The Home Service Expert Podcast - He Lost His Company as a Minority Partner. Then Built It Back From Zero.

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Justin Feichter started Providence Roofing just over a year ago — after getting pushed out of his last company as a minority partner. In his first eight months he realized his pricing was completely wrong, rebuilt his systems on the fly, and crossed $1.2M in revenue. He's still in the field every day. This is a real-time look at what it actually takes to build a blue-collar business from the ground up — the pricing mistakes, the social media strategy that's working without a budget, and what happens when you refuse to quit. -- 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐 -- 00:00 Intro & Background 06:00 Year One Pricing Mistakes 12:00 Hiring for Your Weaknesses 18:00 Trades as the New Goldmine 24:00 Competing on Price 30:00 Retention & Relationships 36:00 Technology & Systems 42:00 Tax Strategy 48:00 Sales Process & First Contact 54:00 Vendor Strategy 01:00:00 Close Rate & Lead Sources 01:06:00 Social Media & Content 01:12:00 Goals for 2026 01:17:00 Lead Gen & AI — Tommy's final word 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Check Out My Social Media:  Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

I was talking to my dad and I was like, man, if I don't sell at least 10 jobs next month, we're going to have to close. We were able to sell exactly what we needed to keep limping along. And it's like, okay, now what are the processes we've got to change? The thing I did not do well was I did not understand how to price in overhead, even as a startup. I'm just not afraid to talk about the struggles. It's real and let's talk about it and let's not hide it and help each other out. There's not business to go around.

Welcome back to the Home Service Expert Podcast. I've got Justin Feitcher here. He's an expert in roofing sales process, pricing strategy, social media, content, homeowner education, blue collar entrepreneurship. He's based out of St. Cloud, Orlando, Florida, founder and operator of Providence roofing started his first company at the age of 13, and Providence is his sixth. Three-generation roving family, his dad, Rick, was roofing before Justin was born. And his son, Miles, is already part of the business.

nearly went under one year in one year and had to completely rebuild how he prices, sells, and operates now focused on speed, transparency, and educating homeowners instead of pressuring them. Still in the field, everyday running jobs, selling roofs and managing crews, active content creator on Instagram and TikTok. Shell shares the real journey, including mistakes, faith-driven business. The episode thesis is not every great podcast guest as someone who already made it. Justin is in the trenches right now, building a rule. company in central Florida, nearly going under in a year and rebuilding everything from pricing to process to content strategy on the fly. This is a real-time look at what it takes to build

a blue-collar business from the ground up, plus a deep dive into how one roofer is using social media content to grow without a massive marketing budget. Justin, I started following your stuff, brother, and I was like, we got to get this guy on. He's funny. He's amazing. You just make me laugh because like the fast food shit like yeah i brought my own chicken nuggets um you know i was wondering if you could give me oh i don't like the burger can i bring it back it's like no other business other than home service home improvement does this yeah it's true man it's true thank you guys for having honestly super super stoked to be here and also get to learn for you man it's going to be good so have you ever heard of the podcast oh yeah yep you read your books you up listening to the

podcast so it's pretty neat to be reached out to by your team and i'll I was like, this is crazy. At first I was like, this is probably spam. And I looked everything. I was like, no, it's legit. So. Now it's great, man. You know, I think content is such a cool thing when you just, you don't even have to be,

you're great at it, but you don't have to be great. You just got to be consistent. Yeah, it's true. What's funny. So your bio is pretty good. Just to clarify. So my dad, he was roofing before I was born. He roofed mobile homes actually in the factories.

So he would put roofs on mobile homes as they were being built in factors. and factories. But then he migrated out of that and he's been a pastor now, pretty much my whole life, moved from construction and farming to being a pastor. So, but one thing you said that is fascinating, I think we need a shift in perspective is used to be contractors who would fight over neighborhoods. And now the marketplaces, we're fighting over attention. And so social media is critical, like he says. it. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about the business. What's going good? What's not going good? What got you into it? What you're excited about? What you hate? Yeah, that's good, man. So I've always been

entrepreneurial, grew up, was homeschooled. And so I've got a younger brother and then three older sisters. And me and my brother, we started a couple businesses similar, similar to you. You started pushing lawnmowers and I think you said shoveling snow. And similar. I mean, I'm here in Florida. So landscape and I just asked my mom today because I wanted to make sure I had my timeline right but I started picking oranges for an orange man down the road when he had an orange grove when I was like nine or ten and mom would drop me off and I'd work there a couple hours on the weekends and stuff so just work ethic has always been something that my parents ingrained into us and always knew I wanted to start something didn't know exactly what that would be but got into construction

have been in construction and in sales pretty much my entire career. And so finally made the jump kind of really around COVID time. I was like, decided, I'm going to start something. And I know roofing. And so I started another roofing company with two partners. And that actually, we built that up pretty quick. It was successful. And then kind of got pushed out of that because I was a minority partner.

And so kind of forced me to start Providence roofing just over a year ago. And to your point, yeah, we first eight months in, like realizing this, I got my pricing all wrong. Like, I don't have the systems in place that I need yet. But now, I mean, we've been in business over a year, done over $1.2 million in revenue, which revenue is vanity. Profit is king. But we're operating at about a 10% EBDA, which is okay. But there's, we've had a lot of stupidity taxes that we won't be repeating next year. And so that's kind of where I'm at. I don't know if I answered all your question. Yeah, so 10% profit, that's after you pay yourself a good salary, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you paying yourself decently?

I kind of, obviously, it's this first year in. It's a lot back into the business. So it is, yeah. So, I mean, not as much as I want to be making eventually, obviously, but good enough to pay the bills. So, and I'm unemployable. I think any of us entrepreneurs are. Like we just people forever have said, stop trying to reinvent the wheel,

stop trying to change things and done it this way forever. And we're visionaries. We want to change things. And so if I don't pay myself great money, I could make more money working for somebody else, for sure. But I wouldn't be able to be in control. You always say, look, if you do this quicker power to you, but usually the first five years is full of mistakes,

long hours and hard lessons that really, you know, my dad always used to tell me, I wish I knew them what I know now. And I'll just tell me, he's like, you know, I wish I was that, I wish it was that easy, but you're going to have to make the mistakes. And each mistake, as long as you don't make it again, you start really building momentum, but it's like, shit's going to go wrong. Your suppliers are going to screw you. You're going to get stolen from. You're going to get lied to you. You're going to get canceled at the last minute. Like, what could go wrong will go wrong until you really sit back and say, I'm going to be a systems guy. And I'm going to start the business by saying no.

You know, you're going to have an opportunity to be a supplier. You're going to have an opportunity to go after new constructs. You're going to have an opportunity to go after storms. You're going to have an opportunity to go after retro. You're going to have an opportunity where someone's going to say, can you do the site and can you do the windows? And you're going to be like, well, I'm not going to do windows, but, you know, I'll do it for $100 grand.

And all of a sudden, you're going to go, man, a hundred grand, it only costs me 40. And then you're going to mismeasure some windows. And then it's going to be like the aluminum side is going to have an issue. it's going to start falling apart because you tend to say yes your first couple of years. And my best advice is stay focused and say no and realize where your profits coming from. They're going to say, man, I'm making a fortune doing storms. I'm making a fortune doing this and the insurance work. I'm making a fortune doing this.

And I started doing commercial instead of Resi. And I'm making a ton of money until I had a buddy of mine do the commercial job. And dude, he damaged four cars. It was a cluster. There was warrants. He calls up the yinging. I feel bad for the guy. He got it all taken care of.

He paid for everything. but it was out of his, out of his normal business. And you just got to learn to say no more and really figure out where your profit is. Yep. When you were. No, that's good. What were you, you know, what were you pricing jobs at and how far off were you when you first started?

I mean, well, it wasn't just pricing, right? It was just seepage, even mismeasuring, not ordering, being overcharged by suppliers, finding different suppliers. So my pricing was really initially, I mean, I was $70, $80 a square short of where I needed to be to actually make a profit. Breaking even, sometimes making profit, but a lot of times we weren't high enough. And then you go the other way, which happened for about two months, August and September of last year, which also the market has been a little bit unique. But then I raise my prices too much.

And then now every job you're going into, you're the highest bidder. And it's not that that can't be done, but when you're a brand new baby company and you're coming in trying to be the top dog with no reputation, it's hard to sell. And so I have to find that easy medium. So now I'm right around about $490 to $500 a square for shingles. And it's about the sweet spot. And I don't do any insurance. It's all retail. And too much, too much opportunity to, you can't, one, you're building a business dependent on something out of your control, in my opinion. You're, you're waiting for storms. Like, if you're building an insurance

based business, if a storm doesn't happen and you don't know how to do retail, you're in trouble. Yeah, I learned. Is that, you guys do much insurance work, Tommy? No, we don't do any. I mean, in the future we will. I mean, look, at this point, we service 28,000 jobs a month, 28 houses for that a month. No commercial, no new construction. So we're in 24 states, about to be in 25, and, you know, if we keep doing what we're doing, I mean, we're already number one in the industry. Question is, how do I get to 100,000 homes a month, and how do I add value, and how do I dominate on the LLMs and the lead source, which we're going to talk a lot about, leads. Was there a moment when you realized, I'm doing this completely wrong? What was the like

epiphany that you were like, dude, my life, I got to make some drastic changes? Yeah. I mean, I think I, it was definitely summer of last year. I was just like, we looking at numbers and I can't give you the exact moment, but I mean, looking at numbers and just realizing, We are if we do not actually I remember the conversation now I was talking about dad and I was like man if I don't like sell at least 10 jobs next month we're going to have to close like that's our minimum like to get us out of supplier debt like that we had we had built up from a net 30 account and didn't wasn't paying them one time. And I was like if we don't like we won't have the money to keep going. and so but we did and we were able to sell exactly what we needed to keep limping along and then it's like okay now what are the processes we've got to change what are the systems we need to implement hired a key person who's now doing i i'm very much uh i'm a big thinker um long vision right

uh strategic but i'm not a numbers guy to to be the guy to sit down and do the paperwork and and do the detail, detail things. It's just those types of things I'm not great at. So I hired a gal who's phenomenal at that. She's great at numbers. She's great at keeping the details in order. And that has been critical. So that she probably is the key person that I brought on that like, man,

that has just changed everything for me. Because I'm not wasting three hours a night when I get home from running estimates or running jobs trying to do paperwork. Now I can let her actually delegate that and let her do it and do it better than I can do it. No, it's great. I mean, keep an eye on the money, man. I mean, there's two things you can never let go of is marketing and your numbers. If you keep those two things only, you'll be a success.

Hey, Colin, can you come in here for a second? I just, we're going to edit this. That's what my question was. So how does this, how does this normally work? Do you guys like this whole conversation you edit it together? It's up and chopped up and it'll be great. And if we'd screw up or want to redo anything, we could do it. Do you think he should put a light on?

So on my screen. Yeah, he definitely doesn't look that dark on my screen. Okay, good. And then secondly, is there a way some time in this that we could play some of his videos and he could comment on him? Yeah, yeah. Can you pull those up and then we'll just do a session of that where he could comment after. We'll play a bunch of his top five and then he'll be like,

because I remember one, you were out in an estimate and you're like, dude, I didn't even want to get this guy's business. Like, I think we should play some of those. Definitely do that. Okay, so we'll cut right back into where we were. So, um, cool. So you started your first company at 13, and Providence is your sixth company. I don't know where you got that, actually.

Oh, that's not true. So you better edit that out. No. Okay. So we're going to edit that out. That's a mistake. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. No, this is this, this is this first solo like company I've started. Well, my dad's, my dad's a partner with me in it. Like, he helped give me the investment to start. But I run the company. but as far as, yeah, I mean, apart from if you count your landscaping as a kid and random stuff like that as businesses, then sure. No, I don't know. But real business, this is my second business I started grouping.

The first one was the one with two partners that I got pushed out of. I was a minority partner. This is my first business I've started myself. Who do you look up to? I mean, do you go seek out answers? what made you want to do roofing? What was like, who do you look up to? What books do you read?

What podcast? What are you trying to do with the business? Yeah. So mentors from afar is what I call. A lot of the authors that I listen to. I really like, obviously, you like your stuff. Grant Cardone, never split the difference by Chris Voss is a phenomenal book. I'm naturally a sales guy.

So I listen to a lot of sales books. I also really enjoy marketing. So build your story brand is a phenomenal marketing. Yeah, storytelling. Obviously, the classics thing can grow rich. But so we in Blue Collar and in the trades, we have a ton of drive time, at least I do. So I spent, I was on the road 80,000 miles last year in my truck.

But 80,000 miles in my truck just driving around like crazy. And so it's a ton of drive time. So I listen to a ton of audiobooks. But your question, where do I see this going? It's a big question, right? I think that this industry, home service and the trades, with the exponential growth of technology and AI, displacing a lot of intellectual jobs,

I think this is the new gold mine. I think that we will see, in the next two to three years, I think we'll see 50% of median middle position white-collar jobs just eliminated. But it's going to be a while, I think, before robotics and AI can put a roof on, right? It may happen one day, but. Let me ask you some questions, though, because, you know, is these white-colored jobs disappear, the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists? You know, they've got a lot of money in their 401K. Where do you think they're going to go?

You don't think they have the potential to learn about some of the trades like us and get into them? No, they do. Absolutely. And so, you know, I know a lot of private equity guys that are like, I'm just going to go start a business. Unfortunately, it's not for the fainted heart. I mean, nine out of ten businesses fail. There's a lot to do with how to treat a blue-collar person that didn't, maybe have a good childhood. Maybe they didn't pass 10th grade.

Maybe they need their confidence built up. And, you know, I just had 70 guys next door that are in our training program this month alone. I had 48 guys last month. We got another 70 coming in next month. And I do a three-hour orientation. And I think, unfortunately, I've seen a lot of these white-collar guys go try to start in this industry. And they don't have the grit, man. They think it's easy.

They're like, man, if I could work in somebody's mouth and I went to school for 12 years, I could handle this. And power to them, man. I hope they could, but I know that there's going to be a lot of competition. So it's how do you stand out in a crowded world? And I think you're doing the right thing by building content. But it's like getting great reviews every day. How do you go from three reviews a day to 20 reviews a day? And how do you get multiple Google my business pages?

How do you win awards to feed the LLMs? There's a lot of things to think about. And we could dive into some of this stuff. But I want to pivot to your dad here. He was putting on roofs of mobile homes. What? He was a dairy farmer before that. And he was just, he's a hardworking man.

Still is. Like he moved, moved us to Florida when I was just really young from Indiana to start the church that he's still pastoring today. And like I said, my mom homeschooled all five of us kids. So just I had a phenomenal upbringing. Like much of my success and who I am is attributed to them. They raised us well. they raise us to respect people to work hard.

And that's it. Your question about doctors, lawyers coming into blue collar, yeah, they can. But I think most, like you look at software engineers, right? No shame on them. They are very smart. But the job that they have is work from home behind your computer. And it's all mental. Try to get that guy to come out in the field and do 14-hour days.

five, six days a week and that's just life. Like, I just, I don't know. It may happen, but I don't know. 80,000 miles in a year. That's, that's a tough one, man. And I will say there's a lot of, you know, right now our biggest probably opportunity

as a company is capacity planning. Because when you graduate 70 technicians, that means you need 210 new leads that they go out in the field. If you get 250, you're burning them. If you get 180, it's not enough. So it's a lot more. more complicated than people think. Like, when you start a franchise like McDonald's or,

you know, subway, you can control what's in those four walls really easy. When you got supply houses, gas, driving, insurance, camera systems, reviews, there's just so many outliers. It's a lot. It's managed chaos is what it is. Yeah. And you're going to learn, man. I love that you're in this. I'm rooting for you, brother. Thanks, man. That means a lot. I think for you, like exactly what you said, all of those things become, they float to overhead costs that in essence can be, can be tracked and are somewhat predictable, but that's where I screwed up. Anybody that's listening that like is starting out, you're new, like you don't quite understand your pricing, like the thing I did not do well was I did not understand how to price in overhead,

even as a startup, like a small company a couple months in, my startup costs were like crazy, like buying equipment, like getting the truck, getting the truck wrapped, like, and then you waste money on stuff that you don't need. But then as you're pricing out month to month, how much does it cost to be in business? And it's not, you don't price a job by materials and labor and profit. You got to include the overhead. And I think that is hard to sometimes figure out. and figure out what that number is. How did you guys do it? Well, I made a lot of mistakes.

And how do you continue to do it? Well, I'll tell you this. There's a couple good books I think anybody listening should read. One is how much should I charge by Ellen Roar? And the next book is, where did the money go? Because I think everybody gets to the end of the year. The CPA calls them and says you owe 200 grand and you go, I don't even have that in my account.

And pricing is probably the hardest thing because, you know, my clients are buyers. We started advertising to the people that aren't trying to... Your advertising sources make a big difference on what kind of talent you're going to attract. If you got a broke-down truck with just stencil letters saying, we do roofing, if you don't stand out in a crowded market for quality, it's like I'm building a really, really nice house in Paradise Valley.

The tile work is $17 a foot. Now, I know where I can go to get it for a buck $50 a foot. Yep. But you know what kind of work they're going to get for the buck 50. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I know what it's like to buy premium, and that's how I buy. I used to, you know, I always see my favorite place costs $1,000 for a couple to go eat. But guess what? They're booked out three weeks.

And guess what? It's hard to get a reservation, but you're going to get your martini shaking three times. You're going to get, is there any special occasion? The plates are 400 degrees. and when I go to McDonald's and eat like a king for $30 with my date, you know, my fiance but I don't want that.

I want an experience and I want people like when I buy something for my house I want the warranty. I want it stuff not to leak on a roof. I want to know that it's quality. I want the people at my home to be safer on my family. And do you fulfill

all your stuff or do you have a team like a team, another team to kind of fulfill it? Um, me. You do all the install? I don't. Uh, no, sorry. No, install labor.

I've got crews. Yeah. And there's 1099. For my later. Yep. Yep. So my crews are 1099. Um, it's the same two crews, uh, that I consistently use.

Um, but I've got, um, more available as I grow. Um, but yeah, other than that, as far as like logistics, though, like ordering, um, even PMing jobs. I trust my guys, though, known them long enough that they do good work, but homeowner management, that's all me. So for now,

obviously, as I, as I continue to grow, I think there's a point when every business owner, I think comes to the point where they realize the biggest, the biggest hiccup or bottleneck in their business is them. Yep. And so it's like you've got to realize,

the business is only able to grow to the level and capability of the leader. And so got to get better every single day and then learn to delegate, have the money to hire the right people. And that's when scale comes. Yeah, no, you're right. One of the things I tell people all the time is you're probably underfunded and you're going to put the sweat equity in for the first five years, which I had to do.

I mean, I started really started the business in 2007. In the first five years, I was running the vast majority of the calls. and then the next two years I was kind of the on-call guy if we were having trouble with payroll. There you go, yeah. You can work cheaper than the rest of the guys. I get more cheaper, higher conversion rate, higher reviews, and higher tickets.

And I could run more calls because I'd work till midnight. I didn't care. Exactly. Yep. How do you handle when a homeowner, go ahead? I was going to say one nice thing, yeah, for you guys, is you can work inside and you can work late. It doesn't, darkness doesn't matter for you because you're inside a garage.

So you probably have crews that actually have, you have, how do your crews work? Are they on revolving shifts, your technicians? Well, right now we're testing some stuff out on a split shift, but, you know, we've got guys that'll work till midnight. We've got guys that'll start at six. So right now we're running a 6 a.m. shift and 8 a.m. shift and then a one that starts at noon and it's a 10-hour shift. And that allows us to be a lot more fine tune on the capacity planning. And that's very hard to do. There's a place in Charlotte called Morris Jenkins.

They run until midnight seven days a week. And they do HVAC plumbing electrical and they murder it because people know that's their claim to fame as we'll be out there same day until midnight. And they absolutely clean up. Do you guys have on-call rotations or not? Yeah, we've got on-call. We pay the guy an extra $100 to ring the doorbell. and most of the time we can do it. I don't really love the on-call shift.

I try to get, that's why we're trying to schedule up to 10 p.m. Because if an emergency shift comes out, we can pay the guy extra stance on midnight. Most of my guys are fine doing it. How do you handle it when a homeowner says your competitor is a few grand cheaper? Yeah. For me, the moment we as businesses start negotiating on price, I think is a moment we lose. So it's always a matter of, I am so sorry. My value that I'm providing you, could I build your roof for $2,000 cheaper? I can absolutely build you a roof $2,000 cheaper.

I won't do it because it's my reputation and the materials and the quality of that product. I can't warranty it. But if that's what you're looking for, I mean, probably not the contractor for you. I call it the takeaway. So basically, they say, can you do it for $2,000 cheaper? And you don't say you're an idiot, which is what a lot of times we want to say. But that's typically the route that I take with it. So there's a book I want you to read by Joe Crisara. It's actually right here.

It's called What Should We Do? And you should read this book as soon as you could, listen to do it on Audible. And he came in and taught us a lot of things, so I'll throw it off to him. But what I figured out is to start giving options a set of ultimatums. Do you want the builder grade? Do you want a good warranty or do you want top of the line? And I've got five. I've actually got six options for garage doors now.

I got one through five star in our signature series. And I got three different style springs through two year, five year, and lifetime. And when they go, well, that's just more than I wanted to spend. I said, let's just pick another option. I'm here to earn your business. And I want to be your garage door provider for life. And what I've learned is little things to add value. So instead of giving that $3,000 discount, say, I'll tell you what I could do.

We do a coating on top of these shingles that'll give them an extra 10 years. Normally, we charge about $3,500 to do this. But I'll go ahead. And I'll go ahead. If that's what's going to, it's going to take to earn your business, I'll go ahead and include that. Now, that might cost you $200. box. You just spray on a, you know what I mean? But a conversion rate is so important because if you paid $500 to get that lead, which if you're not paying a great amount of money to get leads,

they're not great leads. You could go to lead ads. You go to Angie's List. You could go to next door. You can do a lot of cool stuff. But if you're getting quality leads, you want to figure out a way to build an experience, give them options and earn their business. And I appreciate the fact you're willing to walk away because that's what you should do if you only got one price. But, you know, I would say. I offer three. You offer three? Mm-hmm.

And then when you're going to the cheapest one, they still want a cheaper? Oh, yeah. I think that's just free market and people that don't know how to, don't know how to properly price. There will always be cheaper, cheaper people, cheaper companies, but it's chucking a truck. And so normally when people say that, it's like, did you get a price for $3,000 cheaper?

And they're like, yeah. I'm like, why didn't you hire them? And then they start to sell themselves. And it's like, well, we just had this feeling. And it's like, well, I mean, you had that feeling for reason. And I'm here now. So if you want it done right, grab me your driver's license and we'll get this taken care of. extend your hand and close the deal.

So, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool. They do sell themselves when you ask them. You know, why don't you go with them? And a lot of times it'll be like, I've got an uncle's buddy in the industry. and he can do it for a better price. I'm like, I'm just curious, where's he at? Like, well, he's out of town this week.

And I'm like, that's typically how it goes is a lot of times these guys are hard to get a whole of after the work's done. And what's interesting is my favorite clients, and we get these dozens by the day, is the client that calls me up and they go, I've had the same company out three times the last six months. Can you guys just come fix it correctly? And it's just storytelling. And you say it happens all the time.

they don't show up. We'll come out nights, weekends, holidays. Doesn't matter for us. We've got availability. We're here when your door has an issue. We run warranty calls ahead of new clients. And I mean, the lifetime value of you as a client means much more to us than picking up a new one. So, you get kind of what you pay for when it comes to this stuff.

And I think we're a far better value than the cost. And we believe that the value should by far exceed the cost of doing the work. So that's where we win. I mean, and by the way, all of our messaging, our TV, our radio ads, everything, even the way we wrapped our vehicles is that people understand that we're not going to be the discount company, but we're going to be out there right away. And it's going to be fixed right with somebody that you could trust in your house with your family. Absolutely. And I think that's really the key mental shift that has to happen is we, All of us, like as home service companies, we got to realize, and you talk about it in your book,

building a fence around your customers, and I love that, but we got to realize the roof, the garage door, that sale is just the first transaction. The relationship is the actual asset. Yeah. And so that was going to be one of my questions for you, Tommy, is how, when you're selling, what's your warranty on your standard garage door? it's one year like but what are you selling like what do you tell him how long will this last oh a garage or depending on the use and hopefully your kids you know when your daughter turns 16

we might have an incident but as long as um you know i try to make the clients laugh but yeah yeah i like to say look if you get a service agreement we come out each year we lubricated just tight and everything on the door make sure it's balanced and that's going to give you a warranty as long as you're under the service agreement. And it's our parts. So we try to build, we got 50,000 service agreements, which is not near what I want to be.

But they'd be 15 bucks a month. And, you know, the lifetime values there. And then we credit all that money they spend on the monthly towards a new door. Yeah. That's amazing. And for you, I would just say, listen. 50,000.

You said 50,000. Yeah, 50,000. Right now is how many you have? Yeah. That's awesome. nowhere near where I need to be. $750,000, though, in annual reoccurring revenue a month.

Yeah, month, yeah. So that's awesome. That's what I was going to say. It's like my thing I've been really thinking through and trying to figure out is when we're selling these products like a roof, supposed to last 20 years. So repeat business is hard, right? Yeah, but the average person moves every five to six years.

So that's how you get to them. If we're staying in front of them. And that's where. I think that's like there's data you could buy from ValPAC at any given moment as your database starts to build 15% of them are moving and to just be able to move in and give them a free inspection on their new roof would be super powerful. I mean, there's so many opportunities where people don't know where to look, but those are the things that be focused on now.

I'd be focused on getting more leads, getting a higher conversion with a bigger, higher average ticket by building value. Be focused on that simple funnel and getting a five-star review with a video and a picture in it and just using your social media skills. Like if you go hard on the pain for three years, you're going to have a very solid business. Yeah, absolutely. And one cool thing,

me and my brother-in-law were building my own CRM, which I'm stoked about. So we're building it ourselves and building a customer portal to be able to force that fence around them so that all of the photos and everything can, they have access to it. They download the app,

which is something that I'm pretty stoked about. And I think if it's built specifically for roofers, there's a couple out there already, but it'll have processes in place that guys can just immediately plug and play instead of having to get it customized or do long onboarding calls. So that's one thing that's pretty exciting. We'll talk in six months. I think it's very difficult, you know,

a guy I know that's got a very successful roofing company. They've really, they've used service day and changed a bunch of things with a bunch of APIs. But it literally, it literally automatically bids the job. It literally like it knows when you opened it, it follows up. It knows if you looked at financing and auto finances. Like some of the technology now, I mean, you could rebuild anything with Claude and OpenClaw super quickly. Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

And, you know, it'll be interesting because everybody that I know that built a CRM, the one thing that's interesting, The guy I interviewed yesterday, super successful guy, he built his own CRM for this. He's from Israel and he built his own merchant services, built a big company. And he goes, when I sold it, I was the only one that knew how to use the software. So it devalued it. Like the big companies in AHAQ plumbing, electrical, flooring, you know, specifically Grazer's AHAC plumbing electrical. When they're not on service time and they go to sell, they'll lose a lot of value on the multiple because they're not on a CRM.

that's always being worked on with a full-time team. But you're right. If you could build something custom that makes sense for you, I mean, I think it'll be really impressive if you pull it off. Yeah, that's for sure. As far as the competition you guys run into, I'm curious,

do you feel like a lot of your competition is adopting technology even remotely the same as you, or do you feel like that's a big piece of your guys' success? you have leaned into technology adoption heavily. Yeah, I think that's part of our success. I think the bigger piece of our success is the way we recruit. It takes 50 people to hire one, 50 interviews to hire one. And then we train, we train, we train, we train, we train, we train, then we train, then we train again, then we train again, then we train again.

We record every conversation in the field. We record every phone call on the call center. We use dispatch tools to get the right technician out for the right job. I mean, we're running 25, 25 or 27 different technologies. right now in the background. I mean, from recruiting to what we do in the trucks, to how we take inventory, to how we, one of the coolest things that I'd look into if I were you is mantle. Mantle's an amazing software.

And I mean, the guys are killing it in the roofing, the HVAC industry. We started using that. Our conversion rate went up 15%. Our average ticket went through the roof. And it's just people hate to buy, people hate to be sold, but they love to buy. And the presentation takes care of it. and the presentation tool really matters. The best Rupers I know spend 90 minutes on the proposal.

There's a guy named Rodney Webb used to do gutters, and he kind of trains on how to take a GoPro, look at everything, and talk about the differences and circle the video and really walk them through every little detail. And it's a big purchase, and you've got to use the right financing. You know, if you can't get it financed, I don't know a lot of people that have an extra 20, 30 grand line around just to put into it. So you've got a second and a third chance finance company to look at it

if their credit's not above 600. Yeah. Have you figured that one out? You guys, yeah, I've got a pretty, I don't have two or three. I have two, one option. I got rid of one of them, I won't name them. But one of them was a financing partner. The standard, they charge you crazy high dealer fee.

It's like 10% of gross. And so it's just, you can build that in, but it just hurts every time. So now I'm working with a local launch credit launch. credit union rather and uh they're local here in central florida and they're actually they don't charge me any uh any dealer fee whatsoever they'll actually pay up to two percent uh of the of the finance amount to me if they have good credit so that's been pretty good i surprisingly though like i don't actually run into as many finance deals um as you would think so well the way you do that is um why until well there's three types of buyers no interest low interest low payment and your average

ticket will go up by about 40% when people use financing and the question i'd ask is did you want to use your money or our money today because you know gas prices are through the roof who knows when this ukraine russia now we got iran you know a lot of uncertainty in the world the good news is there's no prepayment penalty i can get you the taj mahal installed for 149 bucks a month pay it off whenever you'd like and all of a sudden the conversion rate on that higher end, that best unit you're selling or best jingle unit, you'll have a much higher closing rate. I love that.

Who makes the most money at a car dealership? I think the finance manager. The finance manager, you're right. At every major company, the guy that is the best selling financing. And I don't have a problem with that because if I financed Harley Davidson, I know you're losing 40% when you drive it off the lot. When I finance a roof, that's an investment,

into your home, your family, your house is home value. That's an investment versus a cost. So I don't think you're doing anything shady by offering people a promotional, a promotionary offer to make it affordable for them. I guess, so you would say just simply in your experience for the sake of closing more deals by offering financing or almost pushing financing, that's kind of a must. Well, what's going to happen is you're going to run them through a quick thing. and it's going to say you qualify it for 60 grand.

And then all of a sudden, the client's going to go, well, look, how much is it per month? And they're like, let's just do that. And everybody's coming into money in the next year. So they're like, yeah, I'll pay it off. And the average person that does a 10 year is paying it off in 3.6 years. So you don't have to feel bad about it. But it's a higher conversion rate. They're going to pick better options.

And you're going to have happier clients. I just know for a fact, the biggest best roofing companies, 80% of their jobs are finance. That's great. So it's something I think about. Yeah, absolutely. No, great, great feedback there. What do you say to, you guys, do you guys do your own, or are you planning to do your own actual in-house financing at some point?

No, I don't. No. Unless we get with another partner that has that, like this is the problem is saying no more often, like I said earlier, saying no to everything you could. I used to wrap my own trucks. I had my own rap company. I used to have two full-time mechanics. I used to have a team to go ahead and take the metal apart.

with the aluminum and the copper. And all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm just going to be the best at one thing. The one thing, Gary Keller wrote a book. I'm going to get rid of all the crap. I'm going to lease my trucks to own. I'm going to turn a minute at 100,000 miles or four years, whatever comes first.

I'm going to get the highest value for them. So if I pay $65,000, I'll turn them in at $45,000. Still get a high value. My guys are always driving new trucks. It's all under warranty. It's got a fresh new wrap on it. They feel great. So their mood's great.

The culture is great. The clients love our trucks in the field. they're always clean. And then I learned about accelerated depreciation and just the tax advantages. And that's why I got a great CFO and controller and FP&A team. And when you're small in business, you're like, I'm just going to run this truck to the wheels fall off. I mean, I was buying $3,000 Dodge Dakota's and wrapping them. That's all I had to start with.

And I didn't realize the tax ramifications and under Trump accelerated depreciation on the weight of these vehicles, 6,200 pounds or more. And it just makes sense to play it. Like we're doing it. You know out of the Fortune 500 companies, 598 lease their trucks to own them? I did not know that. That's crazy. These are big, freaking companies.

These aren't like mom and pops because they understand the tax codes. Yeah, which taxes, man. That's the other thing. It's amazing, like how much you got to, to your point earlier, keep on the numbers and realize anybody that says, oh, it must be so nice. He must be making so much money. It's like taxes alone, you end up spending 35% of everything on.

That's not even close. You pay a sales tax. You pay a tax when you buy a vehicle. You pay taxes on your W-2s. You pay taxes to the 1099s. You pay taxes on the insurance. You pay taxes and taxes and taxes and taxes to where it actually comes out to 70%.

I mean, people think you take the money home, but then you got to go spend it, and then they get taxed when you spend it. And then if you buy an asset with it, like a house, when you go to sell that, you're taxed again. If you invest it and your investment grows, you're taxed on the growth. So it is crazy. There's two tax codes and the rich people live off of one and they understand depreciation. They understand tax advantages. They understand things like in the stock market, when you sell something for a month,

you could keep forward those losses. So it's called tax loss harvesting. And these are the things that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and some of the larger companies know how to do is it's mostly the wealthier get wealthy. The wealthy get wealthier because they understand the tax code. And that small business, we don't really get these lessons so you learn the hard way until you get a really good person to understand tax strategy. I mean, a guy like you, I mean, your kids should probably be under payroll. They should have a trust. there should be, I mean, you could write off your gym membership, you could write off every meal as long as you're talking about.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff as a small business when you're on cash accounting versus the cruel that you could kind of do that's legal. It's just, there's a fine line in the sand where, you know, you want to be audit proof, but taxes are a big deal. What do you say to in the first 60 seconds when you get to a homeowner's door? Hi, whatever their name is. Justin, we spoke on the phone here to take a look at your roof. Real quick, remind me, was it leaking anywhere? Let him talk. And what I actually do, I don't tend to go inside.

I make the first interaction pretty brief. Reason being, I want to get on the roof because if I warm up too much in the beginning, when I'm done, and I'm done at the roof, they'll say immediately, so what do you have? Or so what's the cost, right? Because we didn't, we already, if we, if we warmed up too fast before, like I actually got up on the roof, I've just found that then you can't really have any kind of a warm-up a relationship filled. And so that's what people don't really know, homeowners don't really know if they bought a

good roof. They don't really know if they bought a good garage door, but they know how the experience made them feel. Yeah. And that's what they're buying. So they're buying that trust that you're able to build. What about you guys? So we offer coffee on the way.

So let's say I'm offering you coffee right now. So, hey, Justin, Tommy Mello here, you probably got my profile from our software. I'm running off,

I'm running to your house right now. I'm going to stop at Starbucks. Could I grab you anything? So go ahead. Sure. Yeah. You're probably going to say no. Most homeowners say no.

They're fine. So go ahead and say no. No. No, you'll say, no, I'm fine. Listen, Justin, you come to my house, my fiance, Bree, she's going to feed you. This is just the way I grew up. I grew up in the Midwest. Don't make me guess.

Are you a green tea guy or a caramel for Appuccino? Because I'm bringing you one. And then you'll be like, oh, man, just bring me a double espresso. I want to bring you something. And then we expense that onto the job, the technician pays nothing. And then when I show up, I knock the door because strangers ring the doorbell. I've got my tools with me. I look like a worker.

My breath smells good. I've got a big smile on my face. If a dog comes out, I'm playing with the dog. And then I'm going to start asking questions. You know, there's a beautiful home hauling. Have you lived here? I'm actually, now we look at Zillow to find out when they moved in the home. Have they been there for two months or 10 years?

And usually the walking for the house. I'm looking for their family pictures. I'm looking to see if they got a nest. If they got a nest, they're into home automation. So they probably want to automate a garage door. And then I walk in the garage. and then I say, so what's going on out here? And then I see their Harley-Davidson, and I'm like,

how often do you get out on the Harley? Now, listen, I'm genuinely interested. I never want my guys to talk about something they're not interested in. If they're not into it, if they got a razor or fishing poles or whatever it is, we're in their garage. So usually there's some cool stuff out there. Never pretend to be something you're not. And usually I want to spend a half an hour saying,

how often do you use the door? When's the last time it was looked at? Who sleeps upstairs? Do they wake up when the door goes? and I'm just trying to learn who else. So how many kids do you have? How often do they use the door? Do they use the keypad to get in?

Is the noise an issue? When you come out here and it's the wintertime, does it get freezing in here? Does it actually stay a pretty good warm temperature? Same thing in the summer. And we're just asking questions. And then we ask what's going on with it. And they'll say, we heard a loud bang and whatnot.

And we'll say, okay, well, listen, we'll go ahead and do a little bit of an analysis on what's going on. It looks like you got a broken spring. Let me go ahead and do some measurements, then I'll come grab you. And then I only want to start with what they call this out there for. I don't do the huge inspection to just start with them with the price. But you got to get to know the clients, be friendly. If they offer you an iced tea, sure, I love an iced tea.

And smiling free. Smiling free. And it's contagious. Yeah, it is. It's contagious and well-mattered. Absolutely, yes, sir. Thank you so much. No, call me, Tommy.

All right, Tommy. I appreciate that. And now you use their first name. Hey, Tommy, can I grab you for a minute? Come take a look at this. And let them be the detective. Show them the good parts, the bad parts. Show them why.

Never say things like recommend. That'll kill you. Like I say, these parts are no longer good. They're unsafe. They're dangerous. They've used, we've used their cycle life already. And then we start the process. It's a little bit different than I would do on a roof.

But the roof, I'm going to spend at least an hour and a half. I'm going to show them what we do. What makes us different? I'm going to show them testimonials. I would have a written notebook. I'd have every single client write me a written letter, and I'd go through and just read out some of the letters with them because no one else is doing that.

I show them some before and after, show them a couple videos. And I say, look, I just want to do it the right way, not the easy way. Here's some lawsuits that have happened. Here's some of the guys in the – I've kind of blurt out their name because I'm not going to make them look bad. But I'll tell you, well, really, Matt, to me is not only do it do it the right way, but if you do have an issue, we show up the same day.

And if you do it correctly, you know, I know guys, their average roof is $60,000 in a neighborhood, in areas that the average other guys are $25,000. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, my average ticket size is about $16,000 right now. 16? Yep. For shingle.

Metal roofs. which I do, that's closer to 30. So, but yeah, I mean, there are definitely some competitors that I know of that are 40% more expensive than me. And I think one day, what's that? And they're busy. Yep. And they've also been around 20 years. I bet you the one, if I had to ask you, who's the number one company in your market,

you could probably think of the name and I'm not going to ask. And I'd ask you who's the most expensive and they're almost always the same. Yep, pretty close. Yeah. It is fascinating. Because you guys are also, you guys are the most expensive in your market, but you're also the best. Well, I wouldn't see. We're always the most expensive because we give the options and, you know, the difference is we carry custom parts and we've trademarked the parts.

It's not like other people couldn't get them, but. We build a Frankenstein out of the garage door. We don't just give you the factory parts that every other garage store company does. We literally add in all kinds of value. And, you know, if you want something plain Jane flipping the house, we can compete with our competitors. But apples to apples, we sell oranges. And if you can't be different than everybody else, then you're competing on the same stuff.

What's the point? Yep. And that is the key. Figuring out what your differentiation is when a homeowner, just expects a roof. How often do you guys get? How often do you guys get? We don't, we don't need the Cadillac. We just need the basic initially, right off the cuff. You're like, okay, know what I got. No, all the time. We get that. And then we say, did you know the garage drawer at 268% value? 268. So if you spend 10 grand, you're going to get $27,000 value when you go to list the home.

Every time I go to the casino, if I could put a dollar in and take a 270 out, I'd keep playing that machine. It's 40% of your curb a pill. You know, the garage store, Justin, it's the smile of your home. We trademark that. That's awesome. That's cool. There you go. Yep. I mean, I love what I do. That's awesome. And I'd love to be back out in the field. I mean, I'm just so busy, but if I had an opportunity to go back in the field for a week, I would freaking love it, man. I miss the days. I've even thinking about calling clients up that we don't close on and just saying like, look, I want to figure out a way to earn your business. Here's the deal.

My vendors, they have extra shingles. They have extra doors they can't sell. You find, I'd go with my vendors and say, listen, the vendors got this shingle, best warranty in the field, but they actually brought it a new type of shingles. This color is probably not the coolest color they've ever carried. But they're willing to give it to me, if you're willing to do this and you just wanted to get the shingles put on and you wanted a really good roof, I'll show you what it'll look like. I make my vendors play game.

Like, they got to play ball with me. Like, if they got 20 doors that are 16 by 7, a two-car garage, I want to take that list of doors. And we get a list every day. And the clients that don't want to buy, I say, listen, I got 20 doors that are vendors, like, mism measured, wrong color, whatever it was. These are awesome doors. They got the best insulation.

These prices don't work for you. Let me call them, and let's see if one of these will work for you. Like, I got to figure out a way to earn their business because I paid for the lead. I send a guy out there. You know, make your vendors play ball. Say, hey, do I got another, do you got anything that I could sell that you typically don't carry

that's going to give a good warranty? You don't have to degrade the value or the warranty. Like sometimes they have all kinds of stuff. You know, you go to SRS and some of these places. They have all kinds of shit lying around. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. They really do. You're right. And that's the thing I think is figuring out the more, I'm realizing the more smooth your operations are, and the more you understand every aspect of the business, the more you can cut costs that don't need to be costs, which means then your profit just immediately goes up. And I'm still figuring that out, like every day, learning new things.

And so I got some people, the best advice I could give you is I got some people in the industry. You could go out and visit. and it's hard to do when you're in business. But if you could add an extra million dollars a year by making a two-day trip and just, it's hard to do it when you're running solo. But I went and I spent, I probably did 40 trips to go visit HVAC companies. And I was in and out in 24 hours. I'd fly there, go with an empty book of notes, walk away with a full book of notes, and just

learned so much. I learned about service agreements and financing and how to hire and how to do a really good tune up. And I took all Achecks because garage doors were all losers. They didn't have their shit together. There was no big companies that were doing things the right way. So I said, Achecks kind of got it figured out. So I went to every $100 million shop.

And they all let me in. They said, you're just a garage door kid. Come on out, dude. And I'd buy them. And that was how I got educated is success leaves clues. So if I were you, anytime you want to meet somebody, I could set you over some really good people that don't take advantage of their clients, but they offer value.

And they get to make a profit because, why go into business if you can't make a great profit? Absolutely. And that's the funny. It was one of my videos I think you had seen was just letting you know, construction companies are not non-for-profits or for-profit businesses. But every homeowner thinks, like, they're always like, you're making money? And it's like, yeah, I'm making my job.

Like, they almost get offended when they find out we're making money. I just think it's hilarious. Well, I went to Home Depot and I priced it out and I could do it for this. Yeah, but then you'd have to do it. And what if your particle board underneath is rotten? And what if this and what if this? And, you know, if it doesn't go right and think about the tools you'd have to buy. And what good is a better price if it doesn't get done on time or if it's got a leak or there's a great book called it's by Janie Smith.

There's one called The Competitive Advantage. And there's another one. It's called Relevant Selling. Read the book Relevant Selling. It'll Change Your Life by Janie. J-A-Y-N-E-Smith. Janie Smith Relevant Selling. Okay.

It kind of explains the pricing model. So the honer... What I love to do when I actually just had one the other day, an old couple. And for this sake, let's call him John and Mary, right? And talking to John about the process for the roof. And he's like, well, a little bit more. more than I was expecting. I really just keep thinking about,

I know I can do it myself. And he's like 69. And I looked at Mary and I said, Mary, I bet he said that about that light. He'd fixed that for about two months, hasn't he? She's like,

yeah, because the light was broken. And I was like, yeah, John, I think you need to just let me get this done for you. And just bring it back to reality. And we did.

So, but it's just funny when they say that. Because you know, in their mind, they're like, yeah. I've got a guide that shows all the injuries of the garage door. It's literally 40,000 reported a year, and only that 10th of them get reported.

400,000. You'll lose a finger to break a neck. Like, this is a loaded weapon with 200 pounds of torque on it. I'm like, you do not want to mess with this. That's why handyman's don't touch springs because it is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah. How do you handle the homeowner that wants three quotes before? deciding. That one is actually twofold, right? I don't, I understand it as a buyer, right? But when I

set the appointment, if I go there and they have other bids coming, and I didn't know that, part of that's immediately on me for setting, setting the appointment wrong. I didn't do enough research on the call. When I call them, it's Justin. following up with your regarding your request here for an us on the roof, gets talking to him a little bit. And just so I'm not stepping on anybody his toes, have you had anybody come out yet? No, we have two more guys coming out on Tuesday and Thursday.

That's actually perfect. I don't have any availability until Friday. Would it be okay if I came out on Friday? I prefer to be the last guy in. That way they have nothing to say that they're waiting for, but I could be wrong. I know some guys definitely want to be the first guy in because they'll sell on value and that's great.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I found that if they have less excuses to possibly have, being the last one in the door, they have zero reason not to pick me. But I'm curious to hear you, learn from you. I used to be the same way. Now I'd rather be the first one. And I'd rather, I can tell you,

I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of quotes where they said, I always get three estimates. I'm a smart shopper. and I say, of course. That's what you should be doing. That's what everybody that smart does. But listen, I'm here right now, and I want to just really guide you through how this is going to work

and where other companies could cut corners. And then I try to build the little things that add a lot. This is what Rodney Webb does so well, is if I were you, I'd have other things like, look, number one, we're going to replace the boards underneath every single time. Number two, we're going to make sure this is sealed right, because this is where we get a lot of the problems, number three, number four, number five. And then they're like, you know what, that kind of just makes sense, especially if it's finance.

Because if you get them at a good rate, they're like, let's just do that. I could afford that. Because listen, most guys, you're going to spend three, four hours by the time. They get on your roof, come down. Look, I know how important your time is. Let me just figure out a way to earn your business today. And they're like, you know what, we really like this guy. Let's just go ahead and go with them.

Let's just go ahead and cancel. And a lot of times I'll say, you know, if you don't mind who else is coming out. And a lot of times they don't want to cancel because they already set the appointment. I go, look, you already gave me the names, great companies. I'm just going to go ahead and cancel for you. Absolutely. What's your close rate? That's just depends on the lead source.

If it's a if it's an Angie lead, it's about 30% of leads I get a hold of. If it's a referral, upwards to 65, 70%. but if it's a lead through social media, those are actually closing about the same as my referrals. So 65%. But what's been really cool about social media, and one, the networking has been awesome. I can't tell you how many small business owners reach out and just get connected with guys. And a lot of guys that are just getting started out, I don't have all the answers by any means. but I'm just not afraid to talk about the struggles.

And so people naturally just are like, dude, what are you doing? I'm just like, man, I'm just living. It's real and let's talk about it and let's not hide it and help each other out. There's not business to go around. So yeah, but close rate, Angie has is hit or miss though. You guys use Angie too, right? Yeah, yeah. I had the CEO of my house last month.

Really? Okay. That's awesome. It seems like I don't know exactly. their model, but the forms that drive leads in, some months, like it, like this past month, it's like all of my leads were mobile homes for the most part. It was amazing. And I was just like, huh. So like, but so and you just, and you don't control the quality necessarily. So I think you said it in your book. Every lead is, I can't remember how you word it. Didn't you say something in your book?

Every lead is either trash or every lead is fire? You know, for me, at least in my industry, every lead's a good lead because, you know, the only ones that are bad is landlord tenants. You know, they're not the decision maker. It makes it hard. But when I go out there, I used to pride myself on going to the cheapest, worst neighborhoods, the brokeest areas. And I just, I know how to get those jobs done and they don't mind spending the money. And I don't like, look, end of the day, our ticket's not 50, 60 grand, so it's a lot different. I mean, on those calls, you might walk out with, you know, $1,500.

Our blended average ticket, including zeros and door sales is about $1,200. So it's a much different sale. And plus, I'm going to people that are stuck. So, you know, it's way different. It's apples and oranges. But I love my industry. I just, we got to run 28,000 jobs a month. So lots of infrastructure.

If I was doing HVAC and I was going to. good at it, I'd already be doing $2 billion a year of revenue. We're going to do $410 million this year. So I got to do a shit ton of jobs. And anybody that thinks you're going to get in the garage industry, you can make a great living, but it's going to take 10 years. Like to rebuild this company, you give me $500 million bucks. It would still take me 10 years.

Unlimited money because just camaraderie, building the sales programs, the KPI's, now with technology. Like, the good news is through the podcast and all the speaking I do, people come to me when there's an answer. Like the software companies put me as a priority. They build things directly for me. And I've got pretty deep access. You know, you've done a lot on social media.

What made you want to start social media? I think just realizing that it's, well, really actually, kind of just started out with it was an avenue. Being a business owner is alone. Like, I think you probably, at least in the early days, when you're in the hustle phase, everybody's like, hey, you want to hang out and you just, you lose friends.

You lose people because you're working all the time. And like, I got a wife and three kids. And so it's like the free time that I have, I'm trying to spend with them. And so it's like, I didn't have really anybody to necessarily talk to. So it kind of became almost a video journal starting out is what my social media was initially.

But then I started realizing, you know what? Like, this is where people go to consume nowadays. days. People still watch TV, but primarily social media. And we're fighting for attention. And it's so funny when I go out to a job and I made a video last year, me hanging from a roof and acting like I was falling off this roof. It was a marketing video. And I happened to go to a guy's house, an hour and a half away from my house here. It's just a random guy that called in, he was an Angie lead. And I went to his house and he looks at me. And he's like, I think, I think you're the guy that I saw a video hanging from a roof.

And I was like, I am. And I pull up the video. I was like, yeah, that's you. I was like, yeah, that's crazy. And like, so that moment, I was just like, man, it's so powerful. Because if you can build a presence where people actually recognize you, you're building a brand at that point. You're not building a job.

I love what you're doing, man. And you just need, if you double down on that, there's a guy. Roger Wakefield Follow him in the plumbing Follow that guy He ranks number one for everything And he's a YouTube sensation Here's what I want to do

Justin, I want to play some of your videos Just have you react to them and walk through it So I'm going to have Colin pull some stuff up And we'll watch a few of them And we'll have some fun here Sounds good And then you have to tell me which ones you're You have to tell me which ones you're going to remake.

I don't know yet. I got some good ideas. Do you hear sound? Not yet. He's going to get it coming. No. We'll let it all this out, right? Yeah, he's going to edit the shit out of this.

That's good. Man, this is actually so much fun. Seriously, thank you for having me on. It's always a blast. You're such a wealth of knowledge. Yeah. Well, you guys happen to send me any clips from any of this that I can post online.

Oh, yeah, we'll send you a bunch of clips. Yeah, it'll be great. We're going to highlight you big time. Matt, if you get a chance, though, do you guys have any kind of, do you do some TV commercials and stuff or not? Yeah, lots of TV. If you guys, your team probably knows about it,

but Suno, which is how I made this song, it's just this AI app that you just type in the lyrics and type in the style and it's free. And it'll spit out options of immediate songs. And that's how I made this. Oh, that's great. Let's listen to this one. That actually happened. That's so good.

So what made you think of that? Really, it was just a moment. There was a trend actually going around of people doing that with texts from their wife or their husband. And I was like, dude, we should do this for business owners that get all kinds of crazy texts from their customers. And some of them are just insane, but we get them all. So put it to song.

So, that was pretty funny. You know, I'm going to make a good song. Let's do this next one. 32 hours, whatever I want. A little bit exaggerated. But yeah, pretty much, man. It never stops. We don't turn it off.

Let's keep going. These are great. I take your order. The price of the thing. A 10-piece nugget as well. But since the prior is already on, you guys already have the nuggets, can you just drop in like six more from the same price?

If I just bring you guys nuggets, you guys just stick those in the friars. Can you guys supply me proof that it's real meat and take it down to the price? So good. Oh, man. This is it all, dude. Let's listen to a couple more. So what made you do that with just the fact is that that a lot of service?

Yeah, exactly. Well, it's just objections, right? It's the objections we hear all the time. And also just, I think what the industry needs is, we talked about it earlier, but kind of retraining customer expectation in minds because you you don't go to the doctor in talk and ask for the same things that people ask for contractors. Like no other industry. You don't go, I'm going to need a few estimates on that.

Yeah, exactly. You're coding. Before they zap you, you're like, wait, I got to get two more bids. Like, no, there's a problem. You're going to say, yeah, Doc, fix me, you know. Let's go ahead. Let's do a couple. Sir.

Just so busy. Like, I've got to hire somebody. Like, the phones won't stop bringing the work just coming in. Like, what? Everything is terrible. No, woes. This month is crazy. Like, I think I'm going to have to get, like, three more offices and just, like, expand

across the nation. Like, this is so cool. I'm terrible. This is terrible. I'm just going to go be an employee. Oh, it's so true, man. When it's hot, it's hot when it's cold, especially those early years. I like this blue collar math one.

So you've heard a girl math? Have you heard a blue collar math? This is for you wives. When you ask your husband what time he's getting home, you got to add two, two by fours, a broken drill bet, two monsters, three trips to Home Depot, and oh, crap buffer, which equates to roughly three and a half hours later than what he said or simply until the job is done. Welcome. Yeah, and add a couple, uh,

a couple of Kansas in there. Yeah, yeah, that's right. We're good, brother. Hey, listen, you keep making magic. How do you just follow trends and stuff? Or how do you stay on top of what you're going to do next? Honestly, man, it's some of its trends for sure. But a lot of it's just I'm driving.

And I'm like, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that. And I just shoot from the hip on most of it. And I'll throw a lot, like I'll throw a lot of my ideas. Like I've got a whole thread on chat. Just any time I have an idea, I throw it into chat and it remembers it. It's saved in memory. And then I just reference back to that and then kind of build out my idea for it

and then ask chat to help me build out a kind of a content map for it, build out a little bit of a script. And so it's amazing, like what AI can help you with. Yes, sir. I love it. I love it. Listen, what's your goals? What are you going to change this year?

What is the next steps? What's 2026 going to be? Well, we're going to do, I think we will actually hit $3 million this year, pending we don't get a storm. If we get a storm, program, $7 million, very, very easily, just because demand flies up. If a storm comes, that's awesome. But we haven't had a hurricane now in Florida.

four or five years here on the East Coast. So we're overdue, but it doesn't look at El Mino. I don't think we'll get one. Biggest thing for me is kind of have a goal to work through this summer. And I'd love to, I'd love to get to a certain number here in the bank for the business. And then hire some key hires. I mean, I've got another sales guy that's starting, got one. now and then another sales guy that's starting uh that's also 1099 here in two weeks um start pumping

them with leads uh and then get me out of the field out of out of project management um sooner than later but probably in August or September um but that is a hard cost sales guys are 100% commission so there's still an opportunity cost and a marketing cost that is associated with them but um i don't put them in a truck until they've done a million in revenue or been with me six months. I like your goals, man. Dream for the stars. And be making great content, Justin. And look, I'm always here.

I'll make sure Phil gets you my cell phone number. I'll send you a couple of books. I think the, what should we do would be great and relevant selling. And I think you need to listen to them because you drive so much. But yeah, yeah, man, I mean, I will. And then if you ever want to contact, you ever want to go out to a different market. I mean, I know guys in Florida, but if you ever want to see like some of the technology, see what they're doing, see how they're getting leads. You know, the more I pay per lead, the higher quality it seems to be.

And that's just the nature of the beast. I mean, it's a big industry. I got 570 competitors just here in Phoenix. There's 13,000 garage store companies. So, I mean, a cost for a lead for me on Google is about $300 just for an appointment. I mean, so it's not much. I mean, I'm sure on Google you might pay three, four, five hundred bucks. So if it takes you three to close a deal, it's still not a bad combo.

You just got to build that into the pricing, but $1,500,000, not a bad ratio. But you just got to get good at closing, man. And I'll tell you, the bigger you get, the more you can negotiate with your vendors. And that's where you really, the buying power makes a huge difference. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's the thing, though, that like you guys are big enough now. do you have anything you're you're building out to build out your own um your own lead aggregates and build out your own lead networks?

Yeah, we are just relying on. Yeah, we're working on that right now. I mean, there are great companies. The problem is if you get too reliant on those, they just got to be a fraction of the business because I like to own the marketing channel. So if you get somebody that's really good at providing leads, you go grow with them. I mean, now that we're in 24 states, it makes a lot of sense. but we do, I mean, look, we spend

four and a half million a month on marketing. It's so crazy, yeah, absolutely. And is that across? That's across every market. Primarily, is that paid for leads? And by the way, half of that campaign goes to TV and radio. I want to stand out. Which one converts more for you guys?

I mean, radio is the cheapest way to own clients. I mean, if you blast, but don't own, own one. station on one demographic, a good, you know, if you go to Larry John Wright, my buddy Sam, I think he's one of the best in the business. He's like, this is what it'll cost to own this station. And there's no competition. And this is your perfect avatar. Like, you got to hit the right stations and channels and literally put the money into own those. And, you know, one of my favorite things is to get an amazing, one of the best sponsorships of somebody that's got a great reputation. And then the first thing I do is go to their house. I mean, I had a guy at my,

house this past weekend. And I go to their house and we just give them a bunch of free stuff. And I say, look, if any of your clients that ever call up and we don't take care of them, I'll give them 100% money back. And the deal is when you go golfing with those sponsorships and you take them to a basketball game, they're talking about you 90% of the time for free. They got all day. They're on a three hour program. They're like, dude, I went out with Tommy Mello, man. The guy's cool. Like, we went out. We watched this. We did this. So there's a whole strategy. I mean, look, they're very cool people. They're very network. They'll bring you a ton of clients. It just, it costs money to make money. There's this guy I met like a decade ago,

and behind his desk said, whoever pays more per lead will win. Because it's like, look, if you could afford to pay more per lead, you know, there's eventually Grock and Chachibati and Gemini and Claude, they're all going to have a paid model. It's going to start at a hundred grand a month. And when they do, we're going to be the first ones on. We're going to make a lot of mistakes, but we're going to make them quick. We're going to fix them. Well, I think that's awesome, though, because, yeah, SEO is still a thing. But AI optimization is really people now are going to chat.

Keep it here, GROC, and for Gemini even, for sure. But they're asking questions there like people used to Google. And Google is still being used, but I think very much it's going to migrate that way and figuring out how you own that channel, like you said, that's. the future. That's awesome, man. It is, brother. Seriously, this has been awesome. Justin, you're a real treat. Listen, anything else? How do people get a hold of you, Justin, if they want to reach out? Yeah, so check out our website, ProvidenceroofingFL.com. You can shoot me an email, Justin at ProvidenceroofingFL.com, or you can call us 407-338-6106 and we'll answer. So, yep, happy. If you're in Central

Florida and you need a roof for your guys. I love it, man. Well, you're a great brother. I wish you all the success in the world. Let's make sure we follow up and keep putting out the great content. And just don't make the same mistake twice. That's the best advice. Fail fast, fail often, but don't make the same mistake twice.

And you'll do amazing things. Thanks, man. Yep, I believe it. So thank you for the wisdom and the insight here. So it's going to be pretty exciting to continue to build. Maybe one day I'll be. I'll be at a 100 million, 200 billion like you. Very soon.

Easy, easy, easy, peasy. Those are small goals, dream a little bigger. Yeah. I appreciate you, dude. It's awesome. Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you guys. Take it easy, brother.