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
From Football Coach to Roofing Consultant: Ken Blankenship's Journey
What happens when a football coach with 32 seasons of experience decides to tackle the roofing industry? Ken Blankenship's remarkable journey from coaching NFL players to building Superior Roofing offers powerful lessons for anyone struggling with sales teams, business growth, or finding meaning in their work.
Ken entered roofing in 2018 without knowing what drip edge or underlayment was—yet made nearly $400,000 in commissions his first year. His secret wasn't technical knowledge but a deeply human approach to sales. "Everything is about relationship building," Ken explains. "If you don't know how to handle that human interaction, it wears on you mentally and emotionally."
The conversation reveals why door-to-door sales feels so challenging despite being physically simple. Ken's coaching background shines through as he shares techniques for handling rejection, reading subtle client cues, and transforming confrontational moments into meaningful connections. His story about knocking on doors after they've been slammed in his face—offering compassion rather than sales pitches—illustrates the power of genuine human concern in business.
Having launched Superior Roofing's residential division just months before this conversation, Ken's fresh perspective on growth challenges resonates with both new and established business owners. His "five-minute rule" for handling disappointment and failure offers practical wisdom for anyone facing setbacks. The episode culminates with a fascinating story about eating off strangers' plates at a high-end restaurant that perfectly encapsulates Ken's philosophy: "What's the worst that can happen when you try?"
Whether you're in roofing, sales, leadership, or simply interested in building better relationships, this conversation offers rare insights into growing businesses through genuine human connection. As Ken puts it, "I'd rather try and fail than not try at all."
all right, welcome to the limitless roofing show. Today we have mr ken blankenship from superior and we're going to just talk about what it's like to grow roofing businesses. Just the, the hard stuff, the good stuff, the dream, everything we learn along the way. So, ken, thanks for joining the show, man. Hey, thank you, man, I really do appreciate the opportunity, for sure.
Speaker 1:All right. So Mr Ken is involved in a few different things, does some consulting for other roofing companies, loves to teach, loves to serve, and you've done a lot of things over the years. So let's just give a little bit of your background story. How'd you get into roofing? How long you been in roofing Stuff like that Sure.
Speaker 2:So one of the things you know most people that know me call me coach, right, so I'm an old football coach. I coach from every level, from the NFL all the way down to seven, eight, nine-year-old kids, and so you know, in that coaching and I've been coaching for, you know, 30, I think I coached 32 seasons, and so you know, one of the things that I was real big on is making better men for others. That was kind of my mantra, right was we're going to build better men for others and I hope you know people from the NFL even all the way down in that mindset and learning how to become a better man, right, and that is being a good servant, being a better, you know, husband, father, son, you know, boyfriend, whatever, you know, it's just being a better person. And so you know, I've taken that and I and I utilize that in my business principles as well, and so everybody calls me coach and and that's what I do, man is I coach, I coach people, you know, I just try to try to teach them to be, to be better today than they were yesterday and and so that's kind of the, the, the, the short introduction. But but no, man, you know I got into roofing.
Speaker 2:I was in the HVAC business for 22 years, kind of did the same thing there, right, a lot of sales training, sales management. I did business development, a lot of sales training, sales management. I did business development. I did regional sales training for the three major manufacturers, which is Lenox, train and Carrier, and in those trainings, you know, we connected with a lot of contractors and obviously, you know, it kind of morphed into now I'm doing consulting for those guys as well. And so I was in Billings, montana, living there. I moved there in 2012.
Speaker 2:I'm originally from Arizona, but in 2012, I moved to Montana HVAC and in 2018, a big storm hit. A big hailstorm hit and big hail storm, and I was, you know, able to get a lot of the HVAC bought just by understanding a little bit about the insurance and then also sitting down with some adjusters and saying, hey, what do I got to do? You know, I mean you guys don't understand what dings in a condenser does for an AC system. You don't know what it does, what a ding on the refrigerant line does, right, it reduces capacity. And so, you know, with their help, I was able to develop a really nice letter that I would send my estimates in these letters and I was getting everything bought and so I had a couple of roofing contractors that I was, you know, doing some, some just as a subcontractor for them.
Speaker 2:You know I was handling all their HVC work and a buddy of mine said, hey, man, this was in uh 2018, 2019 area. He said, hey, you know, I'm looking for somebody to help me out with sales. I know you do sales training and all this is a small one man gig. You know it was him, his brother and his father and um. You know I think they they had done two or two and a half, I think 2.5 million. Um was kind of their their best year, and but they hovered right around that one and a half million dollar mark. And so he says, man, I've got so many leads and I don't have any salespeople. And so he says, would you run some leads for me?
Speaker 1:I knew nothing about roofing.
Speaker 2:My first year in roofing I couldn't tell you what drip edge was, I didn't know what underlayment was, I had no idea what any of this stuff was, but I had a sales process and so I was able to utilize my sales experience, you know. I mean, if you've got a process right. I'm not a script guy, but I'm a process guy. And so you know, when you have a process down, it doesn't matter what you're selling, you sell anything. And so started making real money, comparative. You know, my first year I did almost 400,000 in commissions in this business and you know it was, it was eyeopening. You know. I thought it's this easy to sell this much, you know, and and and it was kind of a to be honest with you, because it just happened that it was the right time, right place, right storm, and you know, so on and so forth. So I thought, man, you know what I might make, the jump out of HVAC and do this, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2:And so I worked with him for, you know, about a year, almost a year, and you know money, money changes people and it's one of the things that when I'm doing my consulting with roofing contractors, I let them know man don't let the money change you, because it will right. Money and power does change people. So long story short, man, I jumped into that the business and and I said, look, if I can do this for this guy, I can do this for anybody. And so I just started reaching out and I developed a sales team of of about you know six, on average six to 10 guys at a time, and I would go in and we would do sales for roofing contractors. I'd get a contract written up and say, hey, you know what are your goals and all of that. And then I found out that a lot of roofing contractors, they want the sales part of it because they're not, they don't know how to do it or they're very, they don't really want to deal with the sales person. And so, you know, I just jumped into that man and started realizing that they wanted the sales but they couldn't handle on the back end, they couldn't handle the production. And so when you take a company that's doing, let's say, 500,000 or a million a year in in roofs, maybe they're doing 40 or 50 roofs a year and all of a sudden you put 200 roofs on them that there becomes a bottleneck, it becomes an issue if there's no process there. And so then I started realizing that that was happening with our guys, because our guys would go out and sell, sell a lot of product, but then all of a sudden it's like I don't know what to do so then. So now it turned into consulting, like okay, now I'm going to show you how to go from from this turn from the you know, sales turnover to production, to ar, you know, to final closing out, doing the right things, and that.
Speaker 2:So, uh, developed a system for that and a process for that, and and and that was kind of my stick man. I would go in, we'd say, hey, can you handle this? If you can't, I can help you with that. We can put together you know a process and let's go. And so that's kind of where it started.
Speaker 2:We started doing that and then, you know, I just kind of got tired of working for other people, you know, and and there's, you know, I mean I hate to say, but there's a lot of shady people in this industry and I got tired of, you know, being ripped off and I got tired of working with other people and one of my really close friends said Ken, you should start your own thing, man. And so, you know, I have a good buddy of mine that owns Superior Commercial Contracting. And he said look, man, I'm trying to build a residential division. Let's build this thing together, you know. And so he handles all the commercial stuff. You know, he's handling it. Right now he's running five offices in Atlanta, georgia, the Georgia Florida area. And he said, man, I really like that Texas market and I was already here. And so I said, man, I'd like to be in this area. So we did, man, we'd like to be in this area. So we, that's what we did, man. We started it up and got after it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. So you guys teamed up. He's keeping the commercial on its rails and you're growing the residential side Right? When did you officially come in to start growing the residential division? Was that 2019 or 2020?
Speaker 2:No, so I did the consulting and sales side of things up until 23. And then in 23, november of 23, is when I jumped into this with him.
Speaker 1:Man. That's great, and sorry for anybody listening to this. If you hear my dog, I'm sitting in my backyard. We have a year and a half old Labrador retriever. That's a very energetic. He's rowdy, so so what are your goals for the residential Like? Where are you, where are you guys hoping to land revenue wise this year and where do you hope to be within about three years?
Speaker 2:So our first year we did right at a million. You know I have a lot of traveling sales guys that work with me. You know they've been working with me for quite some time and when these storms hit closer to their homes, you know obviously they go home. So you know one of the challenges that I've been having in the Central Texas market is hiring. You know good people that live in the area, and so you know we decided to plant a flag here and then work from here, and so you know when.
Speaker 2:So we did right at a million our first year in, and this year I think we're going to do probably close to three. That's kind of my goal. I've got a really good team behind us now. So I think we're going to we're going to probably be right at about about three million, and then ultimately, what I'd like to do now we are starting to get into some more in this summer may grow exponentially, depending on you know what we find, but we're starting to get into some multifamily opportunities, and so we're. You know who knows where it can go, but that's kind of my goal is three3 million this year, maybe $5 million next year, and then you know me personally. I'm perfectly happy in that five. It's kind of a sweet spot right, that $5 to $6 million a year. A sweet spot where you're not having to work 100 hours a week and, you know, have a little bit of flexibility and still make a very good margin. So it's kind of kind of what we're, what we're hoping for that's great.
Speaker 1:So so you guys are growing. You're servicing different areas in texas. What's been the most challenging thing that you faced since you came on board to start growing the residential Is it? I mean, have you had an experience as a business owner that's been particularly challenging, or a season or a part of the business Like what's what's been the most challenging?
Speaker 2:part so far. So probably you know probably that that that late winter is always a challenge, right From Thanksgiving until you know January. That's kind of a slow part of this and so that's probably one of the biggest, you know, challenges that we've had. And then, of course, you know just weather. You know not being able to get the guys in the field when it's really rainy or or really cold or ice on the roofs or you know it's been, it's been that way in this in this market a lot this year already, and so that's probably one of the major challenges as far as and again the, I think personally the biggest challenge is hiring and you know, hiring local talent that wants to work in the area. You know we're real big on taking care of our people and so you know, once we get somebody on board, then they stay, but it's probably one of the biggest challenges that we've had.
Speaker 1:So why is that? Is it because there's just a transient group of people coming in and out of the area for other businesses like oil and gas and stuff like that or what? I guess what makes it so challenging?
Speaker 2:You know, I mean this is a hard business. You know anybody that does door-to-door sales, I mean we do have our own call center, we have our own division for calling and we've got a really good marketing side of what we're doing and we're growing that part of it. But it's all more direct marketing and we're growing that part of it. But truthfully, man, this is a hard business on that part of it. But truthfully, man, this is a hard business. And you know, and as I tell my guys, man, when you get your rear end kicked in a few times and people slamming the doors and all of those things, you know, it kind of wears on people and so I think that's probably one of the biggest issues. You know, people don't have to have that much experience. I came into this business. You know people don't have to have that much experience. I came into this business, knew nothing about ropes.
Speaker 2:The whole first year I worked and go to work.
Speaker 2:That's the the hard part, and and I I feel like, with everything going remote, you know, after I started seeing the trend happen after, uh, you know, the whole covid thing is people were wanting to work more remote and not really wanting to be in the field. And so you know, I'm sure I'm not the only one you know that has this challenge. But you know, and then you know, and I have tried these, you know, staffing type agencies and things like that, or these guys that will, you know, bring in workers for you, but you spend a lot of money and those people end up leaving or they end up, you know, going on to the next best thing. The problem is is that when you get people and you teach them how to do any kind of storm work and they build a value to themselves, if they're not from this area and they're not planning on staying here, they'll bounce to the next best thing. You know that's next storm or whatever. So, and like I said, I've got people that will travel in and out. It's kind of a challenge.
Speaker 1:So you said something about the business being hard and knocking door to door. You said something about the business being hard and knocking door to door, but the first thing that comes to my mind is well, there's nothing physically difficult about going to a door Like a 10-year-old my 10-year-old daughter. She's about to turn 10. They've been playing this game called Bigger and Better and they've been going door to door in my neighborhood. And they start with a penny and they go. I never heard about this. This is like we didn't have this when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:They go to the door of the penny and they say do you have anything bigger or better than this that you're willing to trade for a penny? And then the personal you know, it's usually a grownup and they'll go get something that they don't need and that they're willing to give away, and they'll give it to them, whether it's a deck of cards or a pair of new socks or something like that. And then they go to the next door and they say do you have anything bigger or better that you're willing to trade for this? We're playing, we're doing a game called bigger and better. We're going across the neighborhood. Anyway, after an hour of doing this last week my daughter came home with a brand new Alexa. She started out with a penny and came home with a hundred dollar piece of electronics, and it's just crazy. So it's not physically hard, right so, but you're a coach, you've coached people. What is it that makes door knocking so hard? From a mindset standpoint?
Speaker 2:So you know, I think, you know, I think rejection is one of the biggest issues, right, when you know if you knock, you know, like everybody says, knock 100 doors and you're going to make a million dollars. You're going to make all this money if you knock 100 doors a day and this and that we don't. We don't really preach that part of it. What we preach is set your goals for what you want, right. So we take their personal goal, we take their financial goal, we take these and we will print this stuff out and say here you want to put this on your mirror every day and look at it right, so you never lose sight of the goal.
Speaker 2:And so, but when you, you know, when these guys go out and they get their rear ends kicked, you know, get the again, you know door slammed in their face, get that rejection. A lot of these guys, ladies, men, whatever, they get kind of down on themselves about it, you know so. It's a constant. It's a constant reaffirming that we have to do in order to to get them out of that mind, you know, to keep them out of the mindset. You know, one of the things that I do in door knocking and people kind of freak out about it's a little different, but when I knock a door, the first thing is is there's nothing personal, right?
Speaker 2:If somebody slams the door in your face and it's not personal, they don't know you, they don't know who you are, they're slamming the door at the situation or whatever. They may curse you out, they may, you know whatever, but and so and also, and the thing to not forget is we don't know what that person is going through in their life. You know, they could have just found some horrible, found out some horrible news. They could be at the end of their rope and wanting to end everything, and you just interrupted that you know, or we just don't know, what they're going through at that time, and so you know. To humanize it, if somebody slams a door in my face, I knock the door immediately. I mean the minute it hits the jam, I'm knocking the door immediately back.
Speaker 1:And when, and then they're going to they and they open the door like they're pissed off, right, they're upset.
Speaker 2:Open the door, you know, and say, hey, listen, I don't know what you're going through, but I promise you it's going to get better. Right, and I'm a believer. I'm not a preacher, but I'm a believer and I just say the Lord puts all the weight on the shoulders of his heaviest soldiers, the ones that can handle it right. And so, with all of that being said, I just want you to know I care about you. There's people that love you, there's people that care about you, and if you need a hug, bring it in. Do you know how many people hug me after they've slammed the door in my face? It's more than you think, because that's wild, because a lot of times again, right?
Speaker 2:People forget that that person on the other side of the door is a human Right. They're pissed off at whatever is going on. They might have had a fight with their wife, whatever, right. They're pissed off at the world. And all of a sudden, here's this dude that knocks on their door, and maybe they've had 25 guys that knocked on their door, right, but again when you and then I don't sell them anything.
Speaker 2:I don't even try to sell them anything After they give me that hug. I just tell them listen, I'm going to come back in a week or so and I'm going to come check on you.
Speaker 2:And then I make sure I go back to that house in a week and I'm knocking on the door and I say, hey, remember me, listen, man, I hope things are better for you. How are you doing today? Right, and then I'll try to sell them something. But you know, at the end of the day it just it's all about that human interaction and if you don't know how to handle that interaction, you know it wears on you mentally. You know mentally and emotionally. You know it wears on you mentally. You know mentally and emotionally. You know, and these days I think people aren't as mentally tough as they were. You know, when I was a young man, when I was a young man, we didn't care, sign the door in our face. I used to sell avocados door-to-door when I was like 8, 10, 12 years old years old.
Speaker 2:I'd make 10 cents. I'd sell them for a dollar a bag and it'd be like 10 in there and I'd make 10 cents for every bag that I sold. I'd go in streets, I'd knock on doors. I mean, I've been door knocking since I was a little kid myself, you know, and I love the bigger, better thing. You know. That's an awesome thing, man.
Speaker 1:But maybe I'll try that.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll incorporate that into our roofing training. It's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:Man, that's awesome, yes, and I'm a believer too, and I think it really does change the way you see people, and I figured you were, because when we first started talking before this, you were asking me questions about me, how I was doing, what was I up to? Most people don't have a genuine interest in you. Most people are just busy sharing their own biography with everybody, what they're going through, who they are, what they're doing. But it's rare to find somebody that's genuinely interested in you, and I had a Bible professor say it one time.
Speaker 1:I took a biblical counseling class at a Bible college in Houston and he said when people sin against you, it's not about you. They're not thinking about you. That's why they're being sinful, that's why they're being rude, impatient, harsh. They're only thinking about themselves. And that really changed the way I looked at people being ugly is. They're not. It's not like they're coming personally at me. It has nothing to do with me. Actually, it could have been anybody that came to the door that day or came across that person that day. Um, so that's a really cool concept. So so, as you do that and you're willing, you're willing to just be a blessing to them. You know you're trying to be a blessing to them, regardless of how they respond to you. How do you teach your guys to embrace that, to embrace the expectation that you're going to hear no over and over again, you're going to go for no, you're going to you know, and eventually it's going to work out.
Speaker 2:So I mean, it's a great point, right. One of the things that I'm glad you actually brought that up because of your course, because you know, one of the things that I teach in my sales training is you know, just imagine if we have a voice, activated light, if that light is shining on you more than shining on your client, you lose. And so the only way to keep engagement with, with people is by asking questions and them answering. The problem that I see with salespeople is that they just want to spew right, like you said, it's how great we are. People don't give it. They don't give a rip about your, your triple a rating, it with bbb, right. They don't give a a rip about how great you are and who you've done.
Speaker 2:You know how many times I've sold roofs and we never even talked about the roof Because it's almost secondary at that point, right. And one of the problems that we have is that and this is why I said earlier, I'm not a script guy, I'm a process guy and so scripts. You know, I just got done training some insurance sales guys um, two weeks ago and their their script everything is scripted say this, say this, say this, say this, say this and so.
Speaker 2:And then I tell them to pitch me right, so tell me what you do. They didn't ask me one question, and so at the end of it.
Speaker 2:I said, you know, when they, when they said, okay, that's kind of what we do, and I said, okay, how many questions did you ask me? You made this all about you. You can't do that, not in sales, right? And so everything is about relationship building in sales. In my opinion Strictly my opinion there's a lot of guys that can do that, can do that, that script stuff, and it works for them, right. But for me personally, you know, it's about relationship building, it's about developing rapport. It's about, you know, truly caring about people, right, that's the first thing. The first thing that a person will see is if you're full of crap or not, right, if you're not genuine, like you said, we're genuinely care about people. We like people. That's who I like to hire.
Speaker 2:If you care about people and you love helping people then I want to hire you, right, because I can teach all the other stuff, but that's the stuff that I can't really teach you. I could, but if you don't buy into it, you're never going to learn it right. And so that is the trick. Right Is, how do we make it about the client or about that person, more so than it's about us? I don't want to talk about shingles if that client doesn't give a rip about shingles. I don't want to talk about underlayment and iso water shingles and drip edge and you know all the things that go into a roof. I don't want to talk about that if that's not important to that client. And how do we identify that? Right, you got to talk to them. You got to ask questions. Right, we have in my training I have five major questions that we ask. I won't get into what they are, but I have five major questions and those five major questions will dig out a lot of information. And then we have our sub questions, right, and then we're asking these questions as it goes. So now what we're doing is now that person is telling us everything that's important to them, everything that they want, all of their expectations and all that, and then all we got to do is find the solution, offer the solution and when you're done, there's no closing. The client closes themselves, right. All we're doing is saying, okay, with your permission, closes themselves, right. All we're doing is saying, okay, with your permission, we're you know, we'll get this thing going. That's it, and so we make it really easy in that part of it.
Speaker 2:But a lot of it is that initial door-to-door interaction is what kicks their hand right. Or they'll walk and they'll go knock a hundred doors and they're knocking in the wrong area at the wrong time. That's the other issue that we have too right, it's like do you not see? It's a family area, they're probably working 8 to 5. You got to go there at a different time. Oh, this is an older area, this is a good one to go. You know, 10 to 1 or 10 to 2. Perfect, right.
Speaker 2:So that's the other part of it is identifying where to knock and then how to overcome adversity. So my favorite quote and I hang this banner. I got a banner and I hang this banner in all my locker rooms and I should hang one in my office. It's just too big for in here, but it's Martin Luther King Jr's ultimate measure of a man, the ultimate measure of a man is not where you stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where you stand during tribulation and controversy. Right, and so that is to is what defines character of a man.
Speaker 2:And so you know if you're the type of person that, when it's easy to be happy and joyful, and all of that when things are going great for you but how do you handle adversity? How do you handle getting your teeth kicked in, right? So it's either fire or flight, you know at that point. But there's only one or two ways it's going to go. You're either going to push through it and be successful or you're going to fold up and be a quitter. That's the truth, right? So what type? And this is my question to all my people, right? So what? What type? And this is my question all my my people, whether they're football players, people on coaching, in life, um, my, my sales team, what kind of person are you? You a quitter? Because if you're a quitter, you might as well quit now. Well, I've gotten out the door, right? Or are you a winner? That's it, you either win.
Speaker 1:You. Either win, or quit.
Speaker 2:You know, um, in football we have the wins and loss columns. I don't have wins and losses, I have wins and learns, and as long as you're learning from your, from getting your teeth kicked in, that's what that's. You got to go through the storm to see the sunshine, right? Yes, I love that. So that's the whole thing, man. You got to weather the storm. If you can weather the storm, the sun's going to shine and it's going to be nice and beautiful Birds, chirping dogs, running sun shining on your on your head, you know, or on your face and you're going to win, right. And so that's kind of how I try to try to coach it Right. It's like listen, yes, you're going to get your rear end kick, but tomorrow, you may not.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow you may learn from today right.
Speaker 2:Learn from today and go out tomorrow and win. Let's go.
Speaker 1:That's it, yeah. And what other business can you go and just earn money from your efforts that week? It's really, yes, it sucks hearing no a hundred times in a row, or however many, but, man, there's just not a lot of businesses out there where you can go earn thousands of dollars off of your efforts from two or three days, and that's what makes roofing amazing to me. Plus, you're helping people. You're literally putting a roof over their head and there's so many opportunities there, like you said, for ministry and helping people and responding in a way that you probably never dreamed of. So that's really neat, man. That's really neat to hear that. What would you say? What would be some advice that you would have for other owners? You've really, I think, figured out the mentality for door knocking in that process. What's some advice you'd have for other owners who are just really having a hard time with that Hard time keeping sales guys, hard time making that work. But they've heard a million times you've got a door knock.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's, it's, it is a mindset, you know it is. I would say reach out to somebody. A mentor me, they can reach out to me. You know, I don't I'm not about the money, right, I'm about the helping of people. You know, if I would just say, if you're having a challenge with salespeople, right, it's a mentality thing, right? So most of the time when people are having those kind of challenges is because they don't understand the way that salespeople think.
Speaker 2:I've been a salesperson my whole life. In essence, right, I've sold everything from avocados when I was, you know, 8, 10 years old. I've sold rainbow vacuum cleaners. I've sold HVAC systems. You know I sold boats. I mean, I've sold a lot of things, and so I've been a salesman my whole life. So the mentality of sales is in me. I've been a salesman my whole life, so the mentality of sales is in me, and so I know how to deal with salespeople.
Speaker 2:Where somebody who came up and most of these roof this is what I learned in my consulting no-transcript. But what they're not good at is managing people, and they're not good at managing their money, right, making sure that their jobs are being profitable enough, and things like that. That's the number one thing that I see. Their AR is really really high and so learning that part of it, being able to separate themselves from the day-to-day grind of physical out in the field, that type of stuff, and focusing on their business right, and learning how to deal with people or, if you can't do it, find somebody that is good at that part of it but that you know that's the best advice is just learn how to have interpersonal skills to deal with. You know different personalities. I have a challenge, even to this day still with it. You know, sometimes I'm not much of a babysitter, you know I don't. I'm also not the rah-rah guy. Right, I've been a part of organizations that and been in organizations that they have a great sales manager. That is just rah, rah, rah.
Speaker 2:Everything is. You know, go win one for the Gipper. Even when I'm coaching football, it's not my thing. I prefer the calm silence and then go to work, right, and so I'm not the rah-rah guy, but what I am is I'm able to connect, or what I can do is connect with people on a different level. Just because you know, I had a really good class that taught me a lot.
Speaker 2:It was an NLP class Neuro Linguistic Programming class that I went through when I was in HVC, class that I went through when I was in HVC, and it taught me an unbelievable amount of reading people understanding. That's one of the things, too that I teach people is, you know, when I'm sitting and talking to somebody, I watch everything about them. I watch everything from the top of their head to as far down as I can see, right to their toes, if I can see them, and I look at every movement, I look at every facial expression, I look at every the way they breathe. If their breathing changes, I know instantly I'm evoking an emotion. So, and I can evoke different emotions based off of how I talk, whether I'm getting excited my facial expressions, my hand movements.
Speaker 2:You know I can evoke emotion in people, so that's what I've learned. And if I notice that something is wrong, I don't keep talking. I stop immediately and say listen, you know, maybe it's the deep sigh and the sit back or the facial expression change, Say, hey, you know, I noticed that I might have said something that didn't sit well with you. I'll stop it right now.
Speaker 2:Notice you know, maybe I said something didn't sit well with you. Mind sharing with me what it that that just evoked that emotion, right? Or? Or maybe you're thinking about something. Let's get that, because if you don't do that, you can't move on to the next phase. They're gone, it's, it's gone yeah, you've lost them yeah yep, and so if you can't, so that's one of the things that I teach in sales is like this is what you're looking for. These are the keys.
Speaker 1:But this.
Speaker 2:NLP class taught me that I didn't know that stuff before. I was doing some of it just naturally, just because it's just a natural thing for me, but it really elevated my game to being able to do that. And so, you know, I close at a very high rate, but it's only because I understand. You know I can't sell to every client the same way. You know there's some clients that want to know everything about the roof. There's some that don't care about that. What are you going to do? How are you going to help me? How much money am I spending? That's all they want to know. They don't care about nothing else.
Speaker 2:And so you got to know how to sell to that person versus the person that's an engineer that wants to know how the shingles are made, what are they using, what's the impact rating, what's you know? So on and so forth. And so you got to learn how to identify the type of person you're selling to. And then obviously we're looking for cues, you know, and then learning how to evoke emotion just in our tonalities and our movement and the way we express ourselves, and things like that. You can, you can change all of those. You know those emotions. You can evoke all those emotions the way you want them to go.
Speaker 1:So, man, that's good stuff. It's very empathetic. It's an empathetic method of selling. They're asking questions. I love that question. You know, did I say something that maybe didn't sit well with you? It's a very disarming question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what happens is a lot of times on the surface, right? They'll say no and. I'll say yeah, listen, you know we, we can't. And I tell them, right Again, sometimes you have to have and a lot of people can't do this. It's funny to me. I watched those people. They're like I can't say that to them.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I know something. I know I said something right. So we can't move on to the next steps if you don't share with me what you're feeling right now. So people can't ask those kind of questions. It's funny to me, but I can, and I do because I need to know what's going on with that person before we can go any further because I've lost them anyway.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm not right, they're not going to. They may not tell you in the moment, but what they're going to do is go with somebody else after you leave, right?
Speaker 2:And so so, if I get it out of them at that point, right. So I'm just going to ask a couple, you know, key questions and I'm going to get the information.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say listen, I want to make sure that we're doing the right thing for you. This isn't about me, this is about you, and this is your home, this is your project, right? All I'm going to do is offer solutions to help you. You know, take care of your issue, and so if you don't share with me what you're feeling, I can't move forward. So are we done? Or are you going to share with me what the issue is? Right?
Speaker 2:And so I'm not that blunt, but you know you get what I'm saying, and so it's, it's part of the game, right? It's to me, that's the fun part to me, that interaction in that evoking emotion. And I, I tell, I tell my guys, if a guy shadows me, I'll be like, listen, this is what we're going to do, right, and I'll tell them exactly how I'm going to, how I'm going to where I'm going to raise the emotion and when I'm going to lower the emotion. And they'll sit through it and be like, damn, oh, excuse me, I didn't mean to curse, but dang, you know, that's, that's true, it works, and so that's what we try to try to train.
Speaker 2:But again, you know, the biggest thing is is, you know, and we're kind of a young company. I mean we've only been, you know, we're looking at a year and I don't see it'd be a year in four months that we've been in existence here and so we're building. I mean I've got, you know, I've got six guys here right now and, uh, and we're doing okay, we're doing okay, but it's a tough one man I'd like to have 30.
Speaker 2:If I had 30 guys here right now, I mean we'd be killing it right now, but it's not how it works.
Speaker 1:Man, that's good stuff. Well, it'll be. It would be cool to do a check-in, like a year from now, and see how superior has grown, how the sales team has grown, what processes you've implemented and stuff like that. So well, before we, before we wrap up, I love that we've talked about relationships. I love that we've talked about mindset. You know, I I've got a degree in leadership from a Bible college in Houston and they broke leadership down to four key areas in Houston. And they broke leadership down to four key areas character, vision, skills and relationships.
Speaker 1:But the true North, that always came back to his character. Because it doesn't matter, if you have a solid vision, if your character's jacked up, nobody's going to follow you. You can have amazing skills but not have character and everything could crumble. But then the second thing is relationships. You can have great skills but, like you said, if you don't know how to relate to people, you're going to be the most skilled isolated person on earth. And so, yeah, we've just covered a lot of really good ground in this conversation. But and we could go on for another hour, I'm sure. But before we wrap up, what's? What's one parting piece of advice? If there's just one thing, just a nugget of wisdom that you could share with other roofing owners. What? What would it be today?
Speaker 2:Um, man, don't be afraid to try something new. You know if, if what you're doing is not working, don't be afraid to do something different. You know it's it's, it's vital, I think, to our psyche as people, right to make sure that we are, you know, doing everything. Uh, you know doing everything that we can in order to push our teams, push our business, whatever forward. And a lot of times, what happens? People get comfortable. So I call it, you know. I say control the controllables. That's our big thing, right, control the controllables and make sure that you know you're doing everything in your power to be better tomorrow than you were today, period, and so trying something new. Sometimes you get out of your comfort zone and it's really hard.
Speaker 2:I've got one thing that I'll tell you. In my NLP class, one of the things that they made us do I was the first one to ever complete this task, and it was seven years at that point. I don't know that it's ever been this task, and it was in seven years at that point. I don't know that it's ever been completed after. But we had to go to a restaurant and you know, in our class we did like eight hours or seven and a half hours of training and then we had this little after class homework assignments, and they put us in groups of six. I'm just kind of laying the foundation here.
Speaker 2:And so I go into this. You know they're telling us okay, here's what you're going to do. You got to go to this restaurant, they pay for it all, and you got to eat off of somebody else's plate. You got to find somebody to give you food. And I'm like I'll go to McDonald's and get a kid to give me a chicken mcnugget. No problem, right, I'll just I'll get fries from somebody. I'm not gonna take a bite of the burger, but I'll get them to give me a fry, right. And so I'm like, no problem, I can do this. And then they told us what we're going to eat. Nothing on the menu, less than 125.
Speaker 2:That is a different class of people. I'd never been in a restaurant like that before, had to wear a tie, shirt and tie. They had a closet full of them and so because they knew we weren't coming there you know we're HVAC sales guys, but so- what they did is they put us in this restaurant and you know I'm going to shorten the story because I know we got to go.
Speaker 2:But so, basically, what I did is I went to the first person that I thought, ok, maybe, and absolutely bombed, bombed. The guy wouldn't even talk to me, he just, and I go back to my group and they're laughing and I'm a very competitive person and I'm like, no, I'm going to do this. So I met this couple and I learned two things. Number one if you get somebody to teach you about something that they're passionate about, something happens in the relationship, right, and so I make it a point to make sure that every client I see teaches me something that they're passionate about. And how do we identify that? Right, you got to ask questions and, see, figure out what they like. Maybe it's the bass on the wall, or the deer head on the wall, or the elk on the wall, whatever, right, maybe it's their sports team. Hey, tell me about it. I've been football a long time. We've had a lot of football coaches talk to me and I'm always a little beneath them when it comes to football or fishing. I'm a big fisherman, I hunt, you know, I live in Montana, and so, you know, I do a lot of hunting and I've got my trophies too right. But if I see a nice buck on the wall, I don't tell them I got a bigger buck right. It's about them telling me what they're passionate about.
Speaker 2:And so so what happened is I I met this couple, you know, sat down with them and they start you know I'm asking them about their wine I don't know anything about. At that point I didn't even know wine came in a bottle, I thought it came in a box, right, and so, you know, so this guy happens to be he was an engineer and he happens to be a wine connoisseur. And so I started asking him about the wine and he's like oh yeah, you know, this with this, food pairs with this, and this is this, and whoop, whoop. And so he hands me his wine glass and he says take sip of that. So I take a sip of his wine out of his wine glass now, this is in the 90s, you know and so I take a sip of it and I was like, oh, you don't like that, no.
Speaker 2:And so then the wife says here, taste mine, but before you do rinse your, you know, clear your palate. I I thought palate was colors. I had no idea it was something in your mouth, right? So wash, wash it down. Take a sip of hers. I like hers a little better. He had a really dry wine. Hers was a white wine.
Speaker 1:When their food came right.
Speaker 2:So I'm, I'm asking about all this wine. When their food came, you know, were like we're talking about the wine. I was like, oh, you know what your food's here, I'm gonna go, no, no, no. They ended up buying me dinner, but what the guy did was he actually cuts a piece of his steak with his fork and he hands me the fork with the steak on it and he says, take a bite of that and then take a sip of this wine. And it changed the whole thing. And I was like, oh, you know, oh, my God, this is crazy. And so, and then, of course, the wife, is like here try mine, you know.
Speaker 1:So I ate off of both of their plates right.
Speaker 2:So I accomplished the goal, but really what I accomplished was one. What's the worst thing that can happen? What I accomplished was one. What's the worst thing that can happen? When the president of Cura Corporation found out that he comes down, that was in their Indianapolis office and that's where his office is. He came down and he introduced himself to me. He says, ken, how did you do it? And I said, well, number one, I tried. So they asked the class how many people tried? 36 of us in a class. Nobody else even tried it because they were so afraid to get out of their comfort zone. That's a very uncomfortable situation to be in. When, when you're, when you feel like and I felt this when you feel like these people are so much above you, it's really tough to break, to get out of your comfort zone and just have a great conversation with somebody. And so that taught me. And then the second thing was get them to teach you about something that they're passionate in and then utilize that to build that relationship.
Speaker 1:But how did you get a seat at the table in the first place? So door knocking.
Speaker 2:Right Door knocking, I walked up and I introduced myself. I said, hey, my name is Ken and, truthfully, I had a menu with me. Now, I couldn't pronounce half the stuff that was on the menu. I had no idea what any of it was.
Speaker 1:I mean it's all foreign to me.
Speaker 2:I went to this French kind of restaurant and then for me, applebee's was like a high-end restaurant at that time, right, and so you know, the two for 25, I'm in, right, and here I am looking at a menu that I can't read. I don't know nothing about it. So I had a menu in my hand and when I knock the door, hey, don't mean to interrupt you, right, but I'm having a problem. Can you help me out? You know people as just a natural thing. We want to help people. Most people are that way. I think there's all. There's something in, you know. That's why people stop when somebody has a flat tire on the side of the road. It's why we hold the door open for people. Right, they got an arm full of stuff. You don't just you always open the door for them, right? Most people feel that way. And so that was it. Like hey, I got a problem, can you help me with this? And they were like sure, we come here a lot. And I'm like she was an attorney, he was an engineer, they're married.
Speaker 1:Younger couple.
Speaker 2:I mean I ended up drinking their wine, eating their food, dancing with the wife. I mean, I could have probably closed the deal and went home with them, but I was married at the time. I am married, been married for 31 years, thank God, but you know what I'm saying. You develop those relationships, but that's how I did it. Hey, can you help? Of course I can.
Speaker 1:Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Man, that's so cool. That's such a cool story. I think the lesson there is pretty powerful too. I thought about making a social media post this morning and I didn't do it. I need to be a lot better about social media, but my thought was I'd rather try and fail than not try at all.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the deal you lose 100% of the time when you don't try.
Speaker 1:Right, right, it's guaranteed at that point and I mean you need to have a right risk to reward ratio, kind of like you know trading stocks or whatever. You don't want to try with 100% of your account, but at least try a little bit and if you fail that's okay, you can fail forward. That's one of my favorite books ever by John Maxwell is failing forward, but that's just the normal way of things, that you stumble along and you learn and you keep going.
Speaker 2:Yep, and that's the whole thing about the ultimate measure of a man, right? Is that? How do you react when you fail? You know it's not easy to fail, it's not. You're not happy when you fail, right, but you have to. You got to have very thin skin, or thick skin, rather, you got to have very thick skin. And I have a time limit and I do this with everything in my life. I have a time limit.
Speaker 2:I'm only going to be mad, sad, disappointed or whatever for five minutes, that's it. That's all I get. I get five minutes. I'll throw my tantrum, I'll be upset as a football coach. Throw my tantrum, I'll be upset. As a football coach, I have a 24 hour rule for people talking to me after a game. If I lost, right, we're not going to talk about anything that we did until 24 hours later. To where we, so we're not emotional about it, right? But I have five minutes, that's it. That's all I get. If I'm pissed off, five minutes, I'll be pissed off. Five minutes and one second. I'm done. Now we're on to the next thing, right?
Speaker 2:And so that's what we do. So failure it's okay to be upset when you fail. It's okay to be upset when you lose. It's okay to be upset when shit doesn't go, stuff doesn't go. I'm sorry, man, stuff doesn't go, stuff doesn't go. I'm sorry, man, stuff doesn't go your way. But but keep that very short. It's okay to grieve, it's okay to do those things, but you got to go.
Speaker 2:The world doesn't stop right five minutes and after that you're on to the next, and that's, that's the, that's my rule, that's what I live by and what I live by, and so I don't hold grudges. I don't you know, it's just not what we do.
Speaker 1:It's good stuff, Good stuff, man. Well, Ken was superior roofing man. Thanks for joining us. Great conversation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, man. I'm really happy and thankful that you gave me this opportunity and, you know, hopefully, you know, hopefully this gets to some people that that that they get a little something out of it. You know, and and people can, can look me up and, and you know, don't hesitate to give me a ring if, if they have something. And, like you said, man, I don't, I don't charge for everything. So you know, I I just like to help people, man, in general, that's great yeah For those of you listening.
Speaker 1:If you want to learn more about the Limitless Roofing Group and how we save our members money Ken is a member of our group as well you can go to limitlessroofinggroupcom. It's as of the time of the recording of this podcast. It's free to join, but we're going to be charging for membership pretty soon and if you want to get connect with Ken, feel free to reach out. We, our members, connect with one another. Our members share best practices with one another, so feel free to reach out and our hour you guys have is pretty good too, man.
Speaker 2:I'd like to plug that too, cause I know you guys are just getting that going, but every other Wednesday, man, that power hour is is is good stuff, if, if people join in there, you know, because we get to have these kind of conversations, man, and it's awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1:That's great Sweet. All right, well, ken, until next time. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, have a great day.