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

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

encourage and inspire the next generation of blue collar

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

done that and are usually still doing it.

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

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

fascinated as I am. Randy is a former fire captain

who accidentally entered the roofing industry after having

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

built a small family roofing business into a massive

construction conglomerate, now employing 78 people and doing

more than $30 million in annual revenue.

Andy is a former break dancer, a father to six, a husband to a

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

to 4 grandkids. So he really has an awesome

story. Randy, thank you for joining us,

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

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

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

from? How did you grow up?

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

today? Well, I currently reside in

Texas. I moved here with my family in

2005. I grew up in California and

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

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

Mexican gangs, Eastside Torrance and T Flats.

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

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

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

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

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

there, you know, had issues, got into gangs, but, you know, it

didn't happen because I had an outlet.

I learned early on that I actually had rhythm and so got

into break dancing with friends and ended up in one of those

crews that you see, you know, shown on in movies where that we

we battle other crews. And, and I was the secret weapon

because I was the only white guy and everybody else that, you

know, is either Filipino, Hispanic or black.

And so, yeah, it was that was my story for my teenage years.

It was how I stayed out of trouble most of the time.

Oh, man. So how does that, I mean, do you

guys battle for money? Is it an organized competition?

Do you just meet up in a back alley?

It's what does that look like for somebody that.

Is organized, you definitely don't You don't battle for

money, but it's more for, you know, more for St. cred, you

know, because everybody knows who won at the end.

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

that crew out and it's kind of adolescent.

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

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

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

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

So yeah, I guess it worked out for me.

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

or adolescent to me. That sounds awesome.

I wish I could have seen something like that.

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

up in Southern California, break dancing rather than joining a

gang, where do you go from there?

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

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

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

And then I had stepdad in the house.

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

to church on Wednesday night as a youth night.

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

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

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

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

exposure to church would be I, I just distinctly remember every

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

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

stop light or stop sign or whatever.

I'd see her drop her head and, you know, do something.

One time I asked her mom, what are you doing?

And she's like, I'm just praying for whoever that ambulance is

going for. So that was kind of my exposure

to, to Christianity as a kid. And then, you know, in my

teenage years, my early teenage years, when I was 13, a buddy of

mine that I grew up with around the block, He, he said, man,

we're going to church on Wednesday.

You want to go with us? And I'm like, church.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, they, they play games and they, they

feed you and there's music And I was like, yeah, that sounds like

fun, you know. So so I went and that night I

looked across the room and I saw this really cute blonde girl,

blue eyes. And and so I remember the next

Wednesday, I'm like, hey, are you going to that church thing

again? And he's like, yeah, I am.

You want to go? And I was like, I do, you know,

And of course I was not going for the right reasons, but I

want to see that girl again. And so I started going regularly

and finally mustered up enough courage.

There's some other drama that came out of that.

You know, ironically, my now wife, who I've been with since I

was 13, originally liked my brother who was there and but

ultimately I got her and yeah. And yeah, we've been together

since. Congratulations.

There you go. So we've been together since I

was 13 and she was 11 and Yep my only girlfriend ever and we

still date. Wow, that's awesome.

That's awesome. Growing up Southern California,

you met your girlfriend now wife at youth group.

What does education look like growing up?

You know, education, just I graduated with a high school

education at high school diploma.

I, you know, as I mentioned, I, I was in into break dancing.

So it kept me out of a lot of trouble, but I still got into

some and one of those things got me kicked out of high school,

traditional high school. And so I had to go to a

continuation school. For those of you not familiar

with a continuation school, it's basically where they send the

riffraff troublemakers to finish school.

And that's exactly what what I did.

And so I graduated from there and I knew I did not want to go.

I did not want to go on to college.

I've never been a big fan of school just because in, in, in,

in my education, I always felt that whatever was being taught,

I understood it. And so I thought it was silly

that I had to go home and do a bunch of homework and, and take

tests. I would generally do really well

on the test, but I, I'd hate the homework.

And so I graduated, but it was like a three-point O and it was,

you know, I immediately went to the workforce and the workforce

brought me among many other jobs from, you know, I worked at

Chuck E Cheese. I as a yes, I was the character

to, you know, you, you do a lot of different jobs when you're.

Yeah, yeah. And so I, I, I, I worked there.

I worked at a place called Play It again sports, managed their

used sports equipment store. And anyhow, many, many small

jobs led to ultimately where I, where my career in IT started

actually back up. I was a loss prevention officer

for a sporting goods store. And I remember one day I'm on

the cameras and I see this guy come in that I once knew from

Chuck E Cheese. So I went down to the floor and

I was like, man, what have you been up to?

And, and he told me he was working at this place called

Fry's Electronics, which I don't know if in your area they ever

made it out that way before they went out of business.

But it was a pretty big chain in the, in the South or in the, in

the West. And it, it made its way into

several other states ultimately after I left.

But while I was there, they were only in, mainly in California.

And I started learning a lot about computers.

I started working at, at Fry's and one day a gentleman who I'd

been, you know, coming serving, he'd been coming in to buy

computer equipment from me for years.

He just, he, he, he said, can I get a business card?

And I hand it to him and he flipped it over and he wrote AK

on the back and I said, what's that?

He said I would like you to come work for me.

Name your price. And I was like, whoa, this is

sudden. And he goes, no, I've been

coming in here now for several years.

And every time I come in here, you always do a great job

serving me and telling me exactly what I need.

And you've always helped me out. And you really know what you're

talking about. And I own a software company and

very specifically in the security, in the world of

security. And I'd really love you to come

work for me. OK, Well I told him I thought,

well, I make $48,000 a year here, which, you know, back in,

I remember what the date was, it was probably 1995.

That was a pretty good chunk of change for a young guy.

And he said, well, I'll pay you that as a base and and I'll pay

you Commission as well. And so of course I'm thinking,

well this is great. So the next day I took my lunch

break to go to his office and kind of almost interview him.

I wanted to see what it was all about and what exactly he did,

what he was expecting me to do. And yeah, it ended up turning

out where he hired me immediately, put me in a

training. I got all my Microsoft

certifications and immediately started working for him,

consulting with companies, with his network security software.

And that sent me down a path of 2020 points, some odd years of

serving our customers and mitigating their risk in iti was

always learning throughout the entire process, constantly.

I would be the guy that everybody leaned on to the sales

team about, Hey, can you explain technically how this works?

And because I, I, I proud, I pride myself in being a very

technical salesperson at the time, you know, I wanted to

understand why the software worked, not just that it worked

and how it worked. And that gave me the ability to

be very successful. And I just did that for a long

time. We ended up moving the family

out to California, I'm sorry, to Texas in 2005 from California.

At this point, we just had our two children, Brittany and

Christian, and was working from home.

And yeah, I mean, that was the education side.

I can go into the professional side of where that all led to,

but yeah, was working from home doing my I.

It sounds like that was a pretty smart guy hiring for talent

instead of certification. So.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, you know, I actually carry that into

my Business Today because of that, that mindset.

But you know, I was working from home and working from home at

that time is a little bit different than working from home

today. You know, post COVID you're you

can have a lot of background noise and kids and everything,

but pre COVID that was very unprofessional.

And so I decided to move my Home Office to rent an office space

and ironically ended up renting the space next to DT Roofing,

which is the company that I now own 1/2 of.

And I was doing my thing. And I would, you know, being an

extrovert, I would go out and talk with the the other business

owners within the building that I was renting out of.

And, and Derek, my now partner, happened to be one of those.

And he and I would go to lunch and talk to business.

And I really didn't know anything about roofing, but I

did understand business sales and marketing and what have you.

And so I'd give him some pointers and he'd utilize them.

And so finally I told him, I said I'm out of ideas.

You know how to help your company.

I said, why don't I sell for you on the side like nights and

weekends? And that way I can learn the

business a little better. And then maybe I can give you

some other advice. And so we started doing that and

then I really started liking it. I really started loving working

with homeowners instead of dealing with corporate America

like I was doing it with my IT job.

And so I started praying about like, you know, God, if you want

me to leave this career and go into a different career, you're

going to have to make it abundantly clear because it

became an identity for me. Like that's all I knew was IT

security. And probably about six months to

a year later, he answered that prayer because the owner of the

company that I worked for as a contractor for 20 some odd years

called me and said that they had been purchased by private equity

and that they weren't going to be bringing on any contractors.

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

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

and I needed to make something happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

operation wise. And he he, he said OK.

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

And last year, we closed $30 million in revenue on the

residential roofing side alone and we started four other

companies since then. Wow, wow.

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

period of time. Where does that fall in?

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

didn't, I didn't know anyone. And my daughter befriended a

girl at school who after about 3 months of going to the school,

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

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

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

we're going to have to meet their parents.

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

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

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

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

And of course, I'm coming from California and not only, not

only California, but the big city.

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

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

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

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

Just the same. You know, you go through the

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

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

about that. So her husband ended up reaching

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

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

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

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

various brush trucks and, and rescue vehicles and just all

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

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

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

that they needed to be able to do it.

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

So I got 45 new friends immediately.

I joined the department. I ran every single call I

possibly could. I think I broke all the records

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

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

showed up, I think to everything.

And it wasn't too far off of that.

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

I got my introductory firefighter.

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

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

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

voted as officers, you don't get promoted.

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

several years and then ultimately voted to be a

captain. And 17 years later, I retired

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

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

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

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

the community. And so I decided it was a good

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

volunteer firefighter and I love it.

I absolutely loved it. I got my EMT certification while

I was doing it. Obviously went through all the

fire school. We were very aggressive wildland

firefighting department. So we were known in our area for

for being the the organization that you call in when you want

something done and and it's still like that.

That sounds pretty exciting. Are there any single calls that

really stand out or incidences that you could tell us about?

You know, there's a there's, there's many, honestly, I worked

a ton. I mean, so many car accidents.

We had a major highway that ran through our community.

And so, you know, so many accidents where you'd roll up on

an accident. You just know that everybody in

the accident perished and everybody lived and it was

always a blessing. There were some pretty traumatic

ones that I worked, you know, dealing with, you know, off, you

know, troopers and, you know, or just it.

I can tell you that our, our department did a really good job

with critical incident stress through briefings after major

calls like that. So that I did it and, and, and

my colleagues didn't end up with PTSD years later, you know, they

did a really good job making sure that we talked about it

and, you know, and, and they stayed connected because in that

world you see some pretty horrific things and you see it.

Across the spectrum, you know, you things that you would say,

why did that drunk driver get to live?

But that family all died, you know, and stuff like that.

And so very exciting, very exciting experience for me, no

question. It really fits my personality

though, because I am that guy that's an adrenaline junkie and

running into a building that's on fire when everybody else is

running out. It was definitely an exciting

part of my life that that I I don't regret doing.

It gave me great insight and experience in areas that most

never are going to experience in their life.

And so, but yeah, definitely, I remember this one brush fire

that we had, we got toned out for a grass fire and it looked

like it started at the road and on a major highway.

And so we're we show up on scene and it's burning towards this

house. And fortunately we were able to

get ahead of it, you know, run out to the head, put the fire

out, and no sooner than we start to get this one under control

that we get toned out for another fire about 8 miles up

the road. I'm like, you got to be kidding

me. So I'm smoked out already, but

we got this one under control. Let's Glen Rose go ahead and

show us en route to the next one.

So we head out and we're starting to, we're almost to

that one and we get toned out for 1/3 fire.

That's only about 5 miles from that one, but they're all in the

same trajectory. And so we arrive on the second

one. We've have a second alarm

sounded for the third fire and a fourth one calls out and

immediately I get on the radio and I said, Glen Rose, you've

got a semi truck dragging a chain going down 67.

You need to get a trooper out there to stop him because it was

the only logical thing that could have been happening that

we would have that many fires in a row.

Either that aura or we have, you know, somebody sparking them

off. And that just, you know, and

that's exactly what it was about 10 miles down from the 4th fire,

they pulled a truck over and he was dragging, dragging a chain

and just sparking fires off. And but that was a that was

definitely one that always stuck out, stuck out because, you

know, you just get fire after fire after fire and it's going

the same way. It's like there's, there's no

way it's anything other than that.

The craziest fire I've ever worked actually was one that I

worked after I retired. I'm still, I'm still on the

reserve list for major calls. And a couple of years ago I got

called out. You might it might even have

made the national news in Texas. Chalk Mountain as a 7000 acre

fire that burned for three days. And my chief called when he

called me. You know, we're friend, we're

friends, but we're not like doing life together friends.

And so when he calls, it's probably going to be something

important. So he calls and I pick it up and

I said, what are you working? And he goes a big one.

I need you. And I was all right, I'm on my

way. And so for three days, I was

gone. And, and that was just a couple

of years ago. It was a huge fire.

We had Texas Forestry Service flying tankers over the top of

us. And yeah, it was it was just

chaos. It looked like a war zone when

it was all done. Oh man, man.

So if you're not fighting fires as frequently anymore, do you

have some hobbies or things like that that fuel that adrenaline

rush that that need to get out and, and chase that rush a

little bit? Yeah, I have grandchildren.

Great answer. But, but you know, realistically

that I do, I do have a, I love Rd. racing.

I have a, a 2009 Nissan GTR that I bought a couple of years back

that my wife insisted I buy because she knew that years ago

when the GTR was first announced.

I've been following that vehicle ever since it, it came out.

I've always loved it. And and so when I had an

opportunity to buy, buy a used 1, she, she said, you know, you,

you, you've earned it. You go get it.

And so when I get a chance, I love going out and driving it.

There's a track here actually close to our our office.

And so I plan in the future to be able to get a little into

that a little bit more now that I have the vehicle to be able to

do it. That's awesome.

The growth of our companies has has kept us back, kept me back

from being able to to go all in on that hobby right now.

But that probably be the closest to the adrenaline that I'm that

I'm experiencing today. That sounds awesome.

That is a sweet car. I, I do not own one, but I would

love to. So, well, that sounds like a

great segue to dive into more where you are today running DT

Roofing and the subsidiary companies.

Tell us a little bit about getting started there.

After you, your first day you get hired, no salary.

We're going to have to figure it out.

Where do you go from there and how do you build it into what it

is today? Sure.

So out of the gate, you know, and this is a nugget that I like

to share with other entrepreneurs that I mentors.

You know, I always say wear as many hats as you can until you

can afford not to. And you know, in, in my case, I

was selling, I was managing the other sales team members, I was

ordering the roofs, I was taking care of the supplemental stuff

on the back end of the insurance work.

So I'd pretty much my day Monday through Friday would look like

get up, it's 536-O clock, work all day, come home, have dinner

with the family, put the kids down, spend a little time with

my wife. She'd get on the couch and read

a book. I'd go to the kitchen table,

open up my laptop and I'd work until one O clock and then rinse

a repeat. And I did that for probably

about four years, three years, four years until we got our

revenue up to a point where I can afford to hire people to

start taking some of the hats off my head.

And one of those decisions was getting out of sales personally,

which I hated because I do love selling, but I knew that it was

necessary for the growth of the company.

So I told my partner I was going to get out of sales.

And he said, wait a minute, hold on, you're half of our revenue

and you're going to get out of sales after I've given you half

my company's. And I said, yes, but there's a

plan. And I said, ultimately I'm going

to hire more guys and train them to do it the way I did it, so

it'll have a force multiplier. And well, he said, OK, I trust

you. You know, you haven't let me

down yet. And that's exactly what

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

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

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

point. And the year that we did that,

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

with what the increase was the years prior.

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

million. And so that's when he knew that

the decision that we made was the right one.

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

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

trajectory standpoint of success, downhill from a getting

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

side. And it's another lesson that I

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

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

do everything under one umbrella.

You know, DT roofing, gutters, garage door construction, fried

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

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

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

And So what I try to encourage other business owners to do is

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

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

out other trades, do it as individual companies.

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

actually profitable. So you're doing something that

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

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

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

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

trying to merge into the roofing side.

And of course, roofing is just an example here.

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

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

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

where it was synonymous with quality.

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

community, integrity. You see it all behind me.

These are the things that we the building blocks in which we

build our companies off of. And so when we decided we wanted

to start, for example, a construction company and build

homes and do remodeling, what have you, which we got really

good at Kingdom Builder construction, ADT company was

almost instantly successful. So I didn't have to call it DT

construction. I can give it its own unique

identity, but putting ADT company below it give it instant

credibility. And so companies didn't,

customers didn't know the Kingdom Builder construction,

but they knew that DT logo, that logo right there.

And so they, you know, so a lot of people would say, well, if,

if those are the guys that are part of that, I want to you

know, I'm going to do business with them because they've done

my roof in the fast and the experience was wonderful and

what have you. So it gave us an opportunity to

start a new business, start new services in the area and be

successful at it because we had taken the time and effort to

grow the original brand first and then it just continued.

You know, Patriot Garage door and Service, ADT company,

Guardian Seamless Gutters, ADT company.

We also separated our residential roofing with our

commercial roofing because those are, even though they're both

roofing, they're both 2 entirely different businesses because

they deal with two entirely different customer types.

The residential customer is going to make more of their

decisions based off of emotion because it's their home, it's

their castle, right Where the commercial person's just going

to make it based off of, you know, lowest cost possible and

you know, whatever makes the most prudent sense for business.

And, and so the sell cycles are much longer too.

So if you can't have the same guys trying to sell both, it

just create it's chaotic. Plus the the margins on of the

profit margins aren't the same either.

And so we separated the two companies and it's actually one

of the best decisions we've made in the roofing side because now

we have distinct leadership in each one of the companies,

distinct sales folks, service tradesmen that are out there

doing their craft in their specialty and our customers are

being served well because of it. And so all of the companies have

been successful in their own right.

Guardian Seamless Gutters is a brand new company and it's on

trail track to do $1,000,000 its first year.

Our Guardian, our garage door company, we'll do $3,000,000 in

revenue and that's not terrible for any consider a garage door

company generally sells grand stores a hundred $1200 at a

time. And so the philosophies and the

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

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

blocks to build each one of these other companies.

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

out. We already knew what we needed

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

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

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

fried chicken ADP company come online?

There's not going to be a fantastic fried chicken.

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

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

that as an extreme example because that sometimes you

wonder like, what were they thinking, you know?

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

realm. We'll leave the fried chicken to

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

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

fix both of both of their roofs, you know.

But. Sounds good.

Yeah, That's, that's yeah, that's the advice to those out

there. They're trying to be everything

to everyone. Sounds like you guys have had a

pretty meteoric rise with DT Roofing and all your subsidy

companies. How do you manage growth like

that in a sustainable way? What does that look like?

Well, it looks like finding good leaders, you know, if you try to

do everything yourself as an owner, you're going to burn out.

Zero question. It's a lot cheaper to do it that

way. I mean, you know, if you're not

hiring a bunch of leaders, you don't have a bunch of salaries

that you're paying. But then you're going to burn

out and that's the path that I was headed down.

My partner would have been head down the same path had we not

decided that if we're going to do this, we need to have

management in place for each one of the companies and that we're

focused specifically on those companies.

And so once a month we have a, a leadership meeting in the same

room that I'm in right now. And all the leaders from the

companies, our CFO, our CMO, they all get together and we

talk about that month's successes and, and any issues

that came up and things that need to be voted on.

And we and choose, we choose the employee of the month.

And, and so we get together as a team every single month and talk

about that collective stuff. But each company in its own

right is run in, you know, as its own entity every month.

And so what's great about it too, is they feed off of each

other too. You know, DT Roofing, oftentimes

when you're replacing a roof, the garage door got hit by hail

as well. And so you need a garage door.

So they, they get a bid from Patriot, they don't get special

pricing or anything. It's same price they would give

another roofing company or a customer.

And same with Guardian seamless gutters.

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

other people that would be traditionally our competition.

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

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

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

they can use our gutter company. All right.

Now our gutter company can only keep up with our roofing

company. And so, yeah, there's a lot of

wisdom there in regards to, you know, you can not only run them

as separate businesses, but kind of cross pollinate between them

and I'll still allow the outside world to use them as individual

services and kind of almost predict your success.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah.

I mean, it's can you get to like?

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

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

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

farm and they also own the packaging company.

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

to be successful because the main product is successful.

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

reason to go out and pay somebody else to do those

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

Yeah. Can you give us some insight

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

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

subsequent companies? Yeah, Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

operational side, our first year we did 3.7.

The next year we did 5.8 and we did 7.5.

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

grow. Every year there was growth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

construction company. The year, same year is when we

also decided to start a garage door company.

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

one reason and that or for one of two reasons.

They're either we felt that the service was either underserved

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

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

company. None of the MEPs services

because those were all represented very well in our

area and still are to today, still are today.

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

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

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

something that we knew nothing about, it should probably be

something that is already either underserved or poorly served.

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

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

happened. And so anything that we're

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

of the time. And you know, fortunately this

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

one of our companies has won the best of category.

Our community where our headquarters is, has a best of

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

overhead doors, gutters, you know, construction.

And fortunately our companies have won their categories every

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

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

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

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

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

community that votes on those things.

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

operations, are there any moments that really stand out as

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

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

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

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

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

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

family and. And people that rely on them,

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

other employees that are relying on us making good decisions in

order for the companies to continue to succeed.

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

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

can make them work somewhere in the company.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

going to be passionate about what they're doing.

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

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

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

And he said, hey, you have a second.

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

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

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

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

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

And I was like, man, that is awesome.

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

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

his area. And so, you know, identifying

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

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

something he was passionate about.

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

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

life personally that they would otherwise not have been able to

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

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

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

teachers get paid crap for what they do.

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

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

you know, paid terribly and being an amazing teacher.

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

teachers. It was really gratifying to see

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

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

me that, that that brings me great joy.

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

exactly. And I was, we were impoverished.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of leaders.

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

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

under them achieved something and really succeeded and made

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

part of somebody's story in that way.

Yes. I know you guys have a really

cool program, you call it DT Serves.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

So DT serves is a two-part program.

The first part, once a once a quarter we find somebody in our

service base that is in need of something.

You know, most recently it was an elderly lady whose back patio

completely collapsed off of the back of her house and it was

just poorly constructed from the beginning.

They didn't tie it into the actual frame, you know, roofing

of the house. It was just attached to the

fascia. And so it failed.

And fortunately nobody was hurt because it happened while our

guys were doing her roof and she had actually told them like,

look, I'm not sure if that's sturdy or not.

And, and our guys were actually had just walked under it and it,

it just came off, you know, and I'm sure it had something to do

with when they were removing the shingles that came up to that

portion of the of the patio because we hadn't roofed that

area yet. But she said, hey, don't.

I'm so glad no one was hurt. Don't worry about it.

It was, it was going to fail anyways.

We always knew it was, I was just, I don't even go back here,

whatever. So, so I got back to my VPS LS

and he said, man, why don't we, why don't we do ADT serves and

build this lady a new patio, a porch area.

And so we did and cut back the roofing, you know, got into the

decking to the trusses and and went ahead and tied it in.

So it was nice and strong and all seventeen of our sales guys

took time out of the field where they're making money because

they're Commission only. And and we served her for 2 1/2

days and built build out her a new patio and she was so

gracious, you know, grateful rather.

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

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

construction. We made it a lot sturdier than

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We got the idea from the Boy Scouts.

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

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

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

collect them later. And so we go into neighborhoods

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

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

Look, we're going to come back by.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of families that could use the food.

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

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

And of course, naturally customers are going to love

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

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

that I got. It was at a conference back at

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

keynote for it. I got to speak with him three

weeks before his passing. And there was a gentleman there

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

and you can have for profit businesses, He said, but what if

you had a four purpose business? And he went on to tell how he's

made millions and millions of dollars, but he's always had a

four purpose business where that that purpose was for everything.

Every this that we do, then we'll do that.

You know, it's not just donating to an organization, but tangible

something that, you know, for every, and I'll give an example

where every 20 roofs that we put on, we'll build, We'll, we'll

dig a water well in Africa or something.

And it's a four purpose business.

And so I came back with that and, you know, approached my

marketing, our CMO, our chief marketing officer, and I said,

hey, I told her the whole concept and I said, I want to be

a four, four purpose business. And, and so the, the canned food

portion is what she came up with and it was in direct response to

the crisis of the pantries in our area and all the counties

that we serve. So.

Wow, that's pretty cool. That's a great idea.

That's a really. Yeah, I've not heard of that

before. Well, that is something pretty

unique about your business. Are there some other things

unique about you as a leader or unique about your business that

you think have contributed to your success?

You know, we wake up every morning with a willingness to

serve. I think if any company who has a

service based business just remembers the industry you're in

is called service. And if you just no matter what

your trade is, if you wake up and your goal is to serve your

fellow man in any capacity, but of course, obviously in your

trade, you're going to be successful.

I mean, it's just a reality. And in fact, I would even argue

that it's easier to be successful in today's age than

it was in our grandparents age, because in our grandparents

grandparents age, it wasn't uncommon for people to just

serve for the sake of it, right? You know, it was more wholesome.

It was more, you know, neighborly these days, people

are, you know, when the, when the world went flat, you know,

everybody's so focused on their phone that they don't focus

around the people, focus on the people around them.

And so our, our whole mindset in our company is relationships,

going out and building relationships not only with our

client base, but with other professions that need our

services in order for them to be successful.

Real estate agents, insurance agents, property managers.

And when you do that, well, a huge part of your revenue every

year comes from these people as well.

You know, on average, between 1/3 and 1/4 of our revenue every

year comes from those three titles.

And it's because they know who to call because we're not

focused on just getting business from them.

We're focused on solving a problem that they have.

And because of that, they're willing to send all their

business our way. So I think that's something

that's unique about our company is our approach is not just the

traditional marketing. I only spent 1 1/2% of my

revenue and marketing. Every book I've ever read on

business says you're supposed to spend between 6 and 7% of your

revenue on marketing. So the reason why we don't have

to is because we spend so much time being human beings that

that naturally turns into revenue dollars because

customers want to do business with us.

That's a great way to approach it.

We have a similar philosophy in our business and I think it

served us well so. Yes.

Have you made any mistakes in the last few years that you

think significantly delayed your growth or your trajectory?

I would say that we've made decisions that on the outset

did, but on the onset we, we felt was a good decision.

For example, you know, I've mentioned that we've started

several companies. Well, one of the companies that

we started years ago was a power wash and, and soft wash company.

If you're not familiar with soft wash, everybody knows what power

washing is, but soft washing is when you use a chemical to clean

something, it means the surface can't be hit with power

otherwise you'll damage it. So soft washing uses a bleach

like material that cleans the surface and there was a huge

need for that in our area. We noticed a lot of roofs that

were not damaged but just ugly because they had algae growing

on them and algae naturally, it's called Gliocapsa magma, but

it naturally feeds on the limestone in the shingle and so

it breaks your roof down. So we thought, well, if we can't

replace the roof, we'll clean it and make some money off of that

as well. Well, that worked.

It worked really well actually. And it brought in on average

between 300, three, $150,000 a year in revenue, which isn't

terrible at 60 to 70% margins. Not terrible, except when you

consider that all the time that we were spending doing that

well, we could have been focusing even more on our $30

million roofing company. And so sometimes, you know, we

didn't, we didn't have good, a good experience finding good

leadership to just take that over there.

Otherwise it would just been another business in the in the

DT family. But when we, we just had, we

had, we definitely had somebody, you know, that would go out and

do the jobs. But as far as having a leader

that would step back, that wasn't in the field but could

step back and grow the company and, and come up with ideas that

we just didn't have that step, you know, anybody to step

forward to do that. So it relied a lot on me to do

that and it just didn't make sense for my, my time was more

valuable growing our other businesses than it was to do to

grow that. And So what we did is we found a

local window washing company that actually wanted to get into

power washing and soft washing. And we said, well, how about we

just sell you all of our equipment and anytime our

customers call to say, hey, can you come out and do this?

Because they knew that we did that in the past.

We'll just let them know we no longer do it ourselves.

But this is the company we've partnered with and this is so

you should use and they use that business that they get from us

to help pay off all the equipment that they bought from

us. That was very expensive when we

bought it. And so that's worked out because

customers are still served in that space.

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

theirs. And so that would probably be 1.

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

experience. It gave me the experience of

knowing that if I start a company without leadership out

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

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

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

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

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

operation over operations of the other companies.

And so, and it's what we learned.

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

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

leader for it. So we haven't started it, you

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

So it was a good lesson learned in that respect.

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

something that didn't work out entirely.

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

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

prevent you from making a bigger mistake later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know, the good contractors list.

I came on two months ago as their, as their chief operations

officer to help grow this company nationwide.

It was a company that was founded by John Hill in 2011 in

the DFW market and the sole purpose of it was to help

homeowners find good contractors so they'd stop getting screwed

by bad contractors because that was a rampant issue.

It's actually a problem all over the nation, and he did a great

job growing that solution in the DFW market.

In fact, since 2011, they've backed over $5 billion worth of

jobs in just DFW. And so how the good contractors

list works is if you're a contractor that meets the

requirements of the company for a small fee every month, we back

every single job that you do with a $25,000 guarantee from

the good contractors list. So it builds instant credibility

to that that contractor and sets them apart from anybody else

that they might be competing with.

And the way that that segwayed into that, as I, you know, as I

said, sometimes you got to do something that nobody else is

doing. When John Hill first came to his

family and friends and said, hear me out, I'm going to

guarantee every contractor that gets on the list with at the

time, it was a $10,000 guarantee on every job they do and they're

only going to pay me $250 a month for it.

What do you think? Everybody was like, you're nuts.

You're going to guarantee somebody else's work and to that

dollar amount and you're only going to charge 250 bucks a

month and 14 years later it's going nationwide.

I came out as a COO. My company has been on the good

contractors list since since 2019.

Beginning of end of 19, beginning of 20.

Since two other of my companies have joined the list and it it

helps close business for for good contractors.

It helps you go in and present to the customer and be different

than the rest because you essentially pose 0 risk at all

to your customer. Because if DT Roofing doesn't do

exactly what they said they're going to do on the contract, the

good contractors list will come in and make it right up to

$25,000. That's a big deal for homeowners

because it removes the risk of choosing this contractor.

And so it just tells a better story than the rest.

And the good news is, is that out of that $5 billion that we

have backed over the the last 14 years, the percentage of claims

that we've had because a good contractor ended up turning into

a bad contractor and not doing what they're supposed to do is

so infant, it's so minute that it's not even, it's a

calculating error. And that just tells us that

we're doing the right thing. And so that's my most recent

venture is because I have such amazing leadership here in this

company and I don't have to be in the day-to-day like, you

know, babysat, you know, micromanage.

They're doing an amazing job. It allows me to focus on growing

the good contractors list nationwide where it was once

just a DFW based company. The last two months that I came

on, we've been able to grow the company into 15 new states.

Wow, wow. That's some pretty incredible

growth. You guys are going to be

nationwide any minute now. That's the goal.

Our goal is within the next three to five years that every,

every home in America, especially in the major markets

where it can, where it can propagate a lot faster, that

every, every home has the good contractors list on their lips.

You know, when they're thinking about hiring a contractor,

they're going to go to thegoodcontractorslist.com and

put in the trade that they need put in their zip code and find a

bunch of companies that have already been vetted by our

company and that we're willing to back with a $25,000 guarantee

on every job. And that way homeowners don't

have to go to Google anymore and play contractor roulette.

You know, it's no longer about what they say about themselves,

it's about what we say about them.

And we're willing to put our money where their warm mouth is.

That says something. Is there anything that has

happened in your leadership journey building DT Roofing that

has caused you to really shift an opinion about something?

Something that you felt strongly about before and have opened

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

your mind. Yeah.

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

probably pretty specific to our industry, especially in the

storm markets. And that is I used to think that

if insurance companies stopped insuring roofs, which 10 years

ago you said that and people would laugh and say insurance

companies are never going to stop insuring roofs.

But it's a real serious consideration now among

insurance companies. But if they stopped insuring

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

point where homeowners that that would affect our business

negatively. I've shifted that mindset into

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

do it right that are going to be around when that happens.

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

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

company is going to charge 4% deductible.

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

roof. And so in an environment where

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

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

the whole roof replaced. They'll tend to go with pretty

much any guy that comes, you know, with a fancy truck and A

and a slick tongue as at their door.

They'll sign a contract to replace the roof.

But when they have to come out of their pocket with either more

of it through a high deductible or all of it through having to

finance to get a new roof, they're going to be a lot

pickier about the company that they choose.

They're going to want the company that actually takes

their business seriously. Because when you give somebody a

5 or 10 year warranty on something, it kind of implies

you expect to be in business for five to 10 more years.

And so they're going to be more specific about who they choose.

And so my, my vision or my goal is to just continue to grow a

company that everyone will want to use when the proverbial crap

hits the fan on the insurance market and they stop either

covering them all together or making it so painful that the

homeowner is having to come out of pocket a majority of the

roof. So my advice to the roofing

companies out there would be be be that company, be that company

that everybody's going to want to use when they have to come

out of their pocket more. The other thing you need to

really know how to do is offer financing.

Because if you just stay old school and expect the homeowner

to come out of pocket, the average homeowner has 2500 bucks

in their savings account. So financing is inevitable and

so you have to make sure that you you partner with a good

financing company to offer financing now instead of waiting

for when it's a necessity because then you're going to be

left behind. Yeah, well, I know you read a

lot. You clearly put a lot of thought

and interest into growing. What are some of the best

resources you have used to grow as a leader?

Hmm, great question. So there's a great book in the

roofing industry by a friend of mine.

Now I consider him a friend. At the time I didn't know him

from Adam. His name is Martin Pettigrew.

He wrote a machine. He wrote a book called The

Roofing Machine and it's a great book that every roofing company

owner should read. I don't necessarily agree with

everything in the book now that I've been in the industry and

have been a leader in the industry, but 95% of what he

says in there I agree with 100%. Obviously Atomic Habits,

everybody should read Atomic, Atomic Habits.

It's an absolutely great book for habit forming, keeping you

on pace and tasks. I also study apologetics which

for those of you that are not familiar with Christianity,

apologetics is the study of things that make up our

Christian faith, more evidentiary type stuff.

And I've, I've been studying apologetics now for probably 8

to 10 years. And my favorite book is by a

gentleman by the name of Mark Clark called The Problem of God.

And the reason why I like it is because he came from being an

atheist to a very similar to Lee Strobel or some of the other

guys out there, Jay Warner Wallace, that we're all atheist,

but ultimately came to professing, professing the name

of Christ because of evidence that they, they came across and

have since, you know, now they would say they have faith, but

it took some evidence for them to get there in their minds.

And, and, and the problem of God is an excellent book.

I've probably, I've probably read it 3 or 4 times.

And truth be told, I'm not a big reader.

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

I have a lot of windshield time in my truck.

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

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

when she hears me reading a book.

And I just like I, I can hear what he's saying and everything.

I just don't want to wait for his draw.

That's a little bit longer than I want to listen to.

And so so yeah, most of the books that I read are.

I do the same thing. You know, I get, I get through

them pretty quickly and it allows me to consume more of

them. But that said, I don't like to

read a whole lot of books. I love documentaries.

I and as I said in the onset, when I'm in the education

portion, I definitely love to learn.

I'm just more of a hands on learner.

Like I didn't know anything about business, so I got into

business and now I'm teaching other people business.

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

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

and on it maybe never even had a business.

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

about it. In fact, sometimes I'll read

something, I'll go. This guy clearly has never been

in business because that does not work.

You know, that philosophy is is dead.

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

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

life and and things that I care about.

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

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

title and what direction would you take it?

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

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

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

I, I don't normally do these long form podcasts.

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

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

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

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

that had the police lighten up my house.

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

shooting a kid in the butt with ABB gun.

Come on, California. That that graduated from

continuation school. By the way, I would love to go

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

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

of all the students that are currently there.

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

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

those. If someone would have come into

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

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

at that time. Ultimately, things worked out,

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

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

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

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

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

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

It sounds fictional to be honest with you.

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

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

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

write. I, I, I know that it would be

full of plenty of color and stories and I'd probably get

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

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

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

You know you have a really unique view or approach to

collaboration with other businesses in your area and even

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

about that and how that unique approach has benefited your

business? Yeah, so the, and I alluded to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

out and I love seeing people win.

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

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

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

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

approach. As I'm saying the words, I

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

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

Meaning if it was a roofer that covered a deductible illegally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why are you? Why are you helping me or why

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

one. And I'd look them right in their

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

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

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

with is going to do anything with.

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

If you win the job over me, awesome.

That customer's getting taken care of.

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

In the roofing world, most roofing companies would drool at

that figure. Oh, I did 1500 roofs last year

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

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

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

would say competitors, but I would say collaborators a little

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

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

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

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

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

hold on, hold on. Swipe your credit card right

here and then I'll give you some wisdom.

No, they just shared their wisdom with me and it helped me

to grow my business. So why would I not do the same?

And yeah, so hopefully they answered that question.

I know there was what was the second part of that?

Because I know there was two parts.

I think you hit it. What was your approach to

collaboration and how has it helped grow your business?

So, well, the other there, there the set, the two parts that were

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

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

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

compete with them. So for example, those same

roofers will buy their garage doors from my garage door

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

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

business. And as long as he's not sending

his roofing company with gutters, garage doors and

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

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

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

approach too, especially when you want to collaborate with

people in your industry. Because then I can send Guardian

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

House and they never saw ADT roofing anything.

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

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

question. You've alluded to it a little

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

a Jesus follower. How has that affected your

leadership and affected your entrepreneurial journey?

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

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

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

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

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

opportunity to be successful at something that you use the

talents that he's given you to do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

of people out there apologize for success.

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

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

of all evil, not, not money itself.

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

Kingdom work that I want at all, look, I mean, I'm not, I'm not

going to say I'm not going to be shy about saying that I want to

make a lot of money because I want to do a lot of good in this

world with it. You know, it's a tool.

So, you know, there was a time I remember in a meeting where I,

you know, I, I remember trying to drive this point across with

my sales team. I said, who here wants to make a

lot of money this year? And knowing my character, nobody

wanted to raise their hand because they thought it was a

trap. And I said, why is not every

hand in the air? And they were like, oh, well,

you know, and, and, and it's, it was just, and I said, the more

you make, the more you give, the more you can give.

And so you should want to just kill it out there.

There's it's OK to make money. It's just don't make it your

God. And so that's kind of, you know,

my position on that is, is work hard.

And but I will share with those of you that are watching this

that don't know the Lord, I'll share with you what I, I like to

say it's the biggest but in the Bible, and that tends to get

people's attention. It's Romans 623.

It says for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of

eternal life is from from the Lord through Christ Jesus.

And if that first sentence stopped at the wages of sin is

death period, then we'd all be doomed.

But because it says for the wages of sin is death comma and

it follows it with the biggest but in the Bible.

But the free gift of eternal life through the from the Lord

is through Christ Jesus. We all all have an opportunity

to accept that free gift. But when we don't accept that

free gift, we've earned that wage at the beginning of that

verse, and that wage is death. Yeah.

Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that.

And I know you'd mentioned you even host a weekly Bible study

in your office that you have open to all employees and other

business owners, even your competitors.

Yep. What does that look like?

How how many people show up? How does that go?

So it varies. Actually.

I'm part of two Bible studies every week. 1's in the industry.

It's called Contractor Fellowship and it's a bunch of

roofers. They get together nationwide on

Wednesday mornings and we right now we're reading now the book

of Proverbs and those those contractors are from all walks

in in their faith, like from brand new believers to people

that have been walking with the Lord for 30 years.

And then on Wednesday or on Thursday mornings at our office,

we host a Bible study. It's no requirement to come, but

we offer it to any of our staff. And we also invite any

contractor in the area regardless of trade to come on

out and whether you're a competitor or not to come out

and just, you know, study the word with us.

And today we had 9 or 10 guys that showed up.

About four of them were not from our company.

Sometimes 1520 show up, sometimes 5 or 6 show up.

It just depends. But it's in standing.

It's a standing open. Sometimes I can't make it.

Maybe I'm out of town or what have you.

I wasn't in town last last Thursday for it because I was in

Utah meeting with a partner for the good contractors list.

But we have it there and it's hosted by a a friend of mine

who's a pastor at a local church.

And he comes and leads it and, you know, he does it for free.

But we do give him a, a gift every 10 weeks.

We give him a gift. So I just tell him to remind me

when we've hit 10 weeks. And and it was just, it's more

of just a blessing for thanking him for taking his time.

But he, yeah, he comes every single week regardless of who

shows up. So there's always that one

steady person that's going to be there.

And yeah, it's worked out really well.

I think it's really important, you know, I've, I've had people

say, are you, are you concerned that somebody's going to

complain about it or like, go ahead and complain?

It's my company, it's my building and I and it's not a

requirement. So I'm not breaking any laws.

You know, I'm, I'm opening it to anyone and everyone.

And I don't even tell people that if you're not a Christian,

don't show up. I want people that are non

Christians to show up. I want them to hear the truth.

Yeah. And so, yeah, that's, that's

what we do. We started doing this.

Now this is our at the end of this year, it'll be our second

full year of doing it. At the beginning of 24 as kind

of a New York New Year's resolution, I felt like the Lord

was prompting me to start a Bible study at the office.

And so I was obedient and did it.

And it's been great. We've read through several books

and and we talk about it every week and there's great

conversations that happen. Sometimes the conversations are

really deep and sometimes we're laughing and and so it's great

fellowship and it's what it's all about.

That's great. That's really cool to hear.

I know you talked a little bit about working hard.

You said you challenge any of your competitors to outwork you,

working hard unto the Lord instead of unto men.

What? What does a day of work look

like for you? What does your schedule look

like? It depends every it seems like

every day, especially since taking on the job with the good

contractors list as a new because sometimes it'll be

heavier. Good contractors list stuff that

day. Other days it'll be heavier DT

your Kingdom builder stuff. Lately it's been a lot more of

the good contractors stuff. It's been my focus.

I wake up around 5:45, six O clock.

Sometimes I'll sleep into the ripe old age of 630 and and then

I get up and I'll often while I'm, you know, brushing my teeth

will have you. I'll put these headphones on and

I'll turn my phone on and listen to their certain YouTube channel

channels that I'll listen to. And one that pops up all the

time is, gosh, I'm just drawing a blank right now.

But he's a former pastor who started a YouTube channel to

just, you know, share wisdom with people and word of wisdom,

I think anyhow, but he's it's just great.

So all this is about 30 minutes and while I'm getting ready and

then jump in the truck and on the way into the office, which

takes about 45 minutes to get to there, I'm probably listening to

something else, another podcast or or another YouTube video that

I'm just listening to, you know, and, and I get into the office

and the day begins. And sometimes it's a whole day

of meetings. Today my day was Bible study,

followed immediately by a two hour mastermind class that I was

Co hosting to pour into about 25 other roofing company owners

that are part of that mastermind.

A good buddy of mine, Randy brothers, he he runs the roofing

Academy and he asked me to come in and and guest speak today.

So just spent two hours just pouring into these guys, asked,

you know, answering questions. Several of them are, you know,

just starting out. Some of them have been in it for

five or ten years. And one of the guys has been

doing it since 1991. I was like, dude, I need to ask

you some questions. What are we talking about over

here? But yeah.

And then went from that to lunch to right into this meeting.

So today is going to be a lot. It was a long day of these

podcast type, but I do it. I do.

I am a guest on a lot of podcasts in the roofing industry

talking about various topics. I attend a lot of conferences

and I speak at conferences a lot, whether I'm on a panel or

I'm up on stage or just as a yesterday I was at one where

they just wanted me to kind of, if they were at, they had AQ and

a section and if somebody asked a question that they were kind

of stumped on, they were like, Hey, can you and Jason, Jason's

my buddy that's in Florida owns a $60 million roofing company.

And like, can you and Jason just sit over here and if somebody

asks a question, you guys can kind of feel the questions and

stuff. So, but I do enjoy pouring into

people and, and helping where I can.

And I'm blessed to get responses from people all the time.

Like man, I just watched that podcast you do or whatever and

man, I am so inspired and all that and it just it, it makes me

feel really good that I can impact people.

That's awesome. Well, thank you.

I'm sure you'll be inspiring to our listeners and you're an

inspiration to me. I've really enjoyed hearing your

story. So as we wrap up and get to the

end of our time, do you have anybody that you'd like to see

on the show, Somebody that has a cool story you'd like to hear

more about where they came from, how they got into whatever

industry they're in? Or maybe somebody that sent a

really unique industry that our listeners might want to learn a

little bit about? Well, my good buddy mentor in

both business and and a brother in Christ is Dominic Fraser of

Fraser Roofing. He's out of Georgia and he's

he's about 20% larger than we are in, in, in as a company

size. But just overall a great, a

great guy. Ryan Groff with Sales

Transformation Group. He owns a company that trains

companies from all trade types on how to sell properly.

He's another brother in Christ, but he really has a great story.

He was a former professional baseball player who ended up

getting into the industry he's in now and he he's really a good

guy. Lives in Hawaii part time, also

lives in Texas, has a huge family.

Just overall solid dude. Awesome.

A cup might have to. Have a cup off the top.

I have plenty to do that. Yeah, yeah, not a problem.

I'd be glad to. Well, my last question, the

segment we do every show to fuel the debate or maybe settle it

once and for all. If you have a job to do and you

got to pick up a cordless tool, what color are you grabbing?

Red. Red Milwaukee, huh?

Oh, everything I have is Milwaukee from my impacts to my

drills to my even my lawn mower. I have electric lawn mower that

uses those big monster 12.0 high capacity batteries that cost,

you know a mint and an arm. And I just use that for just

because we have a ranch. So I just use that for our lawn

on our house and then for all the the the big stuff out on the

ranch. I have a zero turn 4.

But yeah, definitely I'm a Milwaukee guy.

I have been for a long time. And yeah, that's that's it.

All right, awesome. Well, Randy, thank you so much

for joining us. It has been a pleasure.

I know you've had a busy day. You're speaking to a lot of

people. I really appreciate you taking

the time. And what an incredible story you

have. You've been through a lot.

If you ever write that book, let me know.

I'll be the first one to buy a copy.

Thank you all for joining us on From the Ground Up Show.

If you want to be part of a future show as a guest or if you

want to call in and ask a question of one of our expert

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Thank you guys. And until next time, keep

grinding.