Behind the Toolbelt
Behind the ToolBelt is a live, raw, and uncut podcast that brings real, unfiltered conversations about business, leadership, and the entrepreneurial mindset. Hosted by Ty Cobb Backer, CEO of TC Backer Construction, this live show features industry leaders, innovators, and experts sharing their experiences, strategies, and insights. From building successful companies to overcoming challenges, each episode offers valuable perspectives for entrepreneurs and business owners and leaders looking to grow, and make an impact.
Behind the Toolbelt
Behind the Tool Belt: One Contractor's Turn to Technology
Get ready for an engaging discussion with Matt Fruge" a former roofing contractor turned CEO of Square Dash. Matt shares his journey, touching on the challenges faced in the roofing industry and the innovative solutions he has developed.
• Matt's background: Transition from the Navy to roofing
• The establishment of Roofmark and lessons learned
• Identifying the vital need for cash flow management
• Creation of Square Dash: solving industry pain points
• Importance of hiring the right team for business growth
• Insights on personal development in leadership
• The philosophy of doing hard things for success
• Closing thoughts on resilience and adapting to challenges
If you're struggling with cash flow in the roofing industry, be sure to reach out to Matt at Square Dash!
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And we are back.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everybody to Behind the Tool Belt where the stories are bold, the conversations are real and the insights come to you live, raw and uncut. Every week, host Ty Cobb-Backer sits down with game changers, trailblazers and industry leaders who aren't afraid to tell it like it is no filters, no scripts, just the truth. Please welcome your host of Behind the Tool Belt, ty.
Ty Cobb Backer:Cobb-Backer. Hey, welcome back everybody on this magnificent Wednesday. Hopefully it is sun shining on you today. I know it is for us. I know it's been a long ass winter up north here where we're at, but hopefully, wherever you guys are today, you are watching this and the sun is shining on your face. Today we have another amazing guest and I'm going to try to pronounce your name correct, because I was I definitely was Nate, like saying it wrong, and I think I've heard quite a few other people say it wrong. So Matt Bruchet.
Matt Fruge':Boom, you got it. Okay, nailed it.
Ty Cobb Backer:Welcome to the Behind the Tool Belt podcast and you definitely have been somebody that I wanted to get on the show. I apologize for not getting you on sooner. I love your content. I love that you touch on a lot of pain point that a lot of us contractors have struggled with. I love the fact that you're from our industry. I love the fact that you were a roofing contractor and have felt the struggles that most of us have, and that you are providing incredible information for us contractors and I just love what you do, man. So thank you for joining us today and, you know, let's see what we can dig out of you today to see if we can't help some more people.
Matt Fruge':Yeah, sounds good, man. Thanks again for having me. You know I've been a big fan of the show for a long time. See it all the trade shows. So happy to be here. Happy to you know, talk shop in whatever way makes sense.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, yeah, no, that's great, that's, that's great. So I mean, I guess, before we start getting into, you know what it is that you do today. Let's let's kind of go back. You know, hence the name behind it. Let's go back to you know you're the CEO at Square Dash. You're the former owner at Roofmark. You were, you know you were in the US military, you know Navy, rather. So let's kind of just go back and let's hear it from the beginning and how, what it was like, what it's like now, and how you got here.
Matt Fruge':Yeah for sure was like what it's like now and how you got here. Yeah for sure. Yeah, I mean I think I think my story as CEO of Square Dash kind of starts back in the Navy. Anyway, I was a. I joined the Navy to become a photographer. I found out that they had photographers in the Navy and I was into that in high school. So I was like, oh yeah, let's, let's do that. And you know the recruiters, let me believe that for a few weeks, uh, to get you kind of like hooked into the to the whole process. And then they were like oh yeah, there's like a two-year waiting list on that. So uh ended up going into aviation, uh, which was probably a smarter choice. Anyway, um was an avionics electronics technician uh, on the e6b mercury, which is just a big uh in-air command post, was not what I expected. You know, like I said, I joined to be a photographer and thought I was going to be, you know, in some coastal town, on a ship, somewhere Ended up getting stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. Had no clue why I was in the Navy going to Oklahoma. But you know, it was a great experience. I learned a lot of system architecture and troubleshooting and just kind of understanding how big, complex systems work together, without being a, you know, engineer of any type. So that kind of like provided a foundation that I didn't know would come in handy later in life, that I didn't know would come in handy later in life.
Matt Fruge':Got out in 2003. And you know, I'm from Beaumont, texas, a little town on the Gulf Coast of Texas, and ended up bouncing around, you know, worked for my dad for a little while. He was an industrial concrete contractor, so I come from the trades and bounced around a couple of sales jobs and then ended up moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2008,. Around there and did a couple of odds and ends and like the first like actual job that I got was knocking doors at a roofing company. I, you know, responded back back then there were, you know, classified ads when people still read the newspaper and yeah, so I did that knock doors, thought it was going to be like a throwaway job. I got into it, enjoyed it, was good at it, did that for a couple years and then started my started roof mark in 2010 and, yeah, just got into it.
Matt Fruge':You know, just um, it started off kind of slow. Um, I was actually partners in another company, um, with some friends of mine, and roofing kind of started off as like a side. It kind of all happened at the same time and and it took kind of a side stance for a while. And then it was probably 2012, 2013 that I really started kind of taking it serious and along the way of operating that, you know we were here in Dallas, fort Worth 're. We were heavily exclusively focused on insurance claims and just dealing with all of the you know complexity of of multiple stakeholders and you know waiting on money and you know all that stuff. It just the economy, economies of scale never really took over in the business and it it kind of identified a problem that we ended up solving with Square Dash. So, wow, kind of high level.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, no, that's great, that's great, you know. That gave me some more in-depth information about you. On more of a personal level, I guess you know, with your Navy experience, do you think you've applied anything that you've learned in the Navy to your entrepreneurial journey?
Matt Fruge':Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I mean all of the soft skill stuff, right, just the discipline, the attention to detail. You know, all of you know caring about things. I feel like that's me and my wife joke all the time, cause I feel like as a as a young adult, you should like be required to do some type of servicerelated job, whether it's serving in the military or waiting tables or bartending or community service or whatever Because it just, you know, it implants something in your, or it should implant something in your work ethic that's different from a lot of folks out in the world. So I feel like it's an edge.
Matt Fruge':But practically speaking, yeah, you know, people ask me all the time like, how do you go from roofing contractor to tech CEO? Right, like it doesn't. Doesn't not always a straight line there, but it's. It was my understanding of system architecture and just being able to navigate, you know. You know talking to engineers and being able to understand from a high level. You know what they're talking about when this. You know talking to engineers and being able to understand from a high level. You know what they're talking about when this. You know when they're talking in technical language that maybe I don't know the nitty gritties about if I, you know, my, my understanding of system architecture and all that good jazz, uh, definitely, definitely came back to to help me, um, in this, um, but I, I that you know that's, that's just like the, the practical, I think, really the soft skills, like the discipline, the attention to detail, all of that stuff.
Ty Cobb Backer:That's, that's really the value from, from serving. I course I've I haven't served, but I've, you know, have relatives, friends and everybody that have served in like bootcamp is like you know, the training that you endure and I'm not sure if the Navy's like this I'm sure, I'm sure certain branches of it, but like, do you think it has helped you endure more pain than I guess the average Joe?
Matt Fruge':Yeah, probably. Yeah, I mean there's definitely, you know there's, there's obviously we hear it in multiple different places in society now, but there's. You know value in doing hard things right. You got to do hard things. The normal things become a little easier.
Matt Fruge':I also think it stems back to, you know, my childhood, growing up. My dad, you know I mentioned he was an industrial concrete contractor. They worked in the refineries of Southeast Texas big petroleum, uh refineries, goodyear, dupont, um, all all kinds, um. And witnessing my dad right, who's just like my dad, you know, it's just like normal day-to-day guy in your life. Witness him be in charge of projects where they would pour you know 500,000 square foot foundations and you know erect, you know these multi-billion dollar. You know processing units on top of what he built.
Matt Fruge':You know I took it for granted when I was, when I was growing up, but it just I think it set the scale for me in like, what's possible. You know like you know just your normal day to day life. And then witnessing your dad you know run, you know a crew of 30, 40, 50 people that's in charge of building a huge facility. Yeah, I just it just I think it shaped my thinking about what, what's capable and what's possible, if you just like stay the course. So I feel really lucky for that.
Ty Cobb Backer:No doubt, and that's probably that probably even helped you in your, your military careers as well. I would imagine, because you've already had that that that good work ethic you know, bred in you. I guess, for lack of better terms when you were sitting there talking, I was thinking about how my dad and my mom are both entrepreneurs, but by trade. My dad's a mechanical engineer but also was a master carpenter. I considered him, I labeled him, a master carpenter, but he was so good. His brothers, my uncles and his grandfather and my great-great-grandfather were all master carpenters. So my dad always had the knack of just, you know, not just like rough framing houses and stuff like that, but like literally building, you know, cabinets, kitchen cabinets, furniture, stuff like that.
Ty Cobb Backer:So that's what my weekends consisted of was we built a bar, because my family's owned a bar for over 41 years now, and so I grew up in that fast pace, seven days a week. The bar essentially owned us as a family. It was literally a family owned and operated business, but my dad did everything. He was one of those guys. Guys like we didn't hire plumbers, we didn't hire, we didn't hire people, we did everything.
Ty Cobb Backer:And you know I wouldn't have gotten through a lot of the things that I've gotten through in my in my childhood, in my young adult and in my adult life. Today, if it wouldn't be me saying to myself at times and I've caught myself and I didn't even realize it up until probably about five, 10 years ago where I was like you know, what would my dad do, my dad's still with us, my mom has has has passed on about 10 years ago this February it's been 10 years but both of them were such good examples to me and, like you said, I didn't realize that, like I almost resented my parents because the amount of work and them not being home, and you know things as a child that we we just kind of resented and and we worked.
Ty Cobb Backer:That's what we did. People didn't even come over. Our friends didn't come over and spend the night because they would get put to work as well. So my mom would let me sneak away and kind of spend the night over at a friend's house all weekend. Just just that, just to kind of have some sort of childhood right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that.
Matt Fruge':Uh, yeah, I mean, it's a blessing and a curse, right, when you're going through it. It's the curse when you, when you get to be an adult. It's the blessing, right. And me, my sisters, my sisters are, you know, 10, 11 and 13 years older than me, I believe, um, and so they, they came up in a different era of my dad, right, but, like we both got to experience the same thing, my dad was real big on like, uh, or is he still with us too? Um, you know he's real big on projects and lists, right. So during the summer, you know, before you leave, you know, hey, I got, I got a pro, I got a couple of projects for you. I made a list. It's on the bar, right, when you get up, go ahead and get started on that.
Matt Fruge':And it was, you know, always like menial shit. It was like, you know, pick up all the sticks. We lived on a like a wooded lot, a bunch of pine trees and all kinds of trees and whatnot, and before you can mow the grass, you'd have to pick up all the limbs and you know shit, not even the lawnmower, and I'm like what the stuff like pulverizes. But it was always just about like, keeping me busy and keeping me focused on things. And, and you know, he, he, he always says you know, the idle hands of the devil's playground, or idle hands, do the devil's work? Right, he's always got something going on.
Matt Fruge':He's 76 now and they, they, when hit, uh, the gulf coast, it flooded their house all the way up to the rooftop. Uh, for the second time, um, and so they, they bought 30 acres on top of the hill up in east texas and moved up to there and it came with, uh, you know I think they got like I don't know, 15, 18 head of cattle and, um, you know, so he's just got shit to keep him busy. Now, you know he just built a barn and built a lean-to and you know you had to like nurse calves. I'm like dad, you're 76 man, just like, enjoy it. And he's just not that way, it's just not in him so same.
Ty Cobb Backer:Our stories are very similar. Um, in many ways it sounds like my dad was the same way. He'd leave us a list of of stuff that you know because he traveled a lot. He was actually a mechanical engineer. He worked at Grove worldwide and he designed hydraulics booms for cranes and man lifts and scissor lifts and stuff like that. So he would travel a lot around the country, europe, you know, japan, all over the place, wherever these cranes and man lifts and things were, and so he wasn't around a lot, but he always had projects still has projects still like he built a cabin in upstate New York Now he built like a duplex cabin. He calls a, calls it baby bear and it's big bear lodges over here and on the same piece of property built, you know, literally you know he's out there. He's not doing as much as he used to, but he still has these projects.
Ty Cobb Backer:But this is the thing, whether I think are are you know, one of the things that went through my mind was is that you know, uh, good times create weak children and and like, just like the saying goes, you know, hard times create, um, strong men, and I think it sounds like your, your family, had the has the work ethic that that my family came from and I think my dad I know for a fact that he just didn't want to give us stuff. He knew that we were going to have to earn things once we got out on our own, whatever it was, and he always said I don't care what you do as long as you're good at it. And where our mantra came from, for behind the tool belt came from my great, great grandfather and it was a job worth doing is worth doing right. And we we still put that on on our stuff, our billboards, on our you know side of our trucks and business cards, things like that. But I added to the end of it the first time so a job worth doing is worth doing right the first time. And like I don't care if we were, if we were building something like the catering kitchen and I'm up on the scaffolding Literally I'm probably 15 years old up on this pump jacks and stuff with my dad and I attempted to roll out the tieback paper upside down like that. I couldn't do it, it was a no-no and I'm like no one's ever going to see it. He's like that's just not the point.
Ty Cobb Backer:You know what I mean and he was teaching me so much like about integrity, because really, if you think about how a roof is built, it's not necessarily the shingles, it's it's what I call the. The integral part of the roof is what makes the roof. It's the stuff that you can't see, that you did, the preparation that you did, that went into building that roof prior to you putting the shingles on, is what makes the roof durable for long term prior to you putting the shingles on, is what makes the roof durable for long term. Yes, shingles are. Are you know? Uh, you know, water sheds off of the shingles, but ice and water in the valley step flashing tape in the step flashing drip edge, the parts and pieces that homeowners don't see after you install the roof, the integral part of it.
Ty Cobb Backer:And you know it was when he was trying to teach me. You know, it's the things when people aren't watching that you're doing that. That makes you the person that you are and, whether he knew it or not, or maybe he was very intentional, I never really talked to him about that and I probably should before it's too late and because he's 70, I think he's 78 now and unfortunately I live an hour away from him, but it's just still yet too far away for you know, for us to connect as much as I'd like to. But anyhow, let's talk a little bit about your roofing career. Like I said, I watched a good bit of your content and I guess you know what were some of the lessons. You know, and I consider, like the losses lessons. So when I say lessons in this context, I mean you know what were some of the lessons that you learned as a roofing contractor. And then, of course, let's talk about some of those, some of those victories, those wins that outweighed your losses as well.
Matt Fruge':Yeah, oh man, an hour is not long enough, but yeah, I think, I think, I think the biggest thing I was thinking about this this morning, I think the biggest thing I learned the hard way, was how important it is to let the right people inside your company, right, and I think, I think it's just a natural. Just the way people get into this business, right, it's usually by happenstance. You know somebody that knows somebody, or you did it with your dad, or you take, you know, but a lot of people just find their way into roofing. I, you know, I think it's like a running joke in the industry, like nobody wakes up and they're like I want to be a roofer when I grow up. Some people do, I don't know, but regardless. And so it's very easy to you know, as you're growing the business and you get to the point where you you want to start building a team, it's very easy to just kind of like just draw from the gravitational pull of your circle right, your social circles, the people that are closest to your friends, families, uncles, aunts, whatever and that's really dangerous. It can be really dangerous, and if I had it to do all over again, I probably would have saved like six years of pain, torment, of having the wrong people at various stages inside the business, all the way from, you know, door knockers all the way to leadership right, I mean it's hiring is is definitely not like it was a learned skill for me that I'm still, you know, working on to this day as we build the team out at Square Dash.
Matt Fruge':But, yeah, letting the right people in your, in your business is super important because ultimately, it's going to set the, it's going to set the tone, it's going to set the culture. It's going to. You know, you're not always going to be around um in every scenario and situation and conversation. And, um, you really need to make sure that the people that are that are responsible for, for helping you grow the business, um, can be trusted and share the same values and are going to do the right thing when nobody's looking and you know, not going to open the office up at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night because they have keys to it and they need a place to drink. You know, like, there's just all kinds of stories I can, I can get into, but I think that's probably uh, you know, at the end of the day, your business is, um, it's the people that are in it, and so I think it starts there. I mean, there's all kinds of other nooks and crannies we can go into, but yeah.
Ty Cobb Backer:No, I 100% agree. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently and what would be probably one of the first hires?
Matt Fruge':Yeah, I would not focus on. I call it. You know, I think the term they use these days are like vibe checks, right, where it's like. You know, can I have a beer with this guy? Can I shoot the shit with this guy? Sure, you know. But like, is this guy better at me than running production? Right, is this guy better than me at, you know, bringing insane amounts of energy out into the field with our sales team? Is, is this person better than me at doing the accounting and the bookkeeping and and and keeping all the uh, you know clerical stuff in order, right, like, there's, um, there was, there was a lot of like oh yeah, they'll do, oh yeah, I think they could, I think they can do this or I can train them to do that, or whatever.
Matt Fruge':No, when you hire someone, if you're going to hire someone and make that investment, um, not only financially, but like, with your time and your energy and you know all the stuff it takes to build a team, you need to make sure they're better at you than whatever you're hiring them to do. And I think that's especially in our industry. You know it's got a lot of machismo and ego. You know that's what makes people great at selling roofs which is ultimately what probably leads to most people starting their companies is being a great salesperson. Um, it can be hard to get your ego out of the way sometimes and and and want to be like the best at whatever it is and be like oh yeah, I'm gonna run production. I'm not going to hand that over quite yet, right, and uh, I think once you make the decision to start hiring people, you really need to like, lean into, like no, I need to find people that are like at least two X better than me and whatever it is I'm going to hire them to do, and take your time finding them.
Matt Fruge':Um, cause it. You know you can get in a hurry to grow and you can get in a hurry to do all the things you want to do, but, um, you know slowing down. You know the the saying um, hire slow, fire fast. It's for a reason. Right, you should take your time, find the right people, and if they're not aligning and not performing and not what measuring up to whatever it is you measure, you gotta get them loose. Um, and that's much easier to do when it's not your friend or your cousin or your uncle's brother or whatever you know.
Ty Cobb Backer:So, yeah, yeah, no, I'm guilty, guilty of of holding onto people too long and and, uh, hiring the wrong people, probably for the, for the wrong reasons and and I think I think a lot of it does play into ego or pride. You know, fear, a lot of it's fear.
Ty Cobb Backer:All of it stemmed from fear right Of of like hiring somebody that might be smarter than me and and, um, you know, not knowing how to delegate, necessarily, like once you start hiring these people. But you know, letting them actually do their job was something else that I struggled with, you know, and today, you know where I'm at. Today it's like I understand when we hire, it's hiring to raise the company's IQ, right. Not that there isn't things that you know we don't have to. You know we'll have to train on. But, like you said, are they a better production manager? Are they better, are they more organized than I am? Do they have a financial background? Do they? You know, like, what is the experience that they're actually bringing to the table?
Ty Cobb Backer:And I used to think that I used to have to sell people, you know, to come work here and you know that's you know, and that that was okay. But you know, today it's kind of like they have to sell us on why they should come work here, because we have created such and I say we, and I emphasize we, because this is no longer about me and it hasn't been for for a long time it's. It's like you said, it's the company, it's the people that are making this company today. They're our brand, they're our culture, they're our marketing, they're our people, they're the face of the company today and I know I do this podcast every week. But they gave me the confidence to be able to put us out there, because not only am I putting myself out there, I'm putting the entire company out there, but it's because of the confidence that I've gained in the team that we've developed around here and it's there's so many smart people here that, honestly, there are many days that I am not I am probably the least intelligent person sitting in the room.
Ty Cobb Backer:A lot of these meetings that that that I attend, that I didn't even host and I don't have to host every meeting today. Like there's meetings probably happening in the building today that I don't even know that are happening. But I know that they, they're really good at their job. I trust what they do and I just had to learn how to let go in order for the company to grow. And the more transparent that I was with, with people, you know, and vulnerable, the quicker things got resolved, the quicker that we grew, the better quality of the company became.
Ty Cobb Backer:Because I wasn't wearing the 15 hats anymore, you know, I delegated 13 of them. That created 13 full-time, 80 hour a week jobs. And you know, and I come to find out too, like they may not have started out as good as the way that I did it, but they ended up doing it way better than I can do it today. You know, and somebody explained to me like if I could find somebody that could do it 70% or 80% as well as I could do it when I was on top of my game, they're probably doing it a hundred percent better than what you could do it right now. Exactly yeah.
Ty Cobb Backer:Because I was just wearing entirely too many hats. And we talk about this quite often because I think a lot of business owners struggle with, like this is my baby, I grew it my way or the highway, and it's no wonder that you know they and it's okay to be at a one to $5 million company. I mean that's great, it's, it's a hell of a lot easier to manage. I can tell you that, tell you that. But you know not being profitable and and and all of the horror stories that we hear. And let's face it, the statistic is is that 80% of us go out of business in the first four years and then in the first 10 year, all businesses you know, 90% of all businesses in the first 10 years, go out of business and and I think a lot of it it all of it has to do hinges upon leadership and the quality of leadership and the type of person that is in charge of everything.
Matt Fruge':A hundred percent. It starts from the top and some people, um, some people get lucky. Some people are just naturally strong leaders. I don't feel like I'm a. I feel like it was a learned thing. I mean, I've always kind of been, you know, in a leadership position, but that doesn't make me a good leader just because I've been in leadership positions. Right, it's. You have to be coachable, you have to be open to you know learning from your failures and your mistakes and actually like getting your ego out of the way and and, and, you know, pivoting, making changes, all that, all that stuff. Um, so, yeah, I think it's. I think for most people, the leadership thing is, is a journey. Right, it's not. It's not a starting point. And, um, if you're lucky enough to, to get good people around you on that journey, then yeah, that's that's where magic happens. But if, if you don't and you get the wrong people next to you, it just becomes a dumpster fire. You know it can, it can spiral out of control really quick.
Ty Cobb Backer:So isn't that the truth? And I like how you put it. It is definitely a journey. It's an everyday self-awareness of where am I at? Am I the right fit? Am I the CEO? And if I want to be that CEO, what am I doing personally to develop myself, to become that, you know, whatever revenue CEO of this company and, like you said, being able to surround myself around good, really quality, smart, driven people and and.
Ty Cobb Backer:But I think the biggest thing, it all starts, it all starts right here, and we talk about it all the time and I'm patting my chest, I don't know. The setup's a little different today. I'm not sure why, but the, uh, the, the quality of the education. So I'm continuing, I'm continuously educating myself on certain things and aspects of the business, and not even necessarily the business, because I I can overindulge on business all day long and and can't see the forest through the trees and and. But I find, like you were talking in one of your pieces of content you were talking about like time management and things like that, and I've I'm not the greatest at it, but I've definitely gotten better and I'm probably gotten better at it than half the people that I know, but I I've found, by carving out certain periods of time throughout the course of the day or or days of the week, like Saturdays and Sundays, and spending enough quality time with my family, I've I've come to realize that's where I have like some of my greatest, most creative thoughts is with being present with my family and removing myself from that atmosphere and and um, and and and it goes into. You know, they say you're the sum of the five people that that you surround yourself with, and that is so true, and it's not necessarily like it can be family members and it could be. It could be coworkers and co-leaders. But I think, more importantly, you know, what am I doing outside of family and work? Who am I associating myself with? And I'm right off the top of my head. I got like three or four people that have super influenced me to push myself beyond limits that I even thought were even existed.
Ty Cobb Backer:His last name. I've tried it a million times but he's got a podcast. He's got a mastermind group called Cold Culture Movement and he got me to scuba dive. Two years ago I went and got my license. Man, and some people listening to this might be like well, what's scuba diving have to do with leadership. Bro. Listen, I laid in bed. I almost did not complete the Listen. I laid in bed, I almost did not complete the training that is required. And one night I went, the first night, to this training. It was in a pool and I got all this equipment on and I'm trying to learn how to breathe underwater only through my mouth, and I've been taught my whole entire life in through your nose, out through your mouth. Well, this completely contradicts all of that.
Ty Cobb Backer:And, uh, the, the. So I got home after my first little training and I'm laying in bed. I'm like I'm not going back tomorrow, there's no way. Like I'm just I can't, I can't do this. And then I started thinking like what would my team think of me? Or my family, my children, think of me if I didn't complete this?
Ty Cobb Backer:What kind of husband, man, leader if I didn't push myself like I'm the guy, like hey, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, right, I'm completely going against everything that I preach on a daily basis and set people up to put them in uncomfortable positions to make them better people. And I'm the guy that's going to, I'm going to coward out on going back to just this simple training in a six foot pool, right, six foot deep pool, that I can simply run up to the top and, and you know, do that. But long story short, I got through that, I talked myself through it, did all of that, but yet still called Eric and made up an excuse why I can't go. I'm like I can't go, I can't do it. I got a hundred things that I got to take care of and and he, he said a few choice words to me. Yeah.
Ty Cobb Backer:I hung up and I called him back literally like three minutes later, Cause Jana was like you are not going through all that shit that you just put yourself through and not going to Cayman islands scuba diving. Well, outside of that, we get to Cayman Islands. I did it, but the camaraderie, the fellowship and the 12 other men that are in high performing levels entrepreneurs, top salespeople, like was the best experience of for me, of being vulnerable, um, letting go and and go and letting God and having faith in my abilities, putting myself in a very uncomfortable situation and relying on myself to get through that situation with the training that I just recently, you know had and just got through that entire situation that it was so life altering that I am not the same person that I was two years ago that I actually ended up going back again this year. But I know it has changed my, my mindset and I, I, I scale that, I measure like let's just say something's happening to me today or throughout the course of the week I look at was as bad as it was the first time.
Ty Cobb Backer:Going a hundred feet underwater then and it's like, no, it's not. So I know I can get through this, if that makes any sense or not, but I often reflect back on like that was such a traumatic, even though it was very enjoyable. But for me cause I actually backstory I drowned as a, as a child. So, oh wow, I love the water, I love being on the water, I own a boat, I fish, I, just I.
Matt Fruge':I love the water, but but there's still probably something there in the back of your head exactly exactly so I had to overcome that fear.
Ty Cobb Backer:So I faced that fear head on and that's my point of like, personally, pushing myself to bounds that I, just I, I it was a non-negotiable I'm not scuba diving, but I did it. I I got into water. We were 130 feet actually. Yeah, I saw a turtle like this turtle had to be like 300 years old like came up to me and let me pet its head and I was like, okay, all right, that this is why I'm here. Like just chill out, shut everything else off and be where your feet are. And I've been on this be where your feet are, kick.
Ty Cobb Backer:Probably since that day two years ago, I've been on this thing. I've been more intentional with my family, I've been more intentional about my schedule. I've been more intentional about my time, where I spend my time. Like all these things came about because I've surrounded myself around people like Eric O, joe Huffman I'm trying to think who else or Tim Brown was there on the first trip. Vic came with us this year, woody from AJ's Denton and Woody yeah, we and not to continue to keep talking about this but it's like those personal development things that have made me who I am today and a better father, a better husband, a better leader in general because I don't think I know it all and I think the biggest part of this I guess the wrap this up real quick is to remain teachable and and and open-minded.
Matt Fruge':Yeah, I mean, if, if you, if you can still go, if you can still go into situations where things aren't going right and say and question yourself and I, the problem, I think you're on the right track. Right, like, is this something to do with me? Because if, like those, I can't stand those people that are always projecting like it's always someone else's fault, they're always the victim, it's always happening to them. It's like, dude, no, it's not like you have. It may not be your fault, but you may. You have a piece, you have a. You know you're involved in this. You know, and what are you doing that might change the outcome? You know, are you doing something that could change the outcome if you changed it? So, yeah, I think, having that self-awareness, you know, pushing yourself, you know, that's that's kind of what I got out of your story is like, you know, by pushing yourself and getting, you know, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, you open up new levels in your mind. You open up new you know new bandwidth, right, you're like oh, you know, like I went through a similar situation. Obviously, boot camp was its own thing and you know, at the end of it you got the they call it battle stations in the Navy, it's the crucible in the Marines. But you know, it's like a 18 hour gauntlet that you have to run and it's like really hard and by the end of it everybody's crying and you're just like, yeah, we did it, you know. So there was that.
Matt Fruge':But then, more probably more impactful in my life was a trip I got a group of buddies down in Houston where I'm kind of from. They used to go on backpacking trips and I went on one with them to uh Sequoia national forest out in California and I was completely unprepared for this trip. Like you know, my buddies had gone on several of these and they were like, yeah, you know, it's like day hikes and then we camp at night and it's going to be great and I'm like, okay, yeah, day hikes, whatever. So I get all the gear and all the pack and everything. You got a 40 pound pack on. We hit the trailhead and you know they had a tradition of like crushing a beer um, before they hit the trail. So we did that. And then someone had some whiskey. I was like, yeah, I'll take a shot of whiskey.
Matt Fruge':And like I was just like completely like not in the right uh mindset for about what was about to happen and about 20 minutes past the trailhead, I realized how screwed I was, because we were literally on the side of a mountain that just was basically vertical and we're walking on a path that's a little bit wider than your feet and my legs were already like cramping up and locking up, and it was. It was like a four and a half day grueling backpacking trip up and down the mountain. You know, um, but I was with some of my best friends. It was super. By the end of it, my knees were like completely blown out. We were coming down the mountain.
Matt Fruge':Coming down the mountain is actually harder than going up the mountain on your knees because they're, you know, absorbing all the, all the shock of, of. You know every step that you take and, uh, dude, it was probably one of the hardest things that I ever like had to do and get through, and you know it's a really like. Luckily, I was with people, but, like you know, you go out there by yourself, you're screwed, and so, anyway, I got through that. But that it changed. It changed me Like. It changed the way I think about things. It changed the way I think about myself, what I'm capable of um, what it feels like to be in extreme pain, like excruciating, like level 12 pain, but then having the end on the other side of it and finishing. You know, yeah, like do hard shit, it's helpful.
Matt Fruge':It may not be fun in the moment, but it's helpful.
Ty Cobb Backer:It definitely is, and you know some that might be listening, but I think the majority of people that are listening to this podcast can really relate to what we're talking about and that's just like do, like, you know, the the, the pain that I've and most of it's self-inflicted pain that I've endured over the years, um, there's not. I know. I've proven to myself time and time again that there's nothing that I can't accomplish, especially with the team of co-leaders and coworkers that we have around us today. And my wife, you know, and my children, my children, grew up in this business with with us. I mean, we, we were tarpon roofs together. I mean, my three-year-old was was playing in the front yard of this house. That's, that's a little south from here. Um, you know, my 16-year-old was there, my 17-year-old was there, my wife was there. We're up on the roof and you know, um, but I think by also leading by example, you know, for those that are around us, you know, it's attraction rather than promotion, I think.
Ty Cobb Backer:But I think, hopefully we can inspire somebody to get off the couch, put themselves in an uncomfortable, healthy situation. You know whether it's working out or, you know, whatever the case might be, and I work out. Fortunately, I got back into working out about a year or so ago, and you know, that's what I say to myself too. It's just like one more, just one more, that one more is going to happen and I do one more and just continuously trying to push myself to be a better human being. So I'm here on this earth as long as I possibly can be. I got three grandchildren today, but unless there's something else that you want to talk about on that topic, I want to talk about Square Dash a little bit and how that came about. So if that goes into your roofing business a little bit, that's fine, but let's talk about the evolution or the birth of Square dash.
Matt Fruge':Yeah for sure. Just one final point on what you were talking about doing hard stuff, you know, I think to to tie that into like roofing right in in business. My first commercial job, I was scared to death to do it, like I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, I mean, I'd been in the business long enough to, like, you know, I knew my bearings. No-transcript, figure it out. I think most people in this space are of that DNA, right, they just go get, get it done. So anyway.
Matt Fruge':But yeah, squaredash, yeah, squaredash, you know it started as a, as an internal CRM tool in our project, I should say, in my roofing company. This was probably back in 2017 is when we started working on it and you know, at the time there was no AI, there was no. You know, none of this, none of this stuff that we have now, right, and so my, my co-founder, his name's Jeremy Dick. He worked with me in my roofing company to this day, probably the smartest guy I've ever met and we started tinkering. You know he, he had ideas, I had ideas, he had about as long in the business as I did, and we kind of um, you know, really had this dream of like operationalizing, um, a roofing company through software. Right, because we saw all of these. We saw the problem with the business model and the roofing industry, where you know companies leverage their salespeople to the hilt. Right, you got to go knock the doors, generate the leads. You meet the adjuster, you sign the contract, show up on the day of bill, collect the money Like you're basically running a business inside your business and to try and find good people that are good at all of that is like like good luck. And so we kind of saw a path. We were like you know there's, there's like the way to do this with departmental and manila folders and paper and doing all this stuff. But can we leverage technology to try and automate a bunch of this stuff and operationalize it that way? And so that's kind of where it started.
Matt Fruge':We actually did not start with the financial pillar of the business. We started in the door knocking, canvassing. The sexy part, the thing that everybody loves to talk about is customer acquisition. So we actually we built this really cool like door knocking app. That was almost like Zelda If anybody's played Zelda where the map kind of expands as you move through the game, right, you don't see the whole map. It just kind of keeps building and we were able to like pull in homeowner data real time. So it felt really snappy and it was. It was really cool.
Matt Fruge':But you know we built that on like a low code, no code platform and I had probably invested a hundred, $150,000 of my own money, you know, just kind of tinkering around with this over a couple of years. And you know it got to the point where I was so pot committed into this. I was like, well, shit, we got to like we got to bring something to market. Like I'm not just going to like what are we going to build? And so you know we had all these ideas and we had prototype, this prototype that we had all the, all the little modules of the business kind of at least mapped out, if not halfway built.
Matt Fruge':But then when I started talking to people and I really like started thinking about the competitive landscape and really did some soul searching on what actually kept me up at night as a business owner, it had nothing to do with how many doors we knocked, had nothing to do with how many jobs we, you know, had on the books for that week. It had everything to do with the finances of the company. Right, like, how much money have we collected this week? Do we have enough left on our credit? You know line at the material supplier? Do I have enough cash to pay you know the crews for for this volume of work this week? You know, it was just a constant cashflow ninja gymnastic thing that I was having to manage and I was just like either I'm like the world's worst operator or there's something like structurally wrong with how money moves through this industry. And so that was really kind of where we went down the path of like, okay, so how would we even like, how would we automate that? Like, how would, how would we? How would we improve and optimize cash flows? If that's like the root of all evil inside the business, because it affects everything your marketing budget, your you know how many salespeople you can hire, new trucks you can put on the road, equipment you can buy Um, and so that's that's kind of where it started.
Matt Fruge':When we decided to like commercialize a product, we were like, well, I don't really want to go compete with Job Nimbus and Acculinks and Roofer had just come on the market, and I was like, well, is there something else? And so that's kind of how we arrived on it and then it's obviously taken you know its own kind of course and changed shapes a couple of times along the way. We're in the middle of another kind of pivot, if you want to call it that, just because of the things are just changing so quickly in the market and we we see an opportunity there. So but yeah, you know, and I guess it would probably be helpful to explain what Square Dash is right. So it is a managed cash acceleration service right where. Where we come in and we become the accounts receivable department or heavily augment your accounts receivable department and take over all of the billing activity, the followup with all the stakeholders, whether that be the insurance company, the homeowner for mortgage endorsements. We've partnered with ink payments where that's included in your monthly subscription. With Square Dash there's no additional fees and we handle all of that as a managed service so that you and your team can focus on what you're really good at and where the soul of the business typically is in these smaller to mid-sized companies, which is going out, meeting new customers, serving their communities, building good roofs and growing the business. We focus on collecting the money. Where we're different from a traditional accounts receivable. We're not a collection agency but we do collection activities. Where we're different is we actually we will purchase the receivable from the contractor and if you're familiar with invoice factoring, it uses the same principles and kind of frameworks of that.
Matt Fruge':Factoring has been around since like the 1300s. It's pretty pretty well-known thing, but it kind of has a bad connotation because it's kind of like a last ditch. You know it's in a lot of industries. It's like a sign of distress, like the business is in distress so they need access to the cash, and then it's just kind of like a bridge thing.
Matt Fruge':What we wanted to do is really operationalize and like really kind of fit the use of accelerated cash into every job, right into the workflow of the business, and so we've we've kind of built the product to try and accomplish that and and it's that kind of one two combination that makes it different from from anything that I'm aware of out in the market. Uh, there's certainly factoring companies. It's a little hard with the nuance of insurance claims and the way the money's broken down, um, for for a lot of factoring companies to to work with insurance restoration focused contractors. But, um, you know, that's where my industry background and expertise kind of comes in to to build a you know kind of thoughtful product. Uh, in that regard so, wow, Okay.
Ty Cobb Backer:So I guess so you're, you're, you're not a collection agency. Um, so you, you kind of come over and take over people's uh, you know, collections or not collections, but their receivables. So give me a snapshot, Like if I would sign up today, what would a contractor expect to happen?
Matt Fruge':I guess, yeah, so there's, you know, there's a bit of an onboarding process that has to happen right. This isn't like, hey, here's a tool, flip a switch and you know, now we're live inside your business, right, we're taking over a pretty critical function of the business and in a lot of cases it's not really well built inside of the company we're engaging with right, because small companies have needs, large companies have different needs, and so we find our sweet spot in the $2 to $15 million top line revenue range is typically where most of our contractors fall. There's a bit of an onboarding process where we, you know, we have a meeting with the leadership team. We really kind of do a deep dive on the business, how everything like what is your workflow Like? When do you supplement? Before the job, during the job, after the job? Is that you know a hundred percent across the board? Is it as needed right? Like, when do you collect the deductible? When do you collect the first check? We really have to understand. Like you know, there's I think we've mapped out about 18 different permutations of how jobs can like land in our lap right, based on when this was collected, when that was collected. You know all that stuff. So we really take the time to get to know that process of the business so that we can mold our expectation and our staff is going to be serving them, to kind of meet them where they're at. And then after onboarding, you know, obviously there's underwriting. We look at the financials, we determine, you know, the credit limit that we're going to be able to, you know, deploy into this company, based on you know, the past six to 12 months, what that looks like. We'll set credit limits, we'll set job limits and terms and all that stuff, and then we're kind of off to the races.
Matt Fruge':Onboarding takes about a week or so. We have contract, we have an accelerated option where they can try and do it in the afternoon. We also meet with their sales team because you know, their sales team is the tip of the spear. They're the ones out there forming the relationships with the homeowners and they're the ones that ultimately have to present this to the property owner, depending on where it happens in the process, whether that's a contract signing or during the final walk around or whatever. And you know the analogy we like to use with contractors when we're kind of coaching them on how to prep their homeowners is like when you go to the doctor it's not, you know, dr Smith or nurse Betty that you know stuffs the envelope and sends the bill to you in the mail. And they didn't build the payment portal where you, you, you pay your bill.
Matt Fruge':They're focused on delivering, you know, providing the service that they provide, and they partner with a billing partner to deal with the insurance carrier and get all the billing codes and all that crap set up and do all the billing.
Matt Fruge':And that's kind of how we position ourselves and it makes perfect sense to homeowners when it's explained like that. And so there's a bit of a handoff like a welcome call with the homeowner to let us know who it is. There's marketing collateral we give them to help explain that and then we just kind of take over from there and it's up to the contractor. You know most contractors use our claim funding solution on the depreciation check. They kind of have their front end processes intact and their cash conversion cycle hasn't really started until they complete the work anyway, so they don't want to mess up anything there. We have other contractors that are like yeah, I want you to collect everything, I don't want my salespeople touching any money, right, and so we get brought in a lot earlier into the fold with those types of customers, but the majority of it it's on the back end.
Ty Cobb Backer:So okay, now I think I heard you you actually offer financing, like you give the contractor capital to.
Matt Fruge':Yeah, yeah, um, you know we get confused for a finance company and we get confused for a collection agency, right? And so, um, it's um. Again, speaking in analogies, uh, or metaphors, imagine you wanted to sell me a truck, right? You live in Pennsylvania, I live in Texas, we both agree. The blue book values $10,000 on it. It's a file. I offer you 9,500, I say, hey look, I'm gonna buy the truck for 9,500. I'll give you 8,500 right now. When you deliver the truck to Texas, I'll give you the other thousand bucks and you're made whole at 9,500.
Matt Fruge':I didn't charge you interest, I didn't charge a fee, I didn't do anything. I bought an asset from you at a discount, right At 5%, 5%, less. That's the same thing. Except we're buying your receivable, your contract with that homeowner that needs to be an approved insurance claims. That's an important distinction. But we're buying that receivable, we're buying that asset from you at a discount. We're giving you 85 cents on the dollar upfront of whatever portion of that we're buying, whether it's ACV, depreciation, the whole thing. You're only paying the dollar upfront of whatever portion of that we're buying, whether it's ACV, depreciation, the whole thing. You're only paying the discount on what you're selling to us and then when we collect it in full, the 10% reserve goes right back to you.
Matt Fruge':There's a wallet on our platform and so you know it's a. It's a. It's probably the cheapest money that is kind of ingrained into the existing workflow of the company. As much as we can be right there's like the stuff I mentioned earlier, but but that's pretty much how it works. So it's not financing. We don't buy non-performing invoices. We're not a collection agency. We're not going to buy your receivables for 30 cents on the dollar and then go chase down deadbeats. That's that's not what we do. There's collection agencies out there that that might do that, but that's not what we do.
Matt Fruge':We try and we try and just become the billing department and we think of ourselves just as your billing department should think of themselves, as like we got to get this money back in the door as fast as possible, right, like we. This is, this is all good work that we've done and we need to collect on it, and so we're aligned with contractors in that regard, because you know we have a cost of capital. The longer that money's out on the street, the more it costs us, and the contractor wants that 10% back as fast as possible. We want to get it back to him as soon as possible, because that means we've recycled the money and we can deploy that in the other areas. So it's, you know, it's, it's.
Matt Fruge':It's aligned on a lot of ways, and it's it's meant to reduce and take some administrative burden off the company, especially ones that are kind of growing, going through the growing pains, and then also keep the cashflow flowing through the business so that you can stop acting like a bank and you know, you know quit making your salespeople that you hired to go sell jobs like collection agents and billing people. That's not what they're good at. They're good at bringing the stake, not collecting the bill, right, and so that's what we try to focus on now, and you you beautifully put that to you know differentiating yourself from a collection agency, you know.
Ty Cobb Backer:You know getting, you know money from deadbeats and stuff like that. Money from deadbeats and stuff like that have you ever considered, and maybe this is, this is in the future for you guys, but are you guys going to only stay to like insurance restoration contractors? Or what about those that are in the retail space?
Matt Fruge':Yeah, for the foreseeable future we will be focused on insurance claims, because you know the insurance market as a whole. You know roofing, hail and wind claims account for about a third of all property insurance claims that get filed each year. The other two thirds are split between fire and water. Obviously, those are the next kind of frontiers verticals that we want to go into. But even though, even though the you know, the claims process kind of works the same, there's there's some pretty significant nuance difference between how a contents restoration company works versus a mitigation company versus a full service restoration company, how they operate, how money flows through when it actually becomes a receivable, like is a mitigation invoice really a receivable? Has anybody agreed to it? You know, like so there's there's those types of considerations that we have to think through from a product standpoint, like how does our product handle that stuff, before we can really kind of go attack those verticals we really kind of focus on, on the roofing space for now.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, no, I no, I like that. That's great. That is, you know I, I must agree. I mean, I think one of our biggest, one of my biggest concerns, you know when, when we got started early on, is, you know I would lay in bed. You know I was just like you. I worked for somebody else and ended up.
Ty Cobb Backer:I'm a first generation roofing contractor and you know it would be like man, I and and I'm a mechanic, so I would spend a majority of my day I would start a project, leave the guys there and I would run around, try to punch out, like you know, small repair jobs and and do whatever I could do to make ends meet, to make payroll at the end of the week, and it was. I remember it was such a struggle and then it became, you know not like where's the work going to come from, but it was. It was the. What would keep me up at night was is how the hell are we going to get all this work done? You know, not because we didn't necessarily have the manpower, but it was because I didn't have the capital coming in fast enough, where the seed money you know to to back up, because we were for the longest time we were a cash. You know we grew as fast as the cash would allow us and in some instances we're still that way. You know we didn't have lines of credit with with you know distribution and didn't have any lines of credit. I'll be honest with you I didn't get my first credit card. Up until about five years ago. I didn't grow up with credit card debt and things like that because I just I hated debt. Now, as the years have gone on, I've learned how to leverage banks and real estate and things like that. I got into real estate several years ago and have learned that game of leveraging the bank and the difference between good debt and bad debt.
Ty Cobb Backer:But I love that because, like you said, I think you've really found your niche, because I know you were talking earlier about trying to navigate. I didn't want to compete against a CRM company, I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole, but you kind of settled into probably one of the biggest pain points that any, really any business, especially roofing contractors, um base man on a day-to-day basis, um, you know it, it, it's, it's pretty cool and you know, and I think through your experiences and stuff, I think you've identified, you know, the biggest pain point and, of course, any, any successful business which, um, you've created here is is finding solutions to people's problems. Man, and I think you've really tapped into something that's pretty bad-ass. You know, and and and, and, quite quite honestly, I'm a little envious because it's it's it's so dope.
Ty Cobb Backer:You know what it is that you're doing and how many people that you know, lives that you're going to impact. You know, and the importance of cash flow and I really wish we had more time because of talking about, you know, cash flow and problems with cash flow and things like that, and I know you will. You have so much good content out there. But before, before we go here, I just want to make sure everybody knows how to contact you, and I'm assuming that's going to be square dashcom.
Matt Fruge':Yeah, yep, square dashcom, just look for an orange button say schedule a consultation. That'll get you through to one of the members of our team, and you know it. Yeah, it's a work in progress. Right, like this is this is a really hard problem to solve. It's hard enough to do it inside the business and it's it's got its own challenges doing it for companies, right, and um, but our, our entire team firmly believes, like that, this is a problem we're solving.
Matt Fruge':Right, this is this is like a universal problem across all, really all businesses, but specifically in our little niche industry, this is like nobody's immune to this and you just got to figure it out. And so, uh, we're super jazzed, super excited to be part of of our customer's journey and try and help them. And, um, you know, if we don't, if we don't think we can help them or we don't feel like it's going to be a good fit, we will tell you this is not a, we're not in this to. You know, it's not a money grab, it's not a it's if we can't help you, we, we, we shouldn't be doing business together. And so, yeah, if, if anybody sees this and wants to reach out, please visit square dashcom, click on the orange button and we'll we'll have a chat.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love what you're doing, matt. I love you. Know what your team and everybody in your partnership with Inc. Those guys are over there at Inc. Ryan Holiday is probably one of my favorite people in the world.
Matt Fruge':Yeah, he's great, him and Ken are great Yep, such a great dude.
Ty Cobb Backer:So is there anything that you want to leave our audience with? It could be a personal nugget, it could be a professional nugget.
Matt Fruge':before we get off here, you know I think we covered a lot of ground. I think you know, do hard things and do the right thing and you know you'll be just fine in life and in business.
Ty Cobb Backer:So I freaking love that. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I definitely want to connect with you offline here at some point in time and just, you're just a good dude and I love what you're doing and and not that I want to be a part of it, but I more so would like you to be one of the the sum of five people, maybe that that, um, I can be, you know, um, but uh, thank you, thank you guys for for tuning in today. Uh, next week, I believe. Uh, shit, I just lost my train of thought but we will have a guest next week. It'll be somebody there.
Ty Cobb Backer:He said don't forget to tune in. I'm not sure if I might be out of town next week, so who knows where we're going to be streaming live from next week. But thank you guys. If you haven't liked, loved, subscribed, or if there's somebody out there that you think that might get something from this, please share this with them. And, of course, you can reach out to Matt. I'm sure you go on to his, his Facebook page Matt, matt. I just want to make sure I'm saying it right, ferrucci.
Matt Fruge':You got it.
Ty Cobb Backer:On social media. I'm sure he's on Instagram, facebook that's where I follow him. I'm sure you got to. I know you got a YouTube channel, so check him out. Check out square dashcom If you think that your company is in need of their expertise, and, uh, I I think what they're doing is is phenomenal. So, until next week, take care of each other and we will see you then. Thank you for joining us, thanks for having me yes.
