Limitless Roofing Show
We give you a seat at the table as we interview Owners, CEO's, and key executives in roofing companies. Our goal is to equip you with key insights gleaned from these conversations so you can achieve mastery in your roofing business.
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Limitless Roofing Show
Faith-Driven Leadership: Diversifying and Thriving in the Roofing Industry with Randy Hurtado
Ready to supercharge your roofing business? Our latest episode of the Limitless Roofing Show features the brilliant Randy Hurtado from DT Companies, who transitioned from IT security consulting to crafting a thriving home services empire. Learn how to diversify your business offerings and uncover the secret to fostering industry camaraderie and mutual respect among competitors. Discover how Randy’s faith-based leadership approach and strategic recruitment have driven him to remarkable success, such as transforming a humble garage door company into the region's top revenue generator.
We're sharing Randy’s inspiring journey of selling an exterior cleaning business, which paved the way for more profitable ventures. Despite a lack of construction experience, Randy capitalized on skilled talent and his roofing industry reputation to launch a successful home building company. With experts like Clayton Porter on board, he's curated specialized teams to ensure excellence across services. By focusing on relationships and building robust business systems, Randy's ventures have thrived, often outperforming conventional marketing efforts.
Join us as we explore the power of faith and authenticity in shaping business relationships. Learn about the Roofing Referrals program, which offers strategic growth through education and partnerships. Hear how aligning business practices with faith-based principles has nurtured a positive company culture, leading to high customer satisfaction. The episode wraps up with an invitation to meet at an upcoming event, promising opportunities to network, share stories, and discover limitless success with our buying group. Let’s go seize the day and elevate your business to new heights!
all right, welcome to the limitless roofing show, where we give you a seat at the table as we talk with roofing owners so that you can get the tips and tactics you need to go to the next level. And in this episode we have randy hurtado with dt companies. So, randy, thanks for being on the show thanks for having me once again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the second time this year, but here's the deal is we just like at our event, you know, Limitless Roofing Summit that we just held, the goal is really to just get the right people in the room and get people who can help one another. That's why we had you as a speaker and the other speakers. We had you as a speaker and the other speakers we had because we really want roofing owners who can actually help, who've actually been there, adding value, giving talks, providing our members and our listeners with equipping, because you need to be equipped for leadership. So in this episode, you and I talked offline. We really want to talk kind of about three things. One is diversifying your business.
Speaker 1:Most roofing owners are not doing that in any way, shape or form. Number two is just what is the role is? What role does faith play in your, your experience as a company owner, as a leader and so on? And then last, something that comes up all the time is recruiting and retaining the right people. So, before we get into all that I know you were on about six months ago, but can you just give like the quick kind of 90 second background on DT companies in your roofing business?
Speaker 2:Sure. So DT companies. The DT companiescom is a is comprised of multiple home services companies and a commercial roofing company that individually focuses on areas of their expertise. So we have a construction company that builds homes, does remodels, additions, patios, burglars, etc. We have a residential roofing company. We have a commercial roofing company. We have a garage store and service company, a gutter company. These are all services that we offer to our clients in our not only to our clients in our targeted spaces, but also to what people would traditionally call our competitors as well. Because we have a respected name in the area, our roofing competitors don't have a problem buying their garage doors from us when they need them, or possibly using gutters, and so it creates that camaraderie within our industry locally, some mutual respect, and yeah, so that's what we've done pretty well in our area.
Speaker 1:So walk me through how you built that out. So I assume it started as a roofing business. Right, you came on, you started working for DT Roofing. You started adding a ton of value, growing the business like crazy I know you guys are going to land somewhere around $40 million in revenue. But at some point you and the current owner decided, hey, let's partner up. And then what happened from there? What was the first business that spun off of that?
Speaker 2:So the first, the very first company in 2009 was a construction company, and that was my partner. Derek Tanner started a construction company. He was building homes and then, of course, that was right around the time. It was probably one of the worst times to get into that world because, if you remember the 2008 crisis, things were really slow for him and a storm came through the area and he looked at his wife and said, hey, you know what I could put roofs on. And so he started selling roofs to people that attended his church, people that knew him, started to build a reputation and he continued to chug along from 2009. We had a really big storm in 2013 that really put the company on the map. It was our first year that we got Best of Hood County which is Hood County is where we're headquartered Best of Hood County Roofing Company. We're starting to get some recognition because in that vote every year, it's the citizens in the county that vote for the best of each category, and so it was really exciting, really lit a fire under the company, and right around 2016 is when I came on board full time.
Speaker 2:I had been assisting Derek while I was running my IT security consulting company next door to his business. I would come over and have friendly chat, go to lunch, talk business what have you? I didn't know anything about roofing or construction, but I understood business. Business, what have you? I didn't know anything about roofing or construction, but I understood business. And so we'd talk shop. And it was right around that time that the company that I had been doing business with my primary customer for probably about over 20 years, they got bought out by a private equity company for a hundred million dollars and they didn't need my services anymore. And it was a slap in the face somewhat, because I had helped them grow that company to where it got to, to get bought, and so then not to have a position in the company after that really blew my mind. But it also was perfect timing because I had already been spending like the six months prior to that learning things about the roofing industry. But I wasn't doing it for my own purpose, I wasn't planning on switching careers, I was doing it to help my friend and with his business, and so, long story short, he asked me to come on board. I needed a job and so I came on board.
Speaker 2:But I remembered early on just in what I did see in the company. But I remembered early on, just in, what I did see in the company. I didn't like the fact that it seemed a little disorganized when it came to like technology and process, and he was doing business the best way he knew how. And so I said I got to run it. You know you're the owner, that's fine, but I got to run it because I don't want to have to ask permission every single time. I want to do something and if you trust me, this company will be three to $5 million company. And in a few short years, at the time, his office manager looked at me and said we've never done three to $5 million. What if we don't want to be a three to $5 million company? And I said then I don't think I need to be here because I don't know anything different. I only know grow, grow, grow, grow. And so Derek trusted me with that opportunity and in a few short years, we went from 3.8 to 5.7 million, from the 1.8 million that we had always done from 2009 to that time. That was the highest that he was able to achieve with the company. And so at that time is when I approached him and said hey, I'd love to be your partner in this company. I don't want to do what I just got done, doing helping a company build it up to this big brand and then get dropped on my face I can't do that to my wife again. And he agreed and we just grew it from there. So from there it was a slow growth, not only and I wouldn't say it's a slow growth on the roofing side. We continued to grow hand over fist every year.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to. I personally wanted to dabble in the sorry got a phone call coming through, even though I have it on, do not disturb but I wanted to dabble in some construction because I had customers that were constantly saying, well, my roof looks great, now I just need a painting, or now I need a deciding. And I was sending that business elsewhere. And so I approached Derek. I was like, hey, we should offer these services. We've got this client base, why don't we offer these services and keep the business for ourself? And so he agreed and we started doing it under DT Roofing and Construction and in doing that we got a lot of success really quick.
Speaker 2:And so when we started to realize that there was business there, one of the philosophies we've always had is, if we start something new, we want it to be its own business, so we can have its own P&Ls and make sure it's actually a business, it's profitable, it's not just something that we like to do, but the main product, which in this case was the residential roofing. We don't want it just propping up that loss leader, and so we started Kingdom Builders Construction and that's been a great success for us. We're now heavily building. We're getting a lot more into building homes. Before it was mainly just remodels, additions, patios, pergolas, outdoor experiences, things like that. Now we're building homes from the ground up, which is actually easier than doing remodels and additions, because taking a house that's been there since the 70s and trying to make it look like a 2024 house versus just building a house from the ground up, you know, and so we're really enjoying that.
Speaker 2:We then also started our garage door and service company. We didn't feel like there was a company in the area that was serving the clients well locally or us, so we thought we could do it better. So we started, started Patriot garage store and service, and then the same thing with gutters. We just we had some good subs, but they couldn't keep up and so we felt like you know what? We could probably do this better. Let's start a gutter company. And that's where Guardian Seamless Gutters came from.
Speaker 2:And our most recent company that we started was we broke off all commercial business from DT Roofing and started DT Commercial Roofing Systems, and we wanted that to again for the same reasons. We didn't want to offer commercial if we weren't going to be profitable at it and we didn't want to get mixed up with our residential revenue, so we separated it. It's on books, it's everything. One of the benefits of doing that, by the way, especially with like construction, the garage doors, the gutters is, as a roofing contractor, whenever you're handling multiple trades on an insurance claim, when you're the company that's going to be doing. Even though it's never been the case that we were doing our own gutters, we were always using a subcontractor because we were just subbing them out. It was being done under DT roofing, so insurance companies weren't giving us overhead and profit like they should have been, even though we were still orchestrating the same thing. Nothing was changing because it was under DT roofing.
Speaker 2:But as soon as we started Guardian seamless gutters and started serving ourselves as a customer whenever we needed an estimate DT Roofing. But as soon as we started Guardian Seamless Gutters and started serving ourselves as a customer, whenever we needed an estimate we would have Guardian give us the bid, we'd submit that in our supplements and we would get the overhead and profit that we were due or that the customer was due that we charged, and so that really helped with overhead and profit and our margins our profit margins. Same with Kingdom Builders Construction being able to do the parts of the scope that kitchen has a stain in the ceiling and needs to be painted or whatever construction work was part of the scope Kingdom Builders would give DT Roofing an estimate and then DT Roofing would turn it in and get the overhead and profit with it. So it not only makes sense from a standpoint of making sure that these companies are actually companies and not just expensive hobbies, but to also make sure that you're retaining the overhead and profit that roofing companies through TDI, through Texas Department of Insurance's definition, is due Because we're charging for it. But oftentimes the insurance company isn't paying for it and then it's a battle with our customer and we don't want to lose our customer and so we push, you know, we don't, we don't, you know, push it.
Speaker 2:So those are some of the motivating factors as to why we won.
Speaker 2:We wanted to make sure we were offering a service that no one else was offering and, by the way, kingdom Builders Construction, patriot, garage Drawer and Service and Kingdom Builders Construction I'm sorry, kingdom Builders, patriot and Guardian, with DT Roofing, won all four of their categories this year and best of in their categories. So our process as a DT family, we carry through all of our companies and it shows through the awards that we win because these are individual companies that individual customers are voting for, and we won all four of the categories that we are entered into against tens of dozens of competitors in the area. So, yeah, that's kind of the reason why we decided to, and we wanted to diversify our services too. I mean, roofing isn't always going to be what it is today or what it's been in the past, and we want to make sure that we've diversified our portfolio of service offerings so that we're always going to be able to provide for our families, for the 70 families that represent our companies, and that's one way to do it.
Speaker 1:Man, that's so good. So how many companies is it in all? Five, Five. Yeah, we did have a yeah, it was six.
Speaker 2:We had precision exterior cleaning but we decided to exit that company, not because we didn't get business. We got a lot of business. It was our smallest revenue based company and we had a gentleman locally who had a window washing company that approached us and wanted to buy it. And as long as we could still offer the service, we were fine with that because he took something off of our plate that then we could focus on where a majority of our business was happening, which was in these other companies that are left over. So it was kind of a blessing in disguise. We built out a great brand and a great service with some great equipment. In disguise we built out a great brand and a great service with some great equipment, and then he came along and he's continuing that legacy with that solution, uh, just under his responsibility, and then we get to offer it ourselves. Guys still offer it as a sub, uh, to our customer base.
Speaker 1:Man, that's great. So let's talk about one of the offshoots, like the gutter company or that. You said that one is the home building company. Let's do that one, because that's a little more complicated. I mean, if I'm running a roofing company, sure I like the idea of having another income stream with building homes, but I don't know how to build homes. I've never had any experience managing a project and we all know that that can go sideways pretty quick if you're not budgeting correctly. And all the details, all the things. So how did you do that? Like, like, walk us through the steps of going from hey, we'd like to start building houses to the right person to the process, to where you're not working 60 hours a week.
Speaker 2:Right. So part of and it just going to actually go into one of the other questions and topics that we're going to be talking about, about hiring the right people, and that is. We made sure that, and I'm not going to say that it wasn't bumpy at the very beginning. Like you said, I have two brothers in California who run a construction company and they have been in construction their entire life. I was the nerd that was in IT security. They've been running a construction company their entire life, but they are construct, they are I mean, they're hands on, they frame up, they do the drywall, they do everything.
Speaker 2:I didn't have that experience and I wasn't approaching it from that idea that I had that experience. From that idea that I had that experience, I was going to and what Derek and I were doing was we were going to take the reputation that we had created with our roofing company and build out a construction company that was just as solid, with the right people. So each one of our companies has its own staff, its own management, its own talent. You're never going to have a garage door guy installing your roof and vice versa. They're part of their own separate companies, their own office staff, their own sales. For the most part the garage door company is a service company, so it doesn't have sales. But that could change in the future, who knows. But like the sales team for the construction company can't sell roofs. They can refer customers. That said they. They found out that kingdom builder is a sister company of dt roofing and they could turn that in as a lead type under their name and get kickbacks for it. But they can't sell roofs and the roofing guys can't sell construction. They just have to submit it over to their colleagues on that side. That way those folks are focused on their business, their company. And so that's really where it came from.
Speaker 2:With some trial and error we got all the right people in place Our president of our construction company, clayton Porter. He built homes for many years. He also came from the mortgage finance world, so he came in as a leader of our construction company. He not only came with the understanding of how to build it but how to finance it as well and what pieces to put in place and, prior to him coming on board, building new homes. You know, outside of just the occasional customer asking us wasn't really a business model we had. It was remodels and what have you? Because a lot of builders in the area only build homes from the ground up. If you go to them and say, hey, you built me a home six years ago and now we want to add on, they would have sent them to Kingdom Builders, right. And so it wasn't until Clayton came on about a year, year and a half ago that he convinced Eric and I that we do need to start popping homes up as well.
Speaker 2:We prefer customs, you know, because obviously they're a lot more interesting to build. They're not just cookie cutter. So we build very few specs. Most of the time. If we build a spec, it's going to be because we're new into an area and we want people to see our quality, and then that'll kick off other lots that we own building their custom home from there. But yeah, so it's really about putting the right people in place in all the companies.
Speaker 2:Our garage door company it's being run by a gentleman who's been in the garage door industry for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Like we're not just going in and going, let's figure this out. Like we're, we're getting the right people in place so that they know what to do right out of the gate. We just have to essentially finance it and market it and get it out there in front of the client base. And then when you add a DT company to the end of the name, people may not know that company right out of the blast, but they know that DT company to the end of the name. People may not know that company right out of the blast, but they know that DT logo and you know their mindset tends to be like if it's, if those guys are involved, I want, I want, I want to use their service. And so all of the companies that we've come up with have been very successful in their own right. Our garage door company is the highest revenue producing garage door company in the area, and it was. It went from nothing to that in two and a half years.
Speaker 1:Man, that's wild. So, going back to what you said, you found a guy that managed home building projects and he had a background in finance as well. The garage store deal. You found somebody who had lots of experience in that area. So when you go to these guys first, how do you get them on board? So I guess let's shift to finding and retaining the right people. How do you get them on board and how do you finance that? Because you, you, you know you're starting something from the ground up. It's obviously going to take some money just to pay somebody. So how do you go about that without, you know, sinking your ship financially?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. And so with the, with Patriot, we were actually approached by Brent. Brent was working for another local garage door company. They had just been purchased recently, you know, at that time, and the the. The story goes that the, the new owner, said I'm not going to change anything for at least a year, I don't want to upset the apple cart. Well, apparently he started changing things right away and Brent was one of their best assets. He had been doing it at that point for 15 years and knew the business. He had just gotten tired of the new owner and so he decided he was going to step out and do his own thing. Well, he approached us because DT, dt roofing was buying their garage doors from that company.
Speaker 2:It was one of those hold your nose and buy the because they were pretty much it in the area and so, even though their service stunk and we'd have to oftentimes go and apologize on their behalf to our customers for you, you know, the guys maybe doing not great work or whatever it was a necessity because we had to get those garage doors replaced. So Brett came to us. He was actually originally approaching us to be a customer. Okay, I'm going to start my own thing. Would you guys come on and work with me? And our initial response was yes, absolutely. We only know you, know you like, you know your, your company owners. We don't know them whatever. We know your work ethic, um, but, uh, because brent wouldn't be in control of some of those guys that we, they were causing trouble anytime brent was the guy installing it.
Speaker 2:Customers had a great experience and so a lot of our guys were like, brent, you need to be the guy on this one. So then I just asked him a question. I said, yeah, I think that would be fine, brent. I said, but have you considered what that, what that means, and you know what? You know? You're going to start a company like nobody knows who you are. Um, you don't have trucks, you don't have anything. Um and uh, anyways, I left it like that, left it at that.
Speaker 2:He calls me the next morning. Man, I couldn't sleep at all last night. I'm thinking about what you said. What were you thinking? And I said well, I was thinking you have the understanding and the know-how, we have the capital and the customers. Why don't we just start a company together, immediately be successful, because our customer base already knows us. So whatever we're offering, they're going to buy because they know they trust us already. And we could seed the company and then company could just pay us back, pay DT back for the seed money to get the trucks and the initial material and the salaries and stuff. And that's how we started.
Speaker 2:Patriot and Kingdom Builders wasn't too much different than that we had already had a revenue flow coming from when we were doing DT roofing and construction, and so it was kind of like we just converted that, that income, over to Kingdom Builders, the new Kingdom Builders construction, the new LLC. And but there was some loans, you know internal loans that had to be given to the companies and then, as they started to become profitable, then they would start paying that back, and so that's kind of how we did it. It's if, had we not been as successful as we have been with DT Roofing, we probably couldn't have done it that way. We probably would have had to go the more traditional route and take out loans with banks and stuff. But because we were successful in our first love, we had the ability to loan our new companies so that they can get up off the ground, prop them up, so they can get footing for themselves and then be successful.
Speaker 1:Man, that's so good. Two books keep coming to my mind on this around this whole story. You just told and that is who, not how by dan sullivan and ben hardy, and the whole point of the book is don't try to figure out how, like going back to the where you guys started. Okay, well, you know what we want to start a garage door company. How are we going to do that? That's the wrong question. The question is who do?
Speaker 1:we know the best person to build this out, and you guys did that. You found the perfect who that you'd already worked with before. He was very successful, he was a cultural fit, great customer service, and then you present him with a deal. That's a win-win it's a win for you guys, a win for him, and that way he's not having to bootstrap his own business, which may fail I mean, statistically probably would have failed.
Speaker 2:So that's just consistent, too, with anything that anybody's ever heard me talk from stage about is my, my if, if you, when you think, randy Hurtado, what's the topic that Randy's going to talk about most of the time? Relationships. That's right. So it came. It came down to relationships. We had a relationship with this guy and, and because we kept true to our motto of relationships trump all, we were able to find somebody that already knew the garage door business. We were able to find somebody that already understood the business of building homes and construction and financing business of building homes and construction and financing. So oftentimes, relationships are going to be the best way that you're going to be able to do that quickly, versus trying to do it from the ground up, where you're trying to interview somebody you don't know and you're hoping that everything they said they were telling the truth.
Speaker 1:That's so good. Yeah, and the other book that comes to my mind a lot, which is a little more tedious of a read, it's called Anti-Fragile. But the whole point of the book is and this guy studies economics, businesses, everything from wars to you name it to show that you can build a system that's anti-fragile. A fragile system is something like a roofing business that has one income stream. You remove that income stream, you just put pressure on one part of that system, but that one part is like the entire part, it falls apart, whereas an anti-fragile system has multiple pieces to the kind of like a spider web, and you put pressure on one part, that's fine. All of the other ones are still intact and solid. So it makes it a very anti-fragile system. And you've built that and I think most I think it's fair to say most roofing owners have not. So I love that we're talking about this.
Speaker 2:So and there's no question that our roofing company is definitely the largest contributor of our revenue out of, for example, that 40 million that we talked about. That we'll do this year. But where these other products come into play is they are not only profitable companies but they help prop up the, the brand, because they're constantly seeing the DT in there somewhere Kingdom Builders Construction, a DT company. Patriot Garage Storage Service a DT company. You know, and I spoke about this at the Limitless Summit but Our relationships always tend to come back to roost. They always come back to. They never return void, I guess, is what I should say. And like, for example, we have been our sales team understands this so well that after a storm that came through in May of this year, in June, our guys wrote $6.5 million worth of residential roofing contracts. That wasn't because they went out there and started going crazy knocking doors. Yeah, they knocked a few doors, but they almost didn't have time because so many of those relationships that they had from before the storm hit were coming home to roost. And not only were those realtors, insurance agents and property managers that we deal with on a daily basis calling for their customers, they were calling for themselves, they were calling for their mom, their dad, their uncle, their sister. So all of that, because we put such an emphasis on community and on relationships within our customer base, it helps. As you know, we built an entire company outside of my partnership with Derek. I started roofingreferralscom, which we are a partner of Limitless, and that was the whole reason why we started. That is because we knew the process worked and I felt like I wanted to share that with other roofing companies. Because, you know, yes, marketing, traditional marketing, helps, but nothing has ever trumped relationships. As I shared at the event and as I'll be sharing at RoofCon this end of this month, the top three lead sources every single year hands down have always been relationship-based connections referrals, previous customers and self-generated leads. All of those three have to do it through truck wraps and billboards and all that. Yes, those are definitely helpful and they're all justified in their spend, but none of them even touch the revenue that comes through relationships. And they have to be genuine too. If a person knows that you're only there to make a relationship with them for selfish reasons, then they're going to treat you as such. But our guys do an excellent job, truly caring about our partners, our customer base. You know, taking that time to learn something about them and talk about common threads and stuff.
Speaker 2:Praying for them Ooh, can't say that in this world. You know, praying for them when they have a, you know something that they share in front of them. We've empowered all of our team Like, don't be a, you're not going to get in trouble if you pray for somebody. We're not. You know, obviously we can't enforce that on our team for legal reasons, but fortunately our company uh, for legal reasons, but fortunately, um, our company is comprised of believing Christians who don't have a problem with that.
Speaker 2:And so if an atheist came to work for me, I'd love on them. And if they didn't want to pray for a customer cause they don't believe in God, then that's, that's, that's okay for them as well. Um, but they, they're going to know that I'm coming after them as a believer, but I can't push them or can't require them. We have Bible study at our office every Thursday and we leave it open to our staff and we even invite other contractors in the area to come and participate if they would like, because that's separate for us, that's not business. We truly want to just grow our faith and do it through fellow people that think the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so that's a good chance to go into our next topic. But I think, yeah, I mean, if that's what you really believe and I do too, I mean you and I are both followers of Jesus. When we were at our Limitless Roofing Summit you know we're there at the Chief Stadium, we've got all these vendor partners that are critical to this being a success you guys were one of them with roofingreferralscom and somebody came up to me and said hey, austin Watterson and his wife, their son Braden, is having brain surgery tomorrow. What do you think about praying for him? John Abernathy approached me and said what do you, you know, can we pray for him? I was like well, absolutely, what do you want to do? Do you want to have a little prayer meeting at some point? Do you want to bring him before the whole group? What do you want to do? And it was kind of left open. They didn't know. And then, during the event, whenever it was three days ago, I asked him again do you want to bring him up or do you want me to just pray from the podium or whatever? And so I just told they said yeah, austin said go on up there, braden, and he came up with me and I told the whole crowd hey, I'm going off the reservation a little bit, but I'm a big believer in a loving God who wants to be involved in our lives and offer us forgiveness and everlasting life and help us when we call on him. And so I gave Braden a minute to just share his story and we prayed over him. And I know that that was really awkward for some people, but in my mind we couldn't not do that. That young man was about to go through something extremely scary. You can see it in his eyes. He was scared. He had a smile on his face, but he was scared. And I prayed over him and we walked back to the table and his mom was just I mean her, she was just in tears and uh, and she followed up with me.
Speaker 1:The next day His surgery went great, the doctors. The doctors said that when they got in there he had a lot less spinal fluid than they thought he. They knew it was going to be a little bit low. It was way lower, and so they were able to do everything. Everything went beautifully. And then within, like within, him coming back, you know, awake, and after getting off the general anesthesia. He said his headaches were gone. He'd been having chronic headaches for so long because the pressure in his skull and everything messed up. So anyway, it was all worth it.
Speaker 1:It's like, hey, if we can't, you know. Well, I won't go off off on a tangent here, but it's like everybody needs to chill out and be be free to live what you want, and if you don't like it, that's okay. But anyways, that's a big part of our us too. We're, we're very open about you know. We're not going to ever make anybody feel bad, cause I grew up as a skeptic. I, you know I had a pretty kind of a radical conversion experience in my twenties. But let's switch gears and go that direction and talk about you know, what role does faith play in your leadership and the way you manage your relationships in your business? And before we do that, I want to give a chance for you guys to just share as a sponsor. You guys are a platinum sponsor, the Limitless Roofing Group. You're involved in the lives of our members. You know we've got about 350 companies in our GPO. Now, kind of share what is Roofing, referrals and how do you guys help our members?
Speaker 2:So roofingreferralscom, as I alluded to earlier, is literally a program that was designed entirely around the DT method internally, on how we grew so quickly in my estimation and in the research, how we grew so quickly from that $1.8 million company in 2016 to over 40 in 2024. And it takes the customer not only through a class setting where they watch videos that talk about how to approach these professional types that I talked about earlier real estate agents, insurance agents, property managers so that they can overcome objections, they can understand what to say, what they're looking for, what value add you can bring to them. So we teach you that in the classroom setting. That's online, that you have access to indefinitely when you're a member, but you also have a forum that you can. We've had customers that'll go in there and say how do you deal with this, how do you deal with that? And I'll personally go in and actually do a video response to that question, but so that everybody can hear the answer. I don't just respond to that one person privately, so that it's almost creates like a question and answer uh, library for people to go in and go. Huh, I didn't even think about that question and now I have the answer uh.
Speaker 2:But then it also comes with uh because have talented people in-house that can build applications, web apps. It comes with your own app that is personalized to your company so that your relationship customers whether it be your customers, your professionals they can go there's a place they can go to submit for a request for inspection. Go, there's a place they can go to submit for a request for inspection. And it makes things so much easier because, like, how many times have you been laying in bed at 1130? You're like, oh crap, I forgot to do that. Well, nobody wants to send a text to Dylan at 1130 at night when he's probably, you know, in REM. And so this gives them the ability to just get a log on to their partner site, which they can create as an app on their phone, and request that inspection for the next day or whatever, and then hit submit. It goes right to you and we've had customers just have amazing experiences. So they get that. They get collateral that has their brand on it, that speaks to its leave behinds, that you can when you go to meet with them. Initially, you get a comprehensive list of all the realtors, insurance agents and property managers within your region, so you immediately can start dialing for dollars to get in front of these folks, to start building those relationships, and so, yeah, it's a full program. It's not just you know this is what you need to do and then you know, see you later. It's all leave behind so you can continue.
Speaker 2:And then I make myself available, even if I have somebody who's not a customer. Like people will tell you, like they'll reach out to me on Messenger, they'll text me if they have a number and I'll call them up and I'll spend an hour on the phone with them. And it's like what's your angle? Like why are you doing this for free? I'm like I would. If you sound like somebody that wants to serve your customers well, and I don't. I have the knowledge, like I learned a lot of this from other people. So if I could pass that on to you, then you, that's your story in the future is that you learned it from somebody and hopefully you pass it on to that you know guy that's trying to build his company.
Speaker 2:As long as the company is trying to do it the right way and they're not being that company that's covering deductibles and doing all these shady things, I want them to be successful. There's plenty of business to go around, and so that's what the roofingreferralscom program is all about, is it helps. The cost of entry is super low, and we offer both a one-time, once a year cost or a monthly fee so that you can do it even cheaper. You know, um, you don't have to pay that one chunk uh time. So it's, it's a great program and it works. It works really well. We've had customers have some great success and, uh, if you're a limitless partner, you actually get a discount, um, a 10% discount, uh, just for being a limitless partner, and uh, yeah, so that's, that's the program.
Speaker 1:It's awesome and, for those of you listening, it works. In fact, the system works so well that when DT Roofing hires new sales reps, they put them on the system and within about six months they are generating all most of them are generating their own leads. It's proven, it works and, like Randy said, for limitless members you actually get a discount. So check out roofing referralscom. Let them know that you heard about them on the limitless roofing show, but it is worth a meeting at the very least. So, and if you're not, a member of.
Speaker 2:if you're not a member of limitless, you just go to limitlessroofinggroupcom and click on the appropriate link. They have both free memberships and they also have paid memberships that have more mastermind type relationships that you can tie in with people in the industry that really help you grow your business. But there are free memberships as well. To start out alone, it has so much value because you get access to all of these relationships that Limitless has created with these massive vendors like Atlas and Tamco and you know you've got shoot help me out with some of the other companies because I know you've added a bunch.
Speaker 2:Beacon is the newest one, srs, is you know they've negotiated on your behalf because of They've negotiated on your behalf because these vendors know that if they have access to 350 and growing roofing companies, that they're going to naturally get a lot of business from it. So, yeah, make sure you guys are joined on that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, I told Randy, for those of you listening. I told him while we were at the Chiefs Stadium he did a video promo and I was like, dang man, can you come sell for us? Totally joking, wouldn't want I am.
Speaker 2:Look, at the end of the day, I am a salesman at heart. I love selling. I miss it, but I also love seeing our the 70 families at our company smash it, and so, uh, if I have to step back and just be in more of a leadership role for that to happen, then then I'll do that yeah, well, we just can't.
Speaker 1:Guys like us that are wired to solve problems and persuade people to make the best decision well, we just can't help it. It's just the way we think. Right, you know, you research the information, you try to solve the problem and you've made a decision and that comes across as very persuasive. So we've got about 10 minutes left, I think. The last question I'd like to ask is you know we've we've covered an anti-fragile business model, how to do that big picture. We've covered finding the right people through relationships and making sure they're in the right seat. What about the role of faith Like? How does your relationship with God affect your leadership and just the way you relate to others in your, in your business?
Speaker 2:just the way you relate to others in your business. Well, for those of you that are followers of Christ, you know that Colossians 3.23 says that when you work, always work as if you're working for the Lord. And so if you truly believe what the Bible says and you follow it, then it's natural for a believing Christian to follow through with that. And so I felt, like me personally. That's what I do, I'm true to that, and at a fault sometimes, because I work my butt off Like there's. Oftentimes I'm up here until 10 o'clock at night, you know, because during the day I had so many people come into my office. I've even moved my office to the back corner of the building, away from the usual C-suite area, because I had so many people coming into my office to ask questions like, hey, how would you handle this and all that? And I would stop to give them the answer, but then I didn't get anything done that I was trying to get done. So I'd hey, babe, it's going to be a late night, I'll see you. You might be awake when I get home.
Speaker 2:But it really comes down to it makes for a much better culture, even if you're still. You're still pursuing God or you're not quite there yet. Even the biblical principles alone are are a suit a business. Well, because if you think about it, it talks about serving people well, loving on them. You know, doing the right thing with integrity. Those are all great attributes that a successful business has. Being in the community, you know, trying to help others. We don't have a shark tank type mentality in our sales team. I think I was sharing with you at the at the conference like our environment is in a and it gives my heart so much joy when I'm, when I'm seeing teams and one of the guys goes. Guys, my, my adjuster meeting at one o'clock went way over past what I thought. I'm not going to make my 2.30. Is there somebody that's going to be in a complantation that can go out? And guys are falling over themselves in the threads to go.
Speaker 1:I got it.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, you got it last time. I'll take this one, don't worry about it, and they're not going to get anything out of it. All they're helping out. Yeah, adjuster meeting went well. He said he'll have the scope of work to the customer within the next 48 hours, so just follow up with them or whatever. You know whatever the thing is, and they don't expect anything out of it, because they know their colleague is going to do the same thing for them the next time they need it, or if they're out of, they're on a. You know, adjusters must know when our vacations are scheduled, because I always want to schedule it right when we were going to be out of town, and so our guys will jump in for each other. So it just creates a much better environment, and when you have a strong, healthy culture within your company, it reflects onto your customers. And so you go to our Google review page. You're going to find almost 760 five-star reviews with a five-star 5.0 rating.
Speaker 2:Still, that is a direct reflection of how we run our company and how our people treat each other and our customer base. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. There's always going to be a point where you're going to fail somebody, or let's be real, there's some customers you're never going to make happy, no matter what. You could have walked in and did the job for free, and they'd still figure out a reason why there's a complaint. So that's just part of business. But overall, our reputation locally praise God is that we're a company that actually cares, we're not just there to collect a check and move on down the road, and so I think that's the reason why we continue to be successful, and so I think that's the reason why we continue to be successful. So that's where faith really plays a big part into our company's success is that the attributes of our faith are carried out within our company and through our staff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great, it's, it's, it's cool. You know you mentioned the biblical principles. Some of those principles are like stewardship You're held responsible for the time and the talent and the treasure that you've got. But another one is those relationships. So I'm just assuming that, because of who you are, you're attracting a lot of guys from, I mean, are you finding sales guys from church or from where are you building these relationships?
Speaker 2:Well, to compound the two topics, we talked a little bit about finding the right people. One of the things that we learned early on or I personally learned because I was doing a lot of the hiring for the sales guys was don't hire sales people. Don't hire. Now you may find that diamond in the rough that's a salesperson but also has the attributes you want, but don't. And randy brothers talked about this at the conference too. He's with the roofing Academy. I'm always branding everybody else, as you talked about. This is his shirt and that's the limitless hat, but I always have my swag on. But he talked about don't hire salespeople.
Speaker 2:Hire for integrity, for character, play wells with the other. That's what you need to be hiring for, because I can teach most anybody how to sell or how to use our process. Now, they have to have a certain personality. An introvert is not a good salesperson. Let's just be real. They have to have a certain personality. An introvert is not a good salesperson. Let's just be real.
Speaker 2:There's somebody that does a better job in the background, punching the you know, cranking the deal, pulling the widget, pressing the buttons and then clocking out at the end of the day and going home. That's their personality. They don't want to interact with people, so they do have to have excuse me, they do have to have an extrovert type of personality. But character integrity plays well with others of good moral. Uh, you know, compass.
Speaker 2:Those are the people that you need to focus on because in our, in our company, like just our top producer, year over year for the last several years he was a billboard construction crew boss for 16 years prior to working for us we have a teacher who smashes it. We have a firefighter who smashes it. Like these are all retired from those places. They came to work for us. That's where they retired from. They came to work for us, but a lot of them came in board during COVID when they didn't have a job anymore. You know, in the firefighter's case he retired, but most of our staff, our sales staff they didn't come from a sales background and they just met our requirements as far as having good moral, character and stuff, and so that's combined with our faith is kind of the reason is, I believe, a lot of the reason why we've been as successful as we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so good. It all comes back to relationships. Yes, what's what's what's one? As we wrap up, what's one parting piece of advice? You we've we've thrown a lot of people listening to this from growing multiple businesses, relationships, faith, stuff like that. What's one parting piece of advice you have for somebody listening to this? Well, one big thing you'd like them to take away.
Speaker 2:A big thing that I would share. I shared this at Limitless Summit and it sounds counterintuitive to my faith. Until you hear me explain it Never give anything away that you don't ask for something in return. And what I mean by that in business is if I just hand you this hat because you said I'll give you my business if you give me your hat, right, if I just take the hat off my head and hand it to you. I've said a few things. A couple of things I've said is one I've said that that hat has zero value to me because I was willing to just take it off and hand it to you for your business, and so it shows that it's not as important to me.
Speaker 2:So whenever you give something because sometimes we have to give to get right that includes in business. It's a relationship fact as well, but in business sometimes it's not even about what they're asking for. It's just they have been pre-wired that the art of negotiation is I want to get the last win, and so they may have the budget to do that X number of project, but they want to feel like they got a really good value, so they're going to ask for something else. So never give something away that you don't ask for something in return. So when I say, dylan, outside of me handing you my hat, do I have your business, put your hand out. When they shake your hand, as you're shaking their hand, you say we have an agreement, I will give you my hat in exchange for your business. But I need three. I need a review when we're all done and I need three referrals. Because I got to be able to buy another hat and that's a way that you can replace the value of my hat, even if I I may not get anything out of your. Your review might not ever elicit more business and your referrals may not need my services, but I had an opportunity to get more business from for the value of my hat.
Speaker 2:So what you're doing is you're showing that you're not just giving something up without showing that you that that thing had value, and you're asking them for something in return. When you do that, a lot of times you'll get way more than you than the value of what they asked for through those things, but you'll stop the customer from saying, well, if you were just willing to take your hat off, can I get your shirt too? Right, if you just, you know, proverbially dropped your pants, then they're going to be like well, what else can I get? His shirt, his hat, you know his shoes, so you set the tone right there. Here's my hat. If I give you my hat, do we have a deal? As they're shaking their hand, I'm going to need X, y or Z in exchange for whatever you asked for. So you're assigning value and that's ultimately what it comes down to. If you do that, then you're going to not only gain the benefit of those referrals and those in the review, but just stop the bleeding from them, come to continue to ask for more.
Speaker 1:That's good stuff. Don't give some something away without asking for something in return to to ensure that there's value there. That's really good. I like that Well, randy. Thank you for being on the show, man.
Speaker 2:Hey, it was a pleasure. I look forward to seeing you at RoofCon at the end of the month and seeing all the guys and anybody who's watching this Look forward to seeing you guys there. I have spoken with Diego Dante and there is zero question that they're having it. In fact, they continue to sell tickets for RoofCon, so if you're thinking about going, I'll see you there. I want to see you guys there. I'd love to meet you in person and shake your hand and you tell me your story and share how you can help my business. I'll share how I can help yours.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yep, limitless will be there too, so stop by both of our booths. You can join our buying group for free. Our mission is to give you the resources and relationships you need to achieve limitless success, and part of this is connecting you with people like Randy and the others in our group. So be sure to stop by our booth or go by LimitlessRoofingGroupcom, and we would love to help you become more profitable.
Speaker 2:And I'll end with something one of the Limitless cast members members say cast in harp. He says go kick today in the teeth. That's right.
Speaker 1:Let's kick this all right, thanks again, rady see ya.