahuas and just drove

her back. She's now living in our our

furnished basement downstairs with five Chihuahuas.

And my wife has not left me. My wife has not left me.

So I'm giving you a very long winded answer, but I think I've

been battle tested since a young age and my dad always threw me

into impossible scenarios. So now when when this when the

fire comes, I'm like, I feel good.

Like I'm like this is what I was built for.

Yeah, I can relate to that as well.

I maybe not quite as interesting as you, but my childhood was

full of a lot of adventures and challenges and getting.

I was Dad's helper, so it didn't matter if I was 10 years old, if

a truck needed moved you, you got to drive it, you know?

So yeah, I got thrown into things at a pretty young age and

learned how to do things pretty early.

I think I'm finding that's true of a lot of entrepreneurs is you

get thrown into situations where you figure it out or die.

There is you don't have a safety net or a backup plan like you

win or you die. So.

Amen, brother. Amen, brother.

You just sparked something in my brain at my dad's funeral and he

was my hero. One of the nicest things I heard

when this this lady, Dorothy went up, she was part of our

family and she went up there and she's like and Dominic, oh, and

Dominic, she's like he was he and she called my dad the man.

She's like he was the man's right hand man like and you

know, Dorothy is a a character. She's also a pastor.

But that was probably one of the highest compliments I've I

received in my life that I was my dad's right hand man.

I was like, I don't think she knows.

Hopefully she'll watch this. But thank you, Dorothy.

You spoke so much life into me when you said that.

That's awesome. I love hearing about close

family relationships like that. We heard so many stories of

broken families and difficult situations.

It's nice to get to talk to somebody that has that

connection with their dad. You've talked a lot about your

wife and her role in the business.

This is a question I was going to get to a little later, but

you keep bringing it up. What does that dynamic look

like? What?

What is it like working in the office with your wife?

Again, not for the faint of heart.

It's a challenge, but she she and I, I think, I don't think I

know that is why we have a very successful roofing company is

I'm all gas, she's all brakes. I say it's dark outside.

She says it's like we are the opposites in all the right ways,

but not the truth be she knows this and everybody knows this

who's around the organization. If it wasn't for Sarah, we would

have been out of business a long time ago.

Her mind, you know, and you know, she went to Georgia Tech,

which is an engineer really. You got to be smart to get in

there. And, and she's also proven

through corporate America, 17 years of flying all over the

country for all these Fortune 500 companies and she was the

top of her field working with a bunch of dudes.

So she's tough like you can't frazzle my wife.

You can, she's just tough as nails And she, she puts, she

holds me in line. So I, I didn't need a pushover

wife. My wife holds me accountable.

So when she came on, that's it's, it's like when she came on

and then when Connie converged with her, our profits just went

Boo. I just like whoa.

And we went, I'll give you the numbers.

We went from three to five, five to seven, 7 to 1515 to 2525 to

36. And now we're like, yeah, OK,

let's, let's. And then we did like a 26.

And this year we're going to be 25.

I think 25 is our sweet spot. But unless we organically grow,

we meet all sorts of folks. And I shake hands and kiss

babies. I mean, I met one guy on a duck

hunt. Next thing you know, we opened

up an office and it's one of our top offices.

So we don't, we don't plan to like really to expand unless God

puts the right people in our in our place in front of us.

But Sarah, if it wasn't for her, yeah, we would be toast.

So I thank God every day for my wife.

In fact, you know, we're doing this class and this might be for

all you guys that are work with your wives or want to have a

better relationship with your wives.

We were actually doing a course right now at our church called

Re Engage. Re Engage.

Highly, highly recommend you do this 15 week course with your

wives. It's been helping us

tremendously. We went last night at our local

church fellowship Greenville and it's been uncomfortable.

I will warn you, it's been very uncomfortable because we tell

each other we had to get up in front of this group and share

our marriage testimony. I didn't know what she was going

to say. She didn't know what I was going

to say. But bro, like she broke down.

I, I even got a little like we can, you know, like when I was

talking and but we're getting out of our comfort zones because

we're in it to win it there. We will never say the D word in

our house. That's like forbidden,

forbidden. So any of you guys out there

there that never use that D word and when the wife don't win the

argument. That was some of the best advice

I've ever been given because I like to be right bro, I like to

be right. I'm very competitive.

But my mentor give him a shout out.

Jeremy Hogard. He said to me when the wife, not

the argument. So that's my best advice I can

give for any of your your your audience that's working together

with their spouse. Win Herman.

Because at the end of the day, you can't take it with you.

You better. You can take the memories, the

memories, yeah, but you can't take all the stuff.

So cherish your wives or your husband's.

That's good advice right there. What is the dynamic like in your

office? What What role do you guys play

and how do you work together in the office?

So we have a higher hierarchy and I'll tell you exactly how it

goes. And we, we had to get really,

really specific with our roles because I was crossed.

It wasn't her, it was me. I was crossing over into

everybody's lanes and they were getting upset with me or

frustrated. So Sarah, I'm going to get,

she's the owner, I'm the owner, but I'm the sales guy.

So my direct, the direct report to me is Scott Edie.

He's going on a hunt right now to South Dakota.

He's on the road to South to go to do pheasant hunting.

I'm jealous. I got your back while you're

gone. So he is the director.

Of there next weekend doing the same thing.

So let's go. All right, Eric, when we get

offline, we're going to we're going to hang.

So, OK, yeah, Eckhart Ranch, Eckhart Ranch in South Dakota,

it's fantastic place. Well, I went there two years

ago. So Director of sales is Scott

Edie. He's he's a former closer.

He was one of our number one closers.

So I want guys that know how to close and have been there and

done that similar to my cruise industry experience.

You, you can't teach what you don't know.

So he's my direct report and he's got 6 territory managers

that go down the branch, you know, and all of our six

locations. So I'm sales with Scott Ed in

the territory managers, then all of our sales managers.

On the other side of the tree is my wife Sarah and underneath her

is Connie, our Director of Operations.

And underneath Connie is our billing department, which our

billing department is second to none.

My cousin Peggy, 24 year State Farm adjuster and Jeff Knutson,

they're both out of Florida, Jeff Knutson, 19 years

independent adjuster. So we our billing department are

adjusters. Speaking to adjusters.

We don't bring in P as because when you, we've learned that

when you bring in the P as it's a battle and it's a prolonged

battle. We've, our experience is we have

adjusters on our team talking to adjusters and we don't do this.

We do have you considered line option this?

Have you considered this like and we're we're we're winning

claim after claim after claim and getting tremendous

supplements to the bill to the tune of over $2 million this

year alone and additional supplements because of the

billing department. Fantastic.

Connie is also in charge of the financials and underneath her is

Megan Hogard. She's been with us from the

beginning. Megan Port, she's the OG, the

original gangster. She's been with me by my side

when we were like a two man operation and I was sales,

production operations. And she's still stuck with us

all these years. She's a trooper and she's a

godly woman. She holds her own Bible study

within our organization with some of the the ladies.

Just coincidentally enough, her husband is my mentor and hunting

buddy and he's been teaching me how to be a redneck all these

years and go skip and and skin a buck because I'm a Miami boy.

So he's taught me how to skin a buck and run a trot line.

A country boy can survive. That's Jeremy.

And we have a great time together.

We just go out in the woods and blow things up and have a good

time. So yeah, basically those are the

two treats. And we had to get super

intentional again because we used to be like a running gun

offense and I would frustrate a lot of people.

Now I know my role. Sarah knows her role and we had

it all laid out for us by our coach again, Nathan Thibodeau

and Jim Johnson a contractor coach bro.

Another shout out to you guys. If it wasn't for those coaching,

I don't think we would we would have been half as successful.

Wow. I think especially in the

residential realm, I'm hearing that a lot from a lot of people,

the having someone as an adjuster on your team makes a

big difference because being able to speak that language is

huge. I know on the commercial side,

we don't do a lot with insurance, but when I do have to

deal with insurance, it's really difficult because the, the way I

bid stuff is just not the way they price things.

And it's hard to, it's hard to make the two line up.

I, I know what I had to do to do the job right, but I don't know

what it is in their system or how it all works.

So interesting. Was there something that

significantly delayed your growth early on?

And if so, how would you do it differently?

Yeah. What delayed our growth is we

didn't want to, we didn't want to invest in positions like I

tried to do everything, Sarah tried to do everything, and we

were burning each other out. So when you have to step up to

the plate and hire people that are expensive, that was very

tough initially initially, but then we learned, hey, man, if we

if we want to elevate, we got to delegate.

I forget who said that. So we had to let go of our baby.

You know, this is our baby and we had entrusted in other

people's hands and pay them the money and trust them, even if

they're going to screw up. That's the hardest thing to do

is to hand over your baby and watch somebody just drop the

baby. That's that's tough, man.

But I if you, if you do want to scale, which again may be a

good, may be a bad thing, but if you do want to scale, you got to

learn to multiply, forget addition, multiplication, not

addition. And similar to the disciples,

make disciples. So that's got to be the most

difficult thing is when and where to hire that next salary.

Not to get too fat, though. You don't want to get too many

layers, but that's got to be the most difficult thing.

As far as my perspective is investing in future leadership

and to let go of your baby and let somebody else raise it,

that's tough, man. That's really, really tough.

I hear that from a lot of people.

I think that's a really difficult transition and that's

kind of where we're at in our business right now.

I talked to Randy Hurtado a couple weeks ago and he said

wear as many hats as you can until you can afford not to.

And I think that was a big part of my business, maintaining the

efficiency that we did when we were smaller was if I could do

it, I didn't have somebody else do it like I did as much as I

could. So I wasn't paying somebody.

But then you hit a point where you can't grow, you're doing all

the work, you can't do anything. So I think finding the the right

point to make that transition is huge because like you said, if

you're if you don't have sales and you're running a huge office

staff, that doesn't work either. No, Sir, No Sir.

You got to find the right time to make that transition, and

being too early or too late can be a hindrance.

Yes, Sir. It's, it's a delicate balance,

man. It's a delicate balance.

And you just said a name that I highly respect.

Randy Hurtado. Love, love, love, love that

dude. He's the one that connected you

and me. Yeah, but he and his, he and his

right hand man just flew out recently to our our headquarters

in Atlanta and we sat down and you know, some guys I can listen

to. I got a little bit of HTHDHHDHD.

Is that what's it? Called ADHD.

ADHDI can't even talk right now, but I I got a little bit of that

and I asked, asked the ladies. I can sit in a meeting for like

one hour and then I'm out. I like I got to go breathe.

That's why I was probably probably why I was a good

roofer. It's like I need to be outside.

I I can't don't box me and I'll freak out.

But I sat with him, Randy and Mitch in our leadership team the

entire day in the office. I was like, Oh my goodness, keep

talking, dude, keep talking. I keep.

And I think it was vice versa. The feelings were mutual.

Like, we gave them some really good hot tips.

They gave us some. And we're already implementing.

And I'm going to continue to pursue learning from that

gentleman suit. Dude is wicked smart.

Wicked smart. Yeah.

And I mean, he worked with the Pentagon back in the day.

I don't know if I should be sharing.

I don't know if I should be sharing his top secret clearance

stuff. But that dude, when he talks,

I'll listen to that guy all day long.

So love, love Randy Hurtado and DT Roofing over there.

Those guys are doing it right. Another guy that wound up in the

roofing industry instead of doing it on purpose so.

Yes, yes, exactly. You lose your IT security job

working at the Pentagon and walk next door that happens to be a

roofing company and take over. Yeah, man.

Hey, I want, I want Randy. If the if the grid goes down and

the whole place goes to heck, I want Randy in my trenches.

I want like, like I want him on my side.

Yeah. Is there something where you've

had a significant change of mind as you've built your business,

something that you thought or felt strongly about early on and

now have seen it from a different perspective and have

really changed how you look at it?

That's a deep, that's a deep thought one right there.

Ask ask that question again for me.

Has there been something where you really changed your mind as

your business has grown that it's helped you see it from a

different perspective and is shifted how you look at or think

about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When I first got in the roofing industry, at the beginning, I

thought everybody was out to get you.

And I was paranoid and I, I thought everybody was like cut

throat, which they kind of were. But the more and more I get out

there and I shake hands and I and I meet the Randy hurtados of

the world or the the John Cena acts of the world of the, the

Reggie Brock, the Mike Goldenstein's.

There's a lot of good guys out there.

There's a lot of good guys. And I'm like, no, like people I

used to think it was like we got to go kick their ass.

Like let's let's go put on the the helmets.

I mean, I'm a football player. You know, they might know our

playbook. We know their playbook.

Let's line up and see who's better and like, let's go, let's

go battle. It's not like it's not that way

anymore. It's not that way anymore.

Now it's like, hey, dude, I can't do this project.

I'll just give a shout out to Brandon Perk Bergantis over at

Restore America. We're starting to like hang out

class act over there at Restore America.

But we're going to start, instead of battling these guys,

we're going to go side by side. Hey, man, how can I help you and

just work together? So I think that's a Major League

shift from when I was in the business, you know, the early

2000s to now. I see a shift where people are

collaborating and helping each other out.

Like the good guys are kind of rallying around each other and

becoming thought partners and let's go take out all the bad

guys and all the chucks in the truck.

So that wasn't there 20 years ago.

No, I think that's a great change as well.

And even in pretty heavily competitive markets to build

best practices, how can we best serve our customers?

Let's make sure we're serving our community, serving our

customers well. And we can still battle a little

bit over price. But the cutting corners, doing

things wrong, just trying to run people out, I think that's kind

of run its course. We're finding that's not the

best way to do business. So that's a change I'm excited

about. Me too.

What major mistake do you wish you could have avoided?

Commercial going in the commercial roofing and losing

$2,000,000. I trusted some guys.

I trusted some guys that I shouldn't have trusted.

And listen, you know, hindsight's 2020, you know,

don't trust everybody. You know, I I trusted some guys

that came into my organization that said all the right things,

that had all the right references and we got in bed

with them and we did some projects out of our comfort zone

where they underbid all these big contracts in Florida and we

just got murdered. So vet people, you know, trust

but verify. I think that was President

Reagan back in the day. Like, yeah, you can trust people

and I see the best in everybody, which is probably a a flaw.

I don't know, but trust but verify if you got guys coming

into your organization and they said, oh, I was this, I was that

don't take them on their word, vet them because we didn't vet

these jokers and they burned us bad.

And you know, to a lot of companies that could have been a

death blow. We could have been part of the

96%, but we took our medicine, took a deep breath, said, all

right, let's get back after it. So I, I don't trust people

verify, trust, but verify because a lot of, there's a lot

of bad players out there that will sell you a bill of goods

and then when you're knee deep into it, you're like, oh, it's

too late. It's too late.

Then you just got to take your medicine.

So that would be my advice. Yeah, good advice.

The the flip side of that question, if you made any what I

call beneficial mistakes, a mistake that cost you at the

time but helped you develop, grow, ended up helping you

succeed. OK, I'll use a funny example.

I think it's funny. There is a particular guy that

came to us that everybody and my brother and sister just like,

don't hire that guy. Don't hire that guy.

He's going to drive you crazy. But I heard in the back of my

head, he who has no sin cast the first stone.

I just kept on. I heard it three times.

Even my top franchise quarterback in my office, Connie

Bland says if you hire this guy, I'm walking.

But I, I'm a man of conviction. And I just, I said, I, I heard,

I felt the conviction, like if I don't, if I don't go to bat for

this guy and bring him into the team, I don't know, I just, I

felt the conviction. So I was willing to take a loss.

And it turns out that this young man that came into our

organization is now our number one producer.

And he's an influence influencer across the industry and he's

turned his life around. He's way more godly.

He's he's, he's, he's his, his posture is more towards God now.

And I'm so glad I didn't listen to everybody's like, don't hire

that guy because now he's a rising star in the industry.

He, he goes around. His name's Jacob Fuchs.

And if, if, if you, if you look him up, you'll see him out

there. He is a force of nature.

And everybody told me I shouldn't have hired him.

And I'm so glad that I did. Great.

That's a good story. We like to give people an

opportunity in our organization as well.

I say I don't care where you're coming from, as long as you're

moving forward. Amen.

Say that again. I, I don't care where you're

coming from, as long as you're moving forward.

That's a, a key part of our mission statement is that we

develop great people and the idea is less that we have great

people, but more that they're in development.

So no matter where you came from, no matter what your role

is, I expect you to be growing and moving forward, and we're

going to all grow together and get Better Together.

So hey man, I don't care where you, where you're, where you

came from, but what was the last part?

I think that you're moving forward.

But that you're moving forward. Love it.

Keep moving forward. That reminds me of Rocky Balboa.

Again, you grew up in the 80s, so forgive the Rocky references,

But like, when he's talking to his son, he's like, no matter

how hard you get hit, it's how hard you get hit and keep moving

forward. You got to keep moving forward.

Like, I can watch that like, once a day just to get fired up.

All right, let's go. But yeah, who cares?

I'm sure you've heard yesterday's history.

Tomorrow's a mystery. Today is a gift.

That's why they call it the present.

So yeah, man, just forget the past.

Like every single year on December 1st, which is the start

of our calendar year, I look at the guys and I'm like, hey,

guys, 00, let's go hunt. Let's go kill.

Every single day. And this has been my mentality

from the beginning. And if you go into our main

office, there's a lion, there's a lion from Tanzania, a painting

from Tanzania. We do some work there with the

living water to ministry or we we do wells Anywho and the

Samaritan Servants International.

So every single day at the beginning, I would just look at

the point of the lion and our sales meetings.

I'm like, eat what you kill. We don't hire lead babies.

If you're a lead baby, give me a lead.

Give me a lead like this place is not for you.

This place is not for you. You got to go out of your cave

every single day, kill something and drag it back to The Cave.

And if you don't do that, if you don't do that 365 days a year,

you're not going to be welcome in this, in this tribe.

We are hunters. We are killers.

Like that's what we're looking for.

Leave babies, go work someplace else.

That's great. Sorry you brought up Rocky.

Have you heard Stallone's story behind that?

I I heard he had like A and a very abusive home.

He came from abuse, right? Well, just the the process of

making that movie, he wrote the script himself.

He wrote that story and he wrote it with himself as the main

character. Really, really, really wanted to

star in it, but he couldn't find anybody that would produce it.

He spent like 2 years trying to sell it and was like completely

broke living out of his car and somebody finally offered him

some money for the script but they weren't going to let him

star in it. And I I forget the numbers now

but at the time it would have been a a life changing amount of

money for him broke and living out of his car.

And he turned it down because he had written the story 2 star in

it and kept pushing. And then when it finally came

out and hit because he had kept ownership, you know, the return

he got off of that was it made the amount he had originally

been offered look like nothing. It it's a pretty cool story.

You just segwayed into a beautiful thing.

Don't be a sellout. You know, in this age of private

equities and I don't, I don't care if I hurt feelings here.

Stick. Stick to your core values.

Stick. Don't be a sellout.

I mean, Rocky, Sylvester Stallone, which by the way went

to the University of Miami again, go kings.

He could have liked taking that money and run and what what

would have what would his life been?

What would his life would have gone from there?

But he stuck to his core and he didn't sell out.

So all you listeners don't be sellouts.

Look at the statistics on people who won the lottery.

They're broke within a year. So that's why I say to all my

buddies that are selling out to private equities, great, you're

going to get 102030 million, then what?

Yeah, well, I think it's chase the dream.

If if what you're doing is the dream, stick with it and keep

going and push through and fight and persevere.

But if what you're doing isn't your dream, go find a dream,

find something to chase. So Amen.

Awesome. What has been your biggest win

as a leader? I, I got to go back to disciples

making disciples, seeing guys come in broken and seeing them

walk out just new, like what happened to the other guy, like

new creations, disciples making disciples.

I'll, I'll, I'll give a shout out to Chris Massengill.

We have an annual getaway for just the dudes.

We called it guy getaway. We did it at my lake house at 50

plus guys there and Chris Massengill comes up to me.

It's like, dude, will you baptize me?

It's like I I'm tired of living in the world.

I, I just, I want to change. I'm like tomorrow morning, meet

me at the dock. 630 came down there.

It's pretty cold, by the way. Came down there and a group of

men came down and witnessed that brother.

Give me that. Give me that.

I saw that guy die. He died and he came out a new

man. And I could tell story after

story after story of men and women that have walked into our

doors that are now completely different people and they're

chasing Jesus instead of the world.

Give me that all day over the money.

Wow, that's incredible. That's got a When you have a

team that comes together like that and shares an experience

like that, you guys have to have a killer culture where

everybody's on the same page working together.

That's impressive. Yes, Sir, Yes, Sir.

I, I think if, if forget the top 100, forget all that stuff.

I really think pound for pound, our culture, you know, I've

looked around and I've observed and there's some other ones out

there, but our culture is second to none.

Like our guys will fight for each other that I mean, our guys

are amazing. And I, I heard this once that

culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Culture eats strategy for you can have the most amazing

strategies, you can hire the most amazing killers, but if you

don't have a. Simon Sinek said that, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So well done.

So if anybody picks up 1 golden nugget from this podcast, write

that down. Culture eats strategy for

breakfast because you can take your lumps, you can take your

hits. But when you got guys on your

right and girls on your left and and they're and they're, they're

fighting with you, it's like, all right, let's take our

medicine. Let's keep on moving.

Good stuff. I think I know the answer to

this. I can hear it just in your your

passion, your excitement about your job.

But if you could go back to 2004, would you choose to do it

all over again? 1000% yes, 1000% yes.

It's 2005 and yeah, man, I, I'll say this till the day I die is

you find me a better job where you can work in the great

outdoors helping people and you can make the more money than

doctors and lawyers. Please tell me what that is.

And a recession proof business and that all my top guys, my

top, you know, we call it the Green Jacket club.

We give like a, like the masters, all our guys in the

$1,000,000 club, we call it the Green Jacket club.

We send them to the this year we're sending them to the Virgin

Islands. All those guys have serving

hearts. They want to help people.

Like they don't sell with their wallet, they sell with their

hearts. And you it's that's the common

denominator with all the top guys.

They're not transactional. They're relational.

So yeah, man, I can't, you know, some guys say, oh, I wish I

would have been like a professional athlete or, or, you

know, that I'm like, forget that noise, man.

That's Nah, I would do it all over again Eric and a heartbeat.

This has been a the best 2 decades of my life and hopefully

we can keep this thing rolling. God.

Willing, Amen. That sounds great.

You brought it up there. I had heard, I think I read

somewhere you guys have a really unique incentive structure with

some kind of unique incentives. Can you tell me a little bit

about that? Oh gosh, it started with the

bobble heads. See, So talking about culture,

you know, and after this call, I'm going to get on a call with

a guy who wants to talk about Kingdom businesses, running the

Kingdom business. But it starts with a small

things. People love recognition.

They love recognition. So you would not believe we

started this, this tradition of the bobble head shark and it's a

shark with a little bobble head. My top, my sale guys, whoever's

got the number one numbers at the end of the month, they get

the sales shark bobblehead. These dudes will fight each

other over these little cheap bobbleheads.

You'll go into some of our top closers house houses and they

have mantels with like dozens of these like on the top of their

mantle. And it's a what, like a $2550

investment, that little bobblehead, those little

incentives just to start, you know, we treat our team like

like a football team. It's, it's an organization, you

know, like my wife's the offensive coordinator on the

defensive coordinator or the other way around.

And you, you start gamifying, you know, gamifying your sales

in the production and the bonuses it all, man.

Watch, watch what happens within your organization.

It becomes fun. And we have a message board

called Break room. And a lot of people use group

whatever. But there's so much like

challenging each other for lunch or dinner or breakfast and

they're talking crap and banter. And, you know, we keep it rated

PG, you know, on air. So you got, you got to have.

Yeah, man, it's so much fun. You got to gamify your business.

So it started with the bobble heads and then it started with

the golden hammer. Whoever's capping the top sales

within the organization at the Christmas party gets the golden

hammer. And then it started with the

green jackets. You know, over the years,

because like, you know, I'm a golfer in my former life, one of

my many jobs where I was a Jack of all trades.

I was a caddy on the PGA Tour. That's another story.

Shout out to Eric Compton, another Eric.

I was his Caddy and we had all a heck of a time on the road.

And Chichi, here's a fun fact. Chichi Rodriguez at the Puerto

Rican Open told me I was the worst Caddy he had ever seen.

That's that's a true story. So these little recognitions

mean the world, mean the world. So I I've shared this many

times. When you have a Christmas party,

I don't care if it's at the park with some cupcakes, have

yourself a end of the year party, a mid year party and give

away awards. I don't care if it's a cheap

piece of paper that says #1 in sales people love to be

recognized. So that would be my advice to

fellow roofing owners. Ma'am, make, I mean we have

quarterly events. I'll go ahead and share that

with you. We have a guys and girls getaway

to start off the year. The guys come to the lake, the

girls go to the spa. OK, mid year party, we call it

Campercon. Everybody shows up with their

campers in the middle of year. We cook out amazing food.

We bring in keynote speakers like Reggie Brock and John

Scenic and Jim John. We bring in these All Star cast

and we have fun. We play golf, we play for

trophies. The other guys who don't play

golf, they go to the water park. It's just fellowship.

You know, it's fellowship the the fall right now all the

hunters are in the woods. You'll see a lot of my guys

wearing their camo and they have camo Frazier roofing hats.

So the dudes are in the woods are out fishing.

My top producers, they just went down to Louisiana and they

caught a bunch of bull Reds. And if any of them were over 40

inches, we're putting them on the wall in the office to build

that. That's a, that's, that's a

recruiting tool. That's a recruiting toolman.

Like if you're a hunter or a fisherman, you want to come work

for us because nobody hunts and fish more than us anyway.

And then at, at the end of the year, we have our Christmas

party and the girls go way overboard on this.

I'm like, what are y'all doing? But the last couple years have

been more mellow, thank goodness, because I'm like,

they, they send me the bill. I'm like, what, what are we

doing here? No wonder.

But yeah, last year was a cowboy theme, you know, Cowboy and

Calgary, it was awesome. And this year we're going to be

doing 80s. So I'm glad we're not doing any

more formal Christmas parties. But at that party, and I think a

lot of guys will shit, we give our bonus checks to everybody.

So that's an incentive for people to stick around till the

Christmas party, right? But additionally, we have the

rookie of the year award. I already have in mind who's

going to win that total stud. Sorry, I sorry, I couldn't go to

the game with you tomorrow. And we have all these like the

the hero award. The hero award is something that

we base our entire culture on. It's called the hero sales

culture. If your audience has not checked

out that, check it out. You can find it on Spotify, it's

by Nathan Tebido. That's our whole mantra and our

whole creed is the hero sales culture.

Everybody's got a fill in the gap and we we give away these

awards and everybody's all jacked up for the Christmas

party to get these awards. And this year we have a new

thing where we are really, really health conscious this

year, very, very health conscious.

So whoever has the most steps award, every single month, we

throw up a bingo ball into this big bingo thing.

And for three categories, the most steps, which is Chris

Parker right now and Trina Gardner, they're they're

battling because we had a dude, one of our dudes had a heart

attack last year. So we're like, hey, we're going

to get healthy this year. Stop eating all this fast food.

Get your steps on #2 is door knocks.

Whoever's got the most door knocks, which we tracked out on

Spotty O. It's an app.

Whoever's got the most door knocks gets a ping pong ball.

And lastly, reviews. Whoever's got the most ruse

reviews gets a ping pong ball. And at the Christmas party, this

is going to be a new thing we're going to have.

We're giving away 3 cruises, all expense cruises and not the

cheap one like the nice Royal Caribbean five day Caribbean

deal. We're we're giving away

basically 6 cruises. I hear they have great catering.

Great catering. There you go.

But yes, nice, nice plug right there for the yeah, Royal

Caribbean. So at the Christmas party, we're

going to do the bingo thing, just a new addition, which we're

always adding something new and we're going to give away 3

cruises for, you know, you and your plus one for the based on

those 3 categories. So as you can see, every single

month, every single quarter, we're gamifying.

It's a one big fun competition. You got to have that man.

You got to have the fun, you got to gamify it because if you

don't, it's just like, it's just a JOB.

And I don't know about you, but I don't want to go have a JOB.

Yeah, that's really interesting. We probably need to get better

about that. I think we've done that from

time to time. But the last year or two, I've

probably dropped the ball and we don't celebrate things as much

as we should. Do it, man.

Oh and one more thing and this is the funniest thing, we have

our weekly meeting every Monday at 9:00, team Zoom 70 plus

people on there and when it's somebody's birthday we sing

happy birthday and we embarrass them.

But sometimes it's like 3 different people's birthdays and

the whole team sings and it's the most, it's a cacophony.

Cacophony. It's just, I can't think of the

word. It is like horrible but awesome

at at the same time. OK, Yeah, that'd be really

interesting, especially over a Zoom meeting.

It's hilarious. It's like in it, you know, we,

we start the, the, the meeting off on a positive focus.

That's something that we've learned.

Here's another golden nugget is even if the house is burning,

you start every single meeting, no matter how big or small, with

a positive focus. So, you know, that seems to

like, all right. It sets our bearings.

Calm down, everybody. Yeah, the house like today We,

we, we, you know, we, we took a big loss on that house.

So they we installed incorrectly because we didn't read deck it

properly, but we still had a positive focus amongst

leadership and we won't roll. We rolled into that meeting the

homeowner was cool and we're taking our medicine and it's

like it's not the end of the world.

So that's that's a good nugget is before you start every, any

meeting or every meeting. No, just like the important

meetings started with a positive focus and you know, more, more

times than not, it's there's a there's a good tone throughout

the meeting. OK, I like the sandwich method.

You start positive, deal with what needs addressed, and then

finish with a positive outlook, just like you're building a

sandwich. I like it.

I can tell you're well read and have developed yourself as a

leader. You're quoting Simon Sinek and

Churchill. Are there any particular

resources that have stood out as being most influential to you?

Well, I mentioned it earlier, that's the best selling book of

all time. I wish more folks and I wish I

would have known this because I I didn't become a follower of

Jesus until late in life. I was 40 years old and I got

baptized. But I wish more people would

look at this book and realize it's the best #1 bestseller for

a reason. It's changed the world, and it's

a love story. So many folks look at this

because what you know, whatever the reason, has a rule book.

This is the greatest love story of all time.

And if you get into this book and just ask God, hey, speak to

me and open it up and just read it.

Man. That's the best advice I can

give anybody. And even if you're not a

believer, let's just say some of your followers aren't believers.

I I got non believers on my team.

If you just read the book of Proverbs, that'll give you a PhD

in business. Holy smokes, just that alone.

Proverbs. And here's a helpful way to read

Proverbs. You know, today's the 30th,

today's October 30th. Go to Proverbs 30.

Open up the Proverbs 30 because there's 31 Proverbs and whatever

date it is, if it's the 12th and the 15th, just open it up to

that proverb and grab one verse and let it marinate on your

brain. That's, that's, that's kind of

a, a cool way to read the Bible as well.

But besides the Bible, I love World War I, I love war and

autobiographies. I just read the River of Doubt,

which is a, a book of man. Yeah, bro, bro, you want to talk

about a man like Teddy Roosevelt was stud, stud like, Oh my God,

he did the river of doubt at my age at 55 years old and nearly

died. That dude is a a man's man.

And when he was faced with adversity, for example, he lost

his wife and his mom on the same day, You know what he did?

He's like, I'm not going to cry in my beer.

He went out to the freaking Badlands in South Dakota.

And just like, you know what? I'm just going to man up and

just physically get over this and, like, raise cattle.

So yeah, we have a book club at Frazier Roofing.

So, you know, right now we're reading Poems and Prayers by

Matthew McConaughey, A rotter, A rotter Rotter, right?

So yeah, we have a nice little book club and we just, man, we

read everything. We read everything.

So how about you? What do you What do you like to

read? I really enjoy fiction.

I do the stupid thriller novels, spy novels.

I like military thrillers. That's what I read for fun.

And then I mix in a lot of podcasts and I used to do, I do

one kind of business leadership book and then a fiction book and

kind of balance the growing and having fun, growing and having

fun. Love it, love it.

Do you know Vince Flynn? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's Vince Flynn and the

Mitch Rap novels. That's probably my that's my top

five for sure. Maybe.

Let's go, let's go. I read them all.

Read them all. So good stuff, man.

And I like what you do. You you're mixing it up that I

think that's good for your brain.

You don't want to just be like one track, you know?

So I like that you're mixing it up.

I do the same thing, you know, I read like a serious one, and

then I'll be like, all right, let's have some fun, you know?

So, yeah, and a lot of the the leadership in business books,

there's so much overlap. You read them.

If that's all you read, it's just it gets redundant,

repetitive and you don't soak it in.

And man, especially as business leaders, we're always so busy

and on the run and I spend too much time thinking about my

business as it is. It's nice to check out once in a

while and have some fun so. Amen.

I love Shawn Ryan. I was watching Shawn Ryan last

night talking about Uaps. Let's call them for what they

are. They're UFOs, but Uaps and like

underneath the water and out in San Diego with the Admiral.

I'm like, what? Yeah, Shawn Ryan is fascinating

and I love the fact that he just became a a believer.

And anyways, super cool dude. Yeah, I really enjoy his show as

well. He's got some great people on

there. We've talked a lot about going

through hard things, persevering, taking your

medicine as you put it, just sucking it up.

What is it that motivates you and keeps you pushing when

things get hard? My kids, man, are you kidding

me? I I could get up right now and

go to the cupboard and show you most of my coffee mugs are

pictures of my kids and my wife and I and I I give the advice to

to my teammates, go get a mug and put your Y on the mug.

If you're especially if you're a closer coffee is foreclosures

and are you kidding me? Like so many people say, oh, I

would die for my kids. Oh, I would die for my kids.

How about you live for your kids?

Amen, Amen. Don't even get me started.

We'll be here for another five hours.

Like like what more motivation. That's your greatest

accomplishment. Like so many people want to go

out in the world and do this and do that and they leave their

kids and their wife behind. I'm like, bro, that's your

greatest discipleship opportunity issues.

They're watching you. You know, I've heard the

expression early in our marriage, caught not taught,

caught not taught. You can sit there and blah,

blah, blah, all you want with your kids, but your kids are

watching you 24/7, 365. It's caught.

So some of the coolest moments in my life and my children.

I'm out here reading the Bible, drinking my coffee.

My, my son will kind of snuggle up on me and like, hey, dad,

what are you reading? I'm like, dude, let me tell you

something. And I've seen him like pray by

himself and read the Bible. I'm like, you want to talk about

like joy, man, The joy in the Lord is my strength.

Watching my kids go close. I got to baptize my son in a

muddy Creek. It was freezing cold too.

I, I saw my, my daughter get baptized.

I'm like, my wife got baptized. Like I'm hey, if the Lord

decides to take me tomorrow, I'm good to go.

Mission accomplished. Yeah, I, I get to, I get to

spend eternity with them now, so.

I hate that phrase that I would die for whatever like man,

that's the easy way out. Like then you're done.

There's no work to do it's over. You're the work is done.

If, if you're willing to die for something, are you willing to

live for it? Whatever that it, you know,

whether it's your family or your faith or your goals or the

business you want to build, whatever anybody's motivation

is. I, I just hate that phrase.

I'd die for it. I live for it.

Go out and make it happen. Do something.

Amen, Eric. Amen.

Talk is cheap. Yeah, I I like the I might have

to get a new coffee mug. I've got I carry the same mug

all day every day, and I've got our mission statement and

company values plastered all over ours to try to keep the

main thing the main thing. So.

No, I love it. I love it.

Did you have a a major turning point?

I know you've talked about a few kind of big wins.

You started pretty small. There were a few years where you

were losing money. You've brought in new staff.

Was there a point in building your business where you were

like, I made it like we're, we, we, you hit a big milestone.

You felt a level of peace or a level of comfort.

That's funny. Well, you started the question

off and I had the answer in mind, but then you ended it with

I made it. I, I don't think I've made it.

So I'll, I'll answer the first part like we had a bit, we

called it the big reveal. And again, I'm going to circle

back to Nathan Tebudo. We were introducing a whole new

culture and it was called the hero sales culture.

We busted it out on a Thanksgiving and we called it

the big reveal and we brought everybody into a room and we

revealed it and it basically was what the hero sales culture is.

And basically in a snapshot, it's basically there's three

types of people. There's heroes.

You want to be surrounded by heroes.

The people that will take on the brunt of the customer, even if

it's not their responsibility. They never say it's not my job.

They own it. They're they, they will stand in

the gap. You want to surround yourself

with the heroes, the prima donnas.

These are the guys that it's all about me.

I'm the big bad sales guy with the jacked up truck and you

know, testosterone field like we had to get rid of those guys

because it's all all about me. And guess what, that hurt?

That hurt our bottom line when we when we got rid of the egos

and the guys were like sales rules.

I am sale. When we got rid of them, it kind

of it was like, Oh crap, that those are a lot of numbers.

And then there's the monkeys. The monkeys are just order

takers. You give them an order and they

go do it. So those are the three types of

people in the hero sales organization.

We broke it out and like we're looking for heroes.

Prima donna's not welcome. We lost like three of our top

producers right off the bat. But Coach Tebido said, dude,

weather the storm. When you weather the storm and

you set the you set the tone, it's going to come back.

That year we doubled our sales. But Long story short on that,

when we, when we made the shift, our sales doubled because the

everyone was like, oh crap, they got rid of the top producers.

What about me? I better step up.

You know, these guys actually mean what they say.

So that would be, I would highly encourage that.

But the second part of your question was, have I ever

thought like I made it? Heck no, Heck no.

I think that's probably the most dangerous spot.

Like I've made it you, if you say you made it your toast, like

every single day, this, this could all be taken away

tomorrow. So I'm of the simple mindset

that you got to get out of your cave, you got to go kill

something. You got to drag it back into The

Cave every single day. If I, if you ever hear me say I

made it, just please come kick me in the balls because that's,

that's a dangerous place to be. That's fair enough.

Yeah, Well, this is my favorite question.

I think you've answered it to some degree or not, but I know

you're a follower of Jesus. How has that shaped your

leadership journey? And then I'm going to add a

second piece to that. You've brought up being a

Kingdom business twice. What does that mean and what

does that look like? So #1 it changed everything.

I want to thank and give a shout out to my roommate in college,

Brian Moore, B MO. We call him B MO.

Like he was a stud outside linebacker.

Brian was observing me, you know, after college and.

And he knew me better than anybody.

And basically he was like, dude, you got to go get baptized.

I'm like now I don't. I grew up in Presbyterian

Church. I got baptized the baby, I'm

good. I said the prayer, I'm good.

He's like, you got to get baptized.

I'm like emo, whatever, dude. But he kept on.

He was persistent, you know, over the years.

Hey, man, it ain't about a prayer.

It ain't about a prayer, man. And he just stayed in my ear

year after year. And then finally, when I hit

rock bottom, you know, about the time that I lost my brother and

trying to kill myself with Jack Daniels, I heard him in the back

of my mind, hey, man, you got to go get baptized.

And I called him. I was like, tell me about this

again. Why do I need to get baptized

again? He's like, dude, just do it.

Like make a public profession to your Lord and Savior and go die.

You know, like, all right, so I want the Calvary Baptist.

Excuse me, Calvary Chapel in Lilburn, GA and I got baptized

by myself. No family, no nothing.

I was like, this is between you and me.

God, I'm going all in. I surrender.

That was 40 years old, 40 years old.

So that changed everything because of a friend's love.

And he recognized that I wasn't, I wasn't walking the walk.

You know, I was talking the talk.

I wasn't walking the walk. What was the second part of your

question? They how has that affected your

leadership and then to tell me about the Kingdom builders, OK,

Kingdom business. Yep, Kingdom is.

So it's affected everything. I mean, I used to be kind of a

Wildman, you know? I was a brawler.

I owned an Irish pub where I was the bouncer.

I I threw out an entire bachelor party one time by myself.

So taking a lot of punches, if you can't tell by my nose

because I couldn't hit back as the owner anyway, I would just

grab him by the back. Scotch Irish with five brothers.

I can only imagine that's it. So as these guys are swinging

and hitting me, I could take a punch.

I was grabbing it by the back of their loop and like the top of

their shirt, I was throwing them out 1 by 1.

So it's changed everything because I used to be a

completely different person. Like a completely different

person. I was an alcoholic, multiple

DUI's. I drove a car off a mountain one

time drunk and miraculously I know God's watching after me.

I don't know how many lives I've gone through, but one tree

caught the the car, like one tree off a Cliff caught the car

somehow. So I'm so thankful to be here

after I surrender to Jesus Christ.

My whole life has gotten way more peaceful.

It hasn't gotten easier. A lot of people think, oh, it's

going to be all easy. No, once you once you surrender,

there's a big bullseye on your back and now you're a target.

Now you're a threat. So when, when you're going

through many trials and tribulations, you can almost

consider it like a compliment, like, OK, at least I'm a threat.

So it's it's changed everything. I'm not the same man that I used

to be and I don't I don't have the same friends.

A lot of my friends were like, that was a, you know, Dominic's

not fun anymore. See you.

A lot of my friends left me, which is a blessing.

My, my wife said when she first met me, it's like all those

friends suck. Anyways, I'm like, you're right.

So, but Kingdom business, Kingdom business is basically,

it doesn't belong to you. And there's a quote by the guy

who owns Hobby Lobby Green. He's a, he's a very wise man.

But we have it up in our bullpen in our, in our sales, We have a

bullpen where all the sales guys get together and train.

And it, to paraphrase it says, if you think you own what you

have, you have huge problems. And that to me, in a nutshell,

is a Kingdom business. Like when the money comes

calling, which we, we, the phone continues to go off the hook

with all these investors and, you know, mergers and

acquisitions, private equities, they're coming at us with all

sorts of ridiculous offers. And we're just, I simply say,

and it gives me an opportunity to share, you know, the good

news, it's like we're not for sale.

We're a Kingdom business. And a lot of people go, well,

what the heck is that? I was like, well, give me a

call. I'd be happy to.

I'd be happy to share with you who my boss is.

And I'm like, what? They'll call me up.

You know, I don't know these guys backgrounds and like, well,

who's your boss? I'm like, well, he's a Jewish

Carpenter. His name's Jesus.

And they go, oh, you're one of those Jesus freaks, huh?

You're a Jesus freak. I'm like, hell yeah, I'm a Jesus

freak. He's the only chance we're

either one of us have a chance of getting off this earth alive.

Let me tell you about him. Some people listen, some people

don't, but that's not my job. My job is to plant the seeds and

the converse. And it's the Holy Spirit's job

to convict. So that, in a nutshell, is what

a Kingdom business is. It can't be just writing on a

wall. It's got to be shown through

your actions. And I hope my team would backed

me up and saying that I, I, we run a Kingdom business.

It's not about us. It's never going to be about us.

It's about, it's about him. Amen.

That is great. It it, from everything I've

heard, it sounds like that's a real core piece of who you are

or how you do things and it shows in the culture that you've

built. So, well, I have two more

questions. I know you got another

appointment you've got to get to when you're giving us your

background. I know your first exposure to

roofing was Hurricane Katrina and putting blue tarps on.

How did you get from there to starting Fraser Roofing?

Oh, it was a fun journey. I I jumped around.

So Fraser Roofing didn't start till 2009.

So there was a gap of four years where I was like jumping around

the roofing industry. So I started with a company

that's well known called Aspen Contracting.

They're out of the Midwest. And they were the guys that

showed up to storms with 50 trucks and put yard signs in

every single yard and just would just just, they would just flood

the zone. So I sold for them for a while.

And then I met a guy within their organization that was one

of their top closers and he branched off.

He's like, Dom, you want to come with me and instead of getting

paid 35%, I'll pay you 50%. I'm like, OK, I'll go with this

guy. Because I really didn't know

what the heck I was doing. I was just hooking and jabbing

and rolling with the punches. So I went with this guy for a

bit and he taught me some things.

And then he moved out of town and I was like, all right, I'm

going to do this Fraser thing. I can do this.

But I was like, no, no, a big storm hit out in the Oklahoma

City softball sized hail and I wasn't set up to go to Oklahoma

City. So I went with a guy by the name

of Juan Ramon. Shout out to my boy Juan.

He's still out there hooking. He's an OG original gangster

with Empire construction. So I sold with Juan and one

really helped us at the the early stages of Fraser roofing.

And I'm like, dude, how do I schedule jobs?

And he's like walked me into his office and he had like this

magnetic board. And he's like, yeah, man, you

don't know what the hell you're doing, Dominic.

I'm like, I don't that that's why I'm here.

And you know what? I'll give Juan props.

Juan said, hey, man, can I tell you something?

It's like I see you on the social media and you're always

on the golf course. You're never going to be

successful. So get off the damn golf course.

Like, yes, Sir. So I stopped.

I stopped, you know, I stopped playing as much golf and I

started actually knocking doors and getting it out there and and

getting my hands dirty. So thank you, Juan, for kicking

me in the rear end. And then in 2009, after those

jumping around, I'm like, hey, man, I think I can do this.

And yeah, so we've been in business 16 years, Fraser

Roofing. So yeah, it's it's been a fun

ride. Yeah, interesting.

OK, Last question, to either settle or fuel the debate, I ask

everybody that comes on the show, if you have to use a

cordless tool, which brand are you reaching for?

Gosh, this is a question for my wife, I'm ashamed to say.

And and she's she's the handyman in the house, but what does she

have out there? DeWalt.

Is it DeWalt? Is that what it?

Is yeah, yellow. Yeah, man.

Yeah, DeWalt, that's that was one of her many jobs within Home

Depot. She was in charge of this

particular tool division. So yeah, my, my guys make fun of

me because I'm like, so did you put that together?

I'm like, Nah, Sarah did it, you know, so that's great.

And when we moved recently, we wanted to get rid of all this

stuff. And she's got tools upon tools.

I'm like, let's get rid of these tools.

And she's like, Nah, I'm not getting rid of my tools.

So yeah, so I it's it's the wall.

I think that's a conversation common to most marriages, but

maybe your guys's is reversed. Yeah, man, keeping it real.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you coming on the show.

I think our listeners will appreciate hearing your story,

man. Just thank you.

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

So thank you guys all for joining us here on From the

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