Brie Reis – From Addiction to Executive – A woman of color in the trades

So I snowballed from, you know, just like alcohol and marijuana,

and then I started using like cocaine and meth.

I, I do, I do like this question and I get it a lot actually,

because it there's like only one of me like she's brown and she's

a woman and she's a roofing business owner.

The night I tried cocaine for the first time and I was dating

this, this, this, this guy, he's actually, he's a good guy.

He's a good to this day. And so he called me as his

bathroom and he was in there with his cousin.

And you know, she's like got cocaine on the back of the

toilet. And I'm looking at this man

like, I know that you don't expect me to do some cocaine

right now. And in my head, I'm not even

kidding you. My inside voice was like angry,

like offended that this human being would even suggest that I

was going to do some cocaine. But when that rolled up dollar

bill handed to me, I just did it.

Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy?

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show

where we inspire and encourage the next generation of free

thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have been

there, done that, and are still getting it done.

Building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands

and their hustle. I'm your host, Eric Loden.

If you guys are enjoying the show, enjoying the content, help

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are huge. So if you guys don't mind

leaving a comment and a five star review, that would be

great. Today I am super excited to have

Bree Reese joining us. Bree is the COO of Elite

Roofing, one of the fastest growing roofing companies in the

Denver area. She is the lead operations coach

for the Roofing Academy, an online Academy for roofing

contractors. She's a public speaker and was

named one of Denver Business journals 40 Under 40, as well as

startup weeklies Women in Business to watch.

Bri is a wife and a mother. Bri, we are very excited to have

you joining us. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Well, we will dive right in. We start out with everybody.

Could you tell us a little bit about your childhood?

What was it like growing up? Yeah, so there were three of us,

three of us kids. I am the baby.

I'm a proud baby, just so you know, spoiled and all so, but we

had a pretty, pretty good growing up.

I think if you asked all three of us our experiences growing

up, you would get 3 different answers.

My brother is five years older than me and I've literally heard

him tell stories and I'm like, I don't remember it like that at

all. That's a completely different,

different way of interpretating that that situation.

So I think that's pretty common in most families.

We're a blended family. So my brother, my mom was

married prior to both my parents had previous marriages.

And so my brother's my half brother and we have some another

half sister. Oh hat she passed away.

So pretty, pretty, pretty healthy growing up very, very,

very close to my parents growing up.

We have some family drama like like always, like all families

do. But my parents really instilled

independence in US. I think more than a lot of we

had the opposite of helicopter parents.

I remember like if you can find balance between neglect and

helicopter parents, that's where my parents fell.

I remember on many occasions getting up to go to school and

my mom was working nights so she wasn't up to like, get us ready

and out the door. And I'm like in 3rd or 4th grade

just going to school with like my hair not done because I would

just not do it. But she kind of had that very

young age. Like we, we, you know, did a lot

of things for ourselves. Both our parents worked so just

really naturally instilled this independence in US, which I

think some some people may look in at that and and look at it

negatively. I look at it really positively

because I think it created who we are today.

And we're all like really go getters and we just get things

done and make things happen. And we don't rely we're not very

codependent or anything like that, which, you know, not

shouting down codependence. So I know that there's some

positives and negatives to everything.

So we're all super independent and just go getters, but OK.

So what did education look like to you?

I'm the on the the flip side of education, I'm not a standard

learner. I'm a self teacher.

I don't like to be taught things.

I think it takes away the experience for me of figuring it

out. That's the fun part for me.

And so I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth and I

did not go to college. I am a non college graduate.

I went to a trade school for like medical lab technology or

something like that, but I didn't finish and I've never

done anything even close to that field.

Just had the student debt from it.

So but education wise, that's, you know, it's the same thing

with my kids today. I'm like, if you're going to go

into a career that requires a college degree is the only

reason you should go to college. If you don't know what your

career is going to be or you know you, you're just completely

uncertain, which is so hard at 18 years old and knows like what

you're going to be when you grow up.

So especially now, I think the next generation is younger than

we were at 18. I don't know how old you are,

but I'm like, just wait. Just wait and figure it out.

I have two in college right now. I have one in the Air Force and

he tried college and it was the same thing.

I'm like, why are you going to college?

Like, you have anyone in, like, under the closed or whatever

it's called. Why are you going to college?

Like, you have no idea what you want to be, you know?

And he didn't work out for him, but he had to learn that lesson

on his own. But it's on like, opposite side

on the education standpoint. Yeah, go ahead and be a doctor

or a nurse. Yeah, I've been saying that for

a long time. If, if you have a specific

counter track that requires an education, go for it.

Find a way to make it happen. If that's your dream, chase

after it. But I feel like my generation,

probably your generation as well, we all just got funneled

into college. And if you didn't know what you

were going to do, you got shoved into college.

And so there's a lot of people with a lot of student debt and

working jobs that they didn't need that education for so.

Now for the next generation, because it's so wildly

expensive. I have a junior and she already

has over $100,000 in student debt.

She's a junior, she's going to be a teacher.

And like, how are you ever going to pay that off?

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

So I know we had Randy on the show a few weeks ago and he said

that you just had a a phenomenal, awesome story.

I know now you're working with him at Elite.

Can you tell us a little bit about your story getting from

high school to joining him at Elite?

Yeah. No, I definitely am super

transparent about it. You know, I was the only one

still in the home and my parents got divorced.

And so foundationally, that really shook me at a place in my

life where I was kind of already questioning a lot of things like

like you do, you know, 151617 years old and I grew up in a

faith-based home and my dad was a pastor.

And, you know, I, you know, gave my life to Christ at three years

old, like genuinely and, and truly and completely created a

relationship with God at that age.

And, you know, 15-16 years old, Like I just in my young

spiritual maturity, could not understand why there was so much

pain in hurt in the world and my parents got divorced.

And so at the same time of questioning my faith, like the

foundation that I grew up in crumbled around me.

And my brother was off at college and my sister had moved

out and she was a teen parent. She had her, you know, my

nephew, my first nephew had she was 16 when she had him.

And so just all the drama and from those things.

And he was he, he, he healed a lot of things in that time, but

everything kind of crumbled around me.

And so I just turned to the world to solve my pain.

And so I was guys started drinking, you know, like I kind

of almost like a normal age for us millennials, I think like

16-16 years old, smoking weed, you know, sneaking out of my

house a lot. And it wasn't like it was for

the other kids. Like it was a complete and total

escape from pain for me. I wasn't just going to have fun

or hang out at a party or, you know, I was, I was getting

blackout drunk and just like, I was that girl, you know,

everybody knows that girl at the party that it's like, Oh my

gosh, this girl clearly is not just here to have fun.

Like this is an escape for her. And she's, she's dealing with

some things. And and that was me and that

spiraled most of my adolescence, teenagers actually.

That's why I said I barely graduated high school.

I actually dropped out and went to night school my senior year

and a teacher just signed off like a work study for me.

I didn't even have a job because I was pregnant.

It's the only reason I graduated from high school.

I did go back to that teacher with all my hours of work done

and he was like, I didn't actually expect you to bring

these back to me. And I was like, well, he told me

to and I graduated because of you.

And so I did do that. But I got pregnant at 17.

I was like 5 months pregnant when I graduated high school.

So I at my son's graduation, he's 20 now.

But at my son's graduation, I told him you've walked across

the graduation stage twice, once with me and now on your own,

which he thought was funny. But so I just like couldn't pull

myself out of that hole. My parents tried really hard,

bless their hearts, and they sent me.

So they wanted to send me to a girls home.

I was like, I'm not doing that. So they're like, well, you can

leave. So I actually left my home at 16

years old, lived with a friend for a little bit, came back,

lived with them and then obviously they split like very,

very shortly after. They moved homes after that.

And so I think my son was about like 6 months old or so when I

tried hard drugs for the first time.

So I was still pretty young, so I snowballed from, you know,

just like alcohol and marijuana. And then I started using like

cocaine and meth. And just within like 6 months of

that, I pretty much lost everything.

You know, my parents took him rightfully so my parents took

him. I was just like living on

friends couches. I mean whoever's couches I

could, I went to two rehab facilities in that time frame.

And then in 2010 I was 22 years old and I found myself pregnant

again and I was just like in so much like hurt and pain from not

having my other son. And I was like who's going to

let me keep this this child? You know, if I can't, I'm not

even taking care of the one I already have, you know.

And so like just like being separated from this this child

that I love so much and then being pregnant with another one.

It was just like this wake up call to me and I re surrendered

my life to God and I called my mom and I was just like, just

give me one more chance, You know, like let me move in with

you. Just give me one more chance to

to do it. I'm going to do it this time.

Like I you know, I I got this child growing inside of me and

you know, she's like, let me pray about it.

She's like, let me pray about it, and so she, she called me

back. She said yes.

And at the same time she was moving to Denver or to Castle

Rock to work for my brother who had was working as a sales Rep

for another roofing company. So she was working as his

admitted, you know, his admin doing all his paperwork and

things like that. And so it, it moved me out of

the city that I was in into Castle Rock at the same time

that my mom was starting to get into roofing herself.

And so is Randy really diving into roofing.

And so he six months later broke off from that company and

started Elite Roofing, you know, and so, you know, he called me,

I was, I did a lot of walking during that period.

I walk, I probably walked five miles a day just to keep my mind

busy. And I didn't do a standard.

I've done a A and all of those things, the rehab and things

like that. That was just, you know, those

are great programs for people that, you know, they, they, they

literally save lives. But for me, I'm not just going

to like sit in this room for the rest of my life and say, hi, my

name is Bri and I'm an alcoholic and drug addict because I'm not,

you know, so it's just not my program.

It says work a program. And I did work a program.

My, my program was with the Lord.

But I did spend so much time walking during that time.

And I was walking, I remember my brother called me and he's like,

Hey, I think I need it. I'm starting this company.

I already knew about it. And he's like, I need an admin.

Would you come work for me? And I was like, Randy, do not

hire me because I'm your sister. Hire me because you think I can

do the job. And he was like, yeah, you know,

he's so full of it. I was totally unhireable.

He like knew everything I just went through.

I was like 6 months pregnant, six months sober.

But he, you know, he was like, yeah.

And that was, you know, one of the best things that could have

happened during that that time in my life for sure.

So at six months pregnant, I came on with him as his second

employee. My mom was the office manager.

And you know, we were young and foolish and he gave me projects

that didn't make any sense. But the ones he did give me, I

did well at and it gave me a purpose.

Sorry, I'm going to roll back a little bit.

Was there an impetus or something happened?

You said you'd been kind of in a rough space and not doing well

for quite a while before you eventually kind of dove into the

harder drugs. Was there something that

happened around that time that pushed you that direction?

You know, I just said when when I was between 16 and 18 and

people are like, you know, marijuana is a gateway drug.

And I'm like, what is it has the lack of wisdom in your life?

And marijuana is a gateway drug, like, and you're, it puts you

around people that potentially have other drugs.

And that's what happened to me. I remember the night I tried

cooking for the first time and I was dating This, this, this,

he's actually, he's a good guy. He's a good guy to this day, but

you just don't know what you don't know back in those days.

And so he called me as his bathroom and he was in there

with his cousin and you know, she's like got cocaine on the

back of the toilet. And I'm looking at this man like

I know that you don't expect me to do some cocaine right now.

And in my head, I'm not even kidding you.

My insight voice was like angry, like offended that this human

being would even suggest that I was going to do some cocaine.

But when that rolled up dollar bill handed to me, I just did

it. Isn't that crazy?

Isn't that crazy? So, you know, it's I just don't

think it just doesn't matter how what you think inside about what

you're going to do or don't do. When you get put into that

situation and circumstance, things change.

And that's why marijuana is a gay way joke because eventually

it will lead to being around other drugs and who knows what

you'll do in that circumstance. But you know, you just don't

want to put yourself in that circumstance to begin with.

So just through that, like that's a downhill slope, you

meet someone that does or deals cocaine and that leads to the

person that does and deals methamphetamines and that leads

to, you know, the person that you're going to use with for the

next 6 months. Oh man, well, thank you for

sharing that. For a, a young person out there

that like you said, you don't know what you don't know.

And at 1617, what what advice or wisdom would you have to share

for the young person that's being enticed to head into that

lifestyle? Yeah, You know, my dad, I'll

share some advice my dad gave me that I really wish I would have

listened to. And he said, you know, he called

me Boo Boo. And he's like Boo Boo, you

cannot have one foot, you know, 1 foot in heaven and 1 foot in

hell. Like you got to pick one.

And I would say that like, like, it is much easier for someone to

pull you down than it is for you to pull somebody up.

It is unwise for you to believe that you can help other people

if you're not completely stable yourself.

So I would say like, just keep away from it.

For what reason would you surround yourself by people that

use any type of intoxicant, even if it's drinking?

You know, I think alcohol is arguably one of the worst drugs

because it's so readily available and acceptable and

socially acceptable. So just keep yourself away from

those certain scenarios. Even my son today, he's 20 and

he's in the Air Force, you know, and so he's like, mom, I like

literally, you know, I'm like, you're playing too many video

games. I told him he's like, mom, I

literally can't leave my, my dorm.

He's like my barracks. He's like you, You would prefer

me play video games, mom? And I was like, OK, I'm never

saying anything to him about it again, you know?

So like, that's what he's doing. He's just trying to keep himself

out of a scenario where there's drugs or alcohol, Well, alcohol

specifically in the military around.

And, you know, and if that means he plays too many video games,

then he plays too many video games.

You know, you just got to pick your poison.

And hopefully it's not actual poison.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you got him

off on a a better track and maybe he's listening to some of

that wisdom you have to share. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he's, he got to first hand experience, you know, I say

we grew up together, you know. So, you know, he went through

all the ups and downs. I think he was like, I got him

back full time right before I had my daughter.

And so he was five. He was just starting

kindergarten when I got him back, so he doesn't remember a

ton, but I remember about 7 years old.

I was like just having a moment of shame, you know?

And I was like, baby, I'm just, I just want to tell you how

sorry I am again. And he was like, mom, I have

forgiven you. Like basically like stop

apologizing to me. Can we just move on?

You know? So I don't know.

He's been through it. He understands it and he's on

the other side of it for sure. It's his and I hope he has a

perspective that will. I mean, it hasn't always kept

him out of trouble, but I believe that as he matures and

grows, it definitely has impacted the decisions that he

has made as a man. Good.

Well, that brings us up to where we kind of left off.

So you're, you're 22, you just got your son back pregnant with

your daughter and you start working for Randy at Elite.

What what did life look that that's a lot going on?

You're you're getting clean, a full time parent again, pregnant

with the second and starting a new job.

What does life look like? And and what was that period of

your life like? Yes, I just, and maybe it's rose

colored glasses, but I just look back at that time as being

really sweet for me, a ton of gratitude during that time.

I was so grateful that for for the job, I was clashing a lot

with my mom. We lived together and worked

together and we were mom and daughters.

So I remember us being at odds a lot, which does tie into the

elite story all together. But I, I remember I went on

maternity leave actually. And so the business did like we

did like half $1,000,000 in that like first six months of, of

being a business, which is not a ton of money in the roofing

space more than than it would be now.

But I remember when I came back, right, it was like, I don't know

if we can bring you back full time, you know, So he gave me

like a little $2.00 raise and brought me back at part time.

And that was perfect for me. I just had this little, sweet

little baby girl. I named her truly Grace because

that's what I believed she was. And I still believe to this day

that I didn't deserve another child.

And God, God gave me one anyways, so that's my little

chilly grace. She's 15 years old now, which is

wild. But I just remember a really

sweet time, like a really sweet time coming out of addiction,

just being so grateful for everything that was in front of

me being returned and restored back to me that I had.

Lost. That's awesome.

And I understand you're a mom of five now.

Is that right? So I have birthed 4 but I am a

stepmom of four others. So we are a family of with eight

children. The toilet.

OK. Yes, so.

Can you tell us a little bit about that journey of meeting

your husband and building this incredible family?

I would love to tell you that story.

So ours, we call them our marriage twins.

They played soccer together when they were seven years old, and

that's how we met. They were on the same soccer

team. So we call them our marriage

twins because they were born on the same day and they're the

same age. But when's my name?

Yeah. So that's my teen, teen parent

child for me. My husband is 12 years older

than me, and my daughter was, I think, two.

Yeah. 2 1/2 when we met. Crazy whirlwind love, but I

remember so sweet Mason, one of the one of my step kids, he was

13 at the time. And my husband was just trying

to be a good example to him. So he would see me as a single

parent, like with my diaper bag and like my lawn chairs and like

my purse and like, you know, all the stuff as when our cups, like

all the baby drinks and, you know, like walking across the

field And he would grab his son and they would come help me

carry stuff from my car to the, the field, you know, And so he

wasn't trying to like, you know, hit on me or any, it wasn't like

that at all. Like he was really just trying

to be a good example to his, his son.

So we would talk a lot during that time frame.

And he had a, he had a child really young too.

So the oldest, she's actually 31.

So I wasn't sure if they were actually, she would come

sometimes. So I didn't know he didn't look

like her dad. So I didn't know if they were

like a couple. And then also me, like my

daughter's dad would come and Keenan, then my son's dad would

come and like different days. You know, it's like he didn't

know what my situation was either.

But like the last day of it, we, we exchanged our business cards

and, and so that, that next Sunday, he called me really

early on a Sunday morning and asked me to go to church with

him. And so where I was at.

And I'm like, it was such a good start.

The the take notes men out there, I was really just like,

you know, God bless me with these babies.

I have a career that I never thought I would have.

You know, if God doesn't bring me a spouse, like I'm OK, you

know, I'm just going to rock out this single mom thing.

I'm going to work really hard at making my brother's dreams come

true and I'm good. I wasn't seeking it out.

I wasn't like hoping for it. It wasn't like this huge giant

desire of my heart to be to have Finder or have a husband and dog

brought me Eli and literally I met him in June when the soccer

started and then August it ended and we started dating in August

and we were married in November. Wow.

Yeah, wow. Yeah, yeah.

So it was very hard to date with all these children in our lives.

We only had six then, cuz we have two.

We've had two together since, so it's very hard to date.

We were basically just putting our kids to sleep and you know,

I'd go to his house and watch a movie or whatever he'd come to

mind and we were just driving back and forth.

We were like staying up all night long just trying to spend

time together. So he was a single dad, I was a

single mom. So it's very challenging and we

just like, I wouldn't recommend it.

I think when most people say this, like God told me to marry

this person, I'm like, oh, maybe check that against all the

spiritual mentors in your life. It's like one of those things

that's like, can you really tell?

But like, I really feel like God impressed on both of us like

that. Like this was my person.

And so we got married. It's been very challenging.

I think the divorce rate for blended families is like 80%.

It's like it's, it remarriages often end in a divorce.

I was never married before, but I had all those other challenges

that I brought in. He had another we had.

So I said we're just as blended as blended could be.

I think at one point. So we had, we have 6 parents

involved because I have two and he has, he has two sets as well.

So 2 moms and then their spouses.

And then we had, they were in four different schools and three

different school districts. Yeah, so a lot of window time,

man, I just don't have time to run.

A roofing business, It seems like you'd have to spend all

your time just hauling kids around.

Yeah. I mean, luckily that phase of

our life has ended. Most of you know, like we moved.

We moved to Florida. So we live in Florida now two

years ago. And when we did that, we signed

different agreements with the parents and we brought all the

kids with us to Florida with us. We brought all the kids to

Florida with us, except for the the big ones.

They, they're still back in Colorado.

They're 30. She's 31 and and Mason's 25.

So they stayed in Colorado. But everybody else we brought

with us, they're all college now.

And so like we're really at a different time in our life.

There's 30 years between the oldest and the youngest.

Yeah. So let me give you the age

group. So 3125.

Well, that's from Eli, my husband.

And then we have 220 year olds, 1 mine and one his.

It was 17 year old. She graduated high school early,

a year early, so she's at college.

And then I have my 15 year old, Truly Grace.

And then we have a four year old, he's almost 5 and a one

year old. Oh man.

And let me get. 3 from 4:00 to almost 11 and that, that's about

all I can handle. I can't even imagine.

Maybe it's, you have him really close in age.

It's like different. So it is different when they,

it's just a different circumstance.

I've tried to used to give people advice and I've stopped

since I've had the second level 1 because I used to be like,

have two, what you have one, have two.

They just entertain each other. And then we had these two

toddlers and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is actually really

hard. I should stop telling people

that it's easy. Mine were five years apart.

I was a single mom with, you know, five years between those

two. And it's just different when

there's not those big age gaps. Those age gaps help a lot.

A lot. But my dad my my husband's a

stay at home dad. Awesome.

My husband's good for you guys. Yeah, we're upside down.

He kills it. He's a way better parent than

me. Way better parent than me, but

we make it work Good. For him, good for him.

Does he enjoy being at home with the kids all the time?

Yeah, so he has learned to enjoy it.

And I said earlier I was like, this has not been easy.

Even in the upside down scenario where we do it very well with a

ton of grace. I'll speak to any women out

there that are even thinking about this sort of scenario.

Like your husband is built to be the breadwinner.

Do not hold money over your husband's head.

Do not hold your title over to your husband's head.

My husband is the leader of my home.

It doesn't matter that I work and he's the one that stays

home. You know, So we try to keep some

female male norms regardless of the fact that whether I'm

bringing the money in or not, like if I, you know, when I was

an employee and not a partner and Randy would give me a raise,

I would call and I say, babe, we got a raise.

You know what I mean? Like we do this together.

I couldn't get this raise if you weren't doing what you're doing

at home. That's.

Great. I feel the same way about my

wife. There's there's no way I could

go to work and focus the way that I do if I didn't know she

had things covered at home. So.

Yeah, you get it? Yeah.

Did she stay home? She does?

Yep. We've tried to both work, it's

just too much. Yeah, oh man, home with kids is

more than a full time job to try to do that and work.

I know not everybody is blessed to be in a situation where they

don't have to do that, but man, it's a lot.

I, I often come home from work and, and look at what all has

happened in the day and still what all is left.

I'm like, man, these families that everybody's working all the

time, how do they do it? I I don't get it.

Yeah, I remember when we made this decision.

I came. I was.

It was like a crazy hailstorm year.

We were super busy at Elite. My husband was a gym teacher at

a Christian School. And I'm sitting there on the

couch one night and I'm sitting next time I just look at him

like in tears and I'm just like, I have nothing left to give.

Like I am I, I am empty. Like if my energy I was like

blinking yellow and I'm, I'm like, something has to change.

Like we cannot live like this. And that's when we decide we

decided he didn't go back to school that next semester.

That was in December. We had enough savings to get us

through like six weeks of living without us both working and

Randy didn't know that. And that within four weeks of us

making that decision, Randy promoted me to CEO so that he

could focus on the Academy and gave me a raise.

That was exactly the amount of money that we needed that we

were short falling. Wow.

That's really cool. Yeah, well that.

That brings us back to the business.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of you working

with your brother and your mom for a while and growing this

family business into what it is today?

Yeah, so my brother is an incredible man.

He is an incredible man. He like God broke the mold with

him. I'm sure there's there's men out

there like him, but I'm a little sister and so I'm a little

biased to it, but he's just always dreamed big.

I can't remember a time in my life that my brother post

working didn't wasn't working 2 jobs.

So he was also five years older than me and we had one in the

middle. So we didn't have any stuff,

right? Like I fought with the middle

one and he fought with the middle one.

But like, I can remember one time growing up that Randy and I

got a fight. So we didn't like come into this

business with like resentment or like, you know, struggles or

challenges. Like he was always really

supportive of me through my addiction, you know, even coming

out of my addiction, if I had no money, I had nothing.

I had nothing. I had the a bag of clothes, you

know, and I would be like, Randy, you and I have $20 and

he'd be like, for what? You know, for what?

And I'd be like, I'm still smoking at the time.

I'm like, I just ate cigarettes. Like I literally have no

dollars, you know, and he'd like give me two 20s, you know, like

he's, it was always like slipping dollar bills into my

pockets and, and things like that.

So we always had a good cohesion.

Like, you know, I think some families that start that already

have a lot of stuff going on, it's more challenging.

And that was the relationship with my mom where we were

butting heads a lot. And I think I kind of alluded to

earlier, like I like to self teach and my mom's a teacher so

that you kinda can put that dynamic together.

She wanted to teach me everything she knew her

knowledge and her foundations and her, you know, and I'm like,

just give me the task and I'll figure out how to do it because

like, I don't want you to tell me what to do basically, you

know, like that little rebel in me.

So it was, it was mostly healthy, we'll say mostly

healthy, but me and my mom were butting heads a lot and my

brother was having to intervene. So that's actually how I ended

up in production. It's because Randy was trying to

split us up. She was the office manager, I

was the admin. We hired an admin and he moved

me into production. And so that's when I really

understood kind of what like some of my true skills are.

And I would say that God's blessed me with a mind that can

see all the parts and the pieces and then pull those apart and

then put them back in a way that's organized and efficient

and functioning, which is perfect for production.

And had I not have been forced into that, that production role,

I would never have learned that about myself.

Maybe in a different way, but in the circumstances I was, that's,

that's how that was revealed to me.

So I loved production, loved it. I still love it.

I mean, I still oversee it. I don't do the things.

Anymore. But yeah, So what?

What all did that roll entail and what were some of your

favorite things? I think it was just like all the

puzzle pieces, you know, so you have like you're a steep and

what this crew can do and what this crew can't do.

And being able to see all those things laid out and then build a

schedule that's like proper with places like you have all your

zip codes that are close together and you're roofing

close to each other and not far apart.

And materials are just math, you know.

So I think it's just all of it, all of the little variables that

go into properly fulfilling a roofing project.

It just made sense. What was the most difficult step

that you experienced building this business?

The most difficult time frame or the most difficult step?

Let's do both. OK.

We'll go time frame. You know we're in Hail Valley in

the Denver market. So we're you know a lot of

insurance model roofing or we're relying on Mother Nature to

provide our revenue and that's just a complete uncontrollable.

So I mean, we went four years without a hail storm, 19 to 2219

to 23, and we got one in 232324. Yeah, so 19202122, yeah.

So we have four years without a hailstorm in our market.

And so we went from growing 30% year over year from 20/20/10 to

20/19. We were just like cruising, just

like this constant upward trajectory.

I'm actually really grateful for it because we learned so much.

It's just hard when you go like we're half, let's say half the

revenue that we were when we when we ended up with no hail in

2019. So by 2022 we had dipped almost

in half. And, you know, you have to,

like, sit across from people and let go of people, not because

they're not doing a good job, but because you can't afford to

keep them. It's just a different thing, you

know? So for me, and I think for Randy

and our other partner, Cody, too, that was definitely the

hardest time for us. I think I was still an employee

at the time, not a partner. I think Randy and Cody, I mean,

they didn't take a paycheck for an extraordinary amount of time.

You know, the things that they had to sacrifice and so on and

so forth. So that was absolutely the

hardest time and, but we learned so much.

So there's like a, a toss up there.

You know, we were overstaffed, you know, we were not paying

enough attention to our overhead.

Like there's, there's so much that was learned from that.

And like we grew by wisdom, not by revenue points way more in

those four years than we grew in wisdom in the 1st 9:00, if that

makes sense. Yeah.

OK. And So what do you think the

most difficult step was if that was the most difficult time

period? Yeah.

I think the most difficult step probably I would go with our

highest revenue point back then. And I, and This is why I'm going

to say it was difficult and I wouldn't have known at the time,

but in hindsight, I like to explain it as we were fighting

outside of our weight class, OK, so we were, you know, we thought

we were bad. You know, we were doing like 12

roofs a day, like, you know, right, just running a massive

amount of production and like wearing it like a badge.

But I look back on it and I'm like, man, that we were fighting

outside. We were overproducing our

ability to collect. Does that make sense?

And so I think we think revenue wise, you know, I even remember

calling Randy and being like $3,000,000 month, you know, like

we just produced $3,000,000 this month.

And so it's just like, you know, it's, it's something to be proud

of, but that fast of growth is damaging on an organization.

And it's much wiser to say, OK, don't slow down your sales, but

slow down your fulfilment. Most people are reasonable and

you know, stay at 5-6. That's my sweet spot.

Now 567 moves a day. That's where I actually keep the

most of my cash is if I'm roofing, you know, 5 to 7 roofs

a day, OK, distantly as opposed to, you know, consistently

throughout the year, as opposed to roofing 12 roofs a day in

July, August, September and October.

So same amount of sales, but I'll make double as much money.

That's a good equation. The hardest step?

Does it take a lot of restraint to do that to to not see those

sales coming in and want to go for it or have you kind of

gotten over that having lived through that difficult time?

It does take restraint in less for me, but for the people,

everybody involved, it's hard to explain that to to a sales Rep

who thinks they have to say to a customer, we'll get your roof

done next week in order to make the sale.

But it's the expectation and the intensive anticipation of what

they believe the homeowner is going to say that keeps them

from just telling them the truth.

You know, So there is a lot of organizational continuity that

has to come around that concept. And you do have to push back

because people do want to say, OK, everybody's in a hurry.

And you're like, are they? Are they really?

And I pride myself on that. I mean, I looked at, I say I

grew up in production. And so when you're in a

production role, everything's on fire.

So nothing was that's what it's become for me.

Oh, what happened? OK, let's just deal with it.

It's not a fire. Like let's just get it done.

Because otherwise you can't live your life like that.

You literally cannot live your life like that.

So I have maybe I've teetered too far on the other side where

nothing is a fire. I'm like, that's not a big deal.

Like, we're gonna solve it just like the one before.

And it might stress this out a little bit, but like, we're not

going to scale up to 12 roofs a day because we think the

homeowners want us to do that. Like, a homeowner will let us

know if they need us to rush it. So just tell them we're six

weeks out and they'll say, oh, I need it done sooner.

And it's like, OK, we'll squeeze them in.

Solved. That sounds like a great

approach. So as as CEO or COO, sorry, I

know you said you kind of came out of production and now I

imagine you're overseeing sales as well.

How was that transition? No, yeah, I don't oversee sales.

Oh, yeah, OK, I don't oversee sales.

I'll tell you how it happened. So in 2017, my mom was still

working for us and the business had just outgrown her.

And she, she knows that now. So she'll listen to this later.

And she's like, yeah, you know, you know, we've just technology,

all the things that, that, that has have come in that amount of

time. And so we parted ways with mom

and so she started working for the Academy, which so so she

still worked for us. About a year later, she started

a bookkeeping company. But Randy moved me from

production into operations as operations manager.

And so I was all of a sudden over finance.

And so I had been over production.

Now I'm over office admin and finance and production.

And Randy and Cody have always kept sales.

OK. I don't know if you know me

enough in this last 30 minutes that we've been on this call to

know that I probably am not a good sales leader.

I can see that. Yeah, yeah, I don't like fluff.

I, I'm a direct communicator, you know, I, so I, I don't

really care that much how you're doing today.

I just want the stuff in the things to get done.

I've had to learn to communicate with salespeople.

I've had learned to be like, stop and be like, hey, oh, how

was your day? Oh, it's good.

OK. Can you make sure that you know

is that you know that I've had to learn to get along with that

personality style. I could not lead it.

I've I've not an exhort that Randy is an exhorter.

He gets the most out of people. He's a cheerleader, all those

things. I'm just completely a direct

communicator. Bottom line, you know he's the

Ying to my Yang. Good.

It seems like you guys worked together well, but I I can

relate a lot to your personality.

I like send me a text, send me an e-mail.

I don't need the 5 minutes of how you doing?

How's your day going? How are the kids to get?

To. A 32nd question like.

Yeah, yeah, but they live in that they're offended if you

don't also find out how they're doing.

I think I lost a. Little bit of.

Apologies. Oh, I I may have as well.

So you were talking about lessons learned.

Is there something you wish you would have learned earlier?

I don't think so. I I don't know if that's the

right answer or not, but I think I learned everything in the

timeline that I was supposed to learn it for what, what was

coming next, I just don't know. I just think that we do, we

learn them. We learn our lessons in time for

the next lesson and I don't know if I would have pushed them all

forward. I think I needed to go through

all those things that I've gone through as a business owner when

they came, and I will in the future as well, need to go

through them as they come. I.

Think there's a lot of wisdom in that answer.

OK, good. Is there an area or a topic that

you've really changed your mind about through the process of

running your business? Is there something that you felt

strongly about and have since started to feel differently?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's a few areas I'm going to

talk on people first and then I'm going to go to leadership.

But I am very task oriented for the rest of the things that I've

said and so and very independent, which I also shared

already. So I think going in to business

and this career, that's what got me through.

You know, they say if, if, if you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

And that's been the mind shift for me.

I can put my head down and I can get a lot of work done in a

short period of time. I'm pretty productive, but I

have learned to truly value the people around me.

If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would love to work on a

team, I would have been like, no, just put me in my box and,

and let me get things done. And I'm like, man, no, like I

can, I'm a director. I don't mind so much that

something is done at 80%. If I could do it at 100%.

Like I've let go of all those things.

And I really want to empower the people around me to to succeed

and, and grow in value and worth in themselves, which I think

that piece was always there, but trying to figure out how to

relate that while working together.

And I'm still working on it. I'm still, that's always gonna

be something I have to work on and is not just like always

taking the lead and always doing the directing and allowing other

people to pull up around me as opposed to just, you know,

letting other ideas really flow. So I've put a lot of work in

that in the last 5567 years. And it's not, you know, they say

fake it till you make it. It's not that anymore.

It's truly like I, I'm like, Oh my God, I need my team.

Like what would I do without my team?

You know, where before it's like, Oh my gosh, how do I work

with a team? You know, so but that's really

shifted. And then I think from a

leadership standpoint, we have three partners and one's my

brother. And so when I moved to Florida,

that was really challenging on those relationships.

And what came out of that challenge and friction between

the three of us is a complete understanding of a, the, the

lack of a need to compete with your partnership.

And what I mean by that is like, I can truly look at the skill

set of my brother and appreciate it as opposed to be annoyed by

it, right? So we tend to do that.

It's like judgement and grace. Like we give ourselves grace and

give each other judgement. And but now it's like, like he

really offsets my skills. And so, yeah, that does create

some friction, but it is really, really, really healthy friction.

So I just genuinely appreciate the things that he has to bring

and give to the business and he genuinely values the things I

have. And that's the same thing with

our third partner. And all those things are

different. And so if we can take all our

strengths and put them together instead of using them as a

reason to retract from each other because it's conflict,

there's really, I mean, the, our limitations completely go away.

So that's a big thing that's changed for me is that I

haven't, I don't sit in that frustration so much of like, Oh

my gosh, you know, Randye got another idea, you know, like you

got another idea. It's like, okay, like what's

your idea? Let's hammer it out, you know,

and I'll let you know if I can integrate it, you know?

And so now we like, we'll actually sit and have those

meetings as opposed to just being in this fear.

As soon as he has these ideas, I'm like, you know, let's just

sit, let's have an hour meeting. You spit all your ideas at me

and let me filter them and integrate the ones that I

believe truly can be integrated into the business.

And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, you know, so

it's, it's, it's developed into this really healthy, healthy

thing for our businesses. That's great.

So you've mentioned a couple times that you have moved to

Florida and are now kind of running things remotely.

What has that process been like? Has it been difficult?

Not really. I think one of the positive

things that came out of it's been good court, everything in

life is difficult, but good difficult.

One of the positive things that came out of COVID and I think

you agreed to this, is that it did force our businesses into a

remote environment. And so now elite since COVID

really has been a hybrid of that.

Like I said, we went paperless in 2017 and so our salesman have

not been in the office since 2017.

I feel like like why do they come except for to turn in paper

packets? So we haven't seen them in since

pre COVID. And so, you know, we had our

first employee go remote shortly after COVID, she moved to

Georgia. Now I have like employee in

Georgia, employee in Minnesota, I'm in Florida, we have two

Virginia's from the Philippines. So I just think we've become

this hybrid thing. But I also think that it was

really healthy for the organization for me to step back

a little and it did give people the opportunity to step up and

in. So our defines are more, our

roles are more defined as a leadership team.

We've kind of, like I said, fallen into some of our

strengths a little bit more and it was good for me to see how

capable everybody else is even if I stepped out for a minute.

So it's been really good for the organization.

I think it's been really healthy for me.

There's some challenges working from home just like there's

challenges working away from home, I'm sure.

So that's been kind of and I guess I'm really, really, really

great on like one on ones with my team.

I'm really consistent. They're really well agenda and

things like that. So it's like I go up every

quarter and do like a team building event and just hang out

with my staff at the office. And so I think we've really

figured it out. OK, that's great.

But all our systems are online. Technically you should be able

to do this from from any anywhere.

You know, production has to be in office.

We have an office for production repairs.

You know, our service technicians need to be able to

have a warehouse and it's good for, you know, a customer wants

to stop by, they have somewhere they can go.

We have three people in the office still an admin assistant,

our office manager and our production manager.

And other than that, the rest of us are pretty much all remote.

OK. Have you found that you missed

something by not just being shoulder to shoulder, being able

to communicate with with full body language and everything, or

have you guys been able to make things work with the technology

available? I found that I missed steps and

my step tracker is like really terrible working from home.

But other than that, no, no, we communicate more than we did

before, except now I don't have to put a sign up when I need

nobody to come in my office, you know.

So I think, I think we communicate extraordinarily well

as a team. We have a really great culture,

though, so there's not a lot of politics or, you know, a lot of

that. Well, and I know.

Infighting or anything. So I think that.

Helped. Yeah.

Randy and your mom were kind of the master of systems.

It seems like that probably plays a pretty significant role.

If everybody knows their role, their process, their system,

they can go through that without having to pass stuff back and

forth a lot of times. Is that accurate?

Yeah, Yeah. That's the objective of our

system. We sat down and maybe he talked

about this, I don't know, so many years ago.

Now we do this with our clients, with the Academy, and we wrote

every single process that we do up on the whiteboard and then we

reorganized it. So a lot of businesses, what

they end up doing is who's got more room in their basin.

We refer to it as a basin, like what kind of workload can you

handle? And so it's like, oh, this

person has more time, just give them this, this extra task, do

this, do this. And that happens as your

business grows and especially we grow really fast like we did.

And so we just restructured it all and it's like, OK, let's

limit the handoffs. If this one, let's say there's

three processes, but it's really just one big process like give

that to one person. So we reorganized everything,

renamed the titles, presented new employee agreements to

everybody. It's actually when I did that

went over to the operations manager was when we did that.

So that was really good for us. So we do, we try to limit the

amount of handoffs and you get you get people's excuses like,

well, I don't want my employee in QuickBooks.

Like you're, if you're, you're afraid, so afraid your employees

going to steal from you that you don't want them in QuickBooks or

that they're like, like all the reasons that you get, it's like,

OK, so you're going to make this system really challenging

because you don't trust your staff.

Like that's not healthy. Like someone's got to know what

your numbers are in order to, you know, you're just going to

always be in charge of that. You're never going to like, so

it's just like you got to overcome those hurdles in the

consulting side. But there should be main handoff

points, sales to production, production to accounting.

Those should be your major hand hand offs and you know, you

should limit all the other ones in between.

Good. Good.

That's some great advice. That's something we need to

learn a little bit better. I think if we went all remote,

we would probably struggle because we end up handing stuff

back and forth in the office quite a bit.

OK, OK. I think it's pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so.

Well, and so many of us, we were not business experts, We were

not efficiency experts. We learned to trade really well

and then are trying to figure out how to run a business, and

it's a process. It's a process.

So the whiteboard and restriction, yeah, that's a

great idea. Is there a major mistake that

you wish you could have avoided? Yeah, yeah.

I have one big one that always comes to my mind when this

question is asked and that is I had he still works for me.

In fact my main roofing crew, so main roofing crew.

So think about how much money I could have paid him in one year.

He had Texas workman's comp OK. And so I had missed an e-mail

from my workman's comp company saying that he was that they

won't accept that workman's comp.

So when the year came up for my audit and they saw that he still

had that same workman's comp, I got $100,000 audit that year.

I had to pay workman's comp for that subcontractor for the

entire year that he worked for us.

So that is the biggest mistake I've it's like so easily.

I mean, what kind of $100,000 mistake?

I mean, come on, like that's only yours own.

Like that's my biggest, biggest mistake that I ever made.

It was a long time ago. I was new to the auditing system

and insurance and it's so complicated and complex.

So that was a real, real, real bummer.

OK. I think.

We all have, yeah, we all have something like that.

That a missed e-mail, a missed signature that cost you.

You got to learn that lesson to cross the TS and dot the i's.

Yeah, email's so dangerous. I can't wait till AI replaces

e-mail. See that?

That idea scares me. I I I like being in the loop on

stuff but. I know.

I mean, yeah, it needs to be refined.

I can't wait till AI refined e-mail.

There you go. Facts.

What does it say? Effects.

Would that make you feel a little perfect?

I'll get on board with that one. Yeah.

Have you ever made a beneficial mistake?

A time that you screwed up, made a mistake, but the lesson you

learned from it was more valuable than the consequence, I

think. What's the right mindset?

That's every mistake that you've made, your brother said, is it?

That's so funny. So, but we don't spend any time

together. We do both believe that though.

That is definitely a construct that we both both sit on.

But even, I mean, even in this call, the things that I've

talked about like I like. So I'll tie in my drug addiction

like I would never take my drug addiction back.

I am, I am not that person. I say I closed the book.

People like, oh, I turned, I turned the chapter, you know,

I'm like, I, I wrote and I closed that book.

And so this is my new book that I'm, I'm living in.

But the things that I went through help shape who I am

today. I would not be this version of

myself without going through that.

I would not have two of my children without going through

that. So I just think everything, you

know, Romans 820, everything works together for those, you

know, I love that Bible verse. And so I think that and really

does too. So, you know, I think we can

learn something from every mistake we make.

If we're not doing that, then it doesn't make the mistake worth

it. Yeah, he he said.

He doesn't make mistakes. He doesn't consider them

failures. They're just learning

opportunities. So yeah.

That's what he says. He says to our consultant.

Maybe he said it to you. To you.

It's like we paid all, we paid all the stupid tax for our

clients. You know, we paid all the stupid

tax and we get to, you know, teach you guys all the stupid

lessons that we learned already along the way to save you that

specific tax. And I do apologize.

I have a little bit of a cold. If you could go back and do it

all over again, would you? Yeah, yeah, I would absolutely

do it all over again three times over probably.

I've loved it. I've loved the whole experience

of small business, even though it's been super, super hard.

It's been so extraordinarily fulfilling operating a small

business and the micro impact that you can have on people's

lives and you know, from clients, but to your customers

and then the impact that it can be to your home, your own

personal home. It's just like a really, really

amazing little space to live in small businesses.

Yeah, I love that. Has it been difficult as a woman

in a a trade business? Has has that been uniquely

difficult or? So I, I do, I do like this

question and I get it a lot actually, because it, there's

like only one of me, like she's brown and she's a woman and

she's a roofing business owner. There's just like, I just don't

go to many spaces that, that you know, And I do like the question

because I think it's a fun question to answer because it's

not probably an atypical answer. I think that one of my

superpowers is that I just don't think like that.

You know, I'm not walking into a room and counting normally how

many brown people are in the room versus how many non brown

people are in the room and determining if, you know, my

minority impacts the way I'm going to be received.

You know, and I understand, like people do kind of think like

that and I understand how culture tries to shape that

mindset, but I just walk in every room like I should be

there. And why would I not have the

credibility to be here? And whether that's because I'm a

a woman or not a woman, I think that being a woman gives me it

gives me a power inside of a business room that a lot of men

don't have. And I'm going to explain it to

you is because, you know, my mom told me when I was like 22 or

23, she said men see problems when they're like right here in

front of their your face. But women, we have this ability

to see problems when they're super far out and we see them

coming and men see them when they're like right here.

And so if I can bring that perspective and I could say,

hey, rant, like I see something coming.

You know, I see something coming and he's going, Oh yeah, you

know, I can even look at it that way.

Like I can bring a different perspective into the room just

by being what God built me to be.

And then the opposite side of that is he helps like, like men,

you guys have this innate ability to just move on.

I love that about men. I, I envy it not have that.

So I rely on my partners to be like, come off it, you know,

like it's time to move forward. You've been sitting on this

thing for too long. Let's just move forward and see

if that thing works itself out. So where I don't have that

ability, a man has that ability. So I think we can play really

well with each other if we do it with intentionality.

So I think it's a good thing to have both sexes represented if

we, if we can again, stop, look at the ways that were different

as negatives and start looking at those things as positives.

And how do we leverage those differences to create positive

impact as opposed to limiting our own selves by saying, you

know, I'm not, you know, they're just not going to listen to me

because I'm a girl. I'm like, man, let me come in

with some really great information, build my

credibility just like anybody else has to do.

And if they need that impact, like I'm going to find there,

I'm going to find my voice. And I say that all that knowing

is that, you know, my brother is my champion.

And you can attest to this because you talked to him first.

Randy builds my credibility before me.

So I do think that is important that a woman has a champion in

the space because every room I go into behind him, he's already

set a precedent that my voice is to be heard.

It's worth listening to, not to be heard.

Like, hey, my sister's coming in here listening.

It's like, no, this is her skill set.

This is what she's capable of. This is what she's been through.

This is what she can bring. You know, he has set that for

me. And so I get to walk in and I

just get to reassure everybody that what my champion already

said about me is true. So I I do think from that aspect

it is good that women have champions in the industry, but

at the same time I think that we should approach the table

differently than than some maybe a standard worldly view of that

would be. OK, that's a great answer.

I I love that approach that you, you earn your voice and you earn

the earn the confidence. And yeah, I, I think more

business should be done that way.

We spend time listening to people that we shouldn't and not

listening to people that we should and.

Yeah. You you look at look at the

value they bring. So what has been your biggest

win as a leader? Oh my gosh, My biggest win as a

leader. I'm going to go with the people.

You know, I can give you example.

My finance manager, she's been with me 10 years and she started

as my receptionist. She didn't have a computer.

We literally just needed somebody to answer the phones.

Like they were just bringing off the hook and our admin couldn't

handle it. So just come in.

She would carry a cordless phone around in her back pocket and

carry it around whoever needed it.

And, you know, she worked at Subway before I hired her as

that. And, you know, she's now my

finance manager. She knows more about bookkeeping

than I do. You know, she, you know, will

argue about how to do things in QuickBooks.

And I'm like, Dick, it's just right, right?

Asked me, you know, no, I think I think that's been my biggest

win. And she's just one example of so

many. You know, my production

coordinator right now, she's young, she's 25 years old, She's

sick, mom, two kids and she's crushing it, you know, giving

this young lady an opportunity to have a career that maybe in

another scenario, nobody would give her that opportunity.

But she's smart. She's so smart, man, and she

learns things and she doesn't like independently and quickly.

And it's like crazy how quickly she could pick something up.

So like just identifying that and leveraging it and then

seeing them like succeed in Excel.

I think all the great leaders that I talked to, when you ask

them what their biggest win is, they talk about their people so.

Right, I'm not alone. I like that.

Yeah. And so you've really developed

and grown a lot as a leader. You say you you like the process

of self teaching and figuring stuff out.

Have there been any outside outside resources that you've

leveraged to help grow and learn?

Yeah, yeah. I think my coach leading into

it, like what says, you know, the mind is a dangerous place.

Never go in there alone. And I think that's true.

You know, I think we can get drunk on our own thoughts, you

know, we can get drunk on our own feelings, things like that.

And so I, we got a coach and I think we got him in 2017 and

he's been with us ever since. And we rely on him for

direction. We treat him kind of like a

fractional CFO. He determines what our pay

structure is like. He really is one of those things

like how do I pay myself? Am I making money for my

business or am I taking money for my business and trying to

navigate that conversation. And so having his voice in that

really anytime we, you know, hit some type of wall, it's he's

there to to guide us through it. And I guess that's a little bit

of a plug for ourself as the Academy, like that's what we

want to become to people too, is what he's been to us.

And I do think that you need resources of people that have

been through the things that you are going through.

Emotionally, you need that. Mentally, you need that.

Strategically, you need that. A lot of times financially you

need that. So I do, I think everybody

should have some type of, you know, when my daughter was born,

I named her Vignette Louella, my little one, my one year old.

And Louella is my spiritual mentor's first name, you know,

because the impact that she's had on my life over the last 30

something years that she's known me because she's known me since

I was a child. And like there's just so much

value and worth and saying, I don't know how to navigate this

situation and being able to pick up the phone and calling someone

who has either been there done that or that you fully trust to

guide you the right direction despite of you.

OK. So not somebody that's going to

tell you what you want to hear so that you keep paying their

consulting fee, like someone that is actually going to tell

you what you need to hear. That's huge.

That's huge. I don't have a an awesome, well,

I took the business over from my dad, so he's been a phenomenal

coach, but a formal coach, I don't have one.

And anybody I've talked to, it's just what you said.

They tell you what they want to hear.

They rattle off the latest business jargon to try to

impress you and they haven't been there, they haven't done

it. So it sounds like you guys are

doing something kind of unique. Randy talked about this as well

with the Roofing Academy in that you guys are coaches that have

been there, you've done it, you understand the market, you're

still involved in it. Can you tell us a little bit

about the Roofing Academy and how that works?

If if a contractor starts from scratch and signs up for the

Roofing Academy, what what is the process you walk them

through and what can they expect in that process?

Yeah, from start we just have a complete online learning portal.

We really love people to go through in the beginning.

So online courses and really every single avenue of starting

up a business, there's a production course, there's an

accounting course, there's a course just for your

administrative assistant. So we have built out this course

online that's just really, really, really wonderful.

But the meat of the business is in the one-on-one coaching.

We're very high operational, very high fulfillment.

So we restructure the business, kind of what I talked about

before. We take all the processes.

I mean, we've done it so much now that we can kind of say, OK,

you're a $1 million company, this is the roles you need and

this is what each role should technically be doing.

But we take all those so we don't have to like write all the

processes down on the board is basically what I'm getting AT.

And so this is what this is how I explain it.

OK, so I've talked to so many business leaders and all they do

is complain about their people, My people, my people, my people,

my people aren't doing good, my people, blah, blah, blah.

You know, like it's just like this.

And I'm like, OK, well, what are your processes like?

Oh, well, our processes aren't that great.

And I'm like, well, let's restructure the organization.

Get your processes squeaky clean.

OK, get SO PS around those processes and then let's

determine how awful your people are, because maybe your people

just don't have any stinking direction on how to get these

things done. So this isn't, you know what?

At what age were you when you started driving?

16 well, probably 14, but. OK, 14 So do you remember being

in a car before you started driving and you don't really

know how to get anywhere, but then when you start driving, all

the sudden you understand how to get to places.

So as the business owners and the business leaders, we build

those cars so we understand the direction that they're going.

But then we when we insert people into that, they didn't

build the car. They've never driven the car

before, and we don't give them the time that they need to learn

how to navigate. Just like we didn't know how to

navigate before we stepped into the driver's seat of a car, You

know, So that's why I just want to help people build that car

and then create the structure around it that teaches their

staff how to drive the car, all while being profitable.

Yeah. Thumb it up.

That's. The most important part, right?

Yeah, it's not about how much money we can make, it's about

how much money we can keep. Yeah, yeah.

That's great. That's gold right there.

I like that. What motivates you to keep

pushing forward when things get hard?

I mean, I don't want to be cliche, you know, I have.

When I stepped into Elite, I really had this deep started to

like make help. Like I want to help my make my

brother's dreams come true. Like my brother dreams really,

really big. You know, I know where he wants

his life to be because like, I just want to be a part of making

that dream happen for him. And none of that has changed in

15 years. Like I want to be a part of like

my brother's dream. And that has pushed me through a

lot of the hard stuff, like knowing that like this is

outside of myself. And I also know that like

further, I can push him forward. He always brings me along like

we're we're really a team at this point.

And so that's just a greater benefit for all the people that

I love. You know, I want to be a really

good example to my girls, you know, of what it can look like,

you know, a woman in this world and obviously through what not

to do. I'm very, very open with my

girls about what I've been through all my kids and where I

am now and how far you can come and measuring that gain, you

know, in your lives. So I think that's a big driver

too, is like setting that example.

But I'm breadwinner for my family.

You know, at the end of the day, that's a cliche part.

And I want to, you know, like that is going to be at the end

of the day. What drives me forward is that I

need to provide for my home, you know?

Listening to both Randy and you speak about each other, it's

evident you guys have a really strong relationship.

You, like you said he might be your champion but you've done

nothing but lift him up and even talk about your dream is to make

his dream come true. Where does that come from?

How did you guys build such a close relationship?

I think it does tie to some of it's just going to be Grace.

But like I said, we didn't have all I ever saw.

Like I was always just a little sister admiring her Big Brother,

you know, We didn't fight. You know, Everything he did I

thought was cool. You know, like he was like the

Abercrombie and Fitch senior in high school and all the girls

loved him. And, you know, he drove a super

cool car and literally like as this coolest car in the school.

And, you know, he's always working really hard.

And I, I just have always had an admiration for him, you know, so

I think that's good. And I think he's always had the

same like, brotherly little sister love for me.

And, you know, through all the things that I went through, that

was hard. I think that he didn't take

responsibility for it, but he was, I think, very had a really

big desire to help me get beyond it.

You know, I think he never wanted to see me living like

that again. So I think backwards wise, like

he really wanted to pull me up with him.

But I think a lot of it is grace.

And now through the last 15 years, it's become that we've

got to build this thing together.

Like there's something really special with our relationship

because of that and the fact that he's the visionary and I'm

the integrator and the way that we've really kind of fit

together and we've been through a lot together now in the last

15 years of this business. And it's really, really pushed

us together. Like I said, we had that hard

space and you're living on the other side of the hard space.

And like through like some books I've read and things like that,

I've heard like a lot of that partnership, that visionary

integration integrator, it breaks at 11:12.

Thirteen years. There's something that happens

in that time frame that creates challenge in that specific

relationship. We have added pressure of being

brother and sister and the way that that all entangles itself.

But you're married too. So you know, when you go through

like a hard time of being married, there's like this

beautiful time after that, like little little, you're like, Oh

my gosh, I was like mad at you. You're perfect and I love you

and you're so you know, whereas it's just like you put your

blank glasses back on. And there's probably a little

bit of that with Randy and I too.

Not that it's anything like a marriage relationship, but I

know I just made it weird. But there is some of that where

we did, we went through something really hard.

We, you know, fraud to the purposes could have gone two

different directions. But instead of going two

different directions, we pushed into that hardness.

We pushed into our flesh and the things about our own hearts that

was ugly in that. And we turned that into

something good. So you are seeing us at this

really sweet spot. But the last two years we've

just been like really appreciative of each other

almost because we almost lost each other.

OK, It's very evident you guys have a lot of mutual respect

and, and a lot of humility to have built the business that you

guys have built. And then as I've talked to both

of you, you know, Randy said, hey, the person you really need

to be interviewing is my sister. She did all the heavy lifting.

She's the one that built this business.

And as I talked to you, you kind of say the same thing about him.

It's, it's really cool to see the, the mutual respect, the

humility and the way that you guys work together.

So. Yeah.

Well, this is my absolute favorite question.

You've talked about it a little bit already.

I can tell you are a person of faith.

What does that mean to you and how has that impacted the way

that you've built your business and the way that you lead your?

Business. Yeah, I'm absolutely a person of

faith. As I said in my story, I walked

away from faith and I got a taste of what the world could

give me and it was nothing that I would want to keep.

And I truly, truly believe that the Lord saved my life when I

surrendered it back to Him. And that is how I it's, it's the

core of every aspect of who I am.

It's my moral compass. It's the direction Randy and I

are. And, and Cody, I know we talked

a lot about, you know, 'cause this, we're brother and sister,

but we have a third partner that is pivotal.

Pivotal to to the leadership that we have at elite, but we

really strongly believe that like, like this is God's

organization. And so he's going to lead it and

we're going to do our best to follow the path that he lays out

for it. And we want to, we want to honor

him and we give him all the glory in it and the the all the

profit. And you know, we'll put our

hands to it, but he's really the one that's leading and guiding

it. There's a lot of pressure that

comes off too when you do that. And it's like, OK, this is not

all I need to do. You know, and God is going to,

you know, Evan flow it. There's going to be good times.

There's going to be little times.

He's going to teach us lessons through it.

I think that is one of the biggest things we learned at the

end of those four years of no hail was that we all had gotten

become puffed up. You know, we had this, you know,

this, this medium big size roofing company, like I said,

we're doing 12 roofs a day and you know, walking around a

little puffed up. And so when there was no hail

for four years and then we all had to like pull back our

blinders and be like, Hey, like, I wasn't the reason this

business was successful for all those time, you know, because if

I have to own it success, then I also have to own the failure,

you know, So if it's my, my, it's because of me that this

business was successful, then it's because of me that for the

last four years it's been struggling, you know, so it's

like a, a relief too, when you lean into your faith and say,

OK, God guide it. Like, let me just be a, a

servant of it as opposed to just saying I'm the one like causing

this business to be successful. But we we truly function in that

genuinely and fully. And we're not a faith-based

company. We don't just like only hire

people of faith or anything like that.

But we do have a have you ever heard the phrase elusive game?

No. OK.

So elusive gain and elusive expense, it's like an

unmeasurable in our in our organization based off a certain

thing or thing or action. And so if we live our, or if we

run our business on faith values, OK, there's an

unmeasurable elusive gain in that, OK, We can't necessarily,

we can't put it in a spreadsheet and measure how much gain we get

from doing the right thing, even if we're wrong, OK.

It's like we don't, we don't know the measurement there.

It's elusive to us, but we know that there's a gain.

It's the same thing when you lie still and cheat.

There's going to be an elusive expense.

Maybe it's not measurable in the data, but there's an expense

tied to that, you know, So it's that it's, it's the way really,

really the way that we look at it.

And so that's the, you know, faith is one of our core values,

Faith, family, honesty, integrity, you know, safety,

service, teamwork, you know, that's kind of our, our values

there. But you know, faith, faith and

family, that's really our main too.

That's awesome. I, I'm going to steal that, the

elusive gain and the elusive expense because you see that in

the business world, if you've been in business for any period

of time at all, you can see, you can see the businesses that are

riding high on that and you can see the ones that are struggling

because of it. But like you said, it's hard to

put, you can't put it in a spreadsheet.

It's hard to really put your finger on it, but you can see

when it's happening. That's awesome.

Is there anybody that you would recommend for us to reach out to

and have on the show? Somebody that has a really

interesting story works in a really unique industry that

might be fun to learn more about.

I know, but might be fun for you is just to interview our third

partner. Just perspective on that.

My dad also is a consultant. He's called himself an

encouragement coach. He's got an amazing story if

you'd ever want to hear that. He was actually homeless at one

point. Yeah.

I don't know. Not at the top of my head, not

any more than that, but. OK.

All right. Well, we are always looking for

really interesting stories. And yeah, it sounds like both of

those are great ideas. We got to just get the rest of

the family and the rest of the team on here, right.

Right. The whole, the whole damn it.

So my last question, I ask every guest to either fuel or settle

the debate. If you have a job to do with a

cordless tool, which brand do you prefer?

My gosh, I don't know if I can fuel this debate because I love

it. Like in in roofing industry,

there are like, there's this like space of women in the

industry and they're like, oh, I get on roofs and I like I'm a

roofing business owner and I'm like, I don't do any labor.

I'm not going to pick up a nail gun.

Like why would I do that? A bundle of shingles weighs 90

lbs. I'm not picking up a bundle of

shingles. So I'm not going to participate

in the debates. My debate is going to be like,

don't ask girls that. OK, I'm just.

Kidding. Fair enough, fair enough, More

power to you. I'm not, but I can kill a

spreadsheet. There you go.

I love that you own it. So awesome.

Well, Bree, I really appreciate you taking the time and joining

us. This has been great.

It's been great getting to know you and your brother and the

business that you guys have built.

It seems like you're doing something really incredible, and

I really appreciate you giving us the time.

Thank you. Yeah.

Absolutely. Have a good day.

And thank you guys for joining us here on From the Ground Up

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