Blueprints for a Booming Business: Smart Technology in Modern Roofing

Prepare to be riveted as we tackle the heart of home innovation with Pete McKendrick of Roofr and Mike Ippoliti from TC Backer. It's not your average talk about shingles and gutters; these industry veterans take us beyond the tool belt into the world of systems, processes, and the transformative power of CRM technology. Discover how building a successful roofing business today hinges on smart tech adoption and creating symbiotic relationships with contractors.

We're stirring the tech pot with insights into Roofr's metamorphosis from a marketplace into a tech titan, and why TC Backer's leap into CRM functionalities is a game-changer for efficiency post-COVID. If streamlining operations and boosting customer service are your jam, you'll want to hear how these pros are leveraging technology to scale their businesses to new heights. And don't miss the part where we get real about the intricacies of managing overhead and profitability with smart quoting—this is where the rubber meets the roof.

Get cozy with the idea of an 'incubator' for sales training, and why it might just be the ticket to getting your new hires up to speed without skimming on profits. Take a peek into our crystal ball of tech platforms and customer success teams as we unveil the importance of financial literacy for contractors. Plus, we share the secret sauce for continuous improvement and teamwork that keeps the industry ticking. It's a hearty blend of knowledge, innovation, and a dash of Pete and Mike's invaluable experiences—don't miss out on this blueprint for crafting a thriving, sustainable business in the home service world.

Transcript

Ty Cobb Backer: 0:02

and we are live. Welcome back everybody to behind the tool belt, episode 222. Today we have actually two extraordinary guests. Stay tuned, and we will be back after our short intro from our sponsors. Tc Backer TC Backer Roofing siding windows gutters solar Roofing. Siding windows gutters solar. Tc Backer TC Backer my name's Ty Backer, the name of the podcast is called behind a tool belt. Thank god, this isn't live, or is it? You assholes? Go live. We might be here for a while, so buckle down. Welcome back. Happy wednesday, everybody to behind the 12th episode 222.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:00

On this rainy day up here in the great state of pennsylvania uh, looks like they're calling for rain for the next I don't know five, six, seven days. I think we see some relief from that Sunday. I can usually take about two or three days of it, but then the fourth day my psyche starts to, I don't know, get a little weird on me here, but anyhow, maybe I'll go to the tanning salon or something and get some of that vitamin E, c or D, whatever the hell the sun produces for us. But anyhow, getting back on task here a little bit, I tend to get a little distracted here and there. I guess we are doing a podcast that's live. And before we get started, I have to apologize, for we had some technical difficulties and that's one of the many downsides of going live. My fault, yeah, that's all good. Hey, listen, if it wasn't yours it would have been ours or something else, or the weather outside or the internet didn't work or something. But uh, that's one of the right.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:59

Yeah, that's. One of the beautiful things about going live is that it's live, raw and and, uh, it's uncutiltered and all that good stuff. But we have two amazing guests with us today. I've got Pete McKendrick with Roofer, I have the Mr Micah Ippoliti with TC Backer and amongst other hats that he wears. I'm sure we were bringing Micah in as plan B just in case the technical difficulties didn't get resolved quick enough and I didn't have the heart to tell Mike I need you, but now I don't need you. So see you later. Bye, that's why Mike's here, even though he's more than welcome to come on the show anytime. But anyhow, how's it going with you guys? Mike, I feel like I haven't talked to you for about a week, and Pete, I haven't seen you since the 21 Turkey. Yeah, it's been a while. So, pete, how's it going? Let's start with you.

Pete McKendrick: 2:47

Good, yeah, things are going good, man. You know we're plugging right along at Roofer and you know lots going on there. Obviously a big year for us this year, with our CRM coming online and lots of great things going on. So, yeah, we're definitely busy for sure. Good, that's good. So yeah, we're definitely busy for sure it's good.

Ty Cobb Backer: 3:03

That's good. That's a good thing to hear. I think a lot of people in our industry right now are busy, which is a good thing. The service, the home service industry. And Mike, how's it going?

Mike Ippoliti: 3:13

up there, buddy, upstairs. Everything, everything's been great. Honestly, I miss you. I feel like I haven't seen you too. I know, between all the traveling and everything going on, it's hard to catch each other sometimes nowadays. But yeah, life is good. I mean just working on systems and processes and training and implementing and making things happen, pete. I'm sure you know a lot about systems and processes.

Pete McKendrick: 3:34

Oh yeah, it's our favorite right.

Ty Cobb Backer: 3:36

Yeah, well, that's kind of why I thought, you know, for a plan B, because I figured you would end up coming back in Pete, but I didn't know how long. I thought, with the relationship that you two have had and have now and and being coworkers and co-leaders at the same company a couple of years ago, I thought you know. Regardless, it would be a great topic because I'm sure you guys have some stories that you could fill some of our viewers and listeners in on and some of your experiences as well. You know, and and Pete, you know, I know you've been, you've been in the industry and same with Mike for for a long time now, and I was thinking earlier, I was kind of reflecting a little bit about what maybe I might ask you or things like that, and I, I I typically jot just a couple of things down nothing, nothing mind blowing, because I don't want to stump you guys too bad.

Ty Cobb Backer: 4:22

And and of course you guys know, cause you both have been on the show before, it's not scripted. You know I very rarely share with anyone with what we're going to talk about, because I like to keep it as authentic and real as possible. So we really don't have a list of questions, but one of my questions for you was and this is more so to kind of pump you up a little bit like do you have any idea of how many contractors that you've impacted or influenced with the being in the industry? You know the part of the industry that you've been working in for so long. Do you have any idea?

Pete McKendrick: 4:57

You know it's a it's a great question. I think that the number of contract Mike and I have talked about this before the number of contractors that we've interacted with over the years, you know, and that we've gotten to know not only them but their business and their employees, and you know how their business runs and sometimes we've gone out and actually visited their businesses you know it's I don't know it's gotta be in the hundreds right Of of contractors. Uh, you know, and I've been lucky enough to really get to know a good, uh, a solid handful of them, you know, and and really get to become friends with them. Uh, you know, and get to know them a little bit better beyond just running their roofing business and, uh, you know, so it's, it's been a really nice part of the of the industry.

Pete McKendrick: 5:43

There's a lot of people in this industry that you know I call my friends. Now you know that we text all the time. You tie you and I talk quite often and you know John Broch is one that comes to mind was texting me this morning already. You know like we we go back and forth and, um, you know, but there's just a lot of folks that I've gotten to know over the years because of it. So I really appreciate that part of the industry. I'm glad that we're here to help. I mean, ultimately that's what we want to do. So any help that I can be along the way, I try to help contractors any way I can. Sometimes that's with roofer, sometimes that's without. You know what I mean. Sometimes it's just advice on what they've got going on. But, um, but yeah, I, I, uh, you know it's got to be.

Ty Cobb Backer: 6:30

It's well up there for sure well I was, it's got to be probably close to a thousand, if not thousands of contractors. And why I was thinking that was because I know you well enough to know how humble of a person you are, and Ashley, your entire family, both of you are just great, great, wonderful people and I always enjoy our time spent together, whether it's charitable events, whether it's at a roofing conference or just a, you know, an afternoon hey, how are you Text message back and forth kind of thing and I always enjoy, you know, spending time with you guys. And you know, I thought I bet he doesn't even really realize or have has really thought about it, and what integral, important part that you've actually played in that. I mean, a CRM is huge, I mean for those of you out there listening that may not know what a CRM and it's a customer relationship management tool and Pete and Pete and Mike have both been in that space for a long time, hence why I don't think we necessarily poached Mike, but that's why we wanted to bring Mike on, because we knew his experience and his background and where we wanted to go and how robust of an SOP we needed on the back end or front end or even in the middle there. I mean, we still run the same CRM since day one, since we were ever introduced to it.

Ty Cobb Backer: 7:57

But that important, crucial role and maybe you do know this but don't think about it enough or get enough credit for it but the CRM has been a game changer for us, especially probably during COVID, where things needed to be more automated not such you know, face to face engagement and stuff like that, but not just do that, but but for us to keep everything in one place Right, the solidarity of it, of you know, the estimating, the financial tracking, to, to just follow up to everything. And Mike can probably talk more about you know how we have our things set up and why it plays such an important role. But before we dive into that, for those that are listening that may not know what Roofer is, why don't you explain to us what it was, what it's like now and where it's going? And then we can probably dive more into some personal stuff here.

Pete McKendrick: 8:42

Sure, yeah, roofer started out as a marketplace model. So what we were essentially was a broker between contractors and homeowners looking to get their roof done and we would kind of facilitate the deal. We realized right away that the whole scenario was kind of lacking. Contractors didn't necessarily have the greatest tools they needed. They weren't. Because of that, they weren't really offering the greatest customer experience. So we kind of pivoted, we started to build tools for the contractor really kind of became a household name as a measurement tool, competing in the measurement space. And then it's just kind of evolved from there, based on customer feedback and contractors saying, you know, hey, it'd be great if you guys did this Right. And then that became like our next thing.

Pete McKendrick: 9:25

So, um, as the features grew, you know, the next logical step was to start to build CRM functionality, to kind of bring everything together into a one solid platform. Uh, we had some really good standalone tools that contractors were using. Uh, you know, some guys were using just using us for measurements, some guys were using us for just proposals, some guys were using all of it together. The instant estimator became really popular very quickly. But you know, internally it was like, ok, how do we kind of mold all these things together into one platform. You know that contractors will want to use and so that's where the CRM functionality kind of emerged and you know, then we started down that path.

Pete McKendrick: 10:06

So the goal from the beginning you know a lot of people think like, oh, you know, it's just. You know they saw an opportunity and they're going. But the goal for Roofer from the very beginning. I'll remember one of the first conversations I had with Richie, our CEO, even before I worked for Roofer, even before I worked for roofer, and he told me I want to build a, an all-in-one solution for the roofer. Like I want to be the single platform that a roofer can use to run his entire business. And I remember saying to him like no, don't do that, that's crazy, it's way too much, it'll take forever. Like, like, it's just like we don't want to go down that path. Like maybe we'd be like the best sales tool, but to just be the all in one is going to be crazy to even try to manage and build.

Pete McKendrick: 10:49

And here we are. I mean we're doing it so and we're doing it well. The team has been just an exceptional group of people that we have and you know we've brought in some great people. We're figuring it out. We've got I mean, the way we're set up internally is just fantastic to keep everything moving forward. And we're doing it. I mean, we're building that all in one solution and that's kind of the direction of roofer here in the next year and then over the next three to five years is to build the as close to an all in one for the contractor as we can. So essentially a tech stack in a box, you know if that's what you want to call it tech stack in a box.

Ty Cobb Backer: 11:24

You know if that's what you want to call it. Yeah, yeah, Now, now, I love that, I love that. And and do you see where? How do you see the, the role of technology evolving in the CRM space and what unique contributions do you hope that it, that it brings?

Pete McKendrick: 11:39

Yeah, I mean, I think that you know back when Mike and I started, you know back when we were together there and the office trying to figure this thing out and get people to buy CRM, so many times we heard like, oh, we don't need tech, I've been doing this for 15 years. I've been doing this for 20 years, I'm good, my three ring binder is great. And then I think COVID caused us to have this explosion of tech. And then contractors were like, well, I need all of this. So next thing, you know, you've got 15 different pieces of software just to get through your day and your team's all over the place and they're manually entering and double entering and all this stuff.

Pete McKendrick: 12:17

And so I think the biggest contribution that Roofer is going to play and really tech, the direction tech is moving is a consolidation. Roofer is going to play and really tech the direction tech is moving is a consolidation right, like let's get away from having 15 pieces of tech. Maybe we have three, right, maybe we have two. Maybe, if we're small enough, maybe we can do it with just roofer, right, like we can do it with just one. So I think that's the biggest role. Uh, you know, I think that's going to be. The biggest role that we're going to play is that, uh, you know, kind of leading the charge on that whole consolidation of tech.

Ty Cobb Backer: 12:46

Yeah, I agree. I agree, Mike. How would you say you know you can use TC Backer as an example? How much of a crucial component has a CRM has been for our company or any other company that might be using one or should use one?

Mike Ippoliti: 13:04

I mean it's incredibly crucial, using a CRM, having a system put in place that allows everybody to kind of be organized and all in on the same information, and like to piggyback off of what Pete was saying with the industry and consolidation and bringing these tools together, because it's absolutely true that having five different apps that I need to open up or need to learn or have a function or how to use in order to complete a job, land a sale, get paid, whatever the case may be, I mean it's time consuming, it's not cost effective and there could be a lot of pitfalls when it comes to integrations or duplicate entry, like you were saying.

Mike Ippoliti: 13:43

So that all-in-one process, having that where it's still scalable, regardless of the size of the contractor, is extremely important. So for us at TC Backer you know we are a larger size contractor, one of the largest on the East Coast, I would definitely say so we need platforms that can provide the robust amount of work that we perform and put through, and without having stuff documented when we're opening new locations or when we're bringing on new hires or we're expanding the team, without having those SOPs built that follow your systems and processes, it's almost impossible to continue to grow. It's almost impossible to continue to grow. So seeing somebody who comes from pen and paper in the past and watching them start out slowly with the basics of the platform that Pete and I used to be at, and then watching them succeed into like wow, I went from being a $3 million roofer to five to 10 million this year and then so on and so forth, and then watching them grow and expand and then knowing that, like the knowledge that we've gained from working with contractors like you, ty, asking you questions, learning from you, and then at that time, being able to translate that to other roofing contractors and help them grow, help them become better and just overall, create a community of changing the dynamic of what people envisioned a roofer was right.

Mike Ippoliti: 15:03

We're, we're professional, this is what we do, we're tradesmen, we're contractors, and it's just amazing to see the relationships that have been built, the growth between these companies, that they've had exponential growth and just even at TC Backer alone since 2019, the growth that has been tremendous. You know, and you're leading the charge on that, and the systems and process that we're putting in place are really fundamentally helping us continue that mold. So, no matter what we do, where we go, how we pivot, we've always got a game plan, and I think that's really, really important.

Ty Cobb Backer: 15:38

Yeah, yeah for sure. You both touched on a lot of things. You know how things are evolving and changing continuously and if you're not willing to, to make that change and adapt to these changes, whether it be with technology, especially especially with technology without technology and it could be from a roofing aerial or instant quote or to what, whatever it is your social media marketing right like, because I know there's still some contractors out there that don't use social media. I know that there's some contractors out there that don't have a CRM Shit. There's still some roofers out there that are hand-nailing nails, which I mean there's no downside to that either. But I think, for efficiency and streamlining and production-wise, I think it could be a cool little niche hand-nailing shingles down. But I think, as far as a production standpoint of things, it's not a very timely thing, especially when it comes to installing a roof under weather conditions or holidays approaching or time management sake in general. I just don't think, um, you know, if you're not keeping up with the times, man, you're going to get left behind, and and uh, your roofer has been.

Ty Cobb Backer: 16:51

You know, pete, I think you touched on this is like the trailblazer of the all-encompassed roofing, all-inclusive roofing platform for roofers, um, you know, and then also being um, and from what I'm hearing from everybody, it's a great product. But not just that, it's an affordable product. So from your guys' experience and Pete, you talked about this too it's like you know, I think for a lot of younger contractors, they get distracted on all the shiny things. You know it could be roofing, aerial measurement tools, it can be, you know, other bolt-on things that you can bolt onto your CRM and stuff like that. What's your opinion on? You know, what do you think a roofing contractor should focus on, especially, let's say, they're in their first one to three year timeframe? Like, what do you think they should really focus on as far as technology goes?

Pete McKendrick: 17:50

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that makes you instantly competitive is a quoting tool, right, like having something that you can write professional proposals with. Because let's I mean, you know, if I'm brand new, like let's just say I just started out, I'm probably not flooded with leads, I'm probably not overwhelmed with customers. I could probably keep track of that on a Google sheet. I don't necessarily need to pay $100 a month or whatever it is to have a user in a CRM, because I probably don't have the volume or the staff to need that. But what I can employ on day one that will give me a distinct advantage and give me that professional look that the other guys maybe don't have in my area is a proposal tool. Having a really nice, professional looking, polished proposal gives you a leg up from day one and it's usually they're fairly inexpensive now in the market to use them, you know, so that you can use one right away, like you can implement one on day one and uh, then you don't have to go down this path of having, you know, five different pieces of uh of software, like I would say, the two critical pieces for me. If I was starting tomorrow, I would get a proposal tool and I probably would get company cam, because I don't know how you live life without company cam in today's market. But those two pieces would be where I would start and then, as you evolve, you can always add this other thing. You'll know when the time is right to add that CRM. You'll start to sense it Like, hey, we're getting overwhelmed with customers. We really need a better way to organize this than our Excel spreadsheet. Let's go ahead and get a CRM at this point, I think. But out of the box.

Pete McKendrick: 19:31

One of the things that we've tried to do at Roofer is we've really tried to look at that market and say like, okay, if I was a Roofer starting out right now or maybe I'm a guy that's one to $3 million in and I want to go to five or 10, like Mike said, what's a product that I can do that with without breaking the bank? That's not going to be a huge investment. And so Roofer has really tried to stay in that wheelhouse build a product that's really simple and easy to implement, easy for your team to get in and use. It's very visually appealing, very easy on the eyes to kind of maneuver through and find things, but it's also cost effective. Right. It's something that's a product that you can use very, very cheaply early on, and then you can evolve into more and more features as you need them. So you know, it's one of the things that we've really focused on. But yeah, that's where I would. I mean, if I was brand new, that's where I would start.

Ty Cobb Backer: 20:25

Yeah, yeah, no, that's where I would I mean if I was brand new. That's that's where I would start. Yeah, yeah, no, that's good, you got any yeah.

Mike Ippoliti: 20:30

I have a question for you, brother, as far as scalability goes in the roofer CRM, right? So let's say that you know I am starting out, starting out fresh, and I want to go with roofer because I've got my proposal tool, because I've got my proposal tool, I've got my measurement reports and I've got a CRM system so I can perform everything I need to do Now as I continue to grow, right, let's say it's just me, an office admin and a production guy, right? And I'm selling as I continue to grow. What is Roofer CRM implementing to help that change for the individual contractor and compensate for their growth?

Pete McKendrick: 21:04

Yeah, I mean we have Teams functionality built in already, right. So we have what you traditionally would think of as adding your users on. We have the ability to create teams in Roofer. Now we have some teams that are big, that are already using Roofer 50, 70 people on the platform. That allows them to add those in.

Pete McKendrick: 21:24

But the way we're, you know, the way we're set up, now we have the ability for these guys to really kind of customize the views of things to really fit them well. So if you're a sales guy, you can just look at the sales stuff. Your production guy can just look at the production stuff. You don't have to be worried about, you know, the leads coming in and all that, so you know. So just having the flexibility inside of the platform to kind of customize it to who you are, what your role is in the company We've really focused on that early on.

Pete McKendrick: 21:53

You know, taking that into account every time we build a feature is okay, I'm the manager, what view of this would I want? I'm the sales guy, what view of this would I want? Right, and how can I quickly create these filters to where you know I can save these views and make it easy for me to maneuver through there the stuff that's important to me. You know, one of the things we have coming out here shortly is CRM, what we call CRM home, which is essentially going to be a dashboard where you can see what you have going on every day your tasks and your calendar, events and things like that and that'll be flexible for the sales guy and those guys to really see what they have going on every day. So, yeah, how?

Mike Ippoliti: 22:34

likely to do a daily plan.

Pete McKendrick: 22:37

Yeah exactly Like a to-do list, right? It's more or less like hey, I want to know what I have to do. And really that came from a lot of customer feedback People like Ty saying I want to be able to just quickly look and see who on my staff has overdue tasks and that I can find out why. Like, why are we behind on these things? Things like that A lot of that feedback coming in.

Ty Cobb Backer: 23:02

So you know that's where that kind of arose from. That's great, that's great, that's great. You know, I was sitting here thinking when you, when you both were talking, you know one of the coolest things I like about having a CRM and Pete you were talking about, you know early on, you know you could basically keep track of everything on on Google docs or Google sheets and Google calendar and stuff like that, and literally we did that. You know early on, like we essentially built our own CRM through Google and it's possible.

Ty Cobb Backer: 23:29

But but I think one thing that a lot of contractors, especially early on, don't understand overhead. And the thing that I like about a CRM is when you're building out that quote or that macro, that estimate actually has your profit in it, your overhead in it, sales commission, and I mean everything, and you can make whatever you need visible to the salesperson, the production team, the admins and all that stuff when you're building out that quote. And the one thing that I thought about was is sometimes you got to spend that little extra money, not necessarily to make money right, make more money but to save money, right. So and I feel like, yeah, I feel like a CRM and especially where Roofer's going right now explain the macro process slash estimating process. Give us a little high level overview of what that looks like.

Pete McKendrick: 24:26

Yeah, well, I think you touched on it. The biggest advantage, I think, to a CRM and a quoting tool like that is the standardization. So now, if you go out and quote a job, and I go out and quote a job, and Mike goes out and quotes a job, we're all quoting the same way, right? It's not? You know, you have 20 something years of experience, so you're looking at it one way. You know I came, I worked last week at Chick-fil-A, so I'm looking at it completely different, right? So, like this way, I can come right into your organization and I immediately can figure out how to quote, just like you quote, because now you're able to take everything that you've got from years of experience and being able to quote a job and knowing how to be profitable, and you can put it into these templates, and so that way now I'm just choosing a template, right, and everything's built in so I can. It changes the entire way that I can hire, the way that I train, the way that my team is utilizing the product out in the field is just completely different now, because I don't have to spend hours and weeks training somebody on how to look at a roof and quote a roof and how to measure and all these things. So it's made it so much quicker to get the team up to speed when you have new hires. Team up to speed when you have new hires.

Pete McKendrick: 25:41

The biggest thing for us is that we really focused on the proposal as a presentation style tool. We wanted, you know, we know a lot of guys still do in-home presentations. You know they use products like Engage and PowerPoint to build these big. You know presentations that their homeowner, their contractors, do for the homeowners. You know they really focus on the value that they're bringing as a contractor. You know why you would choose them.

Pete McKendrick: 26:07

You know because, let's be honest, I think Chris said at one time when we were on a on a podcast. He said, at the heart of it, we're all just nailing on shingles, right? So what sets us apart from the other guy? And so you know, having those nice presentations and being able to say this is why I'm different, right? This is why you want to choose me over the competition.

Pete McKendrick: 26:28

You know what we tried to do was build a proposal that allowed you to create a presentation inside of it, and that's what our guys are doing with it. You know they're bringing in their PDFs and their about us pages and you know, their sales brochures and everything to where they can maneuver through that thing and it's like having a PowerPoint presentation that the contract that the customer can sign at the end of it. You know, and that's been the biggest advantage, I think, to the way we've built our proposal tool, is it just it kind of incorporates that presentation feel into it, of incorporates that presentation feel into it and it gives you the ability to either do an in-home presentation, do one via Zoom like this, send it to the customer and let them scroll through it on their own. But they're getting that same information as if you were sitting at their kitchen table, like you would have 10 years ago.

Ty Cobb Backer: 27:12

Wow, that's amazing. Mike, do you have any questions?

Mike Ippoliti: 27:16

I just want to say that one thing that I love about that is when you can create an interactive proposal tool so you can include elements like you know, videos or options that the homeowner can check on or off. Or I'm going to give a quick shout out to Steve Spencer Project Map it, you know, throw that inside of our templates. It shows, it shows our, our brand impression Right. It shows the quality and quantity of jobs that we performed and, just like you said, you nailed it on the head right, driving home that value of why the homeowner should be choosing TC, backer or whatever your company may be.

Ty Cobb Backer: 27:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Pete, when you were talking earlier you had mentioned a couple of things just briefly there, and it's funny because when you brought it up I was thinking this to myself you know the, the hiring process, you know of, you know being able to hire somebody that has experience in the roofing industry versus somebody that doesn't have experience in the roofing industry. Let's talk a little bit about why roofer would, you know, be a better choice for someone to use it versus something else. That has to bolt on three other components to come up with an estimate.

Pete McKendrick: 28:28

Yeah, the biggest thing for us obviously is the speed at which you can learn it, because it's all seamless. Pulling a measurement, creating a proposal, working the job through the crm is essentially all under one roof. Now, right, so it's. It's not like I have to spend a week learning one software and then, oh, I'm gonna move this into my crm. Now I gotta learn the crm and how that functions.

Pete McKendrick: 28:50

As a sales guy, you know it's very simplistic. Our product is very straightforward. Um, you know, like I always say, you know, you could probably learn it in an afternoon. Quite honestly, like, if you have a little bit of tech ability, you know it's going to be very, very simple for you to figure out. Rufo, a lot of our guys figure it out with you know very little training and guidance. I mean we have a fantastic customer success team and support team that are there.

Pete McKendrick: 29:19

You know we have an implementation team now that does nothing but help you get your CRM up and running and get your catalog loaded and your templates built and all that kind of stuff, and definitely utilize those guys if you come on to Roofer, because that's what they're there for and they're a wealth of knowledge, but you'll be amazed at how quickly your team will pick it up because it is so seamless and so easy to just maneuver through it.

Pete McKendrick: 29:43

It almost like leads you to the next step right Once you're in the job. You know, okay, my next step, order a measurement, my next step, create a proposal Like it's almost leading you right through the steps in the order that you would need to run a job. So we've really focused on that and making it a very easy product for a team to use and I think because of that now it gives these guys the advantage of I can go out and hire somebody that has no roofing background because I can easily teach them how to work inside my process and they are coming probably with no bad habits right? They haven't been quoting another way in another tool for another company prior to this, so there's not those bad habits that they potentially have picked up along the way and I can go get somebody who's fresh and teach them my standard operating way of doing things.

Ty Cobb Backer: 30:36

Absolutely doing things. Absolutely, I would you know. And why I brought that up was is because one of our biggest pain points has been, you know, whether we hire someone experienced or someone that's inexperienced is is that learning curve of our tech stack has always been one of our biggest nemesis, and might correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the tech stack doesn't even communicate with our CRM. Sometimes we have to still manually put stuff in there. But it sounds like you guys and what Richie's vision was early on and I'm sure a lot of people doubted it and you mentioned a little bit earlier like wow, this can be a huge, heavy lift, but it sounds like you guys have made you know leaps and bounds and strides to to get it where it's at and it sounds pretty cool. But I was just sitting here thinking to myself like one of the hardest things because, like, like you said, like you bring someone on that's experienced, they have bad habits. They, they know a different CRM, they know different aerial measurement tools, so you're basically retraining them all over again. But then when you bring somebody new in, it's like, unless they're very tech savvy, you know to teach them how to pull roof measurement, how to show them how to create an estimate, put a customer's name in all those things. That's probably the biggest learning curve.

Ty Cobb Backer: 31:50

And what we've done here is and I'm sitting here thinking how can we cut our training time in half, right, right. So we've came up with this, this, what we call the incubator, which is kind of a joke because in school we hatched eggs and you get to watch the embryo turn into a chick, with the light behind it. You can kind of see it growing and eventually it it hatches into a chicken, right. So we got like a 30, 60, 90 day incubator, which I think most people probably get through it pretty quickly, like 30 to 45 days, and we invest that time into them upfront instead of dealing with, you know proposals being messed up for the next three, six, nine, 12 months, because that's probably the biggest thing and I think that's where a lot of contractors get a bad name of, like you know people saying you know salespeople saying, hey, they didn't pay me. Well, did you follow the process? Like, did you take the time to learn the process? And there's always two sides to every story, but we're always trying to figure out how to speed that up.

Ty Cobb Backer: 32:47

It's not just necessarily speed the lead. But it's also speed to estimate, speed, to training speed. Like how can we force feed somebody with a fire hose and 14 days and get them to learn all this? And it's like, okay, either we need to take a step back, create a university, right that that you know with, with training that they got to sit through and you know all this stuff, or do they just you know for at least the tech stack and estimating portion of it. Do they just go out and get roofer and cut that that whole first two weeks in half? You know, 90 days actually, I mean before someone can actually physically write a proposal intelligently without any errors. I mean it takes a minute.

Pete McKendrick: 33:27

Yeah, yeah, one of the things that you know, like we, we're always adding like small upgrades, small feature changes to the platform and I thought one of the things that we did early on, that was really smart on our part, you know, for these guys, keeping in mind that we did early on, that was really smart on our part. For these guys, keeping in mind that we're dealing with the small to medium-sized businesses who are trying to grow. They're hiring maybe their first salespeople. We built in profit guardrails so you can set a basement like a minimum profit margin that that person cannot drag the profit below that, or guardrails like they have to stay within a range when they're creating a profit on a job.

Pete McKendrick: 34:06

So all of these things to make it dummy proof, for lack of a better term, but to make it so that if I took someone who was seriously inexperienced, they couldn't really screw up my proposals. They can't go in there and sabotage a proposal. They can only do so much and they're, they're we're still going to end up profitable at the end and maybe we didn't make the profit that we wanted on that job, but they're not going to give the way. You know, they're not giving away the farm at least. So, uh, you know simple things like that. We've built in with that idea in mind that, hey, there's probably going to be people in this platform that are coming from pen and paper, that are coming from another industry, that aren't experienced, and what can we do to hone this in and make it very easy for them to use very quickly and not make drastic mistakes that are going to cost the business money?

Ty Cobb Backer: 34:57

Yeah, no, I love that, I love that. So, when you're talking about, like the, the rock bottom pricing, so that means they can't adjust the numbers, but they can like as far as getting.

Pete McKendrick: 35:08

Yeah, so what you would do is in the backend, as the you know like, as an ops person like Mike could go in and set you know, we don't want to go below 30% on our profit margin and as the sales rep, when I try to drag it below there it would stop me, it wouldn't let me go below that bottom piece. So you guys can essentially set a minimum. I mean we used to have contractors build it into the back end, right, we would have contractors that would literally build profit into their numbers on the back end so that if their salesmen literally put the profit margin at zero they were still making something you know. So we built a guardrail into where you know you can. You can kind of manage the profit margins that the sales rep is using out in the field.

Ty Cobb Backer: 35:51

Yeah, and you know that's a good point too. You know, going back to talking a little bit about how you know, early on, especially for me 20 years ago, I wasn't even thinking about, you know, overhead expenses. It was just me, right, pen and paper, going out there literally giving the estimate, doing the job, things like that. But as we grew, right, I needed to hire more people because we wanted to grow. Plus, it was just, we were getting busier and I needed more people. I had to find the who instead of the how.

Ty Cobb Backer: 36:21

And as we grew, you know, as things started to build out and we needed to hire more people, there's a lot of moving parts and it's like I didn't understand overhead, I understood I had to go buy pen, I had to go buy paper, I had to buy ink, you know, and people don't even take it that granule pen. I had to go buy paper, I had to buy ink, you know, and people don't even take it that granule. But that's, that's all overhead expenses. So with you being able to build that in there, that's also educating the contractor to like, hey, don't forget about your, you know your overhead expenses. And then having that minimum like, okay, we need to make 30% on this and then they can't go below that.

Ty Cobb Backer: 36:58

That's something that a lot of these guys probably aren't even thinking about. You know what I mean Because they got so much going on, and I know what it's like to be a solopreneur. You know basically at that point, and then when you start hiring people now you become an entrepreneur. You know what I mean. So that is a good education. Not only is it like a estimating software tool, but it's also an educational tool. Setting them up for success is what I love about this so far. I love when we get together, because every time that I either talk to Matt or Nick or Richie or you, you guys are always doing something to improve not just the product, but the major impact that you guys are having on the roofing industry as a whole is awesome impact that you guys are having on the roofing industry as a whole is is awesome.

Pete McKendrick: 37:46

Yeah, you know I've. I mean, I said to our customer success people early on is you guys will become, whether you like it or not, you know, cause they were all fairly new to the roofing industry. I said you guys will become business coaches. Right, you're not just a customer success person, that's training someone how to use roofer. You're going to become someone that they're going to say I don't understand overhead, explain it to me, what do you mean?

Pete McKendrick: 38:05

I'll never forget probably one of the most impactful conversations I had with a contractor early on in our days when Mike and I were at the other CRM is. I remember having a conversation with a contractor and showing him job costing and I asked him what his profit margin was and he said to me what do you mean? And I said well, what is your margin on jobs? And he said, well, when a job is done, I collect a check and I pay everybody that I need to pay and whatever is left over, that's my profit. And I said that's not profit margin. And then it was an eye opener for me because I realized that these guys were people who had built a business off of reputation and off of really just knowing production in and out, but at the heart of it, they didn't really understand how to run a business right. And I think that's one of the biggest things.

Pete McKendrick: 38:55

For, like, you have all of these people at all of these platforms, all of these tech platforms in the industry and I often say to contractors utilize them, leverage them. Like you're one contractor maybe you're talking to you know you're having lunch with another contractor, that's two contractors at a conversation today. My success people sorry, make balloons come up. My success. People are probably talking to six or eight contractors today. One person, and we've got a handful of them right. So we're probably talking to 50, a hundred contractors a day, right.

Pete McKendrick: 39:31

So think of all of the information that we're taking in, all the different ways that we're seeing people run a business, all of the successes, all of the failures that we're seeing right.

Pete McKendrick: 39:40

So we become a wealth of knowledge by default. Any of these guys that have been in the business for years and are working at these tech platforms are just a wealth of knowledge of how to properly run a roofing business, because they see it, they live it, they talk to these guys every day and they know that one guy is an expert on profit margin and the other guy has no idea what profit margin is Right. So you know, take advantage of those people if you don't leverage those customer success people and those implementation people because you know, I'm blown away all the time by our people internally who I know have come from no roofing background and to see the conversations that they have now, they're experts on the roofing industry, right, they're experts on running a roofing company. They understand the ins and outs and all the intricacies of creating proposals and what gets a proposal signed and what's needed in it. It's crazy how much information they're able to take in and they definitely are underutilized for it for sure.

Ty Cobb Backer: 40:43

Yeah, no, and the reason why I brought that up was because of Mike. I remember how much we leaned on Mike, especially, you know, because we went from Google to QuickBooks and QuickBooks measures things on more of a macro level. It doesn't like micromanage each individual job where you can like get that breakout on, you know it. Just it just didn't do that. Excel spreadsheets just doesn't do that. I mean, maybe it did, maybe it doesn't. I mean we used what we called was the job ledger and there was so much that we had to do to be able to come up with, like sales commissions, overhead profit, all those things, and it was like sometimes it went wonky, sometimes it didn't share and if you weren't on the server of the network, you didn't have access to it. It was all of these things.

Pete McKendrick: 41:25

And then and then, when we were introduced to mike back in 2019, he had opened our eyes to so many other things in the simplicity of what a crm could do for us yeah, I remember when we added projected versus actual in the costing and the eye opener that was for contractors right To say like, hey, here's what we quoted and here's what this job actually cost us and this is what we thought our profit margin was going to be and this is what our profit margin actually ended up and where the hell did all the rest of the money go. And it allowed these guys to really dial that in and say, okay, now we can literally look at this costing sheet and say, whatever this guy's charging. I worked for a contractor one time where the guy was going and putting cases of water, so he wasn't thirsty on the job, but he was charging them to the jobs and that's not necessarily a job call. I mean it is, I guess, but not necessarily specifically to that job. So it was things like that A couple extra Home Depot trips in there or whatever the case may be.

Pete McKendrick: 42:28

But we had no idea that those were even happening until we started to really look at what are we quoting upfront and what are we actually spending and why. Or maybe we're misquoting, maybe we're just misquoting up front because we are missing something. You know our sales guys are missing something when they're quoting or they're forgetting to put something on the quote. You know all of these things that we can dial in now because we have that ability to, like you said, see that down to a granular job level.

Ty Cobb Backer: 42:53

Mm, hmm, no, I love that.

Mike Ippoliti: 42:55

That reminds me. That really reminds me, pete. I'm sure you remember and I know it still happens today. But I know, line item like single line item estimating right for per square price is an easy way to, you know, figure out how much you should sell a job for. But when it comes to actually breaking down your numbers and, like you were saying, seeing your profitability, seeing what your overhead is and making sure that everything is accurate, it's impossible to do that by estimating off of a per square price. You know, just selling a three line HTC roof system with a golden pledge warranty, you can't. You can't see that information, everything that they have in that per square price break down the materials, the labor, any miscellaneous charges, add in the overhead, any taxes, whatever it may be.

Mike Ippoliti: 43:43

Commission profit giving them a roadmap, basically a checklist of line items that they can review while they're building that estimate or that quote and then having that translate, once the job is sold, into that profit and loss. So, like you were saying, let's say that we weren't expecting the decking to be rotted, right, but now we go in there, we tear off the roof and the decking's rotted. Well, we didn't have that in our original quote. So in our profit and loss analysis I'm going to put that in my actual right, because I projected that it was just going to be this. But now I've got to replace four sheets of OSB. It's going to cost X amount of dollars for material and labor and that's just a.

Mike Ippoliti: 44:24

It really is a game changer when you start to utilize that type of functionality and see where you are in your business as a whole and Ty says it all the time right, that gives a contractor the ability to stop working in their business, start working on their business, because you're not in it. Like you know, it becomes the catalyst that allows you to hand off that transaction right. Hand off the knowledge, hand off what you've learned, because it's already spelled out and broken down for you. Because if you take somebody that's green behind the ears, doesn't know what they're doing, and just give them a per square price, then all they're going to do is do a quick squares, get it, put the numbers in and say here I'm wondering, this is how much your roof is going to cost. In reality, we might only be making 10% on that job, though, because of unforeseen expectations or whatever the case may be.

Pete McKendrick: 45:08

Yeah, or something as simple as complexity of the roof, that's not taken into consideration on that right? Like what if the roof is super cut up and the labor is going to be extreme? Like we don't know that if we're just quoting a per square price? You know, and I think one of the things that I think gets missed in this is that every piece of software, especially like all these proposal tools you know, ours and some of the other guys they're all built for per square, for they're all built for line item pricing, right. They're all built to build a line item quote, like they're designed to do that, and they're underutilized because we still see a lot of contractors that are just using a per square price essentially a single line item on a quote to quote right, and then they're killing themselves because, like you said, they're losing all that detail and all that ability to go back and track all that information and dial it in to say like, hey, are we overspending here or did we forget these specific line items, that now we're paying for them from ABC, but we didn't calculate that upfront when we actually did our proposal. So you know, keep in mind that your tool, whatever tool you're using to write your proposals was built to do that. It was built to house line item pricing and be super detailed, like that's the advantage to using those platforms.

Mike Ippoliti: 46:30

It's too old as well. I'm sorry, Todd.

Ty Cobb Backer: 46:33

No, go ahead, Mike.

Mike Ippoliti: 46:35

I love this because it really is also helped. It helps training too, right? So if you have somebody, they don't know the difference between 15 pound felt or a synthetic underlayment, I mean having those line items there and incorporating the estimates with your actual sales training. When you bring somebody on who has no experience and hand them a piece of 15 pound felt versus whatever synthetic underlayment you're using from your manufacturer and showing them the difference, right, showing them the difference so they can relay that information to the homeowner and making them more knowledgeable, building that sales report. So instead of you know, again just saying hey, here's the price, it teaches them the components of a roof system, which I mean honestly.

Mike Ippoliti: 47:13

You have to know that. You have to know how to build a roof. It's not the used car dealership industry. You can't just be like oh yeah, it's a V8. You have to understand how a roof is put together for exactly what you just said. How cut up is it, how many facets are there, how many valleys? All that information you know. Three rolls of ice and water or leak barrier. Can I swap that out and maybe just use two of underlaying instead? Those are the things that you gain from the experience, the knowledge training and then having that checklist or that estimate built out for you with all of your line items.

Ty Cobb Backer: 47:49

Yeah, I love that. I was thinking the same exact thing that both of you touched on was you know the complexity of the roof. You know if it's a 24-inch overhang, it's required to roof. You know if it's a 24 inch overhang, it's required to have. You know two courses of ice and water. If it's a hip roof, you're going to need all kinds of cap shingles. You know there's so many different variables that go into it and we were guilty of doing I called it the magic number. You know the XYZ per square price, whether it was siding, whether it was with roofing.

Ty Cobb Backer: 48:17

I'm guilty of it myself. And you know some jobs you win some, some jobs you lose. But you know, in today's day and age, if you want to stay relevant is you know, with that line item, bidding or pricing is is really the only way to go, because you know exactly what you have going into that job. You know they, they have everything built in there. As far as you know steep slope, two stories If, if it's over. You know dumpster costs. That's something that that nobody takes into consideration either, unless you already have that line item built in there. I mean that that dumpster can cost you for upwards to $1,200 a job, that that could be 10% of a $12,000 job if you didn't incorporate that into one of your line items. And if you're doing the lump sum, you know, or or the, the bulk pricing, or whatever you want to however you want to term that you know it's. Yeah, I was guilty of it too for the longest time. Um, and that's where you know, perry and I, 15 years ago, we we developed an Excel spreadsheet and up until recently we just stopped using the job ledger. It wasn't as granular as the line items, but I could work out the quote, get an estimate from the distribution, put it in as line item number one $1,000 for materials, $1,000 for labor costs and then it would give us our, it would give us our, our profit on it.

Ty Cobb Backer: 49:37

So, with having this, especially integratable with with the roofing measurement tool or one that's already built in, like roofer I mean, it's really a no brainer. And I love the training. I'm sitting here playing the tape through on how easy it would be to train somebody, especially if they didn't come from the space. Right, just put the address, address in beams up to the satellite, satellite imagery comes back and next thing, you know it's, it's building your quote basically for you and like mike said, as far as the training goes, like learning what the difference is between drip edge and fascia, learning what ice and water is compared to synthetic felt paper, learning what, um, the different products are, from three tab shingles to sealer ridge to to timber tech, to you know all of these different options that that you put inside your macro. It's forcing them to learn how to actually build the roof out. So it's actually a part of your, your, your training process, while you're teaching them how to use your CRM at the same time. So it's like it's like a one, two punch. I love it.

Pete McKendrick: 50:38

Yeah, and I think one of the things too, too, is how many times as a contractor have we returned material to the supplier at the end that we quoted upfront that we needed that. We turned out we didn't need it. It takes me back to a conversation I had Southeastern Roofing Mike I don't remember them out of Atlanta. I remember having a conversation with them and he said we went from per square pricing to line item pricing and we realized that we were quoting double materials flashing and other materials on top of the same area of the roof. And when I went to line item pricing and realized I could pull that out and subtract that because I was putting flashing there or whatever the case may be he said I ended up saving the company $70,000 in 12 months because now we weren't over quoting what we needed, because we were able to see okay, we don't need it there because we're putting a different type of material there.

Pete McKendrick: 51:33

So simple things like that you don't realize. Like you said, sometimes it's not always about making money as much as it is about saving money, right, and some of that can be time, some of that can be materials. There's just so many ways that we can affect the bottom line from a savings standpoint that we overlook. You know like I remember a contractor talking to a contractor who on every single job he had to figure in a pickup fee because he had the supplier going back out and picking up all the material that they didn't use on the job.

Ty Cobb Backer: 52:02

Wow, wow, that's crazy. That's crazy. Mike, you have anything else you want to input on that, because we're creeping up on our one hour mark here and we didn't get to talk too much about personal stuff and how you guys actually met. That would probably be another episode, but before before we get off, I'd like to hear something from both of you. It can be a personal or professional nugget that we can actually leave our viewers and listeners with. Mike, go ahead, why don't you start?

Mike Ippoliti: 52:32

uh, perseverance, pushing through, doing whatever it takes to make sure that your team is functioning and moving in the same direction. No, I'm not a big fan of like using sports analogies, but the one thing that I love is the Yankees. Right, the Yankees. They don't have the names on the back of their jerseys for one reason it's because they operate as a team, as a single unit, and whether you're a one-man band or whether you're a company with over 100 employees, like we are at TC Backer, maintaining that team atmosphere and that culture that continues to help us thrive and move forward is one of the most important foundations that I'd say any company has.

Ty Cobb Backer: 53:09

Amen, brother, good stuff. How about you, pete?

Pete McKendrick: 53:12

Yeah, I think the biggest one for me is never stop learning. I think when you assume that you know it, you're losing, right. You're going to lose right. So never stop learning. And that could be learning from your competition. You know, like I think of a post Corey Combs from South Shore Roofing put up the other day about having lunch with his competition right, you're learning from all of these people. Learn from these guys in the industry that have been doing it for a long time. Learn from your tech platform people who are talking 100 contractors a day.

Pete McKendrick: 53:43

You know, even personally for me, like I made a transition last year out of a partnership role that I had been in for years to the product side of the business, and it has been an incredible learning experience for me. Obviously, you know, the way those guys think and operate is so much different than you know. Like I was in partnerships, you know I was just like, oh yeah, let's do that. You know that sounds like a fantastic idea. You know, and then you get on the part of the product side and you realize all of the details and how detailed these guys are and how they logically think through everything, and it's been a huge eye opener for me.

Pete McKendrick: 54:16

You know of the way to just address things and the way to approach these. You know building these things and how much that equates to. You know building a company, like don't overlook the details but just don't ever stop learning. You know as you move through this process, because you may think you know, but you know you only know a portion of it. All of us have strengths and weaknesses and you know. I think that you know you can learn a lot from having the right people around you.

Ty Cobb Backer: 54:43

I love that. I love both of what you guys said. I'm going to try to galvanize and roll this all up into one. But when, mike, you were talking about leadership and what went through my head was the atmosphere of co-leadership development, right, like we're all here for each other. We're all here to level each other up and support each other, and it's not about, like, what I did, it's about what we can accomplish together as a team, because what I can't do by myself, we can do together. Right.

Ty Cobb Backer: 55:08

And then to try to solidify what you were saying, pete, was you know, the moment that I stopped learning, I stopped growing. I become ignorant, right, I become one of the most dumbest people sitting in a room and half the time I think I'm the smartest guy in a room. Once I stop learning, right, the journey is is continue growth, continue learning, so I can continuously sharpen my skills to become a better human being, to become a better father, to become a better co-leader right. And my job here is to be the CEO, the chief energy operator right, I need to bring the heat. I need to keep my skill sharpened and try to lead by example so everybody else, like I, walk into other people's offices. Now, I saw Chris Baker had one of my favorite books to date. You know, martin not Martin, but shoot, I can't remember the name of it but I saw he had a book in his office. I saw Ben had a book in his office. I saw Ben had a book in his office. You know, like that's. That's the atmosphere that we're trying to create is is co-leadership, development and continuous education, whether it's self-education or what education that we we offer here at TC Backer.

Ty Cobb Backer: 56:12

So, anyhow, that concludes episode 224. Great fricking topic, guys. You know, even though we didn't get into the personal weeds a little bit, I think roofers are great product and and the flow of the conversation was going phenomenal. I appreciate you, pete. Mike, you know I love you to death and you know I I just what a great conversation, pete, and we need to stay in touch.

Ty Cobb Backer: 56:38

I know we we say that all the time and I'm guilty of not reaching out as often as I I I could, but before we get off here, I always like to plug the, you know, behind the tool belt. Make sure you like, love, share, comment, leave a review on Instagram not Instagram, but YouTube, spotify, apple, google. If you haven't subscribed, please do that the moment that you get off here. And then I think Matt Radford put a link in there to be able to subscribe to Roofer. So if any of our viewers are out there, make sure you go back through the comments and, like love, subscribe, sign up. Matt Radford, I'm not sure if he would be your liaison or if Pete would be, but I'm sure there's somebody over there at Roofer that would be more willing and capable.

Pete McKendrick: 57:25

I think that's the link to the podcast, to our podcast.

Ty Cobb Backer: 57:30

Okay, well, what's the best way to get ahold of you guys, Pete?

Pete McKendrick: 57:34

The best way is just to hit us up. Any of the sales guys can help, or you can hit up myself, matt Richie, nick, any of us on Facebook. Even if you guys are on there, you'll always see us active in the comments and the Facebook groups and stuff like that. Any way, you can grab any of us. We're always here to help. We're always available.

Ty Cobb Backer: 57:54

Would it be wwwroofercom?

Pete McKendrick: 57:57

Yep, yep, or I'm Pete at roofer, matt is Matt at roofer, right, so you can. You can hit any of us up. It's pretty simple way to get in touch with us. But yeah, we're always here to help.

Ty Cobb Backer: 58:07

Love it, love it, love you guys. All right, well, thank you for hanging in there with us, man, and hopefully you guys enjoy the rest of your day. We will see you next week for episode 225 of Behind the Tool Belt.

Pete McKendrick: 58:22

Thanks for tuning in. Thank you guys.