01: From Logger to Roofer, 3 Keys to Commercial Roofing Success with Paul J. Gingerich

Share:

Listens: 0

Roofing That Pays

Business


RESOURCES MENTIONED: https://www.jobnimbus.com/ https://www.ziglar.com/tom-ziglar/ https://www.ziglar.com/product/choose-to-win/ https://slvroofing.com/about/ https://roofingthatpays.com/review Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors As a contractor, you know commercial roofing is an amazing opportunity that rewards hard work, but you also see huge issues emerging like finding time to bid jobs, hiring motivated employees, rocketing insurance fees and rising lead costs. On Season One of the Roofing That Pays podcast experienced contractors will share their secrets to what's working in the exploding Commercial Roofing industry. Welcome to roofing that pays. Welcome back to another episode of the roofing that pays podcast. In today's episode, we will visit with Paul J. Gingerich, a successful contractor from Missouri. Owen, it's good to be here. I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to be on here. And I look forward to the interview. Let's start go way back to maybe your growing up years. What did your family do as an occupation? You know, what kind of environment Did you grow? And then how did you get into running your own business? Because I know you had a business prior to getting involved in commercial roofing. So how did you end up in that business in and what did you do there? I grew up on a little farm outside of Carrollton, Missouri here. My dad he was he was not a farmer. So he had us boys do it. We actually enjoyed it. It was back in the day when there was a lot of little dairy farmers all over the country. And my dad was one up and was 15 years old, my dad decided that it was better that we get rid of the dairy cows, we would start focusing on doing something in the line of some production type work. We sold the cows that bought some equipment, and we started making some landscape stakes. My uncle also put in a sawmill. He recruited us guys work there during the day and then we work went home and we work making landscape stakes and evenings rather than doing chores. So that's kind of the barn I grew up in. And 2008-nine came around. The economy went south. We were on our own by that time. I mean, we were 21-22 years old me and my brother move will work for my uncle. Thanks for a really bad I mean, we were working 10 to 15 my uncle was wondering what we're going to do next and we had the opportunity come up some the log suppliers, he was looking for somebody to cut his own law. He thought less you put in the solid mail he said, I'll bring you the lumber. So well we lost 25% 25 to 30% of the lumber industry when disappeared in 2008-nine. These guys put one in. It was it looked really backwards. It was kind of rough for a few years, wake up logs for him. we process them for three and a half years and then we branched out on our own. We did pretty good at it. When we decided that we were going to move to Colorado. I found a job doing lumber again. But there was a transition that happened in me between being employed by somebody else. And being previously being employed by myself. There was just things and atmosphere going on in that operation I didn't like, and it just ate me up. There was just a thing of people having a bad attitude. I mean, this one guy even kept concert, you know, saying well, he doesn’t care. He said we'd come back tomorrow and finish it when they could have finished it that day. I mean, it was just they were goofing around. It just ate me up. Let me go back into, touching on the sawmill, the experience you had there. Give us an idea of the size of the sawmill. I don't know how many guys were working there or how many board feet per day or, you know, revenue numbers or is there anything you can give us on just what size operation you had? Before you ended up moving to Colorado and quit the lumber industry? in revenue wise, we were right at 700,000 for the first couple years. And then after we branched out our own. We were actually buying and processing. We were at 1.5 to 1.8 million. And then I think the last year we were running it, we were at 2.59. It was not a huge operation, but it turned a lot of dollars. That was four guys in the operation that ran it. Besides me. I was buying the inventory. Then you moved to Colorado, the ends you didn't have the sawmill anymore. You started working for someone else. And that's where you ran into some of these issues, you know, with coworkers and so forth and decided to look at having your own business again, as far as a commercial roofing what intrigued you when it came to commercial roofing roof coatings business? What intrigued me about the roofing industry as a whole was we've had some background in construction because we grew up in the lumber. So the roofing thing wasn't like something was that was totally brand new, but it was brand new. And what intrigued me about it was just the opportunity. Ready to have something that doesn't have that was kind of more of a low investment getting into. But it also had the potential of making a really good income. Not a lot of overhead not a lot employees. I mean, if you look across in roofing industry as a whole, in the residence of part of it, there's a lot of turnover that goes on in those places. That's one thing. I'm not a guy that likes to have a lot of turnover all the time turnover is actually hurts your business. employee retention is what you want. Sometimes it's hard, you have to let a guy go But then again, you want to do your best. If you have good and boys, it will show up on the job. If you have employees that don't care, it's going to show up on a job so employees are very important. Doing this type restoration work really allows me to kind of keep your hands involved to make sure the process is done correctly. And that eliminates a lot of problem if you get spread out to you. Much and you lose that you will have some warranty problems, you'll have to go back and fix. And whenever you have to do that, I mean that's costly to I don't care who it is, and they were already there. They could have spent 15 minutes and not had this happen. In other words, with commercial roofing, and especially with roof coatings, you've got enough margin available that you can make a really good living without having a huge number of employees as basically what you're saying. Yeah, yes, that's right. You then ended up moving from Colorado back to Missouri. Anything you'd like to share about that? When we move back to Missouri, half of the revenue for that next year was actually in Colorado. There was still projects we had given some quotes on and proposals on that we actually got and so half of our revenue came from Colorado that year and half came from Missouri. It was basically having to start over in Missouri. One of the things that I found the difference between Colorado, Missouri was there. There's a lot more buildings in Missouri than there is in Colorado. So that gives you the opportunity to grow in Missouri is actually better than in Colorado, but there was actually more revenue involved with projects in Colorado than they are in Missouri. Because the competition, Okay, yeah, not quite as many contractors for the square miles probably because in Colorado, a lot of projects are a little bit spaced out compared to Missouri. Yes, plus, the projects are spaced out. But there's also the people actually know each other out there a lot better than they do here because of the population. Let's dig into some of the struggles just for our listeners. So we can learn, grow, get better at what we do. In the last several years, is there anything you'd like to share that you would do different, you know, that we can learn from today? There’re actually three things I think that's very important that you want all the time. That's marketing, profits, and cost of if you buy a piece of equipment, and you actually take out a bank loan on that, you want to make sure that you have enough work for that piece of equipment. Because you can actually hire somebody to do it for cheaper than owning a piece of equipment. If you don't have enough work for it. We bought a phone trailer which we went and bought a satellite phone priority. It had power Jacks on it, it had tanked It was a Cadillac phone ring, the work we thought we had coming for this that was between a verbal agreement, it never materialized. So that left us having to make the payments on a phone trailer that we weren't turned into revenue from it that we had and just pay that leaves you having to pay for something that's costing you money at that point because or for that year, if you don't run enough dollars on that piece of equipment. So that's, that's the thing that you want to be considered of. The second thing is profits. If you don't know your numbers, and you think you're making this much money. You don't really know, you're actually shorting yourself. So you need to be able to track those numbers. And you need to do it accurately. And you need to do a quarterly inventory and do a state. And the next thing is you got to watch sports and marketing. I've read them my website three times. I mean, you lose money every time you have to redo it. So hiring somebody to do it right the first time, you might have a little bit more of an investment up front doing it right. But if you do it right, you will actually save you money over the long haul plus, you'll get more better leads, better quality, lead generating leads, they're all expensive. So you need to make sure that whatever you do is actually bringing you the results that you want. Let's dig into the numbers a little bit on marketing what all the attract I mean, lead source jobs sold, did what all the attract when it comes to tracking like you're marketing versus revenue, open jobs, things like that. If you track your jobs for an instance, you know how many leads you get, you know what those leads were where they you know, what type of a building, we actually categorize them out into, like 1234, and five. As we want to know, the importance of that job to us. Every job is important. But some jobs are bigger than others, we track the side of the job, we want to know what the dollar amount of that did was, because the more that bid, the higher the dollar amount on that project, the more the importance of it goes up just because there's $1 amount associated with it well makes you want to follow up with that person. You want to serve that person to the best of your ability. If you don't track those numbers, then you won't know you want to know where that lead came from. Because as you're tracking it, you know it's coming from your website, or is it coming from a direct mail face? Is it coming from a cold call you did? Is it coming from a referral as you've tracked all These things you can start seeing where most of your leads are coming from. And as you track those, you'll be able to know where your money should go to. If you track your marketing what you did, and you know where the leads are coming from, you can know the ones that you need to tweak or change, maybe change something and see if that works better. What is your biggest lead producer or a couple of the ones that used to produce leads? There’re three main sources I get my leads from. We do a direct mail campaign, we got a number of those, then we also get a number from our website. And then we have a lot of referrals. Have you noticed anything in referrals, the quality of the lead being better than leads coming from website or direct mail. I love referrals because if you have a referral, you actually your chances of getting that project is just way up. There's a credibility that comes with them when you're referred by somebody and they give you a call and It just changes the game drastically. Give us an average of time between when someone calls you for proposal versus the time it takes actually get the sign contract. Is it fast in commercial roofing? Or does it take a long time? What are your thoughts on that? There is a percentage of the vape call you they are ready to do something. But there's a percentage of them that are looking to put something in their budget. And some of them, they're just curious how much it would cost them to do it. And then they figure out that it's not what they want to do, I use your fine during the year of the all the leads, we get you close, let's say one out of five, and then you'll close a percentage of those will close the next year. And some of you will not get for a couple years for one lead for an instance I'm thinking of right now. We actually bet this project over two years ago, and it's now just come through. So, you buy your commercial roof coatings and material from Conklin, can you share with us why Conklin? I really love Conklin’s products. They're easy to work with. And but their quality we know without about when we get that product in, it's going to be good. If there's a screw up on that project, it's not going to be confident it's going to be as contractors, your employees or somebody did something wrong. It's not the company's fault plus, with the National Contractor’s Group, and just being a preferred contractor, and just having the opportunity to rub shoulders with those other bird contract, you learn so much, you learn little tricks, little tricks make a big difference, and it's a little thing that lead to big things. And so, I enjoy every moment of those contractor trips that we take, and we get to be a small part of we just enjoy those and we learned so much. There's so much value and energy that goes on at that place like that. They It's unbelievable. So, you mentioned that preferred contractor title; To earn that title is pretty significant. How did that make you feel when you earn that title for the first time? It was a goal we had and we ran hard for it. It made me feel really good. I felt like I hit a major milestone. But then again, there was something that it did inside me of knowing that I can do this. There's just something that it was it was literally like it triggered something. And I asked myself, why did I believe it was this was going to be so hard once it's a goal and you go after it. There's something that happens when it's something that you don't know if you can do it and you get to do that there's something that happens in you that grows. It was a really good feeling. And yet there were it was kind of a it was a humbling feeling in a way. Just being able to know that the company actually wants you to succeed. They give you a discount, a product discount. If you hit the You are preferred contractor wisdom that tells me something. I mean, that's something that they are excited to see that you have invested this much money with them and they're willing to give you an edge having that profit margin just a little bit bigger. They know that as you grow, you have other expenses. And that just helps build that crack. And the second thing is we get to go on then preferred contractor trips and just being around those other contractors is just it's, it's awesome. I mean, the food's great fellowship, good for something that they was cold and being on the beach somewhere but your feet in the sand it's kind of not. In wrapping this up, what would you tell yourself if you could go back five years or for someone new that's interested in getting into commercial roofing or starting or their own roof coating does this is there anything that sticks out in your mind that you would share? With someone like that, there is not a better opportunity to get started. You want to be teachable, and you want to listen to your upline, if they can't help you, they know somebody they can. And there's so many people that would be willing to help you. If you're not teachable, you can do it, but you're exposing yourself to their blind spots that you can't see. So being involved with your upline director, and just asking them because they could they see other contractors, they work with them daily, they know, the struggle, what they could face if they do certain things different or not did or they do something they shouldn't do. So if they would just communicate when they have a question. Some of us get really enthused about something, and we just go out there and we do it. And then we later we will ask ourselves, why did we buy this piece of equipment, like we prematurely bought it? So there's things like that. I believe that If just working together gives that person the edge an advantage, he can hire a coach. And that can be really expensive. And the coach is still not directly involved and doesn't know as much about it as what the guys do right in the field. I just don't see how another company could have any better benefits. You've shared a lot of great things here. Paul, where do you see your company in five years from now? Well, I just see in five years from now, as we grow out, there's things that in five years from now, from the day that's going to be very different. One of the things that I see happening as the riffing industry is just it's a booming industry coming out with a new to product, we're going to be getting into new construction. There is no better chance to get involved with commercial roofing industry than it is today. I see ourselves growing and some of the struggles that we have today will be gone. Oh, and I actually don't think I even have any idea. How biggest on faith. We kind of get in our heads that we kind of know. But we actually don't know until we, as we go along because as you start growing I mean, you can grow if you grow 30% every year. Lightning round… is your favorite roof product, either coatings or membranes? Actually, like coatings the best. Is there a favorite app you use in your business and what would that be? JobNimbus. What's your favorite book? Besides the Bible, of course? Choose To Win. Choose to Win by Tom Ziglar. And the last question, if you won a free trip, would you rather go to the mountains or to the beach? It depends on what time of the year it is. I actually liked the mountains by at the 2.1 or the other it'd be the mountain. Today's guest was Paul J. Gingerich with SLV Roofing Service, a commercial roofing and roof coatings contractor from Missouri. If you'd like a copy of the show notes, resources and links, simply visit the episodes page at roofingthatpays.com Thanks for listening to Roofing That Pays! Before you go Can we ask a huge favor? The biggest thing that helps spread this message is when you rate and review us. That tells the platforms we're doing something right. Take a moment to rate and review us at roofingthatpays.com/review. That's roofingthatpays.com/review. Thanks so much. Until next time, do more Roofing That Pays.