Randy Hurtado – The Good Contractors List-From Ghetto to Construction Conglomerate

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, where we

encourage and inspire the next generation of blue collar

leaders by telling the stories of those that have been there,

done that and are usually still doing it.

So today, we're honored to have Randy Hurtado joining us.

Randy has an incredible story. I'm sure you will be as

fascinated as I am. Randy is a former fire captain

who accidentally entered the roofing industry after having

lost a job in the IT space. And over the next few years, he

built a small family roofing business into a massive

construction conglomerate, now employing 78 people and doing

more than $30 million in annual revenue.

And he is a former break dancer, a father to six, a husband to a

wife that he met 35 years ago at the age of 18, and a grandfather

to 4 grandkids. So he really has an awesome

story. Randy, thank you for joining us,

and we'll dive right in. One correction there is I met my

wife when I was 13. 13 OK, yeah, we we like to start out with

just a little bit of background. So Randy, where does Randy come

from? How did you grow up?

What did that look like? How did you get to where you are

today? Well, I currently reside in

Texas. I moved here with my family in

2005. I grew up in California and

Southern California, and, you know, it was kind of a rough

neighborhood that I grew up in, grew up between two rival

Mexican gangs, Eastside Torrance and T Flats.

And so it wasn't abnormal for me to wake up in the middle of the

night with the the infamous ghetto bird flying over my head,

over my house, lighting up the backyard, looking for, you know,

somebody that they were chasing. And, you know that everything in

society tells you that I should have, you know, got stuck there,

you know, had issues, got into gangs, but you know, it didn't

happen because I had an outlet. I learned early on that I

actually had rhythm. And so I got into break dancing

with friends and ended up in one of those crews that you see, you

know, shown on in movies where that we we battle other crews

and, and I was the secret weapon because I was the only white guy

and everybody else that, you know, is either Filipino,

Hispanic or black. And so, yeah, it was that was my

story for my teenage years. It was how I stayed out of

trouble most of the time. Oh, man.

So how does that, I mean, do you guys battle for money?

Is it an organized competition? Do you just meet up in a back

alley? It's what does that look like

for somebody that is? Organized, you definitely don't.

You don't battle for money, but it's more for, you know, more

for St. Cred, you know, because

everybody knows who won at the end.

And of course then it's, you know, well then this crew calls

that crew out and it's kind of adolescent.

But at the same time, like I said, it was it was keeping me

out of trouble, you know, and there were many, many a nights

where I was at the house practicing and and when I could

have been out, you know, doing doing other things.

So yeah, I guess it worked out for me.

That's awesome. Well, it it doesn't sound lame

or adolescent to me. That sounds awesome.

I wish I could have seen something like that.

I lack the rhythm to ever do that, but all right, so growing

up in Southern California, break dancing rather than joining a

gang, where do you go from there?

Yep, and you know, my childhood was, you know, my mom.

I had a single mom for a good chunk of my childhood.

She ended up remarrying, you know, when I was 10 or 11.

And then I had stepdad in the house.

I ended up meeting my wife. A buddy of mine invited me to go

to church on Wednesday night as a youth night.

Wasn't really brought up in the church up until that point,

though. My mom would, you know, she'd

talk about God every once in a while, but it wasn't really a

thing in our house. I think my, my biggest, biggest

exposure to church would be, I distinctly remember every time

an ambulance would drive by or you could hear an ambulance and

my mom was driving as long as she was, you know, I don't stop

light or stop sign or whatever. I'd see her drop her head and,

you know, do something. One time I asked her mom, what

are you doing? And she's like, I'm just praying

for whoever that ambulance is going for.

So that was kind of my exposure to, to Christianity as a kid.

And then, you know, in my teenage years, my early teenage

years, when I was 13, a buddy of mine that I grew up with around

the block, He, he said, man, we're going to church on

Wednesday. You want to go with us?

And I'm like, church. And he's like, yeah, yeah, they,

they play games and they, they feed you and there's music And I

was like, yeah, that sounds like fun, you know.

So, so I went and that night I looked across the room and I saw

this really cute blonde girl, blue eyes.

And and so I remember the next Wednesday, I'm like, hey, are

you going to that church thing again?

And he was like, yeah, I am. You want to go?

I was like, I do, you know, And of course I was not going for

the right reasons, but I want to see that girl again.

And so I started going regularly and finally mustered up enough

courage. There's some other drama that

came out of that. You know, ironically, my now

wife, who I've been with since I was 13, originally liked my

brother who was there and but ultimately I got her and yeah.

And yeah, we've been together since.

Congratulations. There you go.

So we've been together since I was 13 and she was 11 and yeah,

my only girlfriend ever and we still date.

Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome.

Growing up Southern California, you met your girlfriend now wife

at youth group. What does education look like

growing up? You know, education, just I

graduated with a high school education at high school

diploma. I, you know, as I mentioned, I,

I was in into break dancing. So it kept me out of a lot of

trouble, but I still got into some and one of those things got

me kicked out of high school, traditional high school.

And so I had to go to a continuation school.

For those of you not familiar with a continuation school, it's

basically where they send the riffraff troublemakers to finish

school. And that's exactly what what I

did. And so I graduated from there

and I knew I did not want to go. I did not want to go on to

college. I've never been a big fan of

school just because in, in, in, in my education, I always felt

that whatever was being taught, I understood it.

And so I thought it was silly that I had to go home and do a

bunch of homework and, and take tests.

I would generally do really well on the test, but I, I'd hate the

homework. And so I graduated, but it was

like a three-point O and it was, you know, I immediately went to

the workforce and the workforce brought me among many other jobs

from, you know, I worked at Chuck E Cheese.

I as a yes, I was the character to, you know, you, you do a lot

of different jobs when you're yeah, yeah.

And so I, I, I, I worked there. I worked at a place called Play

it again, sports manage their used sports equipment store.

And anyhow, many, many small jobs led to ultimately where I,

where my career in IT started actually back up.

I was a loss prevention officer for a sporting goods store.

And I remember one day I'm on the cameras and I see this guy

come in that I once knew from Chuck E Cheese.

So I went down to the floor and I was like, man, what have you

been up to? And, and he told me he was

working at this place called Fry's Electronics, which I don't

know if in your area they ever made it out that way before they

went out of business. But it was a pretty big chain in

the, in the South or in the, in the West.

And it, it made its way into several other states ultimately

after I left. But while I was there, they were

only in, mainly in California. And I started learning a lot

about computers. I started working at, at Fry's

and one day a gentleman who I'd been, you know, commend serving,

he'd been, he'd coming in to buy computer equipment from me for

years. He just, he, he, he said, can I

get a business card? And I hand it to him and he

flipped it over and he wrote AK on the back and I said, what's

that? He said, I would like you to

come work for me. Name your price.

And I was like, oh, this is sudden.

And he goes, no, I've been coming in here now for several

years. And every time I come in here,

you always do a great job serving me and telling me

exactly what I need. And you've always helped me out.

And you really know what you're talking about.

And I own a software company and very specifically in the

security, in the world of security.

And I'd really love you to come work for me.

OK, Well I told him I thought, well, I make $48,000 a year

here, which, you know, back in, I remember what the date was, it

was probably 1995. That was a pretty good chunk of

change for a young guy. And he said, well, I'll pay you

that as a base and and I'll pay you Commission as well.

And so of course I'm thinking, well this is great.

So the next day I took my lunch break to go to his office and

kind of almost interview him. I wanted to see what it was all

about and what exactly he did, what he was expecting me to do.

And yeah, it ended up turning out where he hired me

immediately, put me in the training.

I got all my Microsoft certifications and immediately

started working for him, consulting with companies, with

his network security software. And that sent me down a path of

2020, some odd years of serving our customers and mitigating

their risk in ITI was always learning throughout the entire

process, constantly. I would be the guy that

everybody leaned on in the sales team about, hey, can you explain

technically how this works? And because I, I, I pride myself

in being a very technical salesperson at the time, you

know, I wanted to understand why the software worked, not just

that it worked and how it worked.

And that gave me the ability to be very successful.

And I just did that for a long time.

We ended up moving the family out to California, I'm sorry, to

Texas in 2005 from California. At this point, we just had our

two children, Brittany and Christian, and was working from

home. And yeah, I mean, that was the

education side. I can go into the professional

side of where that all led to, but yeah, was working from home

doing my I. It sounds like that was a pretty

smart guy hiring for talent instead of certification.

So. Yeah, you know, it's funny, you

know, I actually carry that into my Business Today because of

that, that mindset. But you know, I was working from

home and working from home at that time is a little bit

different than working from home today.

You know, post COVID you're you can have a lot of background

noise and kids and everything, but pre COVID that was very

unprofessional. And so I decided to move my Home

Office to rent an office space and ironically ended up renting

the space next to DT Roofing, which is the company that I now

own 1/2 of. And I was doing my thing.

And I would, you know, being an extrovert, I would go out and

talk with the the other business owners within the building that

I was renting out of. And, and Derek, my now partner,

happened to be one of those. And he and I would go to lunch

and talk to business. And I really didn't know

anything about roofing, but I did understand business sales

and marketing and what have you. And so I'd give him some

pointers and he'd utilize them. And so finally I told him, I

said I'm out of ideas. You know how to help your

company. I said, why don't I sell for you

on the side like nights and weekends?

And that way I can learn the business a little better.

And then maybe I can give you some other advice.

And so we started doing that and then I really started liking it.

I really started loving working with homeowners instead of

dealing with corporate America like I was doing it with my IT

job. And so I started praying about

like, you know, God, if you want me to leave this career and go

into a different career, you're going to have to make it

abundantly clear because it became an identity for me.

Like that's all I knew was IT security.

And probably about six months to a year later, he answered that

prayer because the owner of the company that I worked for as a

contractor for 20 some odd years, he called me and said

that they had been purchased by private equity and that they

weren't going to be bringing on any contractors.

So anybody that was 1099, which is what I ended up being once I

moved to Texas. And so there I was without a job

and I needed to make something happen.

So the next day I walked into my now partner's office and said,

well, you know how you've been bugging me to come on on full

time, I start tomorrow. And he was of course blown away.

He's like, wait, whoa, whoa, hold on.

And he goes, how are we going to pay you?

And I was like, it'll figure itself out.

I said, but I got to run it because I want to.

There's a lot of things that need to be done process wise,

operation wise. And he, he, he said OK.

And you know, so we continue to grow the business together and

last year we closed $30 million in revenue on the residential

roofing side alone and we started for other companies

since then. Wow, wow.

And I know part of your story. You were a fire captain for a

period of time. Where does that fall in?

When were you doing that? So when I moved out to Texas, I

knew I didn't know anyone and my daughter befriended a girl at

school who after about 3 months of going to the school, her

friend asked if she can come over and spend the night.

Well, I didn't know the girl and I certainly didn't know her

parents. So we, you know, we said, well

we're going to have to meet their parents and.

And so the mom came over and so we, she started telling us about

her family. And so, so what's your husband

doing so well, he's a, he owns a firefighter training school

locally and he's also on the local Volunteer Fire Department.

And of course, I'm coming from California.

And not only, not only California, but the big city,

I'd never heard of a Volunteer Fire Department in my life.

I'm thinking like a bunch of good old boys and pickup trucks

with buckets of water throwing it onto a fire, a house that's

on fire and and she said, no, no, that's full.

Just same. You know, you go through the

training, you get all the gear, the engines, everything.

I was like, no kidding. Well, I'd love to hear more

about that. So her husband ended up reaching

out to me at the time they were actually opening the the roster

and and he took me through the fire department and I'll be

doing if it wasn't exactly the opposite of what I thought it

was, is very professional. They had engines and, you know,

various brush trucks and, and rescue vehicles and just all

the, all the stuff I saw in Los Angeles when I lived there.

It's just, it was, it was staffed by people who just

volunteered their time and, and went out and got the training

that they needed to be able to do it.

So I was instantly hooked. I didn't know anyone.

So I got 45 new friends immediately.

I joined the department. I ran every single call I

possibly could. I think I broke all the records

that first year as a volunteer, as a, as a rookie.

I got rookie of the year, the year that I started because I'd

showed up, I think to everything.

And it wasn't too far off of that.

I mean, I, I continued my education in it.

I got my introductory firefighter.

I got my firefighter, too, and started showing signs of

leadership. And I was, I was, you know,

voted because it, you know, in a volunteer department, you get

voted as officers, you don't get promoted.

And so I was voted in to be a Lieutenant and did that for

several years and then ultimately voted to be a

captain. And 17 years later, I retired

from it, our businesses were starting to really pick up and I

couldn't devote the time that I had before to it.

And I didn't want to hold a spot on the roster.

You know, if, if I'm not showing up to calls, that's not helping

the community. And so I decided it was a good

time to hang it up. And so spent 17 years as a

volunteer firefighter and I love it.

I absolutely loved it. I got my EMT certification while

I was doing it, obviously went through all the fire school.

We are very aggressive wildland firefighting department.

So we were known in our area for for being the the organization

that you call in when you want something done and and it's

still like that. That sounds pretty exciting.

Are there any single calls that really stand out or incidences

that you could tell us about? You know, there's a there's,

there's many, honestly, I worked a ton.

I mean, so many car accidents. We had a major highway that ran

through our community. And so, you know, so many

accidents where you'd roll up on an accident.

You just know that everybody in the accident perished and

everybody lives and it was always a blessing.

There were some pretty traumatic ones that I worked, you know,

dealing with, you know, off, you know, troopers and, you know, or

just it. I can tell you that our, our

department did a really good job with critical incident stress

through briefings after major calls like that.

So that I did it and, and, and my colleagues didn't end up with

PTSD years later, you know, they did a really good job making

sure that we talked about it and, you know, and, and they

stayed connected because in that world you see some pretty

horrific things and you see it. Across the spectrum, you know,

you things that you would say, why did that drunk driver get to

live? But that family all died, you

know, and stuff like that. And so very exciting, very

exciting experience for me, no question.

It really fits my personality though, because I am that guy

that's an adrenaline junkie and running into a building that's

on fire when everybody else is running out.

It was definitely an exciting part of my life that that I I

don't regret doing. It gave me great insight and

experience in areas that most never are going to experience in

their life. And so, but yeah, definitely, I

remember this one brush fire that we had, we got toned out

for a grass fire and it looked like it started at the road and

on a major highway. And so we're we show up on scene

and it's burning towards this house.

And fortunately we were able to get ahead of it, you know, run

out to the head, put the fire out, and no sooner than we start

to get this one under control that we get toned out for

another fire about 8 miles up the road.

I'm like, you got to be kidding me.

So I'm smoked out already, but we got this one under control.

Let's Glen Rose go ahead and show us and route to the next

one. So we head out and we're

starting to, we're almost to that one and we get toned out

for 1/3 fire. That's only about 5 miles from

that one, but they're all in the same trajectory.

And so we arrive on the second one.

We've have a second alarm sounded for the third fire and a

fourth one calls out and immediately I get on the radio

and I say, Glen Rose, you've got a semi truck dragging a chain

going down 67. You need to get a trooper out

there to stop him because it was the only logical thing that

could have been happening that we would have that many fires in

a row. Either that aura or we have, you

know, somebody sparking them off.

And that just, you know, and that's exactly what it was about

10 miles down from the 4th fire, they pulled a truck over and he

was dragging, dragging a chain and just sparking fires off.

And but that was a that was definitely one that always stuck

out, stuck out because, you know, you just get fire after

fire after fire and it's going the same way.

It's like there's, there's no way it's anything other than

that. The craziest fire I've ever

worked actually was one that I worked after I retired.

I'm still, I'm still on the reserve list for major calls.

And a couple of years ago I got called out.

You might it might even have made the national news in Texas.

Chalk Mountain as a 7000 acre fire that burned for three days.

And my chief called when he called me.

You know, we're friend, we're friends, but we're not like

doing life together friends. And so when he calls, it's

probably going to be something important.

So he calls and I pick it up and I said, what are you working?

And he goes a big one. I need you.

And I was all right, I'm on my way.

And so for three days, I was gone.

And, and that was just a couple of years ago.

It was a huge fire. We had Texas Forestry Service

flying tankers over the top of us.

And yeah, it was it was just chaos.

It looked like a war zone when it was all done.

Oh man, man. So if you're not fighting fires

as frequently anymore, do you have some hobbies or things like

that that fuel that adrenaline rush that that need to get out

and, and chase that rush a little bit?

Yeah, I have grandchildren. Great answer.

But, but you know, realistically that I do, I do have a, I love

Rd. racing. I have a 2009 Nissan GTR that I

bought a couple of years back that my wife insisted I buy

because she knew that years ago when the GTR was first

announced. I've been following that vehicle

ever since it it came out. I've always loved it.

And and so when I had an opportunity to buy, buy a used

1, she, she said, you know, you, you, you've earned it.

You go get it. And so when I get a chance, I

love going out and driving it. There's a track here actually

close to our our office. And so I plan in the future to

be able to get a little into that a little bit more now that

I have the vehicle to be able to do it.

That's awesome. The growth of our companies has

has kept us back, kept me back from being able to to go all in

on that hobby right now. But that probably be the closest

to the adrenaline that I'm that I'm experiencing today.

That sounds awesome. That is a sweet car.

I, I do not own one, but I would love to.

So, well, that sounds like a great segue to dive into more

where you are today running DT Roofing and the subsidiary

companies. Tell us a little bit about

getting started there. After you, your first day you

get hired, no salary. We're going to have to figure it

out. Where do you go from there and

how do you build it into what it is today?

Sure. So out of the gate, you know,

and this is a nugget that I like to share with other

entrepreneurs that I mentors. You know, I always say wear as

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

And you know, in, in my case, I was selling, I was managing the

other sales team members, I was ordering the roofs, I was taking

care of the supplemental stuff on the back end of the insurance

work. So I'd pretty much my day Monday

through Friday would look like get up, it's 536-O clock, work

all day, come home, have dinner with the family, put the kids

down, spend a little time with my wife.

She'd get on the couch and read a book.

I'd go to the kitchen table, open up my laptop and I'd work

until one O clock and then rinse a repeat.

And I did that for probably about four years, three years,

four years until we got our revenue up to a point where I

can afford to hire people to start taking some of the hats

off my head. And one of those decisions was

getting out of sales personally, which I hated because I do love

selling, but I knew that it was necessary for the growth of the

company. So I told my partner I was going

to get out of sales. And he said, wait a minute, hold

on, you're half of our revenue and you're going to get out of

sales after I've given you half my company's.

And I said, yes, but there's a plan.

And I said, ultimately I'm going to hire more guys and train them

to do it the way I did it, so it'll have a force multiplier.

And when he said, OK, I trust you, you know, you haven't let

me down yet. And that's exactly what

happened. And it's what's funny is the

year I did that we did, we had just exited the prior year, we

did about 7 and a half, $1,000,000 in revenue at that

point. And the year that we did that,

we did 10 million in revenue. So the increase was about on par

with what the increase was the years prior.

But then the year after that, we went from 10 million to 20

million. And so that's when he knew that

the decision that we made was the right one.

And it's just been uphill from there in regards or downhill,

however you want to say it, that it was, you know, uphill from a

trajectory standpoint of success, downhill from a getting

a little easier and that we just continued to grow the roofing

side. And it's another lesson that I

like to teach some of the company owners that I mentor is

that, you know, there's a lot of companies out there that try to

do everything under one umbrella, You know, DT roofing,

gutters, garage door construction, fried chicken and

oil change. It's like they're always trying

to do everything, but they're not good at anything.

And no one's buying that fried guys fried chicken, right?

And so when I try to encourage other business owners to do is

to get really good at one thing and be known for it.

And if you do that and you want to dabble in other things or try

out other trades, do it as individual companies.

That way one you know that it's not just a hobby, that it's

actually profitable. So you're doing something that

actually makes sense. You're not just melding it into

your profit on your PN LS for your roofing company and you

don't really know that you suck at doing siding or suck at doing

construction or whatever. The other thing is that you're

trying to merge into the roofing side.

And of course, roofing is just an example here.

Anyone that's listening to this, that this resonates with, insert

your, your trade of choice. But what we did was DT roofing

got really, really good and, and big in our area to the point

where it was synonymous with quality.

It was synonymous with, well, these are our quality culture,

community, integrity. You see it all behind me.

These are the things that we have the building blocks in

which we build our companies off of.

And so when we decided we wanted to start, for example, a

construction company and build homes and do remodeling, what

have you, which we got really good at Kingdom Builder

construction, ADT company was almost instantly successful.

So I didn't have to call it DT construction.

I can give it its own unique identity, but putting ADT

company below it give it instant credibility.

And so companies didn't, customers didn't know the

Kingdom Builder construction, but they knew that DT logo, that

logo right there. And so they, you know, so a lot

of people would say, well, if, if those are the guys that are

part of that, I want, you know, I'm going to do business with

them because they've done my roof in the fast and the

experience was wonderful and what have you.

So it gave us an opportunity to start a new business, start new

services in the area and be successful at it because we had

taken the time and effort to grow the original brand first

and then it just continued. You know, Patriot Garage door

and Service, ADT company, Guardian Seamless Gutters, ADT

company. We also separated our

residential roofing with our commercial roofing because those

are, even though they're both roofing, they're both 2 entirely

different businesses because they deal with two entirely

different customer types. The residential customer is

going to make more of their decisions based off of emotion

because it's their home, it's their castle, right Where the

commercial person's just going to make it based off of, you

know, lowest cost possible and you know, whatever makes the

most prudent sense for business. And, and so the sell cycles are

much longer too. So if you can't have the same

guys trying to sell both, it just create it's chaotic.

Plus the the margins on of the profit margins aren't the same

either. And so we separated the two

companies and it's actually one of the best decisions we've made

in the roofing side because now we have distinct leadership in

each one of the companies, distinct sales folks, service

tradesmen that are out there doing their craft in their

specialty and our customers are being served well because of it.

And so all of the companies have been successful in their own

right. Guardian Seamless Gutters is a

brand new company and it's on trail track to do $1,000,000 its

first year. Our Guardian, our garage door

company, we'll do $3,000,000 in revenue and that's not terrible

for any consider a garage door company generally sells garage

doors a hundred $1200 at a time. And so the philosophies and the

and, and the mindset, the, the, the way that we run ran DT

Roofing and built it though all that was used as the building

blocks to build each one of these other companies.

So we didn't have to start all over and kind of figure things

out. We already knew what we needed

to do and that's why they were successful out of the gate.

When you try to do it all under one umbrella, it's very

difficult to do it that way. Yeah, so when does fantastic

fried chicken ADP company come online?

There's not going to be a fantastic fried chicken, I can

promise you that. You know, I'm not good at fried

chicken or oil changes, but, you know, that often times is I use

that as an extreme example because that sometimes you

wonder like, what were they thinking, you know?

And so, you know, that's that's kind of where we're at in that

realm. We'll leave the fried chicken to

Colonel Sanders and the oil changes to, you know, Jiffy

Lube. And we'll we'll go ahead and fix

both of both of their roofs, you know, but sounds good.

Yeah. That's that's yeah.

That's the advice to those out there.

They're trying to be everything, everyone.

Sounds like you guys have had a pretty meteoric rise with DT

Roofing and all your subsidy companies.

How do you manage growth like that in a sustainable way?

What does that look like? Well, it looks like finding good

leaders, you know, if you try to do everything yourself as an

owner, you're going to burn out. Zero question.

It's a lot cheaper to do it that way.

I mean, you know, if you're not hiring a bunch of leaders, you

don't have a bunch of salaries that you're paying.

But then you're going to burn out and that's the path that I

was headed down. My partner would have been head

down the same path had we not decided that if we're going to

do this, we need to have management in place for each one

of the companies and that we're focused specifically on those

companies. And so once a month we have a, a

leadership meeting in the same room that I'm in right now.

And all the leaders from the companies, our CFO, our CMO,

they all get together and we talk about that month's

successes and, and any issues that came up and things that

need to be voted on. And we and choose, we choose the

employee of the month. And, and so we get together as a

team every single month and talk about that collective stuff.

But each company in its own right is run in, you know, as

its own entity every month. And so what's great about it too

is they feed off of each other too.

They are DT roofing. Oftentimes when you're replacing

a roof, the garage door got hit by hail as well.

And so you need a garage door. So they they get a bid from

Patriot. They don't get special pricing

or anything. It's same price they would give

another roofing company or a customer.

And same with Guardian seamless gutters.

But what it does is it allows us to then sell those services to

other people that would be traditionally our competition.

You know, I have other roofers in the area that buy their

garage doors from me. You know, I have other roofers

that are begging for us to get our gutter division bigger so

they can use our gutter company. Right now, our gutter company

can only keep up with our roofing company.

And so, yeah, there's a lot of wisdom there in regards to, you

know, you can not only run them as separate businesses, but kind

of cross pollinate between them and I'll still allow the outside

world to use them as individual services and kind of almost

predict your success. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Yeah. I mean it's it's get into like.

An ice cream timeline. I was just going to say it's

it's kin to an ice cream company that has their ice cream

packaging and what have you, but they also own the sugar cane

farm and they also own the packaging company.

You know, it's like, you know, all of those companies are going

to be successful because the main product is successful.

And, and so there's no reason if you're able to do it, there's no

reason to go out and pay somebody else to do those

individual things if you're able to do it yourself.

Yeah. Can you give us some insight

into the timeline of when you came on board at DT Roofing and

how your sales grew and then when you launched all of these

subsequent companies? Yeah, Yeah.

So in 16 the company was a started company opened in 2009.

In 16 the company was a $1.8 million a year roofing company

and that was the highest that that we are able to achieve up

into that point in a in a year. And you know, through the grace

of God and talents, once Derek gave me control of the

operational side, our first year we did 3.7.

The next year we did 5.8 and we did 7.5.

Then we did 10 million, then 20 million and it just continued to

grow. Every year there was growth.

You know, as we started to plateau, the growth wasn't as

obvious. You know, it's not going from 10

million to 20 million, but it was 20 million, then 22 million,

then 24,000,000, then 30 million, you know, and so it

continued to grow. But it's spattered in between.

There is when we started to say, hey, maybe we should try some

construction work and see if we're good at that.

And that was around 19 is when we just decided to start a

construction company. The year, same year is when we

also decided to start a garage door company.

All of these companies by the way were created out of one, for

one reason and that or for two, one of two reasons.

They are either we felt that the service was either underserved

or poorly served in our area. There was no reason for us to go

out and start an HVAC company or a plumbing company or electric

company. None of the MEPs services

because those were all represented very well in our

area and still are to today, still are today.

So it wouldn't have made good financial sense to go out and

compete in the market that's already highly competitive in an

area that we knew nothing about. So if we were going to get into

something that we knew nothing about, it should probably be

something that is already either underserved or poorly served.

So we'd have a lot of grace thrown at us if we didn't do

well right out of the gate. And that's exactly what

happened. And so anything that we're

willing to get into, we want to do well and we want to win most

of the time. And you know, fortunately this

last year, this last year, this year, several years before, each

one of our companies has won the best of category.

Our community where our headquarters is, has a best of

Hood County every year for each category, roofing, garage door,

overhead doors, gutters, you know, construction.

And fortunately our companies have won their categories every

year for the last several years. And so that's kind of a

measuring tape for a measuring stick for us as to whether we're

we're doing what we say we're going to do.

It's not just a a derivative of the of the revenue numbers, but

rather what the community says about us because it's the

community that votes on those things.

So in the last 9-10 years that you've kind of been running

operations, are there any moments that really stand out as

high moments or low moments? You know, any time that I have

to let somebody go, and fortunately that's not very

often, we don't have a revolving door at any of our companies,

but anytime we have to let somebody go, it's definitely a

low moment. You know, we're, we're

definitely we, we do understand that this person's attached to a

family and. And people that rely on them,

but we also have to be cognitive of the fact that there's seventy

other employees that are relying on us making good decisions in

order for the companies to continue to succeed.

And so when we look, when you know, if a person's let go from

our company, we've considered every possible idea on how we

can make them work somewhere in the company.

And we've concluded there just isn't a place and we don't

really look at it. Or at least I don't look at it

as firing them. I look at it as I'm going to

allow them to go do something that they're passionate about

because it's clearly not this. If it came to the point where

we're we're letting them go, then they're not passionate

about what they're doing. And we need somebody that's

going to be passionate about what they're doing.

And so, you know, The funny thing is, is not, you know, a

year and a half ago, I had one of those gentlemen, he happens

to go to my church, walk up to me, he's working security.

And he said, hey, you have a second.

I said, yeah, absolutely. What's going on?

He said, hey, I just wanted to thank you.

And I said thank me. Thank you for what he said

because you let me go. I found out that my passion is

to be a paramedic and I'm in paramedic school.

And I was like, man, that is awesome.

Praise God. And, and, and today he is a paid

paramedic saving lives and, and, you know, helping patients and

his area. And so, you know, identifying

that he just wasn't passionate about what he was doing and

letting him go allowed him to go and, and, and search for

something he was passionate about.

So it worked out well for him and the high, you know, anytime

I see any of my staff able to accomplish something in their

life personally that they would otherwise not have been able to

in the past, it's a big high for me.

You know, one of the, one of our salespeople is a former teacher

and, and, and we all know no matter where you are in America,

teachers get paid crap for what they do.

And so the fact that he was able to buy a home on five acres and

just provide for his family after all those years of being,

you know, paid terribly and being an amazing teacher.

My son actually, he, he, he was one of, he was one of my son's

teachers. It was really gratifying to see

that he was able to, to do that. One of one of them guys is able

to, you know, just anything, any accomplishment, they're able to

me that, that that brings me great joy.

And I think it's derived from the fact that I grew up not

exactly. And I was, we were impoverished.

And so not having a whole lot growing up, seeing people

knowing that the, you know, my colleagues, people that work

with us, that they're able to provide for their kids.

So their kids are never going to question, you know, what's for

dinner if you know they're going to be able to do some basic

things. So I think that's huge for me.

That's great. I'm finding that's a trend with

a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of leaders.

They're high moment, they're most proud moment is not when

they made a lot of money, but it's when the people working

under them achieved something and really succeeded and made

something of themselves. That's pretty exciting to be a

part of somebody's story in that way.

Yes. I know you guys have a really

cool program you call DT Serves. Can you tell us a little bit

about that? So DT serves is a two-part

program. The first part, once a once a

quarter we find somebody in our service base that is in need of

something. You know, most recently it was

an elderly lady whose back patio completely collapsed off of the

back of her house and it was just poorly constructed from the

beginning. They didn't tie it into the

actual frame, you know, roofing of the house.

It was just attached to the fascia.

And so it failed. And fortunately nobody was hurt

because it happened while our guys were doing her roof and she

had actually told them like, look, I'm not sure if that's

sturdy or not. And, and our guys were actually

had just walked under it and it, it just came off, you know, and

I'm sure it had something to do with when they were removing the

shingles that came up to that portion of the of the patio

because we hadn't roofed that area yet.

But she said, hey, don't. I'm so glad no one was hurt.

Don't worry about it. It was, it was going to fail

anyways. We always knew it was, I was

just, I don't even go back here, whatever.

So, so I got back to my VPS LS and he said, man, why don't we,

why don't we do ADT serves and build this lady a new patio, a

porch area. And so we did and the roofing,

you know, got into the decking to the trusses and and went

ahead and tied it in. So it was nice and strong and

all seventeen of our sales guys took time out of the field where

they're making money because they're Commission only.

And and we served her for 2 1/2 days and built build out her new

patio and she was so gracious, you know, grateful rather.

And it was just great to be able to serve her and just see the

smile on her face when she walked out and just saw the

construction. We made it a lot sturdier than

the old one. And so it'll, it should outlast

her quite a bit, you know, and you know, so she, she was

definitely blessed by that. And then the other part of DT

serves that our, our marketing, our CMO came up with is when we

do a roof in a neighborhood, we have, you know, these bags that

have DT serves on them. And it's, it's partially

obviously to grow our business, but also to help serve locally.

And we, and we didn't, we, it's not an original idea.

We got the idea from the Boy Scouts.

You know, the Boy Scouts will go out and they'll put a paper bag

at the house and say if you have any canned goods that you'd like

to donate, just put them inside the bag and we'll come by and

collect them later. And so we go into neighborhoods

where we're doing roofs and you know, the DT serves bags will be

left at the houses. We'll let them know.

Look, we're going to come back by.

If you don't have anything or you don't want to participate,

don't worry about it. Just leave the bag here and

we'll pick it up. And then we bring the food back

to the office. And for every can or box of food

that we that is donated, we match and then we give it to the

local pantry in that county because it's become a huge issue

in our area that pantries are just empty and there are a lot

of families that could use the food.

So it's an opportunity for us to both serve them and also grow

our business by being getting in front of our our customers.

And of course, naturally customers are going to love

that, you know, they love the fact that that we're helping

feed people. And so it's just it's a concept

that I got. It was at a conference back at

When the Storm this year. Actually, Charlie Kirk was the

keynote for it. I got to speak with him three

weeks before his passing. And there was a gentleman there

that talked about, you know, you can have nonprofit businesses

and you can have for profit businesses.

He said, but what if you had a four purpose business?

And he went on to tell how he's made millions and millions of

dollars, but he's always had a four purpose business where that

that purpose was for everything. Every this that we do, then

we'll do that. You know, it's not just donating

to an organization, but tangible something that, you know, for

every, and I'll give an example where every 20 roofs that we put

on will build will, will dig a water well in Africa or

something. And it's a four purpose

business. And so I came back with that

and, you know, approached my marketing, our CMO, our chief

marketing officer, and I said, Hey, I told her the whole

concept and I said I want to be a four, four purpose business.

And, and so the, the canned food portion is what she came up with

and it was in direct response to the crisis of the pantries in

our area and all the counties that we serve.

So. Wow, that's pretty cool.

That's a great idea. That's a really.

Yeah, I've not heard of that before.

Well, that is something pretty unique about your business.

Are there some other things unique about you as a leader or

unique about your business that you think have contributed to

your success? You know, we wake up every

morning with a willingness to serve.

I think if any company who has a service based business just

remembers the industry you're in is called service.

And if you just no matter what your trade is, if you wake up

and your goal is to serve your fellow man in any capacity, but

of course, obviously in your trade, you're going to be

successful. I mean, it's just a reality.

And in fact, I would even argue that it's easier to be

successful in today's age than it was in our grandparents age,

because in our grandparents grandparents age, it wasn't

uncommon for people to just serve for the sake of it, right?

You know, it was more wholesome. It was more, you know,

neighborly these days, people are, you know, when the, when

the world went flat, you know, everybody's so focused on their

phone that they don't focus around the people, focus on the

people around them. And so our, our whole mindset in

our company is relationships, going out and building

relationships not only with our client base, but with other

professions that need our services in order for them to be

successful. Real estate agents, insurance

agents, property managers. And when you do that, well, a

huge part of your revenue every year comes from these people as

well. You know, on average, between

1/3 and 1/4 of our revenue every year comes from those three

titles. And it's because they know who

to call because we're not focused on just getting business

from them. We're focused on solving a

problem that they have. And because of that, they're

willing to send all their business our way.

So I think that's something that's unique about our company

is our approach is not just the traditional marketing.

I only spent 1 1/2% of my revenue and marketing.

Every book I've ever read on business says you're supposed to

spend between 6 and 7% of your revenue on marketing.

So the reason why we don't have to is because we spend so much

time being human beings that that naturally turns into

revenue dollars because customers want to do business

with us. That's a great way to approach

it. We have a similar philosophy in

our business and I think it served us well so.

Yes. Have you made any mistakes in

the last few years that you think significantly delayed your

growth or your trajectory? I would say that we've made

decisions that on the outset did, but on the onset we, we

felt was a good decision. For example, you know, I've

mentioned that we've started several companies.

Well, one of the companies that we started years ago was a power

wash and, and soft wash company. If you're not familiar with soft

wash, everybody knows what power washing is, but soft washing is

when you use a chemical to clean something, it means the surface

can't be hit with power otherwise you'll damage it.

So soft washing uses a bleach like material that cleans the

surface and there was a huge need for that in our area.

We noticed a lot of roofs that were not damaged but just ugly

because they had algae growing on them and algae naturally,

it's called Gliocapsa magma, but it naturally feeds on the

limestone in the shingle and so it breaks your roof down.

So we thought, well, if we can't replace the roof, we'll clean it

and make some money off of that as well.

Well, that worked. It worked really well actually.

And it brought in on average between 300, three, $150,000 a

year in revenue, which isn't terrible at 60 to 70% margins.

Not terrible, except when you consider that all the time that

we were spending doing that well, we could have been

focusing even more on our $30 million roofing company.

And so sometimes, you know, we didn't, we didn't have good, a

good experience finding good leadership to just take that

over there. Otherwise it would just been

another business in the in the DT family.

But when we, we just had, we had, we definitely had somebody,

you know, that would go out and do the jobs.

But as far as having a leader that was stepped back, that

wasn't in the field, but could step back and grow the company

and, and come up with ideas that we just didn't have that step,

you know, anybody to step forward to do that.

So it relied a lot on me to do that and it just didn't make

sense for my, my time was more valuable growing our other

businesses than it was to do to, to grow that.

And So what we did is we found a local window washing company

that actually wanted to get into power washing and soft washing.

And we said, well, how about we just sell you all of our

equipment and anytime our customers call to say, Hey, can

you come out and do this? Because they knew that we did

that in the past. We'll just let them know we no

longer do it ourself. But this is the company we've

partnered with and this is so you should use and they use that

business that they get from us to help pay off all the

equipment that they bought from us that was very expensive when

we bought it. And so that's worked out because

customers are still served in that space.

But it's just not our company anymore, you know, it's, it's

theirs. And so that would probably be 1.

I wouldn't say it really it was a regret because it was a good

experience. It gave me the experience of

knowing that if I start a company without leadership out

of the gate, then it's probably not going to be successful

because I don't have the time to be the leader of that company,

that sole company when I'm trying to, you know, rerun 5

other, you know, up to 40 million in revenue companies.

You know, it just, I, my time is, was more valuable being the

operation week over operations of the other companies.

And so, and it's what we learned.

So now even then, even since then, when we've thought about

maybe we should start that like, Nope, we don't have a leader for

it. So we haven't started it, you

know, and so that's, that's kind of where we're at with that.

So it was a good lesson learned in that respect.

But that would probably be a point where we, you know, did

something that didn't work out entirely.

Sounds like that might be what I call a beneficial mistake.

You learn a big lesson by making mistake that helps you grow or

prevent you from making a bigger mistake later.

One of the things I tell the business owners that I mentor

all the time is if you ever going up, going, going through

something, give me a shout because I probably paid the dumb

tax already and I'll give you advice on what to do or what not

to do in that particular realm. That's what's 1 of the, you

know, I, I heard somebody say one time, and it's absolutely so

true. It's if you're in business and

you're not failing, you're not growing, you know, because you

have to try some things, you know, some things there just

isn't a precedence. You know, you don't, you don't

have somebody to go and check. Have you done this before?

It's like, no, sometimes you're doing things that are unique.

And so it's, you just got to try it to see if it works.

It's actually a perfect segue into my most recent venture that

I told you about, you know, with the good contractors list.

That says something. Is there anything that has

happened in your leadership journey building DT Roofing that

has caused you to really shift an opinion about something?

Something that you felt strongly about before and have opened

your eyes to seeing it from a new perspective and have changed

your mind. Yeah.

The first thing that comes to mind is something that's

probably pretty specific to our industry, especially in the

storm markets. And that is, I used to think

that if insurance companies stopped insuring roofs, which 10

years ago you said that and people would laugh and say

insurance companies are never going to stop insuring roofs.

But it's a real serious consideration now among

insurance companies. But if they stopped insuring

roofs or if they created really, really high deductibles to the

point where homeowners that that would affect our business

negatively. I've shifted that mindset into

realizing that no, it's actually the companies that do do it

right that are going to be around when that happens.

Because at the end of the day, if hail falls out of the sky and

damages the roof, the roof doesn't know that the insurance

company is going to charge 4% deductible.

It just knows that it's damaged and somebody's got to fix that

roof. And so in an environment where

the customer has $1000 deductible or a 1% deductible,

or, you know, it's a, it's a small fee, you know, to, to get

the whole roof replaced, They'll tend to go with pretty much any

guy that comes, you know, with a fancy truck and a, and a slick

tongue as at their door, they'll sign a contract to replace the

roof. But when they have to come out

of their pocket with either more of it through a high deductible

or all of it through having to finance to get a new roof,

they're going to be a lot pickier about the company that

they choose. They're going to want the

company that actually takes their business seriously.

Because when you give somebody a 5 or 10 year warranty on

something, it kind of implies you expect to be in business for

five to 10 more years. And so they're going to be more

specific about who they choose. And so my my vision or my goal

is to just continue to grow a company that everyone will want

to use when the proverbial crap hits the fan on the insurance

market and they stop either covering them all together or

making it so painful that the homeowner is having to come out

of pocket a majority of the roof.

So my advice to the roofing companies out there would be be

be that company, be that company that everybody's going to want

to use when they have to come out of their pocket more.

The other thing you need to really know how to do is offer

financing because if you just stay old school and expect the

home owner to come out of pocket, the average home owner

has 2500 bucks in their savings account.

So financing is inevitable. And so you have to make sure

that you you partner with a good financing company to offer

financing now instead of waiting for when it's a necessity

because then you're going to be left behind.

Yeah, well, I know you read a lot.

You clearly put a lot of thought and interest into growing.

What are some of the best resources you have used to grow

as a leader? Great question.

So there's a great book in the roofing industry by a friend of

mine. Now I consider him a friend.

At the time I didn't know him from Adam.

His name is Martin Pettigrew. He wrote a, he wrote a book

called The Roofing Machine and it's a great book that every

roofing company owner should read.

I don't necessarily agree with everything in the book now that

I've been in the industry and have been a leader in the

industry, but 95% of what he says in there I agree with 100%.

Obviously Atomic Habits, everybody should read Atomic,

Atomic Habits. It's an absolutely great book

for habit forming, keeping you on pace and tasks.

I also study apologetics which for those of you that are not

familiar with Christianity, apologetics is the study of

things that make up our Christian faith, more

evidentiary type stuff. And I've, I've been studying

apologetics now for probably 8 to 10 years.

And my favorite book is by a gentleman by the name of Mark

Clark called The Problem of God. And the reason why I like it is

because he came from being an atheist to a very similar to Lee

Strobel or some of the other guys out there, Jay Warner

Wallace, that we're all atheist, but ultimately came to

professing, professing the name of Christ because of evidence

that they, they came across and have since, you know, now they

would say they have faith, but it took some evidence for them

to get there in their minds. And, and, and the problem of God

is an excellent book. I've probably, I've probably

read it 3 or 4 times and truth be told, I'm not a big reader.

If I do read a book, I listen to it.

I have a lot of windshield time in my truck.

And so I'll listen to books, audio books and I'll and I'll

listen to him on Speed 1.25. And my wife thinks it's so funny

when she hears me reading a book and I just like I can hear what

he's saying and everything. I just don't want to wait for

his draw. That's a little bit longer than

I want to listen to. And so so yeah, most of the

books that I read are. I do the same thing.

You know, I get, I get through them pretty quickly and it

allows me to consume more of them.

But that said, I don't like to read a whole lot of books.

I love documentaries. I and as I said in the onset,

when I'm on the education portion, I definitely love to

learn. I'm just more of a hands on

learner. Like I didn't know anything

about business. So I got into business and now

I'm teaching other people business.

You know, it's because I'm learning it hands on.

I'm not, you know, it's not some MBA that wrote a book, you know,

and on it maybe never even had a business.

He just he learned something in school and so he wrote a book

about it. In fact, sometimes I'll read

something, I'll go this guy clearly has never been in

business because that does not work.

You know, that philosophy is is dead.

So yeah, that's I would say those are a couple of books that

I've read that I really enjoy, that I think are relevant to my

life and and things that I care about.

Yeah, I know you had mentioned that someday you might like to

write a book. If you do, what would be the

title and what direction would you take it?

Oh gosh, I don't. You know, I couldn't even, it's

just funny because sometimes when I'm telling these stories,

you know, because I've, I've done several podcasts.

I I don't normally do these long form podcast.

So as much as we've talked about today, normally doesn't make it

into most of them. It's like a segment of them.

But when you hear things like I was a kid that grew up in the

barrio between two, you know, Mexican gangs that were fighting

that had the police lighten up my house.

That was a break dancer that, you know, got arrested at 16 for

shooting a kid in the butt with ABB gun.

Come on, California that that graduated from continuation

school. By the way, I would love to go

back to my continuation school. I've told my wife this the other

day and asked the principal to give me like 30 minutes in front

of all the students that are currently there.

And just say I just want to encourage you guys that I was

one of you and tell my story because there are a lot of

those. If someone would have come into

the room when I was there and shared the story that I have

now, I probably would have been a lot more encouraged than I was

at that time. Ultimately, things worked out,

but I would love to do that. But if you hear the story, you

know, been been with his wife since he was 13, had a his first

child at 16 was Chuck E Cheese for two years, you know,

firefighter for 17 years, IT security guy for 24 years, 5 * 5

times serial entrepreneur and on my way to growing 1/6 company to

100 million plus it. It doesn't even make it sounds

fictional, to be honest with you.

And if I wasn't living the life, I wouldn't believe it myself.

It sounds like just a bunch of, you know, made-up stuff, but

it's the God honest truth. And so I don't know what I would

write. I, I know that it would be full

of plenty of color and stories and I'd probably get people to

snicker a few times. But if anything, it would be if,

if my ultimate, my ultimate goal would be when someone put the

book down, they would say I'm really inspired.

You know you have a really unique view or approach to

collaboration with other businesses in your area and even

some of your competitors. Can you tell us a little bit

about that and how that unique approach has benefited your

business? Yeah, so the, and I alluded to

it a little bit early on, but you know, when I go out and I

talk to other roofing company owners, whether they're right in

my backyard or within my service area or sometimes like next week

I have one flying in from is it Iowa, Iowa or Idaho.

But he's flying in just to spend 3 days just to see our

operations pick my brain. He's he's at where we were about

four years ago. He's doing about 17 to 20

million. And and so he, he's, he's coming

out and I love seeing people win.

I don't look at somebody down the road that does the same

thing I do as a competitor. And I know by the traditional

use of the term he is a competitor, but I look at

competition as something that takes and it's maybe a unique

approach. As I'm saying the words, I

realize that it probably sounds different, but I look at a

competitor as somebody who takes money out of my pocket unjustly.

Meaning if it was a roofer that covered a deductible illegally

or cut corners on the project illegally, you know, or not

illegally but just cut corners and didn't do the customer right

or you know, you know, something to that nature.

That's what I consider competition is something I can't

truly compete with because I'm not going to break the law.

I'm not going to shortcut the customer for the sake of winning

the bid and trying to race to the bottom on the price.

So I look at guys that run their businesses with integrity as as

a collaboration, as a collaborator, somebody who's hey

man, sometimes you're going to win, sometimes I'm going to win.

But at the end of the day, our industry is lifted up because of

that. That's so that's my mindset.

Those at the top collaborate, those at the bottom compete.

Obviously I didn't come up with that mindset, but I'm just

saying it's what I live by. And so I've had people literally

say like, man, what's your, what's your angle?

Why are you? Why are you helping me or why

would you help them? And that's my mindset is look

one. And I'd look them right in their

eyes, right in their eyes when I say it's like you're never going

to outwork me. So if, and the other thing is,

is probably only 5 to 10% of the people that I share any of this

with is going to do anything with.

So if you're one of those 5 to 10% more power to you.

If you win the job over me, awesome.

That customer's getting taken care of.

Because here's the truth. I only did 1500 roofs last year.

In the roofing world, most roofing companies would drool at

that figure. So I did 1500 roofs last year

and there's over 350,000 people in the area that I serve.

I can't serve them all. So if I can do my part to help

make other competitors, you know what the nation, what people

would say competitors, but I would say collaborators a little

more successful at what they're doing so that they can help

those people I'm not going to be able to get to, then why not?

And you know what, along my journey over the last 10 years,

there's been somebody that I've gone to that I've said, hey, I

have a question. And they didn't say hold on,

hold on, hold on. Swipe your credit card right

here. And then I'll give you some

wisdom. No, they just shared their

wisdom with me and it helped me to grow my business.

So why would I not do the same? And yeah, so hopefully they

answered that question. I know there was.

What was the second part of that?

Because I know there's two parts.

I think you hit it. What was your approach to

collaboration and how has it helped grow your business?

Well, the other there the the two parts that were the two

parts were in my head. The second part is when and I

alluded to it earlier is when you treat people like that, they

tend to want to do business with you as long as it doesn't

compete with them. So for example, those same

roofers will buy their garage doors from my garage door

company because they know the type of person I am and they're

like, I like Randy. I want to bless him with

business. And as long as he's not sending

his roofing company with gutters, garage doors and

construction on the side of the truck to my customer's house to

do something, then I'll do business with them.

And so that's why having separate companies is a better

approach too, especially when you want to collaborate with

people in your industry. Because then I can send Guardian

Seamless gutters vans to their house, do the gutters on the

House and they never saw ADT roofing anything.

And so they're willing to do business with me.

So it helps in both ways. Well, I know my favorite

question. You've alluded to it a little

bit. I know you're a person of faith,

a Jesus follower. How has that affected your

leadership and affected your entrepreneurial journey?

I would say it's affected it greatly just because, well, if

you look at Matthew 25, the parable, the talents in that

parable, the one that multiplied his talents was the one that was

given glory, not the one that was that buried it.

And so I think it's really important when God gives you an

opportunity to be successful at something that you use the

talents that he's given you to do it.

And so that's where I'm at. I don't apologize for working

hard and, and, and trying to be successful because the Bible

also says that when you do anything, do it as if you're

doing it for the Lord. And so if I'm running a

business, why would I not want to do well doing it if it's as

if I was doing it for the Lord? And so, you know, I think a lot

of people out there apologize for success.

And I don't at all, you know, that it's, it's the, it's the

love of money, not the, it's, you know, that was the, the root

of all evil, not, not money itself.

And so if, you know, if I look at money as a resource to do

Kingdom work, than I want it all.

Look, I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to say I'm not going to be

shy about saying that I want to make a lot of money because I

want to do a lot of good in this world with it.

You know, it's a tool. So, you know, there was a time I

remember in a meeting where I, you know, I, I remember trying

to drive this point across with my sales team.

I said, who here wants to make a lot of money this year?

And knowing my character, nobody wanted to raise their hand

because they thought it was a trap.

And I said, why is not every hand in the air?

And they were like, oh, well, you know, and, and, and it's, it

was just, and I said, the more you make, the more you give, the

more you can give. And so you should want to just

kill it out there. There's it's OK to make money.

It's just don't make it your God.

And so that's kind of, you know, my position on that is, is work

hard. And but I will share with those

of you that are watching this that don't know the Lord, I'll

share with you what I, I like to say it's the biggest but in the

Bible, and that tends to get people's attention.

It's Romans 623. It says for the wages of sin is

death, but the free gift of eternal life is from from the

Lord through Christ Jesus. And if that first sentence

stopped at the wages of sin is death period, then we'd all be

doomed. But because it says for the

wages of sin is death comma and it follows it with the biggest

but in the Bible. But the free gift of eternal

life through the from the Lord is through Christ Jesus.

We all all have an opportunity to accept that free gift.

But when we don't accept that free gift, we've earned that

wage at the beginning of that verse, and that wage is death.

Yeah, thank you for sharing. I appreciate that.

And I know you'd mentioned you even host a weekly Bible study

in your office that you have open to all employees and other

business owners, even your competitors.

Yep. What does that look like?

How how many people show up? How does that go?

So it varies. Actually, I'm part of two Bible

studies every week. Once in the industry, it's

called contractor Fellowship and it's a bunch of roofers.

They get together nationwide on Wednesday mornings and we right

now we're reading now the book of Proverbs and those those

contractors are from all walks in in their faith, like from

brand new believers to people that have been walking with the

Lord for 30 years. And then on Wednesday or on

Thursday mornings at our office, we host a Bible study.

It's requirement to come but we offer it to any of our staff.

And we also invite any contractor in the area

regardless of trade to come on out and whether you're a

competitor or not to come out and just, you know, study the

word with us. And today we had 9 or 10 guys

that showed up. About four of them were not from

our company. Sometimes 1520 show up,

sometimes 5 or 6 show up. It just depends.

But it's in standing. It's a standing open.

Sometimes I can't make it. Maybe I'm out of town or what

have you. I wasn't in town last last

Thursday for it because I was in Utah meeting with a partner for

the good contractors list. But we have it there and it's

hosted by a a friend of mine who's a pastor at a local

church. And he comes and leads it and,

you know, he does it for free. But we do give him a, a gift

every 10 weeks. We give him a gift.

So I just tell him to remind me when we've hit 10 weeks.

And and it was just, it's more of just a blessing for thanking

him for taking his time. But he, yeah, he comes every

single week regardless of who shows up.

So there's always that one steady person that's going to be

there. And yeah, it's worked out really

well. I think it's really important,

you know, I've, I've had people say, are you, are you concerned

that somebody's going to complain about it or like, go

ahead and complain? It's my company, it's my

building and I and it's not a requirement.

So I'm not breaking any laws. You know, I'm, I'm opening it to

anyone and everyone. And I don't even tell people

that if you're not a Christian, don't show up.

I want people that are non Christians to show up.

I want them to hear the truth. Yeah.

And so, yeah, that's, that's what we do.

We started doing this. Now this is our at the end of

this year, it'll be our second full year of doing it.

At the beginning of 24 as kind of a New York New Year's

resolution, I felt like the Lord was prompting me to start a

Bible study at the office. And so I was obedient and did

it. And it's been great.

We've read through several books and and we talk about it every

week and there's great conversations that happen.

Sometimes the conversations are really deep and sometimes we're

laughing and and so it's great fellowship and it's what it's

all about. That's great.

That's really cool to hear. I know you talked a little bit

about working hard. You said you challenge any of

your competitors to outwork you, working hard unto the Lord

instead of unto men. What?

What does a day of work look like for you?

What does your schedule look like?

It depends every it seems like every day, especially since

taking on the job with the good contractors list as a new

because sometimes it'll be heavier.

Good contractors list stuff that day.

Other days it'll be heavier DT your Kingdom builder stuff.

Lately it's been a lot more of the good contractors stuff.

It's been my focus. I wake up around 5:45, six O

clock. Sometimes I'll sleep into the

ripe old age of 630 and and then I get up and I'll often while

I'm, you know, brushing my teeth will have you.

I'll put these headphones on and I'll turn my phone on and listen

to their certain YouTube channel channels that I'll listen to.

And one that pops up all the time is, gosh, I'm just drawing

a blank right now. But he's a former pastor who

started a YouTube channel to just, you know, share wisdom

with people and word of wisdom, I think anyhow, but he's it's

just great. So all this is about 30 minutes

and while I'm getting ready and then jump in the truck and on

the way into the office, which takes about 45 minutes to get to

there, I'm probably listening to something else, another podcast

or or another YouTube video that I'm just listening to, you know,

and, and I get into the office and the day begins.

And sometimes it's a whole day of meetings.

Today my day was Bible study, followed immediately by a two

hour mastermind class that I was Co hosting to pour into about 25

other roofing company owners that are part of that

mastermind. A good buddy of mine, Randy

brothers, he he runs the roofing Academy and he asked me to come

in and and guest speak today. So just spent two hours just

pouring into these guys, asked, you know, answering questions.

Several of them are, you know, just starting out.

Some of them have been in it for five or ten years.

And one of the guys has been doing it since 1991.

I was like, dude, I need to ask you some questions.

What are we talking about over here?

But yeah. And then went from that to lunch

to right into this meeting. So today is going to be a lot.

It was a long day of these podcast type, but I do it.

I do. I am a guest on a lot of

podcasts in the roofing industry talking about various topics.

I attend a lot of conferences and I speak at conferences a

lot, whether I'm on a panel or I'm up on stage or just as a

yesterday I was at one where they just wanted me to kind of,

if they were out there at AQ and a section and if somebody asked

a question that they were kind of stumped on, they were like,

Hey, can you and Jason, Jason's my buddy that's in Florida owns

a $60 million roofing company. And like, can you and Jason just

sit over here and if somebody asked a question that you guys

can kind of feel the questions and stuff.

So, but I do enjoy pouring into people and, and helping where I

can. And I'm blessed to get responses

from people all the time. Like man, I just watched that

podcast you do or whatever and man, I am so inspired and all

that and it just it makes me feel really good that I can

impact people. That's awesome.

Well, thank you. I'm sure you'll be inspiring to

our listeners and you're an inspiration to me.

I've really enjoyed hearing your story.

So as we wrap up and get to the end of our time, do you have

anybody that you'd like to see on the show?

Somebody that has a cool story you'd like to hear more about

where they came from, how they got into whatever industry

they're in? Or maybe somebody that's in a

really unique industry that our listeners might want to learn a

little bit about? Well, my good buddy mentor in

both business and and a brother in Christ is Dominic Fraser of

Fraser Roofing. He's out of Georgia and he's

he's about 20% larger than we are in, in, in as a company

size. But just overall a great, a

great guy. Ryan Groff with Sales

Transformation Group. He owns a company that trains

companies from all trade types on how to sell properly.

He's another brother in Christ, but he really has a great story.

He was a former professional baseball player who ended up

getting into the industry he's in now and he he's really a good

guy. Lives in Hawaii part time, also

lives in Texas, has a huge family.

Just overall solid dude. Awesome, I might have.

To have a cup off the top, I have plenty to do that.

Yeah, yeah, not a problem. I'd be glad to.

Well, my last question, a segment we do every show to fuel

the debate or maybe settle it once and for all.

If you have a job to do and you got to pick up a cordless tool,

what color are you grabbing? Red.

Red Milwaukee, huh? Oh, everything I have is

Milwaukee from my impacts to my drills to my even my lawnmower.

I have an electric lawnmower that uses those big monster 12.0

high capacity batteries that cost, you know, a mint and an

arm. And I just use that for just

because we have a ranch. So I just use that for our lawn

on our house and then for all the the the big stuff out on the

ranch. I have a zero turn 4.

But yeah, definitely I'm a Milwaukee guy.

I have been for a long time. And yeah, that's that's it.

All right, awesome. Well, Randy, thank you so much

for joining us. It has been a pleasure.

I know you've had a busy day. You're speaking to a lot of

people. I really appreciate you taking

the time. And what an incredible story you

have. You've been through a lot.

If you ever write that book, let me know.

I'll be the first one to buy a copy.

Thank you all for joining us on From the Ground Up Show.

If you want to be part of a future show as a guest or if you

want to call in and ask a question of one of our expert

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Thank you guys. And until next time, keep

grinding.