August 25, 2025 • 53 mins
What does it really take to build a thriving roofing business in today's competitive market? According to Ronnie Lawler, CEO of Avco Roofing, the answer might surprise you.
"The most important part of our business is the people side," reveals Lawler in this compelling conversation that peels back the curtain on what truly drives sustainable growth in the roofing industry. From his unlikely start as an 11-year-old newspaper salesman knocking doors in New Jersey to building a multimillion-dollar roofing company, Lawler shares the hard-won wisdom that comes from being in the trenches.
Lawler doesn't shy away from discussing the mistakes that shaped his leadership philosophy. He candidly explains how promoting top salespeople into management roles backfired when they lacked leadership skills, and how ignoring "yellow flags" about character in favor of potential performance created costly problems. These lessons transformed how Avco approaches hiring, training, and retention.
Perhaps most valuable is Lawler's insight into why door-to-door sales remains effective despite changing times. "Our number one sales guy this year has knocked the most doors," he notes, while breaking down the psychology that separates successful reps from those who fail. His practical advice for overcoming mental barriers and rejection will resonate with anyone who's ever felt anxiety about prospecting.
What truly sets this conversation apart is Lawler's counterintuitive approach to retaining talent. Despite not being the highest-paying company in their markets, Avco rarely loses employees to competitors. The secret? Lawler blocks the first hour of every day for connecting with team members – no meetings, no exceptions – a practice he's maintained for seven years. "Professional problems are personal problems, just in fancier clothes," he explains, emphasizing the power of understanding the whole person.
Whether you're running a roofing business or simply interested in leadership principles that work, this episode delivers actionable strategies for building systems, developing people, and creating a culture where everyone thrives. Subscribe now and discover why the human element remains the ultimate competitive advantage.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
all right, everybody, welcome to the limitless
roofing show, and today I've gota special guest, mr ronnie
lawler.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So thanks for joining us, man yeah, thanks for having
me, dylan happy to be here yeah, buddy.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So I wanted you to be on the show because we have a
friendship.
You've got a very successfulroofing business.
You're also into health andwellness and stuff that I'm
passionate about too.
But I just I knew that youwould be easy to talk to and
real about the highs and thelows of running a roofing
company.
You know painful lessonslearned, wonderful things
(00:42):
learned all along the way.
So that's what we want to getinto.
But for people that may notknow, ronnie Lawler, kind of
just tell us who you are andwhat's Avco Roofing stuff like
that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, so I'm the chief executive officer at Avco
Roofing.
I've been there for 10 years.
I've known Heath Hicks, who'salso the co-founder of the
Catchall known him for 20 plusyears.
At this point in time which iskind of crazy you start to feel
a little bit older.
That's.
The only time I kind of startto feel a little bit older is
(01:14):
whenever I start referring tofriends of mine that I've known
for 20 plus years.
So yeah, I'm kind of athird-generation contractor.
My dad's a master plumber,master electrician, gc.
My grandfather was a tradesmanas well.
So I kind of grew up in theconstruction industry.
I was sweating copper by thetime I was 11 years old.
(01:37):
So I kind of grew up in thebusiness, got into sales pretty
early on.
I was born and raised in NewJersey.
Had somebody one day that I wasriding my bike, as we used to
do back in the day, whenever thestreetlights came on and we
knew it was time to go homeProbably very familiar for Dylan
(01:58):
, for our generation, foreverybody else that's younger
than us.
They're like I don't have aclue what you're talking about.
We didn't ride our bikesanywhere, right, and so I had a
had a guy pull up one day, whileI was riding my bike, uh, in
New Jersey, and he's driving a,you know, wood panel uh station
wagon, uh.
And so he, uh, you know, rolledthe crank window down and was
(02:18):
like, hey, you want to make somemoney.
And you know, uh, I was like,yeah, sure, that sounds good.
I don't know about you, but ifanybody was to randomly roll up
to my kids and try to talk tothem right now, we'd be probably
fighting at this point in time.
But life was a little bitdifferent back then.
And so he told me aboutnewspaper sales.
And so he told me you just gotto knock more doors and sell
(02:42):
subscriptions to adults anddeliver the papers.
And so I was like, wow, I couldmake my own money outside of
the family business.
And I was 11, so uh told methat I could win a boombox cd
player.
Uh, at that time we're talkinglike 1990, 1991, at this point
time for kind of reference, cdplayers were kind of a new thing
I was like, well, I could neverafford a cd player.
(03:03):
My parents couldn't buy me one.
So what, what do I got to do towin that?
And just got to sell the most.
And so I started and I sold themost.
So that kind of started mysales career and my door
knocking career.
So it was something that I wasexcited about and I love the
idea of being able to go find mycustomer.
(03:23):
I guess you could say and yeah,I started in roofing
specifically back all the wayback in.
I guess it was about 2007,.
2008 was when I first startedin the industry.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Man so door knocking since 11 years old yeah yeah,
yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I hadn't really thought about it.
My dad owned, uh, when we weregrowing up in New Jersey he
owned an irrigation business andwe worked predominantly in, um
uh, retirement communities, andso I guess I technically started
knocking doors even before Iwas 11.
Cause he would be workingacross the street.
He like, hey, we gotta go, uh,you know, blow out their system,
go, knock on their door and youknow, tell them, you know, uh,
(04:07):
that you're my son and uh.
So I was talking to adults bythe time I was like six, like
knocking on people's doors.
So for me, even when it was 11,like I didn't have kind of the
fear and trepidation of being 11years old and knocking and uh,
and talking to adults, so thatnever bothered me.
So like my mindset's alwaysjust been kind of a little bit
different when it came to doorknocking.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Man, that's so cool.
That makes me think about mydaughters.
So they, my daughters are 10,eight and five, and the 10 and
eight year old like to set up alemonade stand at the corner of
our neighborhood.
Right, they made 80 bucks theother day.
That's awesome 80 bucks sellingother day 80 bucks, I'm like
that's like right Right.
The 10 year old.
This is huge.
(04:48):
And then the next day they made70 bucks.
Wow, I'm just like you want agab watch, you want to order
whatever these things are, andit's like you can easily get
this within a week or two.
Yeah, yeah, but I didn't think,I, but I thought, I thought the
same thing.
I thought, man, this is goingto help them down the road If
they keep doing stuff like this,to just get over that fear of
(05:08):
man, that anxiety over talkingto people about stuff that you
have in sales.
So, so then, so you did that.
How did you get into?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
roofing of reefing.
So my wife and I my wife and Ihave been married for 19 years
and thankfully I don't just likemy wife, I love her and vice
versa.
So that's, that's a added bonus.
So we were, we were living in a450 square foot apartment.
We had a kid on the way.
(05:39):
I was actually sellinginsurance door to door, funny
enough.
So I worked for a company thatI sold insurance door to door
and we had to collect, which wasa whole other thing.
So we got to do our own claims,had to collect the money and
sell the policy.
So not sure how that wasn't aconflict of interest there, but
that's another story for adifferent day, I guess.
(06:00):
And so I was coming home fromwork and every single day I just
didn't enjoy doing what I wasdoing.
I just I was not passionateabout it.
What they said I could make, Ireally, you know, there was
really probably like one guy inlike 1979 that worked 120 hours,
you know a week, that was ableto make that kind of money.
Like it just didn't seemfeasible, based off of like what
(06:22):
they had originally sold me onas the opportunity and it just
was.
You know, I kind of felt likethe life was getting sucked out
of me every day.
And I'm in my mid twenties andI'm thinking man, is my next 10
years of my life going to looklike this?
If that's the case, like I,something has to change, cause I
know what this life looks likeright now.
I can't even afford a twobedroom apartment.
(06:43):
We're about to have a kid.
Where are we going to put thiskid?
There's no place to put a cribin a 450 square foot apartment.
And so I was coming home one dayand one of my buddies that I'd
known for a number of years hisname is Matthew and Matthew was
like man every time.
Ronnie, every time I see younowadays, you just look defeated
(07:04):
and down and just like life isreally, really rough.
What's going on?
And I told him work, life's notgreat, blah, blah, blah.
He's like dude, you grew updoing construction, you are in
the insurance business.
Have you ever thought ofroofing sales?
And I was like that is a madeup job.
You just made that up on thespot.
Roofing sales, I've never heardof this.
(07:24):
Like, I don't know what you'retalking about.
That doesn't sound like that'sa real thing.
He's like no, no, no, dude,just come meet the owner of this
company that I work for.
I've been doing this and I'mnot even a good salesperson and
he told me how much money he hadmade in the last like six
months and I was like sell somestuff, so let's go talk to that
owner.
So, um, I did uh, and yeah,that was kind of what uh
(07:49):
launched me into uh, intoroofing sales and then you
eventually made your way to avco.
Yeah, yeah, tell us, tell theaudience, a little bit about
avco roofing yeah, so, um, heathhicks uh, he's the owner of
Avco, good friend of mine.
Like I said, we've known eachother for 20 plus years and I
(08:11):
was working for another roofingcompany in East Texas at the
time and he was in the processof buying Avco from the widow
original owner.
Unfortunately, he had passedaway kind of suddenly and
unexpectedly and his wife kindof inherited the company and she
didn't want to own a roofingcompany, and so he was somebody
(08:32):
that she trusted and believed inand offered to sell the company
to him, and so he was in theprocess of buying it.
While he was in the process ofbuying it, he was trying to
recruit me to come work for him,and so he just kind of was like
, hey, man, why don't we, whydon't we create this thing?
That was a place that you and Iwish that we would have been
able to work at from the start,someplace that cares about
(08:53):
people, a place that trainspeople well, a place that gives
people the opportunity to moveup and kind of earn, earn their
opportunity for upward mobility,and, you know, place that, uh,
family is important and you'regoing to have time to spend with
your family and I'm like, yes,all those things resonate
greatly with me and so, um, so Isaid yes.
(09:14):
Eventually he actually asked mesix times and then on the sixth
time I finally said yes.
So, uh, and yeah, one of thebest decisions as an adult that
I've ever made outside of askingmy wife to marry me, and so
that was, yeah, that was that'llbe 10 years ago in October, and
so initially, really like, wejust kind of looked at some of
(09:37):
our existing friend circle, if I, you know, for people that
worked really hard, that hadkind of good character, that the
opportunity they currently wereat wasn't the most ideal
opportunity for them, and sosome of those people still work
for us to this day, which isreally, really cool.
And so that was what kind ofjust got us started.
(09:59):
And then we were like, huh, weshould probably put some
processes and things in placeBecause, like, we went on our
first year we did, you know, $5million in revenue.
The best year that they hadever done in business in the
first seven years was like $1.5,$1.7 million, and we tripled
that in our first year and itwas like, all right, we're kind
(10:19):
of off to the races at thatpoint in time.
So that was kind of the startof it.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Man, that's wild.
And I know you guys, I knowAvco's.
You guys could make one of thetop 100 roofing companies lists,
cause I think that I think thatlist starts out with guys at
about a hundred million plus orwhatever, but it goes.
It goes all the way down toguys that are doing like 10
million a year.
I think they've.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, yeah, which is kind of interesting, that it's
that's in a year, I thinkthey've.
Yeah, yeah, which is kind ofinteresting.
That's a pretty vastlydifferent yeah, on the
residential side, for sure.
I mean, there's some monstrouscommercial companies that are
out there, but on theresidential side you're probably
right.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, but I know you guys have done well above the
bottom end of that list.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And so one thing I know youguys have done really well is
the door-to-door thing, whichmakes total sense, because
you've been doing that since youwere 11 or 6 or whatever.
What's one of the biggestchallenges you guys faced as you
grew to 5 million, then 10, andthen 15, and 20, and just kept
(11:17):
going.
What were a couple of thebiggest challenges you faced?
Let's get into that, because alot of guys listening to this I
think it's just the nature ofour culture.
You see people's highlightreels on Facebook.
You see a guy driving a brandnew, jacked up Ford F-250.
Right, and it's just like dang,what am I doing wrong?
Sure, what am I missing, youknow?
So let's get into some of thechallenges.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, some of the biggest challenges, like I said
right from the outset, was oh,this is kind of already bigger.
You know, the five-year goalwas 5 million, like that was
Heath's original goal was 5million in five years and we did
it our first year.
So it was like, oh well, thatgot blown out of the water.
But in doing so, like we didn'thave a CRM, we were still using
(12:04):
, like paper folders.
After, like, I think we werepart of the way into our second
year before we ever, like evengot a CRM.
So, you know, we're using paperfolders, which was, you know,
kind of interesting to do allthose things.
But it really probably theinitial first like you know
issues or whatever was well, nowwe have people that are wanting
(12:25):
to come work for us that we'renot even like recruiting at that
point in time, like, which waskind of weird, right, like we'd
all love those problems nowadays, right To where, like, people
are like throwing themselves atyou.
That was, uh, that's not the,you know, uh, necessarily the
norm, but it was getting systemsin place, getting processes in
place, cause we were good atselling stuff.
But the whole back end side ofthe business from you know
(12:50):
production, you know, accounting, all those things like that
wasn't my skill set, like Ididn't know how to operate
QuickBooks or anything alongthose lines that was.
That was not what I was good at.
I knew what I was good at, andso trying to find the right
people to get in the right kindof seats, that was kind of a big
problem.
But really then it was thetraining side of things, like
(13:13):
getting people up to speed asfast as possible.
And so then Heath and I both wegot kind of like for my first
roofing job.
That was a door knocking,specific roofing job.
I got dropped off at the end ofthe driveway and said, hey, you
know, you talk real good, gosee if you can get on that
person's roof, you know.
(13:33):
And at that point in time it'slike, well, I got to figure it
out.
I already quit my insurance job.
My wife is about to have a kidLike I got to figure this part
out.
Have a kid?
Like I gotta, I gotta figurethis part out.
And so then we just kind offumbled into like teaching
ourselves how to do the job,heath and I both.
You know, over the years, andso obviously for anybody that's
done this, this is probablyseveral of our stories where,
(13:55):
like, we just kind of got thrownto the wolves and you kind of
had to figure it out and if youmade it past three years, you're
, you know, an exception to therule.
But we realized that's not whatwe wanted to do, and so then we
really started kind of buildingout more of a training program
to get everybody on the samepage doing similar things.
So that way it was kind of likewash, rinse, repeat, and so
(14:17):
having to come up with like atraining plan, the crm, um,
actually, um, you know processesto follow, because everything
was like in Heath's and my brain, right, it was just up in our
heads and it was like, oh well,this is how I just have done it
for such a long time.
How do I communicate that tosomebody else that's never been
in roofing?
How do I communicate that tosomebody that's never been in
(14:40):
sales?
Right, and so that was a bigthing for us was, you know,
getting people up to speed,because the thing that always
bothered me was seeing at othercompanies.
I'm like this is a goodcandidate, this is a good person
, this guy's got good culture,fit, he's got sales DNA.
But because of the trainer,sales manager, owner or whatever
(15:00):
.
They didn't actually know howto coach people, they didn't
know how to train people, theydidn't know how to onboard
people, and so somebody that Ithink probably could have done
well at it ended up falling tothe wayside and getting burned
out or not making enough moneyin the first three months.
So they couldn't continue to doit.
And I think we probably all havethose stories that we either
(15:20):
you know, unfortunately, that wewere a part of, either you know
, unfortunately, that we were apart of um or that we've heard
stories of, or or whatever, andso we wanted to kind of curb
some of that stuff, uh, from thebeginning.
So, um, you know, then there'salways just the people component
, which is always, uh, always aninteresting part once you just
starting adding more and morepeople to the mix.
(15:41):
But, yeah, we could definitelycontinue to dive into.
I mean, there's definitelyplenty of things that we did not
do right.
So I definitely don't wantpeople to think like oh yeah,
like we just kill it all thetime, like, no, like we've
definitely made mistakes, we'vehad a lot of errors, there's a
lot of things that you know,hindsight's 2020, that we could
have.
We could have done differently,we could have done better.
And yeah, I think that's justpart of the learning process,
(16:03):
right, that learning is failingat something, learning from that
opportunity and then hopefullynot making the same mistake
again and then growing from that.
You know, quote unquote failure.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, totally.
Um.
Well, so let's get into that,though.
Let's get in maybe a story andyou don't have to mention any
names, but maybe a story whereyou guys made a big people
mistake and what did you learnfrom that and how did you deal
with it, and then how.
And then let's get into how doyou start getting the right
people from there.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, I mean there's several, so let me let me think
of what's probably the, the onesthat are some of the more
noteworthy ones that I thinkthat would be helpful um to to
other folks, um, I would say, umwhat?
I'll give a couple instanceshere um, one of them being that,
(16:58):
uh, putting the wrong peopleinto positions of leadership
because of the potential thatthey have as individuals, and so
putting people into positionsof leadership because of what
the upside possibly could bewith them, whether they're in
sales or whether they're inproduction or whatever.
(17:19):
And so we had put people inplace, whether they were maybe a
top salesperson, as a salesmanager, and it's like, oh well,
that's the obvious thing.
How many times have we heardthat story where top sales guy
goes in and he's the salesmanager all of a sudden and then
sales go down because you justtook out your number one
producing guy.
Everybody is being treatedterribly because he's actually
(17:41):
not a good people manager, he'snot a good leader, he's good at
kind of caring about himself andmaking his own personal sales.
And so we definitely had someof those where we put somebody
in a position of leadership.
That was because of the upwardpotential was greater than we
should have looked at the wholepicture and been like, okay,
(18:02):
well, there's a couple of yellowflags.
Maybe they weren't red flags atthe time, they kind of became
red flags, but they were kind ofyellow flags.
It was like, uh, well, the theupside of what we could maybe
get out of this individualperson might be better than what
the downside of, like, theircharacter flaws, uh, or that
they're not a culture fit, um,and so that's something for me
(18:24):
nowadays that that's the mostimportant thing is are they core
value alignment, and are theyculture fit?
Before I ever consider them foranything else, those two things
nowadays I look through thatlens because I don't want to
ever make that mistake again,and unfortunately we did make
some of those mistakes and itcost us dearly in multiple
(18:47):
different ways.
Whether other people I careabout most in the business is
the people side of the business.
This isn't for everybody and weknow that.
(19:10):
So some people are going toleave and they're not going to
stay in the industry, and that'sfine.
But at the end of the day, Ihope that I can put my head on
the pillow at the end of thenight and say that I did write
as much as I possibly could forthe people that I engaged with
in that specific day.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, right.
So why so?
Well, first, how do you I mean,how do you filter through
finding the right people nowtraining, and so, yeah, we do
utilize.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Predictive Index.
I really like that tool Beenaround for, I think at this
point in time, around 50 years,so they've got a lot of
information.
They've got a lot of data topull from.
It's been helpful to us to kindof narrow down the specific
person that we're looking for orthe specific role of what we're
wanting.
Right, because if we are justlike, I'll take any warm body,
(20:19):
or if it's a cultural alignmentright, like we've also made the
mistake of being, uh, going toofar the other way, which is, as
long as they're a cultural fit,you know, let's give them a shot
.
They didn't have sales dna.
It actually ends up not workingout great for them or us.
Everybody's kind of frustratedafter, you know, three months of
(20:39):
a failed effort and so reallydialing in what your candidate
is that you're actually lookingfor instead of being like well,
I have five different types ofcandidates that I could possibly
bring on, probably not one,maybe two.
When we're talking about likemore on the sales role side of
(21:00):
things, you need a certainarchetype, if you will, to be
able to reference.
You know, it's kind of likecounterfeiting, right, whenever
somebody's double checking billsthat are counterfeited or not,
right, they have that hundreddollar bill.
That is the real one that theylook at after every single time
they come back right, and that'sthe the main one.
(21:22):
This is real.
This is fake.
That archetype that you'rebuilding when it comes to the
type of salesperson that youwant, you got to keep
referencing back to that.
This is actually what we reallywant, and not deviating from
that just because that was agood person, it's a friend of
yours, it's a relative.
He knows one of my sales guys.
Right, they're a good culturefit.
(21:43):
Well, if they're not going tofit that archetype that you're
designing, then you're going tobe frustrated.
They're going to be frustrated.
You're going to spend hundredsof hours trying to bring in the
wrong person.
Right, it's kind of that squarepeg, you know round hole.
You keep pounding that.
It's never going to work.
(22:05):
It's going to continue to be afrustration point.
And so, understanding whetheryou use predictive index or not,
you really need to ask yourselfwhat is it exactly we are
looking in?
If you're hiring for sales thisapplies to every role in your
organization but really, reallynarrowing down what it is that
(22:26):
you're looking for in thatsalesperson.
So, since we were talking aboutsales, I'll just give you some
examples of like what was someof ours.
And so, since we were talkingabout sales, I'll just give you
some examples of like what wassome of ours right.
And so we were.
We wanted somebody that wasemotionally intelligent, right.
That way that person couldunderstand and read the room.
They could read the bodylanguage of the decision maker.
So if that person all of asudden you know the husband
(22:52):
leans back and he's crossing hisarms and before he had been
leaning in, listening intently,it's like okay, something else
in my presentation went awry.
An emotionally intelligentperson is going to pause,
they're not going to keep goingin their presentation and then
they're going to try to find outwhat happened to where, you
know that communication kind ofderailed, if you will.
Right, that's an emotionallyintelligent person, um, somebody
of high character, like wetalked about before.
(23:13):
Um, that was a really, reallyimportant part.
One of the ones that we addedjust in the last couple of years
was somebody that actually ismoney motivated and they had
left the job, that they had made35K a year and then, when they
were making 60 to 65K, they weregood and they like, wanted to
(23:35):
like call it a day.
Well, for me, that's not what Ineed.
That's not gonna be really,really helpful to have somebody
you know selling $350,000,$400,000 a year in roofing.
That's a lot of effort for thatsales manager to you know.
Continue to meet with them oneon one and, you know, for all it
(23:55):
was just like you're trying toget them to keep going and going
(24:16):
out and finding new business orgetting more referrals or
whatever.
And then they just were likeI'm good, I have way more money
in the bank than I've ever had.
I live below my means, which isgreat.
I'm not saying we shouldn't,but I needed somebody that
wanted to have more, that theywere somewhat money motivated.
I don't want them to beterrible human beings because
(24:38):
all they care about is money andthey want to take advantage of
every single person, but theyhad to have some kind of drive
that they wanted to betterthemselves and their family
financially.
So those are a couple examplesof getting really really clear
on what you want in your, inyour candidates, whether it's,
like I said, sales or somethingdifferent.
And then from there really likewell, now, now that we're clear
(25:00):
on that, how do I get people inright?
Like, how do we create a funnelto get more and more people in.
So you know what, how do we,how do we do that?
How do we get as many people inas possible?
That's kind of the goldenquestion that everybody wants to
always have, like a really youknow, kind of easy answer to.
(25:22):
And, unfortunately, depending onthe market you're in, depending
on your brand recognition, allthose kind of things there's.
You know, like I was on a callwith you a couple, I think last
week and you know some someweeks, we've got 200 to 500
candidates between our differentlocations.
Uh, sometimes, um and so thatwas it always like that?
(25:42):
No, um, you know, I'll give youa little snippet.
I would say beta test, like theactual, like job title, like,
try three different things.
You know entry-level home sales, uh, you know something along
the lines of, like, home servicesales, rep, um, roofing sales,
(26:05):
like you know, come up withthree different things, see what
actually gets more candidatesapplying to the role and then
shift and put more of your moneyback into the number one or
number two thing.
So do multiple different teststo see what actually is going to
hit for you.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, that's good.
A lot of guys I think there'sjust a lot you guys are doing
that make a complete processfrom the advertising, the role
to the interview process.
I know you've got pretty,really tight interview process
with several steps, um, and thenthe training after that.
So I think it's guys wonderlike, how do they keep people or
how do they, how are theybuilding their team?
(26:48):
We really have to build a wholesystem around it.
Why do you think a lot ofroofing companies struggle with
sales?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, I think there's multiple things here, right.
I mean if the culture doesn'tfeel inviting who wants to go to
work, you know what I mean Likeso nobody really wants to sign
up for that.
So that's kind of like the easyanswer.
And if you don't know whetheror not your culture is good and
maybe as a leader or the owneryou think it's good I would say
(27:22):
do a SurveyMonkey that's able tobe anonymous and ask some hard
questions that you're going tobe okay with getting hard
answers for We've done that acouple different times and, man,
that'll smack you in the facefor sure.
You're like, oh yeah, cultureis doing great, everybody loves
being here.
And then you're like, oh mygosh, like wow, okay, that was
like more than one person thatsaid that.
And so you know, be willing tobe asked to ask the hard
(27:47):
questions there.
So I would say cultures,cultures, number one.
Number two would be that mostpeople don't really have a
process.
They don't have a way ofonboarding people.
They don't have a way oftraining people.
They don't have a way ofcontinuing education.
They don't have a way ofconnecting with their sales reps
on at least a weekly orbiweekly basis.
(28:12):
The owner or the leader a lot oftimes kind of defers to their
learning style.
I see this pretty regularlywhere it's somebody like you,
Dylan, you might be like, showme one time and let me do it
once and I'm going to have it.
And so, as a leader, we end upassuming that everybody operates
like that.
(28:33):
Well, probably not right.
Like you're a parent, you gotkids, do you get to encourage or
discipline all your kids thesame?
No, everybody's different,right.
So you kind of have to bewilling to tailor fit a bit of
the training to the individualperson.
Now you need to hit like themajor milestones and the bigger
(28:54):
points and stuff like that.
But if this person is more of aum, of a doer, show them how to
do it and then let them showyou three to five times that
they understand how to do it.
Let them do it on their own andthen come back and inspect
their work again to see ifthey're actually catching on.
But I think most of the timeit's because there's a lack of
(29:14):
structure, there's a lack ofunderstanding from whoever their
trainer is, of actually how totrain people instead of, well,
just follow me around and I'llshow you how to do the job.
That's not really necessarily atraining methodology that's not
necessarily going to be like.
Oh well, johnny's the bestsales guy, follow him around and
(29:35):
you know, and he'll, and he'llshow you.
And Johnny's, you know, overthere talking mad smack about
you know how much he doesn'tlike it and he's going to start
his own roofing company in thenext year.
And hey, do you want to comewith me?
Like you never know, right.
Like there's all kinds of crazystories that we hear.
But we want to make sure thatwe're not just kind of, like you
(29:59):
know, being kind of the oldschool roofing way, which is
like, well, if they can figureit out, that means that they're
meant to be here, and if theycan't, that means that you know
the job's not for them.
Well, is that actually a themproblem, or is that a them and
maybe an us problem?
Maybe we should actually lookat ourselves and realize, you
know and I've had to have anhonest, hard conversation with
myself in the past when I'vetrained people and somebody
(30:21):
didn't work out and I was like,huh, I don't know if I did right
by that person or I didn't givethem everything and all the
tools to see if they could besuccessful, um, like, I wish I
would have.
And so that's what reallyhelped us kind of like refine
the process a lot more was cause.
I didn't like having thatfeeling at the end of the day of
(30:42):
like maybe I could have donebetter, maybe I could have done,
um, you know something a littlebit more.
Instead, nowadays I'm like, hey, man, that's not on us.
Like, you know, that personjust that's, it's not the right
fit.
They're just not right for therole.
Like, I feel very, veryconfident for us that that's
generally how that worksnowadays.
It's not because of lack oftraining, lack of care, lack of
(31:04):
accountability or anything alongthose lines.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
That's good.
What do you think about?
What do you think are some keysto door knocking, because I
know you've done that for a longtime.
Abco is a door knocking company.
You guys teach door knockingthrough the Roof Warrior program
, which feel free to unpack that.
Well, first of all, why do alot of roofing companies
struggle with door knocking?
And then, what are some realtips or tactics you could share
that work?
(31:29):
What are some real tips ortactics you could share that
work?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah.
So it's multifaceted here.
Most of the time, I think doorknocking it's from the top down.
So if you're an owner and youdon't believe in door knocking,
it's going to be a really,really hard sell to the rest of
your people.
That door knocking is actuallygoing to work no-transcript,
(32:23):
that's going to be feltthroughout.
Other people like well, if theowner doesn't believe in it,
right, say that you're, sayyou're a heavy marketing company
and you're spending 10 of yourrevenue dollars on uh marketing,
but you're also wanting to seeif you can generate leads via
door knocking.
Well, you've never seen in yourown company door knocking work.
(32:45):
But probably somebody else inyour market has probably made
door knocking work, whether it'sroofing or it's pest control or
, you know, used to be solar.
We won't get into solarnowadays, but you know all these
different means of doorknocking works.
It really doesn't even matterwhat you're selling Like, people
still buy, right?
Our number one sales guy thisyear that signed the most
(33:08):
contracts.
Guess what he's signed?
He's knocked the most doors.
Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
And so it still works.
So I would say you know, makingsure that you believe that it's
actually a viable businessstrategy.
So I would.
I would say that that's part ofit.
Really, most of it comesbetween the ears, right, most of
(33:32):
it is between the ears.
Um, I've coached, at this pointin time, you know hundreds, if
not thousands, of reps betweenavco and roof warrior and uh,
you know different uhconferences and different things
like that, and what I generallybelieve is the biggest downfall
for most people is that theyjust get in their head too much
(33:56):
right?
So I think that there's I'vekind of narrowed it down to what
I think are some core fearsthat most people have.
People, you know, you alludedto it earlier.
Like you know, people have thefear of man.
Well, if I knock on this door,maybe they're going to yell at
me.
Maybe they're going to bereally, really mad at me.
Maybe they're going to cuss atme door.
Maybe they're going to yell atme.
Maybe they're going to bereally, really mad at me.
Maybe they're going to cuss atme.
Maybe they're going to call thecops.
(34:16):
Right.
Or you have the fear of failure.
Well, if I don't knock thisdoor and I don't sign, if I
knock this door and I don't signa contract, I'm not putting
food on the table, I'm notproviding for my wife, my kids
are going to go hungry, rightlike that just continues to
cascade.
Or there's like the fear of theunknown, which is like I've
never knocked a door and so Idon't know what the
(34:41):
possibilities are.
But my mind just spirals andspins to where this could be
anything and this could be theworst catastrophic thing that
I've ever chose to do.
And so a lot of people fallinto those categories that they
generally lean towards, wherethey're going to be more fearful
and in fear of man.
For a lot of people, that's a,that's a big part of it,
especially when you're firststarting off, and so I always
(35:01):
think about this whenever I'mknocking on this person's door.
Right, I don't know what kindof day they're having, I don't
know what's going on in theirlife, so whatever response that
they give me, I'm not carryingthat weight to the next door.
So if, dylan, if I knocked onyour door and you're like you're
the worst human being of alltime, I can't believe you.
(35:21):
You roofers are terrible.
You guys suck.
You're ruthless.
I don't carry that weight tothe next door.
I kind of think like, huh, Iwonder what's going on in that
guy's life that he respondedlike that.
Maybe he just found out, youknow, his wife has cancer.
Maybe he just got fired.
Maybe he's just also a terriblehuman being, I don't know.
But I'm not going tointernalize that and let that
(35:42):
affect me, because I know whatthe upside is, what the
potential is.
I know that you know, if theaverage commission at your
company is $2,500, letting oursales guys know like, hey,
there's potentially $2,500behind every door, it's kind of
like price is right and I don'tknow what door it's behind, but
(36:05):
it's behind some door, there's$2,500.
The only way you find out is bygoing up there and knocking on
the door to find out if it'sthat door and if it's not, you
just go to the next door.
And so don't live in thatrumination cycle of like the
worst case scenarios and likethat person yelled at me.
And you know I'm not going togive somebody that kind of power
(36:26):
over me personally to make mefeel bad because I'm out there
trying to provide for my family.
I have.
There is no shame in my gamewhen it comes down to, I'll do
whatever it takes to provide formy family and at the end of the
day, like I know that it'stheir best interest if I'm the
one that's going to take care ofthem, because I'm going to do
right by that homeowner I'mgoing to do right by them to
(36:47):
take care of them.
And so I would also say some ofthe other things that we kind
of talk about is kind of takethe pressure off.
Don't think so much of like ohmy gosh, I got to sign a
contract today because my salesmanager said I got to hit this.
Many Like go out there.
We're out there to meet people,see if they have a need, and
(37:09):
can I help fill that need?
That's really it.
If you simplify it like that,then you kind of weed out all
the other things, right?
So meet people.
Do they have a need?
Right?
Is there a roof damage?
Yes or no?
Right?
There's not a lot of optionshere.
Roof's not damaged, roof needsto be repaired or roof needs to
(37:32):
be replaced.
That's it.
Can I help fill that need andhelp them with retail or an
insurance claims process, yes orno?
If it's a yes, that's mycustomer.
If it's no, that means they'renot my customer, and then I just
move on to the next one.
So don't make it a way biggerdeal than it actually has to be.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, that's good.
I remember reading in I thinkit's called the sales Bible by
Jeffrey Gittimer and he calledhe says go for no.
Every no gets you closer to ayes.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
So yeah, it's as many doors as you can where they say
no or they don't answerwhatever, and every single one
you build up is a closer to ayes.
Yeah, I heard at a conferenceone time when I was speaking on
a panel I think it was Wind, theStorm a couple of years back,
and one of the other paneliststhat was up there she was at the
time selling solar and she saidI kind of just shifted my
(38:28):
mindset and instead of like Igot to get 100 doors and I got
to talk to 17 decision makers, Igot to get you know a hundred
doors and I got to talk to youknow 17 decision makers.
I got to sign this manyagreements.
Instead, take the quote,unquote, negative, the no.
Well, I need to get 25 people totell me no today.
I got to get 25 people to tellme no today.
Like where's my first no goingto come from?
Like it kind of takes all thepower away from it whenever you
(38:51):
kind of turn it on its head thatway.
Right, it's like huh, that's areally interesting perspective
and I really appreciated thatperspective.
It's like that's a, that's agreat outlook on it, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, that's interesting.
So what would be your?
We're kind of rounding thecorner on our time together.
What would be some advice youhave to companies that are that
are struggling to grow theirsales and their door knocking?
What are one or two things thatyou would tell them today?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Well, you mentioned earlier, we do have our Roof
Warrior product and that'ssomething that Heath and I had
built a few years back when wewere getting guys to come to our
office.
But, like every other week,sometimes people were flying in
from Indianapolis, people werecoming in from florida, people
were flying in from thenortheast and you know, asking
(39:39):
all these questions, and heathand I are both coaches kind of
at heart, like we enjoy helpingpeople and uh, so we decided to,
you know, take some of thethings we learned and kind of
package it into a product, andso that's one of the things I
really like about our product isthat, like we're we're still
running a roofing company everysingle day.
Um, currently, that's what kindof I think separates us a
(40:00):
little bit from some othercoaches.
Like I'm friends with severalof the other guys.
I think everybody's got uh, forthe most part, has a really
good product.
It just or it was just a littlebit different, um, whenever it
comes down to it.
So if you don't have a trainingprogram that you've already
created, you need to get atraining program.
It takes quite a while tocreate your own.
So find somebody you connectwith, find somebody that you
feel core value alignment, havea call, discovery call with them
(40:23):
, see if it's something thatyou're going to enjoy, and get
on a training program of somesort.
Because if you're notconsistent with how you onboard
people and you're just kind ofthrowing them to the wolves,
you're probably going tocontinue to get the same results
that you've been yielding,which I would assume is probably
(40:46):
not very good.
And so the other thing that Iwould say is really the most
important part of our businessis the people side.
I'll say that again the mostimportant part of our business
is the people side, the peoplecomponent, the way that we do
that, the way that we buildrelationships right.
Time spent equals relationshipright.
(41:07):
If I want to get to know mywife better, after 20 plus years
of being together, I still needto date.
My wife Took her on a date lastnight, right after we went to
therapy.
So we did therapy and we wentout to dinner right after that.
Right and so.
But if I don't spend that time,I'm not going to continue to
(41:27):
develop that relationship andthen, whenever the kids are gone
, like we're going to bestrangers, right?
We can't have this expectationof bringing in a sales rep and
not spending time with them tounderstand who they are.
Where do they come from, whatare their strengths, what are
their weaknesses, what are areasthat they're going to struggle?
Where is their headspace at?
Where are they at emotionally,where are they at physically?
(41:49):
You know, like we're wholepeople, whole people but yet
we're trying to talk to thissmall segment of them as an
individual person, wheneverything else might be on fire
in their life.
And you're wondering whyJohnny's not performing.
Well, you don't know Johnnywell enough to know that him and
his wife are having fertilityissues right now.
I don't know if you've ever andsome of you have obviously
(42:12):
struggled with that, and youknow what that's like.
Well, that's going to play abig part.
Whether we think that peopleshould be able to
compartmentalize their life ornot.
It's still really, really hardto do that right.
I always say that professionalproblems are personal problems,
just in fancier clothes.
So, at the end of the day,whatever's going on in Johnny's
(42:36):
life, more than likely it'ssomething else.
Maybe he's not hitting hissales numbers because something
else is going on in his life,and so the thing that I
personally really enjoy isspending that time with people
in the office, whether they'resalespeople, whether they're ops
people, whether they'reaccounting people.
Let's not forget, because we'reso in the weeds, we have're ops
people, whether they'reaccounting people.
Let's not forget, because we'reso in the weeds, we have so
(42:58):
many meetings, we got so manyhats we're wearing right,
especially if you're kind of inthe startup phase, you're going
to be wearing a lot of hats andthat's okay, that's going to be
for a season, but at the end ofthe day we can't bypass that.
People component part of thebusiness.
For me, that's the mostparamount thing.
(43:18):
My first hour of my day andit's been this way for years is
8 o'clock to 9 o'clock.
In my calendar every single day, it says connection.
I do not allow myself to have ameeting from 8 o'clock to 9
o'clock.
The most important part of theday is that connection time with
everybody in the office at thathour time slot.
(43:38):
Nobody's.
No meeting ever gets put inthat time slot.
That's it.
It's there.
It's stayed there for years andI've done that for probably six
or seven years now.
And when I'm gone and you know,thankfully get to go on vacation
and not have to worry about thebusiness falling apart, which
has not always been that way.
Coming back, it's cool whenpeople are like man, I miss
(43:58):
getting to see you every singleday in our talks.
That means a lot to me.
Whenever they're like man, Imiss my.
Ronnie time is what some ofthem will call it I'm like, oh
okay, cool.
And so finding out what's goingon with your people, sitting
with your people, being a safeplace for them, right, like if
we only look at them as profitcenters and how much money they
can bring us and all that kindof stuff, I feel like that lack
(44:22):
of sincerity, that lack ofauthenticity will eventually be
found out and felt.
And then, when push comes toshove and they get offered more
money to go somewhere else, ifthey feel like it's a better
culture fit for somewhere else,if they feel like it's a better
culture, fit for somewhere else,they're going to leave.
But if you make it a placethat's welcoming, inviting
upward mobility opportunities,they can grow personally, they
(44:44):
can see what a healthy life ismodeled to them.
People want to be around thosekinds of things.
I think it's like number nine ornumber 10 on the list that
people leave a job because ofmoney.
That means there's eight plusother things that people leave a
job for that's crazy.
Most of us think it's fine.
You know it's financially thatthey're leaving because this
(45:08):
other guy is going to offer them.
You know two more points ontheir sales.
If they come sell for them, ourpeople get offered.
We don't pay the most inprobably any of our markets.
Our guys get offered all thetime because guess what?
Those companies they know wetrain really really well.
And so therefore they don't knowhow to train people, so they
want to try to steal our peoplebecause we're like oh, they're
(45:29):
already like up and ready andraring to go, but our people
don't go because they feel caredfor they been ready and raring
to go, but our people don't gobecause they feel cared for,
they feel heard, they feelappreciated.
And I think that's a missingpart of the piece for us,
because we just get so kind ofuh, you know, bogged down with
the, uh, the day-to-day stuffand we don't just kind of take a
(45:50):
moment, take a pause and, uh,really sit with somebody moment,
take a pause and really sitwith somebody yeah, that's so
good, yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't like, look at your
business and go well, I wish wehad better processes.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Our people suck, but I wish we had better processes.
Our sales are doing great, butour people suck, but I wish we
had better processes.
Right, sales are doing great,but our people suck.
You know, it's like nobodywould look back on their company
and wish they had worse people.
You're always going to wantbetter people sure and it's it's
interesting.
I look at it like I mean, it'syou spend so much time at your
job when you're you're away fromhome?
(46:32):
Right, it's kind of it's yourhome away from home.
So, so, these people thatyou're working with all day,
it's like man, I want to bearound people that I like, yeah,
and that I enjoy being around,that are also the right people
in the right seats.
But, like sure, there's afriendship part there too, and,
of course, there's boundariesinherent in that.
As leaders.
I don't want to be talking toeverybody about business owner
(46:52):
problems, but you know you wantto.
You want to make it like beingpart of a family.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, yeah, we, we.
We kind of went away fromsaying family and more started
saying team, just because somepeople's view of family.
Yeah, family can get messy andyou know like when you're family
, you're family.
You can put boundaries up, butyou know your blood.
So we started saying team andthat seemed to kind of resonate
(47:19):
a little bit better for us.
But yeah, I just kind of try totake a little bit more of a
holistic approach to life.
We talked about before we goton that work-life synergy.
I don't really believe there'swork-life balance, because
balance means that it's 50-50.
I don't spend 50% of my time athome.
I just don't.
(47:40):
It's not going to be balancedright.
So that synergy of home lifeversus your professional life,
the whole other aspects offitness, is important to me
overall wellness right.
If I feel good, then I'mprobably going to be able to
perform well right.
(48:01):
So you know that's an importantpart of the component.
You know I mentioned therapyearlier.
You know, for me that's one ofthose things that's really
really been a game changer formyself is to make sure that you
know emotionally and mentalhealth wise which I used to
never pay attention to.
I was just kind of living inthe chaos, living in the grind
(48:24):
and the you know the hustleculture and stuff like that, and
realizing that there's there'sthere's an important other part
of it that I need to be a littlebit more readily available.
You readily available becausefor my wife and my kids and all
that stuff, they don't need mebeing CEO dad when I come there.
I need to be able to be justdad or just my wife's partner.
(48:49):
There's a lot that we can learnfrom each other and how to do
life in a good, healthy way.
Be around the kind of peoplethat you want to be like.
Create boundaries from thoseothers that might not be best
suited for the type of life thatyou want to lead.
(49:10):
I think being a good, genuine,authentic person can kind of
take you pretty far in lifenowadays, which is kind of crazy
Because I think that over time,people's character will be kind
of proven out over time.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah, yeah, we did a when I was in my undergrad.
We went through a wholeleadership training thing for a
year because I might agree.
But they built out this modeland they taught leadership from
the perspective of a like acompass.
Like you know, if you were todraw a compass on a piece of
paper with north, south, east,west and north was character.
(49:45):
Like that's always your truenorth.
It always comes back tocharacter.
You'll never outpace yourcharacter, right, doesn't matter
how skilled you are.
You know, if you're skilled atmaking sales but you don't have
a character and you're sleepingwith your secretary, you're, you
know things are going tocollapse, right, sure.
So, uh, character was North, um, and then East was vision and
(50:06):
South was skills and West withrelationships, and so they built
that out over the course of ayear.
But I'm sitting there and thisis at Bible college and the
teacher's writing this stuff upthere, and at the time I was
really, really focused andintense, preaching a lot,
studying all the time, tons ofhead knowledge, you know, in my
mid twenties, and it was almostas if God highlighted the word
(50:29):
relationships, like with aglowing.
I mean it just stuck out likecrazy on the whiteboard and I
didn't hear an audible voice oranything.
But it was almost like God saidhey man, you're hard enough on
yourself to where you're notgoing to let your character get
jacked up.
You can develop vision, you canget trained on skills, but your
(50:49):
relationships are.
You need help.
Like you don't know how to getalong with people, you don't
even really love people verywell, you don't appreciate their
company.
And it was really powerfulbecause I was like wow, I don't
like people kind of get on mynerves a little bit.
I just want to tell them truthlike biblical truth at the time.
I mean, I'm 45 now.
This is 20 years ago and thenGod led me up to Dallas to go to
(51:14):
Dallas Seminary and I got a jobas an apartment manager on
campus at Dallas Seminary and Iwas surrounded by 400 seminary
students who are all so muchdifferent than me and it was
awesome because God taught mehow to love people and how to
appreciate people and appreciatediversity and all this stuff.
But I think that's thechallenge I'm taking away from
(51:35):
this conversation with you isfor anybody listening to this,
like man, go deep on people,learn how to love people,
appreciate people, how to be apeople person, because it's.
Any business is a peoplebusiness.
So that's the biggest thing I'mtaking away from all this.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, and it doesn't matter if you're introverted or
extroverted.
That's not really what we'retalking about.
Right?
I'm extroverted, my wife isintroverted.
That doesn't mean that youcan't people well.
It just means that when itcomes time to recharging your
batteries, it's just different.
And so, yeah, I would highlyencourage you know, maybe that's
not something that you've beengreat at in your current place
(52:12):
of employment whether you're aleader, whether you're the owner
, the great thing is that, aspeople, we get a new day every
single day, as long as we wakeup, right.
So you can choose that.
You want to be a differentperson tomorrow.
You don't have to continue todo the things Now.
It's going to be hard, becauseyou're going to have to now
create a new skill set, right.
You're going to have to createa new habit because your default
mechanism is to be that way.
(52:34):
So you're going to have to makethe conscious effort to change.
But we get a new day tomorrow,and so you can make that choice.
Whenever it comes down to it,it's like this is part that I
want to change.
I don't want to continue to benegative.
I don't want to continue to behard on people.
I don't want to be yelling,know be yelling at people or
cussing at people, you know, andpeople be wanting to leave.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Like you can make that change, you know it's going
to be difficult, but you canmake that change.
That's good stuff.
Well, Ronnie man, I appreciateyou being on the podcast Always
good talking to you and I wantto get you back, actually maybe
in six months or something, andtalk more about the leadership,
the personal leadership,everything from mental health to
(53:18):
physical health to justleadership in general.
I think it'd be really fun totalk about that.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah, I'd love to, yeah, I'd be happy to hop back
on.
All right, man?
Thanks a lot, thanks.
all right, everybody, welcome to the limitless
roofing show, and today I've gota special guest, mr ronnie
lawler.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So thanks for joining us, man yeah, thanks for having
me, dylan happy to be here yeah, buddy.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So I wanted you to be on the show because we have a
friendship.
You've got a very successfulroofing business.
You're also into health andwellness and stuff that I'm
passionate about too.
But I just I knew that youwould be easy to talk to and
real about the highs and thelows of running a roofing
company.
You know painful lessonslearned, wonderful things
(00:42):
learned all along the way.
So that's what we want to getinto.
But for people that may notknow, ronnie Lawler, kind of
just tell us who you are andwhat's Avco Roofing stuff like
that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, so I'm the chief executive officer at Avco
Roofing.
I've been there for 10 years.
I've known Heath Hicks, who'salso the co-founder of the
Catchall known him for 20 plusyears.
At this point in time which iskind of crazy you start to feel
a little bit older.
That's.
The only time I kind of startto feel a little bit older is
(01:14):
whenever I start referring tofriends of mine that I've known
for 20 plus years.
So yeah, I'm kind of athird-generation contractor.
My dad's a master plumber,master electrician, gc.
My grandfather was a tradesmanas well.
So I kind of grew up in theconstruction industry.
I was sweating copper by thetime I was 11 years old.
(01:37):
So I kind of grew up in thebusiness, got into sales pretty
early on.
I was born and raised in NewJersey.
Had somebody one day that I wasriding my bike, as we used to
do back in the day, whenever thestreetlights came on and we
knew it was time to go homeProbably very familiar for Dylan
(01:58):
, for our generation, foreverybody else that's younger
than us.
They're like I don't have aclue what you're talking about.
We didn't ride our bikesanywhere, right, and so I had a
had a guy pull up one day, whileI was riding my bike, uh, in
New Jersey, and he's driving a,you know, wood panel uh station
wagon, uh.
And so he, uh, you know, rolledthe crank window down and was
(02:18):
like, hey, you want to make somemoney.
And you know, uh, I was like,yeah, sure, that sounds good.
I don't know about you, but ifanybody was to randomly roll up
to my kids and try to talk tothem right now, we'd be probably
fighting at this point in time.
But life was a little bitdifferent back then.
And so he told me aboutnewspaper sales.
And so he told me you just gotto knock more doors and sell
(02:42):
subscriptions to adults anddeliver the papers.
And so I was like, wow, I couldmake my own money outside of
the family business.
And I was 11, so uh told methat I could win a boombox cd
player.
Uh, at that time we're talkinglike 1990, 1991, at this point
time for kind of reference, cdplayers were kind of a new thing
I was like, well, I could neverafford a cd player.
(03:03):
My parents couldn't buy me one.
So what, what do I got to do towin that?
And just got to sell the most.
And so I started and I sold themost.
So that kind of started mysales career and my door
knocking career.
So it was something that I wasexcited about and I love the
idea of being able to go find mycustomer.
(03:23):
I guess you could say and yeah,I started in roofing
specifically back all the wayback in.
I guess it was about 2007,.
2008 was when I first startedin the industry.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Man so door knocking since 11 years old yeah yeah,
yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I hadn't really thought about it.
My dad owned, uh, when we weregrowing up in New Jersey he
owned an irrigation business andwe worked predominantly in, um
uh, retirement communities, andso I guess I technically started
knocking doors even before Iwas 11.
Cause he would be workingacross the street.
He like, hey, we gotta go, uh,you know, blow out their system,
go, knock on their door and youknow, tell them, you know, uh,
(04:07):
that you're my son and uh.
So I was talking to adults bythe time I was like six, like
knocking on people's doors.
So for me, even when it was 11,like I didn't have kind of the
fear and trepidation of being 11years old and knocking and uh,
and talking to adults, so thatnever bothered me.
So like my mindset's alwaysjust been kind of a little bit
different when it came to doorknocking.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Man, that's so cool.
That makes me think about mydaughters.
So they, my daughters are 10,eight and five, and the 10 and
eight year old like to set up alemonade stand at the corner of
our neighborhood.
Right, they made 80 bucks theother day.
That's awesome 80 bucks sellingother day 80 bucks, I'm like
that's like right Right.
The 10 year old.
This is huge.
(04:48):
And then the next day they made70 bucks.
Wow, I'm just like you want agab watch, you want to order
whatever these things are, andit's like you can easily get
this within a week or two.
Yeah, yeah, but I didn't think,I, but I thought, I thought the
same thing.
I thought, man, this is goingto help them down the road If
they keep doing stuff like this,to just get over that fear of
(05:08):
man, that anxiety over talkingto people about stuff that you
have in sales.
So, so then, so you did that.
How did you get into?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
roofing of reefing.
So my wife and I my wife and Ihave been married for 19 years
and thankfully I don't just likemy wife, I love her and vice
versa.
So that's, that's a added bonus.
So we were, we were living in a450 square foot apartment.
We had a kid on the way.
(05:39):
I was actually sellinginsurance door to door, funny
enough.
So I worked for a company thatI sold insurance door to door
and we had to collect, which wasa whole other thing.
So we got to do our own claims,had to collect the money and
sell the policy.
So not sure how that wasn't aconflict of interest there, but
that's another story for adifferent day, I guess.
(06:00):
And so I was coming home fromwork and every single day I just
didn't enjoy doing what I wasdoing.
I just I was not passionateabout it.
What they said I could make, Ireally, you know, there was
really probably like one guy inlike 1979 that worked 120 hours,
you know a week, that was ableto make that kind of money.
Like it just didn't seemfeasible, based off of like what
(06:22):
they had originally sold me onas the opportunity and it just
was.
You know, I kind of felt likethe life was getting sucked out
of me every day.
And I'm in my mid twenties andI'm thinking man, is my next 10
years of my life going to looklike this?
If that's the case, like I,something has to change, cause I
know what this life looks likeright now.
I can't even afford a twobedroom apartment.
(06:43):
We're about to have a kid.
Where are we going to put thiskid?
There's no place to put a cribin a 450 square foot apartment.
And so I was coming home one dayand one of my buddies that I'd
known for a number of years hisname is Matthew and Matthew was
like man every time.
Ronnie, every time I see younowadays, you just look defeated
(07:04):
and down and just like life isreally, really rough.
What's going on?
And I told him work, life's notgreat, blah, blah, blah.
He's like dude, you grew updoing construction, you are in
the insurance business.
Have you ever thought ofroofing sales?
And I was like that is a madeup job.
You just made that up on thespot.
Roofing sales, I've never heardof this.
(07:24):
Like, I don't know what you'retalking about.
That doesn't sound like that'sa real thing.
He's like no, no, no, dude,just come meet the owner of this
company that I work for.
I've been doing this and I'mnot even a good salesperson and
he told me how much money he hadmade in the last like six
months and I was like sell somestuff, so let's go talk to that
owner.
So, um, I did uh, and yeah,that was kind of what uh
(07:49):
launched me into uh, intoroofing sales and then you
eventually made your way to avco.
Yeah, yeah, tell us, tell theaudience, a little bit about
avco roofing yeah, so, um, heathhicks uh, he's the owner of
Avco, good friend of mine.
Like I said, we've known eachother for 20 plus years and I
(08:11):
was working for another roofingcompany in East Texas at the
time and he was in the processof buying Avco from the widow
original owner.
Unfortunately, he had passedaway kind of suddenly and
unexpectedly and his wife kindof inherited the company and she
didn't want to own a roofingcompany, and so he was somebody
(08:32):
that she trusted and believed inand offered to sell the company
to him, and so he was in theprocess of buying it.
While he was in the process ofbuying it, he was trying to
recruit me to come work for him,and so he just kind of was like
, hey, man, why don't we, whydon't we create this thing?
That was a place that you and Iwish that we would have been
able to work at from the start,someplace that cares about
(08:53):
people, a place that trainspeople well, a place that gives
people the opportunity to moveup and kind of earn, earn their
opportunity for upward mobility,and, you know, place that, uh,
family is important and you'regoing to have time to spend with
your family and I'm like, yes,all those things resonate
greatly with me and so, um, so Isaid yes.
(09:14):
Eventually he actually asked mesix times and then on the sixth
time I finally said yes.
So, uh, and yeah, one of thebest decisions as an adult that
I've ever made outside of askingmy wife to marry me, and so
that was, yeah, that was that'llbe 10 years ago in October, and
so initially, really like, wejust kind of looked at some of
(09:37):
our existing friend circle, if I, you know, for people that
worked really hard, that hadkind of good character, that the
opportunity they currently wereat wasn't the most ideal
opportunity for them, and sosome of those people still work
for us to this day, which isreally, really cool.
And so that was what kind ofjust got us started.
(09:59):
And then we were like, huh, weshould probably put some
processes and things in placeBecause, like, we went on our
first year we did, you know, $5million in revenue.
The best year that they hadever done in business in the
first seven years was like $1.5,$1.7 million, and we tripled
that in our first year and itwas like, all right, we're kind
(10:19):
of off to the races at thatpoint in time.
So that was kind of the startof it.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Man, that's wild.
And I know you guys, I knowAvco's.
You guys could make one of thetop 100 roofing companies lists,
cause I think that I think thatlist starts out with guys at
about a hundred million plus orwhatever, but it goes.
It goes all the way down toguys that are doing like 10
million a year.
I think they've.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, yeah, which is kind of interesting, that it's
that's in a year, I thinkthey've.
Yeah, yeah, which is kind ofinteresting.
That's a pretty vastlydifferent yeah, on the
residential side, for sure.
I mean, there's some monstrouscommercial companies that are
out there, but on theresidential side you're probably
right.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, but I know you guys have done well above the
bottom end of that list.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And so one thing I know youguys have done really well is
the door-to-door thing, whichmakes total sense, because
you've been doing that since youwere 11 or 6 or whatever.
What's one of the biggestchallenges you guys faced as you
grew to 5 million, then 10, andthen 15, and 20, and just kept
(11:17):
going.
What were a couple of thebiggest challenges you faced?
Let's get into that, because alot of guys listening to this I
think it's just the nature ofour culture.
You see people's highlightreels on Facebook.
You see a guy driving a brandnew, jacked up Ford F-250.
Right, and it's just like dang,what am I doing wrong?
Sure, what am I missing, youknow?
So let's get into some of thechallenges.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, some of the biggest challenges, like I said
right from the outset, was oh,this is kind of already bigger.
You know, the five-year goalwas 5 million, like that was
Heath's original goal was 5million in five years and we did
it our first year.
So it was like, oh well, thatgot blown out of the water.
But in doing so, like we didn'thave a CRM, we were still using
(12:04):
, like paper folders.
After, like, I think we werepart of the way into our second
year before we ever, like evengot a CRM.
So, you know, we're using paperfolders, which was, you know,
kind of interesting to do allthose things.
But it really probably theinitial first like you know
issues or whatever was well, nowwe have people that are wanting
(12:25):
to come work for us that we'renot even like recruiting at that
point in time, like, which waskind of weird, right, like we'd
all love those problems nowadays, right To where, like, people
are like throwing themselves atyou.
That was, uh, that's not the,you know, uh, necessarily the
norm, but it was getting systemsin place, getting processes in
place, cause we were good atselling stuff.
But the whole back end side ofthe business from you know
(12:50):
production, you know, accounting, all those things like that
wasn't my skill set, like Ididn't know how to operate
QuickBooks or anything alongthose lines that was.
That was not what I was good at.
I knew what I was good at, andso trying to find the right
people to get in the right kindof seats, that was kind of a big
problem.
But really then it was thetraining side of things, like
(13:13):
getting people up to speed asfast as possible.
And so then Heath and I both wegot kind of like for my first
roofing job.
That was a door knocking,specific roofing job.
I got dropped off at the end ofthe driveway and said, hey, you
know, you talk real good, gosee if you can get on that
person's roof, you know.
(13:33):
And at that point in time it'slike, well, I got to figure it
out.
I already quit my insurance job.
My wife is about to have a kidLike I got to figure this part
out.
Have a kid?
Like I gotta, I gotta figurethis part out.
And so then we just kind offumbled into like teaching
ourselves how to do the job,heath and I both.
You know, over the years, andso obviously for anybody that's
done this, this is probablyseveral of our stories where,
(13:55):
like, we just kind of got thrownto the wolves and you kind of
had to figure it out and if youmade it past three years, you're
, you know, an exception to therule.
But we realized that's not whatwe wanted to do, and so then we
really started kind of buildingout more of a training program
to get everybody on the samepage doing similar things.
So that way it was kind of likewash, rinse, repeat, and so
(14:17):
having to come up with like atraining plan, the crm, um,
actually, um, you know processesto follow, because everything
was like in Heath's and my brain, right, it was just up in our
heads and it was like, oh well,this is how I just have done it
for such a long time.
How do I communicate that tosomebody else that's never been
in roofing?
How do I communicate that tosomebody that's never been in
(14:40):
sales?
Right, and so that was a bigthing for us was, you know,
getting people up to speed,because the thing that always
bothered me was seeing at othercompanies.
I'm like this is a goodcandidate, this is a good person
, this guy's got good culture,fit, he's got sales DNA.
But because of the trainer,sales manager, owner or whatever
(15:00):
.
They didn't actually know howto coach people, they didn't
know how to train people, theydidn't know how to onboard
people, and so somebody that Ithink probably could have done
well at it ended up falling tothe wayside and getting burned
out or not making enough moneyin the first three months.
So they couldn't continue to doit.
And I think we probably all havethose stories that we either
(15:20):
you know, unfortunately, that wewere a part of, either you know
, unfortunately, that we were apart of um or that we've heard
stories of, or or whatever, andso we wanted to kind of curb
some of that stuff, uh, from thebeginning.
So, um, you know, then there'salways just the people component
, which is always, uh, always aninteresting part once you just
starting adding more and morepeople to the mix.
(15:41):
But, yeah, we could definitelycontinue to dive into.
I mean, there's definitelyplenty of things that we did not
do right.
So I definitely don't wantpeople to think like oh yeah,
like we just kill it all thetime, like, no, like we've
definitely made mistakes, we'vehad a lot of errors, there's a
lot of things that you know,hindsight's 2020, that we could
have.
We could have done differently,we could have done better.
And yeah, I think that's justpart of the learning process,
(16:03):
right, that learning is failingat something, learning from that
opportunity and then hopefullynot making the same mistake
again and then growing from that.
You know, quote unquote failure.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, totally.
Um.
Well, so let's get into that,though.
Let's get in maybe a story andyou don't have to mention any
names, but maybe a story whereyou guys made a big people
mistake and what did you learnfrom that and how did you deal
with it, and then how.
And then let's get into how doyou start getting the right
people from there.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, I mean there's several, so let me let me think
of what's probably the, the onesthat are some of the more
noteworthy ones that I thinkthat would be helpful um to to
other folks, um, I would say, umwhat?
I'll give a couple instanceshere um, one of them being that,
(16:58):
uh, putting the wrong peopleinto positions of leadership
because of the potential thatthey have as individuals, and so
putting people into positionsof leadership because of what
the upside possibly could bewith them, whether they're in
sales or whether they're inproduction or whatever.
(17:19):
And so we had put people inplace, whether they were maybe a
top salesperson, as a salesmanager, and it's like, oh well,
that's the obvious thing.
How many times have we heardthat story where top sales guy
goes in and he's the salesmanager all of a sudden and then
sales go down because you justtook out your number one
producing guy.
Everybody is being treatedterribly because he's actually
(17:41):
not a good people manager, he'snot a good leader, he's good at
kind of caring about himself andmaking his own personal sales.
And so we definitely had someof those where we put somebody
in a position of leadership.
That was because of the upwardpotential was greater than we
should have looked at the wholepicture and been like, okay,
(18:02):
well, there's a couple of yellowflags.
Maybe they weren't red flags atthe time, they kind of became
red flags, but they were kind ofyellow flags.
It was like, uh, well, the theupside of what we could maybe
get out of this individualperson might be better than what
the downside of, like, theircharacter flaws, uh, or that
they're not a culture fit, um,and so that's something for me
(18:24):
nowadays that that's the mostimportant thing is are they core
value alignment, and are theyculture fit?
Before I ever consider them foranything else, those two things
nowadays I look through thatlens because I don't want to
ever make that mistake again,and unfortunately we did make
some of those mistakes and itcost us dearly in multiple
(18:47):
different ways.
Whether other people I careabout most in the business is
the people side of the business.
This isn't for everybody and weknow that.
(19:10):
So some people are going toleave and they're not going to
stay in the industry, and that'sfine.
But at the end of the day, Ihope that I can put my head on
the pillow at the end of thenight and say that I did write
as much as I possibly could forthe people that I engaged with
in that specific day.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, right.
So why so?
Well, first, how do you I mean,how do you filter through
finding the right people nowtraining, and so, yeah, we do
utilize.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Predictive Index.
I really like that tool Beenaround for, I think at this
point in time, around 50 years,so they've got a lot of
information.
They've got a lot of data topull from.
It's been helpful to us to kindof narrow down the specific
person that we're looking for orthe specific role of what we're
wanting.
Right, because if we are justlike, I'll take any warm body,
(20:19):
or if it's a cultural alignmentright, like we've also made the
mistake of being, uh, going toofar the other way, which is, as
long as they're a cultural fit,you know, let's give them a shot
.
They didn't have sales dna.
It actually ends up not workingout great for them or us.
Everybody's kind of frustratedafter, you know, three months of
(20:39):
a failed effort and so reallydialing in what your candidate
is that you're actually lookingfor instead of being like well,
I have five different types ofcandidates that I could possibly
bring on, probably not one,maybe two.
When we're talking about likemore on the sales role side of
(21:00):
things, you need a certainarchetype, if you will, to be
able to reference.
You know, it's kind of likecounterfeiting, right, whenever
somebody's double checking billsthat are counterfeited or not,
right, they have that hundreddollar bill.
That is the real one that theylook at after every single time
they come back right, and that'sthe the main one.
(21:22):
This is real.
This is fake.
That archetype that you'rebuilding when it comes to the
type of salesperson that youwant, you got to keep
referencing back to that.
This is actually what we reallywant, and not deviating from
that just because that was agood person, it's a friend of
yours, it's a relative.
He knows one of my sales guys.
Right, they're a good culturefit.
(21:43):
Well, if they're not going tofit that archetype that you're
designing, then you're going tobe frustrated.
They're going to be frustrated.
You're going to spend hundredsof hours trying to bring in the
wrong person.
Right, it's kind of that squarepeg, you know round hole.
You keep pounding that.
It's never going to work.
(22:05):
It's going to continue to be afrustration point.
And so, understanding whetheryou use predictive index or not,
you really need to ask yourselfwhat is it exactly we are
looking in?
If you're hiring for sales thisapplies to every role in your
organization but really, reallynarrowing down what it is that
(22:26):
you're looking for in thatsalesperson.
So, since we were talking aboutsales, I'll just give you some
examples of like what was someof ours.
And so, since we were talkingabout sales, I'll just give you
some examples of like what wassome of ours right.
And so we were.
We wanted somebody that wasemotionally intelligent, right.
That way that person couldunderstand and read the room.
They could read the bodylanguage of the decision maker.
So if that person all of asudden you know the husband
(22:52):
leans back and he's crossing hisarms and before he had been
leaning in, listening intently,it's like okay, something else
in my presentation went awry.
An emotionally intelligentperson is going to pause,
they're not going to keep goingin their presentation and then
they're going to try to find outwhat happened to where, you
know that communication kind ofderailed, if you will.
Right, that's an emotionallyintelligent person, um, somebody
of high character, like wetalked about before.
(23:13):
Um, that was a really, reallyimportant part.
One of the ones that we addedjust in the last couple of years
was somebody that actually ismoney motivated and they had
left the job, that they had made35K a year and then, when they
were making 60 to 65K, they weregood and they like, wanted to
(23:35):
like call it a day.
Well, for me, that's not what Ineed.
That's not gonna be really,really helpful to have somebody
you know selling $350,000,$400,000 a year in roofing.
That's a lot of effort for thatsales manager to you know.
Continue to meet with them oneon one and, you know, for all it
(23:55):
was just like you're trying toget them to keep going and going
(24:16):
out and finding new business orgetting more referrals or
whatever.
And then they just were likeI'm good, I have way more money
in the bank than I've ever had.
I live below my means, which isgreat.
I'm not saying we shouldn't,but I needed somebody that
wanted to have more, that theywere somewhat money motivated.
I don't want them to beterrible human beings because
(24:38):
all they care about is money andthey want to take advantage of
every single person, but theyhad to have some kind of drive
that they wanted to betterthemselves and their family
financially.
So those are a couple examplesof getting really really clear
on what you want in your, inyour candidates, whether it's,
like I said, sales or somethingdifferent.
And then from there really likewell, now, now that we're clear
(25:00):
on that, how do I get people inright?
Like, how do we create a funnelto get more and more people in.
So you know what, how do we,how do we do that?
How do we get as many people inas possible?
That's kind of the goldenquestion that everybody wants to
always have, like a really youknow, kind of easy answer to.
(25:22):
And, unfortunately, depending onthe market you're in, depending
on your brand recognition, allthose kind of things there's.
You know, like I was on a callwith you a couple, I think last
week and you know some someweeks, we've got 200 to 500
candidates between our differentlocations.
Uh, sometimes, um and so thatwas it always like that?
(25:42):
No, um, you know, I'll give youa little snippet.
I would say beta test, like theactual, like job title, like,
try three different things.
You know entry-level home sales, uh, you know something along
the lines of, like, home servicesales, rep, um, roofing sales,
(26:05):
like you know, come up withthree different things, see what
actually gets more candidatesapplying to the role and then
shift and put more of your moneyback into the number one or
number two thing.
So do multiple different teststo see what actually is going to
hit for you.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, that's good.
A lot of guys I think there'sjust a lot you guys are doing
that make a complete processfrom the advertising, the role
to the interview process.
I know you've got pretty,really tight interview process
with several steps, um, and thenthe training after that.
So I think it's guys wonderlike, how do they keep people or
how do they, how are theybuilding their team?
(26:48):
We really have to build a wholesystem around it.
Why do you think a lot ofroofing companies struggle with
sales?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, I think there's multiple things here, right.
I mean if the culture doesn'tfeel inviting who wants to go to
work, you know what I mean Likeso nobody really wants to sign
up for that.
So that's kind of like the easyanswer.
And if you don't know whetheror not your culture is good and
maybe as a leader or the owneryou think it's good I would say
(27:22):
do a SurveyMonkey that's able tobe anonymous and ask some hard
questions that you're going tobe okay with getting hard
answers for We've done that acouple different times and, man,
that'll smack you in the facefor sure.
You're like, oh yeah, cultureis doing great, everybody loves
being here.
And then you're like, oh mygosh, like wow, okay, that was
like more than one person thatsaid that.
And so you know, be willing tobe asked to ask the hard
(27:47):
questions there.
So I would say cultures,cultures, number one.
Number two would be that mostpeople don't really have a
process.
They don't have a way ofonboarding people.
They don't have a way oftraining people.
They don't have a way ofcontinuing education.
They don't have a way ofconnecting with their sales reps
on at least a weekly orbiweekly basis.
(28:12):
The owner or the leader a lot oftimes kind of defers to their
learning style.
I see this pretty regularlywhere it's somebody like you,
Dylan, you might be like, showme one time and let me do it
once and I'm going to have it.
And so, as a leader, we end upassuming that everybody operates
like that.
(28:33):
Well, probably not right.
Like you're a parent, you gotkids, do you get to encourage or
discipline all your kids thesame?
No, everybody's different,right.
So you kind of have to bewilling to tailor fit a bit of
the training to the individualperson.
Now you need to hit like themajor milestones and the bigger
(28:54):
points and stuff like that.
But if this person is more of aum, of a doer, show them how to
do it and then let them showyou three to five times that
they understand how to do it.
Let them do it on their own andthen come back and inspect
their work again to see ifthey're actually catching on.
But I think most of the timeit's because there's a lack of
(29:14):
structure, there's a lack ofunderstanding from whoever their
trainer is, of actually how totrain people instead of, well,
just follow me around and I'llshow you how to do the job.
That's not really necessarily atraining methodology that's not
necessarily going to be like.
Oh well, johnny's the bestsales guy, follow him around and
(29:35):
you know, and he'll, and he'llshow you.
And Johnny's, you know, overthere talking mad smack about
you know how much he doesn'tlike it and he's going to start
his own roofing company in thenext year.
And hey, do you want to comewith me?
Like you never know, right.
Like there's all kinds of crazystories that we hear.
But we want to make sure thatwe're not just kind of, like you
(29:59):
know, being kind of the oldschool roofing way, which is
like, well, if they can figureit out, that means that they're
meant to be here, and if theycan't, that means that you know
the job's not for them.
Well, is that actually a themproblem, or is that a them and
maybe an us problem?
Maybe we should actually lookat ourselves and realize, you
know and I've had to have anhonest, hard conversation with
myself in the past when I'vetrained people and somebody
(30:21):
didn't work out and I was like,huh, I don't know if I did right
by that person or I didn't givethem everything and all the
tools to see if they could besuccessful, um, like, I wish I
would have.
And so that's what reallyhelped us kind of like refine
the process a lot more was cause.
I didn't like having thatfeeling at the end of the day of
(30:42):
like maybe I could have donebetter, maybe I could have done,
um, you know something a littlebit more.
Instead, nowadays I'm like, hey, man, that's not on us.
Like, you know, that personjust that's, it's not the right
fit.
They're just not right for therole.
Like, I feel very, veryconfident for us that that's
generally how that worksnowadays.
It's not because of lack oftraining, lack of care, lack of
(31:04):
accountability or anything alongthose lines.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
That's good.
What do you think about?
What do you think are some keysto door knocking, because I
know you've done that for a longtime.
Abco is a door knocking company.
You guys teach door knockingthrough the Roof Warrior program
, which feel free to unpack that.
Well, first of all, why do alot of roofing companies
struggle with door knocking?
And then, what are some realtips or tactics you could share
that work?
(31:29):
What are some real tips ortactics you could share that
work?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah.
So it's multifaceted here.
Most of the time, I think doorknocking it's from the top down.
So if you're an owner and youdon't believe in door knocking,
it's going to be a really,really hard sell to the rest of
your people.
That door knocking is actuallygoing to work no-transcript,
(32:23):
that's going to be feltthroughout.
Other people like well, if theowner doesn't believe in it,
right, say that you're, sayyou're a heavy marketing company
and you're spending 10 of yourrevenue dollars on uh marketing,
but you're also wanting to seeif you can generate leads via
door knocking.
Well, you've never seen in yourown company door knocking work.
(32:45):
But probably somebody else inyour market has probably made
door knocking work, whether it'sroofing or it's pest control or
, you know, used to be solar.
We won't get into solarnowadays, but you know all these
different means of doorknocking works.
It really doesn't even matterwhat you're selling Like, people
still buy, right?
Our number one sales guy thisyear that signed the most
(33:08):
contracts.
Guess what he's signed?
He's knocked the most doors.
Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
And so it still works.
So I would say you know, makingsure that you believe that it's
actually a viable businessstrategy.
So I would.
I would say that that's part ofit.
Really, most of it comesbetween the ears, right, most of
(33:32):
it is between the ears.
Um, I've coached, at this pointin time, you know hundreds, if
not thousands, of reps betweenavco and roof warrior and uh,
you know different uhconferences and different things
like that, and what I generallybelieve is the biggest downfall
for most people is that theyjust get in their head too much
(33:56):
right?
So I think that there's I'vekind of narrowed it down to what
I think are some core fearsthat most people have.
People, you know, you alludedto it earlier.
Like you know, people have thefear of man.
Well, if I knock on this door,maybe they're going to yell at
me.
Maybe they're going to bereally, really mad at me.
Maybe they're going to cuss atme door.
Maybe they're going to yell atme.
Maybe they're going to bereally, really mad at me.
Maybe they're going to cuss atme.
Maybe they're going to call thecops.
(34:16):
Right.
Or you have the fear of failure.
Well, if I don't knock thisdoor and I don't sign, if I
knock this door and I don't signa contract, I'm not putting
food on the table, I'm notproviding for my wife, my kids
are going to go hungry, rightlike that just continues to
cascade.
Or there's like the fear of theunknown, which is like I've
never knocked a door and so Idon't know what the
(34:41):
possibilities are.
But my mind just spirals andspins to where this could be
anything and this could be theworst catastrophic thing that
I've ever chose to do.
And so a lot of people fallinto those categories that they
generally lean towards, wherethey're going to be more fearful
and in fear of man.
For a lot of people, that's a,that's a big part of it,
especially when you're firststarting off, and so I always
(35:01):
think about this whenever I'mknocking on this person's door.
Right, I don't know what kindof day they're having, I don't
know what's going on in theirlife, so whatever response that
they give me, I'm not carryingthat weight to the next door.
So if, dylan, if I knocked onyour door and you're like you're
the worst human being of alltime, I can't believe you.
(35:21):
You roofers are terrible.
You guys suck.
You're ruthless.
I don't carry that weight tothe next door.
I kind of think like, huh, Iwonder what's going on in that
guy's life that he respondedlike that.
Maybe he just found out, youknow, his wife has cancer.
Maybe he just got fired.
Maybe he's just also a terriblehuman being, I don't know.
But I'm not going tointernalize that and let that
(35:42):
affect me, because I know whatthe upside is, what the
potential is.
I know that you know, if theaverage commission at your
company is $2,500, letting oursales guys know like, hey,
there's potentially $2,500behind every door, it's kind of
like price is right and I don'tknow what door it's behind, but
(36:05):
it's behind some door, there's$2,500.
The only way you find out is bygoing up there and knocking on
the door to find out if it'sthat door and if it's not, you
just go to the next door.
And so don't live in thatrumination cycle of like the
worst case scenarios and likethat person yelled at me.
And you know I'm not going togive somebody that kind of power
(36:26):
over me personally to make mefeel bad because I'm out there
trying to provide for my family.
I have.
There is no shame in my gamewhen it comes down to, I'll do
whatever it takes to provide formy family and at the end of the
day, like I know that it'stheir best interest if I'm the
one that's going to take care ofthem, because I'm going to do
right by that homeowner I'mgoing to do right by them to
(36:47):
take care of them.
And so I would also say some ofthe other things that we kind
of talk about is kind of takethe pressure off.
Don't think so much of like ohmy gosh, I got to sign a
contract today because my salesmanager said I got to hit this.
Many Like go out there.
We're out there to meet people,see if they have a need, and
(37:09):
can I help fill that need?
That's really it.
If you simplify it like that,then you kind of weed out all
the other things, right?
So meet people.
Do they have a need?
Right?
Is there a roof damage?
Yes or no?
Right?
There's not a lot of optionshere.
Roof's not damaged, roof needsto be repaired or roof needs to
(37:32):
be replaced.
That's it.
Can I help fill that need andhelp them with retail or an
insurance claims process, yes orno?
If it's a yes, that's mycustomer.
If it's no, that means they'renot my customer, and then I just
move on to the next one.
So don't make it a way biggerdeal than it actually has to be.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, that's good.
I remember reading in I thinkit's called the sales Bible by
Jeffrey Gittimer and he calledhe says go for no.
Every no gets you closer to ayes.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
So yeah, it's as many doors as you can where they say
no or they don't answerwhatever, and every single one
you build up is a closer to ayes.
Yeah, I heard at a conferenceone time when I was speaking on
a panel I think it was Wind, theStorm a couple of years back,
and one of the other paneliststhat was up there she was at the
time selling solar and she saidI kind of just shifted my
(38:28):
mindset and instead of like Igot to get 100 doors and I got
to talk to 17 decision makers, Igot to get you know a hundred
doors and I got to talk to youknow 17 decision makers.
I got to sign this manyagreements.
Instead, take the quote,unquote, negative, the no.
Well, I need to get 25 people totell me no today.
I got to get 25 people to tellme no today.
Like where's my first no goingto come from?
Like it kind of takes all thepower away from it whenever you
(38:51):
kind of turn it on its head thatway.
Right, it's like huh, that's areally interesting perspective
and I really appreciated thatperspective.
It's like that's a, that's agreat outlook on it, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, that's interesting.
So what would be your?
We're kind of rounding thecorner on our time together.
What would be some advice youhave to companies that are that
are struggling to grow theirsales and their door knocking?
What are one or two things thatyou would tell them today?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Well, you mentioned earlier, we do have our Roof
Warrior product and that'ssomething that Heath and I had
built a few years back when wewere getting guys to come to our
office.
But, like every other week,sometimes people were flying in
from Indianapolis, people werecoming in from florida, people
were flying in from thenortheast and you know, asking
(39:39):
all these questions, and heathand I are both coaches kind of
at heart, like we enjoy helpingpeople and uh, so we decided to,
you know, take some of thethings we learned and kind of
package it into a product, andso that's one of the things I
really like about our product isthat, like we're we're still
running a roofing company everysingle day.
Um, currently, that's what kindof I think separates us a
(40:00):
little bit from some othercoaches.
Like I'm friends with severalof the other guys.
I think everybody's got uh, forthe most part, has a really
good product.
It just or it was just a littlebit different, um, whenever it
comes down to it.
So if you don't have a trainingprogram that you've already
created, you need to get atraining program.
It takes quite a while tocreate your own.
So find somebody you connectwith, find somebody that you
feel core value alignment, havea call, discovery call with them
(40:23):
, see if it's something thatyou're going to enjoy, and get
on a training program of somesort.
Because if you're notconsistent with how you onboard
people and you're just kind ofthrowing them to the wolves,
you're probably going tocontinue to get the same results
that you've been yielding,which I would assume is probably
(40:46):
not very good.
And so the other thing that Iwould say is really the most
important part of our businessis the people side.
I'll say that again the mostimportant part of our business
is the people side, the peoplecomponent, the way that we do
that, the way that we buildrelationships right.
Time spent equals relationshipright.
(41:07):
If I want to get to know mywife better, after 20 plus years
of being together, I still needto date.
My wife Took her on a date lastnight, right after we went to
therapy.
So we did therapy and we wentout to dinner right after that.
Right and so.
But if I don't spend that time,I'm not going to continue to
(41:27):
develop that relationship andthen, whenever the kids are gone
, like we're going to bestrangers, right?
We can't have this expectationof bringing in a sales rep and
not spending time with them tounderstand who they are.
Where do they come from, whatare their strengths, what are
their weaknesses, what are areasthat they're going to struggle?
Where is their headspace at?
Where are they at emotionally,where are they at physically?
(41:49):
You know, like we're wholepeople, whole people but yet
we're trying to talk to thissmall segment of them as an
individual person, wheneverything else might be on fire
in their life.
And you're wondering whyJohnny's not performing.
Well, you don't know Johnnywell enough to know that him and
his wife are having fertilityissues right now.
I don't know if you've ever andsome of you have obviously
(42:12):
struggled with that, and youknow what that's like.
Well, that's going to play abig part.
Whether we think that peopleshould be able to
compartmentalize their life ornot.
It's still really, really hardto do that right.
I always say that professionalproblems are personal problems,
just in fancier clothes.
So, at the end of the day,whatever's going on in Johnny's
(42:36):
life, more than likely it'ssomething else.
Maybe he's not hitting hissales numbers because something
else is going on in his life,and so the thing that I
personally really enjoy isspending that time with people
in the office, whether they'resalespeople, whether they're ops
people, whether they'reaccounting people.
Let's not forget, because we'reso in the weeds, we have're ops
people, whether they'reaccounting people.
Let's not forget, because we'reso in the weeds, we have so
(42:58):
many meetings, we got so manyhats we're wearing right,
especially if you're kind of inthe startup phase, you're going
to be wearing a lot of hats andthat's okay, that's going to be
for a season, but at the end ofthe day we can't bypass that.
People component part of thebusiness.
For me, that's the mostparamount thing.
(43:18):
My first hour of my day andit's been this way for years is
8 o'clock to 9 o'clock.
In my calendar every single day, it says connection.
I do not allow myself to have ameeting from 8 o'clock to 9
o'clock.
The most important part of theday is that connection time with
everybody in the office at thathour time slot.
(43:38):
Nobody's.
No meeting ever gets put inthat time slot.
That's it.
It's there.
It's stayed there for years andI've done that for probably six
or seven years now.
And when I'm gone and you know,thankfully get to go on vacation
and not have to worry about thebusiness falling apart, which
has not always been that way.
Coming back, it's cool whenpeople are like man, I miss
(43:58):
getting to see you every singleday in our talks.
That means a lot to me.
Whenever they're like man, Imiss my.
Ronnie time is what some ofthem will call it I'm like, oh
okay, cool.
And so finding out what's goingon with your people, sitting
with your people, being a safeplace for them, right, like if
we only look at them as profitcenters and how much money they
can bring us and all that kindof stuff, I feel like that lack
(44:22):
of sincerity, that lack ofauthenticity will eventually be
found out and felt.
And then, when push comes toshove and they get offered more
money to go somewhere else, ifthey feel like it's a better
culture fit for somewhere else,if they feel like it's a better
culture, fit for somewhere else,they're going to leave.
But if you make it a placethat's welcoming, inviting
upward mobility opportunities,they can grow personally, they
(44:44):
can see what a healthy life ismodeled to them.
People want to be around thosekinds of things.
I think it's like number nine ornumber 10 on the list that
people leave a job because ofmoney.
That means there's eight plusother things that people leave a
job for that's crazy.
Most of us think it's fine.
You know it's financially thatthey're leaving because this
(45:08):
other guy is going to offer them.
You know two more points ontheir sales.
If they come sell for them, ourpeople get offered.
We don't pay the most inprobably any of our markets.
Our guys get offered all thetime because guess what?
Those companies they know wetrain really really well.
And so therefore they don't knowhow to train people, so they
want to try to steal our peoplebecause we're like oh, they're
(45:29):
already like up and ready andraring to go, but our people
don't go because they feel caredfor they been ready and raring
to go, but our people don't gobecause they feel cared for,
they feel heard, they feelappreciated.
And I think that's a missingpart of the piece for us,
because we just get so kind ofuh, you know, bogged down with
the, uh, the day-to-day stuffand we don't just kind of take a
(45:50):
moment, take a pause and, uh,really sit with somebody moment,
take a pause and really sitwith somebody yeah, that's so
good, yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't like, look at your
business and go well, I wish wehad better processes.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Our people suck, but I wish we had better processes.
Our sales are doing great, butour people suck, but I wish we
had better processes.
Right, sales are doing great,but our people suck.
You know, it's like nobodywould look back on their company
and wish they had worse people.
You're always going to wantbetter people sure and it's it's
interesting.
I look at it like I mean, it'syou spend so much time at your
job when you're you're away fromhome?
(46:32):
Right, it's kind of it's yourhome away from home.
So, so, these people thatyou're working with all day,
it's like man, I want to bearound people that I like, yeah,
and that I enjoy being around,that are also the right people
in the right seats.
But, like sure, there's afriendship part there too, and,
of course, there's boundariesinherent in that.
As leaders.
I don't want to be talking toeverybody about business owner
(46:52):
problems, but you know you wantto.
You want to make it like beingpart of a family.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, yeah, we, we.
We kind of went away fromsaying family and more started
saying team, just because somepeople's view of family.
Yeah, family can get messy andyou know like when you're family
, you're family.
You can put boundaries up, butyou know your blood.
So we started saying team andthat seemed to kind of resonate
(47:19):
a little bit better for us.
But yeah, I just kind of try totake a little bit more of a
holistic approach to life.
We talked about before we goton that work-life synergy.
I don't really believe there'swork-life balance, because
balance means that it's 50-50.
I don't spend 50% of my time athome.
I just don't.
(47:40):
It's not going to be balancedright.
So that synergy of home lifeversus your professional life,
the whole other aspects offitness, is important to me
overall wellness right.
If I feel good, then I'mprobably going to be able to
perform well right.
(48:01):
So you know that's an importantpart of the component.
You know I mentioned therapyearlier.
You know, for me that's one ofthose things that's really
really been a game changer formyself is to make sure that you
know emotionally and mentalhealth wise which I used to
never pay attention to.
I was just kind of living inthe chaos, living in the grind
(48:24):
and the you know the hustleculture and stuff like that, and
realizing that there's there'sthere's an important other part
of it that I need to be a littlebit more readily available.
You readily available becausefor my wife and my kids and all
that stuff, they don't need mebeing CEO dad when I come there.
I need to be able to be justdad or just my wife's partner.
(48:49):
There's a lot that we can learnfrom each other and how to do
life in a good, healthy way.
Be around the kind of peoplethat you want to be like.
Create boundaries from thoseothers that might not be best
suited for the type of life thatyou want to lead.
(49:10):
I think being a good, genuine,authentic person can kind of
take you pretty far in lifenowadays, which is kind of crazy
Because I think that over time,people's character will be kind
of proven out over time.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah, yeah, we did a when I was in my undergrad.
We went through a wholeleadership training thing for a
year because I might agree.
But they built out this modeland they taught leadership from
the perspective of a like acompass.
Like you know, if you were todraw a compass on a piece of
paper with north, south, east,west and north was character.
(49:45):
Like that's always your truenorth.
It always comes back tocharacter.
You'll never outpace yourcharacter, right, doesn't matter
how skilled you are.
You know, if you're skilled atmaking sales but you don't have
a character and you're sleepingwith your secretary, you're, you
know things are going tocollapse, right, sure.
So, uh, character was North, um, and then East was vision and
(50:06):
South was skills and West withrelationships, and so they built
that out over the course of ayear.
But I'm sitting there and thisis at Bible college and the
teacher's writing this stuff upthere, and at the time I was
really, really focused andintense, preaching a lot,
studying all the time, tons ofhead knowledge, you know, in my
mid twenties, and it was almostas if God highlighted the word
(50:29):
relationships, like with aglowing.
I mean it just stuck out likecrazy on the whiteboard and I
didn't hear an audible voice oranything.
But it was almost like God saidhey man, you're hard enough on
yourself to where you're notgoing to let your character get
jacked up.
You can develop vision, you canget trained on skills, but your
(50:49):
relationships are.
You need help.
Like you don't know how to getalong with people, you don't
even really love people verywell, you don't appreciate their
company.
And it was really powerfulbecause I was like wow, I don't
like people kind of get on mynerves a little bit.
I just want to tell them truthlike biblical truth at the time.
I mean, I'm 45 now.
This is 20 years ago and thenGod led me up to Dallas to go to
(51:14):
Dallas Seminary and I got a jobas an apartment manager on
campus at Dallas Seminary and Iwas surrounded by 400 seminary
students who are all so muchdifferent than me and it was
awesome because God taught mehow to love people and how to
appreciate people and appreciatediversity and all this stuff.
But I think that's thechallenge I'm taking away from
(51:35):
this conversation with you isfor anybody listening to this,
like man, go deep on people,learn how to love people,
appreciate people, how to be apeople person, because it's.
Any business is a peoplebusiness.
So that's the biggest thing I'mtaking away from all this.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, and it doesn't matter if you're introverted or
extroverted.
That's not really what we'retalking about.
Right?
I'm extroverted, my wife isintroverted.
That doesn't mean that youcan't people well.
It just means that when itcomes time to recharging your
batteries, it's just different.
And so, yeah, I would highlyencourage you know, maybe that's
not something that you've beengreat at in your current place
(52:12):
of employment whether you're aleader, whether you're the owner
, the great thing is that, aspeople, we get a new day every
single day, as long as we wakeup, right.
So you can choose that.
You want to be a differentperson tomorrow.
You don't have to continue todo the things Now.
It's going to be hard, becauseyou're going to have to now
create a new skill set, right.
You're going to have to createa new habit because your default
mechanism is to be that way.
(52:34):
So you're going to have to makethe conscious effort to change.
But we get a new day tomorrow,and so you can make that choice.
Whenever it comes down to it,it's like this is part that I
want to change.
I don't want to continue to benegative.
I don't want to continue to behard on people.
I don't want to be yelling,know be yelling at people or
cussing at people, you know, andpeople be wanting to leave.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Like you can make that change, you know it's going
to be difficult, but you canmake that change.
That's good stuff.
Well, Ronnie man, I appreciateyou being on the podcast Always
good talking to you and I wantto get you back, actually maybe
in six months or something, andtalk more about the leadership,
the personal leadership,everything from mental health to
(53:18):
physical health to justleadership in general.
I think it'd be really fun totalk about that.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah, I'd love to, yeah, I'd be happy to hop back
on.
All right, man?
Thanks a lot, thanks.
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