September 23, 2025 • 59 mins
When things aren’t working in your business…
You don’t need a tweak.
You need a HARD RESET.
In this episode, Martin Shepard (owner of Reset Roofing and host of the Hard Reset Podcast) reveals how he turned personal breakdowns into business breakthroughs.
✅ From building a values-driven company…
✅ To creating a culture of real teamwork (no more lone-wolf reps)…
✅ And treating every homeowner like they’re part of the project (literally blessing the roof on install day)...
Martin shares the behind-the-scenes of Reset Roofing — where former bartenders, missionaries, teachers, and even his wife (with no roofing experience) are helping him scale a company built on empathy, clarity, and customer obsession.
If you’re feeling burnout, culture issues, or like your roofing company is just off...
This episode is the RESET you need.
🎯 Real talk on:
- W2 vs. 1099 struggles
- Insurance audits and “dumb taxes”
- Balancing marriage & business (with therapy tools that WORK)
- Building an unshakable team culture
- And what to do when your business (or life) is at a breaking point
🚨 THIS IS A MUST-WATCH for any owner, leader, or sales rep who’s ready to reset, rebuild, and reignite their roofing company.
Links:
https://linktr.ee/Resetroofing
https://www.instagram.com/reset.roofing/?hl=en
tiktok.com/@resetroofing
youtube.com/@resetroofing
https://www.facebook.com/resetroofing/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How do you turn a personal breakdown into a
business breakthrough, buildinga roofing company and podcast
that thrive on resilience?
In this episode, we sit downwith Martin Shepard, founder of
Reset Roofing and host of theHard Reset podcast, to explore
how transparency, empathy and acustomer-first culture have
(00:20):
shaped his approach toleadership and life.
Martin built Reset Roofingafter years as a top 1099 sales
rep.
He now runs a values-drivencompany where Friday lunches,
handwritten underlaymentblessings and a therapy-informed
leadership are just part of theDNA.
Martin's not afraid to go deep,from hiring former bartenders
(00:43):
and missionaries to building inboundaries with his wife, who
now helps run the business.
Reset isn't just a name, it's adaily mindset.
So if you're struggling withculture, customer experience or
just need a reminder of why yougot into this business in the
first place, this one's for you.
Let's hit the reset button withMartin Shepard of Reset Roofing
(01:07):
.
Welcome to the Roofing SuccessPodcast.
I'm Jim Alleyne and I'm here tobring you insights from top
leaders in the roofing industryto help you grow and scale your
roofing business.
Martin Shepard welcome man.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh, thank you, jim.
Super excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, man, it's good having you so Reset Roofing.
Where are you guys?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
out of.
So we are out of a small town,believe it or not, called
Cumming, georgia, which isspelled C-U-M-M-I-N-G, but it's
about 30 minutes north ofMidtown Atlanta, about 30
minutes north of uh midtownatlanta, so kind of handled the
whole north atlanta, little bitof south atlanta stuff.
Uh, here in georgia.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Cool, how did reset roofing get started?
How'd you get into roofing?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
man I uh, long story short in 2006 I dropped out of
college or I I don't even knowif I dropped.
Well, they asked me not to comeback and I had like $20,000,
$25,000 worth of student loandebt and I just have always been
(02:16):
in customer service and workedin food and beverage and I just
was like I guess this is goingto be my life now, where I'm
going to work nights andweekends and holidays and I'm
not going to be able to see myfamily and all that stuff.
So in 2006, I married my highschool sweetheart and at that
time I saw an ad in the localpaper.
It was a town in Roswell,georgia, and they were looking
(02:39):
for a sales and marketingposition and that's kind of what
I was studying Although I wasstill like learning about
biology and history and all thatstuff for a residential roofing
company.
So I got into it in 2006 as a1099 self-employed subcontractor
and then, fast forward to 2016,I started my own company called
(03:03):
Reset Roofing and been kind oftrying to grow it ever since.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, what have been some of the early challenges
that you faced?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, I mean, I'm a sales guy at heart.
I'm a sales guy at heart, solike I don't really understand
all the nuances of like workerscomp insurance and general
liability and why I get an auditand all I know is like IRS
audits are terrible but you havean insurance audit Like, so
like all the things I justthought man, just go out and
(03:38):
sell, you need to have insurance, so just go close deals.
Luckily, when I first startedin the industry, they really put
me in this uh rigorous trainingwhere I was like on roofs.
The first roof I got on waslike a 14, 12, like I have no
idea how I survived it.
Um, but I think that for me hasbeen uh kind of the learning
(04:00):
curve is like it's not justabout man sell everything you
can.
It's kind of the learning curveis like it's not just about man
sell everything you can.
It's there's a lot more torunning and owning a business
than I thought.
What were some of the hardestones to learn?
I think the hardest for me, jim, was the insurance thing, and
(04:24):
it was only because no one eversat down and like made it like a
fourth grader could understandit.
It was just like, hey, you needinsurance and we audited your
insurance and you don't haveenough.
So I know you think you made alot of money last year, but you
also owe another $25,000 ininsurance.
And no one sat down, jim, andsaid hey, martin, your insurance
(04:49):
is based on your revenue.
So if you tell them you'regoing to do a million dollars
and you do $10 million, you'regoing to owe, at the next year,
$9 million worth of insurance,because they insured a $9
million or a $10 million project.
(05:10):
And it wasn't until I just hadit out with this.
It just felt like they wererobbing me and somebody.
Literally I was having a drinkor something with somebody and
he's like you know, and what Ijust told you, it's based on
your revenue.
So if you're going to do 5million, you should tell them
you're going to do 5 million.
If you're going to do 3 million, you should tell them you're
going to do 5 million.
If you're going to do 3 million, you should tell them you're
going to do 3 million.
And I was like oh, that makessense, but it still frustrates
(05:34):
me Every time I get an audit.
We had a really great year lastyear and we grew a lot, and all
of a sudden they're like hey,uh, your audits do and you owe
(05:55):
this and here we are.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So that was the hardest thing for me to really
understand is like I know weneed insurance.
I've unfortunately had to beensued and all those other things,
but really understanding likethe money end of it has been the
biggest learning curve for meand everyone's trying to avoid
those costs at all costs, right,and so now I'm up to a million
this year.
This sounds good, right Like,and then whoa, what just
happened?
Other things I see people doingis making themselves general
(06:19):
contractors.
That you know they're trying to, you know, you know get around
the roofing aspect of insuranceand things like that, where you
just you're I don't know.
I think one of the things I'velearned over the years is there
are certain things you have topay for Yep and it's and as a
roofer.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
yep Insurance is one of them.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, definitely.
What was the moment you knewyou wanted to start your own
company?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Great question.
I probably wanted to start itwhen I was a 1099.
And I wouldn't throw any shadeon the company that I'm forever
grateful to the man that startedthis company.
But that model was a 1099 modeland so and he ran it like a
(07:09):
1099 model, right.
So he was like if you want todrive a truck, you got to rent
the truck.
If you want shirts, you got tobuy the shirts.
If you want insurance, you gotto pay for insurance on your own
.
If you want workers comp andgeneral life, like all the
things.
So I was my own company per se,but I, you know it, it it never
(07:30):
had any sort of like culture.
In my opinion.
It was all always like everyoneis out for themselves.
And that is a 1099 model.
Like it sounds great, like, oh,we're going to go a 10, 50, 50
split on a commission scale andlike the, you know, we'll get
10% to manage the job, and then,um, you know, we'll split the
(07:51):
commission 50 50.
And but, hey, if you want todrive this billboard around, you
need to rent that for 75 bucks.
And I just, I don't know.
I just I had some ideas and Ialso had some people in my ear,
just saying hey, man, you shouldstart your own.
Like you're a subcontractor,like you're allowed to go and
show income from other people.
They probably want that and acouple things, kind of they
(08:16):
didn't want to do a newconstruction job.
I was approached with a newconstruction job and I told
myself, man, if I land this deal, I'm going all in with an EIN
and start this thing.
And it happened in 2016, kind ofOctober of 2016.
And it was probably for thefirst year, year and a half.
It was just me and everythingwas in my head, which is not a
(08:37):
great business model, and I'msure there's lots of guys out
there that's doing the sameright now.
And that's a good model, untilyou get, get hurt or something
happens and you know you dropthe ball and and all that.
So I asked my wife to help me alittle bit as I went on out of
town on a golf trip, and then Iwas like, hey, she never wanted
(09:00):
to talk to a homeowner.
She was deathly afraid oftalking to homeowners, but she
didn't mind talking to anyoneelse.
So she was like, okay, I'llcome on board.
We hired a part-time customerexperience manager is what we
call them, but like a sitesuperintendent and she made it
very much a point to say, hey,this is a part-time job, uh,
(09:24):
this is not a full-time job andwe just kind of slowly grew from
that.
So it's been a it's been a heckof a run.
Uh, we're nine years into itand, um, we have an awesome team
right now and I'm just tryingto learn every day and all that
fun stuff that goes along withowning a business that goes
along with owning a business.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So what I heard from you is that you saw the 1099
model subcontractor model.
There was no life to it, it wasvery transactional and it just
didn't feel good.
So you started off on your own.
(10:05):
Wife came in to help.
How have you developed the teamto be much different or
different from that model?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
What has been the vision there and how have you
implemented that vision?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, I think it's.
You know, we start every day togo simply, how can we obsess
over the customer experience?
And then who can we pull infrom the customer service world
that not necessarily have anyties to roofing but have ties to
(10:40):
, like, serving people?
And so the the culture of a1099, like it's just like,
theoretically, you're on yourown and so it.
It makes it feel, just like yousaid, very transactional, and
so, from this model that that wehave, it's just different.
Um, that's, you know, I wouldsay that it's better, but it is.
(11:05):
It's.
It's more of a hey, we're ateam environment where we're
we're selling as a team, we'redoing operations as a team,
we're kind of getting togetheras a team, versus like, hey,
you're going to go over here anddo this and you're going to do
this, it.
It really feels more like ateam oriented event.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Now people hear that a lot.
What does that mean on a day today in your business?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, I would say that it means that we all have
each other's back, and I knowyou probably know the guys out
of Top Rep.
We run on a very specific herosales culture here at Reset and
so we like to just put othersfirst, right.
So, from setting our operationsteam up for our operations team
(12:01):
, setting up our invoicing team,like all of those things, so
what it means to us is like, hey, we just all have each other's
back and at the end of the day,the buck stops with the sales
team, and so if they're notperforming like the, the, the
company and the team is feelingit.
And so what can we do as asales team out in the field to
make sure that the phone'salways ringing, that we have
(12:23):
operations things to do, andthen, outside of it, culturally,
we like to do fun things whenwe can, when the, when the
schedule permits, right, uh,getting out.
We have a Friday lunch, um,every Friday here where we buy
lunch and we want everyone tocome in from all over, you know,
cause we're driving all overAtlanta all week and we're
installing roofs and gutters andall that stuff.
(12:43):
So like bringing everyonetogether and then we try.
I mean, I can't say that we dothis all the time, but like we
try to do at least quarterly aget together where it's two
options, like we just had to gettogether with our team where,
um, it just so happened that allthe girls wanted to go make
(13:05):
perfume and go to lunch and allthe guys, and plus one of my
girls, wanted to go racego-karts and eat Brazilian
steakhouse.
So we just try to do those funthings, because anytime that
there's any sort of tension, myrole at the office is, when we
have tension amongst our group,we need to break bread together.
(13:27):
Right, it's just theold-fashioned like keyboard
warriors online.
It's like everyone's just youknow out to get you and
everyone's you know we're allhiding behind an email, sending
in an email.
You can't understand tone.
It's like, hey, man, when youhave conflict with people on our
team, let's go to coffee, let'sgo to lunch, let's go to dinner
(13:48):
and get together.
So you can see the human partof it.
And we've done a really goodjob of emphasizing that I feel
like here.
So when there is tension, it'slike, hey, what's the rule?
Let's, let's go grab somebreakfast together.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
The other side of it youmentioned is from the customer
experience.
The sales team sets up theproduction team.
Who sets up the invoicing team?
Maybe marketing sets up thesales team?
Maybe you know right what aresome of the things that you've
implemented in that customerexperience and the handoffs
(14:23):
between people that that you'veseen the most value out of?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I think well, one we're.
We're brand new into switchingCRMs, Um, and we're we're
actually leaving one CRM to gowith pro line, and I'm super
excited, holistically, that whatProLine is going to do for us
as a company, because it's goingto be able for us to pass the
(14:53):
baton in a more efficient way,like right now.
It's like okay, martin comesout to Jim's house, Martin sells
Jim a roof and then I get yourcolor choice, you sign the
contract and then the contractgets notified in our CRM and
then it passes on to the nextperson and next person it
doesn't feel like super flowyfrom a homeowner standpoint or a
(15:15):
property owner standpoint, it'svery fluid, but the back end
does not feel that way, does notfeel that way.
So what we do as a company iswe try to get every roof that we
sell on and installed withintwo weeks, weather permitting,
of course and then we have a48-hour repair guarantee where
(15:38):
we'll install a repair within 48hours, because obviously in
today's day and age, everyonewants it done really quick and
right now and yesterday, and allthat fun stuff.
So, um, from a sales perspective, we drive home that hero sales
culture to say like hey guys,you, you can't we like we can't
operationally be super on pointif your material purchase order
(16:04):
sucks and it doesn't, you know,flow right or you you miss a
color or you didn't you know,tag this thing right in company
cam.
So we have someone on thebackend that kind of make sure
that everything is is good, sothat when we switch it to
production, production knows hey, this is exactly what we do
from a repair standpoint.
Obviously a little easier witha new roof, but we really try to
(16:30):
obsess over the customerexperience so that that they
don't feel like they're gettingleft.
The homeowner doesn't feel, andthen operations doesn't feel
like, hey guys, just go put thisroof on or here's a repair.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Go figure it out.
Yeah, the sales rep is likehere.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Best of luck, go figure it out yeah, the sales
rep was like here, best of luck,yeah.
And my operations, myoperations team, is like man.
It's sometimes it feels as likehey, here's the roof, black
shingles, and it's like, yeah,so coaching everyone up that way
and uh, it's really helpful,definitely so.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
The your your wife has, you know, came on board.
You said that she played kindof a certain role in the
beginning.
Has her role expanded over time?
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(17:25):
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Today your wife came on board.
(18:07):
Um, well, you know, you saidthat she played the kind of a
certain role in the beginning,as her role expanded over time.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah.
So she, um, she's awesome man,she and we've, we work together
well, because of lots of therapy.
And I emphasize that, right,because I the first company that
I ever work for in the roofingspace.
It was a husband and wife andthey would just holler at each
other from across the hallway.
(18:37):
Right, it was just like so badfor culture, but it was a really
good company.
I mean all those things.
But I was like man, if I everwork with my wife, I'm never
going to yell at her across thehallway.
So, yeah, she's been part ofthe company from the early on.
She's now our office manager.
(18:57):
So what she does is she's incharge of what I would consider
the back of the house, so thecustomer service reps, the
profit losses, she handlesmarketing, um, kind of she.
She probably has, I would say,like five or six people on her
team that she's serving, andthen she is the like greatest
(19:19):
advice giver.
Uh, that I could like.
I'm a very much a dreamer.
You were like hey, man, youwant to do a podcast.
I'm like absolutely, let's doit.
What are the questions?
I don't even care what thequestions are, to free flow it.
That way she is very much likeso I'll come to her just like
that and be like hey, I think weshould do this.
And she's like maybe you shouldthink more about that.
(19:41):
And also people, my staff cometo her and they're like hey,
what do you think about this?
Uh, so she really gives greatadvice and she's a early
childhood education major fromAuburn and, um, she's so.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
She's got that kind of teachable spirit about her so
she can help explain systemsand processes a whole lot better
than the dropout and teachingtwo-year-olds or three-year-olds
or you know one-year-olds, soyou know it kind of fits right,
like it kind of fits intobusiness.
You said that everyone's a twoand a three-year-old in the
(20:17):
wrestling game.
She knows how to speak ourlanguage, mark.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, at the end of the day,it's anytime I bring someone on,
that's brand new.
At this.
I'm like guys, we're just doingroofing.
I mean it's like a box of stepflashing and coil nails and like
we can figure this out together.
It's not difficult.
We make it more difficult thanit needs to be.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
That's awesome.
You said it took a lot oftherapy.
You know, for those people whowho do work with their spouses
or partners and, like you know,potential future spouses or you
know what whath years of runninga business together, I would
(21:04):
assume you know some of the homeconversations become just about
roofing and what you know.
How do you keep?
How do you keep that?
How do you keep that balancegoing with the relationship and
the uh in the business?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, I um.
I always thought, like backbefore I was in therapy.
It was like man, like if you'rein an argument, you're meant to
win it, right, like if you andI, it's like a fight.
Like if we're getting in afight, like you want to win the
fight.
Same thing with an argument,right, and actually that's the
polar opposite of like there'sno winning and losing in an
(21:40):
argument, right?
So it's like.
So what I've learned throughall these years of therapy is,
like my wife is way smarter thanme.
Um and uh, women are madedifferent, right?
Uh, they have great intuitionand, um, they have a great gut
feeling about it.
And ask, hey, what do you thinkabout this?
(22:05):
Instead of telling someone andI think I do a good job here not
saying, hey, this is my company, you know, this is the way it
has to be it's like, hey, whatdo you think?
Cause I, our team, is sodiverse of, like, all different
walks of life, and so we have anearly childhood education.
You know, major, who's ouroffice manager?
(22:28):
Right, so it's like.
You know my operations directoris a food and beverage manager.
Right, my sales manager is agolf bro.
It's like.
So we try to bring on peoplethat really help us and
compliment us very, very much.
But from my wife perspective, Iwould just say ask a lot of
(22:49):
questions and then have reallygood boundaries.
My therapist once told me he waslike, as business owners, you
know this, we can work all daylong and then there's still more
work to do tomorrow.
Right, so we have the boundary.
Before you know, when we firststarted growing, we were not at
an office.
Now we have an office, um, butwe were working out of our
(23:12):
basement, in our home.
So, like every second we wouldtalk about this business.
Oh, listen to this, what thiscustomer did, listen to what you
know.
This happened today with thissupplier and it was just like,
oh, my gosh.
So we, we put in the boundaryof like, we're not going to talk
about work, especially like thehard conversations, and, uh,
(23:37):
about six o'clock we basicallyturn it all off and we go
straight to mom and dad modeinstead of, you know, business
owner mode.
That's been really, reallyhelpful.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I bet that's hard.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
It is hard and it's so good, cause we remind each
other, uh, especially when, like, she's worn out and doesn't
want to talk about it, or I'mworn out, she'll always say it's
like, hey, let's not talk aboutthis here, and I'm like, so
good, yeah, because it's stillgoing to be there tomorrow.
It's like it doesn't matter,but I'm an outward, so I just
(24:15):
want to talk about everythingthat happened and all the things
and all of that, and it's.
It is very difficult, but it'salso really great, um, to be
able to be like, yeah, we're notgoing to talk.
We have that boundary, thatguardrail in our relationship
where we're not going to talkabout roofing all the time.
We're more than roofing, youknow.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yep, what other lessons have you learned in
therapy that have helped you inbusiness?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Man, you can't make everyone happy.
I had this customer man I can'teven tell her name because I'm
under a non-disclosure agreement, but if this wasn't recorded I
would tell you her name and Iliterally it was like I was
right when I started in thisindustry and it was a referral
from my metal sub and he's likethis lady's great, you're going
(25:07):
to love her.
And I was like awesome.
So I sold her a roof and shenever provided plans and she was
like hey, so we kind of handmeasured everything.
We're just trying to figure outhow to, uh, you know, get the
right materials.
So I just ordered like a wholebunch of extra materials, just
cause, as you know, like it'sthe worst thing, it's five
o'clock and you're out of youknow timber techs or you know
(25:27):
sealer ridge or whatever.
And so I ordered a whole bunchof materials.
Everything went great.
We, uh we installed a fullsystem.
So this was a GAF job.
So we use felt buster, sealerRidge, uh, timberline ultra
storm guard, like everything.
Like it should have been agolden pledge, but we weren't a
master elite contractor at thetime.
So we showed up to get all theextra materials and she was like
(25:49):
, oh, I thought I got to keepthose.
I was like, no, we're, you know, taking them back.
I ordered extra because, youknow, five o'clock, the normal
spiel.
Well, she didn't like that.
Well, she sent me a video thenext day saying, hey, you didn't
put flashing on this roof.
And I'm like, no, there'sflashing there.
And so I, of course, ran rightover to her house to, you know,
double check and make sure thatthere's flashing there.
(26:10):
And of course, I sent her thisvideo.
This is before company cam andyou can like hear me tinking
with a pencil like ting, ting,ting, ting, the metal behind the
hearty blank.
And I sent it to her and she'sjust like, nope, it's not there.
I'm like it is a hundredpercent there.
And what I found out is thather husband's an attorney and
this is what their stick was isjust to stick it to people.
(26:34):
And they would just see if theycould, you know, win the
argument or get away with nothaving to pay the contractor.
And man, I was in this crazytailspin because I took
everything so personally, likethis is my baby, you know, I
care so much about the homeowner.
I want to make it right, like Idon't understand why they would
(26:55):
ever think that I didn't do it.
And then I would just run overthere and my therapist, ed he's
a great guy, he goes, he goes.
Martin, like you can't makeeveryone happy Like, let me ask
you a question Did you put theroof on to the best of your
knowledge?
And I said, yes, there's no waythat this roof will ever leak.
We did everything perfect, Ipersonally inspected it and I
(27:17):
had my top crew do it.
He's like some people are justlike that, some people are
a-holes, and I'm like, yep, somepeople are a-holes.
And so I learned that valuablelesson is like man, you can't
take it personally.
Like some people just want tosue you and it sucks and it's
messy and I would never live mylife that way or treat people
that way.
(27:37):
But some people, that's justtheir MO, they think every
contractor's out to get them andyeah, so you know, being able
to take a deep breath and belike, hey, that's what we have
an attorney for.
The attorney can handle allthat stuff.
I did everything right, um, butit took a lot.
Um, you could see my passionbeginning to talk about this
(27:58):
late?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
No, it's.
It's the truth, though, and andthat's a, that's a good lesson
to learn because, like, first ofall, not everyone is your
customer, right, as the firstthing I think of there and not
that you knew, right, you didn'tknow think of there and not
that you knew, right, you didn'tknow.
But that's a great lesson thathey, don't we really did
everything, like, if you feel,maybe the lesson there is that,
(28:21):
if you know that you dideverything that you could have
done, hey, man, that's about asfar as we could go with this,
because there are, you know,there are one or two crazy
people out there.
Um did a podcast.
There might be more than one ortwo there, maybe three or four,
maybe three or four per squareinch of the earth surface or
(28:46):
something.
But you know, um, I want towrite a book.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I want to get together with a bunch of uh of
roofers and just write a bookabout everyone's favorite
customer right, Like the goodone or the bad one.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I think that would be a heck of a reason the show
every now and then, and Dimitridoes that show where they do
like horror, horror, horrorstories about a contractor, but
then also horror stories about auh, a homeowner or a property
(29:23):
owner, and it's uh.
I love the premise of itbecause it's not always.
It's not always you, eventhough it may, even though the
world may feel it to you.
I know you're enjoying theepisode, but let's give a shout
out to another one of oursponsors.
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(29:46):
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(30:09):
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It's not always you, eventhough it may, even though the
world may feel it to you.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, it, it definitely does.
And we, we have some awesomecustomers too.
Man, I mean, some of myfavorite customers are like like
, what color would you want?
And I'm like, well, I would dothe landmark pro more way, like
that's what I put on my house.
They're like that's what I want, like those are our favorite
customers.
And then we have the customersthat are like hey, we're gonna
videotape this whole thing.
(30:52):
And we're like, well, how doyou videotape?
Where do you get the tape?
Like you could just record it,like.
But it's like, you know, that'swhat I love about this job is
that there's.
You just meet all the differenttypes of people the people in
the c-suites and the people that, like man, are hard up on their
luck and they just need, youknow, somebody to fix their roof
and, uh, you know, do it quickdo it quick.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah it, it there's.
There's a wide variety ofpeople that you'll come across
from a customer standpoint andfrom a team perspective.
What are some of the, the, the,the, the, some of the ups and
downs you've had building your,your team, over the years.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the things I'm
most proud of.
Is is the team, and it allstems from when I was first
hired by this roofing company.
Um, they hired me.
I did tile, like floor tile onesummer and that's the extent of
(31:55):
my, like trade knowledge.
Uh, and they hired me andthey're like, we love hiring you
because you don't know it anyother way, so we're going to
teach you our way and that's theway, and so that is the way
that I love it here.
As much as I would love to bringin, you know, a sales guy from
another company like there's allthose bad habits.
(32:18):
It's like, at least how I feelin Atlanta, jim, is that, like,
people just want to be nurturedand cared for and not be sold to
.
So if I can find people thatare just customer focused, where
they can just, um, not feellike they're being sold to, they
(32:40):
feel like they're being takencare of, if I can teach that and
hire that, then, uh, you'regoing to be a great fit.
So, you know, my sales teamcurrently consists of two
bartenders uh, an ex special edteacher, a missionary in Africa
and, uh, a golf pro like, andthen this college dropout I
(33:03):
consider myself sometimes asales guy.
Um, and no one has any salesexperience and I have to remind
myself that, oh, like you don'tknow about follow-up and like
all those things.
So I have to remind them ofthose things.
But it's like I love it becausethe people that we hire are
like they.
They, they are customer servicepeople that happen to sell
(33:24):
roofs.
Right, because, especially inthe homeowner uh sphere, if, um,
if you can obsess over thecustomer experience and you feel
like you're like overcommunicated with, you're going
to continue to flourish and havemany, many appointments.
(33:46):
So if you're in customerservice and you're a bartender,
you know how to deal with theangry people.
You know how to deal with thecouple that's in an argument.
You know how to deal with theold man that's just lonely and
as you know what like.
So you know all those things.
So we just take that and thenthrow it into the homeowner
(34:07):
space and we teach them a littlebit about roofing and roof
repairs and then we'reconstantly kind of teaching our
team that way.
So that's kind of our salesteam operations man.
I.
I have another bartender andhe's uh, he's a colombian dude.
He's awesome.
My food and beverage guy, uh,my operations manager is a food
and beverage like uh, I, I Ismoked him out of my uh, my
(34:32):
country club because I justwatched how he obsessed over
taking care of the members.
Yeah, we have another educatorhere that worked with my wife 20
years ago and we post a lot offun content on our thing.
And she saw our content andshe's like, man, I want to come
(34:53):
work there.
And, um, I just found out thatmy media manager she's in charge
of all of our marketingactually has a marketing degree,
uh, which is just like blew mymind.
I was like, wait, what?
You have a marketing degree?
That's crazy.
I just thought she was thislike division one soccer star.
So you know, but we just hire,like just great people and, uh,
(35:15):
we, we have a.
We kind of let everyone beinvolved in the hiring process
where we, uh, we want everyoneto, you know, meet that person
and see if they're going to workwith the flow.
I don't like the whole we're afamily thing, cause I don't, I
just don't believe in like, hey,we're a family, uh, cause you
can't fire your mom.
Um, I just, I don't know, Ijust I've never liked that.
(35:39):
Hey, we're a family, but we'rea we're a really great unit and
team and um it works really wellfor us, especially if we give
everyone the opportunity.
Hey, we're thinking aboutbringing this person on board.
We would love you to set up atime to have coffee with them,
or vice versa.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah, I like that.
I like the concept of, or whatyou're doing.
They're bringing people withwho have already maybe they
haven't been formally trained incustomer experience, but but
they have had to, but they werethrown in the fire of customer
experience, right and, and hadto deal with a lot of
(36:19):
challenging situations.
Um, I think that's that'ssomething I've heard from a few
different contractors around thecountry and and I've heard it
other ways where you know theylike if you're recruiting people
for your team, you may recruitfrom, you know, like, a company
that has a really in helpingpeople and doing the right thing
(36:41):
and creating that customerexperience.
And then you find out they havea marketing degree and you're
(37:04):
like, wow, this is awesome.
Who would have thought that'scool?
That's so cool.
I want to shift gears a littlebit real quick.
I want to shift gears a littlebit real quick and you, you know
, with the new sign behind youthe hard reset podcast um, have
ventured into my world.
Martin, you've come to, you'vecome, you've come over to to the
(37:24):
good side.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Finally, yeah, I love um, I love the podcast space.
It's like this is my newpassion project space.
It's like this is my newpassion project.
Um, and uh, yeah, it's funny ifyou, if you, were to get on our
socials and see our tiktok orwhatever it's like.
I don't feel like, if I was ahomeowner, that I care about the
(37:46):
drone, the epic drone videoswith, like, uh, the unbelievable
music and all those things likewhat I think is like how do we
entertain these, these peoplethat want to follow our channel?
And, um, we do have some goodeducation stuff on our YouTube
channel.
But, uh, the hard reset kind ofpodcast came out of, like, long
(38:11):
story short, in 2021, I gotCOVID and, um, about 10 days
after my COVID, I went intomania and my mania wasn't
treated, so that I went intopsychosis.
The psychosis wasn't treatedand so it came to this moment in
2021 where my therapist, mywife and my big brother were in
(38:33):
this room and they were like youneed to get him to a
psychiatric hospital and heneeds to go, like right now,
today, and so no mental healthhistory or anything in my family
, anything like that.
So, fast forward, like I spentfive and a half months in 2021,
you know, by the way, I had acompany at the time and so that
(38:54):
was, just, you know, awful.
But what I learned in thatmoment and I can, you know, tell
that story another day but whatI learned in that moment is
like when it's hitting the fanand you're going through it, or
now that I've been through it,other people are going to go and
(39:15):
be faced with that same thingMaybe not the same story, but
they're going to be faced with asimilar thing, where it's like
my wife just went a little crazy.
She's in the psychiatric ward.
Like what do we do?
Now?
I'm the guy that gets the call,and so I love getting the call
because I feel like, you know,not just in roofing but in life
like we're out here to help eachother.
(39:36):
So the hard reset podcastliterally came from like the
more people that know my storyor the more people that know
your story of your hard reset.
That's what this podcast isabout.
It's like hey, man, this iswhat I went through.
(39:57):
We've we've had a widower on.
We've had people that you knowleft uh, you know the corporate
world to go into ministry.
We've had alcoholics peoplelying to their wife.
We've had adulterer.
Uh, we've just had.
We had my best friend's ex wifeon, who's now married to
(40:17):
another person with three kids.
It's wild.
But all these stories kind ofadd up to just this Hard Reset
podcast and we're just having alot of fun and we're just having
conversations with life changepeople, right?
Because again, who wants to seea drone video of a Landmark Pro
?
It sounds boring.
Let me tell you about the timethe guy drove north in the
(40:40):
southbound lane of Interstate 75.
I can listen to that.
I got that guy coming on.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
A little bit more attention there.
What does having a hard resetmean to you?
Speaker 2 (40:57):
You broke up on me on that question.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
What does having a hard reset mean to you?
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Man, hard reset is starting from scratch and really
thinking about everything needsto be redone.
Um, a hard reset is like, hey,man, it's, it's like a 180 like
you're.
(41:25):
You're going down this, thisroad and all of a sudden you
gotta hit that reset, unplug thethe cord, plug it back in and
start over from scratch.
Um, so that's what hard resetmeans to me.
The, the name reset roofingcame like in 2015, 2016, where I
(41:45):
was going to name my company,like every roofer does after
themselves, and, uh, someoneelse had already.
My last name is shepherd andsomeone already had shepherd in
in in Atlanta, believe it or notand my wife called.
She's like I can't get theWi-Fi to work.
I'm like just hit the resetbutton.
Like reset it, hit it.
She called me back.
(42:06):
She's like everything's workingand I'm like reset roofing.
If we ever own a business, oneday, that'd be really cool to
have reset roofing.
It a business.
One day that'd be really coolto have reset roofing.
It's got that double R, sothat's where it came from.
And now there's like a reseteverything.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
I should have trademarked this a long time ago
but so, yeah, that's what resetmeans to me Awesome, and so,
like I think this could be inlife and business.
It applies in a lot of ways.
What can someone?
What are some, some things thatyou know from from the
conversations that you've hadwith people on the podcast now
and from your own life.
What are things, what are somethings that people can do if
(42:47):
they need to reset.
I know you're enjoying theepisode, but let's give a shout
out to another one of oursponsors.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
Stop going at it alone, because growing a roofing
company today is not what itwas like even three years ago.
Not with the economy, not withprivate equity, not with AI
taking over the world.
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(43:14):
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Speaker 1 (43:22):
What are some things that people can do if they need
to reset?
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, I think probably the ringing kind of
endorsement of all these thingsis you got to tell someone, um,
and you also have to look atyourself and realize that, hey,
I need this reset.
Because if I told Jim, if youloved Chipotle, let's just say,
and every day you're eatingChipotle.
(43:51):
I'm like Jim, you need to stopeating Chipotle, you can't eat
it every day.
And it's like, well, I likeChipotle.
Jim has to look at himself inthe mirror and say, man, I can't
eat Chipotle every day.
It's not healthy for me, Ican't take, I can't eat Chipotle
every day.
It's not healthy for me.
Uh, I, I've, I've learned that Iam.
Uh, you know, I have learnedyou can't tell people what they
(44:11):
need.
You can't tell someone, hey,you need a hard reset.
It's like you need to lookyourself in the mirror and be
like, hey, man, I've got to stopdoing this.
I need to kind of move on withmy life.
I'm tired of waking up drunkevery day or you know dealing,
you know doing drugs, or like mylife feels empty.
Like that rock bottom moment iswhat most people have to do to
(44:34):
get to the hard reset moment sothat they can kind of start
their life over.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
What do you think a struggling roofing contractor
can do to reset their business?
Speaker 2 (44:52):
I would say hire a mentor, um, and just have
someone come in and look at it.
And just because so often it'slike especially like for a, it's
so hard for us to ask for help.
Because we want to be thestrong business guy, we want to
be the guy that just knowseverything, it's like I've got
(45:12):
the answer to every question.
And it's the humble guys, it'sthe guys filled with humility
and the girls filled withhumility that are like man, I
don't know that answer.
Let me find someone else thatdoes it.
That's what I love about yoursweatshirt, man, is.
There's so many things I loveabout RSRA, but one of the many
things is like hey, man, I'm a$10 million company, I'm trying
(45:36):
to be a $20 million company.
Yeah, here's my phone number,call me.
Hey, I'm a million dollarcontractor, I'm trying to be a
$3 million contractor.
Hey, man, send me your, send mea couple things.
Let me look at your SOP.
What's an SOP?
(45:56):
It's like man, if I'm liketrying to grow as a human, you
got to eat that humble pie andbe humil.
You know, humble and filledwith humility, and say, man, I
need some help.
Jim, I don't know what the heckI'm doing.
I just got an audit from myinsurance.
They say I owe him $25,000.
I don't understand.
I've paid a bunch of dumb taxesover the years and I want to
give everyone all these dumbtaxes that I've paid.
(46:18):
So Jim and all of his friendsdon't have to follow and pay
those dumb taxes, because it'sgoing to be better for the
industry.
Which is why I love RSRA somuch.
It's like it's just an openplace of hey man, I need some
help, I need some feedback.
Will you look at this for me?
I, you know, I'm havingproblems hiring.
I'm losing talent.
(46:39):
Left and right, everyone'sgoing and starting their own
thing.
It's like, well, hey, hey,let's look at the culture of
your company.
Hey, how do you pay your people?
Like, what do you?
How do you incentivize allthose things?
So, and the humble people?
Um, those are the people that Ithink are just going to really
excel it's people that are open.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, people that are open, right like you're open to
, you're open to change, you'reopen to change, you're open to
expressing your problems Likecause.
If you don't express yourproblems, especially to your
peers, to you know, a lot ofpeople don't have the abundance
mindset.
But like within a group, likelike, we have it's, you know,
you're saying, oh yeah, I wentthrough that or I did that and I
(47:21):
tried it this way and it worked, or it didn't work, or it
worked for me.
It might not work for you, butI tried it this way, and more of
those things that you can getinto your, into your day to day
is it's fantastic, what, what isone of the best kind of things
that have come out of the likemaybe a myth, or you in the
(47:41):
mission control group, or or oneof your things there, from from
one of the other mentors, ornot even from a mentor in there,
but from one of the otherbusiness owners, uh, in the RSRA
, like what?
Or outside of the RSRA, whathas another roofing business
owner, what piece of advice oror or lesson did they give you?
(48:02):
That is that you're like, likeman, that one made just an
amazing impact on what we'redoing yeah, I think it would.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Um, I, you know, for me I've really been following
reimagined roofing for a whileand cody landles and a lot of
the things that he talks about.
It makes a lot of sense to meand I love his vulnerability of
like hey, man, we used to do itthis way and then all of a
sudden, all these people leftand they owed me tons of money
(48:34):
and instead of me like filingbankruptcy and like I, you know,
I found a way to get all theseguys their money.
And then I was like I'm goingto make this roofing industry
like so much better.
And for for a guy like Cody toinvite us out to Arizona to his
office and just like say here'sthe playbook, like here's a
(48:56):
playbook, this is what we do,this is how we do it I mean the
guys in Arizona selling roofs inNew Jersey I mean it blows me
away.
So just watching Cody, you know,you know, reading the books
that he had like the Zappos booklike, which was an instrumental
part for him like getting allthose advice, I mean, shoot, man
(49:17):
, adam Binsman, I mean thatguy's a real deal.
There's been so many goodpieces, but I would say the
biggest advice that I got wasfrom Cody is like you just
constantly got to be evolving.
You have to change with thetime.
You can't do it the same wayover and over and over, like
(49:43):
yeah, it's going to work, butyou're probably not going to
grow.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
So, with that, what are some of the evolutions that
you are implementing, like whathave?
What are some of the thingsthat have evolved at reset
roofing?
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah, I think, uh, the number one, uh, evolution.
Was it Like?
(50:13):
I have spent so much moneyprotecting our brand with the
customer that might be takingadvantage of us At the end of
obsessing so much over thecustomer experience that they
feel like they are a part of thecompany as well?
(50:38):
Anyone who watches this iswelcome to steal this idea.
I think it's great.
So back in the day, like theJewish tradition was to hang
like prayer scriptures over yourdoor jam, so, like anyone that
would walk through the house, itwould bless them.
That was the theory.
This underlayment project thatwe do with all of our homeowners
(51:01):
to say, hey, we want we bringthem this arts and crafts
project that they can do withtheir family or their kids.
Hey, we're going to put thisunderlayment underneath your
roof so you'll never going tosee it, except for this one time
that we take a picture.
What we want you to do is blessyour house.
You can bless it with a prayer,you can bless it with a song.
You can just have your, yourkids, like, do a draw whatever
(51:24):
they want, like here's all themarkers, you just do it.
And so we bring the, the, thehomeowners, into the project to
make them feel like, hey, wewant you to be a part of this,
and the reception that we getfrom all of our homeowners and
property owners is, like man, Ireally felt like I was part of
this project.
It wasn't just you guys wereputting a roof on.
(51:44):
You welcomed me into that and Ihave learned that, man, if we
can obsess over even thelittlest things, where it's like
we got to drive an hour to dropoff this underlayment packet so
that you know the kids can doit, like we're going to do it
because it's worth it, um, soyeah, I mean we, we never balk
(52:08):
at someone's like man, that nailpop was never there.
Well, we told you on thecontract that nail pops are
going to happen.
No, we're going to send thepainter like it's not worth it
to me, like we'll make money onthe next one and hopefully
she'll tell someone or he'lltell someone about man that they
even said that they won'thandle nail pops, but they do
those little tiny things thatjust add up.
Uh, you know tremendously, yearafter year after year the, the
(52:32):
reputation things, the and againit's the.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
The homeowner doesn't know, like, they just don't
know.
They don't know what, what,what this is process is going to
be.
Like they don't know thatthere's going to be nail pops or
potentially could be nail pops.
They don't know, like, theydon't know any of it.
They don't know at all.
Uh, what are the other thingsthat helped that?
That that helped to bring thatcustomer in or just create that
(53:13):
great customer experience thatyou guys do or have focused on?
Speaker 2 (53:18):
yeah, we, uh, we just try to throw everyone in that
we go and see, like if this wasmy home, what would I do?
So we have a huge repairdepartment, we love doing
repairs and so you know we'll goto Jim's house and we'll be
like, hey, jim, like your roof'sonly 15 years old, you have
(53:39):
some nail pops and you know wewould recommend doing these
three things and do it.
Hey, jim, we had a storm inyour area.
Yeah, we definitely think thatyour insurance company should be
involved in this.
We would file a claim.
So that's kind of how we treatevery customer is.
Like if this was my house, whatwould I do and, to be honest,
(54:02):
this is my favorite role that Ialways use is I like I cover the
logo on my shirt and I just say, hey, let me consult you
through this, right Cause, to behonest, like it doesn't matter
if they don't buy a roof from mebecause someone else will I
mean historically speaking,right?
So, like, at the end of the day, let me just consult you
through this.
Like if this was my house, thisis what I would do.
(54:22):
Yeah, if you got this guy andyou trust him and you feel safe
using him like, use him.
Here's why we're different.
Might cost you a little more,might cost you less, but that's
what I would do, and so you knowthe golden rule of treating
others the way you want to betreated.
Man that's done a such wonders.
You know, from an employeestandpoint, from a homeowner
(54:42):
standpoint, from a supplierstandpoint, from a crew
standpoint, that's really kindof how we like to operate is
like man.
If this was me, how would Iwant to be taken care of?
And it's really helped ourbusiness flourish.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Like I know you're a visionary right.
Like I have a lot of ideas andand and so in.
Has there ever been anythingthat you've implemented in that
in, in trying to to improve thatcustomer experience where
you're like, well, that didn'twork.
Yeah, all the dumb yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
I think one of the things is is like we let used to
let the customer, like we usedto ask the question like, hey,
does that work for you?
Like, does that work for yourschedule?
And so that was a terribledesign because now, all of a
sudden, like nobody wanted aroof on a Monday and nobody
wanted a roof on Friday, so wecould only work Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday.
So instead of asking if itworks, hey, we have you
(55:47):
scheduled on this day has beenreally super helpful because, of
course, if it doesn't work on aMonday, like, but you know who
wants, who wants to cherry pick,you know their specific date
and time that that wants to go.
So taking, you know, maybe notgiving full autonomy to the
homeowner to say when thematerials are being delivered
(56:09):
and when we're actually comingto put the roof on.
I mean we, we literally had a,uh, we had a builder call us.
It was a remodel.
It was uh, 8, 30 at night.
He calls, he said, oh, by theway, the hoa will not let anyone
do any work until 8 am and theguys show up at six.
I mean it's hot, like we'retrying to get this thing done.
(56:30):
I have a picture from mybuilder on my phone of the guys
sitting on the ridge and it'slike 7 45 in the morning and
they all have their, their uhforks, just like ready to go and
across the street there's alandscaper with a backpack
blower going and I'm like, yep,we're those guys, man.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, we're those guys that we're gonna wait till
8 am to make the customer happy.
So you gotta do it.
If, uh, if you had to startover, you know now, with all of
the things that you've learned,look, you got to reset right now
.
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (57:16):
what would my action plan be?
yeah probably wouldn't.
Um, it was hard, man, it wasreally hard.
Um, I think my action planwould be I would slow down
(57:37):
because so much um, so much oflike, even being a sales guy or
being an owner is like man, timeis so like important and I
would slow down and I would getto my 10 o'clock appointment and
just sit there until they hadall their questions answered and
I wouldn't rush to the 12 andrush to the two and the four and
(57:57):
all that stuff I'd I'd go realslow.
Um, I would hire the exact sameteam that I have now.
Um, the exact same team.
Um, it would be a really hard,uh recruitment.
But, um, I, I challenge um myteam against anyone's team right
(58:17):
now.
Uh, they're just uber talentedand, uh, they care so much about
the customer experience and Ijust love that so much.
But yeah, I would probably goreal, real slow and be selective
and not take it personally.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Awesome, Martin.
Thanks for your time today.
This has been another episodeof the Roofing Success Podcast.
Speaker 3 (58:39):
Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast
For more valuable content.
Visit roofingsuccesspodcastcomWhile there.
Check out our sponsors forexclusive offers, shop for
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(59:01):
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The website link is in thedescription.
Thanks for listening.
How do you turn a personal breakdown into a
business breakthrough, buildinga roofing company and podcast
that thrive on resilience?
In this episode, we sit downwith Martin Shepard, founder of
Reset Roofing and host of theHard Reset podcast, to explore
how transparency, empathy and acustomer-first culture have
(00:20):
shaped his approach toleadership and life.
Martin built Reset Roofingafter years as a top 1099 sales
rep.
He now runs a values-drivencompany where Friday lunches,
handwritten underlaymentblessings and a therapy-informed
leadership are just part of theDNA.
Martin's not afraid to go deep,from hiring former bartenders
(00:43):
and missionaries to building inboundaries with his wife, who
now helps run the business.
Reset isn't just a name, it's adaily mindset.
So if you're struggling withculture, customer experience or
just need a reminder of why yougot into this business in the
first place, this one's for you.
Let's hit the reset button withMartin Shepard of Reset Roofing
(01:07):
.
Welcome to the Roofing SuccessPodcast.
I'm Jim Alleyne and I'm here tobring you insights from top
leaders in the roofing industryto help you grow and scale your
roofing business.
Martin Shepard welcome man.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh, thank you, jim.
Super excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, man, it's good having you so Reset Roofing.
Where are you guys?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
out of.
So we are out of a small town,believe it or not, called
Cumming, georgia, which isspelled C-U-M-M-I-N-G, but it's
about 30 minutes north ofMidtown Atlanta, about 30
minutes north of uh midtownatlanta, so kind of handled the
whole north atlanta, little bitof south atlanta stuff.
Uh, here in georgia.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Cool, how did reset roofing get started?
How'd you get into roofing?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
man I uh, long story short in 2006 I dropped out of
college or I I don't even knowif I dropped.
Well, they asked me not to comeback and I had like $20,000,
$25,000 worth of student loandebt and I just have always been
(02:16):
in customer service and workedin food and beverage and I just
was like I guess this is goingto be my life now, where I'm
going to work nights andweekends and holidays and I'm
not going to be able to see myfamily and all that stuff.
So in 2006, I married my highschool sweetheart and at that
time I saw an ad in the localpaper.
It was a town in Roswell,georgia, and they were looking
(02:39):
for a sales and marketingposition and that's kind of what
I was studying Although I wasstill like learning about
biology and history and all thatstuff for a residential roofing
company.
So I got into it in 2006 as a1099 self-employed subcontractor
and then, fast forward to 2016,I started my own company called
(03:03):
Reset Roofing and been kind oftrying to grow it ever since.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, what have been some of the early challenges
that you faced?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, I mean, I'm a sales guy at heart.
I'm a sales guy at heart, solike I don't really understand
all the nuances of like workerscomp insurance and general
liability and why I get an auditand all I know is like IRS
audits are terrible but you havean insurance audit Like, so
like all the things I justthought man, just go out and
(03:38):
sell, you need to have insurance, so just go close deals.
Luckily, when I first startedin the industry, they really put
me in this uh rigorous trainingwhere I was like on roofs.
The first roof I got on waslike a 14, 12, like I have no
idea how I survived it.
Um, but I think that for me hasbeen uh kind of the learning
(04:00):
curve is like it's not justabout man sell everything you
can.
It's kind of the learning curveis like it's not just about man
sell everything you can.
It's there's a lot more torunning and owning a business
than I thought.
What were some of the hardestones to learn?
I think the hardest for me, jim, was the insurance thing, and
(04:24):
it was only because no one eversat down and like made it like a
fourth grader could understandit.
It was just like, hey, you needinsurance and we audited your
insurance and you don't haveenough.
So I know you think you made alot of money last year, but you
also owe another $25,000 ininsurance.
And no one sat down, jim, andsaid hey, martin, your insurance
(04:49):
is based on your revenue.
So if you tell them you'regoing to do a million dollars
and you do $10 million, you'regoing to owe, at the next year,
$9 million worth of insurance,because they insured a $9
million or a $10 million project.
(05:10):
And it wasn't until I just hadit out with this.
It just felt like they wererobbing me and somebody.
Literally I was having a drinkor something with somebody and
he's like you know, and what Ijust told you, it's based on
your revenue.
So if you're going to do 5million, you should tell them
you're going to do 5 million.
If you're going to do 3 million, you should tell them you're
going to do 5 million.
If you're going to do 3 million, you should tell them you're
going to do 3 million.
And I was like oh, that makessense, but it still frustrates
(05:34):
me Every time I get an audit.
We had a really great year lastyear and we grew a lot, and all
of a sudden they're like hey,uh, your audits do and you owe
(05:55):
this and here we are.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So that was the hardest thing for me to really
understand is like I know weneed insurance.
I've unfortunately had to beensued and all those other things,
but really understanding likethe money end of it has been the
biggest learning curve for meand everyone's trying to avoid
those costs at all costs, right,and so now I'm up to a million
this year.
This sounds good, right Like,and then whoa, what just
happened?
Other things I see people doingis making themselves general
(06:19):
contractors.
That you know they're trying to, you know, you know get around
the roofing aspect of insuranceand things like that, where you
just you're I don't know.
I think one of the things I'velearned over the years is there
are certain things you have topay for Yep and it's and as a
roofer.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
yep Insurance is one of them.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, definitely.
What was the moment you knewyou wanted to start your own
company?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Great question.
I probably wanted to start itwhen I was a 1099.
And I wouldn't throw any shadeon the company that I'm forever
grateful to the man that startedthis company.
But that model was a 1099 modeland so and he ran it like a
(07:09):
1099 model, right.
So he was like if you want todrive a truck, you got to rent
the truck.
If you want shirts, you got tobuy the shirts.
If you want insurance, you gotto pay for insurance on your own
.
If you want workers comp andgeneral life, like all the
things.
So I was my own company per se,but I, you know it, it it never
(07:30):
had any sort of like culture.
In my opinion.
It was all always like everyoneis out for themselves.
And that is a 1099 model.
Like it sounds great, like, oh,we're going to go a 10, 50, 50
split on a commission scale andlike the, you know, we'll get
10% to manage the job, and then,um, you know, we'll split the
(07:51):
commission 50 50.
And but, hey, if you want todrive this billboard around, you
need to rent that for 75 bucks.
And I just, I don't know.
I just I had some ideas and Ialso had some people in my ear,
just saying hey, man, you shouldstart your own.
Like you're a subcontractor,like you're allowed to go and
show income from other people.
They probably want that and acouple things, kind of they
(08:16):
didn't want to do a newconstruction job.
I was approached with a newconstruction job and I told
myself, man, if I land this deal, I'm going all in with an EIN
and start this thing.
And it happened in 2016, kind ofOctober of 2016.
And it was probably for thefirst year, year and a half.
It was just me and everythingwas in my head, which is not a
(08:37):
great business model, and I'msure there's lots of guys out
there that's doing the sameright now.
And that's a good model, untilyou get, get hurt or something
happens and you know you dropthe ball and and all that.
So I asked my wife to help me alittle bit as I went on out of
town on a golf trip, and then Iwas like, hey, she never wanted
(09:00):
to talk to a homeowner.
She was deathly afraid oftalking to homeowners, but she
didn't mind talking to anyoneelse.
So she was like, okay, I'llcome on board.
We hired a part-time customerexperience manager is what we
call them, but like a sitesuperintendent and she made it
very much a point to say, hey,this is a part-time job, uh,
(09:24):
this is not a full-time job andwe just kind of slowly grew from
that.
So it's been a it's been a heckof a run.
Uh, we're nine years into itand, um, we have an awesome team
right now and I'm just tryingto learn every day and all that
fun stuff that goes along withowning a business that goes
along with owning a business.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So what I heard from you is that you saw the 1099
model subcontractor model.
There was no life to it, it wasvery transactional and it just
didn't feel good.
So you started off on your own.
(10:05):
Wife came in to help.
How have you developed the teamto be much different or
different from that model?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
What has been the vision there and how have you
implemented that vision?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, I think it's.
You know, we start every day togo simply, how can we obsess
over the customer experience?
And then who can we pull infrom the customer service world
that not necessarily have anyties to roofing but have ties to
(10:40):
, like, serving people?
And so the the culture of a1099, like it's just like,
theoretically, you're on yourown and so it.
It makes it feel, just like yousaid, very transactional, and
so, from this model that that wehave, it's just different.
Um, that's, you know, I wouldsay that it's better, but it is.
(11:05):
It's.
It's more of a hey, we're ateam environment where we're
we're selling as a team, we'redoing operations as a team,
we're kind of getting togetheras a team, versus like, hey,
you're going to go over here anddo this and you're going to do
this, it.
It really feels more like ateam oriented event.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Now people hear that a lot.
What does that mean on a day today in your business?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, I would say that it means that we all have
each other's back, and I knowyou probably know the guys out
of Top Rep.
We run on a very specific herosales culture here at Reset and
so we like to just put othersfirst, right.
So, from setting our operationsteam up for our operations team
(12:01):
, setting up our invoicing team,like all of those things, so
what it means to us is like, hey, we just all have each other's
back and at the end of the day,the buck stops with the sales
team, and so if they're notperforming like the, the, the
company and the team is feelingit.
And so what can we do as asales team out in the field to
make sure that the phone'salways ringing, that we have
(12:23):
operations things to do, andthen, outside of it, culturally,
we like to do fun things whenwe can, when the, when the
schedule permits, right, uh,getting out.
We have a Friday lunch, um,every Friday here where we buy
lunch and we want everyone tocome in from all over, you know,
cause we're driving all overAtlanta all week and we're
installing roofs and gutters andall that stuff.
(12:43):
So like bringing everyonetogether and then we try.
I mean, I can't say that we dothis all the time, but like we
try to do at least quarterly aget together where it's two
options, like we just had to gettogether with our team where,
um, it just so happened that allthe girls wanted to go make
(13:05):
perfume and go to lunch and allthe guys, and plus one of my
girls, wanted to go racego-karts and eat Brazilian
steakhouse.
So we just try to do those funthings, because anytime that
there's any sort of tension, myrole at the office is, when we
have tension amongst our group,we need to break bread together.
(13:27):
Right, it's just theold-fashioned like keyboard
warriors online.
It's like everyone's just youknow out to get you and
everyone's you know we're allhiding behind an email, sending
in an email.
You can't understand tone.
It's like, hey, man, when youhave conflict with people on our
team, let's go to coffee, let'sgo to lunch, let's go to dinner
(13:48):
and get together.
So you can see the human partof it.
And we've done a really goodjob of emphasizing that I feel
like here.
So when there is tension, it'slike, hey, what's the rule?
Let's, let's go grab somebreakfast together.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
The other side of it youmentioned is from the customer
experience.
The sales team sets up theproduction team.
Who sets up the invoicing team?
Maybe marketing sets up thesales team?
Maybe you know right what aresome of the things that you've
implemented in that customerexperience and the handoffs
(14:23):
between people that that you'veseen the most value out of?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I think well, one we're.
We're brand new into switchingCRMs, Um, and we're we're
actually leaving one CRM to gowith pro line, and I'm super
excited, holistically, that whatProLine is going to do for us
as a company, because it's goingto be able for us to pass the
(14:53):
baton in a more efficient way,like right now.
It's like okay, martin comesout to Jim's house, Martin sells
Jim a roof and then I get yourcolor choice, you sign the
contract and then the contractgets notified in our CRM and
then it passes on to the nextperson and next person it
doesn't feel like super flowyfrom a homeowner standpoint or a
(15:15):
property owner standpoint, it'svery fluid, but the back end
does not feel that way, does notfeel that way.
So what we do as a company iswe try to get every roof that we
sell on and installed withintwo weeks, weather permitting,
of course and then we have a48-hour repair guarantee where
(15:38):
we'll install a repair within 48hours, because obviously in
today's day and age, everyonewants it done really quick and
right now and yesterday, and allthat fun stuff.
So, um, from a sales perspective, we drive home that hero sales
culture to say like hey guys,you, you can't we like we can't
operationally be super on pointif your material purchase order
(16:04):
sucks and it doesn't, you know,flow right or you you miss a
color or you didn't you know,tag this thing right in company
cam.
So we have someone on thebackend that kind of make sure
that everything is is good, sothat when we switch it to
production, production knows hey, this is exactly what we do
from a repair standpoint.
Obviously a little easier witha new roof, but we really try to
(16:30):
obsess over the customerexperience so that that they
don't feel like they're gettingleft.
The homeowner doesn't feel, andthen operations doesn't feel
like, hey guys, just go put thisroof on or here's a repair.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Go figure it out.
Yeah, the sales rep is likehere.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Best of luck, go figure it out yeah, the sales
rep was like here, best of luck,yeah.
And my operations, myoperations team, is like man.
It's sometimes it feels as likehey, here's the roof, black
shingles, and it's like, yeah,so coaching everyone up that way
and uh, it's really helpful,definitely so.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
The your your wife has, you know, came on board.
You said that she played kindof a certain role in the
beginning.
Has her role expanded over time?
Before we carry on with theepisode, let's give a shout out
to one of our sponsors.
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(17:25):
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Today your wife came on board.
(18:07):
Um, well, you know, you saidthat she played the kind of a
certain role in the beginning,as her role expanded over time.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah.
So she, um, she's awesome man,she and we've, we work together
well, because of lots of therapy.
And I emphasize that, right,because I the first company that
I ever work for in the roofingspace.
It was a husband and wife andthey would just holler at each
other from across the hallway.
(18:37):
Right, it was just like so badfor culture, but it was a really
good company.
I mean all those things.
But I was like man, if I everwork with my wife, I'm never
going to yell at her across thehallway.
So, yeah, she's been part ofthe company from the early on.
She's now our office manager.
(18:57):
So what she does is she's incharge of what I would consider
the back of the house, so thecustomer service reps, the
profit losses, she handlesmarketing, um, kind of she.
She probably has, I would say,like five or six people on her
team that she's serving, andthen she is the like greatest
(19:19):
advice giver.
Uh, that I could like.
I'm a very much a dreamer.
You were like hey, man, youwant to do a podcast.
I'm like absolutely, let's doit.
What are the questions?
I don't even care what thequestions are, to free flow it.
That way she is very much likeso I'll come to her just like
that and be like hey, I think weshould do this.
And she's like maybe you shouldthink more about that.
(19:41):
And also people, my staff cometo her and they're like hey,
what do you think about this?
Uh, so she really gives greatadvice and she's a early
childhood education major fromAuburn and, um, she's so.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
She's got that kind of teachable spirit about her so
she can help explain systemsand processes a whole lot better
than the dropout and teachingtwo-year-olds or three-year-olds
or you know one-year-olds, soyou know it kind of fits right,
like it kind of fits intobusiness.
You said that everyone's a twoand a three-year-old in the
(20:17):
wrestling game.
She knows how to speak ourlanguage, mark.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, at the end of the day,it's anytime I bring someone on,
that's brand new.
At this.
I'm like guys, we're just doingroofing.
I mean it's like a box of stepflashing and coil nails and like
we can figure this out together.
It's not difficult.
We make it more difficult thanit needs to be.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
That's awesome.
You said it took a lot oftherapy.
You know, for those people whowho do work with their spouses
or partners and, like you know,potential future spouses or you
know what whath years of runninga business together, I would
(21:04):
assume you know some of the homeconversations become just about
roofing and what you know.
How do you keep?
How do you keep that?
How do you keep that balancegoing with the relationship and
the uh in the business?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, I um.
I always thought, like backbefore I was in therapy.
It was like man, like if you'rein an argument, you're meant to
win it, right, like if you andI, it's like a fight.
Like if we're getting in afight, like you want to win the
fight.
Same thing with an argument,right, and actually that's the
polar opposite of like there'sno winning and losing in an
(21:40):
argument, right?
So it's like.
So what I've learned throughall these years of therapy is,
like my wife is way smarter thanme.
Um and uh, women are madedifferent, right?
Uh, they have great intuitionand, um, they have a great gut
feeling about it.
And ask, hey, what do you thinkabout this?
(22:05):
Instead of telling someone andI think I do a good job here not
saying, hey, this is my company, you know, this is the way it
has to be it's like, hey, whatdo you think?
Cause I, our team, is sodiverse of, like, all different
walks of life, and so we have anearly childhood education.
You know, major, who's ouroffice manager?
(22:28):
Right, so it's like.
You know my operations directoris a food and beverage manager.
Right, my sales manager is agolf bro.
It's like.
So we try to bring on peoplethat really help us and
compliment us very, very much.
But from my wife perspective, Iwould just say ask a lot of
(22:49):
questions and then have reallygood boundaries.
My therapist once told me he waslike, as business owners, you
know this, we can work all daylong and then there's still more
work to do tomorrow.
Right, so we have the boundary.
Before you know, when we firststarted growing, we were not at
an office.
Now we have an office, um, butwe were working out of our
(23:12):
basement, in our home.
So, like every second we wouldtalk about this business.
Oh, listen to this, what thiscustomer did, listen to what you
know.
This happened today with thissupplier and it was just like,
oh, my gosh.
So we, we put in the boundaryof like, we're not going to talk
about work, especially like thehard conversations, and, uh,
(23:37):
about six o'clock we basicallyturn it all off and we go
straight to mom and dad modeinstead of, you know, business
owner mode.
That's been really, reallyhelpful.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I bet that's hard.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
It is hard and it's so good, cause we remind each
other, uh, especially when, like, she's worn out and doesn't
want to talk about it, or I'mworn out, she'll always say it's
like, hey, let's not talk aboutthis here, and I'm like, so
good, yeah, because it's stillgoing to be there tomorrow.
It's like it doesn't matter,but I'm an outward, so I just
(24:15):
want to talk about everythingthat happened and all the things
and all of that, and it's.
It is very difficult, but it'salso really great, um, to be
able to be like, yeah, we're notgoing to talk.
We have that boundary, thatguardrail in our relationship
where we're not going to talkabout roofing all the time.
We're more than roofing, youknow.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yep, what other lessons have you learned in
therapy that have helped you inbusiness?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Man, you can't make everyone happy.
I had this customer man I can'teven tell her name because I'm
under a non-disclosure agreement, but if this wasn't recorded I
would tell you her name and Iliterally it was like I was
right when I started in thisindustry and it was a referral
from my metal sub and he's likethis lady's great, you're going
(25:07):
to love her.
And I was like awesome.
So I sold her a roof and shenever provided plans and she was
like hey, so we kind of handmeasured everything.
We're just trying to figure outhow to, uh, you know, get the
right materials.
So I just ordered like a wholebunch of extra materials, just
cause, as you know, like it'sthe worst thing, it's five
o'clock and you're out of youknow timber techs or you know
(25:27):
sealer ridge or whatever.
And so I ordered a whole bunchof materials.
Everything went great.
We, uh we installed a fullsystem.
So this was a GAF job.
So we use felt buster, sealerRidge, uh, timberline ultra
storm guard, like everything.
Like it should have been agolden pledge, but we weren't a
master elite contractor at thetime.
So we showed up to get all theextra materials and she was like
(25:49):
, oh, I thought I got to keepthose.
I was like, no, we're, you know, taking them back.
I ordered extra because, youknow, five o'clock, the normal
spiel.
Well, she didn't like that.
Well, she sent me a video thenext day saying, hey, you didn't
put flashing on this roof.
And I'm like, no, there'sflashing there.
And so I, of course, ran rightover to her house to, you know,
double check and make sure thatthere's flashing there.
(26:10):
And of course, I sent her thisvideo.
This is before company cam andyou can like hear me tinking
with a pencil like ting, ting,ting, ting, the metal behind the
hearty blank.
And I sent it to her and she'sjust like, nope, it's not there.
I'm like it is a hundredpercent there.
And what I found out is thather husband's an attorney and
this is what their stick was isjust to stick it to people.
(26:34):
And they would just see if theycould, you know, win the
argument or get away with nothaving to pay the contractor.
And man, I was in this crazytailspin because I took
everything so personally, likethis is my baby, you know, I
care so much about the homeowner.
I want to make it right, like Idon't understand why they would
(26:55):
ever think that I didn't do it.
And then I would just run overthere and my therapist, ed he's
a great guy, he goes, he goes.
Martin, like you can't makeeveryone happy Like, let me ask
you a question Did you put theroof on to the best of your
knowledge?
And I said, yes, there's no waythat this roof will ever leak.
We did everything perfect, Ipersonally inspected it and I
(27:17):
had my top crew do it.
He's like some people are justlike that, some people are
a-holes, and I'm like, yep, somepeople are a-holes.
And so I learned that valuablelesson is like man, you can't
take it personally.
Like some people just want tosue you and it sucks and it's
messy and I would never live mylife that way or treat people
that way.
(27:37):
But some people, that's justtheir MO, they think every
contractor's out to get them andyeah, so you know, being able
to take a deep breath and belike, hey, that's what we have
an attorney for.
The attorney can handle allthat stuff.
I did everything right, um, butit took a lot.
Um, you could see my passionbeginning to talk about this
(27:58):
late?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
No, it's.
It's the truth, though, and andthat's a, that's a good lesson
to learn because, like, first ofall, not everyone is your
customer, right, as the firstthing I think of there and not
that you knew, right, you didn'tknow think of there and not
that you knew, right, you didn'tknow.
But that's a great lesson thathey, don't we really did
everything, like, if you feel,maybe the lesson there is that,
(28:21):
if you know that you dideverything that you could have
done, hey, man, that's about asfar as we could go with this,
because there are, you know,there are one or two crazy
people out there.
Um did a podcast.
There might be more than one ortwo there, maybe three or four,
maybe three or four per squareinch of the earth surface or
(28:46):
something.
But you know, um, I want towrite a book.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I want to get together with a bunch of uh of
roofers and just write a bookabout everyone's favorite
customer right, Like the goodone or the bad one.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I think that would be a heck of a reason the show
every now and then, and Dimitridoes that show where they do
like horror, horror, horrorstories about a contractor, but
then also horror stories about auh, a homeowner or a property
(29:23):
owner, and it's uh.
I love the premise of itbecause it's not always.
It's not always you, eventhough it may, even though the
world may feel it to you.
I know you're enjoying theepisode, but let's give a shout
out to another one of oursponsors.
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(29:46):
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(30:09):
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It's not always you, eventhough it may, even though the
world may feel it to you.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, it, it definitely does.
And we, we have some awesomecustomers too.
Man, I mean, some of myfavorite customers are like like
, what color would you want?
And I'm like, well, I would dothe landmark pro more way, like
that's what I put on my house.
They're like that's what I want, like those are our favorite
customers.
And then we have the customersthat are like hey, we're gonna
videotape this whole thing.
(30:52):
And we're like, well, how doyou videotape?
Where do you get the tape?
Like you could just record it,like.
But it's like, you know, that'swhat I love about this job is
that there's.
You just meet all the differenttypes of people the people in
the c-suites and the people that, like man, are hard up on their
luck and they just need, youknow, somebody to fix their roof
and, uh, you know, do it quickdo it quick.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah it, it there's.
There's a wide variety ofpeople that you'll come across
from a customer standpoint andfrom a team perspective.
What are some of the, the, the,the, the, some of the ups and
downs you've had building your,your team, over the years.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the things I'm
most proud of.
Is is the team, and it allstems from when I was first
hired by this roofing company.
Um, they hired me.
I did tile, like floor tile onesummer and that's the extent of
(31:55):
my, like trade knowledge.
Uh, and they hired me andthey're like, we love hiring you
because you don't know it anyother way, so we're going to
teach you our way and that's theway, and so that is the way
that I love it here.
As much as I would love to bringin, you know, a sales guy from
another company like there's allthose bad habits.
(32:18):
It's like, at least how I feelin Atlanta, jim, is that, like,
people just want to be nurturedand cared for and not be sold to
.
So if I can find people thatare just customer focused, where
they can just, um, not feellike they're being sold to, they
(32:40):
feel like they're being takencare of, if I can teach that and
hire that, then, uh, you'regoing to be a great fit.
So, you know, my sales teamcurrently consists of two
bartenders uh, an ex special edteacher, a missionary in Africa
and, uh, a golf pro like, andthen this college dropout I
(33:03):
consider myself sometimes asales guy.
Um, and no one has any salesexperience and I have to remind
myself that, oh, like you don'tknow about follow-up and like
all those things.
So I have to remind them ofthose things.
But it's like I love it becausethe people that we hire are
like they.
They, they are customer servicepeople that happen to sell
(33:24):
roofs.
Right, because, especially inthe homeowner uh sphere, if, um,
if you can obsess over thecustomer experience and you feel
like you're like overcommunicated with, you're going
to continue to flourish and havemany, many appointments.
(33:46):
So if you're in customerservice and you're a bartender,
you know how to deal with theangry people.
You know how to deal with thecouple that's in an argument.
You know how to deal with theold man that's just lonely and
as you know what like.
So you know all those things.
So we just take that and thenthrow it into the homeowner
(34:07):
space and we teach them a littlebit about roofing and roof
repairs and then we'reconstantly kind of teaching our
team that way.
So that's kind of our salesteam operations man.
I.
I have another bartender andhe's uh, he's a colombian dude.
He's awesome.
My food and beverage guy, uh,my operations manager is a food
and beverage like uh, I, I Ismoked him out of my uh, my
(34:32):
country club because I justwatched how he obsessed over
taking care of the members.
Yeah, we have another educatorhere that worked with my wife 20
years ago and we post a lot offun content on our thing.
And she saw our content andshe's like, man, I want to come
(34:53):
work there.
And, um, I just found out thatmy media manager she's in charge
of all of our marketingactually has a marketing degree,
uh, which is just like blew mymind.
I was like, wait, what?
You have a marketing degree?
That's crazy.
I just thought she was thislike division one soccer star.
So you know, but we just hire,like just great people and, uh,
(35:15):
we, we have a.
We kind of let everyone beinvolved in the hiring process
where we, uh, we want everyoneto, you know, meet that person
and see if they're going to workwith the flow.
I don't like the whole we're afamily thing, cause I don't, I
just don't believe in like, hey,we're a family, uh, cause you
can't fire your mom.
Um, I just, I don't know, Ijust I've never liked that.
(35:39):
Hey, we're a family, but we'rea we're a really great unit and
team and um it works really wellfor us, especially if we give
everyone the opportunity.
Hey, we're thinking aboutbringing this person on board.
We would love you to set up atime to have coffee with them,
or vice versa.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah, I like that.
I like the concept of, or whatyou're doing.
They're bringing people withwho have already maybe they
haven't been formally trained incustomer experience, but but
they have had to, but they werethrown in the fire of customer
experience, right and, and hadto deal with a lot of
(36:19):
challenging situations.
Um, I think that's that'ssomething I've heard from a few
different contractors around thecountry and and I've heard it
other ways where you know theylike if you're recruiting people
for your team, you may recruitfrom, you know, like, a company
that has a really in helpingpeople and doing the right thing
(36:41):
and creating that customerexperience.
And then you find out they havea marketing degree and you're
(37:04):
like, wow, this is awesome.
Who would have thought that'scool?
That's so cool.
I want to shift gears a littlebit real quick.
I want to shift gears a littlebit real quick and you, you know
, with the new sign behind youthe hard reset podcast um, have
ventured into my world.
Martin, you've come to, you'vecome, you've come over to to the
(37:24):
good side.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Finally, yeah, I love um, I love the podcast space.
It's like this is my newpassion project space.
It's like this is my newpassion project.
Um, and uh, yeah, it's funny ifyou, if you, were to get on our
socials and see our tiktok orwhatever it's like.
I don't feel like, if I was ahomeowner, that I care about the
(37:46):
drone, the epic drone videoswith, like, uh, the unbelievable
music and all those things likewhat I think is like how do we
entertain these, these peoplethat want to follow our channel?
And, um, we do have some goodeducation stuff on our YouTube
channel.
But, uh, the hard reset kind ofpodcast came out of, like, long
(38:11):
story short, in 2021, I gotCOVID and, um, about 10 days
after my COVID, I went intomania and my mania wasn't
treated, so that I went intopsychosis.
The psychosis wasn't treatedand so it came to this moment in
2021 where my therapist, mywife and my big brother were in
(38:33):
this room and they were like youneed to get him to a
psychiatric hospital and heneeds to go, like right now,
today, and so no mental healthhistory or anything in my family
, anything like that.
So, fast forward, like I spentfive and a half months in 2021,
you know, by the way, I had acompany at the time and so that
(38:54):
was, just, you know, awful.
But what I learned in thatmoment and I can, you know, tell
that story another day but whatI learned in that moment is
like when it's hitting the fanand you're going through it, or
now that I've been through it,other people are going to go and
(39:15):
be faced with that same thingMaybe not the same story, but
they're going to be faced with asimilar thing, where it's like
my wife just went a little crazy.
She's in the psychiatric ward.
Like what do we do?
Now?
I'm the guy that gets the call,and so I love getting the call
because I feel like, you know,not just in roofing but in life
like we're out here to help eachother.
(39:36):
So the hard reset podcastliterally came from like the
more people that know my storyor the more people that know
your story of your hard reset.
That's what this podcast isabout.
It's like hey, man, this iswhat I went through.
(39:57):
We've we've had a widower on.
We've had people that you knowleft uh, you know the corporate
world to go into ministry.
We've had alcoholics peoplelying to their wife.
We've had adulterer.
Uh, we've just had.
We had my best friend's ex wifeon, who's now married to
(40:17):
another person with three kids.
It's wild.
But all these stories kind ofadd up to just this Hard Reset
podcast and we're just having alot of fun and we're just having
conversations with life changepeople, right?
Because again, who wants to seea drone video of a Landmark Pro
?
It sounds boring.
Let me tell you about the timethe guy drove north in the
(40:40):
southbound lane of Interstate 75.
I can listen to that.
I got that guy coming on.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
A little bit more attention there.
What does having a hard resetmean to you?
Speaker 2 (40:57):
You broke up on me on that question.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
What does having a hard reset mean to you?
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Man, hard reset is starting from scratch and really
thinking about everything needsto be redone.
Um, a hard reset is like, hey,man, it's, it's like a 180 like
you're.
(41:25):
You're going down this, thisroad and all of a sudden you
gotta hit that reset, unplug thethe cord, plug it back in and
start over from scratch.
Um, so that's what hard resetmeans to me.
The, the name reset roofingcame like in 2015, 2016, where I
(41:45):
was going to name my company,like every roofer does after
themselves, and, uh, someoneelse had already.
My last name is shepherd andsomeone already had shepherd in
in in Atlanta, believe it or notand my wife called.
She's like I can't get theWi-Fi to work.
I'm like just hit the resetbutton.
Like reset it, hit it.
She called me back.
(42:06):
She's like everything's workingand I'm like reset roofing.
If we ever own a business, oneday, that'd be really cool to
have reset roofing.
It a business.
One day that'd be really coolto have reset roofing.
It's got that double R, sothat's where it came from.
And now there's like a reseteverything.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
I should have trademarked this a long time ago
but so, yeah, that's what resetmeans to me Awesome, and so,
like I think this could be inlife and business.
It applies in a lot of ways.
What can someone?
What are some, some things thatyou know from from the
conversations that you've hadwith people on the podcast now
and from your own life.
What are things, what are somethings that people can do if
(42:47):
they need to reset.
I know you're enjoying theepisode, but let's give a shout
out to another one of oursponsors.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
Stop going at it alone, because growing a roofing
company today is not what itwas like even three years ago.
Not with the economy, not withprivate equity, not with AI
taking over the world.
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(43:14):
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Speaker 1 (43:22):
What are some things that people can do if they need
to reset?
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, I think probably the ringing kind of
endorsement of all these thingsis you got to tell someone, um,
and you also have to look atyourself and realize that, hey,
I need this reset.
Because if I told Jim, if youloved Chipotle, let's just say,
and every day you're eatingChipotle.
(43:51):
I'm like Jim, you need to stopeating Chipotle, you can't eat
it every day.
And it's like, well, I likeChipotle.
Jim has to look at himself inthe mirror and say, man, I can't
eat Chipotle every day.
It's not healthy for me, Ican't take, I can't eat Chipotle
every day.
It's not healthy for me.
Uh, I, I've, I've learned that Iam.
Uh, you know, I have learnedyou can't tell people what they
(44:11):
need.
You can't tell someone, hey,you need a hard reset.
It's like you need to lookyourself in the mirror and be
like, hey, man, I've got to stopdoing this.
I need to kind of move on withmy life.
I'm tired of waking up drunkevery day or you know dealing,
you know doing drugs, or like mylife feels empty.
Like that rock bottom moment iswhat most people have to do to
(44:34):
get to the hard reset moment sothat they can kind of start
their life over.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
What do you think a struggling roofing contractor
can do to reset their business?
Speaker 2 (44:52):
I would say hire a mentor, um, and just have
someone come in and look at it.
And just because so often it'slike especially like for a, it's
so hard for us to ask for help.
Because we want to be thestrong business guy, we want to
be the guy that just knowseverything, it's like I've got
(45:12):
the answer to every question.
And it's the humble guys, it'sthe guys filled with humility
and the girls filled withhumility that are like man, I
don't know that answer.
Let me find someone else thatdoes it.
That's what I love about yoursweatshirt, man, is.
There's so many things I loveabout RSRA, but one of the many
things is like hey, man, I'm a$10 million company, I'm trying
(45:36):
to be a $20 million company.
Yeah, here's my phone number,call me.
Hey, I'm a million dollarcontractor, I'm trying to be a
$3 million contractor.
Hey, man, send me your, send mea couple things.
Let me look at your SOP.
What's an SOP?
(45:56):
It's like man, if I'm liketrying to grow as a human, you
got to eat that humble pie andbe humil.
You know, humble and filledwith humility, and say, man, I
need some help.
Jim, I don't know what the heckI'm doing.
I just got an audit from myinsurance.
They say I owe him $25,000.
I don't understand.
I've paid a bunch of dumb taxesover the years and I want to
give everyone all these dumbtaxes that I've paid.
(46:18):
So Jim and all of his friendsdon't have to follow and pay
those dumb taxes, because it'sgoing to be better for the
industry.
Which is why I love RSRA somuch.
It's like it's just an openplace of hey man, I need some
help, I need some feedback.
Will you look at this for me?
I, you know, I'm havingproblems hiring.
I'm losing talent.
(46:39):
Left and right, everyone'sgoing and starting their own
thing.
It's like, well, hey, hey,let's look at the culture of
your company.
Hey, how do you pay your people?
Like, what do you?
How do you incentivize allthose things?
So, and the humble people?
Um, those are the people that Ithink are just going to really
excel it's people that are open.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, people that are open, right like you're open to
, you're open to change, you'reopen to change, you're open to
expressing your problems Likecause.
If you don't express yourproblems, especially to your
peers, to you know, a lot ofpeople don't have the abundance
mindset.
But like within a group, likelike, we have it's, you know,
you're saying, oh yeah, I wentthrough that or I did that and I
(47:21):
tried it this way and it worked, or it didn't work, or it
worked for me.
It might not work for you, butI tried it this way, and more of
those things that you can getinto your, into your day to day
is it's fantastic, what, what isone of the best kind of things
that have come out of the likemaybe a myth, or you in the
(47:41):
mission control group, or or oneof your things there, from from
one of the other mentors, ornot even from a mentor in there,
but from one of the otherbusiness owners, uh, in the RSRA
, like what?
Or outside of the RSRA, whathas another roofing business
owner, what piece of advice oror or lesson did they give you?
(48:02):
That is that you're like, likeman, that one made just an
amazing impact on what we'redoing yeah, I think it would.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Um, I, you know, for me I've really been following
reimagined roofing for a whileand cody landles and a lot of
the things that he talks about.
It makes a lot of sense to meand I love his vulnerability of
like hey, man, we used to do itthis way and then all of a
sudden, all these people leftand they owed me tons of money
(48:34):
and instead of me like filingbankruptcy and like I, you know,
I found a way to get all theseguys their money.
And then I was like I'm goingto make this roofing industry
like so much better.
And for for a guy like Cody toinvite us out to Arizona to his
office and just like say here'sthe playbook, like here's a
(48:56):
playbook, this is what we do,this is how we do it I mean the
guys in Arizona selling roofs inNew Jersey I mean it blows me
away.
So just watching Cody, you know,you know, reading the books
that he had like the Zappos booklike, which was an instrumental
part for him like getting allthose advice, I mean, shoot, man
(49:17):
, adam Binsman, I mean thatguy's a real deal.
There's been so many goodpieces, but I would say the
biggest advice that I got wasfrom Cody is like you just
constantly got to be evolving.
You have to change with thetime.
You can't do it the same wayover and over and over, like
(49:43):
yeah, it's going to work, butyou're probably not going to
grow.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
So, with that, what are some of the evolutions that
you are implementing, like whathave?
What are some of the thingsthat have evolved at reset
roofing?
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah, I think, uh, the number one, uh, evolution.
Was it Like?
(50:13):
I have spent so much moneyprotecting our brand with the
customer that might be takingadvantage of us At the end of
obsessing so much over thecustomer experience that they
feel like they are a part of thecompany as well?
(50:38):
Anyone who watches this iswelcome to steal this idea.
I think it's great.
So back in the day, like theJewish tradition was to hang
like prayer scriptures over yourdoor jam, so, like anyone that
would walk through the house, itwould bless them.
That was the theory.
This underlayment project thatwe do with all of our homeowners
(51:01):
to say, hey, we want we bringthem this arts and crafts
project that they can do withtheir family or their kids.
Hey, we're going to put thisunderlayment underneath your
roof so you'll never going tosee it, except for this one time
that we take a picture.
What we want you to do is blessyour house.
You can bless it with a prayer,you can bless it with a song.
You can just have your, yourkids, like, do a draw whatever
(51:24):
they want, like here's all themarkers, you just do it.
And so we bring the, the, thehomeowners, into the project to
make them feel like, hey, wewant you to be a part of this,
and the reception that we getfrom all of our homeowners and
property owners is, like man, Ireally felt like I was part of
this project.
It wasn't just you guys wereputting a roof on.
(51:44):
You welcomed me into that and Ihave learned that, man, if we
can obsess over even thelittlest things, where it's like
we got to drive an hour to dropoff this underlayment packet so
that you know the kids can doit, like we're going to do it
because it's worth it, um, soyeah, I mean we, we never balk
(52:08):
at someone's like man, that nailpop was never there.
Well, we told you on thecontract that nail pops are
going to happen.
No, we're going to send thepainter like it's not worth it
to me, like we'll make money onthe next one and hopefully
she'll tell someone or he'lltell someone about man that they
even said that they won'thandle nail pops, but they do
those little tiny things thatjust add up.
Uh, you know tremendously, yearafter year after year the, the
(52:32):
reputation things, the and againit's the.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
The homeowner doesn't know, like, they just don't
know.
They don't know what, what,what this is process is going to
be.
Like they don't know thatthere's going to be nail pops or
potentially could be nail pops.
They don't know, like, theydon't know any of it.
They don't know at all.
Uh, what are the other thingsthat helped that?
That that helped to bring thatcustomer in or just create that
(53:13):
great customer experience thatyou guys do or have focused on?
Speaker 2 (53:18):
yeah, we, uh, we just try to throw everyone in that
we go and see, like if this wasmy home, what would I do?
So we have a huge repairdepartment, we love doing
repairs and so you know we'll goto Jim's house and we'll be
like, hey, jim, like your roof'sonly 15 years old, you have
(53:39):
some nail pops and you know wewould recommend doing these
three things and do it.
Hey, jim, we had a storm inyour area.
Yeah, we definitely think thatyour insurance company should be
involved in this.
We would file a claim.
So that's kind of how we treatevery customer is.
Like if this was my house, whatwould I do and, to be honest,
(54:02):
this is my favorite role that Ialways use is I like I cover the
logo on my shirt and I just say, hey, let me consult you
through this, right Cause, to behonest, like it doesn't matter
if they don't buy a roof from mebecause someone else will I
mean historically speaking,right?
So, like, at the end of the day, let me just consult you
through this.
Like if this was my house, thisis what I would do.
(54:22):
Yeah, if you got this guy andyou trust him and you feel safe
using him like, use him.
Here's why we're different.
Might cost you a little more,might cost you less, but that's
what I would do, and so you knowthe golden rule of treating
others the way you want to betreated.
Man that's done a such wonders.
You know, from an employeestandpoint, from a homeowner
(54:42):
standpoint, from a supplierstandpoint, from a crew
standpoint, that's really kindof how we like to operate is
like man.
If this was me, how would Iwant to be taken care of?
And it's really helped ourbusiness flourish.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Like I know you're a visionary right.
Like I have a lot of ideas andand and so in.
Has there ever been anythingthat you've implemented in that
in, in trying to to improve thatcustomer experience where
you're like, well, that didn'twork.
Yeah, all the dumb yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
I think one of the things is is like we let used to
let the customer, like we usedto ask the question like, hey,
does that work for you?
Like, does that work for yourschedule?
And so that was a terribledesign because now, all of a
sudden, like nobody wanted aroof on a Monday and nobody
wanted a roof on Friday, so wecould only work Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday.
So instead of asking if itworks, hey, we have you
(55:47):
scheduled on this day has beenreally super helpful because, of
course, if it doesn't work on aMonday, like, but you know who
wants, who wants to cherry pick,you know their specific date
and time that that wants to go.
So taking, you know, maybe notgiving full autonomy to the
homeowner to say when thematerials are being delivered
(56:09):
and when we're actually comingto put the roof on.
I mean we, we literally had a,uh, we had a builder call us.
It was a remodel.
It was uh, 8, 30 at night.
He calls, he said, oh, by theway, the hoa will not let anyone
do any work until 8 am and theguys show up at six.
I mean it's hot, like we'retrying to get this thing done.
(56:30):
I have a picture from mybuilder on my phone of the guys
sitting on the ridge and it'slike 7 45 in the morning and
they all have their, their uhforks, just like ready to go and
across the street there's alandscaper with a backpack
blower going and I'm like, yep,we're those guys, man.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, we're those guys that we're gonna wait till
8 am to make the customer happy.
So you gotta do it.
If, uh, if you had to startover, you know now, with all of
the things that you've learned,look, you got to reset right now
.
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (57:16):
what would my action plan be?
yeah probably wouldn't.
Um, it was hard, man, it wasreally hard.
Um, I think my action planwould be I would slow down
(57:37):
because so much um, so much oflike, even being a sales guy or
being an owner is like man, timeis so like important and I
would slow down and I would getto my 10 o'clock appointment and
just sit there until they hadall their questions answered and
I wouldn't rush to the 12 andrush to the two and the four and
(57:57):
all that stuff I'd I'd go realslow.
Um, I would hire the exact sameteam that I have now.
Um, the exact same team.
Um, it would be a really hard,uh recruitment.
But, um, I, I challenge um myteam against anyone's team right
(58:17):
now.
Uh, they're just uber talentedand, uh, they care so much about
the customer experience and Ijust love that so much.
But yeah, I would probably goreal, real slow and be selective
and not take it personally.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Awesome, Martin.
Thanks for your time today.
This has been another episodeof the Roofing Success Podcast.
Speaker 3 (58:39):
Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast
For more valuable content.
Visit roofingsuccesspodcastcomWhile there.
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(59:01):
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