- The history behind Randy Brothers’ start in the contractor business
- The big reason why a new contractor can benefit from Randy’s book
- Why systems & processes are so important to your business’ operation
- So much more….
Send us your questions, comments, feedback, praise! We can’t wait to hear from you!
Transcription:
Devon Hayes:
Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Amanda Joyce:
This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Devon Hayes:
Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Amanda Joyce:
Let’s dive into today’s Trade Secret.
All right, guys, we are so excited to welcome Randy Brothers of Elite Roofing and Solar, as well as the Roofing Academy. We could not be more excited to have you on today, Randy. Thank you so much for joining us.
Randy Brothers:
I am delighted that I finally got the call to join your amazing podcast. It’s been a long time coming and I’m just grateful and blessed to be here.
Amanda Joyce:
We had to get it down. We had to figure out our flow before we could possibly ask you to join us.
Devon Hayes:
I know, we’re, as our loving listeners know, new this year, and we have yet to ask very many people as we have been trying to iron out the kinks and figure out what we’re doing because podcasting is not as easy as it seems.
Randy Brothers:
No, it is not, and I can very much appreciate that because I’m more of this ready, fire, aim type of person. I just got a tripod and started recording, and that’s how I started my podcast. And I still could use it probably a lot. I’ve done 250 episodes and I probably could step up my game to the level where you’re at, so you guys are crushing it, so congrats.
Devon Hayes:
But yeah, you grew your audience really quickly, and I know you’ve helped so many contractors out there. So good on you. That’s awesome. For those of you listening, Randy runs the Start, Build, Grow Podcast as well, so check that out. Tons of great guests, lots of insights. Really, really, really good podcast if you are in the industry. And if you’re listening to this, you probably are.
So with that, Randy, I mean, for those of you who don’t know you, because we do have a lot of contractors and tradesmen outside of roofing, would you please give us your background? And it’s a fun one, but yeah, your background, your history from Elite Roofing to the Roofing Academy, and tell us a little bit about the Roofing Academy as well.
Randy Brothers:
Of course.
Devon Hayes:
It’s a loaded question.
Randy Brothers:
Yeah, so how much time do we have? No, the Reader’s Digest version. I’m a third generation contractor. I’ve been intrigued by construction and contracting my whole life since my inception in Lego building all the way up through becoming a general contractor, superintendent, working building homes. So that’s how I cut my teeth. I was really interested in that. So I started building homes, and I was a general contractor for a number of years, even while going through college. And launched my construction company in 2006.
We switched to roofing in 2010, and at that point I realized there was a lot of opportunities to build a roofing company, and luckily I was surrounded by amazing people that we all went to work together and started building systems and processes, and really tried to approach what I felt at the time was an archaic industry where a lot of people can see success in roofing, but I observed there was a lot of companies that weren’t very established. They didn’t have a lot of systems, a lot of processes. Not very many things were duplicatable or repeatable. It was just a lot of us just flying by the seat of our pants and some people actually finding success.
So I saw that as an opportunity. I was like, you know what? I want to approach this industry a little different. And day one, we focused on building systems, building processes, and really, really doing things in a little bit of a different way. And we saw some really, really cool, really incredible success. And so much of that came from the people and coming together and having that mindset from day one, which allowed us to build a really successful roofing company, one of the most systemized, organized roofing companies in the country.
And that led me to identify just a passion. I’ve always had a passion for helping others. I’m maybe of a new generation where I feel that if we help others, we all get better. So I kind of started collaborating with other roofing contractors. When I started my career, I reached out to some more successful companies and I reached out to the owners and I was like, “Hey, can we be friends? And what can I learn from you?” And coffees and doing the things. And then I started getting to a point where we saw some success. I just felt like it was really important to reciprocate that.
And I guess to dive in a little deeper, roofing saved my life. I mean, roofing is an industry that I found after some really challenging times in life where I had gotten broke, I’d gotten bankrupt, and the recession hit and really hit me in a really bad way.
And so by the time, I guess I say roofing found me, I was able to get in, learn sales, learn insurance. I’m still trying to figure out the leadership thing, right? That’s an ongoing lifelong journey. But learning all those things, I felt like it was important for me to give back to an industry that has blessed me with so much, which led me to the idea of writing a book.
And if you know me, I didn’t exactly score very well on my reading, my comprehension, all those sort of things. I’m not exactly that studious when it comes to that sort of thing. So someone who knows me well, when they hear that I wrote a book like, “What?”
Took a year, but we wrote a book and I wanted it to be a guide. Wanted to write a book that helped share the things I’d learned over the 10 years of building my roofing company and create this guideline for myself 10 years ago, somebody who just wanted to get into business, wanted to do things the right way and wanted to kind of fast track their growth and knowledge curve.
And so we wrote the book, Start It, Build It, Grow It, the Contractor’s Guide to Success.
Devon Hayes:
Put it in the show notes for you.
Randy Brothers:
Yep, yep. I actually got it right here. You can see it. You can get on Amazon.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, we’ll link to it for you.
Randy Brothers:
And so I wrote that, and then that was kind of at the same time is, okay, what’s next? And that’s where I decided to create an online course.
So at this point, I mean, over years of creating, we got over 200 hours of content. Pretty much everything you can imagine you can need to learn about and implement in your business as a roofing company from startup all the way to five, 10 million dollar companies that we work with.
And every document, every process, every SOP, all the checklists, contracts, agreements, all the things that we’ve created and built and adjusted and adapted over the years are now available as an archive.
And then we realized that there was a big demand for people that just wanted one-on-one, they wanted coaching, they wanted the interaction with a coach, with an experienced professional to help them implement the things. So that led to the third component, which now we have a team of coaches that works with contractors all over the country. So I guess that was maybe a little bit of a winded version, but that’s…
Devon Hayes:
No, no, I mean, it’s a great story. And I was going to say, going back to even the very beginning of Elite Roofing, I think what you really executed well that you didn’t touch on, but that I noticed from the jump is that you were always branding the company. That wasn’t an afterthought. You were consistently branding Elite Roofing. You thought about the impact and the importance of your brand, which helped build the trust early on for the company, which I think led to a lot of the success.
But that’s something that I don’t think a lot of business owners think about is the branding aspect of the company. And you just always seem to know that from the jump with Elite Roofing and Solar, now with TRA and the Roofing Academy. And I think that’s probably something you teach throughout the course.
But just that branding, and you yourself, you’re part of the brand and you really want people to do well, and that includes everyone within the company, everyone around you. And now as a coach, every business and company that you coach, it really is about impacting the people that you’re working with. And so I think both of your brands really convey caring for the customers, whether they be other contractors or homeowners.
So I think you’ve done a really, really good job with that. So I just wanted to call that out, because as a market… Yeah.
Randy Brothers:
I’m glad you brought that up because there was intentionality there actually, accidental intentionality. My creative entrepreneurial side, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, but I just observe, right? I’m very observant and aware of the market, and I basically was thinking, okay, who are the most recognizable roofing companies and what are they doing? What colors are they? What logos do they have?
And I observed, and I really took note of what that was. And I identified, okay, there’s kind of a color scheme that no one’s really dominated yet or really captured, as well as our logo, our themes, our slogans, and all the things. I just was like, how do I do this and be intentional about it, unintentionally intentional about it?
And it has evolved over the years. But it’s funny. I was doing a podcast just the other day and I talked about this, and I’m doing a podcast series on my own journey. We’re breaking it into five. So the startup version, I told the whole story of how I started my company. And created that first logo on some free app. I didn’t have any money. I was like, okay, from some free logo design app that I could do online and created it. And it’s evolved a little bit over the years, and I know you’ve done a great job kind of tweaking and helping it really refine it.
Devon Hayes:
Little bit.
Randy Brothers:
But it’s still the same concept, it’s like the same thing.
Devon Hayes:
I think you did it in Word, like Microsoft Word, Word Art, I think you did it in.
Randy Brothers:
Some logo creator and Microsoft, whatever. And it still stood the test of time, which is really cool. We’ve made adjustments. And you made a huge adjustment recently with adding the Solar, and I think it really just brought it all together and it’s great. But it’s cool to just sketch something out and use your creativity and go for it.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely.
Randy Brothers:
[inaudible 00:10:28] figured out it from.
Devon Hayes:
So I want to kind of dive into who you help at the Roofing Academy. We know it’s roofing contractors, but I am so curious and so interested. I know everybody’s story is different, but I am curious if you have seen a common theme throughout the contractors that come with you, and whether that’s a theme, I don’t know when they’re at one to $5 million or five to 10, or if it doesn’t matter what the revenue is, they all of the same common problems? I don’t know. Just tell us more about maybe some common themes you see with your contractors.
Randy Brothers:
So the one thing that stands out, and I’m sure everybody’s going to cringe but also relate to this, is so many of us are very driven, we’re hungry, we want to make things happen. A lot of contractors are great at sales, they’re great with people, they’re great at networking and connecting with people, but they’re not good with the back office. They’re not good with details. They’re not good with holding others accountable. And I say they, I mean me.
And being able to build systems that we can rinse and repeat on the backend of our business, that’s the commonality. I mean, there’s companies out there doing 10, $20 million that are still very disorganized and don’t have SOPs for everything in the business. And there’s companies that are just getting started that are flying by the seat of their pants, doing millions of dollars in revenue with not one thing written down, with not one procedure, barely operating if even operating off of a CRM system or any technology.
So that’s fairly common is a lot of us have a lot of ambition. You can create a good brand, you can go out and market, you can go out and sell, but it’s the whole backend infrastructure of the business from books all the way to a sales training system, to a production management system, to a process of hiring and onboarding people, organizational charts and job descriptions and employee agreements and all the things that we know are important that none of us really do.
That’s the commonality and that’s what’s created the demand, and that’s where we’ve landed with our niche. That’s what we do. We build a whole backend of your business. And whether you come in at inception, or I have contractors come in 5, 10, 15 years in business, and we’re still able to have a drastic impact in helping it organize and systemize the business in the back.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. So I liked it earlier when you mentioned that from the start of Elite, you knew how important it was to do that. Do you feel like that was from business school? What was it as such a young, probably naive businessman, let you know that you realized you needed to start that from the very beginning?
Randy Brothers:
Oh, it came because I failed epically trying to do it myself. It was just learn. That was hard knocks.
Amanda Joyce:
But at least identified it early. It didn’t take 15 years.
Randy Brothers:
Yeah. I started my first construction company, it was just me out of my basement. A garage full of tools and trying to run around and hustling, doing all the things, me behind QuickBooks, bad idea, trying to do all the things, and it failed. I say the word failed kind of facetiously because I don’t truly believe in… You never fail if you keep trying. If you learn and grow, you never actually fail in my world, I don’t believe that failure happens. It’s a mental thing.
Amanda Joyce:
It’s just your first try.
Randy Brothers:
Yeah, you just tried and made some mistakes and you learn from it and you got better. And that’s the mindset I try to always have, that failure doesn’t really exist if you keep trying and keep chasing your dreams and learning and growing.
But in this context of that, yeah, I bombed and went bankrupt, literally went bankrupt and lost everything and learned so much. And that’s what I learned is like, man, I had no structure. I didn’t have the right people around me. I knew that if I’m going to do this right, I got to think of systems and processes.
But I digress a little bit because I can’t really take credit for that. Because I knew I needed help. I knew I needed someone that was really good at the things I wasn’t good at. And it just so happened that my mom was available, and she’s super detailed and very organized, and she loved me enough to not rip me off. I could trust her. That was great. That was just a blessing.
She was really a big influencer in that because she had this mentality of, if I’m going to have to do something more than once or multiple times, I’m going to create a process for it. I’m going to write it down. I’m going to create a checklist and start creating.
So she was really the implementer of creating the SOPs, which have now evolved to hundreds and hundreds of documents over the years. But yeah, she really helped execute a lot of that.
Devon Hayes:
Awesome.
Amanda Joyce:
Yay Moms.
Devon Hayes:
I know. Yeah, you got a love when working with family actually works out.
Randy Brothers:
Yeah. Oh, I got stories all the way across the board. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it does.
Devon Hayes:
Sometimes it does. So it sounds like the common pain points are really back of the house issues and repeatable processes and SOPs not really being in place. I know you’ve helped so many contractors all over the country. You have different summits throughout the year, which are kind of like a shortened version. I think those are extremely beneficial.
Is there a success story or something that stands out to you where when you have a stressful day and you have a hard time and maybe you miss the mark, you can fall back on that one where you’re like, I know we made such a huge impact on this specific contractor, this business, and one of those that you’re just like, “Ah, this is why we do it.”
Randy Brothers:
Yeah. I mean, there’s so many of them.
Devon Hayes:
That’s awesome. That’s good that it’s not… Yeah.
Randy Brothers:
And it’s a wide spectrum. I mean, I worked with a company… And I share these stories. When I get asked this, I share stories of people that I don’t even work with anymore.
Devon Hayes:
Because they graduated.
Randy Brothers:
Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, that’s the point.
Randy Brothers:
It’s not about like, hey, I’m just going to tag you along and string you along and charge you money for my services. No, I want you to succeed. And some of my good friends in the industry, one in particular that I worked with for probably four years, and one of the first things we did… They were already doing good volume there, just getting their second and third locations opening, and they’re trying to expand and definitely needed some structure in place.
But one of the first things we did, I took from my own experience was two owners, and there was a couple people working in the office and these sort of things. And I asked him, I said, “Who in your office stands out as somebody that can be your Debbie, like my mom? Who can be the office manager? Who can be a person that can really implement things that has a big impact that you can see as developing into a leader?” And they went back and forth a little bit and they identified this one lady, one gal.
So we decided together like, “Hey, let’s bring her into the fold of this.” And she, to this day, I believe is the vice president of the company and just has been a huge catalyst in helping implement all the systems and processes. Again, two owners, very ambitious, very sharp, ready to make things happen, can sell anything and build and motivate people. But we got to find that person that can be the anchor on the back end of the business. And we did that. That was one of the first things we did.
And then we organized the new organizational charts and new employee agreements or employee responsibilities for everybody in the business, established a bunch of KPIs and all these things. And then they just executed and executed. And they’re doing well over $20 million. They were under 10 when they came to us. And now they’re doing very well, three locations, just absolutely crushing it, doing a lot of commercial work and getting into solar again now. And it’s really cool to see that. And I don’t even work with anymore, but that’s a company that I love. And I feel like it was really cool to kind of have that kind of impact just coming in and being a third party to give it a perspective.
Devon Hayes:
And I think that’s what it is too, because I know you work with a lot of sharp business owners and a lot of smart people. And Amanda and I can attest to this, sometimes we’re in the forest, so in the forest that we can’t see the trees. And so it takes someone with, like you said, perspective to just come in and look at it and say, “You guys almost have it. This is just the one cog that’s missing. And you’ve got it.”
And sometimes it’s harder to find in some businesses than others, I would imagine. But I think that’s the beauty of someone like yourself and the Roofing Academy is having someone with the experience within your niche, within your industry, in your business, who’s had their feet in your boots and can really understand, you guys are so close, you’re so close. This is the one thing, you almost have it. Or maybe if you do this and then this other thing, and then the rest of the hierarchy within the organization probably falls right into place.
And it’s like to them afterwards, they’re like, “Why didn’t we think of that?” But just sometimes you just-
Amanda Joyce:
You just can’t see it sometimes.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah.
Randy Brothers:
You can’t even put a monetary value on that. But sometimes I’ll talk about this, whether it’s a conversation with myself or when I have conversations with people that I want to learn from, mentors that I have, one conversation… Again, I’m not saying this to sell you on something, but literally one conversation with somebody, a mentor, a coach, or somebody that has been there, has done that, has the experience, that can give you a different perspective, can literally change the course of not only your life, but the lives of generations to come.
If you think about that, you may learn one thing about business or one thing about leadership that changes the dynamic and changes how you operate from a day-to-day perspective. And then little do you know, you pass that on to your kids and they pass on to their kids and get better and better. And now you created this generational change for the positive in business or whatever.
One conversation can be worth millions of dollars, but it’s hard to put a value on that. And people don’t see that. We don’t see that. And they’re like, “I’ve got to pay for a consultant?” They don’t realize that that one session that you paid for or that one month or whatever you paid for a year, and you get that one thing that created a trajectory of millions of dollars in income.
Devon Hayes:
That makes me think of your event that you just had your, one-day of Roofing Success Summit. Thank you for having me, by the way. But I love that you said… The theme was to everyone in the room, take away one thing. And during my segment I got to do… At the end, one guy was like, “Yeah, go ahead. Roast me, roast my website.”
And afterwards he’s like, “Randy told me I needed to take away one thing today. And you did. I took away so many things from what you just told me about my website that changes everything.”
And it was just a simple site structure. So for me, something I do all day every day. But it’s funny, you laid out the gauntlet. You let everybody in this room take away one thing. That’s all I’m asking out of this whole day that we’re here. Take one thing away that is going to change your business and impact your business. And they listened to you and then they did.
I was grateful to be part of it. I just love that the guy was so open and was like, “Roast me. Put my website up there in front of everybody.”
Randy Brothers:
On that context. I think that the… I’ve been in this industry a long time. I’ve been at every conference from thousands of people to…
Devon Hayes:
There’s a ton in roofing. Yeah.
Randy Brothers:
That’s why I really like the small setting. 30 people, 20 people in a room. I feel like that’s going to have the biggest impact. So that’s why I put a lot more focus in that. And I kind of bowed out of the whole, let’s do the big huge conferences. There’s other guys out, great. Congratulations, do your deal. But I think I have a bigger impact by connecting with a smaller group of people, and I think they get more out of it. Even if it’s just one thing that changes the course of their business, cool.
Devon Hayes:
I agree. Yeah.
Randy Brothers:
Instead of just leaving all hyped up because some a hundred thousand dollars speaker came in and gave you their precast, motivational speech, and you’re all excited and you go back to work and do nothing.
So our workshops are all about, you’re leaving here and you’re going to implement things. And if you feel so inclined, you’re actually going to hire us to help you implement those things if you need that help. It’s a smaller amount of people, but it creates a bigger impact.
Devon Hayes:
And the vibe was more conversational, so people really could ask questions and kind of learn from each other in the room too, where instead of when you’re in a massive room, it’s not as personal and you probably don’t ask the questions that you’d maybe ask in a smaller conversational kind of a room. So I think that was brilliant. And not that we were sitting here trying to promote that that event has passed. But to anyone listening, if you do get-
Randy Brothers:
We got another one coming up.
Devon Hayes:
Do you? When is it? Let’s plug it. When is it? January?
Randy Brothers:
Yep. And it’s going to be in Utah. We’re doing it in Salt Lake City.
Devon Hayes:
All right, we’re going to put-
Randy Brothers:
Yeah, in January, I think middle of January, the 16th or something like that. But yeah, we’re doing another one already. We’re trying to plan it way ahead because we had a lot of good feedback and sold that last one out. So we’re going to do another one. I think there’s only going to be maybe 30 or 40 spots open.
Devon Hayes:
We’ll put that in the show notes, yeah. That was incredible. That was incredible. So yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes. Salt Lake City, January, put it on your calendars, folks. And let’s see here.
So Randy, I know you do this on your podcast, you have a golden nugget that people take. But we always try to end our podcast with something actionable that someone could do today that would impact their business. And that’s a hard one with what you do, because systems and processes and all that, that takes a lot of time. But if you were to try to say, if you could do one thing today that would impact your business, what would that one thing be?
Randy Brothers:
One thing. Man, I got a whole list of things I can do. I think really the one thing we can do is get out of our own way. And what I mean by that is understand that you aren’t wired, God didn’t create you in a way, any human in a way to do everything on their own. There’s not one person unless you are God himself, that can do everything. So identify your superpower, identify what you’re really good at, what your natural talents, what gets you excited every day, what the best contribution you can make to your life and to your business, and find a way to work towards getting into that zone every day.
Devon Hayes:
That’s great.
Randy Brothers:
And figure out what you’re not good at and empower someone else to help bring along other people. But you got to get out of your own way, and you’ve got to allow that to happen. So many of us are either prideful or scared or fearful, or there’s a lot of things that come along with that. But we’ve got to find somebody or a team of people that can be really good at the things we’re not good at, and stop spending all the extra time trying to stick that square peg into a round hole because you’re afraid or just don’t believe or you don’t trust others.
Find your lane, find your superpower, and work towards getting in that lane. And I promise success will happen. But more importantly, you’ll be a happy person and you’ll just love what you do each and every day.
Devon Hayes:
I love that. Randy, where can people find you if they want to get in touch and talk with you a bit more?
Randy Brothers:
So the quickest route you can see all about what we do is theroofingacademy.com, and right at the top, you can click a little button and book a call with me if you’d like to book a call. Or you can reach out on the social medias. Facebook probably is the best one for me that I actually monitor a little bit. So Facebook Messenger or just hit me up on Facebook or shoot me a message on theroofingacademy.com.
Devon Hayes:
Beautiful.
Amanda Joyce:
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was so much fun to just talk about your journey and really hear more about all the impact you guys are making. It’s been so much fun to watch you grow yet another business into something so successful.
Randy Brothers:
Yeah, thank you, thank you. Hey, here’s the thing. We can come on these podcasts and share in successes, but the journey itself, that’s the destination. Every mistake, every challenge that we learn, that we have to work our way through makes us better, makes us stronger, and that’s where the success really comes.
Devon Hayes:
Brilliant.
Amanda Joyce:
Awesome.
Devon Hayes:
We’ll end on that. Thank you so much, Randy.
Randy Brothers:
All right, thank you guys.
Amanda Joyce:
That was today’s Trade Secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe and don’t miss our next reveal.
Devon Hayes:
Until next time.
