Mike Goldenstein – From Roofing Contractor to Tech Entrepreneur- The Future of Roofing Sales & Tech

The most difficult was not outworking your problems.

I took it to his house and I gave it to him because I could

directly attribute 12 jobs to him.

He knew that I went through that help and he was so happy with

the end result. He told every single one of his

neighbors and every single one of his neighbors said if that

guy can get a, a recommendation from him, we're going with him.

I'll always remember I was eight or nine years old and, and my

dad had told me to change the tire on the bobcat.

You know, I could barely lift these things.

I had over tightened it and actually broke the stud and like

I'm nine. So I didn't, I didn't break it.

You fix it. And so when you're grow up in a

situation like that, I mean that it, it tests you, right?

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I am pretty excited. I have Mike Goldenstein with me.

Mike is a seasoned veteran of the roofing industry and a

number of different facets. He owned and operated his own

roofing company for a number of years.

He has worked on the manufacturer side as a

manufacturer's Rep, and now he runs Roofal, an online platform

to assist roofers in the roofing industry.

So Mike, I'm really excited to dive in and learn from your

wisdom, your experience and learn a little bit more about

Roofal and what it can do for us.

So thanks for joining me. Yeah, it's an honor to be here.

And and yeah, Speaking of going from the ground up, man, this is

this is going to be that story of starting from the ground up

to, to have a career that has now spanned what, 34 years in

the roofing industry for me. Oh man, well congratulations and

we can dive right in. I like to start every show

getting to know a little bit about your childhood.

What was childhood like for someone that grows up to start a

roofing company? So I was growing.

I grew up in rural Iowa on a, on a hog farm of all things.

So for those of you who know me as a, you know, Goldenstein,

sometimes they think I'm Jewish and I'm, well, I'm on, I grew up

on a pig farm. So if anything, I can be your

favorite Jewish pig farmer. And people find the, the

significance of that. But yeah, I grew up on a farm

really in the middle of nowhere northeast Iowa.

Closest neighbors were about a mile away.

Number of 60 people and my kids in my class, graduating class, I

think maybe 70 or 80 people that lived in the town that I grew up

in, but I didn't know any of them because I was so far away

from that town that it was in a different school district.

So really it's it, it was just a very free childhood adventurous,

but we always had work to do. And that's kind of where, you

know, you hear that about kids that grew up on farms.

That's what we did. And so that track into

entrepreneurialship really starts when you're, you know,

678 years old when you grew up in those kind of a situation.

Yeah, I know Harvard did a study, I was going to say two or

three years ago. It's probably closer to 10 by

now. I lose track of stuff all the

time. It's all the same.

They did a study really trying to drill down to what aspect of

childhood, what trait, what part of for your home life was most

closely tied to success later in life.

And you know, they looked at where you live, the type of

family you grew up in, all kinds of things.

And the the greatest determining factor to success later in life

was kids that grew up with significant responsibility.

They had chores, they had a job, they had somebody depending on

them early on. Those were the people that grew

up to really succeed later in life.

And I think the, the farm, farm life, the ranching life, I see

that again and again just anecdotally in my life, the, the

kids I knew that grew up that way and they they know how to

get it done when they become adults.

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incentive trips. Yeah, whether it's hard or not,

right. And I'll, I'll always remember I

was eight or nine years old and, and my dad had told me that I

was, I had to change the tire on the Bobcat.

And you know, I don't know, I've never changed the tire on the

Bobcat before. You know, I could barely lift

these things around. And, and he had set it up and,

and as I was tightening up the bolts, I'd over tightened it and

actually broke the stud. And like, I'm nine, you know.

And, and so, you know, he's angry and all that kind of stuff

and everything that goes along with that.

But he refused to fix it. He said I didn't, I didn't break

it. You fix it.

And so when you're grow up in a situation like that, I mean that

it, it tests you, right? And you and you.

Oh, yeah. What do you mean fix it?

Like, I don't know how these things work.

He just told me to tighten the bowl.

They tighten. And, you know, and but you know,

I can give you, you know, story after story about, you know,

these situations I put myself into and there was no easy way

out. You broke it, you fix it or go

outside and do this, you know, and that's that's all you have

to go on. And you have to figure out

yourself, whether it's fixing a fence or, you know, rebuilding a

shed that got blown over in a strong wind or, you know, hey,

we got to re roof this, you know, OK.

I mean, it can't be rocket science, right?

People do this all the time. So you go out and just try and

kind of fix it. And when you do that for, you

know, 18 years by the time I graduated high school, I mean,

nothing was a risk anymore. Yeah, I can relate to that.

I didn't grow up on a farm in the farm life, but my dad was

very involved in search and rescue and then running a

roofing company. And man, me and my sister, we

had big responsibilities at a young age and and there's big

trust. You know, if you didn't do what

you were told to do, someone was going to get hurt bad.

It wasn't just, you know, sit here and play toys.

It was, you know, you got to pull the lever at the right time

or you got to not push the button because somebody's going

to get hurt if you do. And I think growing up with that

level of responsibility really prepares you for adulthood.

I'm always looking for opportunities to do that with my

own kids, but I'm not nearly as good at it as my dad was.

I mean, and that can be a double edged sword too, you know, and I

do also like to tell the story because when I by the time I was

14 in Iowa, you know, they had to, you can't get your license

till 16, but at 14 you could get what they call a school permit.

And everybody lived in rural and so you could drive to the, to

the school and, but you know, again, the entrepreneurial

spirit was already well in, in, in, in and you didn't have a

talent. So it's not like you were

spending money. So I had a fair amount of money

saved up. And so I bought my first car.

I was barely 14. And my dad is also one that does

we, we had to go get the best deal possible.

So we weren't going to go to the, the, the, the actual, you

know, you, you already know which way we're going to go.

And you don't go on Facebook marketplace.

They hadn't even invented the Internet yet.

So this is, you know, this is this is late 80s.

And so we drove all the way down to Lee's Summit.

It was like a four hour drive. And to pick out at a car auction

because he had a friend, you know, we all have friends.

We know somebody and they had a dealer license and they could

buy it directly from the car auction.

And so here we are in Lee's Summit, Missouri looking at

cars. I find the one we're bidding on

it. Little did I know it's a stick

shift. I never driven a stick shift

before. And so as we're buy it, I'm

getting in and my dad takes, he's like, we'll see you at

home. I say, I, I don't know how to

drive this thing. He's like, you bought it, you

figure it out. So I'm driving it around the,

the parking lot just to try to figure out how to drive a stick

and then drove it 4 hours home. And I tell that story because

that's how I was raised. Well, by the time I got to

college, this would have been, you know, about six years later,

kind of like the girl and she, you know, I had a truck by now

and it was also a stick shift. And so have you ever driven a

stick shift before? And she hadn't.

And so I said, let's come on, I'll, I'll teach you how to

drive a stick. And you know where this this

conversation going to go? Because I got her in the

driver's side and, and, and she's like, I've never driven a

stick. I'm like, yeah, but it's you

just push in the clutch, you pull it out slowly, feel the

contact patch just kind of feathered in and and you go and

like, no, no, you have to tell me how this works.

I'm like, no, you just do it. Just do it.

To this day, like to this day, I know that she does not know how

to drive a stick because she was so angry at that experience

because you're so humiliated. And especially being out in the

campus and trying to get her to just to drive it around a little

bit and in front of front, like it was humiliating to her.

And I'm like, I don't know how else to teach you.

You just do it right to this thing.

She doesn't know how to drive a stick.

And I know it because she did end up becoming my wife.

But how do we you know these these experiences and what we

were taught, how we were taught, how we lived life become part of

us and myself as a as a teacher trainer and manager later on in

life. I have to keep going back and

saying just because that's how I learned might not be the way

that you're going to learn. And how are we going to be

successful together? Because there are all kinds of

different personalities and we all learn differently and we

teach differently. But we do have to get along if

we're going to build this thing called a business.

Well, I guess that brings us up to college.

You mentioned that you you went to college.

Can you tell us a little bit about your education?

Where did you go to school? What did you go to school for

and what impacted that decision? Yeah, which is interesting

because when I when I was heading off, when I was making

that decision later in my high school years, really only looked

at 1 college was Taylor University was actually talking

about that this week as I took my my fourth child, my youngest

daughter is now just finished up her freshman year at Taylor.

And thinking it back on how God brought that decision to me

because I that was the only school that I even applied for.

And upon getting there, I, I wanted to be, I really was

pursuing computer science, which is you got to remember, this is

1992. Nobody even owned computers back

then. You didn't have a personal

computer. Most people didn't.

I didn't get my first personal computer until after I'd

graduated college. I did love coding.

I loved technology. I loved this whole thing of

building things electronically, but I didn't love the dungeon.

That's what we called the dungeon is where all the

computer lab was and there was no windows there and you would

sit there for hours in coding. I I kind of like the coding, but

I didn't like being in that room.

So after about 2 1/2 years, I switched my major because I was

doing a minor in Christian education.

I ended up making that my major and dropping the computer

science entirely. And meanwhile, about a week

after I graduated high school, ready to go to College in the

fall. I also didn't have a summer job

lined up and so I contacted my uncle who also owned a roofing

company. And so I went on the road living

out of a suitcase hotel, the hotel traveling around the

country putting roofs on salt domes.

And so that was my summer job for basically 5 summers was

roofing. So by the time I graduated

college that I went there for a computer science degree, ended

up with a Christian education degree.

Meanwhile I, I was, and then by that time I talk about it, I got

asphalt my blood and I just never could get that out.

And to this day, 30-4 years later, I'm still in the roofing

industry. Yeah, I have a close friend that

says most people don't go into roofing.

You wind up in roofing, but once you get here, it's not a bad

place to be. Yeah, it's it's, it's kind of

like the Waffle House. You don't go there, you end up

there. So roofing is kind of the same

thing. Yeah, Yeah.

So you mentioned that you guys were traveling the country

roofing salt domes. That sounds like kind of a

unique system or a unique application.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, they were. They were built on tall concrete

walls, usually between 8:00 and 12:00 feet, depending on the

Dome, could be 30 feet across, could be, you know, 80 to 100

feet across. They could be very, very large.

But they were built in triangular sections.

So when you start at the very base of it, it's about a 2112,

if not steeper. And then slowly as it goes to

the top, it gets narrower and narrower to the very top where

it's spotted, but 812 at the very top of it.

And that could be 9000 feet in the air.

And so we were carrying bundles all day every day.

We would start before light because it starts getting hot.

You know, if we were in Kentucky or Saint Louis or Wichita, KS,

or you know what, you, you name it, we've been in December,

January, during breaks, I would go and we'd be in Minnesota or,

or New York. I'm like, hey, can we switch

these off a little bit? I'd rather be in Saint Louis in

December and, and instead of Ely, MN.

But that's kind of where we were doing and we were hand nailing

shingles, 3 tab shingles to salt domes.

We would cut hip and I don't know, do you know if cutting

hip? I don't know you're, you're a

commercial guy. I don't know if you cut hip on

asphalt shingles before, but these three tabs, you would cut

the hip and Ridge. You would have to do that by

hand. We would cut anywhere from 25 to

30 squares of hip on each Dome. That's 90, you know, anywhere

from 60 to 90 bundles of hip had to be cut.

And so it was very manual. You mean your hands were

bleeding. And I mean, it was just, there

was nothing sexy about this lifestyle.

But it did get me into roofing, did get me nerdy about, you

know, the, the trades and certainly taught me the value of

a, of a hard day's work and the value of just the satisfaction

at the end of the day and going. That's what I did today.

Oh, man, yeah, that's, that's a lot of work, especially on

steeps like that. And yeah, I, I don't envy that.

So through college, you're working for your uncle doing

mostly the salt domes. What happens when you when you

graduate, did you immediately start your own company?

Did you continue working with him?

What did that look like? No, actually kind of it.

So I got married right out of college.

So met, met my wife in college and then so I moved to

Minnesota. That's when I started in

Minnesota in 1997. And we did get married in

February. So I was in the Yellow Pages

looking up every roofing company going, I have nothing, I own

nothing. I, I have a pile of college

debt, as does my wife. So let's get working.

And so went through and, and found a couple of roofing

companies that would take me on, you know, at that point, it's in

the middle of winter and in Minnesota.

So really the only thing available is it's going to be

new construction. But you know, you, you start

your own company is what you do and you subcontract to A to a

company. And I did that basically for the

next three years. I did get a job as a youth

pastor during those times. And so I kind of did both of

them, one to kind of support the family and one to, you know, my

passion really was I did love being a youth pastor at those

days. And then in 2000 is when I

started my own company, as you know, getting license, doing the

whole thing and then being the boss.

And I did that full time for the next 12 years.

OK. Oh, man.

So what was that transition like going from being a, you know, a

subcontractor kind of just providing labor to actually

starting a full roofing company? Was that a difficult transition?

Yeah. So I appreciate that question

because it really it was not to me, it was so natural because

again, nothing is a risk anymore.

Like how many times that I had been growing up that I don't

know, just go do it. Like I'm watching people do it

all the time. It can't be that hard.

And so from my background, it just, it was kind of my second

nature to just do it. Just go ahead and do it and see

what it's like. And if you fail, you fail, not a

big deal, you know, figure it out and redo it or, or do

something else. And so that was probably one of

the easiest things to do as you start picking up things along

the way, like it's really understanding the first time you

get sued, you know, and the first time you've had a leak,

you know, I'm like, there's and, and you're the one that's

responsible, ultimately responsible even.

So, even though you didn't do the work necessarily and you,

you've have all of these growth moments, but the fact is the

risk that it takes to take that step was probably the easiest

part of the whole thing. I was 35 years old the first

time I received a check from an employer that had taxes taken

out of it. Like what is this magic?

Like where did my money go? You know, because I've been as

I've been self-employed my entire life.

And, you know, and, and so actually getting license and

going through the process, which Minnesota's very highly

regulated state, I'm having to do it in the right way, which is

not a big deal at all. It really was kind of this is

this is this is the next phase of my life, No.

All right, what what you said that that getting started step

was pretty easy. What was the most difficult

step? The most difficult step was not

out working your problems. So everything that I did, you

know, when you come up to a problem like this, this house

has a deadline or, you know, the sun's going down, there's a

storm coming, like everything and every, you know, we don't

have the money to, to pay the bills right now.

The answer to every problem was work harder.

And that was the hardest thing. Again, my SO being newly married

and then kid one, kid 2, kid three, kid 4, you only have so

many hours in the day. And my choices in those days

were to work harder, work harder, work harder.

And it really throws off your, your work life balance if there

is such a thing. So that was probably the hardest

part. And then really understanding

the way that I was doing it, because in those days there

wasn't the training, you don't have access back and then you

didn't have. All the events, the roofcon,

the, you know, the ire, the, you know, the manufacturers that are

bringing in speakers and you really didn't have any of that

stuff. That network of of information

was not available. You didn't have your Chuck

Tokies or your Ann of amendments or your John Cena's of the world

back in those days. And so you were literally in

reinventing your own wheel, which is great unless you're the

personality of me. That was more of the really the

blue collar. I do it myself.

I work harder, I'm working, you know, 14-15 hours a day

installing most of my own jobs. You know, I have crews working

with me, but it was not scalable.

We're making good money and I was very comfortable living and,

and it really got me a lot of a great base of where, you know,

even set me up to for today. But it, it wasn't, it looked a

lot different 20 years ago than it does today, that's for sure.

The entire roofing industry does has involved significantly.

Oh yeah, yeah. There's so many resources

available now with, like you said, different conferences and

podcasts and people willing to do trainings and coaching and

just the the feel of the industry back then, it was, it

was pretty cutthroat. You didn't talk to other roofers

because they were your competitor, you know, and.

Yeah. Now it's a, a very welcoming

industry, I think where most contractors are willing to help

somebody out, help their competitor.

They're they're interested in raising the bar in the industry

as a whole rather than just landing the next job.

And it's been really interesting to watch even in my tenure in

roofing that I feel like it's changed a lot.

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Now we do talk about that a little bit because it is

regional that that what you're just talking about is regional.

And so Minnesota, they don't mind sitting there.

They're very educational focus. The contractors are and they

don't mind sitting in a room with their competitors to learn

the, you know, the best practices and you go to Kansas

and they don't like it's hard to pick get counter to be together.

Chicago is very difficult. You get to Ohio.

Columbus is very easy you can get and Atlanta is very open to

doing that. You get down into Texas and they

don't either. Again, in the coasts they don't.

So there's different pockets as to where you know, where do you

feel you rank or your role within your competitors.

Sometimes it's like I ain't giving them a time of day.

I refuse to, you know, and and and you're just always a

competitor. And then there's other just the

culture of the contractor in that area says now, I mean,

rising tide, raise all ships, you know, we're we're good.

I mean, anything that you can learn, I can learn.

We learn together is only going to make the industry better.

That's a regional thing to me, in my estimation.

Yeah, I can see that. I guess I've not been has

involved at that level. It just seems to be a trend I'm

watching. So I could definitely see that

being regional. So you mentioned that you were a

youth pastor for a long time. That was kind of your passion

and roofing was the job that supported that.

Did you step away from the pastor job about the same time

you started your own company there in 2000, or how did that

line up? No, actually the most.

So I was a youth pastor from basically 97 until 2006 at one

capacity or another. So sometimes some of it was full

time, some of it was part time, but it was, it was about 2006 is

when my fourth child was on her way.

And I was doing, you know, nights and weekends with the

church. And my days were, were with

ambassador, which was what's the name of the roofing company that

I had. And I was like, something's got

to give. And so I gave my 6th month

noticed I said I have to be full time at the church or full time

at the business. Like I said, just I don't have,

I don't have it enough to to do both.

And unfortunately the church wasn't in the position to be

able to bring on a full time youth minister at that time.

And so I went ahead and did full time with the company.

But then, you know, I still volunteered a lot with the

church, probably too much still, you know, because we still

attended the same church for for several years after that.

And, but yeah, you know, in one of the things, and I do enjoy

talking about those years because ministry is not easy.

It really isn't. And, and especially in the youth

ministry, you know, I, I did come across, you know, those,

those parents that are just very difficult.

You know, it's you're, you're, you're ministering to their

kids. And, and, and my wife talks

about it. She, she took some classes at

Taylor, you know, about being a coach's wife.

And she would always talk to me about kind of that she's the

coach's wife because people aren't always very kind, even

inside of a church, they're not kind.

And and conflict resolution is a real thing.

And I thought that more than my roofing company, my years as a

youth pastor prepared me for what was coming with my career

at GAF. When dealing with angry or, you

know, upset customers, whether it's distributors or

contractors, my years as a Youth pastor premier prepared me for

those in the conflict resolution much more than my history as a

roofing company owner did. That's interesting.

That's probably not an application that most people

would expect, but I can see how that would probably be

beneficial. Yeah.

And, and, and then just kind of piggyback on on that, I did

recognize, you know, later on and as I was, you know, picking

up those days of GAF were very entrepreneurial as well.

They basically threw a set of keys and said, grow market

share, make your plan and grow your engagement with your

contractors go. And so you make your own

decisions during that time. And, and one of the things that

I recognized was, man, I wish I had access to these tools or I

knew that I had access to these tools as they were getting more

popular inside of the GAF culture.

And so that really is, was the, the cry of my heart at that

point was to say, this is the type of sales Rep that I want to

be, is I want to bring this value and saying, Hey, there's a

better way, You know, let's simplify this.

There's a better way. We want you to be successful.

And so that training and educational piece to it, I

wanted to be their best advisor inside of their company, inside

of their business, and then grow the market that way.

And so I would double down into understanding the business

growth piece of it and, and bringing those that educational

piece of it. So then when we started seeing

like the when the storm come and you know, some more of these

trainers, educators, even influencers as social media

started growing, I kind of leaned into those because it was

just making my job better and my customers lives better.

OK. So you you've kind of

transitioned here in your story from running a roofing company

now to working for GAF. What did that transition look

like? Why make that change?

Yeah, I used to joke a lot, you know, in I'm going to be careful

on how I say this. I thought that it was too easy

being a company owner. I'm like, listen, as long as you

have a nice truck, you wear a collared shirt to your sales

meetings, you brush your tooth in the morning, you already

separated yourself from your competition.

It was a rough industry in the late 90s, early 2000s and but it

was maturing. And I, you know, I could notice

that, but there was a desire that came back to me and said,

man, and, and I also turned 35 and my physically, my body was

just not, I would still work at 12 or 14 hour day, you know,

heavily physical, but I just, my body wouldn't recover the next

morning. I was still, it was hard for me

to get out of my truck at night. It was hard for me to get in the

truck in the morning. So physically I was breaking

down. So there's, there's a lot of

things that were going on at the same time to say, you know what,

I think it's time that I would like to see a transition.

And I was very grateful to be able to transition into an

organization like GAF, which is a, you know, multibillion dollar

organization like that. I don't take for granted, you

know, what that opportunity looked like and how that

happened and how that transaction transaction actually

happened. A transition actually happened.

Quite, quite unique. OK.

And So what was your role then at GAF?

How was that structured and what did that look like?

Yeah, so it's I enjoy telling this story a little bit too,

because in my territory, so my territory manager in the

Minneapolis area got promoted to regional.

And so when I learned of that, you know, I called him up, said

well, who's taking your job? And I not didn't really even

understand what that job was. I mean, I knew him.

I knew Jim well. And you know, we were, we had

become good friends and and then Lance, who was his partner also

got promoted at the same time. So they went from a hiring 1 to

hiring two people replacements in the same territory.

So then I'm thinking, all right, this is cool.

I really want this job. And then I didn't get either one

of them. So they hired two other people

and it, that was, I remember driving home from a job and just

exhausted and, and like, you know, that's when all the doubts

and, you know, I really thought this is where God was leading

me. I've kind of felt like this was,

you know, but now that it happened, I didn't get it.

I'm really feel like those feelings itself, doubt and, and

depression, you know, kind of start setting in and, and, and

really start affecting you. And but about four months later,

I got another call that said their composite decking division

is looking for any an employee. And so I put my name in for that

one. Like I, I mean, I, I built a few

decks in my day, but you know, and it's not roofing, but you

know, maybe I can get in my foot in the door.

And so I took that job and, and that was my foot in the door of

GAF. And that's when I was started

traveling my territory became I was hired for like Minnesota and

Northern Iowa when I went to their national sales meeting

like a month after I was hired, my territory was basically

Minnesota, Iowa, all the way to Seattle.

And I remember taking making that phone call to my wife and

going because I had four young kids at that time, Like this is

going to be a beast. And but you know, that only

lasted nine months because, you know, nine months later they

did, they closed down that division of the company and the

number of calls that I got from the other guys.

What did you do? So I tell you, all I do is break

stuff. That's my job.

So I broke the composite decking division of GAF, just so you

know if anybody asks. Well, that's something you can

be proud of. A little feather in your cap

there. I doubt there's many people that

can claim responsibility for that.

Well, it was like 2010, 2011 and the economy had crashed and they

were trying to, you know, trying to pull it back up.

But you know, the composite that it's a that was a, you know,

high end product in the sales were just not there to support

it. And I think JF was probably

looking at an acquisition and then noticing, you know, the

books on, you know, if you're acquiring somebody because there

was a couple of companies that were for sale that were

competitors that that would have been good acquisitions.

But you know, the margins on that are just for a

manufacturer. So I think they went from, hey,

we really want to get into this, double this down and grow this

to wait a second. Best case scenario, we're at

those margins. No.

And they ended up instead of dumping more money in and

growing it, they cut the entire thing.

And so it took us all by by surprise.

And by Christmas time, I was a week away from losing my job and

like, I didn't know what I was going to do next.

You know, my and go back. I mean, it's only been barely a

year that I've been out of and my company no longer exists.

Try to call some distribution maybe I do that.

But and then about a week like it was between Christmas and New

Year's, a job did open up that I didn't even have to move.

I got slid into the roofing side of things, which is roofing side

of GAF is much more stable than the composite decking side.

So put it that way. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that was a

scary experience. And so it sounds like when you

shut down your roofing company, you just shut it down.

You didn't sell it or pass it off to somebody else.

You know, it's again, looking back, you know, it's kind of

interesting because that would most people are like, that's

ridiculous how you could have sold that you could have done it

because it was at that point it was a 12 year old company.

You know, surely it's worth something.

But in 2010, the the landscape of the industry wasn't like that

at all. There was nothing really

valuable to sell because there weren't really systems and

processes that were involved. I was the company and I can't

sell myself, especially if I'm exiting.

And so I did contact a business broker at the deal at the time

and we put it on the market, but there was no takers.

Like there was no book of business.

It, it wasn't, it wasn't a mature business nor a mature

business environment. Exteriors just wasn't out in,

in, in the 2000s. So, but like today, I mean, now

the company is what, 26 years old?

Of course, I haven't done anything with it for 15.

But you know, you think about that.

What's a, what's a 26 year old roofing company worth today?

You know, it's a very different landscape today than it was, you

know, 20 years ago. Yeah.

And I know you mentioned one of the things you struggled with

the most was solving problems by not just simply working harder

and that you spent a good portion of your career, you

know, out of not only doing sales and running the company,

but out on the roof with the guys.

As you got towards the end of your time there, did did the

company mature past that? Were you more of a business

owner than a business operator? Were you able to step up to that

next level? You know, not, not really, and I

don't really regret it either. It's just, you know, my, my

level of attention. It might have been ridiculous,

but it was there. You know, one of my sales

pitches is I know where every nail is going on your roof.

I'm not one of those that just sells the roof and then I don't

see you until I'm collecting the check.

I was on every one of my my builds and you know, my

attention to detail was, was to such that it, that's, that's,

that was my personality and that's how I did stuff.

And, you know, would I be able to just do it?

But you think about this too, but you think about the big

names in tech today, the Acculinks, Eagle view, hover.

None of that existed when I when I actually closed down my

business. Like I'm telling you this, I

don't even think data form of what might have been around

maybe in those days, you know, so when there really wasn't a

way to have a, you know, you would have to really be a pretty

astute businessman and be attracted to the margins in that

those days for roofing, which just that the margins weren't

there back in those days either. So yeah, it just, it, it, it's

just, it's one of the things that that's one of the things I

enjoy talking about the most is because, you know, between 97, I

was there when we started using pneumatic nail guns, like I was

pan nailing shingles. And I'm like, look at this

thing. It plugs into air.

And you can like there's so many changes that have happened over

the course of 34 years. And, you know, but the same time

these changes are coming faster and faster and faster and faster

and faster to where now there's more that happens in a year than

would happen in 10 years, you know, in the 90s.

Absolutely. And I'm a, a little bit younger

than you, a little behind you in your career, but I, I grew up in

the roofing industry. And I remember that I, I

remember sitting in rooms where the debate was, you know, can,

can guys really do as good of a job with an air nailer?

You know, hand nailing's got, it's still better.

And there's a lot of resistance to that.

And I know my dad and I both struggled with kind of the the

same thing. We were very attention to

detail, wanted to be on the job, wanted to know what was going

on. And even with some of the

technological advances, it was difficult to get off of the

roof, get off of the job site and start really working on the

business. Yeah, and even some of the

functionality stuff that like now you have to have what like

where do you put this monstrosity?

Like I'm way faster shelling nails with a hand with a with a

hammer. But now I got to figure out

where to put this big old thing. And not only that, but I'm

dragging this hose back. Well, not only that, I got to

buy a compressor. Well, not only that, it's got to

probably have a motor because I can't just draw it off the the

power in the house. Like there were so many

complexities that this technology brought.

It was easy for your dad and I to go.

It'll never work. Yep, Yep.

I remember having all of those conversations and, you know, OK,

maybe you can put nails in a little bit faster, but but

you're going to lose that time when you you got to set that

thing down and your hammer goes in your pocket and you know, Oh

yeah. Oh man.

And now we're looking at these complex CRM systems, these

instant estimators on your websites where homeowners can

come on, put in their address. Now they have a quote.

Now you're automating a, a, a text message or a phone call or,

or emails to them to do this. The, and then you're entering

them into a cadence to where you don't.

Now you're continuing this and it's all generated by AI.

And you're sitting there going, dude, what happened to the

hammer and nail? Yeah, I want to go back in those

days. You mentioned that that

technology is speeding up rapidly.

The changes are coming so fast. It is just a a vastly different

industry. Do you see it going too far?

Too far? Well, I don't.

You'd have to define what too far is, I think.

Yes, contractors have to adapt. They have to adapt now, what is

too far? So you know, is it farther than

your comfort level? Is that too far?

What's too far too far for your home owners?

I think you know, your, your consumers are always creating

the demand. You know, as business owners,

the hardest thing for us to do is we've created this thing

that's ours and we wanted to perform the way that we've

created to perform. But we have to stop, separate

ourselves from that entity and and put ourselves in the shoes

of the consumer and say, how can I fit your need?

What do you, what do you? And then you have to decide

whether you want to or not because some of them are like, I

just want the cheapest price possible because I'm leaving,

I'm selling the house and I'm out of here, You know, well,

you're probably not my person. Yeah, whatever, whatever the

scenario is. But the fact is we have to

listen and adapt to the consumer demands and then also really

understanding where the tech is, you know, giving us additional

efficiencies and effectiveness because where there's tension

and where there's inconsistencies, that's where

technology comes in and starts solving problems.

And you can't just turn your back on it and go, it's not

important or I don't want to go there because somebody is going

to go there and they're going to just take all your work.

Yeah, yeah. That's a good point and a good

way to look at it. So, so in, in kind of our

storyline here, you shut down your business, went to work for

GAF, they eliminated your job, you're a week away from losing

your job right before Christmas and finally get into roofing,

which is where you wanted to be to begin with.

What? What was your job at GAF and how

how long were you there? Yeah, I ended up being there for

12 years entirely, you know, for the entire experience right

away. I was in north-south Dakota.

That was my territory. I did it from the Twin Cities.

So I would, I always remember, I was so excited because the cars

were always a, what was it? A Ford Escape, which is just too

small. You know, I'm driving this all

around in the middle of winter in North Dakota.

And then we, we were able to, you know, had a good year and

they kind of opened this up and they gave us an Explorer.

And the Explorer was much nicer vehicle larger, went through

snow better because again, north-south Dakota here, right?

I'm going up to Williston, you know, and, but I only had it for

a year because you, you had to turn it in once it hit 85,000

miles. I put 85,000 miles on my company

vehicle in one year. I just was, I was, I took my job

very, very seriously. And, and again, you take that

from from when I was a kid 6-8 years, I was, I was comfortable

when I was working. That was my safe spot.

Just the family dynamics that I had were a little bit unique

and, and I always, I felt safe when I was working and I just,

that has always carried it through.

You know, you don't Mike, you don't have to work that hard.

Like I get it. Yes, I do, you know, this is how

it's going to be done, right? You know, And so, so 2 two

years, I think we're spending north-south Dakota and then I

got promoted to the Twin Cities and I was here for eight years,

grew this market share significantly.

It went from about a $30 million market to $100 million market.

And then I got promoted to national accounts, was there for

a year before exiting and then joining a rueful.

And I know there is a portion there, we were chatting before

we hopped online here. You even slipped over into like

Montana and Wyoming. And we found out we have a, a

few common contacts and a few friends in common.

So that was a, again, maybe not quite the 2/3 of the country

that you were covering with decking, but a pretty large area

that you covered. Yeah, and, you know, and these

relationships have continued to grow, you know, and, and that's

one of the things that's that's really been my favorite part of

it is being a connector. It's one of the greatest joys I

have in my life. And, you know, you need to meet

so and so and, and even you and I, we met because Chris

Zimmerman said, hey, you should give Mike a call, see if you do

it. You know, and these people that

we're meeting around the country are fantastic people.

And, and, and I've been appreciated that.

And I've got a MacArthur that's 2 miles, mile and a half, two

miles from my house who again, you think about this like today

still remains great friends. And we do stuff like I, I've

always relied on on Terry. Terry.

She's, she's fantastic. She saved me in 2008 because

they opened up two miles from my house.

I'm still a contractor. The largest hailstorm that in my

lifetime, I know everybody thinks, oh, 2017 was the biggest

hailstorm in the Twin Cities wasn't even close. 2008 was

there was shortage of materials everywhere, but they had just

opened up two miles from my house.

So I'd open up and I'm like, what?

I'd never heard of you before, but I'll, I'll open up an

account because I'll probably pick up ice and water shield or

vents or whatever. I really like my guy who at the

time was United Products. Well, when this massive storm

and we had a lot more national guys in those days flooded the

market, I got cut off at my main distributor.

My Rep came to me and was like, I'm sorry, Mike.

I mean, you're my largest account, but you don't write.

I mean, he was said it nicer than that, you know.

But the fact is I, I, I lost my way of life.

I could not get materials in 2008 except for my little

MacArthur that's 2 miles from my house.

And Terry said when do you need it?

And for that entire summer, I never missed a delivery for the

entire year. She, she saved my career, you

know, my, that was, that was my only, you know, source of income

with my family. So, so that's MacArthur and then

I know, so then when I started traveling with GAFI, I love

going to MacArthur because I've got this connection.

You know, I'm meeting with John down there and traveling with

him and we're having, you know, these 3456 hour drives down into

Wyoming. We're talking about John Piper

and, and, and old, old school theology and, and you know, he,

he's got a brilliant mind and you know, but you bring all of

these faces and people and places together over the course

of time and you just keep having all these intersections.

And it's been really a joy to be a part of of this this this

roofing industry has been been fun.

Yeah, again, you're going back to what we were talking about.

I guess you said maybe more regional, but even when I

started my roofing career a little after you, it seemed very

cutthroat, very closed off. And yeah, in the last decade or

so, everybody's just kind of opening their minds, talking a

lot more, a lot more welcoming. And I feel like that's shifting.

I've, I've had a few, talked to a few other people in roofing

that are like, man, if you're looking to get into an industry

today, there's no better industry than roofing because

there's so many people willing to help you, so many connections

to be made. And I love that MacArthur was

our primary distributor when I was in business and they're

actually a sponsor of the show. So our listeners will hear an ad

from MacArthur if they're listening to this podcast.

I have, I have lots of similar stories where it's a big enough

company to really serve your needs, but small enough that

every customer matters. You, you don't hear that answer

of you're not a big enough account.

You know, it's it's your neighbor, it's your friend, it's

somebody in your community selling to you and they make

sure they take care of you so. Yeah, and, and and you have the

same Rep like I like the people, the same people that have been

there when I was a contractor are still there today.

And they have watched me from me and I they Remember Me when I

was opening up in 2007. They saw me and I was I was

their Rep for eight years when I was territory manager here with

JF. And then now watching me and

making fun of me for, you know, all the shenanigans that Take

take part when I'm traveling around the country for Ruffle.

Oh man. Well, that's a great segue.

I know where you're at now is Rueful.

That's kind of a a passion and an exciting thing you got going

on. Can you tell us a little bit

about about that? How did you wind up at Rueful

and what is it that makes you so passionate about it?

Yeah. So I had a contractor in town

here in the Twin in the Twin Cities area.

They were always very innovative as a company.

They were doing virtual VR in 2015.

And some people like that doesn't really make sense, you

know, may not resonate, guys. They were doing VR in 2015.

Nobody was doing VR in 2015. And they would have homeowners

association come into their offices, put on these VR

goggles. They paid 10s of thousands of

dollars for this. You know, again, now we pay 800

and like that's expensive, 10s of thousands of dollars for this

equipment. And they would have the

association president and and their the group, anybody who

wants to put on the VR goggles and walk through their

association and see their new window siding, gutters, roofing.

That's how they sold to multi family crazy stuff like they

would just they would they would sit, the executive team would

sit down and go what's missing? How can we, how can we innovate?

Where does this industry need to go?

A couple years later, they were sitting there again having that

conversation and said, what's missing?

What's nobody doing, what's nobody looking at?

And they said e-commerce. When is e-commerce going to hit

the roofing industry? When is a home owner going to go

online, put their address in, get a price on their project and

decide within, however and what does that process look like?

Decide to have a roofer come out and do their roof and it's been

100% online. And so they created Rueful.

This would have been right about 20-20 about five years ago.

And so they figured this out and they built out an entire website

and they became a roofing contractor that was 100% online

and e-commerce platform. So homeowners would go online to

Rueful, which did not exist. They didn't have a permanent

location anywhere. They were in 18 States and and

home owners would come on and then, you know, at any point

they could hit talk to a pro and then somebody would come on and

they would go through the sales process and they would sell the

house. And then Rufel would not see the

roof in person until they came out to tear it off and put a new

one on. So it was 100% e-commerce.

Well, about it, two years into that they were being so

successful and growing so fast that other contractors were

looking at it and there the demand started coming.

We need your website or build us what you know we need.

We need access because clearly this is where the industry is

going and that decision was made.

Then I think it was like May of 2022 that they said, OK, we're

not going to be a roofing company anymore.

They shut that down entirely, became a SAS company.

So it was a, we're a subscription technology that

embeds on a contractor's website.

So they can basically have many of the components that we had as

a contractor put that on their website so that they can help

bring this. Because again, what are we

doing? We're putting ourselves into the

shoes of the homeowners and because the homeowners are the

ones that are creating the demand, This is how they do well

life. Why should roofing be any

different? You know?

And so, so that's where it came from, which then became

interesting because they, they, I started with them in October

of 2023. So it'd be out six months after

they had made this transition. And then they launched 2 weeks

later. And what was fun about the

entire experience and, and we sit back and I actually had a

conversation with, with Travis. He was the CEO when we were in

that day. We, we, we launched it at

Roofcon Big Booth. Nobody had ever heard of Rufel.

And when they came to it, that was what was fun about it.

Hey, have you heard of Rufel? No, Well, we are an instant

estimation software for your website and blank stares because

people didn't know what that was either.

Like we literally created a segment of the industry that

nobody had like say that again, you know.

And so over the next three years, building this, building

the brand, doing the marketing, getting adopt, adoption, and

then watching adoption not just from the contractors, but you

have to find adoption from the homeowners as well.

Because how many homeowners, and you've probably seen this too,

things that you're like, could you, do you really get a price

like this? Or is this just a gimmick bait

and switch where you're promising me a quote, but all

you just really wanted was my information.

We've all been through those funnels too.

So there were the process of adoption for even consumers to

trust this process that you are going to actually get a price

with a value proposition with it because that's important too.

I'm not, I don't care who you are, you don't buy price.

Otherwise we'd all still be driving Geo metros.

You know, we want, we want to know what this entails, you

know, so I want my warranties products, good better bass.

I want to, I want to understand this whole process.

And so that's why we created it. And This is why we're seeing

such explosive growth to the point where, you know, we were

able to be so desirable that we were acquired in December, which

was barely past our three-year anniversary of launching the

product. Oh, wow.

So what did that acquisition process look like?

Have have things changed at Ruffle?

What was it like as an employee coming through that?

Yeah. So depends on who you ask.

So it takes about a year or it took us about a year.

So from when the the point where, you know, we started

those negotiations and I was not much of a part of that whole

process. So if you ever want to have a

conversation that would be entertaining, ask Travis.

He was the CEO at the time and he's AVP of operations now with

the new company. But the amount of time and work

and effort and you know, like and you know this because you

went through probably a similar situation.

How long did it take for you to? Yeah, I was going to say mine.

Mine was a good year and a half. We ended up, we, we started down

that path with two different private equity firms and, and

got right to the finish line with one of them and finally

ended up doing an internal sale to one of my employees.

But it it took me a year and a half going through all the yeah.

And it can be brutal, right? Because you're doing all of this

stuff while trying to row and scale and, and, and run the

company as well. So that's where we we, but we

had really, we went, we go above and how do I say this nicely?

Like we were very intentional about the culture that we were

putting together during these three years.

So that we had the freedom that that Travis knew that he could

go work on his stuff and he knew that things were getting taken

care of behind him. So, but yeah, it was a, you

know, Kimmy and between Kimmy and Travis, they pulled off a

majority of this process. And it's not easy.

Not everybody can do it. And so, so I think I do want to

kind of talk about it. What's that?

Sorry, I was going to say, I think I read a statistic.

I guess I didn't look at the raw facts.

This is an Internet fact, but 65% of businesses that try to

sale never do. And it's, it's just what you

talked about. It's such a process to go

through the, the legal investigations, the quality of

earnings reports, the, Oh my gosh, it's just months and

months and months of legal and accounting and stripping down

your books to we had to account for every penny, 40 years, where

it went, what it was used for, how much we actually made, where

are the checks? Yeah, it was a process.

And that process is very different from a tech company as

well. And so that was even crazier.

Oh yeah, you guys got a your infrastructure, your software

does this actually. Do what it?

Says it can do. Or do you just have a fancy

website? Yeah, yeah, learning a learning

a whole different vocabulary because it everything,

everything just happened. And like even it's, you're not

looking at EBITDA, you're looking at, you know, your

annual recurring revenue numbers in your churn.

Like what's churn? Like there's all these things

that you had to learn in three years.

And again, remember, we're a bunch of roofers like this is

the executive leadership team for a roofing company that said,

hey, let's do this. And they put together this team.

And frankly, that's what I was driving and talking with Travis

again yesterday. We do this fairly often.

Sometimes you just stop and have to think, you know, the team

that we put together, how it was done, the intentionality, we we

paid attention to every little detail from how do we treat

customers, how do we sell the customers, how do we treat our

salespeople, how do we treat our success, the customer success

team, how do we build this thing?

So that is perfect, you know, and I don't think we could have

done a, a better job cumulatively.

Like every single person that was part of the team had a role.

We truly loved each other to be able to, to, to have something

that is a high performing culture that is very respectful

and, and acknowledging that we all come to our jobs, you know,

because there is still, you know, this whole thing of a work

life balance. And we all come to work with

baggage too, you know. And so how do we, how do we put

all these pieces together and just have a spectacular

experience? And we really did, to the point

where we we talk about it and say this is that we truly built

a Unicorn. As much as I would love to do it

again, I could work my the rest of my life.

Now I'm a little bit older, so it means a little bit different

coming from me. But my boss is, I don't even

think he's 40 yet. He could try this again 100

times and not have the experience that we had at roof.

Oh, yeah, it was, it was, it was a Unicorn.

It was perfect. That's incredible.

Like you mentioned, we've talked about a few times, I think the

industry is changing and the modern roofing industry, there's

an incredible amount of professionalism.

There's fantastic people. It's awesome.

But like you pointed out, I mean, back in the 90s, it was

kind of a cutthroat industry and and roofers earned a poor

reputation for good reason that it was a rough industry and man,

a stand out in the roofing industry.

Like like you said, I love that brushed your tooth this morning.

So yeah, if you if you said let's let's gather up a team to

build an incredible SAS tech business, a tech platform, a

bunch of old roofers is probably not.

Your misfit. Yeah, that's, that's not, that's

not the A-Team. That's not your first round

draft pick is a bunch of roofers, so that's awesome.

Yeah. So it's, it's so it was a it was

a magical experience. And and so, yeah, so now the

part of the new company and, and I I describe it like this

because I do have a lot of friends who are part of the

private equity roll up private equity in the roofing industry.

It's a big, big deal. And a lot of my friends that

we've been walking through this, this path together for, for 15

years or, and I'm watching them and, and, and one of my good

friends is Reggie Brock. I don't know if you know him.

He's yeah, we're, we're just crossing paths all over here

today. We got yeah, Chris and John and

MacArthur and Reggie. Yep.

So Reggie's a dear friend and, and has been for a number of

years. And and I was telling him

yesterday, I said, you know, this, any kind of private

private equity sale is one of the unique experiences where you

go through the divorce first in hopes for a honeymoon because

you have the death of an identity you really do like.

Roofal does not exist anymore as a single entity.

And as much as we want to hold this culture together and we're

doing everything that we can and we did everything we could to

prepare for this day. It doesn't matter if it's us or

a contracting company or roofing or whatever.

But we're always seeing more and more reports of, you know, since

private equity took over blank, right?

And there's part of me that says, I refuse to believe that

that has to be the case. As long as we can acknowledge

that these times are going to be hard because we've, yeah, we've

lost our identity, but we're gaining a new one.

And for every negative, we probably have 5 positives.

But we have to build on those positives and keep those in

mind. It's coming.

You don't start with a honeymoon.

It would be nicer if we did. You actually start with a

divorce where it's the death to yourself.

You're kind of the death to the company who's buying you.

And then there's this rebirth and then you look forward to the

honeymoon. I mean, that's really the goal.

The hard part is, and we just have to acknowledge it is

getting through that divorce without too much collateral

damage because frankly that that is the hard part.

That's the biggest challenge is how do you keep everybody

together during this divorce and rebirth?

Yeah, yeah. So what has that looked like at

Rueful and especially you mentioned you weren't a big part

of that, the transaction itself, but more keeping the company

going while that was all going on.

What has been the most difficult thing for you as you went

through this transition? I mean, on a personal level, I'm

not, I don't know what to say, how to say it, but I go through

those same things. I have those same self doubts.

I I'm going through the death of my identity.

I was, I was kind of a. Very frontal piece.

I was a big part of Roofal. I was a big part of their story,

their go to market strategy, their business development.

I was a big piece of that and I may not be that big of a piece

of the new company and I have to come to grips with that.

I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a salesperson, I'm driven to

success. I want these high performing

Organism and I might not have the say, they might not be

asking me questions anymore. I'm just I'm not that guy and I

have to come to terms with that. I have to be at peace with that.

So personally, I go through the same thing and that every other

person at both sales Rabbit and Roofal and Roof Link are going

through like they, we all go through the same things.

And that's kind of where I, I kind of pull Reggie back into

this because we have been, Reggie has been mentoring us as

a, as a rueful for years now, 32 to 2 1/2 years of our 3 1/2

years of existence. And you know, every week we meet

with him and, and he prepares us for these things.

And, and a lot of it has to do with authenticity.

You know, let's, let's be real with each other.

Let's let's make sure that we know that tension is going to

exist. We know that collisions are

going to happen. There's going to be personal

friction. Let's make sure these collisions

happen in the parking lot, not on the freeway.

You know, let's keep the collateral damage down.

But you know, let's figure out how to how to work with each

other And then and then how do now we have to enter and we're

not now our family just adopted a great big family.

So now how does that with those, what are those dynamics going to

look like? And, and we have to do that in

a, in a way that we're creating a better and a new and a healthy

culture on the other side of it as well.

Because last thing we need to do is, is, you know, having weird

competitions and, and you know, it, it's, it's not easy.

It's just not easy, but it is rewarding to get on the other

side of it. I admittedly did not, I didn't

know a lot about Rufel coming into this.

I knew a little bit about you and your background.

I didn't know a ton about Rufel. And so the more I'm learning,

I've kind of got this, this internal conflict of we talked

about. I'm even though I might be a

little younger, I'm kind of that old school roofing crowd of man.

Hand nailing is better than an air nailer.

Like there's the right way and the wrong way and the new way is

the wrong way. You know, it was very hard for

me to kind of let go of that being in the field on the roof,

doing the work myself. But I'm very much the tech guy

in in my personal life. If you can buy it online,

there's no way I'm walking into a store to get it.

Like I love the simplicity. I love online and the tech.

My part of my education is actually computer science as

well. That's something else we share

in common, but there we go. So just hearing your story, I'm,

I'm kind of torn here of like, wow, what you're doing here.

Roof is so cool, so revolutionary.

If I was buying a roofer my house, I want to get on your

website and use it. But then the roofer part of me

is like, but, but that's not the right way to do it.

So I see maybe a similar tendency with you.

What has that been like coming from kind of the old school

roofer that did it the old school way to now running a, a

tech company that is at the the cutting edge of kind of the new

technology in the space? Has that been a difficult

transition? Is that something you've had to

reconcile kind of in your own spirit?

Yeah. So I absolutely have to

reconcile this, right? Because, and I'll tell you a

really specific story because I was in, I was in Rapid City, SD

meeting with Master Elite there and he was actually training his

guys to go out and drive by the house.

And if you saw the car in the driveway, just keep driving.

What we do is we leave the estimate in the in the mailbox.

Don't talk to them, No reason to.

And I'm looking at it go like, where's the value in that?

Like what? So you're saying that all you

want my customer to see is a price.

That's it. And so I started making bets

with him because I knew it was better, you know, so I said,

tell you what, I'll be back here in in three weeks.

And in that time I want you to do.

And I gave him very specific things to do and I would train

the sales guys to do it. And we got rid of that process.

You like, no, you need to hand it to them.

But here's the thing, other thing I need to do, I need to do

across the board, add $5 a square to your price every

single week. So when I come back here, we're

going to look at your books and I want you to be $15 a square

more expensive than you used to be.

And we're going to, we're going to track a few different

numbers. We're going to track your sales,

your close rate, your profitability.

And I'm going to challenge you as to whether or not this is

proper way. You probably know the end of the

story. The guy, his, his wife was in

tears when I was because she was very much in the bookkeeper side

of it. So when I was asking him that,

the whole story started because it said how much do you make on

an average job? And he told me it was like 5 or

$600.00. And I said it looks to me like

you're at about somewhere between 50 and $85, you know,

and he got mad, stormed off. She started crying.

She said, you're right because you're seeing these big checks

come in, right? And they're coming in and he was

one of the larger ones. So it was always a lot of money

coming and going. He didn't realize he was not

making nearly as much money as he thought he was.

And anyway, so we started this process and, and it was super

successful. So now let's forward, let's Fast

forward now. What did I just do?

I'm joined a group that's just giving a price online.

Just put your address in, we're going to give you the price.

So how do you reconcile 2 vastly different aspects?

Well, so two things that you have to think about #1 and if

you'd mentioned it, this is what I want.

But just because you want it doesn't mean I need to give it

to you, because that's not how the world works.

However, you also have to understand when I was teaching

this guy how to do it, what didn't we have?

The Internet, the access to information now becomes the

conduit by which you give your value proposition.

So especially with the younger generations, how do they value

truth? Where do they find it truth?

And then and, and the number one like this is what I wanted to

say is how do people trust contractors these days?

Where does that trust come from? How do you build trust?

It looks a lot different than it did 15 years ago. 15 years ago,

I came to your house. I sat at your kitchen table.

We talked about what we had in common.

We gave the value proposition. You were in those days and this

is a stat is you were 20% of the way through your decision making

process. I as a salesperson came to your

house, gave you your your bid and got you that 80, the rest of

your 80% until you were 100%. You signed the contract and we

did your work. In 2026, you are as a consumer

90% of the way through the decision making process.

And how did you get there? Well, through the process of

going online, looking at the contractor's website, you see

their about Us page, you see their certifications, you see

their warranties, you see the all it's this value, value,

value, value, value there in the reviews.

Are you local? All these things.

And now you get a price to this. But if you're not getting those

questions answered, guess what you're doing?

You're going to the next contractor.

Yeah. And so if everything has

changed, so, yeah, am I giving a price?

And my answer to that is, I hope not.

Because if I'm giving you a price, I want you to also see my

reviews. I want you to see my trucks.

I want you to see the people. I want you to.

Yeah, It's going to be at 10 o'clock 11:00 midnight, but

you're seeing it on my website. I'm developing that trust.

I'm giving you that value proposition.

It's just done, just done online rather than in person.

Now, does the transaction though, and is e-commerce really

the true that we can start getting into and dicing this up?

Is e-commerce really going to come out of this?

My answer to that, I don't know, because I think it's going to

look a lot like the automobile industry.

Is Carvana taking over the world?

No, not really. People still want to go.

Now they're doing all of their exploration online, but they're

not actually swiping a credit card to buy a car necessarily.

Carvana has what, 8 to 10% market share, something like

that. They still want to drive that

car just to make sure this is what they're really looking for

and, and wanting to do. I think roofing is going to

continue to be like that. They want to know all the

information. They want the price, they want

to be able to shop. You know your options.

You want a good, better and best and good, better and best.

Which one is the most popular? They want all the information,

but ultimately they're going to end up doing that transaction in

person. OK, that's an interesting take.

And yeah, I can relate to a lot of that of yeah, I love the used

car. Like you do all your research

online, but you still want to go see it, feel it, touch it, talk

to somebody, hand them a check. Just putting a credit card

number in online, there's some purchases that just doesn't feel

right. Yeah, yeah.

And when you're at that initial stage, like you need a new

truck, hey, honey, grab the kids, put them in the car.

We're going to do the dealerships and you're going to

go to dealership to dealership to deal.

You're going to spend a whole Saturday just to try to look at

inventory. What are you doing?

You're looking for the exact same thing that you have at the

end of your fingertips. You know nobody's going to do

that. So that's why I regardless of if

you agree with me or not, the fact is if you want to continue

to be that used car dealership that has no digital presence on

online, guess what's going to happen?

You're waiting for that guy who wants to get the kids into the

car with his wife and go dealership to dealership to see

inventory. Guess what?

You, you, you are going to cease to exist.

I'm sorry. That yeah, that's what I was

going to say. You know, Carvana might only be

8 or 9% of the market, but your average used car dealership down

the street is point OOO, 1% of the overall market, like 8% of

an entire market. That's a big market.

If roof O could own 8% of the entire roofing market, that's a

win. That's a big market and and

that's an asset that people need to be offering.

Yeah. So really the, the idea is that

in used car markets, 95% of the process of buying a car for a

consumer to buy a car, 95% of it starts online, 85% of it ends in

person. And that's kind of what we're

telling the, the contractors as well.

So a roofing contractor who's a subscriber for roofing, we

actually white label this, embed it right on your website because

the, the homeowner has to deal with you, not with us.

They have no idea who we are. So they come to your website,

put your address in, see that. Now here's what most people

miss. They are also consuming 66 pages

of content before they make a final decision. 66 pages of

online content. Most of the time when I'm asking

that question in a group of people, they're saying one page

we have the the attention span of a guppy.

You know, one page, half a page, 2 sentences, whatever.

You got to remember they're watching videos, they're

watching, they're reading your reviews, they're looking at a

lot of things and because they have access to a lot of things.

So they're making their decisions based on all this

information they have, which is why 95% of it starts online.

But I think about 85% of it is still going to end up in person,

which is why you want those, you know, not just getting that lead

from your from your technology on your website, but also doing

the follow up to be able to secure that appointment in order

to finalize that contract. Yeah, it's a both and not an

either or, right. So, yeah, awesome.

Well, that sounds like a great tool.

I guess my last question about roof, when is it going to be

available for commercial applications?

So it is already, it is already and we do have some subscribers

that are doing it, but most people are, you know, the big

chunk of our subscribers are doing it for single family

because that's, that's where the, you know, home owners are

driving their traffic to the website.

And it's a home owner experience where we're seeing in

commercial. It actually works better for

commercial than it does for residential, frankly, really.

But OK, well, because it's a lot easier.

So we have the ability to get number of squares pitch and

complexity in less than 3 seconds.

Well, we already know the pitch on all the commercial buildings

like it's, it's flat, right? Here's where it's tough is that

you're, if owner a large warehouse space, it's got a flat

roof on it. Am I going online and doing a

search for roofer near me? Maybe, but probably not right.

So now where our subscribers that do a lot of commercial,

what they do is they will set up their, their because you get,

you know, up to 8 different options.

So if if you're doing flat roofs, I want to give you a

TPOADPDMA coatings option on a repair option so that business

owner can put their address in and see OK, so I can do this and

get an EPDMATPOAPVC at a coatings.

And so now I have that ballpark price.

Generally Speaking of what we're seeing though is in those

applications as they are actually calling their

contractor of choice. So you would actually equip your

inside sales Rep or they're inside any of your workers.

So when a call comes in, hey, I'm looking for a estimate on

this thing. Well, hold on a second, get your

information and then send it to them before the phone calls over

again, home owner, the like the business owner that's got this

warehouse doesn't know is this a $30,000 roof or a $300,000 roof?

I have no idea. And if I'm doing codings, maybe

it's you know, a 30% of that cost, but like there's a lot of

information, but I just want to know, get me started, help me

get started. Can I afford this now?

Do I need it in the future? Yeah.

OK. So it's more than getting in a

ballpark or rough estimate rather than a firm.

OK, I can click buy, put in my credit card number and be done.

Right. Yeah, because in in commercial,

I don't know how many, you know, I don't know, I don't know how

many refrigerator devices you have up there.

I don't know the metals that you know the the trim metals.

Exactly. That was the, you know,

commercial gets so varied and do you have four roofs up there

already and we got to tear it off.

Is it wet? Are we talking new insulation

package, structurally sloped, tapered insulation?

You know there's so many variables that you really can't.

Yep. But what if I can help eliminate

some of those variables in a way that's understandable to you,

Mr. Building Owner. We can do this on a quick

conversation in the middle in the midst of 15 minutes.

Can I come up and, and I need to just verify some of these

variables for you. Now it makes a lot more sense.

And what did I do? You just earned my trust because

what are you not doing? You're not giving me a well, I'm

not going to tell the price until you and I have a

conversation. I waste 3 hours of your time.

Yeah, OK. Yeah, Yeah.

That's awesome. I can see some value in that.

So, well, I want to roll back and you know, you've, yeah, been

in ministry, you've worked as a subcontractor, you've owned your

own business, you've worked as a manufacturer's Rep.

And now at Rufo, you just have a vast array of experience and

knowledge kind of all in the the roofing industry and in in

leadership and dealing with people.

So I want to tap into that a little bit today.

What advice would you have for a young person looking for a new

career that that wants to do what you've done, that wants to

pick a Trade and Industry, a field and just kind of advance

and keep going? What would be your advice

education fields to look at? You know when it when your kids

are headed off to college or graduating high school, what

advice do you give them? Oh, it's such a great question.

Yeah. And I do have 5 kids.

So my 4th 1 is a is a freshman and I just went and took her to

she's volunteering at a camp this in the offseason.

My other son is actually he's in the middle of taking his Mcats

right now. So he's he's he wants to be a

doctor. So yeah, my kids are all over

the place. I've got my oldest is a, is a

roofing salesman for a local company here and my other

daughter just graduated with her master's degree last weekend.

So they're all over the place. Right here's here's the point,

though. What I, I love about it is we

have always encouraged their effort, not their results.

So our kids, if you know, I don't care if they got AC or an

A+ if they didn't do any work and they got an A+, we still

encourage, we, we still celebrate the effort, not the

result. And when I look at my youngest,

I don't, who knows if he's going to go to college at all, but he

will always be a lifelong learner.

And that's number one, always be a lifelong learner.

And that doesn't necessarily mean college or junior college

or high school doesn't matter. And I feel like when I learned

the most in my life to where, Yeah.

So you could go on building Experts Institute sounds really

fancy. It's an online course.

There's it's all on code compliance.

I teach this class. I didn't learn that in college.

I learned that because 20 years ago I was sued for $450,000 when

I was just a one man entity and I was pretty scared.

And what did it make me do? It made me dive into the

manufacturer's installation instructions, the pro field

guide and code and defend my processes of installing a roof

assembly. And so I dove into that stuff

and I owned it right. And I, I owned up to and then

end up, you know, there was, it was basically, it ended up being

a, a pretty frivolous lawsuit that I had no problem getting

away from. But it's scary because this is

my lifeline. This is this is what I.

Built with I got I got a hit pause here.

How do I mean, I'm assuming this is a a roof on a personal

residence. How does that end up being a

$400,000 lawsuit? Yeah.

So I was doing a lot of new construction.

This would have been like 2002, 2003, and I'm still doing a lot

of new construction in those days.

So it was a it, it was a, I think it was about 1000 square

between 8:00 or 10 buildings, something like that.

OK, so. It wasn't one home owner, one

home. It was like a a subdivision that

you're doing for AGC or something.

No, and it gets any and this is good stuff to talk about, right?

Because it wasn't even something that they saw in my roof.

It was actually AI think it was like a $3,000,000 lawsuit

against the builder. And so they sue everybody that

put a single ounce of effort into this project.

What was really at issue in my understanding of it was the

depth of the driveways and the privacy fence that was installed

that they didn't like and they wanted $3,000,000.

And so they sued everybody that did anything.

So this is the politics of owning business.

You know, the joys of being a business owner.

So I get served papers and I open this thing up.

I'm a 20. 8 year old that's got a three-year old company that

I'm still up on the roof installing every single day and

I get sued for $450,000. Like what do you do?

You know, I've got, I've got a 2 year old and a six month old at

home. And so it took me back.

I like, OK, let's go back to the basics.

Let's, let's get everything I can.

And basically you have to become your own attorney.

And so, yeah, through that process, I, I kind of figured it

out and I was able to like mark a lot of stuff.

I took it to my attorney. Again, it wasn't a big deal

because what happens is that you have to give up your.

So this is Minnesota. We're a highly regulated state.

And so I had to have, you know, my insurances.

So an insurance company is the one actually getting sued.

Of course there's limits to this, you know, so I'm scared

anyway, but my attorney calls me, I come in, I have this 40

page document demanding $450,000 and I have a pro field guide and

installation instructions in the code book all marked up that's

addressing all of their 30 or 40 page document.

And the attorney looked at me and said picked up the phone and

fired. His expert said this is way more

thorough than the guy could ever do it.

And he allowed me to sit in through the entire process.

So again, what did I do? I learned through that entire

process because I heard every conversation, every back and

forth, the judge came in, you know, as they were doing all the

demands. And and it was that that really

said I am a lifelong learner. I am going to not just say what

I think is true, I am going to find out what's true and I'm

going to defend it in writing. You know, what are the published

and approved installation instructions from the

manufacturer because it matters. Yeah.

So I need to know what those are.

And, and so that kind of springboard that so be a

lifelong learner and is number one, first and foremost.

And secondly is, is be a connector and for whatever

however you want. And, and to me, that's about

loving people. If you don't like love, value

people, doesn't matter. I've never regretted having a

relationship with somebody. And I was talking to my son, my

oldest son, who called me last night.

He was so excited because he's a, he's a salesman for a roofing

company during the, during the year.

And dad, I got invited to apply. He's going to, and he's got all

these certifications. He's like his, his, his life.

Love is racing cars and he has the opportunity to maybe, and he

thinks he's going to get it, become a coach, a driving coach

for exotic cars during the winter time.

Tell me that isn't the coolest thing ever.

Right, that's awesome. Are they taking applications?

Right, right. So I mean, it's a long process

to get to this point, but here's my response to him.

This is literally last night. It was like 10:00 at night.

I said, Peyton, do you remember how this started?

Like he's got this organization that has invited him to be part

of this experience. And he and I were on a retreat,

a men's retreat with our church. And we were sitting there

talking about, I don't know, the group of guys.

And I started making fun of this guy's shirt.

That was again, I'm a, I'm a roofer.

I'm like, I'm this idiot. But it was had racing cars.

I'm like, and I and I made fun of his shirt because it was

something racing that I didn't understand and started.

But I started up that conversation and as my son who's

sitting next to me and this guy that I, we'd never met before

and we went back and forth and turns out it's his father-in-law

that owns this, this organization that does these

things. And, and then they connect.

They they, and this was a year and a half ago, they connect,

exchanged numbers and they've been talking for a year.

And he has been helping my son throughout this last year and a

half get to a place where he now has a very reputable experience

log that he can do something like this.

I said, if I hadn't said anything about his sweatshirt at

this men's retreat, we would never know about this thing even

existing or that we haven't, you know, put these pieces together.

So I don't care who you are. If you're in high school, you're

in middle school. I don't care you're even if

you're in college, you're not in college.

Maybe you're in a dead end job. Every conversation matters.

Every conversation matters. I was, I was at an Owens Corning

event and talking to this guy and I didn't know who he was,

right. And but we started making I'm

again, I typically I'm the guy that's just making jokes or

making fun, whatever. And we were started talking

about tech. And so I kind of clearly this

guy's from tech and we started talking back and forth and he

asked me, I can't remember the question he asked me, but I said

that's a really interesting question.

I got, I got dead serious. And I said one of the joys of my

life right now is I'm working with a team and we're watching

the success of a tech company. We're a bunch of misfits, but we

love what we do and we're very connected uniquely to each other

and to the industry. And we're watching it.

And I'm telling you right now, this thing doesn't happen

without this exact group of people.

These, this team is the only way to I said it's, it's a surreal

experience I've never experienced before.

And I watched him and he actually got emotional.

Like I swear I saw a tear. The guy was from.

He was from Acculinks. He's been there.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

He was one of the founder and not, he wasn't the founder, but

he was like, I think he was like the 5th, 6th, 7th and who is

ever employed there. And he started, he told me his

story of when he was there and he said Achillinks never would

have grown if it not just that you had people there, but you

had those people there doing those things with the skill set

that they had. And it's a rare thing, but it's,

it's just, it's so much fun. You know, when you start

collaborating at that level and, and feeling that level of

experience and, and that level of success.

And, and those things only come from connections that you make

and relationships that you make and people that you invest in,

whether they're deserving of investment in it or not.

You know, I've never regretted having a relationship with

somebody. That is some fantastic advice.

And I can tell you I have regret sitting on the other side of the

table. I've kind of always or when I

was younger, I discounted the value of connection.

There are times I look down on it.

Oh, they only got to where they're at because their

connection, they didn't work for it.

That was handed to them. They had an opportunity nobody

else had. And I just, I put my head down.

I'm the guy that when I get on the airplane, instead of talking

to the person in the seat next to me, I like, you know, hat on,

headphones in, clearly communicating.

I don't want a conversation. I'm going to watch my movie.

Leave me alone. And the older I get, the more I

live life, the more I see the value.

It's not that you don't still work for and earn it.

You know, you have to do the work, but those connections are

just invaluable of just connecting the right people.

And I mean even just us talking today, the the, the mutual

connections of the mutual friends, people and connections

make the business world move. They make the world go round.

And the more you can connect, the more relationships you can

build, the the farther you're going to go in this life.

And that's something I wish I would have done a lot earlier

on. I kind of had to.

I'm just going to do my own thing.

I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to work hard and I'm

going to let my work speak for itself.

And, you know, people are going to recognize my work.

And, you know, there's value to hard work, but there's a lot of

value to relationships. Yeah.

So I, you know, you say you you never regretted a relationship.

I often regret that I didn't build more, so that's some good

advice. Sometimes the harder ones, you

know, and I, I learned that one early on, you know, I was doing

a, a project and, and the guy was, oh, he was so hard to work

for. I mean, he was, he was in the

front yard, sitting in his yard in his lawn chair, you know,

yelling and watching every single thing.

He went up and I swear he had a magnifying glass making sure

every nail was exactly right. I think I went up there and I'm,

and I mean, the guys were just furious with me, but I said, no,

you do what he says. And because he would look and

he, if he even saw a nail underneath the shingle, he

would. And we took out dozens of

shingles and replaced him at his.

I remember coming to my, my wife and like this, it makes me want

to quit. Like I just want to fold the

business. I never want to have an

experience like that and for the rest of my life, I'll tell you,

less than a year later, Home Depot was running a sale for and

this is in the days when they were starting to come out with

these really cool battery powered tools, tool kits.

I think I got like a 11 pack or something like that.

I saw it, you know, it was like 5 or 600 bucks, but it was on

sale and I'm like, this is awesome.

I bought it. I bought 1.

I took it to his house and I gave it to him because I could

directly attribute 12 jobs to him because he knew that I went

through that hell that he put me through.

And he was so happy with the end result.

He told every single one of his neighbors and every single one

of his neighbors said if that guy can get a lot, get a, an A

recommendation from him, we're going with him.

And so you know, it, it is, I mean, the number of times that I

want to burn a bridge because they're hard to deal with or I

don't like them or they're mean to me or they're, they're not

doesn't matter. Whatever reason it is, man, just

keep you can absolutely, it's your, your choice.

You can burn that bridge. And maybe sometimes you should.

I'm not saying that shouldn't but I don't and and there's most

times I just refuse to and I think I'm better off for it.

I agree a wholeheartedly and I know I've actually reflected.

I think some of our best customers are raving.

Reviews are not the jobs that went perfectly, they're the jobs

that had problems. But we handled it well and it's

stepping up to that challenge, stepping up to do things right,

to love people. We had 5 core company values.

That was the first of our company value was we love

people. So when you love people, take

care of people, serve people. When you do the right thing,

even when it's hard, sometimes that speaks louder than doing a

job with no problems. Yeah, it is funny.

I guess. So one of my side projects, some

of the things that I just like I started doing just cuz I, I, I

think it's cuz I entertained myself, which is kind of a, a

bad reason to do stuff, but I just do it.

That's why I started doing my Facebook and social media stuff.

And about two years ago, a year and a half, two years ago, we

hired a, a gal Tara, and we, and she's, she's actually good at

it, you know, And so she, I was her supervisor And so, you know,

I was encouraging her to do more content because it's just

everything she did just worked. And, but it's like everything

else, like we, we all have our insecurities and we all have

these things. I can't really do it that way.

I get, and one of the things that we joke about a lot is

like, Terry, you just don't really like people that well, do

you? I don't, I just really don't,

you know, and just being real with that and encourage her in

that. And we, we did again, it was

this morning, yesterday, 2 days ago and having that conversation

like Tara, are you kind of loving people now?

I mean, is this kind of a thing? I know I really AM.

And she started talking about how much her life has changed

over the last six months. She's like, I just, I like

people, you know, and that kind of stuff is reflected in, you

know, even as silly as, as social media can be, people

respond to authenticity. People respond to, you know,

everything from the kindness to the silliness to the humor to

the seriousness. And you know, when you put

yourself out there and especially for being a little

bit vulnerable specifically, I think she took a screenshot and

said other girls post my post and hers had such a hideous look

on her face, Like it just caught her at a weird moment.

And she's like, that's funny. And that became the cover of the

video that she did. And, and I, I, I responded to

her. I said, I bet you you're going

to get a lot of people, girls like contacting you, whatever,

maybe in person or if you're at an event or or in DMS or

something saying I resonated with that.

I saw your courage in that because I feel pressured.

I have to look a certain way all the time.

And because, yeah, because I think her text was Harris text

was this is my biggest fear. And here I'm just broadcasting

it. And I said it's not just yours,

it's mine. It's everybody's biggest fear.

And when you're being vulnerable in that way, you're making

everybody else feel like it's OK, I don't have to be perfect.

And, and just this entire this life giving experience that that

comes out of that level of authenticity and to where people

are like, all right, I like that.

I want to be like that. I wish I could be like that.

I wish I had that courage. And it just, it opens up a whole

new adventure in your life. I love it.

We started talking about roofing kind of business in general, and

now we're just getting good life wisdom.

You're full of all kinds of wisdom that that's good stuff

right there. Is there an opinion that you

once held strongly that you've changed based on your

experiences? That's a question that's

probably been asked to me like 3 times in the last month.

It's funny, really. OK, yeah.

And, and the reason is because I think there's a lot of people

that that they wish that they would, but they don't.

And when you're looking at especially religion and politics

in the America today, people don't change.

They don't change their minds. And the things that they held

fast as a kid, they still hold fast to today.

And part of what happens as you close yourself out to healthy

debate. And, you know, in, in biblical

times, the men of the city would actually gather in dirt certain

places and they would engage them each other in debate.

And I think it's a healthy thing.

And I think one of the things that I, I, I, I, yeah, it goes

directly to personal attacks. It has nothing to do with

following a logical argument anymore.

And we are closed to changing our minds.

We will not change our minds. I feel like I've had a lot of

things that change in my mind. And a lot of that has been, you

know, a result of me saying I would never chip, that's not

that way, but then saying, but why is that?

And then challenging myself to wait a second, back up, hear it

out, let's figure it out. So there's some pretty, I

subscribe to some pretty weird, I think unconventional things

that most people wouldn't think of that I would be.

So for example, I was adopted as a as an infant.

So I spent about 3 months in a in foster care and then was

adopted and then we've done, my wife and I have done foster care

for 13 years. We haven't for the last couple

years. My youngest son is adopted out

of foster care. We've had between 40 and 50

children through our home over the course of that time.

And I refuse to get political about foster care or abortion,

which is a huge change. My votes will reflect a pretty

conservative as you would expect, but I feel like Jesus

was so good at getting to the heart of questions And when when

the Pharisees specifically see there's a lot when the Pharisees

would say, is it this way or this way trying to trap him?

Yeah. And he would say you're you're

thinking about it wrong. It's not that way, you know, and

he would change it. He would create this new thing

and say, you're not even, you're not even asking the right

question, you know, and, and there's some things that are

like that where our, the philosophy that has emerged in,

in American politics and, and religion, evangelicalism, no,

nobody's immune to it at all. Has, has come to different

things. So for example, one of the stats

that really changed my mind about all of this is a ministry

called Save the Storks. I don't know if you've ever

heard of this Matt Maher. I heard about it from a concert

that I was at with him. It is an organization that

exists for one purpose and one purpose alone.

They have, what do you call it, you get an ultrasound.

They equip mobile ultrasound units so that anybody, any

pregnant woman in America can have an ultrasound with their

child. And the reason why that exists

is because once a woman has seen ultrasound of their child, there

is an 85% chance that they will not choose to abort it.

Yep. So you tell me how important is

my vote to have the United States federal government define

or the state government? I'm sorry, this is new.

And so this is all the states now it's up to the state.

I don't care if as a Christian, if as a man of faith, as a man

who has values, I don't care what direction you want to go to

this. If I know that internally, if a

woman can see their child in an ultrasound, they have an 85%.

You know what? They don't care about the laws

anymore. They don't care that the federal

government chooses one way or another for them.

It doesn't matter. So again, that's just one

example. Yeah, I'm OK with being

pro-choice because I don't believe that the government is

the place to regulate the heart of a person.

Now, do I vote one way? Absolutely.

I absolutely do. So as a person who was adopted

myself, I've adopted foster care, you would think, well,

you're pro-life, pro-life, pro-life.

And I am. But I also know that there is

value. How should I say this?

Authoritarian value in a government making that the

choice? That's good.

Well, thank you very much for your service to our, our

culture, our society, being a foster parent and, and loving

people that way. That that's an issue that my

wife and I feel very strongly about.

And we, we feel very strongly for those that choose to foster.

We, we tried that in our home and found that just our home.

And maybe at that time we were just not equipped and ready for

it. We might want to circle back

and, and do that again at another time, but that's a, a

topic close to our heart. We love to support foster parent

organizations and it's not that the national organization like

that, but we support very strongly a local organization

that provides those same services for women in our

community to let them have an ultrasound and see that baby.

And so I guess just let me say thank you for your service to

our culture, our community, our nation in loving children that

way that that's a big deal. Yeah, it's an honor and, and but

it is. I mean, it's hard.

I don't we we it's not it. I don't know that it's always.

You know, it introduces chaos into your home pretty much 110%

of the time. And so it's not for everybody,

but it is it is a calling And and my wife is, is the absolute

St. that that really pushed this whole time because again, you've

heard me, I was traveling a lot. I've traveled a lot in my

career. And she has always been that

rock that has really felt called by God to be a a foster mom.

And she's really good at it. And, and I think thank God for

every day for the effort that she's put in over those 15 years

or 13 years, whatever it was. We haven't been doing it

recently just because we've got a nine year old that's that

demands a lot of our attention. And it's hard to introduce more

chaos. That that might be kind of where

we were at. We tried to do it pretty early

on when we had really young kids and there was some disruption to

the birth order. And yeah, be careful.

We have to, yeah, it might be something we have to revisit

here is our kids grow up a little bit, but man, parents

that do foster parenting and and love kids and that way, that's a

special calling. Those are special people.

And yeah, God bless you. That's, that's amazing.

Is there a major mistake that you've made in one of your

numerous careers or in life that you wish you could have avoided

or you would have done differently if you could do it

again? So I am a colossal failure.

I make lots of mistakes and there's a lot of reasons for the

lot of mistakes. I think I'm one of the best

mistake makers on the planet and I'm actually kind of OK with

that. And do I, do I have some

regrets? I do I regret the way the end of

my career at JAF went and I regret it desperately, But at

the same time, would I do anything differently?

I just like I don't. I believe that through that, you

know, God ordained this career that I have with with Ruffle.

I do believe be out of shadow of God because there were so many

crazy things that were happening in that last year that if I had

done things differently, I think it would have still been the

same result because I believe they got it ordained there to be

a divorce in that relationship. I was, I really thought I was

going to be a, a career GAF guy and a lifelong GAF guy.

And, and, and I there's not very many people on the planet that

make can make a mistake. Like, I can make mistakes, but

they just become part of my story and yeah, become part of

the success later on. I I would disagree.

I think probably all of us make those mistakes.

You might just be the one with the humility to recognize it.

I mean, I've made some pretty mistakes.

Yeah. I, I, yeah.

That made people like, OK, where did that come from?

And I don't know. I don't know.

I just. Yeah, it made sense.

OK, so I'll, I'll tell you one really quick.

Now this isn't like this isn't a really bad one, but it's one of

those that you so I had a guy from college e-mail probably

like a year or a half ago, two years ago, something he had

actually kept a journal of high school years, which to me this

time, like 30 years later, like that's, that's kind of fun to

do. So I'm sitting here, I'm reading

through this thing and and the number of times I actually come

up in it because of the all the dumb things that I did, like I'm

sure that made sense at the time.

So I send this to my daughter, who's now a freshman at the, at

Taylor at the at my alma mater. And she's reading through this

and going, dad, you were crazy. She's like, what about this one?

You guys were out camping and it was raining.

You're having a hard time with with getting fired.

So you thought it you, you would start the fire in the bed of

your truck, drive it across the campground so that you had it.

And by the time we were getting there, like it was blazing.

I had this blazing fire in the back.

Like, I'm sure it made sense at the time.

Honey, just relax. I'm sure if that had caught, you

know, the bed of a truck, it's right next to the gas tank.

Like, if there was an explosion, can you even imagine what the

report would be in the newspaper?

Like, OK, so there's this idiot who thought it was a good idea

to start a fire in the back of his truck and then drive it

across so that they had firewood in their campfire.

Like I'm telling you, I make really bad mistakes.

OK, I have. That's a good one.

I have. Yeah, I think that's called

being a adolescent male because I can recount a few.

Oh man, if I start rethinking high school years, college

years, it's a miracle that I'm alive.

Right. And these days it's all on video

because somebody's pulling out their camera and taking a

picture. Look at this moron putting fire

in the back of his truck. That terrifies me.

If I had been a decade later, I I would be dead or in jail.

The things that me and my friends did and got up to I I

just thank God there is no video evidence.

If there was, oh man, that these coming generations, it's a bit

terrifying for me. I think just being an adolescent

male is going to become a punishable offense because we

all make we all make mistakes, we all do stupid things.

And now they're recorded forevermore.

They're on the Internet. You can never get away from it.

It's terrifying. And not only that, and we don't

need to spend time on this side. I'm not quite ready.

I I'm really I love putting on the tinfoil hats.

But maybe not today. But then they can get cut and

sliced and, and, and manipulated and, and now you have something

completely different that's promoted to the entire world.

Lives are changed just with video editing.

And then we got to start talking about AI.

I'm very grateful to have grown up in the 80s and 90s because

this is, this is, this is a very concern.

That's a big concern for me. It is.

Going forward, it is. We do our best to limit our kids

exposure to some of that, but my only hope is maybe because of

all of that, it'll just be so overwhelmed and so unbelievable

that it'll get back to where it doesn't matter anymore.

I just, I kind of think it might.

I really do. When you hit the point that you

cannot trust, cannot believe what you see with your own eyes

on a screen, there's going to be a point where it all becomes

meaningless. And we can go back to only

trusting, only believing what we actually see in person.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, man. Well, I know we're kind of

bumping up against our time window here.

I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I have a few

questions I like to ask every guest.

We've talked about this a little bit, but just to to bluntly

state it, let you kind of throw it out there for everyone to

hear. Are you a person of a particular

faith tradition? And if so, how has that shaped

your life and your leadership? Yeah, so specifically

denomination. I consider myself a mutt.

I have been Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, been I've been

pretty much all around and back because I'm now back to Lutheran

again. I am a believe Bible believing

Christian. I, I, I've been changed.

My life has been changed by doing a couple of study tours to

Israel. It will absolutely change your

life. It'll change the way that you

read the Bible. It really takes it outside of

that. Just kind of the, the, I think

the echo chamber that we can get into as an evangelical in the,

in the Western United States, It's, it's, there's a different

flavor to it that that brings the Bible alive when you put it

into context. And it's important to understand

the geography and the philosophy.

What were the philosophers saying?

What were the teachers saying? Why were they saying it?

Where were they saying it? You know, the geography, the

politics is all really important.

And, and once you see that your life has changed, your

experience with the Bible has changed.

And so, so that's kind of my, my explanation of my history of my

denominational leanings and background.

OK, awesome. Well, thank you for that and I

appreciate your faith and how bold you are with it and the way

that that's clearly impacted your life and serving the

communities that you're in. Our last question I asked most

guests to either fuel or settle the debate.

If you have a job to do that requires A cordless tool, which

brands do you prefer? Oh, that's not fair.

That's not fair because I have to be embarrassed.

I was always a DeWalt guy. I always was.

And so today I have two DeWalt drills.

So I'm a DeWalt, but I know that my son who is a gearhead and he

has all Milwaukee and I understand Milwaukee's a better

tool and it's he's got all of the tools.

And so yes, I'm insanely jealous of his Milwaukee, but I

personally own DeWalt. OK.

All right. Well, those are our 2 front

runners. We've had a few people with

other answers. I think right now DeWalt.

Wrong. They're wrong.

Those are the only two answers. Like I could did someone go on

one way or another but. Awesome.

Well, Mike, thank you so much. This really has been a pleasure.

It's been a lot of fun discussing areas of life where

we kind of intersect and overlap.

And you just have so much experience, so much wisdom in

the the roofing industry, in the tech industry, and just in life

in general. I really appreciate you taking

so much time to chat with us and I think it's going to be a great

benefit to our listeners, So thank you.

I appreciate the time, this has been a lot of fun.

Thank you. Awesome and thank you guys for

joining us again here on from the ground up Show again, if you

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