On this episode, Mike has on Jon Broce Jon is the co-founder at Ugly Roof. Ugly Roof is a roof rejuvenation that leverages roof repairs instead of a whole new roof. Jon has been in the roofing industry since day 1! From there, he started multiple business ventures structured within the industry. Working within that, he found a missing gap within the industry. Jon and his business partner, Ty Meredith, saw that they could be repairing, cleaning and restoring roofs instead of replacing them every time. Mike & Jon go over the roofing industry, doing what's best for employees and customers, the best branding methods, and everything in between!
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ep 25
They saw the door hanger, the guys left. They, they, they saw 4, 5, 6 postcards. They saw the TV ad. They saw three different Facebook ads that finally hit 'em. Like, oh, it's convenient. Now let's, let's click that Facebook form link now. If you've got $60,000 for your projects for market, how are you gonna spend that?
Which everybody says that. Direct mails dead. Right?
Welcome back to Commission Control podcast. I'm HEROs Mike Stears with a Send Digital Agency and we're joined by Jonathan. Bro. What's up bro? What's up Mr. Stearns? How are you buddy? I'm doing well. 2023 is here. We made it through the blizzard. Um, we've got, uh, I've got like a clogged tear duct, which makes it look like I got punched in the face.
So we're doing side profile on my good side today. I'll give you a sneak. Oh, yep. Right back. Okay. That's, That's what most Bills fans look like after a, a, a hard weekend. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What, uh, how's Kenny Pickett doing for you? Yeah, I don't know. I haven't watched the game in about three months. Yeah. I, I can't say I blame you
So, welcome, bro. So you're with Mhi Roofing as well as Yes, sir. Ugly. . Yes, sir. All right. And before we, we, before we dive into those things, we want to give a huge shout out to our sponsor roofer for helping make the Mission Control podcast possible for end-to-end sale solutions, clean and pristine proposals, and of course, roof measurements it up.
Roofer. What, uh, what is ugly? Roof. Roof. So ugly roof. As a company, we, uh, we provide roof rejuvenation solution, um, to, I mean, I guess the, I guess the best word is to restore the shingle back to like new condition, um, ugly roof as a business model is we help roofing contractors do more than. Bang out Rosh, you know, we help them learn to build a, a repair department.
We help them with their sales presentations, with, with their marketing. Um, you know, try to help them un understand that a repair lead is the best lead. Most guys argue that, but repair leads are the best. I'm, uh, I'm above the same mindset, honestly. Big repair lead guy. I think there's tons of opportunity.
They're way more ubiquitous than people explicitly searching to pay top dollar to replace the roof. So, especially in these times where things, uh, things take a little dip in the economy or a recession, economic downturn, whatever we want to call it, uh, I think that repairs and being set up to handle, um, those repairs and, and to be able to provide alternatives to the repair, which is what it sounds like the roof rejuvenation route is, is paramount.
Paramount to thrive. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. , do you got any numbers on how impactful it is as far as like conversions and why it's a good idea for people to get on the roof rejuvenation train? Because I think the skeptics would say like, Uh, it's an old roof. You can make it look better than it's gonna fall apart anyway.
Or you know, something along those lines. So it depends on what num, what numbers you're looking for. Are we looking for lifetime customer value? Are we looking for, you know, the profit of the profit? Now, are we looking at closing percentages? I want, because big data guy, I want all the numbers, bro. All the numbers.
So all the numbers for, for $12.7 million. I'll give you all the numbers. No, but I, I mean, at the end of the day, so like what it did for us at mhi, so I can speak directly with that. We went from being a normal, you know, decent closing from like 35, 36, 40% to this year. We finished the year as a team at 52%.
So, you know, you're, you wind up closing 15% more deals. Um, or more. Um, plus people want, I mean, the best way to look at it is when you're chasing a repair lead, right? Mm-hmm. , they are at that moment bleeding and they need help now. So that's the best thing about the repair lead. Now, when, when you get there, not every roof is repairable.
So that's where we differ from competition, I guess, from the ugly roof side, is we don't think that every roof is repairable or reju. Hmm. So, so it gets you in front of the customer and gets you on more, more roofs faster, um, and more efficiently. So, so 15 north of 15% increase in, in closing, which is, I mean, that's a really good number as far as an increase is, was there any correlation to the, the ticket size, the average ticket that you guys were closing?
So it's, it's crazy, right? So for years our average ticket, um, all in has been around, let's say, 12 five, right? For a roof. Um, our actual average ticket for a roof went up to 16 six. Um, and our average repair, you know, used to be, you know, thousand bucks, 500 bucks, 1200 bucks. Our average this year was $5,100 in, in the repair department.
So we grew all the way around, right? Because now we're hyperfocused on just roofing. Um, we, we go into the home with the right ethical product to, to give to the homeowner. Whe whether it's a new roof or a roof, roof repair or repair, rejuvenation, um, you know, you're, you're at that point aware that you can really help the, um, homeowner, you know, make a good decision.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that. I like that. I like that a lot. What about before mhi before ugly roof? What was, what was Bros doing back in the day? So let's, uh, I'm a Jim. I'm a Jimmy Buffett song. I'm the son of a son of a roofer, right? So I, uh, I, I was raised in the roofing industry. My dad was a sheet metal man.
My great-grandfather was a sheet sheet metal man. My grandpa was a carpenter and a roofer. Um, so my summers were different than everybody else's, you know, like I've been on a roof and I, I, I'm not bragging, I'm complaining at this point, um, from like eight, nine years old. When I was 13, 14 year years old, I was running my dad's roof, roofing cruise.
Um, you know, in, in the summertime, you know, I was up on an EPM roof and I was teaching guys how to, in, you know, how to flash an inside corner, the proper way to fold your pig's ear over and the right way to glue everything. You know, you know, back before they had, you know, all this, this pressure release film stuff you used, but, you know, but, but anyway, so.
You know, so I grew up in the roofing, in industry. Um, graduated high school, um, could, could have played some football in college. Didn't do that. Went in the Marine Corps instead. Came home, um, went to work at a factory for about six months. Hated it. Worked at Lowe's. Hated it. Worked. Worked at 84 Lumber was okay, didn't I?
Didn't like it. Started up a, a contracting company, uh, in oh two. Started building houses. Um, then we got into building spec houses. Sold that company in oh seven, like right before the crash, which was actually the best thing I could have done. I didn't really know at the time, like I didn't understand economics and what was getting ready to happen.
But all I knew was two years ago I was, I was pre-selling 20, 30 houses at a time before I put a footer in until I was sitting on five houses, you know? So I was like, you know what? It's just time. You know, we've made some money since. So we sold out. Um, 2008 I went to work for a roofing contractor, just selling, um, and haven't really looked back since.
I worked for a couple guys along the way. Um, help, help, helped build a couple guys. Um, left there, cashed out and bought into MHI here, uh, at the beginning of 2019. So time, and I've been, been together now for almost four years. Hmm. At what point did you become a big data guy? Because I, I gotta tell you, I've worked with a lot of roofers and there's not many, I haven't seen any with as sophisticated spreadsheets as you have.
So
it comes down to. , you know, that like the, I don't know how, how to put this. People lie, right? But numbers never do. So at the end of the day, when, when you learned about numbers, it really wasn't a numbers thing until probably, let's say 2012. I was always a process guy, right? Always an SOP guy. I mean, I guess I got, I got that from sports and military.
So I've always had an sop, like we just rebuilt our whole SOP for 2023 and we're streamlining things. We're cutting off tech products and merging everything into one and, you know, having some fun doing it. But, um, so I guess it more started as more like SOP and how to track those SOPs. Mm-hmm. and how to track the KPIs.
Like what do you, you know, I've always said that, you know, you incentivize the behavior you want. So to be able to get that, you gotta be able to pay somebody, but you gotta be able to track it. So more started with tracking the, so p like how do I track this right? . Um, that's really kind of where it started.
Then I learned, I took an Excel class, I took a, um, a Microsoft Access class, which back in the day I guess was awesome. And then I just started building out, you know, in inventory sheets, worksheets, that kind of stuff. And I just got into the data side of it. Then I just started learning about the demographics of things.
I go, okay, so like, I started thinking like, okay, so where were my most profitable jobs at? Was it in this zip code or this zip code? Right? And so now I had data so I could go back to, um, and then I could build on that data. Cuz historically, like I, I, I can tell you like over the last 10 years, which month of the year is the most pro is the most profitable in.
Right. So I can even tell you that kind of stuff, like when's the most leads come in? How do you, you know, fluctuate for sales reps and the ebbs and flows and like, when you're training new sales managers now, like to get them to understand like, hey, listen, like data's there, the historic data's there, I just take it from each year and I put it in there and now here's you a new, a new number.
Um, so that's really where it started at, was more just wanting to track the KPIs and, uh, you know, and just making sure that the team could stay on track. Hmm. Yeah, because I, I mean, I don't think that intuitively many people would think a son of a son of a roofer would, would be so entrenched in numbers, data, spreadsheets, you know, and I think that a lot of people would stand to benefit from, from, you know, not necessarily, you don't have to go from A to z.
Becoming more cognizant of the numbers and making database decisions so you can capitalize on trends and be more profitable. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that's the key word in that is trends. You know, that's what we look at, you know? So like, it's just like when you're developing a process, so e, everything in in business is trends.
When I'm developing a process or we're looking at our current process, you know, is this the trend or is this an anomaly? Right? So like when there's an anomaly, that's a totally different story, right? So it's just an anomaly. It's not part of the normal SOP or you know, whatever. Like you gotta know how to handle it and what to go to and how to do things.
But at the end of the day, you wanna look at the trend, you know, did you, did you take out or give less credence to the data collected in 2020? Like, let's say you were saying historically, how does, how does may perform, how do we perform may, what's our average sales volume? What's our average margin? I feel like May, 2020 may have been a little bit tricky.
So it was actually worth an April for the data. Um, I might go, I I could, I could, I could go check it out now if you wanted to, but my memory was April was the worst month, probably in history. Um, may towards the end of May. It, it actually exploded on the roofing side, so, right. But it's cause we made a, we made adjustments, right?
Sure. So when we made our adjustments, you know, from outside sales to inside sales to like, we had everything already set up and ready to go, already had the concept, it was already built, put on the shelf. , we, we just had to implement and train. So we pivoted within three to four weeks with our whole sales team.
And we actually didn't miss a stride from that point on. It was just more of that fear of even people wanting to talk to you in April, right? Um, once, once they kind of broke out of the fear, actually home improvement, like probably three x that with that year by the, by the time you got to June, cuz everybody was home.
Now they're looking at the ceiling like, oh, I didn't, and I didn't, I didn't have that leak, right? Because as humans, like it's, we walk through life with blinders on. So if I don't want to see the problem, it, it doesn't exist. But now you're sitting on, on the couch for 12 hours a day instead of one. You see the problem, you're like, I gotta take care of that.
So I think that if anything it, it, it exploded in 2020, um, around the end of May. Yeah. Now if you look at the data from April or from May, both would, I think in statistics, what they would call, would, you could draw a spurious relationship if you are, if you're stacking that up against like a different April or May.
Cuz for better or for worse, correct. The data, I, I feel like in that type of situation would be less telling of a story of what you can expect in next year's April or next year's may. Correct. Yeah. So you kind of throw that data out when you're put, you know, when you're plugging stuff in. It's in my overall 10 year spread, right?
Sure. So I've got it in, in, in my data as far as the percentage of business and stuff like, like that. But when I was setting 20, 21 goals, I didn't look at 2020 for April may. Like I looked at 29 19 April, may, and adjusted accordingly. Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's just, it's being present while you're making those decisions.
And you know, the reason I ask that question is because I wanna make sure that, you know, guys that are trying to focus on these things that are listening in make sound decisions. Because you can make bad data-based decisions as well. You know, you said, yeah, people lie, numbers don't lie. But numbers can tell a bunch of different stories depending on how to, how you're looking at them and how you're processing that information and how you decide to act based off of what you are gathering out of it.
Uh, mm-hmm. , I love numbers. Numbers are our friends. They don't lie to us. You talk about trends, Google trends, and then someone will tell you that Bing, there's 40,000 searches on Bing, and you should . Yes. I mean, don't get me wrong here. Yeah, that's a funny post, right? So don't get me wrong here. . The cool thing about being is if you know how to do it, you set it up one one time and you'll make some money.
Right? But, and you'll get some leads. But the thing about being or anything else, you know what it is, is you gotta think is the, is the demographic that is probably 55 plus, right? They buy a laptop, they go buy an hp, they pop it open, they go on there, they use the word, I'm Googling something when they're on Microsoft Edge and it's connected to Bing, right?
So those are probably some of the juiciest leads. I don't know if I gave away one of your trade secrets, but. You know, like nobody's really dumping any money into being, and it's real simple. It's real easy. Um, and it's usually a demographic that's ready to buy and has the money. Yeah. So, you know, I mean the younger, like my us and younger probably on Google, like I force my, my safari to go to Google instead of on, on Safari side.
You ever get one of those instances where it forces you to a Yahoo safe search? Oh yeah. I hate those. Yeah. It's like fucking malware or something. It's the most frustrating thing. I literally uninstalled the fucking thing like six times I wanna smash my computer. It happened to me about a year ago, and I'm like, for the life of me, I can't figure this out.
I love it. And I keep trying to go to Google to figure it out and it keeps going to Yahoo Safe search. I'm like, motherfucker . It's not fun. Right? Nah, it's not great. It's, it's not the best. Yeah. There's there's better spots to be. Yeah. So what do you find. , what have you found as far as, you know, over your decades of roofing?
What are some things that others would benefit to know, especially ones that are running a business? Hmm, that's a good question. Um, I mean, the first thing that pops out to me is, I mean, is know your numbers, right? So you shouldn't be in business unless you can afford to be in business. You know, you can't, you know, like if, if you're working for somebody now, um, you know, and, and I'm all about like helping guys, like my sales reps come just say, Hey, I wanna start up my company.
I'll dump everything I have into helping them, right? Because I mean, there's enough, there's enough work for everybody. Um, but I would say, say this, don't start until you have money, until you have an investor. Until you have a line of credit, until you have something to, to, to get going. Cuz the days of you going out there and going from one job to the next job and just living from job to.
Are coming to a halt quickly because there's professional guys and there's a lot of private equity money that's going to go in there and just bury you. Um, from this point, full forward, it's all about branding. You gotta build a brand. You, you gotta have a a hook, you gotta have a ling. You gotta have something that gets somebody, you don't say hook on this podcast.
Yeah, I'm just kidding. Shout out to Tim. Shout out to Tim. Right? Tim and Tim. So, yes. Yeah, I mean, so I mean, you know, we're, uh, you know, so when it comes to, to that part, I, I think you gotta build a brand and you gotta start with the brand first. Even before revenue, even before marketing, you gotta have the brand ready to go.
Really, really. I think that's the number one thing right now. Yeah. Cuz like when I came here, you know, we had, um, it was Meredith Home Improvements, which is, it's been a family name. It's been in Pittsburgh, you know, it's 44 years now. Every, everybody knew the, the Meredith name mm-hmm. . But the problem was it wasn't a brand, it was a name.
And the first thing was our website was this long, right? Meredith Home improvements.com. Like, no, nobody can spell Meredith, and no, nobody can spell improvements. So I'm, I'm in there buying, I'm, I'm in there buying misspelled names for myself, so I pop up, you, you know what I mean? So, mm-hmm. , we just kind of continued with what we were doing.
and we started a new brand within the company that we already had. And so we rebranded and we, and we refocused, you know, it was MHI Roofing, right? And now we focus on roofing. We focus on shingle roofing. You know, like, like we picked a niche of a niche, right? So we're only doing roofing. We're only doing shingle roofing, only shingle roof repairs, only shingle, um, you know, rejuvenation, right?
So that's why we do this every shingle day that's trademarked. You can call me, you can use it as part of an ugly roof dealership, right? But, you know, so I mean, but honestly, I've seen it thrown around a lot recently. So I hope that they got their trucks in a row. Everybody's using a variation of it. You know, our, what we actually trademarked was we do this every single day, you know, so, so that's our trademark with it.
But it's fun, you know what I mean? It's a fun thing. Um, people know it. . But again, like we got hyper-focused. Like we cut out windows, we cut out James Hardy's siding, we cut out siding, we cut out, soften faia, we cut out decks, you know, and when I sat down with Ty, like it was, it was scary for both of us.
It's like, hey, we're, we're a four and a half million dollar company and 3 million of that is all these o o other things. A man halfish roofing. How do we go from four, four and a half to an aggressive goal of seven with roofing? Only the first, you know, the first year in, right. And then Covid hits, right?
So we had nine 19 to prep, 20 to launch, and then we launched right into Covid and, and we still did our 7 million in, um, you know, in that year. So yeah, most guys I know we're fucking terrified, but ended up thriving in 20, yeah, it was. . You know, we, it was a weird time, but we did, but we did roofing only since 2020.
That's all we, you know, that's fucking crazy. Yeah. Roofing only hell of the time to hit the pivot. Yeah. Heck of a time, man. And now we're pivoting back into, you know, repairs and we're just cleaning up, man. So it's fun. Yeah. Let's talk more about this branding statement. Okay. All right. Are there any caveats that you would like to place on that statement or, well, one is, I did a bad job at Roof Co.
If, if you're going there with our conversation, but, uh, no, but what, what, what conversation sir where I didn't have my, my branded shirt on that day. Yeah, yeah. But again, the brand is bigger than me. Right. The brand becomes the, becomes what everybody sees. So we've got an orange diamond. Yeah, right. It's simple.
It's nothing crazy. It's just an orange diamond. Um, you know, but that's the brand. People see the brand, right? And we've actually got it to where it says mhi roof.com. So, so I don't have to put mhi roof.com in my advertisement, it just says mhi roof.com, right? So you put the brand on there and that's it.
Boom. It's done. So those are little things that you want to try to do to get your name and get your brand built to where it's recognizable. And you can pivot in different ways with it. But for like a day one contractor or somebody in their first year, do you think, you think that they're, the money should go into brand before different means of advertising?
I think that they should sit down with their wife and their kids and their dad and their mom or whoever it is and say, Hey, I wanna start up Yellowstone Roofing. Right? We've been watching that series, whatever it is. Like whatever you come up with, right? Like I've seen a couple of cool brands that's come out Yeti Roofing.
I thought that was pretty cool with Nate. Um, you know, I can't, I came up with that, uh, with Roof Tiger about six months before Nate launched it. We were sitting at a client doing a consult together and uh, yeah dude, I came up with a dope logo and everything. When I saw him I was like, ha, there it is. Yeah.
Yeah. But, but I, but I mean, I think you have to start with the brand. What do you want this to look like in five years? What's your plan? Right. You know, have a business plan of do I plan on, you know, is is this going to be for my kids? Am I going to sell this in three to five, five years? What products do I want to offer?
Like, keep it simple. Don't go in and say, I'll do e everything and take on e everything, because it, it only curates headaches. Know what you're good at. Like, if you're good at Windows, just do Windows. Just go in and do windows. Look at Window World. They do Windows, right? They do doors now too, I guess. But they do, you know, openings.
So, you know, I, I've always admired the Apple approach, right? Everybody that has Androids or whatever, or Blackberry, but Apple was sent is, they've got what, like seven products, right? Maybe. Yeah. Seven or eight. Right? And so they've got a very narrow line of product lines and they're very successful. Okay.
Because they do what they do and they do it great. And they make very minimal improvements to each release and charge an arm and a leg for that next model. Yeah, right? I, I mean, I'm an Apple guy, so I get it. I dt listen, I'm an Apple guy. If you text me and there's green bubbles, I'll fucking block you, . All right.
It's, it's the green screen of death. That's what I call Oh, approach me with some green bub. I'm kidding. I love all you Android users. I'm just fucking with you. He's an Android user. Uh, mark. This is spam Mark. Mark is junk. So you go with, you try not to be the jack of all trades, master of none. You stay narrowly focused on things that you guys are really good at.
Uh, and I'm sure it creates, I mean, we kind of do the same. Same thing. I know how to do social media marketing. I understand the concepts of it. We could do email marketing, we could do all these different things to help people, but we focus on custom web design, SEO, and ads because Yep. It's a, it's very narrowly focused.
It doesn't introduce a ton of friction. When we stick with, we have very well defined processes and they're seemingly scalable. They've been, they've been scaling with the company, so that's very good. I'm sure we'll have to make some iterations of some. That's fine. But I see, you know, and that's not to knock the people that are doing all services, because I see a lot of companies that do a lot of things very well.
Um, but it's just two different approaches to business. And like you said, sitting down and having that conversation and building a brand around that is really important. Yeah. That's what you gotta start with. I mean, things that aren't going to last, I mean, it, it, it is now, right. But in the next five to 10, You know, when you look at the major brands in the world, they have one name to 'em, right?
Apple, Google, you know what I mean? Amazon Johnson Johnson Johnson Johnson and Johnson I guess has two, but it's really Johnson, but it's the same names. I mean, you know ? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Johnson and Johnson, right. But, you know, but like McDonald's, whether you like McDonald's or not, it's a brand, right?
McDonald's doesn't make hamburgers. They, they sell golden arches to kids. You know, they're the real estate game, baby. They're, they're in the real estate game if, if you watch it, but if, if you watch the documentary on it. But, but at the end of the day, they're a brand. You know, there's not a three year old kid that you can drive by a McDonald's and them not point and go, huh, cuz they saw the.
Mm. Right. Whether you like McDonald's or not, you know, the arches. If you looked at the Apple thing, what Steve Jobs did, why did the, why did the MacBook glow the apple in the back? They just stopped that like two, three years ago. Because there was no need for it. No use for it. But he said, I want, when somebody's in a room or in a coffee shop or whatever, I want my logo to stand out.
I want people to see it. I want it to glow. So like in, that's why, so like in 2023, how every time you see Ascend a rocket, a rocket on the wall, on the shirt, on a hat or a rocket? I think an Elon Musk. Yeah, I think Elon Musk. God damnit,
All right, well, back to John board. Or Kim. John Yue. Right? He was rocket man, right. . Every time I see a rocket, I'm thinking Elon Musk or Kim John Yuker. Yep. That's it. Oh, no, no. Wait, wait. Mi Michael Sterns. I apologize. Yeah, no, that guy. Yeah. That's, uh, no, I, I agree wholeheartedly, especially with the, the child analogy with, with McDonald's brand is super important.
It's, for me, I think understanding what your brand is going to be, and then obviously branding need to be looked at through a little bit of a different lens because, well, we'll look at Chick-fil-A, right? So, and sorry, that's how we call it. We have our, our, one of our kids, chick, chick-fil-A, chick-fil-A, chick-fil-A, chick-fil-A, you know, we call it Chick Chicka.
But anyway, um, but, so look, they've got, what, 11 products on their, on their menu mm-hmm. . And they, and they, by far, like, you know, you know, if you look at the building to building, they have like triple the profits of the McDonald's or the Arby's, or, or, or the Hardee's as that's beside 'em with 11 products on their menus.
They have what like, 15, 14 something percent less opportunity. Cuz they're closed on Sundays. Correct. And they outperform everybody. Right, right, right. But they're they're doing it right. By the way. They're, they're, uh, fucking chicken nuggets. The ones that aren't breaded, they're grilled nuggets are fucking amazing.
You can't touch them. They are good dude. Yeah. I love the grilled nu nugget. Yeah, they're good. Shout out Chick-fil-A. Actually, last time I was in Chick-fil-A I think was when I was in Pittsburgh. Yeah. Chick Chick-fil-A. And that, I mean, so, so like, when you start thinking of the big brands and the people that are making money, they know what they do and they do it well, and they keep a, a narrow focus.
When you start getting out into other things is when you start losing money, you start losing focus. Like, if they would start selling hamburgers, you know, you'd be like, what? You know what I mean? Like why, why is Chick-fil-A, why do they sell hamburgers? Like they're a chicken place. Like I want chicken, I'm going there.
Yeah, that's a good point. I think that was, that's their brand. That was my, I think it will continue and always will be like, my biggest challenge with running a business is staying focused. Staying focused. Yeah. Stay focused. Focused. There's so many different ways to make money. So many opportunities, so many ideas, and it's like, it rained it in.
Mike, in Mike. Focus on what you guys do and do it well and keep doing it really well. Rent some repeat. Yep. I get very easily distracted. Yeah. Well, and it's, and it's all about the production process too, right? So if I'm a new business owner and I wanna start a new roofing company, you know, I'm gonna first making sure I have a brand.
Second, I'm gonna make sure I got some financial backing, whether that means that I have to save up for the next three years and put stuff back while I'm building my brand. Having it there. You know, like I'm, I've got a friend of mine that like, like before he goes to a market, he starts marketing in there and starts building SEO for two, three years out and he kills it.
Send him my way. So I kind of learned that , so I learned that concept, right? So like he was never in the Morgantown market and he's starting to come up that way now. But like, every time I looked at something on, on online, it was like he was there. Like, boom, there's an impression. Well, he, he was giving me all of his leads at the time.
Like, Hey man, I was, I'll just give you all those leads. But he was building up his SEO for, you know, in his organic search for the day when, when he is ready to come, like he just turns it on, puts in a salesman, and he'll do, you know, three, $4 million in that market this year, right? But he invested his time and his energy.
So it's the same thing before you go into business is have that stuff ready to go. Like, know what you want, know, know how you want to do it. playing chess. Not Checkers on that one. Smart playing chess, dude playing chess. Well, I mean, to be honest, that's what we did here in Florida. You know, I mean, we had it ready, it's ready to go.
I was se owning it and had it going and then, you know, I was giving leads away to guys that I knew here. I, I learned the concept. I didn't make it up. I learned the concept from somebody else. Hurricane Ian hits and, you know, we were already here, licensing, doing some work, but I wasn't doing a lot. And now we're here, you know, living in the RV resort, you know?
Yeah. You know, I think that's important, and I always struggle with this because there's so much information. There's a small percentage of information that you're gonna find on the internet that's reliable and good. And, you know, do your best to find good information and, and use that information or be afraid to adopt things that you're learning from other people and trying them for yourself because,
Well, you know, you'll do well by doing it. Look at, I mean, look at you in, in Florida, right? Yeah. I mean, I've picked up a ton of shit off of, off of the internet. Um, that's been, that's worked very well for, for me, over the course of my life. Uh, but you gotta, you gotta filter it. Well, it's the delayed gr the delayed gratification.
Most people don't want the delayed part of this. Right? They want the gratification, but then, but they don't want to just wait for it to happen or build that to the future. They, they want it right now. It's instant now. Right. It's the DoorDash effect. Everybody wants it right now. They wanna be able to see what's in front of them.
I, I, I can. Like when it comes to marketing Mike, right? So like, I think of it this way, everybody's looking for the, for the magic pill that, all right, I pay Mike $10,000 a month. He runs my website, he brings me in Google ads, and I should be able to make x don't get me wrong, like there's a number that you can put to it, but you've also gotta put some sweat equity into it as well.
You gotta know how to manage Mike and make sure that he's representing your company the proper way. The one, the one thing that always frustrated me and, and I'm friends with a few of you guys, right, as far as the digital marketing guys. That frustrates me, not with you, but I see it from the ugly roof side with the contractors.
It's like, all right, I'm signed up, let's get it going. And then everybody goes dark and they don't talk to you for six months, and they're like, why is it not working? Well, we've had seven meetings and we've not been able to meet with you. So as a roofing company owner, when you want to take something on, invest your time, energy, and your knowledge in, into it, find the thing that you hate to do the most.
Right? I hate the books. I love numbers, but I hate the books, right? I, I hate dealing with the accounting part of it. So what I did about five, six years ago was I said, you know what? I hate it so much. I'm gonna learn how to do it. Because I wanna be able to hire somebody that I, that can do it, but I need to know how it works.
I need to know how it operates. So I learned QuickBooks. I learned how it all works. I learned how to read a balance sheet. I learned how you know how to make a p and l sheet. I learned what the numbers actually meant, right? And then I learned how to check it and audit it. So now I can hand this over to somebody else.
So take the thing that you don't want to do. Tackle that first, right? I like to do the numbers on the sales side and the marketing side. I didn't tackle that first because I knew I already had a natural talent and I wanted to do it. So I would fill those things in right in, in my spare time, I'm doing the crap I hated because I wanted to learn the crap I hated so I could teach somebody to do it, right?
That's what Ty and I both do. We divide and conquer. Like there's certain things that he doesn't like to do and I don't like to do, and that he does like to do, and, you know, and, and vice versa. So as business partners, we, we divide and conquer, but also like the things that we don't like, we learn how to do it, we conquer it.
We say, here's the SOP for it. I need to hire you. Or I've already got this person. Like, here is part of your, your job do with duties. Now what can I do to help you? I work for you. Now it's your department. , you know what, what can I do to assist you? Like, I think that's the biggest thing as a bi as you start to grow, is the crap that you hate the most.
That's the thing that you gotta do, will do the hardest and get it figured out because you gotta be able to, to check some balances. Yeah, that's right. Trust but verify. And how can you verify if somebody's doing the job you want them to do? If you have no fucking idea of what that job is, if you, if you know nothing about marketing, go take a marketing class.
Right? If you know nothing about production, go to Nrca or somewhere like that. Go take a class. Like go learn it. Right? If you know nothing about a certain subject, go learn it because you gotta manage that one day, you know? Right. Right. Now it's cool with your wife and you're kind of doing, doing the payroll, but four years from, from now when you get audited and they go back and your wife was doing the payroll wrong.
Not because she meant to, cuz she just thought that that's the way that you did it. Now you're backing up half, half to pay, you know, a $20,000 bill that's 20 x because of all the interest in late payments. Right? Right. So now it's a hundred thousand dollars mistake. Right. So the stuff that you don't know about before you get into business, I mean, that's where my passion's at Mike is watching because this industry has a lot of turnover.
Like you're, you're talking average, you know, two to three years and guys are out of business, outta business, outta business cuz they're chasing the dollar or they're chasing the truck or the boat or whatever it is, and they're not really focused on learning the hard crap and then passing that on to the next person to where they can manage that.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I couldn't agree more as far as your statement on the, on the marketing side. I, I've seen, I see it all the time. I see it time and time again, and it's not, I'm not necessarily saying our clients just from the outside looking in, even people getting upset, but they don't engage and that's not necessarily.
something where that's going to dictate whether your campaign flourishes or fails, but it won't hurt for you to engage with the people that you're paying to represent your brand. Right? like that engagement is a really welcome thing and it's a really good thing because there might be some pivots that you wanna make.
Um, there might be changes within your company. And if the people that you're paying, whether you're paying them $10 or fucking a million dollars a month, if they don't know, it's not a fault. Especially, you know, if you have structured meetings and you're not showing up to 'em because you're not making them a priority because you don't like to do it cause you feel like it's a waste of time.
Well, or because if you paid them to, to do it. So it also come, well, comes down to this, it's the position that people think that they stand in, right? Everybody thinks that they're standing at the top look looking down, which is totally reverse. Like it's, they've got the pyramid wrong, right? The pyramid should be this way.
They should be at the bottom looking up at everybody else that works within their network. Right. Or within their company or whatever. So I think a lot of times guys will go in there and be like, Hey, I'm paying you $10,000 a month to do this. Why is it not performing? He says say, Hey man, what can I do to make sure that we're doing this with this better?
What do you need out of me? Right? What do you need us to do? Like, I need an extra third with 30 leads, you know, a week next year. What do you, what do I need to do to be able to get. You know, what do you need pay, right? Is, is this a i I put more money in and, and more leads could come out and I'm just talking about the marketing side, right?
Yeah. So, but you can take that same concept into every department in, in, in your company 100%. You know? And even if you're small, if, if you're a million dollar guy, it's still, you know, there's no difference in 1,000,010 million. There's no, it's, it's just a few zeros, right? You still have the, you still have the, the, the department, right?
I might not need three people to run this one department. I might need, you know, a half of a person to run this department and a half a person to run this department. So one person can run two departments, right? But you, you still have to know that there's departments for that scale for when you go to 3 million or 5 million or whatever the next step is.
You gotta think ahead and look at what that next step is. So master each step as you go. Um, and as a business owner, nobody's gonna have the same passion that you have for your product, cuz they don't make the same money that you can make. , right. So they're not gonna have the same passion. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. I like, I like that message because all too often you see like money doesn't fix the problem. You can throw a bunch of fucking money at something and it's not necessarily gonna fix the issue. So. Correct. You know, if you've got, if you're not handling your leads correctly, or if your salespeople aren't following a sales process and you know they're closing at shit percentages, you can get fucking a thousand more leads.
And if you're closing percentages, 15%, still 15%, and you've just spent an insane amount of money to lose all that additional opportunities, if you should be at 35 40. , right? Mm-hmm. , you know, so that's a, that's an issue where, you know, you gotta look in the mirror and say, okay, so what are we doing wrong on our side of things?
And I'm not saying this to, to wiggle out of like, accountability for marketing companies, cuz there's plenty of shit marketing companies too. I, I understand. You know, do, like you said, do immersing yourself in the shit that you don't want to do. So, setting processes, putting people in the right seats, and then actually managing them or, or having somebody who you can rely on to actually manage those processes and check in with people, have routine meetings and, and, and do things that are going to impact the culture and productivity of your team.
It's fucking huge. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an oversight all times. Well, and I think that's what, that's what's missed out, and that's why guys don't go to the next level. They go out of business after they hit a million, a million and a half, and, and then they try to do it again, and they do it again. They do.
Like I messed up when I was first building houses, like I was a horrible manager. Like I figured out quick, like, I like people too much. Right. So I'm awful at managing. And I think one thing that I even heard, which was, I think it was Gary, . Um, and this is like, I, I had started this years prior, but, but he made it more, more clear.
The problem with us as, as small business owners is we hire somebody. You know, like I hire Mike, right? So I hire you to be a sales rep. I hire you because I see the potential in you. It's hard for me as a business owner to fire Mike. Right, because I saw all that potential in Mike and Mike's not living up to it, so therefore I must have done some, some something wrong.
So what can I do? Or I get complacent, or I do something different, or I don't put in the right time of energy and I don't do the right thing for my company and my family and the other four to 10 families I'm feeding. Yeah. I don't fire Mike. Right? Even though it was probably my fault to begin with because my process sucked, right?
I didn't train Mike properly. So you had to go back and do some extreme owner. You know, which, which is a great, a great book, uh, book there. If, if nobody's read that book, like that's your number one book before you get into any, any business's extreme ownership because you have to understand that the world around you, it you own.
So, you know, but, but back to it there with, with, with Mike, if, if I didn't give Mike everything with thing he needed, it's my fault. Right? But Mike comes to a stage where he's no longer employable cause I messed up. So I have a hard time firing Mike or cutting the ties and starting over and redevelop him cuz of my own ego.
And you gotta get your ego out of the way, right? You gotta ha have a process. I don't trust people at all. Right? So that's the, that's the thing. This is what this goes all the way back to. I don't trust the people, but I trust the process. I know that my accounting is set the right way. That I trust that process to do that.
you know, quick, quick, quick tip for anybody. As you grow separate out AR clerk and AP clerk, it should never be the same person. Mm-hmm. , right? Hire somebody to come in once a year to audit all the books that is not your accountant and is not your, is is not your AR or the ap. Pay a guy, you know, cost you 10 grand a year.
You know, it's worth every penny because they'll find stuff that somebody might've done or, or, or misclassified or whatever. Counts Receivable counts payable. A r p Fells. Um, yes sir. Yes sir. Yeah, so get somebody from the outside fresh perspective. Unbiased running audit cost 10 grand. It could save you.
Considerable not. And, and it's as much as it's a money, you know, if you catch something that could potentially get you audited, I mean, yeah. Yeah. I've never been audited, but, uh, all the stories that I hear about it is less than pleasant. Well, well, the main thing, it's the audit's gonna be your 9 41 s and nine, you know, all of your, all of your payroll taxes.
That's the stuff that they're gonna look at. You know, and something else too, i, I, I would say is what's coming to an end quickly is, is this, um, 10 99 game for sales reps and how people are operating in a business like that comes back. It takes one dissident employee, which went on employee independent contractor to come back and say, Hey, I wasn't treated as an ia, I was treated as an employee.
And they audit everything. I've seen it time and time again with, uh, with guys get getting busted with that. And then you wind up, they cracked you, your, your books back seven years and everybody that you paid a 10 99 to they interview and they put 'em through this key factor test, right? But did they control your schedule?
Did they schedule the appointment and say you had to be there at eight o'clock? Did you have to attend trainings? Did you have to use their systems and processes? And once that happens, you're, I mean, you're going outta business like it's, you can't pay the payroll tax and now you're living with this debt over, over your head.
So guys, just think that they can jump in, feed feeds first. Now I'm an action versus versus theory guy, right? Like, you put it into action and do things, but do the right actions.
Fuck. Some good tips. Good tips. I mean, we, we went deep sturge. Those are, we went deep. I mean, those are some good tips. Different ar, different ap. I like that. Have someone audit your shit. It's good. Keep you outta harm's way. Have you ever been involved in an audit on the business end? An audit? I have.
What's that? . I mean, if, if you're, if you're stuffed in order, you're, you're good to go. Um, a couple of companies I've worked for in the past, you know, their stuff wasn't in order. And so it's, it's not fun stuff. It's not a fun, um, you know, that's where you learn, right? It's, it's, it's, it's all about experience, you know, it's just, you don't know until you know, you know, like until you're right in the middle.
Yeah. So, so my dad, you, you just, Say this and God arrest his soul cuz we actually buried him a year ago today. But, um, sorry for your loss. He, uh, that's okay man. I, I appreciate that. So he, he, he used to say it's, it's hard to, to remember the main objective was to drain the swamp when you're up to your asshole on alligators.
Right. So that correlates into a lot of things in life. Right. So, you know, so, so just keep that in mind. It's like you gotta stay focused on, I mean, it, it goes back to everything we talked about. It's focused on your mission, you know, what is your mission? Mission control. Mission control. So have you ever watched or listened or consumed the Mission Control podcast prior to being on it today?
Um, I, I've, yeah, I've few things, but I usually watch your, your, your snippets, your, your little shorts you do on little short form content. YouTube. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Haven't, haven't, uh, peaked your interest enough to come click through and listen to an episode, huh? I'm doing a poor job. That's what that tells me.
No, no, no. I've listened to, um, what was his name? Um, was it Pete that you were on with Pistol? Pete? I've been on with, uh, process Pete a couple times. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I listen to his all the way through. Um, no, I mean, it's good podcast. So again, I, I guess I've become my own consumer, right? Is I like short video content.
Like I like under three minutes you get like, you get that one point and then. in, in 20 minutes, I'm gonna get the same podcast thing that you had, but in a shorter clip. Again, this one thing you got. So I consume content that way now instead of long formm. Interesting. So maybe I'm not doing, maybe I am doing it wrong, but for the a different reason, maybe I need to stop putting out short form content so that people can't think that I'm gonna give you all the juicy nuggets.
Huh. And we can test it. We can ab test it. I would do a blind test on that for sure. All day. All right. We got zero hours of listen time in the last month, . Turns out it could have gotten worse than it did . Yeah. Okay. Got it. So, well, I was gonna ask you what, what your favorite piece of content you've consumed from the podcast is, Ben, but since you don't listen to it, I guess it doesn't fucking matter.
I'm such a butthole, right? Um, no, I just, so again, I, I've got into short form content, I guess. Because my attention span is like everybody else's getting shorter. And so I watched that one to three minute snips man. And I like that. So I couldn't tell you the podcast. It was like I could tell you some of the information.
You know, you're like, one of the, like I fire, you're like the guy that doesn't wanna wait for the ieo, you want the paper click Cause you're gonna get the leads now, bro. You don't wanna wait for the info . Well so, so I watched your fire side when you did, you know what I mean? With you? So you only watch podcasts that have to do with our guys over at Roofer.
I appreciate that. Support . So I gotta get Nicky baby and fucking processed peed in here more often than the studio I, and I guess it just, maybe it just popped up my stuff. . I, I, I thought the fireside chat thing was awesome. Well, the fireside chat thing, I tagged you because you were mentioned in it. Oh, okay.
I was like, check this out bro. We talked about you on here. So I either gotta have the team, the whole roofer team on. Or I gotta fucking stroke your Eagle by mentioning you if I want you to. It's fine. I can do that. It's okay. I'll walk you into every podcast moving forward. So just to be fair, I don't listen to a whole lot of podcasts.
Like I do a lot of them, I guess, with guys, but I don't listen to a whole lot of them. Um, gotcha. I listen to a lot of audio books, but, uh, um, so if there's a podcast that I, that I have watched several of, uh, and it's not in this industry, it would probably be um, Joe Rogan's, not Brad Lee. I'm a Bradley fan.
I like his dropping bombs too, man. He does some pretty cool stuff with that. And Jockos is good. Jocko Wilk. So I've listened to those three podcasts, um, quite a bit. So, so you like audio books, so when I drop my book, you're gonna purchase it and listen to it, correct? Sure. A absolutely. I like books. Okay.
Okay. I like being talked at, I guess I don't know the right word with that. Got it. Talk at me. Talk at me. Talk at me. talk at me. Okay. All right. All right. Well, listen, we learn things and then we evolve and, and we pivot. Yeah. And, uh, if I want to reach the, the bros of the world, I gotta make books in short form video.
Got it, got it. Well, or just take what you do to cut it off in short. Form 'em, and, and, and like, I think that's where it's going. And that's like, I've been against it for a long time, but when, when you look at it now, it's like, huh. Yeah. It's probably what's gonna happen, you know? Yeah. Yeah. What is single-handedly the most effective piece of advertising that you've ever put out?
Wow. That's a pretty good, that's a loaded question. This most single. The most successful single form of advertising I've ever put out. I think it's gotta go back to some of the, I think it's, I think it's the trademark stuff, dude. Like it's still part of the brand. Like we do this every single day. I think it's the most effective thing that we've done.
And because it goes across all platforms at that point, right? So, so our TV and our radio and our billboards, like, it's like, oh, you're the shingle guy. Like you're the every shingle day guy. Like tight gets that a lot cuz he's the face of the company with it. So I think it's probably the single most best thing that we've, we've ever done.
It's a, is what's, what's a good word for it? I can't use hook a slogan, right? A good slogan, bitch.
This is slogan. Yeah. Slogan . Yeah. I mean, but you gotta find something that lightens people, people's mood and puts 'em into a good, a good, a good mood to wanna talk to you. I like that. And like we, we get phone calls all the time and like, we don't really need a roof. We just wanted you to know that you're all's slow.
Slogan is awesome. You know, and they hang up with what we hang up, but they talked to our receptionist, our, our scheduling girls. Well hopefully your marketing company's not trying to count that as a lead. Yeah, well you know, , everything's a lead with Jim, right? Yeah, that's me too. I'm like, yeah, all these leads.
Yeah. . We actually got one. So I love hundred, 100. I need to find a face for the company. That's what I need to do. I'm over here with fucking, I don't even know what it's called. Dude. It hurts. Well, you're a radio face. I got a face for radio. Yes I do. Yeah. That's why the, this podcast will bes successful Monday Day.
I think so. . I mean, I, no one listens to it, so I don't know
but it's content man. Right. So that's what it is, is, is you could take that content and cut it up. I think that it's interesting. It, it is, it is interesting because I see, you know, it, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, you've got 800 downloads, or you've got 80 views on this one, 30 views on this one.
And average listen time is six minutes. But you know what I've seen on multiple occasions, people hold things out and, and quote them. I saw this over here. I watched this, my mike had a podcast. It just happened recently with the one that I did in the Blizzard with Ty Backer. Ty Backer, and somebody had tagged me.
And then it's like, uh, I saw Mike and Ty talking about. And I really like this. So he made a difference. ? No, actually it was DoorDash. I don't even know. I guess my wife ordered DoorDash. So we're in this, it's gated here at this resort. And um, somehow the guy came in and my wife out by the gate. Wait, wait.
Waiting on food? I guess so. I guess it was my night, night to cook. So here's, here's the DoorDash. Hmm. I'm fucking starving. I'm gonna need something water a little bit. When we wrap up, I'm gonna go get a tuna tar tar. Oof. That doesn't sound good at all. But tar tar, you got pallet of a back end of a dog.
Well, yeah. Um, one thing to stay away from for those watching is chicken tartar, . Any tartar, ? What? Dude, you, you don't like steak tartar steak tar? Nah, I don't like anything that's raw. Raw. Like, what do you eat? Your shit Well done. Well done. No, I, I'm a medium rare, like medium. Like, I like it medium rare, but Yeah.
But I just don't, I, I can't, um, the texture, texture, what, what's that? Is it texture or is it all of it? The fact that you feel like it's like alive thought of bacteria, foodborne illness. Like what, what, what is it for you? What is it? Yeah. So like, I don't know when we invented fire, but I know we've had it a while.
Uhhuh, . So, um, I, I don't wanna go back to caveman days, but before we had fire
Yeah. I, I don't know. Yeah. It's, it's the, it's the foodborne illness thing. This, it's, it's the fear of that. So I had a tape worm or something. Yeah. I don't eat mayonnaise now either. I fucking hate mayonnaise. So, so we had a, um, it was like a homecoming at church one time when I was younger and there was like some macaroni salad or potato salad or something, had mayonnaise in it.
And I was sick for like weeks. Like it was awful. Like food poisoning was awful. You got a DoorDash again or ? I think it's my wife now. This time's my wife. It's Uber Eats. I'll be right back. ? Yeah. Yeah. I gotta get two meals tonight, so that's good. No notice it's my wife. She was out waiting by the gate on it, sir.
Yeah. Uh, that's so funny. What, uh, if you had to take a look, what did you guys do in revenue in 2022, if you don't mind sharing? 11 million. 11 million? Well, in the north, 11 million. We did 4 million in the south here. Okay, so 11 million up north. And that's your primary market. So let's start there. So of that 11 million, how much of that broke down into like internet advertising for versus traditional advertising?
Cause I think I see people argue all the time for one way or the other, and I think that there's opportunities for both to really thrive and flourish. So, I'll give you a number that's going to blow your mind on it. Right. Um, and it's actually postcards and direct mail and automation with dope marketing.
I guess I'm giving a shout out to Dave with it. But we, uh, we just put those numbers together. So we generated like 2.7 million from direct mail this year. Um, which everybody says that direct mail's dead. Right. But again, it's all about the brand recognition. It's, it's all about the consistency. It's all about, it still goes back to the same opinion of you gotta have that five to 10 touches before somebody buys.
Yeah. So I could directly, I could directly a, a tribute $2.7 million, our sales to, to a postcard. So, so I've got that number for sure. As far as, as far as like my percentage of my, my percentage of marketing, um, right now I'm gonna say probably 60% of our marketing costs is gonna be the digital and online probably 20% is, um, tv, probably 25.
I'd say it's even more than that 7%. Which postcards Now, does that, does that deliver proportionate return? So was 60% of that 11 million coming from Google is 20% coming from traditional media? Yes. Yeah. So it's hard to measure though, right? So, so it's hard to measure when, well then you gotta stop doing it.
App, if you can't measure, you can measure it, but it's hard to measure. It's hard to measure tv, right? It's really hard to measure TV unless you put up, um, a different website or a tracking phone number or QR code. So we do that stuff, but it winds up not measuring like you think it would measure. So you, you'll, you'll still get that impression and then they'll call you from the postcard that came in the mail and said, Hey, yeah, I just got a postcard, but I saw you on TV last week.
Right. So it's, it's, it's hard to, if it's not like a web form or if it's not a direct phone call, it's really hard to measure where it came from. Um, you can measure it, don't get me wrong here, but it's very hard to say yes, this is definitely a t a TV lead. Yes, this is definitely a postcard lead and the data is not anywhere near as reliable.
It's not, you know, we, I used to work for you. I used to sell phone book ads. Phone book still works, believe it or not, in some places. And it's almost like there was a shame around like people saying that they were calling from the phone book, you know, because they would, the person answering the call, you know, thank you for calling ABC Roofing, how can I help you?
How'd you hear about us? I found you on the internet. But they're calling a number that's only on a yellow page ad. . Right. You know? Right. Or maybe in some of those instances, maybe they looked the person up online afterwards. Right. And they didn't attribute it to the initial fact that they found 'em in the internet, which tri or in the phone book, which triggered them to look on the internet.
So, you know, that happens all the time. But a lot of people take that mindset. Oh, that's why I was being funny, is well, if I can't measure it and I can't attribute it, well then fuck, it's not happening. And Right. It's not the case. No, I'm with you on, on that. I mean, it's, um, I mean, so there's a couple ways to, I'm, I mean to look at this too, right?
So you can look at a loop mar well marketing campaign type of stuff. Um, we do more of an omnipresent to where I want to hit you from the Facebook ad to. , you know, to the postcard, to the TV that's gonna run. And like, everything has to be consistent. Um, it'd be the right word, or congruent, I guess. Like, it's, it's all gotta like, play onto each other.
Mm-hmm. , right? So like, whatever I'm doing with, with my digital marketing ads, I'm doing something similar or I'm using the same verbiage in my TV ads or my Facebook ads or whatever it is. So if you want the consistency across it, or continuity, I guess is, is the word I'm looking for. Like, it, you know, you've gotta have the same color, the same, you know, the same logo, the same like, like it's gotta have the same font.
Like I'm very picky on, on our font. Like our font has to be the same on my Facebook ad is what it is in our, in our proposal. Right? Right. So, so we want our font to be exactly the same, you know, we, you know, and if you go in and find our font, and then it's gotta be, it's. Got, it's got, gotta have the perfect spacing, right?
So it's a negative one. Spacing or , whatever it is, right? So like I, I'm that crazy with it, right? And, and, and my, and, and our graphic designer, like, he gets it, you know, so whether we're, we're using a script font or we're using a. You know, whatever the font name, when name is on it, like, you know, you want all that to be consistent cuz that is part of the brand, right?
Again, it comes full circle back to the brand. But when you, when you connected together with like a marketing campaign for postcards or for direct, you know, some type of handwritten mail that, where that's going to the homeowner right now you hyper-target this within a one mile radius and now I'm dumping in, you know, 700 postcards, six or seven times with this Facebook ad.
Now it's effective. Now they click, they click, click on the Facebook ad and they're ready to buy. Cuz they saw our yard sign, they saw a door hanger, the guys left. They, they, they saw 4 56 postcards. They saw the TV ad, they saw three different Facebook ads that finally hit. I was like, oh, it's convenient now let's, let's click that Facebook form lead now so I can tell which, which Facebook forms are working the best.
Cause I know what campaign is. Attached to. So when we're just doing general Facebook leads, they don't work that well, but we're, what does work for Facebook in my mind is, you know, if you're boosting a post or whatever, but I do a lot of Facebook stuff and look at it as I do tv. It's more of a branding tool, right?
I'm just getting my impression with my logo running through their feed, you know, over and over and over and over again. Then they get the postcard, we're hitting 'em with the postcard, right? Then we're hitting 'em with, with the tv. Then they're getting the little whatever it is, right? So you're hitting them from all angles and finally they're scrolling through one day and they're retargeting one pops up.
It's like, what have you been waiting on? Like, you need a roof inspection. And they click on that form, right? But it's not, cause it's that form, it's because the other 14 things that hit 'em. Yeah, I think, I think a lot of people make the mistake of just trying to hammer a bunch of Facebook ads for acquisition and Oh, it sucks.
Yeah. I mean, you can, you can get leads I think. I think when a. Assortments, you're more apt to get the inspections and do a little bit better. But especially in a retail market, if you're going in full steam ahead for acquisition in Facebook, you be really fucking disappointed. It's a lot of tail chasing.
If your reps are gonna hate it, you're gonna call a hundred leads and 20 of 'em are gonna respond. You know, a small percentage of those will actually meet and be actual, like qualified appointments. It's, uh, I, I like that approach is using it for branding and that's sort, kinda what I tell my guys all the time.
So yeah. It, it should stay relevant going through the, the, uh, their feed, you know, so, so make sure it's your, your logo and your font and everything. We're talking about all mat, what matches up, right? So if you run a campaign that says, we tell our customers no, which is what we do, right? That, that's like a shock value and, and that brings it out to 'em.
Now what do you mean? You tell your cu, your cu your customers Well, no, no money down, no, no payments for 18 months and no interest , right? So we tell our customers know, right? So, but, but, but that was one of those shock value things. That, that draws the customer in. But that doesn't work until it's a retargeting ad after they saw everything else and they saw their brand.
Like what's, what's this jackass gotta say now? You know? Like he's been about feed for the last three weeks, you know? Yeah. That's good shit, dude. I like, we talk customers now. . Yeah, you're good. You you're good. So if I'm a year, let's start a new roofing company. Let's say you were to start a new roofing company tomorrow in five, I don't know which market.
Arizona. Arizona. Arizona. Okay. You're gonna go out to Arizona and start a roofing company and let's assume you're gonna take a retail approach, okay? If you've got $60,000 for your budget for marketing and advertising, how are you gonna spend that? So we got $60,000. Let me grab a calculator.
So $60,000 means that I want to be able to do, you know, 600 to 900,000 in revenue, um, off of six 60 k. So, you know, seven to 10%. Um, so for $60,000, I'm probab, you know, so brand new, right? So I, I don't have a brand yet. First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hire somebody to build my actual brand, right? So I'm gonna get somebody to build my logo.
We're gonna sit down, we're gonna design, design this out. It's probably gonna cost me, let's say, 5,000 to get that going. Right? So that's the first investment I'm gonna make. On, on my marketing side, have the brand ready to go. Have the colors, have the, you know, whatever's local that's gonna make sense.
It's gonna stand out, whatever the, whatever the, the name of the company is, right? It's gonna be Mike Stearns Enterprises or whatever it is, right? It's a great name. So , I've, I'm gonna build that bread out, right? And so I'm gonna have that everybody to go. The next thing I'm gonna dump in, into, I'm going to have to have a website.
So, you know, I'm going to call one of the website guys, right? That specializes in roofing, like, you know, that are roofing marketing guys. Like, you know, that's what I'm wanna do. You know, I'm gonna spend probably what, what your web website costs. 10. What? 10 k? Depends. I mean, what can I get? Start started with, with, with, with 15 pages.
You know, I, you know, I think, do you have to build your forever home? No, but I need to build it on the platform where I don't have to change it again. So if I'm gonna build it on a WordPress side, or I'm gonna build it on whatever, like, you gotta study and know where that you're gonna build from and that is big enough to build with you.
Let's say for round numbers, you're gonna spend 10 grand on the website. Okay? So, so now we're 1550. Yep. So I got 45 5K left, right? So now I'm gonna go buy a bunch of door hangers and I'm gonna find some high school kids that want of. Do some evening and weekends or depends on what time of the year it is, but they wanna, they just wanna go door hang, right?
I'm gonna pay those with those guys. Let's say a hundred bucks a day to get out there and start door hanging. Okay, I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna find a neighborhood. So, you know, it, it, it depends on what the product I'm doing, right? So like if I'm using my ugly roof, which is a good reason why a roofing company should have a roof rejuvenation and repair, I'm gonna find a neighborhood at the very corner, right?
That this house needs our services. I'm gonna do that job free. I'm gonna send those kids in to put out door hangers and in invitations, I'm gonna have an open house on that next Saturday and I'm gonna invite everybody over to look at this roof that we just did. I'm gonna pull out probably six to 10 leads out of that and I still got 40,000 left, right?
And then I'm gonna repeat that process probably another 10 to 15 times. I'm gonna do these, you know, show, showcase, home. Home events I'm gonna buy. Now you're gonna do, you're gonna do a new roof or a rejuvenation, a re a rejuvenation or a repair or, or a new roof. Let's say I sell a new roof. Let's say it's a small enough roof that I can, I can do a free, a free roof there, right?
Just, just to get into a neighborhood. I've got 40 K to spend, so why couldn't I spend a e k on a roof,
right? So you gotta think outside the box of how to use that money. You know, I've, I've got the website, so the SEO is kind of being built there, right? You're gonna build it in, when you build the website, you know, I might not be paying $10,000 a month for seo, but at least have a website for people to go and park.
So now I'm professional. It looks like I've been doing this. I'm not just a chuck in the truck. I'm gonna make sure I got on a polo. You know, you're gonna put all those things into place and I'm, I'm gonna spend six, six K on a wrap, you know? So now we're down to what? 30 k, you know, but I'm going to start the organic way of going into these.
Into these places with door hangers and high school kids and myself, and do some free jobs that are on the corner. Invite people down and I'm gonna start shaking hands and kissing babies. What if you had $120,000? I'm probably gonna do the same thing, but I'm probably hire an employee, right? I'm going to hire an employee to train.
So I wouldn't take all that 120 for just marketing. I would put, you know, I'd probably take probably the 60 to 80 still and put it into marketing and then have that reserve backed up for their, where they're salary till we get some revenue on.
I really like that. So sweat equity style, you're gonna go out there, get your hands dirty, do some shit for free. Yeah. Build a relationship in communities. Well, that's how the ugly roof idea started. We, my wife and I had a, uh, a company called Rooftop Restoration. Uh, And we went out there and worked, worked just with just me, me and her.
And we, we did a million halfs of 2 million and just cleaning and small repairs and all that kind of stuff. And I hired my, um, my son-in-law and, and three other kids, and that's all they did. We literally just went from house to house and like I would go in and like, have you ever seen those window cleaner guys?
When they go in and they, they, they get an appointment to do one window and then three, three days ahead of time they, they throw yard signs up and they send a crew of like kids in there to to, to pass out these flyers and say, Hey, we're gonna be in the neighborhood next week. You know, we could do your job at half price.
Right? So they're already there and they, they wind up doing 14 window washing jobs in a day. It's, it's the same process. Like, I wanna do the same thing. I'm gonna find one of my low ticket items and give it away. I'm, I'm gonna do a roof cleaning or a roof re rejuvenation or a roof repair, or, Or whatever it is that I'm gonna add into my product and give it away, and then I knock on doors.
I've got a, I've got a showcase home. I, I talk to people about who we are and what do we do. And now you're selling more roofs.
I like that shit, dude. That's smart. Yeah. And now you've got, I mean, I've probably spent, what, 30? Well, I mean, probably 30 to 40,000. I've still got 20 k, you know, for equipment or whatever else that I might be. Yeah. But assuming that 20 k was for advertising on you had your other base is cut. Yeah. No, I mean, how would you invest the other 20?
It's still gonna be the same, the same thing. I, I, I might start doing some Facebook ads, like hyper targeted just for branding's sake. You know, just start running, you know, a hundred bucks a day or something and just, you wanna target Google Local services? I need Google Ads. That'd be more of a year two thing.
So I. Would do l lsa, but like you're talking day one, I'm gonna go ahead and start doing that. But it's gonna, it's gonna take you 60 to 90 days, but before that starts working, cuz you know, I just got in business, I gotta make sure my, my license is in place. I gotta make sure you know, of all that stuff. So it's gonna take you what, 30 to 90 days before they turn you on?
So I, I've gotta get reviews, right. I've gotta get all that stuff before I, I go to the top of the list so that I'm gonna do that paperwork, but I don't think I'm, I'm gonna invest anything at all until, until they actually turn it on. But LSA is one of the cheapest leads that you can buy if you're established For sure.
Fucking amazing. You know? I bet we probably had, I mean the last time I looked was, was about three weeks ago, but we had like 800 LSA leads in Florida and like an eight week period. It's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. I just, I just put it on Max, like, the max that you can do is a hundred thousand a week. I just put it on Max.
I'm not spending that, but I put it on Max. Max it out, whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Just put me first. Yeah, please, please. And thank you, sir. Can I have another, can I have another please? Yeah, that's, I would like more soup, please. . You know what, uh, what's, uh, and we're gonna run out of time here soon, so I don't wanna keep it too long, but you're, you're good man.
What's, uh, what's one lesson that you've learned throughout the years that you would impart on, on someone who's listening? So, it's kind of a dual answer I'd say, but it's be patient, not everybody's like you, right? That's the hardest thing to learn, is that your expectations of what you can do is not what somebody else's strengths are.
So learn to hire your weaknesses, but know that you can do your weaknesses. Just like we talked about in the beginning, you know, um, you know, iden. So I guess to kind of wrap it up in one, be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses Right. And know what you gotta work on, and know that it's okay to hire out weaknesses, but not until you know how to do it.
It's really good advice. And I love the, like, not expecting yourself outta people. Yeah. Type deal. Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's one of those things that it's, it's, it's a personality thing, right? I mean, not everybody has the same work ethic or drive or personality or, I mean, there's, there's these different faires abilities.
I mean, there's different talent levels, you know? Um, you know, there, there's just different ethics with everything. So, so I said, I don't expect everybody to be just like you. Yeah. And honestly, like, uh, I'll take the guy with or gal with the drive over. The guy that's supremely talented. Yep. 99 dimes out of a hundred.
Cause you can't teach that shit. You can't teach that ambition, that pursuit, that, that proactive nature. And maybe the guy with a girl talent has, maybe not those that have that work ethic. You can teach somebody want for the most part, and, uh, fuck each other for you. Well, we grade on three things.
Attitude, effort, and performance. Right. So, and it's in that order. So we have everybody in the company will, will, will go in, well, the management team and whatever, but, but they'll go in and grade each employee and each person, like up and down the chain. Like, it's not like I'm grading, you know, the, the project managers or the project managers are grading me.
But it's all about attitude, effort, performance. So if your attitude's good and the effort's there, the performance will come. If the performance doesn't come, then you're, you're in the wrong position. Right. So, but if you've got good attitude and good effort, I want to keep you on my team. So I will repurpose your, your position into something else and make a position just for you, right?
We, we can solve issues with stuff like that. As long as your attitude's there and you put in Effort Pro, the, the performance will come. You might not have the right talent or the right skillset or the right whatever for whatever that that position is. You know, I've got, you know, I've got some guys that were sales reps, that man had great attitude, great, great effort, but they just couldn't close the front door.
So they wound up, but because they had too much sympathy, right? But they've made great customer service reps cuz they could listen to the customer, talk to the customer, get to the root of the problem, and then pass that information on. So you find out understanding what their strengths and weaknesses are, and you cater to their strengths.
And if you gotta make a position for a guy that has great attitude and effort, you know, make. It around his strengths and, you know, and make sure that he can su su succeed in that. So,
attitude, effort, performance makes a lot of sense. Very simple. But when you roll it out that way, that makes a ton of sense. Yeah, it's fine. It's easier that way. You gotta, if you got a shitty attitude for him, it probably isn't gonna problem you probably doesn't matter as much effort, right? ? Like, and you're probably creating a, a toxic culture that is everyone else down, right?
First step of attitude, first step of attitude. If you got the right attitude to ch you're on the team right now. If you're putting in the effort, something good's going to happen. He's got a good attitude, he's got good effort, you know, he might be in the wrong position. So that's where the, the performance thing comes in.
But learn to grade your guys on a, on a curve too, right? So know that when you bring in a new rep, they're, they're not gonna close at 62%, you know. My highest guy this year was 68%. They're not gonna close at 60, 80%. So, so you gotta set threshold, tell you if they're, they're gonna start out at 30, then he is gotta move to 30, 35.
But you gotta see the progression attitudes there, efforts there, and then he starts to go up. You know, that's on the sales side, but it's, it's any position in, in the company. That's wise advice, my friend. So if there's one more thing, Hmm. Let's say, this is the one thing that I snip into that short form content that someone like you will watch, if there's one thing that you want say to those of those things, what would that be?
Well, we gotta gimme a subject at least. I mean, there's a lot of things that I could say. No, no. So one thing that I would say to any of your listeners out there, right? That's what you're looking for. So if you're in the roofing industry, make it sexy. You know, let's not be the guy that shows up and doesn't have on a pole.
And a pair of slacks, or at least a nice pair of shorts. Like, let's make, let's make roof roofing sexy again. You know, it's, it's one of the lowest rated trades according to, to, to consumers, you know, I just wanna see everybody, like, just start to be more professional in what they do. And that breeds good competition too, when you do that.
So we like good competition. You know, just start, just stop being sl ball, you know? Like, just, just look, just look yourself and make sure that you're doing the right thing. You know, you can look at character integrity and, and reputation, right? We have this conversation. What's the most important, you know, reputation is merely what everybody thinks about you.
Anybody can have integrity, but character is who you are when no one's looking. So who are you when, when no one's look looking there, you know, because back to the integrity side, I can have integrity and do the right thing when someone. Is looking, and I've got eyes on me, but if nobody's looking, would I still do the same thing?
So try to find out where your true character's at and stick to that
dropping bombs, brother. I'll tell you what, aside from my fucked up eye in my shitty camera. Cause my camera's not working. I lost there. I lost my light too. Yeah, I mean, we, you know what? We persevered and that's gonna be the theme of 2023. It's the year of the honey badger. If you sell my post, I want people to be tenacious, ferocious, and reci.
Its fucking obtaining their goals. Ah, this one is ferocious. Can you tell? Yeah. . I can tell. Yeah. And, uh, and I want you to persevere. So all this shit that's gonna happen. You, I mean, there's gonna be a lot of shit that happens in business personally. You know what? Roll with the punches. Make that lemonade.
Yep. And maybe you have a, a fucked up eye for your honeymoon that you're about to go on. Or maybe you're in the middle of. And you don't have a flight or your camera sucks, do it. Bite down your mouthpiece and keep pushing forward. That's it buddy. That's it. Yeah, man. I really appreciate you and I appreciate everyone that's tuning, man.
Appreciate you, Mike. This was fun.
