Business Innovators Radio - Ryan Spencer – Owner of Sharp Construction

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Ryan Spencer is the owner of Sharp Roofing, Real Estate and Construction in Holland, Michigan, and serves as a vocal leader in his community. In this episode, Ryan talks about his early entrepreneurial struggles, his triumphs, and his mindset along the journey toward growth…nearly doubling each year since his start 8 years ago. Ryan has been a client of Strategic Navigators for two years now, and he gives insight into his experience working with Strategic Navigators and the tax savings plan that he claims changed his life.Check out Sharp Roofing, Real Estate, and Construction at: https://www.sharppros.comNAVIGATEhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/navigateSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/ryan-spencer-owner-of-sharp-construction

And it has far exceeded what the projections were for cost savings and tax savings and all that. I couldn't say enough good things. Let's just say this. Stratnav from what they do to how it integrated into my business has changed my life. Welcome back to the Navigate podcast, brought to you by strategic navigators where we save entrepreneurs 40 to 60% on their income taxes. were your host, Mitch Salanti. And I'm Adam Dirkson. On the show today, we're highlighting a current strategic navigators client from the Midwest,

owner of Sharp Construction, book connoisseur, husband, father of five, Ryan Spencer. Ryan, welcome on. Thank you. It's good to be here. And father of six. Father of six. I'm sorry. You're right.

It's hard to think about myself. It is. I added in book kind of sewer there because I know you read a lot of books. I can see them there on your bookshelf, but I just want to add in there because entrepreneurs, leaders are readers, right? We're trying to be. You bet. That's what I heard. As I can.

Awesome. So tell us a little bit about yourself and sharp construction. I'm a book connoisseur. I'm a father of five. Wait, no, six. No, I'm a Michigander. I was an Air Force brat growing up, and my dad ended up in ministry, went from Air Force to Bible College. to straight into the ministry.

We moved up to Holland in 1997, been here ever since. I met my wife here when she was 11. I was 13. We've been together for, been married for 15 years, been together for 24, 24, 25. And I had six babies here. Owned two homes now. And yeah, just been a long, not long journey, a fun journey, starting sharp about seven half years ago and just been on a growth trend and and yeah

Strattna was a big part of that so so Holland's where it's at that's your stomping grounds of Holland love it already looking at my my what my dad calls his rock the cemetery stone like I want to oh I love it here so but you got another 50 60 years still that's a reality is a awesome All right, cool. So give us, let us know. How'd you start? Why roofing? I had no business in roughing when I got into it. A friend of mine, I was running a failing mobile oil change company here in Holland as an idea of friend of mine had and he and I jumped together into that. And I don't know if anybody's been to Holland or not, but we get

lake effect snow. And so trying to change oil outside in the snow during the winter was a something we hadn't quite thought through. And I was pretty young at the time. I was 2021. So did that for a couple years. It was failing and looking for a different opportunity. My dad got a call from a missionary friend to his that had just come back from Bulgaria who had jumped into storm restoration work.

And within two weeks, he reached out to my dad and said, hey, I think your sons would be good at this. I literally packed up, drove down from Holland, Michigan to Houston, Texas, met him. We, I'll say quote unquote, trained for a week and then decided that this is something we wanted to do. I still had no clue, had never seen a package of shingles, had never quoted a job. Yeah, nothing. Didn't have any experience in construction industry. But I did have experience with door to door and meeting people and things of that nature.

So that was my only saving grace. So I started doing that. Let me ask you a follow-up question there because you chuckled when you said quote-unquote training. And I've heard part of this story before. Just give us a little idea of what your training was like. So we go down, we meet Jeff and who's been a friend of our family for a number of years. And Jeff introduced us to Bob. And so we jump in the truck with Bob, me and my brother are in the back of his tundra.

And we're driving around town. And he's calling out the names of like different. shingle manufacturers. I have no clue, but I'm supposed to pretend like I know stuff. So I'm just shaking my head and saying yes. And I'm classic. And then he just pulls up in front of a house and he said, all right, get out there and knock that door. It was like, and say what? Just the way, you know, we knocked on the first door and they let us up on the rough window of getting the job. And so that was very odd, you know, to have someone who literally need. nothing of what they were talking about. And we landed a deal. And that was, that was the start of

my now, what is it, 14 year journey in roofing. So yeah, it was fun. Quite the start. So you, before roughing, you tried a couple other entrepreneurial things. And roughing was the thing that stuck. Yes. Compared to the others. Yeah. I think, you know, from the sales end, I really enjoyed people and that even today um you know that's really what i i like selling roughing it's great but it's really it's just a gateway to get to people and i i've really enjoyed uh ownership from the sense of being able to develop talent within our organization to garner new friendships and relationships within the business and and to realize that i'm a ruffer my buddy might be a builder my other buddy might be in tech, but we're all building our businesses with people. And there's commonality in some of

the issues that, you know, owners face. And so it's been a fun journey to be able to link up with someone and have commonality in some of the issues we face being in a wide variety of different industries. So cool. Cool. So industry, roughing, construction. Where's your territory? What's your reach? So we're West Michigan. So our Our hopes is to service the lower peninsula of Michigan. Our 10-year plan is to have a couple other locations and continue to grow. Currently, we're from St. Joe, Michigan, up to Ludington. And Holland is on Lake Michigan.

So we would head east from there to about Grand Rapids area. So we cover pretty large, about an hour from our office in any direction except for West because you'll get wet. Yeah, you'll fall under the puddle. onto the path of film. I was just going to ask Ryan, speaking of growth, how have you grown as a business owner? We were talking before we started the podcast about some of the books that you're reading and some of the things that you've taken from that and from scripture from your faith. So I just want to hear how you've grown these last.

You said seven years? Yes, seven and a half. Yep, you bet. I would say probably the one thing that I didn't do, that I'm still working to develop is to speak less and listen more and listen entirely. I had a real bad habit. In fact, my employees, and I'm thankful for them, pointed this out to me one day. And it kind of got heated in a meeting.

Then someone would go to give the rest of their sentence. I thought I knew how they were going to end, so I would just interrupt. And I didn't realize I was doing it. and they kind of snapped on me and said, you really need to knock that off. Like you never let me say, you need to, you know, wait till I'm finished before you answer, you know, let me talk.

And I was kind of taken back at first because I was, you know, I try to be a nice guy and amiable and team player. And I didn't realize that I had this deficiency. And so when they called it out, I was shocked and I can remember a policy. I was saying, wow, I didn't know I did that. I'm really sorry. And I had that from that moment on, my wife actually affirmed it when I got home. She's like, yeah, you do kind of interrupt people and don't let them finish their thoughts. And I'm like, wow, like that's terrible. I don't want to be

that guy, you know. So I would say learning to listen more, take people's full thought in, you know, let there be an awkward pause after they're done to fully develop their, their thought before answering so that I get the best information from them. Yeah, wow. Thanks for, thanks for sharing that. I mean, that's cool to hear of your humility too because it's easy as the boss to snap back and

be like, what do you talk? I'm your boss. What do you, what are you snapping at me for? I probably should be more boss-like in some respects. I think maybe perhaps my employees would, would wish I would step more into that space and kind of be a little more direct.

I've, that hasn't been the way I've grown up and I never wanted to lead a team that way, which that can be good and bad. So I've enjoyed the learning process of it, but I've also had to learn that there are times when you just step up and lead, you know, and you can ask for all of the opinions and get everybody's opinion and make sure everybody's had a voice at the table. But what I'm realizing more and more as we continue to grow is that even the talented leadership that surrounds me, I tend to want to give them the decision-making power, and they are looking to me to step into that space. And so while they're giving me the best of themselves to help me make a decision, ultimately they want me to make the decision. And so I'm learning that now, you know, as we continue to make hard decisions and grow. Yeah. That's cool to hear that from an entrepreneur.

So it'd be great. Hey, I want to skip ahead to talk a little bit about taxes, strategic navigators. I want to talk about your first point of contact with strategic net. Well, let me back up again. You've been in business for seven going on eight years now. How long have you been a client of Stratnav? We, I think we met in the end of 2020 or beginning at 2021. I came on board September of 21 and started my first transaction, I think, December 30th of 21,

and then had a full 2022 season and now a full almost full 2023 season. Gotcha. Okay. So a couple of years. So first point of contact with Stratnav, walk us through the story. You're good at storytelling. You've mastered the art of storytelling. I appreciate that.

Tell us the story. So I'm sitting in my office. office. I do social media. I have Facebook, but I never have it up on my desk or on my desktop on my computer. It's always done through my phone. For whatever reason, you know, I've got three screens and I have Facebook up on my desktop. And Messenger pops up and there's this dude name Adam. And I don't know Adam from the Adam of the Bible. And so he says, hey, I think I can save you on your taxes. I'd like to come over and meet you sometime. And I'm always up for meeting new people. So I said, yeah, that'd be great. Come on over. So Adam shows up and, you know, within about an hour of a meeting,

he tells me he can save me $100,000 and red flags are going off everywhere. You know, all I can hear is my dad in my ear. If it's too good to be true, it probably is. And then I'm thinking, I'm going to prison if I hook up with these guys, you know. So, you know, I try to be nice to Adam. Adam leaves, but he wants to bring, you know, somebody else in to give me a free analysis. So I'm like, sure, why not? So he comes in and Josh shows up. We sit down in our conference room and he walks me through how he's going to save me all this money.

And I'm still like, there's two sides of me. One side's going, this would be incredible if these guys aren't lying. right and then the other side of me is going no way that this can be true you know i am running for the hills you know get me away and uh so i said what's interesting is something kept eating at me like this this is probably legit you know everything about these guys seems legit i'm looking them up online i'm finding out if they got a rap sheet you know like what what am i what am i getting into here and uh let me interrupt you because in the meantime you you you know you you're referring us to other people.

Exactly. So I referred, I sit on the board for our Home Builders Association. I started referring all my entrepreneurial friends, especially by Christian friends, because I'm like, man, what we could do to give back to our communities, if this money was in our hands, we could really make a difference with this. So if it is legit, I need to, you know, tell a bunch of people about it. And so a good friend of mine, he's just as skeptical as I am. So we're meeting having lunch and, you know, talking trash about Adam and Josh.

but there's still this like thing that's eaten at us. This could be legit. And he calls me up one day. He says, I did it. I was like, you did what? And he said, I joined up with Stratnav. And here I hadn't even done it. So my referral signed up before I did, you know?

And so then within, I think, a week or two, I had signed up with Stratnav and wished I would have in the year that I waited to do anything. So, yeah, it's been a great journey. That's hilarious to me that your referral signed up before you did. Ryan, I want to know what you first thought of Adam when you met Adam. Were you like, this guy is just trying to take my lunch? Or, okay, like, this is a good guy. Where's the vacuum cleaner? Is he still any vacuums or what?

No, actually, Adam and I got along. It's interesting because when I first got into, when I first started Sharp, I got introduced to my shingle rep, who is still my shingle rep eight years later. and the connection we had was not related to our respective industries. I connected with him because we were both, we shared the same faith and same values. And so when we found that out, I just joined up with him and I started buying shingles. With Adam, it was a very similar experience. It was, wow, he won, he lives locally.

So if he is shady, I can just drive to his house, you know? So that was a big plus for me. The other was that we shared values and shared our faith together. And so I felt more trust there to want to at least explore more of what they had to say. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. On a more serious note, if we can get there, what were your initial thoughts?

Like, I know you shared a little bit already, but did you? everyone always uses somebody as a soundboard or vets, vets a sales call with somebody else. Who did you vet to? Who did you use as a sounding board? And like, who did you talk to to kind of get a better idea or grasp on what we do? So I'm not a finance guy. So I went to my CPA. I said, hey, I've got these guys approaching me.

Here's what they're saying. What are your thoughts? And, you know, he said, yeah, I've heard of something kind of. sort of like this that happened, you know, 20 years ago with one of my other clients. And, you know, it didn't really work out too well. And, you know, what was promised wasn't delivered on. And so it's probably something like that. So I'm like, I took it for what it was. And but then there was still something. I was like, I don't know that I totally like that answer as a, as an in the conversation answer. And so because I, again, I'm hearing all this language that's not,

I mean, when I talk roofing, people can sometimes stare at me like a cow at a new gate. And so when it comes to finance talk, I'm like, well, I don't know that I'm hearing or understanding all the lingo. So I put my CPA in a Zoom meeting with Josh. So, and then I just got to listen in. So if there was going to be something that came out that was the red flag I needed to say, no, I figured it would happen in that meeting. So they, I wouldn't say duped it out, but they exchanged. information ideas and what was going on. And at the end of it, my CPA was like, I understand what we're doing and I'll grow with you. So that was the kind of the green light for me to,

to want to move forward. That's a great example of another growth mindset coming from your CPA. Yeah. Yeah. He has benefited from growing with Stratnav because the other business referrals that we, you know, are introducing Stratnav too. They want to have a CPA that can come alongside them and understands what's going on. And so I think he has grown his business by learning to partner up with Stratnav and the people that, you know, take advantage of these incentives or strategies. So we didn't steal you from your CPA. You're able to keep your current CPA. Yeah. Yeah. That's a huge benefit because he's your local. I can, you know, he's five minutes up the road. And so there's some comfortability there that I didn't have two or three new things.

Yeah. And that speaks well to your CPA because we meet with a lot of CPA groups around the country. And not many of them are open-minded. And which is, it's fine. It's their business. It's their CPA firm. But to come across the CPA that is open-minded and willing to work with another group and can see long-term growth and benefit through that. That's fantastic. So your CPA, a lot of good things to say about your CPA. I know them personally. So I was thinking earlier, like, okay, when he got over the hump and signed with S&I, I was like, did you make the decision thinking, shoot, I hope this pays off? Or were you pretty comfortable at that point with your CPA in the room with Josh? And you're like, okay, if he checked the box, then we're good to

go here? A little bit of both. So my thought was they told me 100K. So even if they're lying on 70% of that answer, I'm still going to come out ahead. So I didn't fully understand exactly how it was all going to pan out. But I felt comfortable enough in the savings that was projected being high enough that what it would cost me to be a part of the program. program, I could at least break even. And then it continued year over year would still be a benefit to me. And it has far exceeded what the projections were for cost savings and tax savings and all that.

I couldn't say enough good things. Let's just say this. Stratnav from what they do to how it integrated into my business has changed my life. You want to expound on that or should we just leave that right there? I have, all right, so my, I guess what the heck, let's just throw all the numbers out. Last year, I probably saved $180,000. I turned around and was able to make a sizable donation to my church to help them pay off their mortgage. The Lord returned that back to me three times over within 10 days.

so interesting that he saves me the money so I could give the money so he could turn around and return it three times over so I could give it again. It's just this residual positive impact on communities that that is what I was hoping to be able to do with the savings. So I've been able to, I can, there's so many different ways. that have been able to bless other people. We donated a portion of a roof to House of Hope, which is a home for girls that have been rescued from human trafficking here in Michigan.

And I wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't have the money to do it. And so what I've saved in tax dollars has gone right back into my community to help to impact lives, you know, in ways that I'll never even know. I'll never meet any of those girls more than likely. But I've had a small part in impacting their lives for rehabilitation and who knows what happens. So cool story about that. I know I'm taking a lot of time up, but how little things impact in large ways. My father was a drunk, was angry, came from a divorced home, went into the military,

was a partier, married my mom. They had me. Had, so he was 20 years old. I'm sorry, this is prior to me being born. 20 years old, he meets with my great grandfather who came to know Christ at a late age, like 72, 75. And he radically changes from this mean old cadre to this sweet, you know, passionate Christian man. He hands my angry, parting partying, father a little gospel track and and just as a way of showing care for his grandson. My dad puts it in his wallet, promises to read it two years later. My dad has me and my brother and he's still, you know, getting drunk with his cop buddies on the weekends and my mom's ready to hang this thing up, right?

She's like, I am, we're not going to live this way. Like, I want to raise a family. So my dad's struggling with this, you know, selfish party life. and this family life. And so as he's walking around his house, he's thinking there's got to be more to life than this. All of his buddies leave. My mom leaves because she's mad at him for having a living this life.

He pulls out his wallet. He pulls the track out. He reads the track. He gets saved. When my mom shows up, comes back home, he's pouring all the alcohol down the sink. And she's like,

what are you doing? And he said, I don't know. I just don't want this anymore. he goes and finds a Bible that he was given to him for high school graduation, I think is what it was, and starts to read the Bible. Today, he is a pastor, has impacted thousands and thousands of people for Christ. And his, you know, has 21 grandchildren, a solid marriage of over 40 years because of one simple tiny act of love by his grandfather,

my great-grandfather has changed our entire family dynamic. So when I think about strategic navigators and the impact that my partnership with them has had on my life and my business and what I'm able to invest back into other people's lives, I don't know that I'll ever know the full reach of that, you know, until the end of my life. just to be in a position to be able to do that is just amazing. In similar fashion, the way your great-grandfather had no idea the impact when he witnessed to your dad, right? Yeah, exactly.

And then my dad got to go back while my grandfather was in the hospital on his deathbed. He wouldn't leave that hospital. He would leave and go home to his heavenly home. My dad got to go back in there. and he said, grants, I'll see you when you get home. And he said, son, I don't think I'm going to be going home this time. And he said, I know, but I've trusted Jesus as my Savior. And I'll see you in heaven.

And so he got to realize the benefit of that simple act of love towards his grandson right at the end of his life. He got to exit this life for the next life with that. So powerful stuff. That is. Yeah. And goes to show the benefits. benefit of what entrepreneurs with little extra pocket money can do, could do what could happen,

the impact, whether it's community or family or whatever the case is. So that's neat. It's fun to we've worked with so many different business owners, franchise owners, things like that. And it's fun to see how you guys grow when you have some tax savings. You have some extra money. You open another franchise, open another location or hire more people. It's you guys are the bread and butter of the country. So it's awesome to be a part of that and see that growth. So our goal was, and we preach this, 40 to 60% savings. Did we deliver on that just one time or was it ongoing?

It's beneficial every year. I would say that's a low estimation. Cool. Good deal. Was it time-consuming working with us and implementing? It was heavy at first. The education was heavy once the strategies were set into place and all of the, I'll say foundational work was done with Sanjay and, you know,

the team at Stratnav, transacting business now is much easier. It's become rhythmic. So that's been, yeah, it's been simple for the last year and a half. But those first couple months, I mean,

if you don't have any background like me, I was totally green to this. It just was a lot of education. I wanted to understand what I was stepping into. So I engaged more with the team at Stratnav so that I knew not just how it was done, but why it was being done. Cool. So what worth it?

Would you do it again? Oh, yeah. And sooner. I wouldn't let my referral beat me to it. That's for sure. Awesome. That's awesome. Thanks, Ryan.

Yeah. Well, Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and sharing those stories. I'm, I just want to affirm you and say, I'm so encouraged by hearing a business owner like yourself take those savings. And it's not that it's wrong to take that and go, okay, I'm going to buy another house or cars or, you know, that's, that's up to you. That's your money. But for you to take that and reinvest it back into your community and your church, I'm personally just inspired by that. So thank you for all those stories. And again, for coming on. Thanks for having me on, guys. This is always fun. You guys are inspiring.

and encouraging. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for listening to Navigate. If you're interested in learning more about strategic navigators, feel free to click on the link in the description.