Limitless Roofing Show
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Limitless Roofing Show
Mastering Retail Roofing Strategies
Are you curious about what it takes to thrive as a roofing contractor? In this episode, Luis Venegas, founder of Texas Stag Roofing, shares his incredible journey from having no background in roofing to establishing a successful company focused primarily on retail sales—even amidst the challenging storm market in Texas!
Luis reveals the importance of education in sales, emphasizing a consultative approach that empowers homeowners to understand the value behind their choices. He dives into the innovative strategies Texas Stag employs, including an in-house call center, to generate leads efficiently. This unique method not only yields numerous appointments but allows the company to retain control over their sales process.
Throughout the conversation, we tackle significant themes such as adapting to market shifts, the pros and cons of insurance versus retail roofing, and the importance of cultivating a knowledgeable team through the use of virtual assistants.
Join us for an insightful discussion that underscores how a shift in perspective and strategy can revolutionize a roofing business. After listening, we encourage you to think critically about your own approach—what unique value can you provide to your customers? Don't forget to subscribe and share your thoughts!
all right, we have got luis venegas on the show today from texas stag roofing.
Speaker 1:Luis, thanks for joining the show, man thank you for having me yeah, and so for those of you listening, luis is, he's a member of the limitless roofing group. He's also a member of our mastermind called Forged. He's also doing some really interesting things that a lot of roofers are not doing exceptionally well. He has a very unique approach to retail sales, even though he's in the Texas market. He also has some things he's doing with a call center that are unusual in a really good way, and so it's just been really cool to watch you grow your company, and so we'll get into some of that stuff. But before we do that, just give people a little bit of background, like who are you and how did you get into roofing?
Speaker 2:Well, I've been in roofing for about five years Actually, this month is our anniversary and I got into it because of a friend of mine, so I had zero roofing experience. When I started the company, I had a friend that had a roofing experience installing, you know, doing the labor part of it. And I was helping a painter at the time, a custom painter and we would just paint like mansions, right, like million dollar homes. And my friend was asking me why are you doing that for somebody else? Why don't you do it for yourself? You know you get in front of custom builders, you build a relationship, you get jobs from them. Why don't you do it for yourself? And I'm like I don't know how to paint, you know I can't do that kind of work. And he's like well, no, I know roofing, so we can get a roofing company started and then just see how it goes.
Speaker 2:It didn't take much, you know. I want to say maybe like a month after that we were already getting everything going and, uh, well, slowly, you know, I just started learning what everything was. I didn't know, like the parts of the roof, I didn't know anything whatsoever. And he has another business. So I want to say maybe like a year in, he had to step away to focus more on that other business, and so I really, really had to had to learn everything. That's how it all got started.
Speaker 1:That's a trial by fire for sure. Yes, it was. But you had started your own company at that point, or were you guys in some sort of a partnership, or how did that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's still my partner. Yeah, he's still involved. Well, he doesn't live here in Houston, but he's still, yeah, he's still involved. He's uh, well, he doesn't live here in houston but, uh, he's still involved with with the business, maybe not day-to-day, but he comes by maybe, uh, every month, every other month, you know something like that um, on calls, you know he still helps with the team and everything, so he's still involved nice.
Speaker 1:So he kind of helped you get going. But but then you really became the owner-operator. You put some serious energy and horsepower behind growing sales, making things happen. That's great. So tell us a little bit about Texas Stag. What kind of roofing company is it? Are you guys? Residential, commercial? A little bit of both.
Speaker 2:Mostly residential. I can probably count with my fingers how many commercial jobs we've done. It hasn't really been a focus. Every residential I mean commercial job that we've done, it pretty much landed on our lap. You know we haven't really pursued commercial, but this year that's changing. That's one of the goals for this year to this year to tap into commercial a little bit more.
Speaker 2:We, for the first three years, we were mostly retail. I want to say 95% of our volume was retail, until I didn't understand anything about insurance. I didn't know how to work, I didn't know how to communicate with adjusters, any of that. But I realized I was leaving a lot of money on the table. So I was like you know what? It's time to learn, it's time to adapt. So, yeah, we started doing insurance in 2000. At the end of 2023, 2024, we went pretty heavy in insurance. So now and I don't like it to be honest I freaking hate insurance. Work man, it's a total nightmare. So this year I want to have like a 50-50 split. I don't want to rely on insurance. If it was up to me, I would just do 100 retail, but I don't want to, you know, just so here's.
Speaker 1:Here's what makes you unusual in a really good way compared to you know we've got about 330 companies in our, in our buying group and our gpo you're one of the only guys I know that's in a storm would be considered a storm market in texas that is so focused on retail and you just started doing storm restoration work. So how did you get started into retail? And then you know why did you stick with that?
Speaker 2:well, um, the reason why we do things very outside the box or the unusual way is because I didn't really have a mentor, you know, to guide me through. This is how you do roofing, right. So I I have experience in sales. I've been selling for for a long time right, have experience in sales, I've been selling for a long time, right. And so when I hear we do roofing, now like this is what we're into, what do I do? Well, I got to go sell a roof, right. So I will talk to people like hey, it looks like you need a roof, I can finance it, let's do it. You know, like that's pretty much how you get started.
Speaker 2:I didn't understand the insurance world, right, and the storm chasing and none of that. And just, I looked into it a little bit and it seems so complicated and I didn't want to wait to learn at all. But I was like you know what, let me just go this route where people pay cash, they finance whatever. And if it was insurance, I would just go meet with the fuel adjuster and if it gets approved, great. And if it doesn't, it doesn't right. Then I finance it, and if it gets approved, I just wait to collect the check. I wouldn't communicate with the carrier at all.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So with retail, though, your sales process is a lot different. So tell us about that. Like what is your retail sales process? What's your typical close rate? Not for you personally, but for your typical sales guy, because your close rate is going to be way higher, but what does it look like? What's the sales process look like? What close rate are you going for Stuff like that?
Speaker 2:Well, we use SumoQuote for our presentations and I made the SumoQuote in a way that the sales rep just has to follow page after page. They don't have to memorize the process. They pretty much have a reminder every step of the way on what to say, what to touch on, what to explain. So we go a lot into education. We have a more educational approach. It's not like oh yeah, this is the shingle and this is the prize. What do you want to do? No, it's not like that. So we explain what the tariff looks like. We explain why removing the other label is important, why inspecting the decking is important, why the different shingles are important, what impact resistance means, what the hip and ridge, why the starter is important, what the drippage does. We go into a lot of detail because nobody else is doing that. That's how we build value right. So we still on retail. We still hit the margins that we hit on insurance. So we don't sacrifice money when we go retail, which is something that I hear a lot with other contractors. That was because I have to go really low.
Speaker 2:I have to compete with Chuck in a truck. It's like why Are you, Chuck, in a truck? Why are you lowering yourself to that level. Why are you competing with that guy? Like? You guys are not on the same playing field, Like? Why do that to yourself? Well, it's because the homeowner just wants the cheapest. Do they Like? Do they understand what they're getting with that Like? You need to educate them and explain why your price is higher.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? That means that I'm going to answer the phone when something goes wrong. That means that you can find me on Google. That means that you can find me in the Chamber of Commerce. You can find me on Directory. You can find me on NRCA. Can you find Chuck in a truck somewhere else? Or is it just his cell phone number? And if he changes his number, you'll never hear from him again. You know, these are the risks that you take. Where does chuck get his material? Does he have any warranties, like all these things that homeowners don't understand. These homeowners they're not experts in roofing, right? It's, uh, really easy for us to forget what people don't know, right, like you, you roofing, you know what everything is and you just assume that people maybe not know as much as you do, but that have a basic understanding of what you're doing and they don't. So that's our main approach is educating the homeowner and when they say, that's so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, go ahead homeowner, and when they say, well, I still want to collect more estimates, oh, that is great. Please do that. Way you can see why we are better than everybody else, right? So we just blow it out of the water with a presentation, because we know that nobody else is going to explain it the way that we do, and we prep them all right. So make sure that you ask, can ask them this, this and this what kind of shingle are they using? How are they installing it? Are they going to clean up afterwards? Do they have this? Do they have that? Make sure that you ask these questions, okay, okay, they call us later. They're like well, you were the most expensive of them all, but I want to go with you. Why? Because they feel safe with us, right?
Speaker 1:They understand the value behind the price. No, that's so good. And you know we just had our second annual Limitless Roofing Summit, but the first one, a year and a half ago, I invited you to speak at because you broke down your sales process in detail and your educational approach. You guys are even bringing like a miniature version of a roof system and you're showing them this is the shingles, this is the underlayment, this is the decking, here's some things you need to look for. And you're bringing this educational approach to the point to where, when they do talk to someone else, you guys are coming out of the gate so strong as experts. When they talk to somebody else, there's no way they're going to go with them.
Speaker 1:And I think about that with anything. I mean like I think about when I threw my back out doing jujitsu about 10 years ago and I was really getting into it, loved it, but my back pain started ratcheting up and my back started getting more and more stiff and then it got so bad to where I couldn't even get out of bed one day, and it's like dang, I guess I need to chill out on the jujitsu and it just got worse from there to the point to where I couldn't walk. I laid on my back for about a week and then went to go see a neurosurgeon and took they took x-rays and did all that stuff. And she's like, well, you've got two options. You can either cut off the you know your disc is herniated. You've got it. Your disc is protruding. That's why you're feeling all this sciatic nerve pain going down the left leg and it feels like somebody's poking you with a hot iron. That's nerve pain.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, okay, what do we do? Because I'm walking around like a zombie, like I can't function anymore. My, I can't even drive my car. My wife has to drive me somewhere. It takes me five minutes to just get in in the car. So she's like you can cut off the protruded part of the disc or just leave it alone. It's not going to get any worse. And this is a woman who's been through a lot of school I mean to be a neurosurgeon the amount of years in school after medical school. I was just like so disappointed by her analysis and her recommendation. So I started looking around online and I find this chiropractor that specializes in herniated discs and does this thing called decompression therapy. So I go to see this guy.
Speaker 1:His whole approach was, just like you're saying, extremely educational. He asked me, I was there for an hour. He asked me a ton of questions and then he started telling me here's our process. We're going to take x-rays of your neck, your back, we're going to do alignment, we're going to weigh you on a scale that weighs your right foot, your left foot, all these other things. And then here's my approach and he's like, and I'm going to tell you right out of the gate, I am not the cheapest. He said my services are pretty expensive and it's not going to be covered by insurance. Insurance companies aren't up to date on the best treatments, he's like. But I'll let me show you this. He handed me a binder, this thick of customer testimonials handwritten, and I'm just reading person after person going.
Speaker 1:I couldn't walk. I went to see this doctor and after two months I was completely back to normal. Just after one after another, after another. So I've been sold through education and sold on testimonials. And, man, I started going to see this guy three times a week and within two months my life was totally back to normal Zero back pain. It was done.
Speaker 1:But I went with the most expensive option I could find it was like $3,000 out of pocket for two months of therapy, but it changed, it saved my life and so I talked to people, I talked to people, I, I talked to other roofing members in our in the limitless group about this and they'll get in these issues of well, how do you sell against price? And it's like man, you should never get in a price war. You should totally be selling on value and educating the homeowner to the point. Like I know your presentation presentation. Once they see your presentation at texas stag, anybody else who comes to present, it's going to be like black and white versus color tv. So it's gonna look it's the homeowners and like, uh, like you know, 10 minutes in they're gonna be like I don't know yeah, exactly that's.
Speaker 2:That's the goal.
Speaker 1:That's that's pretty much how we want to do it so what are the pros and cons of retail versus insurance? Because, as somebody who came into the industry from the outside, with every roofing company I engage with, I think we ask them all these questions like what kind of work are you doing Retail versus insurance work, stuff like that? And with a heavy membership group in Texas, most of the guys in our group are doing almost 100% storm restoration work, and so what would you say to guys that are listening to this what are the pros and cons of just doing retail or just doing storm?
Speaker 2:work Well. Number one you've got to make sure that your service and your product is solid right, because obviously, if you're going to sell on value, you've got to make sure that your service and your product is solid right, because obviously, if you're going to sell on value, the value has to be there. It's not about over-promising and then not being able to deliver right. That would be the number one thing that you can deliver on the value that you're promising, right, and then having the confidence that your service, your product, is that good, like that you don't have to worry about oh man. Well, I'm telling them this, but what if it doesn't go like that? Right? What if we have issues? What if they have problems? What if? No? Like you need to have the confidence, because otherwise, how can you present a number that is going to be higher than everybody else more than likely if they're trying to show up on price, like most people do and be able to give them that number and be like yeah, that's what this is, and this is the reason why, instead of like oh man, yeah, well, yeah, man is $3,000 more, you know. Like that's not confident at all, it's just having the confidence and the pros, I would say no cash flow issues.
Speaker 2:You finish the job, you get paid period On to the next one. You don't have to request recoverable depreciation supplements, none of that. You finish the job, you get paid period. Like the workflow, the life of a project, you know, on retail is probably about a week with us, from the moment that we sign it to the moment that we deliver the warranty certificates. But if we compare it with insurance, we still have claims that we signed back in July that don't have approval yet, you know. So that's the difference. That's why I love retail. Everybody loves cash and you know cash is king, right? Without cash flow, there's nothing.
Speaker 2:So the con I would say you have to be able to replicate yourself, right? You got to have a mini-me that can present the same way that you do, that has the same confidence that you do, that has the same knowledge that you do. So that takes a little bit of time. You can't just hire someone and be like, okay, go knock doors and you're going to tell them that the insurance is going to take care of it. They just have to pay their deductible and that's it. No, it's a lot different because with insurance, technically, as long as nobody is waiving deductibles, my cost is going to be the same, right? It doesn't mean if you go with me, you go with Chuck. When you go with my competitor, you're just paying your deductible, those $5,000, that's how much you're going to pay.
Speaker 2:It's just about who's going to do the better job, right, but on retail, no, it's a whole other skill set. You need to be able to read them, you need to be able to educate them, have the patience to answer questions and actually have the knowledge to break down the process and every material that is going to be on the roof. So I don't I don't want to say that it's a con, but it's something that is going to take more time and effort. That's why it took us so long to put a sales team together yeah, I know, I look at that I.
Speaker 1:when I got into roofing four years ago it was selling roofs and I'd been in sales for about 15 years uh, predominantly sales, and then some sales before that. But I remember selling my first few roofs and thinking, man, this is the easiest thing I've ever sold. I mean, I'm in Dallas and the whole sales process in Dallas for most roofing companies is well, I'll tell you what. Let's do an inspection of your roof. Yeah, it looks like it's pretty damaged.
Speaker 1:You may want to file a claim, know, and that's it and it's like you know, you're, like you said, your deductible and and it is the issue um, of course, most deductibles have gone up to two percent or more at this time now, but back then they were almost all of them were one percent and but even then you can finance the, the deductible if you need to. So what would you? So why aren't more roofing companies selling retail? I mean, to me it's a no-brainer, it's like don't be a one-trick pony, don't just focus on insurance claims. Have an actual sales process and system and sell value with retail and get paid, like you said, cash. You've got to have cash. So why don't more guys do it?
Speaker 2:I think it's, you know, just going after the low-hanging fruit. You know, Like we have probably like 90% closing rate on insurance. If we go to an appointment and it's insurance, it's in the bag, it's like there's no question why? Because we go through the same process, same education process that we do on retail, on insurance. So you can only imagine, right, so it's a lot easier to close, right, it's a lot easier to sell In retail.
Speaker 2:I think it's just more complicated and most of the guys try to compete on price. You know just what we were talking about a minute ago. And that's not the point, because then you're pretty much enabling truck in a truck, like by competing with those prices you make it normal. So we go to an appointment and so they have an estimate for $8,000, another one for $9,000. They have one for $12,000, and let's say that we're at $13,000, right?
Speaker 2:So if everybody's trying to compete with Chuck, what is the homeowner going to think? Well, that is the normal price, that's how much my roof should be. But if we all legitimate roofing companies have our prices aligned same as insurance, and we say, no, your roof is going to be $13,000, $12,000, and the chug shows up with an $8,000 estimate, then no homeowner is going to see that as a red flag. They're going to be like wait, wait a minute, what do you mean? It's $8,000? What's up with that? And then we can be like, well, yeah, exactly, don't you think that's a little weird? I mean, what do you think is going to put on your roof?
Speaker 2:But if we all try to match those prices with better quality material, with better workmanship, with actual warranties, insured, with workers' comp and all these things, it doesn't make sense. I think we just need to come together and put a stop to the low prices. With the low margins. There's no way to run a business. That's why, if you tell me, if I do insurance, I have a 50% profit margin, but if I do retail, I have a 20% profit margin, I'm going to do insurance all day, right. But if we all get together and we're all doing the same margins on retail yeah, of course Then the whole industry is going to shift Right.
Speaker 1:No for sure. And where are you guys? So you're going to get more of a mix this year, maybe 50-50 or even more weighted toward retail. So where do you guys hope to land revenue wise in the next couple of years?
Speaker 2:You know, and then from there just kind of reevaluate, recalibrate and make sure that we are ready to scale from there, because I feel like that's a huge milestone and I don't think it's the same scaling from 10 to 15 or 20.
Speaker 1:So yeah, no, that's great, yeah, and so we. So you guys have got the retail sales process down, and going from that to storm work is you're going to a simplified process. So you guys are doing great at that. But you guys have, yeah, it's easy to sell a roof, but then, like you said, all the back and forth with with adjusters and carriers and waiting on checks it's just brutal sometimes.
Speaker 1:But I want to get into what you guys are doing for lead generation, because who cares if you can't sell, if you're not bringing in leads? And you've done something very unusual and unique there. But before we get into that, you're the company owner. You're growing a growing company. You've built a strong team. You're doing stuff with us to improve. So I know you're going to be one of these roofing owners and leaders that's going to have a great company. Like you're getting into some EOS. You're getting into Culture Index, you're getting into, you know, mastermind. Like you're doing everything you can to go to the next level and remove the limits on your leadership and on your success. So, at this stage, though, what keeps you up at night? Like what are those 1 am or 2 am issues that you wake up and you just that's it. You start thinking about that issue with your company.
Speaker 2:Well, I sleep pretty well. Well, I sleep pretty well. The things that right now are a challenge is the insurance it's, getting the recovery, depreciation release, it's, you know, all that going back and forth. I just I hate it, man. I don't know how other people do it the same way that it's confusing or odd for other contractors that we just do retail or that we like retail more. It blows my mind how contractors deal with this BS, you know, with the adjusters and all that. It's just a freaking nightmare, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know.
Speaker 2:Just to retail and having the quick turnaround and then going to now, the process takes months. That's a I want to say. We have about right now, probably 70 to 80,000 that we're waiting on recover depreciation to be released. That is over 60 days and it's like wow and you just feel like our hands are tied right, Like we are doing everything by the book, but the adjuster is just like playing games, right. So I guess that would be the thing that it's one of the biggest challenges right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, you've got a desk adjuster that's probably never walked on a roof in his life or her life. Might have been a pastry chef before getting that job, and now you're trying to educate him on what a roof should cost. It's just so. It's so frustrating. So how are you overcoming that challenge? I mean, are you guys working with a supplementing company or are you trying to get somebody in-house trained? How are you dealing with that?
Speaker 2:So we were working with a supplementing company, but I want to say, 90% of the insurance jobs that we sold last year we ended up sending to a PA, because we know if it's State Farm we don't even try. We already know how it's going to go, so we don't waste our time, we send it straight to the PA. Allstate same thing. I don't know why, but most of our volume was Allstate. So, yeah, most claims ended up tied up with Public Adjuster. I want to say right now we have about 35 claims with attorney. So yeah, so yeah, whether we have a PA or we handle the claim with a supplement company, the recovery still takes forever, no matter what. So we're playing with different ideas and today, during the call with Steve, um, I picked this brain. I was like, hey, well, what if we do this? What do we do that? Well, yeah, that's a great idea. That won't work. Don't waste your time. I'm like, okay, cool. So yeah, we, we learned a lot on that call that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for those of you listening luis is talking about, one of our mastermind meetings was was solely focused on insurance work today with Steve Patrick so, yeah, that's great, man. So let's get into what you're doing to generate leads and I mean, I was picking your brain on this yesterday because you're doing something that really could apply to any, I don't care what kind of business you have roofing, hvac, plumbing, healthcare this could apply. So how are you guys generating leads? Because most guys are spending money on Google ads. What are you doing? That's different.
Speaker 2:So we're doing Google ads as well. We're doing Facebook ads, but our number one lead generator is our call center by far. Like it doesn't even come close. Like I'm pulling up the numbers right now Back in November we got 53 appointments out of the call center seven appointments from Facebook, four appointments from Google ads, three appointments from our SEO. Wow.
Speaker 1:So over 50 appointments in one month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the call center just blows it out of the water.
Speaker 1:What's your cost per booked appointment?
Speaker 2:Cost per booked appointment at the call center $141.
Speaker 1:Wow, and I imagine, off the Facebook appointments and stuff like that. Let's say you get half of them to no show or whatever. I assume the cost per booked appointment is way higher.
Speaker 2:Well, actually no, it would be Well. Ok, so we have the appointments and then we have the actual shows, right? Because out of the appointments that we have, not everybody shows up, or some people they're not home, whatever Right. Or some people they're not home, whatever right. So we have a 68% show rate on the appointments that we book from the call center, which is crazy. So, out of the actual, presentations.
Speaker 1:You know from the people that we actually meet with that's $141. Okay, and so when you said our call center, you've built your own. You're not outsourcing this to some call center?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, they're company employees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so how?
Speaker 2:in the world did you do that? Where did you get that idea and how did you do that? So it all started with the VAs, right? I hired VAs since my first year in business because it was great for me, because I was out there doing everything right Selling, estimating, measuring, project management, everything right.
Speaker 2:And so I would go sell and then night I would put the estimates together, you know. So I barely slept. So like, this is not going to work. I can't scale like this, right. So then I looked into getting VAs and then, just being in that world, right, I realized that a lot of them had a cold calling experience and I'm like tell me more about that. How does that work? Yeah, you know the telemarketers and like all the calls that we get. I started looking into it more and there's a lot of industries that do really well with cold callings and I'm like, man, really, maybe it's worth a shot. Let's see how this goes.
Speaker 2:I hired quite a few agents to call and it didn't go that well. I tried, it failed, I pretty much gave up on it and then I was like you know what? No, if other people are having success with it, there's a way. I just got to find it, I just got to figure this out. I will try it again. Some did good, some didn't.
Speaker 2:It took a lot of trial and error, a lot of money that was spent until I found a couple agents that were performing great One of them. So I remember the last well, not the last, but when I hired these three agents, there was two that had a lot of experience in, one that barely had any experience cold calling, and I'm like you know what? That's the guy that's not going to make it Like, that's probably the one that we're going to get rid of and I'm going to keep the other two. The opposite happened. So this guy's work ethic and, plus, he's very coachable. So I would listen to the calls, I would review the calls and I'd be like, okay, this is where it went wrong. Like they told you this and you said this, or you didn't know how to answer this. So next time say this right, okay, okay, okay. So I could see how he was improving and improving and improving. And then I was like, all right time to get the next one.
Speaker 2:But instead of hiring one that had experience, we hired one with no cold calling experience. So like, all right, let's train them from scratch so they don't bring any bad habits any you know. So that was the second one. I'm like, all right, let's do it again, let's get the third one. And then that one guy, the one that had the least amount of experience, is now the one running the call center, like he's the manager call center, but he's the manager. So it's just about having the patience to coach them, and you got to keep an eye on them and make sure that they know what they're doing, that they have the knowledge. So now we have a system put together that is kind of like plug and play we hire someone, we put them through the training process. It takes a week. We just hired two new agents two weeks ago. Their first week, first day. They made two appointments each With no cold calling experience. We pay them $3 an hour, plus bonuses.
Speaker 2:So my cost on the call center is $5,000 each month. And that's with how many people, that is, with six people.
Speaker 1:Six people, and that includes their hourly rate plus bonuses. Yes, and so you're spending about, and they work 40 hours a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're paying these six people to cold call. They're setting appointments all day long. How many with two additional people? How many appointments do you think you're going to get next?
Speaker 2:month. So they have a minimum goal of five appointments a week For you to stay on the team. You've got to hit those goals. Plus, we have a 50% show rate as a goal as well, which most of the time they kill it. I want to say your average is probably about 62-65% show rate, but if anybody drops below 50%, we coach them, we try to find the problem. If it's not for them, because it's not going to be for everybody, then we let them go and just get another one.
Speaker 1:So, out of those 50 appointments, how many jobs do you think you got out of that? And what's the ROI that you're shooting for with all this?
Speaker 2:Well, so we had five signatures out of those 53, and that was in November. So that's the slow season, right season, right. Um, on these, I don't have the total like uh, what the revenue was here handy, so I can't tell you what the ROI was, but let's assume that each one it was shoot at low, at 18,000 each roof times five. You're looking at $90,000 in revenue with a $5,000 investment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's killer, I mean it's just I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is why I was asking you well, luis, what do I need to do to start my own call center? Yeah, I mean it's, it's a we're going to. You know, we're running Facebook ads as well and we're using the same company. You are sales gadget with, uh, aaron Thomas. And, by the way, for those of you listening to this, uh, we have a special programs we have as a group purchasing organization. We have group discounts on everything from shingles to marketing and lead gen, and sales gadget is one of our marketing and lead gen partners, and we actually personally use them, and so does luis at texas stag, I know you guys are just getting started with them.
Speaker 1:So it's probably too soon to kind of report on customer testimonial, but, um, we've been very happy, very happy. So so you've got this call center rocking and rolling and you have these, these agents that you get, that you train, and everything. Is there a specific country that you try to work with when it comes to vas? Uh?
Speaker 2:I have vas in venezuela, honduras and mexico, um, so, since we're in houston, I I always get vas that are bilingual english and spanish, because there's a lot of Latino, you know, it's a big Latino community here in this area, so it just makes sense, you know, for us to have someone that well, everybody speaks Spanish in the back office. All the agents that are cold calling are in Venezuela, every single one.
Speaker 1:That's wild. Yeah, I think a lot of people, when they think VAs, they're thinking Philippines, because the Philippines is just known for having a lot of VAs.
Speaker 2:But it makes perfect sense if you're in Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you're in Texas, I mean, I think about that. If I started a roofing company, I would want somebody that's bilingual. That would be huge, especially in Houston. I grew up in Houston, so I'm kind of kicking myself for not learning Spanish earlier. It would be so helpful to know Spanish. Living in Houston.
Speaker 2:You have yourself a VA that can teach you.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, man, that's great. So you've got the retail sales part rocking and rolling, you've got this call center. You're you're growing your company and your team. What's what's one of the biggest things that you've done? And maybe it's been the stuff we've already talked about, but like what's been one of the biggest game changers for you as a business owner to help you get to where you want to go with your business as a business owner, to help you get to where you want to go with your business.
Speaker 2:um, I mean, I I'm gonna go back to the same thing, man the va's. I think they give you a huge advantage, not not specifically the call center, which I mean it is right, but like the whole back office is run by DIs, that really, really, really, really helped us scale. Because, as a business owner, you know when you're like a one-man show to make that transition into all right now I need to hire staff. Can I afford that staff? And I had to train that staff. But if I don't hire that staff, I can't grow because I'm doing everything by myself. But if I don't hire that staff, I can't grow because I'm doing everything by myself.
Speaker 2:So it's a scary step, right, especially when you haven't done it before. So when you hire a VA that you can pay I don't know if you have a Filipino that can work full-time for $300, $400 a month I mean, come on, because you're not going to find someone in the States that can do it for that much, that's willing to do it for that much, right? So that is a huge stepping stone to help you get to the next level. That was the plan. But now everything is ran by VAs in our company, you know, except sales right, like obviously we need someone to go get on the roofs and everything. But we have a total of, I want to say about 13, 14 VAs.
Speaker 1:That's a lot. I mean most companies might have one or two, but I can't imagine. I mean I, I can only imagine your net profit I mean true net profit at the end of the year is probably a lot healthier than the average roofing company uh, not yet.
Speaker 2:Not yet because we reallocate that money right. So it's money that we can put into marketing, that we can put into, you know, investing into within the vehicle. You know, because we're in the growing stages so we're not at a point that, all right, we're saving money that is going to go into profits, like no, we're not there yet, but it's what is allowing us to. You know, we have an office, we have, you know, uh, we have three trucks, we have all these things, and that is what's allowed us, because can you imagine having 14 people here in the States on payroll Dude? That would be insane payroll, you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, that's some serious overhead, but yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. You're in growth mode. You're not going out and buying yourself a, a brand new truck and a lake house, you're putting money back in the homeowner away, not just as decent, I mean something that blows them away to where, when somebody else comes along, you're glad that they do, because there's no way they can compete with your approach. And number two, consider using VAs. And if you guys want to interact more with Luis, we have a member community and you can join the conversation. You can ask him well, what about this, what about that, how do I do this? And you can hear from other members. We have a few different members in our group that are using VAs on another level, kind of like you are Luis. But, man, before we end this discussion, if you could give the other company owners one parting piece of advice based on what you've learned so far, what would it be?
Speaker 2:To join Limitless, pretty much. So. No, and it's not even you know because we're in this podcast, right, even if I was somewhere else, if you are new to the industry, if you're barely getting your roofing company started, if I had been part of a group like Limitless when I got started with roofing, we would be at another level right now Because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know if I could reach out to it. I didn't know who to reach out to. I didn't know anybody else in roofing. If I could reach out to it, I didn't know who to reach out to. I didn't know anybody else in roofing. And then Facebook.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's mostly haters, you know. So just being part of a community like this and people that are willing to help, willing and able to help, it's huge man. It's a huge advantage, especially when you're new, because you don't know what's what. You don't know left from right, up from down. So just having other business owners that have been through all this BS before that can guide you and tell you what to do, what not to do, how to do it, so you don't have to learn the hard way, that is just the biggest advantage that you can have as a new roofing business owner.
Speaker 1:That's huge man. Yeah, thanks for calling that out. We appreciate you being a member. And yeah, for those of you listening to this, the Limitless Roofing Group, we're a group purchasing organization, which means we bring hundreds of roofing companies together. We go to suppliers and vendors, we negotiate group deals, discounts, programs and we pass that along to our members and it's free to join. It's kind of like Costco you join, you save, and it's that simple.
Speaker 1:At the time of the recording of this podcast, there's not even a fee to join. We're probably going to change that pretty soon. Just because psychologically, I think people think, oh, it's free, it must be some kind of a scam. So it's like, okay, well, we'll charge people. If it gives people more peace of mind, it's free to join. But then, if you want it, that's to get all the buying power, the discounts programs with Beacon, srs, our fleet program with discount tires, our discounts on general liability insurance and everything in between. But if you want to join the community and network and share best practices with guys like Luis and other members, that is a paid experience. But we want to make sure the ROI is solid.
Speaker 1:Going back to what Luis said, it's not free, but we think that if you invest in yourself and invest your company, it could be the biggest turning point in your journey, because you can finally ask questions and get feedback on your pressing challenges and grow your company with a team of owners and not make those decisions on your own. I really think that's. The biggest challenge to any business owner is isolation. I mean, we're surrounding ourselves with wise counsel and I think, my gosh, how did we make it this far without this counsel we just received this week? You know, it's just. You just don't know what you don't know as a business owner. So anyway, man, I really appreciate that, luis, and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be on the show. For those of you listening, I just want to challenge you get into some retail get into some VAs, you'll be glad you did.
Speaker 2:And Luis, thanks for being on the show. Man, of course, man, thank you for having me.