The Greatest Complement with Larson Home Services

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thirteen ten WI b A and ask the experts. Joining
us this morning is mister Andrew Larsen of Larsen Home Services.
Of course you can get to know Andrew. You can
learn more also about larsenorm Services all on their website
Larsenhome Services dot com. That's l A R S O
N Home Services dot com. Speak of getting to know Andrew.
I hope you've had a chance to follow them on

(00:20):
social media. They've got great videos that go up and
some other really good information available to you. And you
can find Larsenome Services and Andrew right on your favorite platform,
whether it's where are the kids these days? Facebook and
all those really cool things. As we talk with great
stuff about great stuff and cool things with Andrew, don't
forget about tell phe number for Larsenome Services six oh
eight five three five forty three forty three. That's six

(00:42):
O eight five three five forty three forty three, without
any further ado, Andrew, how are you doing this morning?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm doing excellent and I just want you to know
that you just aged yourself. You So what are the
kids doing now? Is Facebook? Kids don't use Facebook? No
on MySpace. They've never heard of their it's Snapchat pretty
much primarily the only thing. But yeah, Facebook, I remember

(01:08):
when Facebook was people us for old people.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Remember when it was like an exclusive party, like you
had to get an invite to join, and like all
the cool kids were there. That's apparently not the thing anymore, huh.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
It was way back in the day that that's before
Facebook and Google ruled.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah the world they sure, Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's funny about is about like where we are now
and the great world of information sharing and you know,
all these fantastic opportunities to get words word out and
share knowledge. Nothing also beats, though, good old fashioned getting
together with with other folks in similar fields or other
folks in the same field, maybe in different areas. And

(01:52):
you had a chance actually to speaking of partaking in
some information and information sharing. You recently got a chance
to attend a con Diference with about the roofing industry
and kind of what it's all about. And this is
one of the things I love about you is we've
talked about your team at Largstom Services continuing education, but
it starts at the top. You also do a lot

(02:13):
of spend a lot of time learning about different products,
learning about the industry. Let's talk about this this recent
conference you attended.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, so this wasn't really a conference. So this is
something it's a networking group. And I've been involved in
this for all since like twenty twenty. I remember our
first conference. It was actually in Florida and it was
in February of twenty twenty, and there was all these
like little whispers about this thing called cool ooh, like
yeah whatever, and no big deal, and then like a

(02:41):
month and a half later, boom, the world trust out. Anyway,
it takes me back. But so no, I get together
with these other with these other roofing contractors, and it's
it's not to really talk about products. It's more to
talk about business practices and the changing world of contractors
and roofing. And you know, one of the things I

(03:01):
think one of the last shows we kind of talked
about business, business ethics and being able to choose the
right contractor. And in something that that I'm really proud
of is that, you know, we've we've put our money
where our mouth is for the past fifteen years and
and a lot of contractors will say, oh, yeah, you know,
if anything's wrong with it, give me a call. Well,
we put it in writing. I mean, if there is

(03:22):
something wrong, we will fix it for free pretty much forever.
I mean, it is what it is. If there's something
wrong with something that we did, I mean, man, sometimes
we go overboard. I never forget about the lady called
and said her downce ball was broken. I get there
and you know it's got holes all over it. I
think I've talked about this and it's all blood. Well,

(03:43):
her dog chase to squirrel up the downpat rip the dowart.
Should we fix that for free? No? But we did. Ah,
you know, like I'm like, you know, next time you
might have to pay for the next one. But we
talk about business ethics and meeting all these other contractors.
There's probably about fifty fifty companies. They're roofing companies from
basically every corner east coast, west coast, south, you know, north, everywhere.

(04:07):
And what was super surprising to me was, you know,
I always talk about this. We do it this way,
we do it this way. We charge enough so we
can stay in business to help our homeowners out in
the future if they have problems. And I lost count
at the amount of other roofers that pulled me aside

(04:30):
and said, hey, just want you to know that we
model our business after the way you do things. And
I'm like me, you know, when some of these people
have been in business for twenty five, thirty forty years,
but because of social media, because of podcasts, they see them,

(04:52):
they watch them, they hear what we talk about in
the way that we do things. And so it goes
back to what I've had some of my other buddies,
Buddies and slash competitors here in the Madison area saying, gosh,
you know, you talk about everything that you do, you
say the way you do it, and then magically, like
six months or a year later, another contractor is doing
the same thing. And I always take the stance of

(05:14):
but if we can do things better or be like
a trend setter, and those trends trickle down to other contractors,
that means for me, whether they go with us or
go with somebody else, they're going to get a better
job done if people are trying to do it the
way we do it. And there's something good about that too, right,

(05:35):
I mean, contractors have got the worst reputation for leaving
people high and dry, not doing a good job. Not
you know coming back if there's a problem where if
I can talk about the way that we do things,
the way we warranty things, the way we like it
is right in our model, like we service to a fault,

(05:58):
meaning sometimes we fix things that we shouldn't for free,
but we do anyway because once you're part of once
you're part of our family, you're part of our family,
and that's how we take care of it. So making
other contractors better through talking about it is great. And
having contractors from Florida and Washington, Massachusetts, but I lost

(06:19):
count come up to me and say that they want
to run things ethically and morally the way we do
it just made me feel really good.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
As you should and it's it's amazing and we're we're
you know we I've talked about having the opportunity to
work with you and work with your team at Arsenal Services.
The old the old adage of a rising tide lifts
all boats, and we're seeing it obviously, the standards being
being great, you know much being risen up here in
Madison for the work that you guys are doing here
at at Larsenoalm Service. And people say, well why And

(06:48):
one of the things I know about you, Andrew, is
because you take the time to do things right, you
build this reputation, which means when a neighbor needs in
the roof, for when when somebody says, you know what,
it's time to upgrade our gun it it. The truth is,
and I don't want to lift the things that expose
at all, but the truth is it's good for the homeowner.

(07:08):
It also ultimately is really good for you and your
team at large home services as well to do things
right by folks.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well exactly. I mean, that's what keeps us growing, that's
what keeps us busy, That's what keeps guys working, That's
what keeps them getting further ahead in their own lives.
And when other contractors say to me, how can you
put a lifetime workmanship warranty on everything that you do?
I say, how can you not? I mean you're telling
me that, you know, after seven or eight years, someone

(07:34):
calls you back and like, I don't know, shingle blew
off or the roof is leaking. You're not going to
go fix it? They say, well, yeah, probably. I'm like, well,
then put it in writing. Yeah, just put it in writing.
You're going to go fix it, so I mean some will,
some won't. Some Some some contractors run a hard line
on an X amount of year warranty, And for me,

(07:55):
it's just kind of like, I don't know, if if
I sell a couple of their last set of gutters
and their last roof and they have an issue, We're
just going to go back and take care of it.
And also that's I mean, that's what gets us more business.
You know, it's not it's not rocket science. Carrious customers
and they will tell people about it. I mean, we

(08:15):
take care of our customers and we talk loudly about it,
and the news has gotten around to other contractors all
over the country, which was insane to me. But it
makes them better, it makes us better, and when they
think we're at the very top, it just wants me
to keep getting better. What better can we do for
the community, for our customers, What more can we possibly do?

(08:36):
Kind of gets me fired up. So it's more of
a we're very rejuvenating, let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
As it should. It doesn't help to Andrews, as anybody
that's driven around town has noticed. There's you've got a
good team. You've gotta you've got to you've got a
large team at Large Home Services. That's got to help
as well. Is the opportunity is is if something needs
to be addressed, you've got the you've got the manpower
to do it. And I think sometimes, you know, as
we go through this, you know, we just got done

(09:00):
with spring. Now that we're into summer, people start start
having having you know, there's people knocking on their door,
Hey we'll do this, we'll do that. Uh, they're there
certainly to when you assign on the thatline, then you
oftentimes don't hear from them. And something. It's got to
help too having just a phenomenal staff and a and
a and a and a large staff as well to

(09:21):
really address any type of concerns and be there for
people when when they're needed, when you're needed.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Sean, And that goes back to when people get estimates
from us and say that you know, we're expensive, and
I say, we're not expensive. We're priced appropriately so that
we can pay all of these people. Because if you
want great service, we have to have the people to

(09:48):
back that up. Right. If every single employee that I
have is always on a job swinging a hammer, then
how can we go back and address warranty issues, service issues. Honestly,
some people just you know, they just want us to
come out and look at something and talk to them.
If every single person I have is always constantly being

(10:09):
run into the ground by you know, being on a
roofing site or be doing gutters or in somebody's attic,
we're not going to be able to get back to
people's homes. So in order to have a staff like that,
in order to have the infrastructure like that, you have
to charge appropriately, you know. Of course, of course there's
profit in a business. If there wasn't profit, then nobody
would do it. But I think some people look at

(10:31):
prices and go, well, that's insane. Well it's not. There
is some left over at the end of the year,
and we don't need to get into details, but like,
there has to be money left over to keep growing,
to keep hiring, to keep trying to get better, to
keep expanding the more locations, to be able to help
more homeowners. And that's always the philosophy. But yes, we
have a great infrastructure of people. We have the best people.

(10:54):
But yeah, we have people that at certain times are
actually on call to do a rapid response roof leaking issue,
someone calls them the roof is leaking. Wellat ninety nine
point n of roofing companies that you called and said
I have a roof leaking, they'd be the great. We'll
get there next week. We can get there while it's
still raining. There's something that we do. We want to

(11:17):
be able to tarpe it, quick fix it until we
can come back really address what the issue is. Sometimes
it's a restore, sometimes it's a new roof, but we
can get there and kind of like you know, uh,
put a tourniquit, put a tourniquit on the wound for
a little while. But it takes people to do that.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
It's really good to work too, not only as you
get a you know, we talk about the great you know,
the great team around you, the great products. Also feels
really good that you know, like when the job is done,
you as a homeowner can feel good about it that
everything was done right. And you've also got a secret weapon.
You've got your dad Greg as well, who comes by
and checks on all the work as well to make

(11:54):
sure everybody's keeping everything on a very very high level.
It is a great day to pick up phone gimmick
call Larst Home Services six oh eight five three five
forty three forty three. That's five three five four three
four three for Larsen Storme Services the website Larsenhomeservices dot com.
That's l A R. S o N Home Services dot com. Andrew,
it's always fantastic talking with you, my friend. You enjoyed

(12:16):
this beautiful day. We'll talk real soon.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
All right, We'll see you later.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Kevin ham Hamsarbercare comes your way next right here on
thirteen ten wib i