Grant Gilmore – From Racetrack to Roofing Prodigy – Building a Roofing Empire

I never really had experience in learning how to drive a stick

shift and that's how I learned. I was literally on a race car

and that was a very a costly way to learn how to drive race cars.

But I got the hang of of it. Hard to walk away from a quarter

$1,000,000 a year job to get 3550 thousand dollar base.

I was, I was like, I'm going to, I'm really going to do this.

I, I got to take a big step backwards in order to take a

step forwards. We scaled from 6,000,000 to 10

1/2 and then we went from 10 1/2 to 20.

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

encourage and inspire the next generation of free thinking

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

done that and are still getting it done.

Building a life they love with their heart, their hands and

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That's the best way to get the content out there.

Today I am joined by Grant Gilmore and I am really excited

to have Grant on the show. Grant has had kind of a meteoric

rise in the roofing business, helping grow AMW into a regional

powerhouse serving Northwestern United States.

Grant is an amateur race car driver, a husband and a father.

So, Grant, welcome to the show. Hi, Eric.

Thanks for having me on. Yeah, we're excited to dive in.

Yeah, absolutely. We like to start each show

getting a little bit of your background.

So where did you grow up? How did you grow up?

Help us get to know you a little bit.

Absolutely. Well, I'm, I was born in

California and I moved to Oregon when I was 2 years old.

I grew up in a little city called the Lake Oswego and, you

know, just really fell in love with Oregon and its nature and

really just kind of had a great childhood and a great life.

Went through private schools. I went to a boarding school for

a while. Then I really started to fall in

love with business when I when I ran into college.

OK. I think you're the first person

I've talked to that has gone to a boarding school.

Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?

Was it something local or or did you go away to school?

It was, yeah. So I guess it kind of starts out

with my father. He was, when we moved into

Oregon, he had a job at a company called Ford Graphics and

he was kind of a middle manager kind of put in place to refine

systems and processes and he was pretty good at that.

So he they gave him a promotion to vice president and regional

on on the West Coast. So for 20 years he was flying to

Seattle every Monday and coming home Friday morning.

So I, I had an interesting childhood where I only got to

see my dad on the weekends. But that left all this time in

the middle of the week that I was a little bit unruly and my

mom kind of had her hands full. So we, she found a boarding

school in, in Mcminnville and I was, I was on a 5 day schooling

program where I would be dropped off on Monday and I'd come home

on Friday, similar as my father. It was, it was actually a, a

good experience and a not so good experience.

You know, it was, it was hard to just kind of have two, two

different lives. I did that for 7th grade and

then I then I came back to a full full time for 8th grade and

then we found a local private school for high school.

But I, I always, I didn't really do well in large classes.

I had a bit of, I guess you can call it AADD or just not, not

great at sitting in one spot. So that was always kind of a

struggle. But it it it, it has its upsides

too. Yeah, I think that's common for

a lot of business leaders is not.

Many of them were the straight A students, especially elementary

school, middle school. I think most of us got a little

bit of the ADDADHD going on. So did you grow up with any

siblings or were you an only child?

No, I was an only child. That was a whole nother part of

my life that I had to reconcile. Because you find out once you've

hit real life that being an only child and having everything all

about you all the time isn't really the greatest way to

branch you out. OK.

So with your own children, do you plan on having just one or

are you hoping for siblings there?

Oh man. Well, I, I was on the fence, but

we, we actually had a home birth and it was a 30 hour labor and

Reed was 10 lbs. So it was a full on, like

traumatic experience almost straight out of Saving Private

Ryan. So we're actually happy with one

child. We never want to go through that

experience again. And we're very grateful that

everything worked out OK. Yeah, my, my, my wife is an only

child too, so that's always fun. Oh man, yeah, you guys have a

lot of figuring out to do when I'm sure there's some

personality clashes there. Very strong and independent

personalities, but we always find a way to make it work.

Good for you. That's great.

So I, I almost had to lead with this question.

I'm super excited to hear about it, but we got to do the

background first. Now tell me about the race car

driving. How did you get?

Into that perfect Segway. So my father, he was working

really, really hard. He ended up putting himself in a

position to help take his company public.

He was one of the regional vice presidents, so he got a nice

share of stock. The company went public like

2007, and I was a junior in high school.

He just turned 50 years old and he was able to retire.

So I get my dad back. And one of his favorite things

to do was like racing and cars. He grew up in California.

That's a huge car, car culture. And here actually in Oregon, we

had a really nice hub of incredibly talented Porsche

builders. And one in in particular was

called Embry Motorsports. And he's one of, he's a world

renowned vintage Porsche builder and mechanic.

And he had this beautiful racing program where you could buy one

of these older 1950s, nineteen sixties, 3356 Porsches.

And it would be a arriving drive.

So he would have anywhere from like 10 to 18 of these cars.

He'd take them all out to the track.

He'd have a full pick pit crew built and you would just show

up, enjoy the party, learn how to drive these vintage cars.

And it was a great time. So my dad did that for a year or

two and they they booked a trip to Daytona in Florida and a

couple weekends before that trip his car got hit by another car

and he couldn't take that car to Florida.

So he ended up buying a second one and he was like, hey, let me

take the second car. I don't want to miss this.

Did this trip. I have to be there.

So Anne Marie got him a second car and he he he took it had a

great time racing on day Daytona, really big banks.

You know, you're in an old nineteen 58356 Porsche on these

banks. You know, it's a wild

experience. So he comes back home.

He's like, hey, I have a second car.

Let's it's and grant is 18. Let's let's get him racing.

So I, I never really had experience in learning how to

drive a stick shift. And that's how I learned.

It was literally on a race car that was very difficult.

It didn't have a first gear, had a really, really hard Cam.

So you just had to really drive the just drive the piss out of

the car to get it to perform. And that was a very, you know, a

costly way to learn how to drive race cars.

But I got the hang of of it. You know, I'm, I'm in high

school and I'm leaving to go travel up and down the West

Coast to race vintage cars with all these incredible people that

all have different stories. If you're racing vintage cars,

then you get to meet other business owners that have

telecoms that are that are investing significant money into

these portions and you just get to hear their stories.

And there are a lot of down to earth people that just knew how

to navigate the world on their own terms and they're living

their best life. So when you get to see that, it

really opens your eyes at, you know, where can you position

yourself now in order to take advantage of time to get to

where you want to go. And that that got me my first

real taste of like good people, blue collar back backgrounds

with, you know, the ability to do what they want whenever they

want to. And that that's kind of what

fueled my fire. So my dad meets a fellow.

They're in California racing on Thunder Hill Raceway, and he

meets a guy running an AR Typically, we don't speak to

people who own Italian cars. There's a big rift there.

But this guy was a pretty cool guy.

And they're sitting down at a bar And his name was Mark

Carpenter. And he asked my dad, like, what

does your son do? And my dad's like, well, my, my

son, he's, he's graduated college.

He went into finance. The big crash happened.

And, you know, he's selling copiers.

And he was like, wow. Mark's mentor said if you could

hire a copier salesman, you should hire them.

They're incredibly good at generating new business.

So Mark's like, hey, I want to hire your son.

And my dad's like, what? What do you do?

He's like, I I run a commercial roofing company.

And that's how I was able to make a Segway from sales into

commercial roofing. It was through a relationship

that was built through racing. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, we'll, we'll dive into the

business side real deep here in a little bit, but I want to hear

a little bit more about your car.

What do you drive now? Are you still driving a vintage

Porsche? No, those are really expensive.

We sold that I, I moved into BMWs.

So I had a vintage 2002 BMW that I raced for a while and then I

got into these older BMWs called an E30.

It's a 1989 chassis and it was a Pro 3 grid where you had 18 to

25 of these Pro 3 cars where these purpose built sedan BMW's.

That was a really fun class, very aggressive driving, a lot

of bumping a lot of wrecked cars.

So I, I've erased that for two, for two years.

Then I moved into racing my dad's car with him, which was

A1978911 Porsche. I spent some time in that car.

That was a lot of fun. And now I have a newer model

endurance E36 BMW that I was racing for endurance races.

And those are completely different game.

Those are 6 to 8 hour races and you have a team and it's it's a

lot of wear and tear, but you get a lot of seat time.

OK. Can can you tell us a little bit

about your setup? What what do you do to that BMW

to get it race ready versus something that we might see on

the street? Oh man, you, you, you get a very

nice sponsorship. So you, you make a good

relationship with your bank account and then you close your

eyes and you start writing blank checks.

Where I'm at now, we, we did have a racing program where we

built 2 purpose built race cars with our logos on the side.

And, you know, it's a you go through the entire car like you

strip it down to the to the bare chassis.

You want to get it as light as possible.

You want to get as mechanically sound as possible.

And then you want to put on all the really cool race parts, the

fuel, the fuel lines, the endurance fuel tanks, the really

nice braking systems, all the control arms, all the bushings,

all the gaskets. I mean, you go through every

single piece of these cars and then you get a really nice

machine that's really fast, OK. So how does it compare like

weight wise and power wise? What kind of a difference are we

talking about between a race ready BMW and the stock?

Yeah. I mean there's different ways to

build your car and you can, you know, we always liked a little

bit lower horsepower car, but a light very agile car.

So the horse, the weight to the horsepower to weight ratio is in

your favor and you have to keep the momentum up.

So it's really about like, I would rather corner and break

and go fast in a straight line. And that that's where you build

your skills and that's where you can take advantage of of nicer

tires. You really want to use that

contact patch and keep your momentum through the corners.

So, you know, a lot of people think, you know, like these

Ferraris or these high end Corvettes, those street cars are

really fast, but you put them next to my, I forgot the 1995

BMW that I retrofitted and I will be seconds faster around a

racetrack just because it's a purpose built race car.

It's really hard to compare. But you can spend $185,000 on a

supercar, it still won't have the same performance

capabilities as an actual purpose built race car.

Yeah, that's interesting. I know I'm I'm a car guy, but

not a race guy. And I've noticed, you know, the

the big head to head right now is the Ford Mustang GTD and the

Porsche are kind of competing for the fastest times on the

Nuremberg track. And yeah, neither one of them is

the the most powerful car out there, but they beat a lot of

cars with way more horsepower. They were built to to race.

They were built for the track, like you're saying.

Is that accurate? Oh.

Yeah, no, they're, they're engineered, you know, and that's

that's the thing. Engineering's come so far that

you can really squeeze the performance out of the cars.

And, you know, I'm really excited to see what happens in

the future with, with some of the advancements that they're

making. It just gets it gets to the

point where these cars are too fast for the road that people

can still buy them. Yep, I I had a crotch rocket in

high school that was that way. It you know, the fastest speed

limits in the country are 80 miles an hour, and that bike

would do 100 miles an hour in second gear and had six gears.

You couldn't ride it legally. Yeah, yeah.

So. Yeah, I mean, imagine being 18

years old and learning how to race cars and then you have a a

nice BMW for the for for the street.

I mean, I had over 15 speeding tickets and multiple St. races.

I mean, it was I was going down the wrong path with that car.

I'm very lucky to still be here. I was.

Going to say I'm kind of impressed you still have a

driver's license. I'm not sure I would.

No. Great.

Well, you brought up you're headed in the car racing

direction, maybe not headed down the right path.

What? What turned you around or got

you back on track? Well, you know, the thing that

my, my father did well is, you know, once you get out of

college, I'm done supporting you.

So if you want to go live your life, you have to go figure out

how to finance it and how to fund it.

And I'll give you all, all of the tools, but that's about it.

So I, I graduated college with a business major and a minor in

philosophy. I didn't really know what I was

going to do. The economy was in shambles and

I went into the 1st place that could offer me a job and that

was a, a financial institution, you know, trying to build a book

of business to sell mutual funds.

And that lasted for about 3 months.

And they're like, no, this isn't going to work.

So then I went to the second best place that would offer me a

job and that was selling copiers.

There is a really interesting copier company here in Oregon

where they would they would put you on a very low base salary

and then they would give you a Commission plan.

That was my first time ever seen that and it was a great

experience and a terrible experience because it was like

the Wolf of Wall Street of sales.

There were so you, you would, you would make 40% of the net

profit and you had to make 50 to 60 cold calls every day.

You were working from 6:30 to 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM mandatory at

the end of every day. They would get a 30 rack of beer

and put it in in the office and you had to drink beer.

That was part of the culture and your job was to basically cold

call and find appointments and build value and sell these

copier systems or printers. And the successful reps that

were doing that, they were making $600,000 to $1,000,000 a

year. And when you're 22 years old and

you're like, I, I get a drink in the office, I get to try to make

money and I get to see all the success.

I mean, it was just a wild ride. But inside of that, they

provided really good sales training and they taught you

like the key fundamentals of, you know, going out in

appointment setting and finding buyers and going through a sales

process. And you have to go through

hundreds of sales processes and hit so many objections.

And you have, you have to lose so many deals in order to figure

out your flow. And once you kind of understand

those mechanisms, then you're like, Hey, I can put time in and

I can get money out. And then the better I I get, the

less time I can put in and the more money I can get out.

It's just you have to have like the mental fortitude to just

show up and just learn every single day.

So I did that for about a year and had a fallen out with the

ownership of the company, which is a common theme for me.

And I went to their competitor. And that's, that's where I went

from a very kind of morally loose, unethical, sales driven,

results oriented company to a corporate company.

And I've never really seen corporate yet.

So I, I, I segwayed over there and I worked for, for Rico and I

saw, you know, the proper kind of management tiers.

I had a sales manager, I had sales force.

I had like all the the time management systems in place and

how terrible it was ran. But you can still find ways to

to succeed. And ironically, that's where I

found my wife was at copier company.

But I I stayed there for about a year and a half and I found ways

to navigate their internal systems to create better

commissions for myself. So I was able to figure out how

to work the comp plan, and I was making twice as much as my peers

just by reconfiguring their estimated models and selling a

bunch of copiers. But it's a complete burnout.

So by the time my father got in touch with Mark at Columbia

Roofing, I was ready to leave the industry.

So I went from there and that's when I segwayed right into

commercial roofing and that was when I was 24 years old.

OK, so you're done with copiers, you've seen a couple different

corporate structures or cultures and now moving into roofing with

Columbia Roofing. What was your role there?

What were you doing for them? So they, I was primarily just a,

a salesman. So they, they just wanted to

bring me in there and, and, and shake things up a bit because

typically the structure is you bring an estimator that came out

from the field or had some previous experience with

roofing, then couldn't talk about it and sell it.

You know, it's not very often if you just hired some random

person off of the street and teach them what roofing is.

If they have sales skills, I can teach them what roofing is.

And then I was kind of like that experiment and I was taking some

of the bad habits from copier sales into this job, which took

me about a year to straighten down.

Because you know, when you're in a prospecting heavy loose kind

of sales job, you know, you like to drink a little bit, you do

some minor alcohol abuse, little bit drug abuse, and you're just

rolling with, with life, just trying to stay one step ahead of

it. I mean, I think I've, I've at

this point, I was, you know, a good Commission check was 2 to

$3000. My best month, I made like 7500

bucks. I had a couple $1000 in my bank

account and I was living at AI had a townhouse that my father

gave me for $1.00. That was part of the tools.

He was like, I'm going to give you a place to, to live, but

you've got to figure it out. And I had all my friends live

with me. So I had two other salesman 1

was a service writer. His name was Chris.

He was living with with me. I had another copier salesman

living with me. And then I had another buddy.

So we had like four or five salesman living in this one

house. And that was my life.

You know, we just partied and made money and you know, that's

your early, early 20s and that was the halfway home.

So I, I went from this like kind of college mindset to, Hey, this

is a career. Like the first year at, at

Columbia Roofing, I really realized like I can make a

career here. I have to grow up.

And that was like the real education.

So I get transferred into Columbia Roofing.

In the first two weeks, the sales staff leaves.

So they were all like, the company had culture issues.

They had a bunch of things going on behind the scenes.

And I show up and that's right when I think two or three of

their core salesman leaves the company.

So it's just me and one other guy there and I'm like, this was

a nice, well running family owned commercial roofing company

and they just lost all their guys.

And it's like, Oh my God, what did I get myself into?

So it allowed me to like do what I do best.

Like I knew how to, I knew how to reach out to customers.

I knew how to prospect and manage territories.

I knew how to organize the chaos and figure out where the value

is. I mean, and that's, that's the

greatest thing about commercial roofing.

Like you have to buy a roofing system.

You can't just not buy a roof. Like when you have to buy a

roof, you have to buy a roof. That was the easiest thing ever.

Like you cannot convince anyone to buy a copier.

No one wants to buy a copier, right?

Like you have to like literally meet with them three or four or

five times and take their hand and like get them to sign the

contract. But with roofing, they're like,

Oh yeah, no, I have to buy this. So what I started to find out is

not even really knowing commercial roofing that well,

just knowing the sales process. I was able to start churning

contracts and really getting numbers on the board quick.

And that's something that they were all really impressed by.

They were like, who is this kid? My, my, my first year I sold

close to the company record of sales, if not were broken.

I sold over like 3 and a half, $1,000,000, which back back then

that was a lot of money for your first year of sales.

I didn't really know what I was doing.

The other thing I did really well is I started to refine

their whole sales process. They typically you would go on a

roof, you'd write a scope of work, you would put a number on

it and then you would submit that through to the customer.

And that was so backwards for me because I, that's not how I buy.

If someone just gave me a scope of work with a big number

attached to it, I'm not, I mean, that doesn't inspire me to move

forward. So I I started building these

proposals where I would build 40 to 60 page packet on why they

need to buy this system and here's all your upsells.

And that kind of helped build the foundation for my entire

future was building these tools. Yeah.

So at that point you've, you work for the maybe more upstart

culture copier sales, just sales at all costs, young drinking,

partying. You moved into a big corporate

job and got to see corporate and now you're working for more of a

a family owned family business culture company.

What were you able to pull strengths and weaknesses from

all three of those and and how does that experience play into

how you would run things today? Yeah, I mean it, it was a bit of

a dumpster fire in a way. I mean, as things started to

scale up and as we started to refine the sales systems, that

created growth and that company wasn't really ready to grow.

But I was like, I need to make money, I need to get a comp

plan. They never had a Commission

plan. So we we got comp plans.

We started a, we, we branched into Seattle, we bought a

company in Long Beach. I grew into the regional sales

manager and through five years there, every single year we had

a new president. So imagine having a new

leadership structure every single year for five years

straight. That takes a pull on culture,

right? And it also creates a lot of

volatility, creates a lot of difficulties and, and

operations. And you know, I think I joined

there when they were around 6-7 million.

I took them to like 1516 million.

We built out a bunch of new salesman and systems and

processes, but eventually you just get kind of burnt out

because you don't have the right foundation to scale the company.

And what I learned over those five years is it would be easier

to design a company from the ground up than to fix this one

because there were key items that needed to be changed.

Yeah. OK.

So that that brings us probably closer to current.

Your next move was from Columbia to AMW, where you are now.

Can you tell us about the the impetus for that change and what

that jump looked like? Yeah, so it did it, it, it just,

it got to a point where I needed to find what the next steps

were. And we had a new operations

team, one of the main, the operations manager and I, we saw

the same things. And he was, he was Mormon and he

met Ken Dixon at church. And Ken owned Architectural

Metal Works, which was a small specialty sheet metal shop.

Ken had a background in roofing, so he knew about it and he knew

the family and he knew the company I was working for.

So I was able to go and get coffee with them.

And we just got coffee and we hit it off and everything was

just kind of flowing. And it was a complete different

personality than I was used to working with.

It was way more, hey, you know, let's try this out and I'm going

to say yes. And we're going to have an open

conversation verse no, you have to do things this way, blah,

blah, blah. So I was like, OK, there's

something here. Let's start talking about what

making a change would look like. So, you know, I'm still at

Columbia Roof. You know, I've built an

incredible sales team. I have great relationships with

all my salesman that I've trained personally, I've hired

personally. Chris, my, my roommate is

working at Columbia. You know, my other roommate was

working at Columbia. So it's like I'm living with my

company and my team. And I had a tone like, hey guys,

I'm moving on. I sold this big job.

It was a beautiful contract at like 42% margin.

I had the contract signed and I gave it to the owner to sign off

on. And he was a little upset.

I don't know why he didn't like the contract.

He wouldn't sign it and I was like, OK, if he, if we're

hurting for first for sales, I'm bringing you this beautiful

$300,000 nicely well sold job and you're not going to sign it

to just make me angry, then I'm just going to leave.

So that's what I did. So I packed up and I left and

that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

So I took about a month off. I bought a boat, I went fishing,

kept him contact with all my with all my buddies and

everything was just kind of rebalancing in my life.

I had, I married Megan, I had a wife.

I moved into this bigger house in Lake Oswego that I couldn't

afford because I left my company had to sell that house.

I took a $25,000 loss, which was a really hard thing for me to do

at that time. I sold the house, I moved right

back into the townhouse and I had to like reset my life so I

can afford to ramp up the new company.

And that, that was hard. I mean, it's hard to walk away

from a quarter $1,000,000 a year job to get back at, you know, I

took a 4550 thousand dollar base.

I was, I was like, I'm going to, I'm really going to do this.

I, I got to take a big step backwards in order to take a

step forwards. So I got everything in in line

and I had all the energy there. And I started with AMW.

And what I didn't know is everyone at AMW didn't really

know that I was starting a roofing division.

So Ken knew, but the rest of the company really didn't understand

who I was or what I was doing. And that later to find out that

Ken might not have been the greatest communicator, but he

knew what he was doing all along, just not everyone was on

his same page. So I show up to work and I'm in

the smallest office you can imagine.

It was a utility closet. It had no windows.

It was like 4 feet by 6 or 7 feet.

I mean, we were talking 35 square feet was my office.

And that's where I set up shop. And that began the saga.

OK, so where do you go from there?

You're AM WS, primarily a custom sheet metal shop doing

architectural metal and you're launching a roofing division

basically by yourself. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And so you've got 35 square feet, a computer, and you're

supposed to be running a roofing division.

How do you get it off the ground?

That's the beauty of it. So the first day I was able to

secure an appointment on this beautiful roof and Ken and I are

going up there and we, we, we started talking about our

business plans and we're walking the roof and we're looking at it

and we do a full takeoff. They wanted a sheet metal siding

package and the the roof hatch as I'm coming down the ladder it

it was a faulty roof hatch. The wind hits it at the perfect

time, hits me on the head and I fall off the ladder straight

onto concrete about 1213 foot drop.

It was a big drop, but I was able to kind of turn as I was

falling and catch myself and I basically pancake out on this

concrete floor. I broke both of my arms.

I lost my front tooth and I suffered a severe concussion and

I had to go to the emergency room.

That that's a tough first day, right?

That's a worker's comp claim. Everybody in the company is

like, well, who is this guy and what is Ken doing?

And it puts you on a recovery arc that's going to take, you

know, six months to a year. So that's so I had to start.

I had to like the first two months.

I was literally in my townhouse with two fractured arms banging

out my business plan and my marketing materials.

And at this time there was upheaval at Columbia Roofing and

my like one of my best friends, Chris Woods, he was fired

because operations kept dropping the balls on his projects and

his customers were getting upset and he was getting upset and

there is a new president involved and they're putting

heads. So they fired him.

So we just hired up. We, we, we picked them up.

So now I have my buddy here who's also going to help out in

sales. Columbia also fired a foreman.

So we picked up the foreman and that was our, our main service

guy. And then they were also kind of

not paying out on commissions and they let go of my operations

manager who felt cheated. So then in like two to three

months after my fall, all these people started to get let go

their opportunities and we were able to kind of keep the wheels

on the bus and get enough Billings and we just hired them.

Like we, we took the risk and all of a sudden we snapped our

fingers and we have like 3 or 4 employees within the first four

to five months. So that kind of created the

nucleus. And, you know, meanwhile, I'm

just kind of building the systems and the processes and

the foundation to start growing. And that that is like the first

year when you start a company. It's not really about growth.

It's just about getting the foundation built and engineered

in the right way where you can't grow.

And that's when we hit COVID. OK, well, we'll get into that.

I'm sure there's quite a story with COVID, but I want to roll

back. So Ken's running his business,

doing metal, doing well at it. It appears from from what I

know, he meets you, you guys are having coffee, chatting, and

within a few months now he's not only hired you, he's launched a

whole nother division in his company that he hasn't been

doing it all and then hired 3 or 4 guys kind of on your

recommendation. It sounds like he took a pretty

big swing on you and and bet a lot on you.

What is it that you told him during those coffee dates that

convinced him to go all in on you and your business plan?

Well, I have 5 years of experience in in this

marketplace and I had a really good like book of business and

there's a great opportunity to leverage that.

So it's one thing to start a company from like absolutely

zero, it's another thing to have some relationships that are

pre-existing and I was able to leverage some of those.

Of course I had a non compete and of course Columbia tried to

sue me. But there there's ways where you

can get referrals and you can build business off of business.

So, you know, the first year we did $2.8 million in revenue, we

had 19 contracts sold. And that was, that was back in

2020, right, right. Like when COVID hit.

But it was, it was, we were able to produce enough immediate

success that helped kind of build the small building blocks

that kind of led up to year 2, year three-year 4.

Most of the time when you start a business like this, you're

really not going to get an ROI till till year 3.

But in year 1, we were, we were able to break, break, break

even, you know, we had a really low overhead model and that's,

that's really important. OK.

All right. So you're getting off the ground

2020 in the middle of COVID. Where do we go from there?

Everybody took their foot off of the gas when COVID hit.

It give everyone an excuse to, to, to relax.

And that's when we just started making cold calls.

I mean, every single day, every single night, emails, LinkedIn

prospecting, refine our, our, our systems so we can just get

on roofs. And people might not buy in

COVID, but they're going to buy the year after or the year after

that. So the more momentum you can

create by just setting, just just setting appointments and

talking with brokers and property managers and building

owners, the more you will just create momentum for the

following years. So we went from 2.8 million in

2020, we're going through COVID in 2021, we did 6.3 million.

So that's like that's a pretty big jump in a short amount of

time. Yeah, there's not a lot of

roofing companies that hit 2.8 their first year and.

Even fewer that almost tripled that the second year so.

That was, that was like a stress test, right?

Because now, you know, labor, you just can't hire 20 guys to

go out and do all this work. So, you know, we obviously had a

really good relationship with a subcontractor company that was

able to provide us certified foreman and cruise.

They didn't have the quality that we we wanted that they were

bodies to get on roofs. And then we would have to

quality come, we'd have to train them our way to produce perfect

roofing systems. And you know, getting that

perfect 10 roof is obviously the the foundation of any, any

roofing company. It's quality.

If you don't have quality, you don't have a roofing company.

I don't have the background to put it on roofs.

I've never really put on a roof system before.

I've done leak calls and I've done tear off days and I've,

I've, I've done it, but not like eat, sleep, live install.

And that's, that's where your operations team come in.

They have to have that knowledge in order to get that quality

there. You never cut, cut corners and

you build a foundation of providing for the customer.

And that's what we learned how to do in the 1st year after

COVID or after 2020 was how do you run four to six jobs every

single month, provide the quality and churn it out

profitably and not just stress test everything.

I mean, you, you break everything, you make every

single mistake, you try to learn from it.

You might have to make the mistake two to three times

before it really sticks. We didn't even know how to

estimate. I had to teach myself how to

estimate, you know, I mean, you, I can't, I have so many stories

of things that we did wrong, but you have to go through that

learning phase in order to get to a a place where it is refined

and you can turn around project. It's perfect the first time to

actually create a sustainable like pipeline.

So the first two years were really just figuring it out and

at least we had enough sales where we could bankroll our

mistakes. That's kind of how it turned

into. Gotcha.

Is there one mistake that really sticks out in your mind that you

lost a lot of sleep over and helped you learn some of those

lessons in a significant way? Oh yeah.

I mean, we got, we have a couple, probably the one that

kept me up at night was there was a year, I think it was

either I'm looking, yeah, no, it was in 2021.

We had two people fall off, fall off or fall through roofing

systems and that, that was a wake up.

I mean, that was, you know, what are we doing?

Are we, are we moving too, too fast?

Are safety systems not dialed in like what happened?

So the first one, the contractor had his harness on, had to go

back to the eave just to work on some flashings.

Never clipped in. He was clipped in, but he

unclipped, walked to the ladder, walked back to take care of

something and literally just fell over the eave.

It was a lower roof and there was a sidewalk, but there was 1

grass patch between two concrete patches and he fell onto the

grass patch. So that was, you know, that was

a wake up call. He was OK.

It wasn't a it was a big deal, but he didn't have long term

lasting injuries. But it really kind of taught us

like we safety has to be the number one consideration and

stuff happens that is outside of your control.

So you have to plan on that. Prior to that accident, we had

someone fall through a roofing system, go through a warehouse,

drop 20 feet right onto a Porsche.

Yeah. So we're working on this guy's

building, and he typically parks his Porsche outside.

They didn't want to park it outside because we're working on

the roof, so he moved it inside. Then they were cutting through

ply plywood and the dude cut the plywood out from around himself,

fell through, landed on the rear window of the Porsche, shattered

the glass that took all the impact.

He was, I mean, he went to the hospital, but he he was walking

by the afternoon and he was eating tacos by the end of the

day. But no one just has a 20 foot

fall. And you know, we, we were so

lucky. Like if that Porsche was not

there, we would have been done and he probably wouldn't be

here. But those are those are things

that make you look at this career path and really

understand that you know, it is, it's a simple, it's a simple

job, but it's incredibly risky and you have to focus on the

fundamentals before you start scaling up and biting off more

than than you can chew. I had to buy that car, fix it

and sell it. And that that was a eighty

$90,000 mistake. Yeah, wow.

Oh man. Yeah.

But that, that that'll happened in the first 2-2 years.

We got our feet under us and and year three, we scaled from

6,000,000 to 10 1/2 and then we went from 10 1/2 to 20.

Wow, wow. So that brings us to Year 4.

Are you continuing to grow? Do you think that's a

sustainable arc? This year we're down, oh, sorry,

we went from 20 to 22. And then this year we're, we're

pacing about 1617. So we kept on trying to continue

the growth, but we're in a really small marketplace.

I mean, Portland is about as small as they come.

And you know, we I think last year we won the award for being

number, we were the number 2 volume installer for Versico

nationwide, which is a cool little feather in, in the cap.

But we've, we've kind of hit our first layer of growth restraints

based on there's only so much market share you can you can

grab in this smaller market without having to really works.

You have to work a lot harder to get a smaller share.

So that's kind of, you know, our ideal position is to keep

refining our internal strategy, but to start branching out a

bit, looking at different markets and coming up with like

new strategies to pull, you know, 4 to 6,000,000 out of two

or three different markets and you can double your company from

20 to 30. But at some point, you know,

growth isn't the main objective. You know, when we started the

company, everyone involved, you know, we kind of had a chip on

our shoulder and we had to we had to out outgrow and we had to

prove ourselves. And you know, the marketplace

didn't like us at all. Like this is an old, this is a

old boys club where new, like if there's there's been no new

commercial roofing companies at our scale in the Portland market

for at least for for a long time, right.

It's it's been like the magnificent 7 here in Portland,

there's and that's it. So to break in to that market

and take away a lot of market share, you really, you really

face a lot of head headwinds with developing your book of

business. So you so you have to find your

competitive advantage and you have to find your niche.

And our niche was our salesman and our sales process and our

proposal process and how we educated and consulted our

customers and gave them different options and really LED

them down this path of we're going to give you a bunch of

facts about your buying systems. And you know, if you want to go

with us, we're going to give you the best value, We're going to

give you the best quality. We're going to we're going to do

this faster on time and under budget.

And we have to perform on these five net metrics in order, you

know, to keep you as a customer. And we've done that and that's

how we were able to grow really well.

But it, it's been tough. It's been tough.

But sorry, at some point you, you stop looking at the numbers

and you want to focus more on like your culture and on the

long term view of the company and, you know, finding other

things that are more important to you than just the results and

just the money. And that's been kind of the

maturity arc that I've gone through as a business leader and

to be less data-driven, less results focused and more kind of

culture focused. That's the transition that we're

slowly making. Awesome.

Yeah, I think a lot of businesses go through that.

Can you tell us what does that look like inside AMW?

What kind of things are you guys doing to focus on the culture

and and what kind of a culture are you shooting for?

What what I'd like to have is a appreciation culture.

Everybody in any company, particularly smaller companies

that have to perform at a certain level, you're really

trying to get the best out of your employees every day.

And they have a lot of responsibilities.

Like I have two people on my operations team, right?

I'm a service manager and an operations manager and they

manage all the field guys. That's a lot of work for two

people. I'm putting 16 to $25 million on

their back. You know, we have sales teams

that have to get in and do The Dirty work and work really hard

to win every single one of their projects.

And everyone has these high expectations in order for us to

keep the lights on. So it's it's how do you make

them feel appreciated and how do you try to keep the stress off

of them as much as you can so everyone can live the life that

they want to live in their own way.

And that's, that's something I'm, I'm working on engineering

my one of my flaws as a leader is very analytical and systems

driven and empathy is something that is needs to be learned.

But we are definitely getting there.

Headed that direction. I know you shared when you were

in high school and you got to rub shoulders with a lot of the

other race car drivers. Many of them were successful in

the blue collar spaces. They were business leaders.

And you mentioned that that was kind of an inspiration for you,

that you got to see these guys that worked really hard and then

got to enjoy the benefits and we're living a life they enjoyed

maybe earlier in life than the average retirement.

It sounds like that's kind of the goal of where you're

building now, both for yourself and your employees.

Is that a good way to look at it?

Yeah, that's a that's that's a great way.

You know, this company is just not all, all about me and my and

and goal. You really have to build it so

it benefits everyone in some ways.

That's why I, I have a pretty aggressive compensation plan put

in, put in place so my team can provide for themselves very good

living. And that's, I, I take a lot of

pride in that. If if you engineer your company

well enough where you have a low enough overhead, you can pay

your people and that, and that's, that's the first step,

like make sure they're they're paid well and then you give them

the time off that they need and then you have fun doing it.

If you can do all three of those things, you're not going to have

a lot of turnover and you're going to invest in your

employees and they're going to stick around and and they're

going to take care of you if you take care of them.

Great. I like that that comp plan How

how is that structured for different people?

Do you guys do a lot of Commission and performance based

bonuses? Is it pretty heavy on a base?

What does it look like to take care of your people on that

level in a way that inspires performance?

So in Cockiers they would give you a base that you could barely

live on and then a high comp plan.

So I I provide a base that you can make a, a decent living on.

So like your average salesman, you're going to start at making

80, 80 to $90,000 base and then I'm going to give you a comp

plan that says 10% of the gross profit.

So you can sell $1,000,000 deal at let's say 30% margin. 10% of

that you're doing pretty well. You know, you should be able to

gross 30 to $40,000 checks per bigger deal and you know we have

some salesman I want you to sell 3 to 4 million at year two or

three. But the people that really build

their book of business and they really get get things ramped up.

They're selling 8 to 10 million and they're making 3 to 500,000

a year. Wow, wow.

On the sales side, that sounds pretty good.

What what does that look like for more the operation side?

How do you incentivize those positions?

So it's, it's based on keeping the estimate intact.

So your gross profit has to stay above a certain level.

And that's that's a function of our fixed overhead.

But I have it paying out over a 27% gross profit and then they

get 1% of what they're able to create.

So if we sell twenty, $20 million a year and you keep it

over that level, that's a $200,000 Commission plan plus

your base salary. So my, my pops guy should be

making between 2:50 and 310,000 a year.

And my service manager, she represents about $1,000,000 of

decent margin work. And that's more of a, it's a,

it's a, it won't pay as well, but she should be able to clear

110 to 125,000. OK.

Yeah, that sounds like a great comp plan.

And of course, in Portland that doesn't go as far as it does out

here in Wyoming, where I live. But yeah, sounds like you really

care about taking care of your people, and that's paid off for

you. Yeah, I mean, there's people on

my staff that make more money than I do, and that's OK.

That's how it should be. I mean, they show up and they

they do the hard work every single day.

And I just help orchestrate. And if you can orchestrate it,

then you can find this nice nice place.

Yeah, great. Well, I know you said when you

first showed up at AMW, the rest of the company kind of looked at

you like, who are you and what are you doing here?

How do you and your roofing division fit into the rest of

the company now? Has that shifted?

Are they glad to have you? Oh, you probably know something

about roofers. They, they can be very prideful.

They're independent and they're a bit standoffish.

So we we relied on on the sheet metal division for all of our

coping caps and counter flashings.

And as we grew, it was difficult to get orders processed and

there was some friction on a kind of a business performance

level, but as a kind of personality level.

Everyone got on. We're all the same type of

people. But what we did is we put a lot

of pressure on performance because when you have a six day

roofing job, I need my flashings ordered in on day one or two and

I need to get them on the roof by day three or four.

And I can't take my equipment out of there and bring it back

just to put on sheet metal flashings like I need.

I need it now. So it, the first couple of years

were, were pretty tough just trying to build out the systems

and the processes to hold people accountable on like, hey, you

know, I had to hold my staff accountable for placing the

right orders. I had to hold them accountable

for processing the right orders. And then we had to manage our

inventory and ordering systems. When I started at AMW, they were

a $5,000,000 company. We grew them to 30 million

trailing 12 in four to five years.

I mean, that's, that's an incredible growth.

You're talking to totally different companies and it's all

about design and how you kind of build the scalable processes.

And a lot of companies can't get through the 1st iteration of

design refinement. But once you, once you start

looking at a company as a, as a system of organized processes

and designs, then you're able to kind of boil everything down to

a tool or a function. So what it what it took was

rebuilding the machine so it functions at a very simple yet

efficient pace. And that's that takes a lot of

kind of personality checks and a lot of changes and organizations

have a hard time changing. So I was really a change agent

in creating a bunch of these systems.

So it was really tough. People didn't like us.

We were butting heads, we were sharing space.

It was hard for roofing to create more revenue than sheet

metal That gave us a inflated self importance or A and we

basically just had to just humble everyone had to just take

a step back in order to take a step forward.

And that's, that's where we're we're, we're finally headed.

OK, I'm I'm picturing that episode of The Office where they

got bought out and the sales team's Commission structure

changed and the the atmosphere there changed a lot.

Is that a inaccurate view? You know, it's been a big yeah.

I mean, when you get a taste of success and you start winning

and you have that momentum, it, you know, when you go from a $10

million company to $20 million company just in one year, I

mean, you get a lot of momentum and feelings, but it also

creates ego. And like ego is the barrier to

change and it can be a barrier to progress.

And that's, that has to get, you have to go through the success

to get to the ego and then to get to the rebuild.

And, you know, it's a, it's a big learning curve and we're

just grateful that we were able to to get to the other side of

it. OK.

Well, congratulations that that sounds like you guys are doing

really well. So I know you've talked about a

few ups and downs and setbacks. What has been the most difficult

thing so far? Well, I mean, personally,

everything when when your company is your life, it's

easier to manage your company. But then when you realize, like

you have a family and you have a life and you know, you have a

newborn, your whole life changes and things that you used to

value, they're not as valuable, you know, so really it's finding

that work life balance and, and personally understanding where

your priorities are and then managing both to the best of

your ability. You know, in, in, in America,

our culture rewards this, this work ethic in these hundred hour

weeks and, you know, really taking on these, these heavy

lifts inside of your organization and, and being the,

the, the leader that has the charisma that can manage sales

operations, estimating all of it.

But it comes at a price and it comes out of sacrifice.

And, you know, for me, I found that that sacrifice wasn't

really worth it. I'd rather spend more time with

my family and, and do less racing and more, you know,

building for, for our future. And that's, that's been my

biggest challenge is managing my health and my family and also

keeping a successful company afloat through the turbulent

times. It's all about balance.

Yeah, I know this is probably a silly question.

You guys have grown so fast and gotten to be so big, but was

there something that delayed your growth to a degree that if

you had to do it over, you would do differently?

I think, I don't think our growth was delayed.

I think we just grew too fast and had to learn all the lessons

in a very short amount of time. You know, because you have to

add on crews, you have to add on staff, you have to make a lot of

decisions that you've never had to make before, all within one

summer cycle. I mean, our, our, our roofing

season is, is 8 months long. So every year we have to fit in

7080% of our revenue and, and eight months out of the year.

So when you see that style of growth, you, you are probably

buying jobs that you shouldn't be buying or you're taking jobs

on at, at too low of a margin. So, you know, I think we've

probably left. We probably did things the hard

way. We probably could have sold jobs

for a little bit more money and done less of them.

And that would have been a lot easier for everyone.

But we were so bought into winning at all costs that it, it

did it, it created a lot of stresses.

And when you stress your system out, you stress your people out

and you internalize that. So there is a there's a lot of

learning lessons packed into a small amount of time.

There's some good advice there. Thank you.

Is there something that you've changed your view on or changed

your opinion about through the process of building your

company? I think, I mean, a company is is

a sum of its people. So, you know, you really want to

protect your people and you want to find the right people for

your company. I think as an owner, it's a lot

easier to have a business partner that can help manage

your blind spots. There are some things that I'm

not good at. There's some things I'm not, I

don't want to be good at. And you really need to be able

to just take a step back and acknowledge that, you know,

there's some things that you don't want to do and, and hire

people that are very competent for those items and just

organize it or organize your people, organize your strengths

and then boil everything down to the most simplistic nature of

each function. And your goal as a business

owner should be, I want to work the least amount of effort to

get the best return on that time.

And when you can start really refining your systems, it's

going to put you in a much better place.

That's great. I appreciate that.

Do you use, you talked a lot about finding the right people,

different personality, different skill sets.

Do you have any resources or personality test, things like

that, that you use to help determine that balance and

getting different types of people and the right people in

the right places? Or is that something that you

just kind of feel out and figure out as you go?

That's, that's the $1,000,000 question, right?

Because when, when you interview someone, you're not really

interviewing them, right? You're just trying, you're,

you're trying to see the best in that person to see if they can

match the skill set you perceive that they need to have to do

well in your organization. So, you know, I just, I like to

be direct. I like to have a very good

description of work. And then when you, you really

want to define the position or the role that they're going to

fill and then understand each, each item that they're going to

be working on has a certain skill trait that you need to see

if they will be competent in or at.

So once you understand exactly what you need to hire them for,

then you really need to find that personality type that's

going to fit that space. And then you need to have

relentless training, just relentless training and you'll

know in the first four to five weeks if they're going to work

out or not. And if they're not really the

right fit, you got to let them go and find another one.

And the better you get at, at hiring and and managing people,

the, the, the better, the more core strength you're going to

have because eventually that person you're going to want to

have grow and take on more responsibilities, find the next

step in your organization. So it's, it's, it's, it's about

just creating the right system, finding the redundancy and then

really trying to find the personality that fits for it.

But I, I still haven't cracked the code in in, in that system

yet. It's it's, it's people you know.

Yeah. It sounds like you were really

good at having well refined systems and processes and

defining that well. Would you say that's one of the

biggest strengths that you have and in your company?

Yeah, I mean, every, every company that wants to scale to

that size, you have to have somebody that's orchestrating

the inefficiencies. I mean, every construction

project is going to have hiccups.

There's always going to be problems, but you just want to

focus on the top four or five big problems to solve, write

them down and then refine it. And then in three or four

months, check off the next 4 to 5 problems and really like

navigate your change. And by the end of the year you

can look backwards and you should see all of those little

things will add up to a big result.

So it's, it's really just about just isolating the granular

pieces and then, you know, through refinement, through

conversations, through meetings, through getting input, through

getting buy in, you will create that change.

But it's a it's, it's a hands on thing that takes a lot of time

at the beginning. But if you do it well enough,

over time, you're going to create this culture of allowing

change to happen, allowing people to make decisions.

And I have people underneath me that are now refining and

building their own processes that I'm not aware of.

I think that's great. They're finding efficiencies in

their own job and they're able to make that change.

So it's like if you, if you start your company with this

kind of change culture, it will allow that to take place.

And then it's, it's being done without even knowing about it.

Like that's, that's, that's, that's the sign of success.

And that's that's going to really allow you to grow in the

future. That's great.

Yeah, I know. That's a huge step as a leader

is when you find out about a problem after it's been solved.

And it feels pretty good to have your people take care of

something without even needing to involve you and and see that

they did it well and did it right.

Oh yeah, and everyone makes mistakes and you can't harp on

them. You say?

Great. OK, try it.

Try it again. Great.

Yeah. Have you made any beneficial

mistakes? Something that was a mistake at

the time, but in retrospect it allowed you to learn a lesson or

open a door. That now has been a benefit.

Yeah, I, I call those happy accidents from Bob, Bob Ross.

You know, we have happy accidents all the time, you

know, and, and building strategic vendor relationships

or accidentally estimating a job wrong that turns out to be

right. I mean, there's, there's,

there's always an accident is how you perceive it.

So anything that happens that isn't intentional, if you can

learn from it or create a positive behind it, then it's a

net positive. Yeah, that's a good way to look

at things. If you could go back and do all

this again, would you choose to do so?

Yeah, yeah, I I would. It's been a life altering

decision. It's amazing how close I came to

not making that decision. And for any salesman or

entrepreneurs out out there that are afraid to take the job, you

know, I'd say you, you have to have faith in yourself.

And if if you know your stuff and you understand how to be

successful because you've had success previously, then go out

and do it. My hard part was being a little

risk adverse financially. And that's why I have a partner.

He's the majority part partner and he's benefited greatly from

our relationship. I had to do it over again.

I wish I had put myself in a position to really mutually

benefit from this growth. And you know, I didn't think I

could be this successful or create a team that would be this

successful and three years later, boom, there it is.

It just it was manifested. So you know, if if, if you can

do it on your own and you have the means to you, you should.

And then when you bring in a business partner, always get a

very nice ironclad agreement that's lowered on I wouldn't

have a handshake agree agreement.

You have to look out for your future self.

And that's very difficult to do when you're making so many

decisions every single day. It's like, what is future grant

going to want? You know, what is the agreements

that future AM WS needs to have in place?

And that's that's the hard part. It's like, how can you predict 6

to 12 months down the road in order to make sure your your ass

is covered? So there's there, there's a lot

of of, of mental math to do it right.

But if you can navigate that well, you're going to be set.

OK. Have you guys been able to

figure that out as you've moved forward?

Have you made some changes to adjust things so you're happy

with everything? Yeah, yeah.

You know, we've come to a a really good spot, but it took,

you know, whenever you have a business partner, it's like a

marriage. You have your honeymoon phased

and you have your figure in it out phase and then you have, you

know, bumps in in the road. But that's kind of where that,

that, that humbleness comes in and trying to let go of your ego

and, and just work as a team and, you know, work not for

what's going to be best for me in one year or two years, but

what's best, what's best for us, you know, and that's, that's

kind of where we've all arrived at.

But it's, it's been a process. It's not easy.

That's great. Well, if if I can commend you on

that. Just the short amount of time

that we've known each other, just the, the language you use,

the way you talk about your business, I've seen incredible

growth in that and you and maturity and man, I, I aspire to

run my business the way that you do someday.

You're doing a great job and I I can see it even just in the

limited interactions we've had so.

Thanks, Eric. I do appreciate it.

And you know, it's we're in this exciting time like the next

generation is moving into business.

Baby boomers own so much market share of these companies and

they have an iron grasp on them and they don't want to let them

go. But eventually they're going to

have to transition. They're going to have to

transition to the next leadership shell.

And that's that's going to be our generation.

And we're going to have to show up and, and do things a little

bit differently. And we're going to have to

engage the younger generation differently.

And that's a very results oriented generation 2.

So everything's going to have to change.

And if, if you can be in front of that change and you can be in

front of that management style, then you're going to be able to

just to keep the blue in blue collar while providing the next

way of doing things because it it is going to go through a

generational life cycle. And that's kind of what we're in

the middle of seeing. Also, this industry is getting

gobbled up by private equity. And that's, that's, that's a big

thing. You know, that's a very, you

know, there's two sides of that coin and it just depends on if

you can find yourself in the right place at the right time,

the right team. It could be really been

beneficial, but it can also be very impactful too.

So for the millennial or the Gen.

Z out there that doesn't have a direction, doesn't know what

they're doing, but they're interested in a trajectory like

you have had, what advice would you have them to prepare

themselves to launch a business or partner with someone or take

over a business from a retiring boomer?

How can those people be preparing themselves to go into

business the way that you have? The best skill set I think you

can you can really have is being able to work backwards.

So if your end result is here, how do you work backwards and

get to where you are right now? So if, if, if you can build that

out just roughly and then you say, OK, what are my next steps?

Well, here's the next step. And here's the next step.

Here's the next step. And you can, you can kind of

focus on that end goal and kind of simplify your route to it.

You'll get there. Whether that is an income goal

and equity goal conversations. You need to have legal

agreements that need to be put in place, like you have to

educate yourself on every step of the way so you have a clear

path forward. Now, if you don't have any

experience with that, you're not going to get there until you

have a job where you can get some education.

You know, not five years at Columbia Roofing, I had five

different vice presidents or presidents.

I saw five different leadership styles.

I saw five different ways for it to fail.

And I had a very good education on what ran a company, what

worked and what didn't work. So when I got into a position of

actual making decisions, I knew how to navigate that well.

So, you know, get your foundation experience, like if

if you wanted to go into HVAC, become a basic HVAC tech tech,

go become an estimator, do some house calls, sell it, really

understand the business model. And then you can branch out and

either buy a buy a company or start your own.

But you need to have that foundation experience and then

the ability to work to work backwards.

That's great advice. And I know you brought up kind

of on the job education and education there.

I know you also have a, a college education.

Could you speak into maybe the the different skills that you

learned in the two different areas and maybe put some weight

on one or the other? Do you use much of your college

education in your current role, and how important do you think

that is? College might not have given you

a ton of like a ton of like just like hard skills, but it gives

you the ability to critically think.

And I think the ability to critically think is probably one

of the the greatest abilities and traits you can, you can look

for. Also coupled that with a

background and philosophy, you kind of learn how to see things

from multiple perspectives and understand that you know, you

might be right when you think or you might be wrong when you

think you're right. So critical thinking skills

definitely am must. I was never a great college

student. I had a really hard, I had to

work harder than most kids just to get B or C.

But when it came to business, I had a straight A's.

Like I understand money and I understand business well,

because that's like a that's, that's a separate language.

It's good to learn the basics of that language and to, to get the

vernacular behind it that that helps, you know, a good

vocabulary really helps kind of differentiate yourself when

you're in a conversation, you're going to have a lot of high

level conversations. I mean, you're going to meet

with bankers, you're going to meet with business owners and

that's what basic sales is and you need to be able to speak

their language. So that's, that's something

that's that's worth spending time on.

And then the ability to present is a huge ability.

In college, you have to go through all sorts of

presentations. But now I do PowerPoints in

front of property management companies, anywhere from 8 to 15

people. I get sales presentations.

I do proposal pitches for why you should buy my product.

So the ability to explain difficult scenarios and very

simplistic form is a is a key trait in to being successful.

Presentation skills are, are huge.

So, you know, just basic, those basic skills kind of create a

successful business leader. And if you're passionate about

that, figure out what you're worst at and then start

practicing it and you'll get better.

Like I, I was born with a speech impediment.

I still stutter. Like, I have fear of meeting

with people and I have fear of public speaking and all of those

things were were just terrifying.

But you have to work through it. I mean, someone who stutters has

to pick up a phone and make 50 cold calls a day.

Are you kidding me? Like, it was it was terrifying,

but I, I failed. I mean, I failed for years, but

those failures led to success. And that's, that's just, you

know, everyone has a similar story and you got to start

somewhere. And yeah, that's that's that's

what I got. Persistence, I think that's a

theme that comes up a lot. You got to stay at it and be

persistent. Yeah.

Just a interesting side note, you and I kind of met and

connected for the first time a little over a year ago.

We've been collaborating and working together in a few areas

and even on a project together. But here, 15 years after

graduation, as we met professionally, we found out we

did go to school together. And actually, Loden and Gilmore,

we walked across the graduation stage together, probably

separated by only a few people, so.

What are the odds? Isn't that crazy?

It's pretty interesting to run into run in such small circles

and really never meet and connect later on.

SO yeah. What was your what was your

thoughts on our education? Oh man, I I enjoyed college.

I felt like I matured and learned a lot in school.

I don't know that I, like you said, I didn't gain a lot of

hard skills that I use very frequently, but I think there's

a lot of maturity just in that time period.

So my stance has always kind of been when I speak to young

people or give advice is if you have scholarships or an

opportunity to go to school for free, absolutely take advantage

of it. I wish I would have seen the

educational opportunities I had earlier for what they were in

high school and college. I checked the boxes to get the

grade to get my certificate, and now I'm like, I'm spending

significant money to learn and struggling to learn things.

I'm like, man, I had experts in this field ready to teach me and

I was young. My brain was working better.

I had more time, and rather than seeing it as an opportunity to

maximize education, I saw it as a checklist.

So if you have that opportunity, take advantage of it.

If you're have a dream that is a career track that requires it,

find a way to make it happen. But the the number of people

that just go to school 'cause that's the next thing they think

they're supposed to do, especially if you're going into

debt to do so, man, I think there's other places, other ways

to gain that. The education you're talking

about of critical thinking, decision making, relationships,

presentations, put yourself in positions to learn those things

where you're getting paid instead of having to pay to do

it is kind of my thought. So I don't know.

What do you think? Would you agree?

With that exactly, I think that's that that sums it up

really well. And if if you can put yourself

in a position where you can be on a compensation plan at a

younger age, you're then then you can really learn sales.

And if you can learn sales, then you can run a company if that's

your goal. Yeah, Yeah, that's great.

I think, you know, from 14 to 25, there's so much maturing

that happens in that period. There's so much education that

happens in that period. And whether you go to formal

education or the workforce or other for, I mean, today's age,

it's changed even since you and I were in school, the amount of

information that's available, the education that you can get

for free has just blown up exponentially.

But someone that takes advantage of those 10 years from 15 to 25

to maximize your education, whether formal or not, you're

going to be way ahead. Absolutely.

Another thing also worth worth noting is everyone's going to

pick up bad habits, you know, and I, I always wrote my bad

habits down so I can understand, you know, things that I probably

should work on. And we all have them phone time.

Like if you're younger and you're glued to your phone,

that's something that you should probably start talking to

yourself about. It's like, how much time do I

want to invest in the screen processing knowledge that might

not go anywhere and what can I use this time for?

And that's it's harder and harder to really focus on your

future when you have so much data coming at you every single

day. And there's, there's this

beautiful time in your life where you're just not that

important and you want to take, you want to take advantage of

it, You know, like when you're 21 to 25, like that's the

beautiful time of your life. You know, once I started and

actually getting traction in my business, my life, your life

completely changes. I mean, you're not having as

much fun. You're having all sorts of

responsibilities. You have monthly quotas, you

have deals, you're winning deals, you're losing.

And the higher and the better you get at your job, the more

problems that you have to fix. And then when your time just

becomes solving problems, that's a that's a rough go, man.

Like you get paid well, like you have decent weekends.

You know, you can go to a fancy restaurant, but you look back at

that time when you were 19 to 25 and you're like, man, those were

the glory days. So just just use your time as

best as as you can and just be be grateful for it and just work

on yourself and it'll take care of you.

I love that advice. I, I, I want to go back and

revisit that to identify the problems with yourself and deal

with them, work on them. I, I love that you said you, you

actually wrote them down. I think that's a, a skill that

is lacking not just among young people, but in our culture

today. We've kind of gotten this

message of love yourself, follow your heart, your heart, you are

who you are, be who you want to be.

And I mean, I think be your best self is a better message.

And instead of like you said, we all have negative traits.

We all have bad habits instead of just this is who I am.

Deal with it. Be a better you fix the negative

things, maximize the positive things.

And I I love that advice to write it down.

I think if very few of us take the time to sit down and think

about our negative traits, but even those that do that kind of

you, you think about it, you know it, That's maybe something

you know about yourself. But to to actually write that

down and set it as a goal to work on it.

That's some good advice there. I think that's gold.

Did you pick that up from somewhere or is that something

you just did on your own? No, I got, I was in a bad spot

and I, I sat down and I wrote down all my bad habits and, and

I had a list of good habits that I had.

And I had more bad habits than good habits.

I mean, we were drinking and smoking and abusing drugs, not

having great relationships with women.

I mean, I was a degenerate. And when you sat down and looked

at yourself and you said, wow, this is where I am right now.

I need to change these bad habits.

I need to make good habits. And that that took a lot of

intention. It took a lot of self

realization and you kind of have to come to terms with like with

your ego and really realize that there's, there's probably some

personality traits that aren't going to benefit me in the

future. I got to take care of future

Grant and that was that was my that was my growth period from

22 to 25. But at at Columbia Roofing, they

had this thing called an 8:00 AM puddle where you had to be at

the office at 8:00 AM everyday and it was tough to get there

hungover. So I had AI had a sober up and I

had a sober up and, and come, come come to terms with with

where I was. But after a year or two of that,

man, you're in a much better spot.

And that's, that's the momentum that you need to get in front of

your life. And it's just too easy to have

the years fly by without really making progress.

And that's it's all part of the journey and part of the path and

everyone experiences it differently, but you, you got to

be open to it. That's incredible that it takes

a really humble person to do what you're describing and to go

through that. And it's an impressive thing.

I know I've had some similar experiences and usually it, it

was kind of hitting a rock bottom, so to speak, getting,

getting smacked in the face with a significant problem that it

took to wake me up and realize that I needed to change.

I needed to mature, I needed to do something.

Was there a particular impetus or motivation that caused you to

sit down and really look at that?

Was it just the 8:00 AM huddle or was there something else?

Well, you know, I mean, kind of hard to put my finger on all the

bad decisions and what one really led to that just change.

But when you start to get success and when you start to

feel like you're on the right path, it's a good feeling.

And you just you, you want more of that.

And I realized that, you know, when you're on the wrong path

like that, that's not a great feeling.

And you know, that sometimes leads to more negative feedback.

But once you get yourself in that positive feedback loop,

that creates momentum and you have to have some discipline to

stay on it. That's hard with people with

ADADHD. Like you just want to do all

these other things all over the place.

So, you know, you need something to tether you back to your, to

your plan. And you know, you're not going

to be perfect all the time. You're going to have a step

backwards here, here and there. But as long as you you know and

you have that compass and you listen to the compass, you'll,

you'll work your way through almost anything.

It just takes time. That's great.

I love that. I know a lot of people kind of

get caught in that shame cycle of you.

You make some poor decisions like you said, most of the time,

even the things that you think you're doing for fun or

excitement, it's that feeling afterwards that brings you back

down. A lot of people get caught in

that shame cycle of feeling bad about a poor decision leads to

trying to feel good by making another poor decision and it

spirals out of control. Somebody that feels like they

are kind of stuck in life and are looking for a turn around

and they want to get on that momentum of feeling good because

of the good decisions. What advice would you give them

to try to break that shame cycle and get on the the cycle of

building positive feedback? I always I I listen to a audio

books from Jim Rohn. So, you know, like self help,

motivational speakers, just people that have good words to

describe the hard feelings and the psychology of your state of

mind, right? So like when you're in a

negative state of mind, you have like negative, like

psychological effects on your decision making cycles and

there's not a lot of hope. You got to, you got to turn

that, that thinking around. So you got to teach yourself how

to see the positives and you got to take care of your body.

You got to eat the right food. You got to, you got to do some

form of exercise. You know, I, I bought a sauna

and I sit in that thing every three or four days.

It just feels good to detox like you just you got to take care of

your body, You got to take care of your mind.

And if you just start making better fundamental decisions for

your life, it's going to naturally put you in a better

spot. It's the same way of a salesman.

Like if you have a high performing salesman, they are

not emotionally stable, right? You have competitive type A

people that have to win deals to put food and money in their bank

account to take care of their families.

You are going to deal with volatile people.

You're going to deal with with people that aren't slumps.

You're going to have to figure out how to pick people up and

put them on the right track. You're going to have operations

teams that make mistakes. You're going to have pissed off

customers. Like you have to become a master

of managing people's emotions and expectations, patience, and

navigating it very efficiently and effectively to create

buoyancy in that part of your company.

Then you got to deal with all the financials and all the

analytical stuff. I mean, there's so many

different facets that you have to be able to emotionally manage

that you have to be the sale. So if you ever want to be put in

a spot of being a leader, you have to learn how to manage the

winds in your sales so you can navigate the rough terrain.

And let me tell you, you have supply chain issues, you have

tariffs, you have different presidential leaders that it's

affecting your economy. You have volatile stock market.

It is going to become increasingly harder to navigate.

So you have to become increasingly stronger and and

more agile. Yeah, that's great.

I say. I, I meet with a friend once a

week to kind of connect, decompress, support each other.

And we were considering the other day that man, the the

problems we get together and talk about now are so much

bigger than the problems we used to have and a a problem that was

almost debilitating five years ago.

That's just Tuesday. Yeah, you, you mentioned a lot

of kind of caring for yourself, getting yourself help, healthy

and setting up for success there.

You bringing up the sauna reminded me on my To Do List.

I I have a sauna at home as well that the control box went out

this week. So I need to order a new one of

those and get it in. But what does that your routine

look like to make sure that you are healthy, well rested, eating

nutritious food, taking care of yourself?

What kind of things do you build into your routine to make sure

that you are a peak performer and ready to tackle those big

problems that you face? Great question.

So I I spend between 1500 and $3000 a month on health and

Wellness. That's a large part of our our

budget. My wife is a nutritionalist.

I could not have done anything without her help.

She really created balance in my life and she addressed cooking

and food and just giving me a healthy place to flourish.

My health journey that it kind of started a couple years ago, I

was, I was diagnosed with Lyme's disease and then I went through

a bunch of testing and I had a lot of mold in my system, 14

different markers that were in the red, super high amounts of

mold that kind of shut down my internal detox systems of my

body. So I was feeling really bad.

Stress is definitely not a help with that.

Through this blood testing, we were able to isolate and found

that it was actually diagnosed with blood cancer as as well.

So I kind of three years into my business, I kind of had to take

a step back. I said, man, you have cancer,

you have Lyme disease, you have mold, you just have a newborn

and your energy storage is completely depleted.

Like what are we going to do? How do we solve this problem?

Well, started doing research and I got a hold of a of a natural

path who is incredibly gifted when it comes to isolating

problems, finding the root causes of it, and then building

a supplementation plan to start to systematically fix each layer

of my health. Onion.

So it starts with food. You know, a lot of people are

dairy and tall and tolerant and they don't know it.

I'm one of those people. I try to stay away from dairy,

gluten, low amounts of soy. So I'm not really focused on

eating processed foods. Most of my meals are homemade

and I really do well with high protein vegetables and grains,

low grains. Second thing I do is I have an E

Watt system at my house which is exercised with oxygen therapy.

Fills up a giant bag full of pure oxygen.

I try to do that two or three times a week on my exercise

bike. You feel amazing when you

exercise with oxygen. That's an incredible help with

detoxing my body. I do Ivs with nutrients once to

twice a month. Ivs are awesome.

They give me enough vitamin CD, mag, zinc, glutathione straight

into the bloodstream. I have between 10 and 15

supplements that I take to bind with the mycotoxins and the mold

in my system and make me feel better.

Those are huge help. I do red light and I do sauna.

So it's like it's a, it's a freaking program just to keep,

keep me at normal. But what I found is after two

years of this, all my markers are basically better.

I'm working on my last two markers.

My Lyme's disease is torment, my blood cancer.

It's just, it's a, it's a low grade blood cancer.

It's essential pharmaceia. I have too many platelets in my

blood. My bone marrow creates more

platelets. If it gets up too high, I have

to go on a Med, a medication for the rest of my life.

They say you can't nothing I can do can affect my platelet

levels, but after I started these routines, I dropped them

from 900 to high 6 hundreds. That's a 30% drop.

OK, maybe you can't affect them. So you know, like all of these

layers of kind of just like health systems, they make you

feel better. You know it's not the.

Greatest situation, but you got to make, you know, you got to

make the best you can out of it. And then you're really grateful

for the time you have because you just don't know what is

going to happen. And that's, that's been, it's

been a separate journey. Oh man, so somebody that doesn't

have maybe the specific health problems that you have, but just

wants to increase their health to become a peak performer.

It sounds like you've been through the gamut of everything.

What's the the one or two things that had the biggest impact that

you think they could see the the the most gain for the least

investment if they don't have the $3000 a month to.

Put absolutely now you're going to you're going to get 80% of

your gains by understanding what your body does not digest well.

So what causes, what foods are you currently eating that cause

low grade and inflammation? So you figure out like what

those combos are and a natural path has these tests that will

say, hey, you shouldn't eat this and you shouldn't eat that.

OK, great. And now I know what I shouldn't

eat. I'm going to stay away from

from, from those within two weeks, you're going to feel

great. Some easy supplements that go

with what you shouldn't be eating.

So whatever your body is not the main building blocks.

Like what, what does your body need in order to function a

little bit better? Is it magnesium?

Is it saying, you know, let's identify those.

And then just basic exercise or some sauna like it's, you just

feel better. It you just sweat it out.

Like those three things are not that hard to do.

They don't affect your life negatively.

It's going to help out a lot. And then you manage your screen

time. Stay off the phone as much as

possible. Build some some boundaries.

Thank you, that's some incredible advice.

So have you taken the plunge into Cold Plunge yet?

Is that something you're interested in?

I love cold plunge. I haven't bought 1 yet.

I do it as much as I can and it is it's it is a love hate.

It is a lot paid for for sure. OK.

Oh, man. Well, it sounds like you've been

through some some difficult things in life.

Even even just talking about your health there.

You've struggled through a lot and you seem to have a a very

positive attitude. You keep going, you keep

pushing, keep grinding. We talked about perseverance.

What motivates you when things get really hard?

Why? Why haven't you given up?

For me, it's not like it's just life.

Everyone's life is going to get complicated in other ways.

I'm very fortunate that I have a great family and a great wife

and you know, my parents moved in on the lower part of our lot.

So my, my problems aren't real problems, they're just things I

need to find solutions for. I'm lucky that I have the

ability to have some control over my life.

There's a lot of people that don't have that or they're put

in a position where it's going to take them a lot more work to

get to where they want to go. So I'm just, you know, I, I

don't, I don't really know. I think you just do the best you

can with what with what you have, and you work every problem

backwards and you know, just figure it out.

OK. Well, I know we've talked a lot

about growth and maturing. I know you've just learned a lot

of hard lessons by figuring it out and engineering a system in

your business for your life. But you also talked about some

audio books you listen to. Are there any particular

resources that you feel have been most beneficial in your

maturity and growth? I can't point to 1, you know,

you just have to say yes to everything.

If you have a hard job, say yes. Figure it out.

Like just you have a very short term memory.

Don't, don't dwell on on the stakes.

And then when you're in the right place in your life, strive

for change because it's going to get busy and it's going to get

crazy. And you know, just try to

createspace for you and use that space to the best of your

ability. OK.

So this is one of my favorite questions.

Are you a person of a particular faith tradition?

And if so, how has that shaped your journey building your

business? Yeah.

So I, I never grew up with religious background.

I would say that I'm, I'm spiritual in, in many ways, but

I'm more just like philosophical.

I'd rather have just be a good person, treat people well, use

them as a means and themselves and not as a means to an end.

So if you view everyone as their own person and you're just

trying to enrich and and better their life, you know they're

going to do things that you don't agree with.

They could lead your company, They could go work for a

competitor. I mean, I've had lots of lots of

people go on their own journey and if you can just support them

in that because that's what they want to do, that's all you can

do. You know, you can't hold

resentment. Try not to be as judgmental, but

your goal is to create this kind of utopic company where everyone

benefits from each other. And if you can kind of relate

that to your life, then you can find harmony.

And it's a lot easier said than done.

And it's always in balancing that it's really just, you know,

through your own life and through your own trials, you'll

find your own balance. And if, if, if you can achieve

that in your life, that's a successful life.

And that's just kind of my those are my ideas and my ideals.

OK. Well, thank you for that.

Who would you like to see on the show?

Do you know anybody with a cool background, a cool story, a

really interesting niche in their market that you'd like to

learn more about or hear more from?

I think you should figure out where vintage racers are in your

area or fly to a vintage race car track and you should meet

some of these crazy older guys that have these 7 figure cars

driving them on on the edge. Those those guys have some wild

stories. OK, all right, well, I might

have to see if you can hook me up or introduce me after the

show here. Absolutely.

Last question to either fuel or settle the debate.

If you have a job to do with the cordless tool, which brand do

you pick? Ah.

Yeah, Hilti is a great place and DeWalt is a follow up.

OK, awesome. I think that's the first Hilti

answer we've gotten and we're we're getting close to neck and

neck here with Milwaukee and DeWalt.

So. Chalk one up for DeWalt all.

Right. Perfect.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Grant.

I really appreciate you joining us on the show.

If someone wanted to reach out to you if they need some roofing

services or are interested in picking your brain a little bit,

would you be open to that? And is there a way they can get

a hold of you? Yeah, yeah.

I mean they can reach out to Eric and Eric will give them my

contact information and and e-mail.

They can call me direct. It's all good.

OK, great. Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you making the time and I thank you guys

for joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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So again, thank you and until next time, keep grinding.