#182 Roofing Business Success: From Contractor to CEO in a Growing Industry

Summary

Owned and Operated Podcast Episode #182: Roofing Business Success—From Contractor to CEO in a Growing Industry

Host: John Wilson
Guest: Eddie Griffin, Owner and President of Brown Roofing
Release Date: April 1, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode #182 of the Owned and Operated podcast, hosts John Wilson and Jack Carr delve into the ins and outs of scaling a roofing business with special guest Eddie Griffin, the owner and president of Brown Roofing based in Connecticut. With a focus on transitioning from hands-on contracting to executive leadership, Eddie shares his entrepreneurial journey, the strategies that fueled his company's growth to nearly $20 million in revenue, and his vision for reaching $50 million in the future.

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Eddie Griffin’s Journey: From Roofing Apprentice to CEO

Eddie Griffin's foray into the roofing industry began at the tender age of 13, working summers for Gary Brown. His foundational experiences laid the groundwork for his deep understanding of the trade. In 2012, a pivotal moment arrived when Gary Brown, battling cancer, decided to sell the company to Eddie:

“I realized very quick that I was really good at swinging a hammer and I knew absolutely nothing about the inside of a functioning business. I need good freaking people to help me scale this business.” (00:32)

Eddie's initial acquisition saw Brown Roofing generating approximately $500,000 to $600,000 annually. Recognizing his limitations in business management, he sought education from the School of Entrepreneurship led by Larry Janinsky, an investment that profoundly impacted his ability to scale the business effectively.

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Business Model and Operational Structure

Brown Roofing operates with a robust structure comprising nine subcontracted roofing crews. Eddie emphasizes the importance of maintaining high standards through in-house project managers who liaise between subcontractors and homeowners:

“Our subcontracted crews, they don't work for anybody else. We train them, we educate them. We pay a commission to our PMs, we pay a commission to our sales representatives.” (05:10)

This model ensures quality control and consistency across projects. The company manages comprehensive internal departments, including marketing, accounting, collections, and even an auto body mechanic to maintain their fleet—a critical aspect considering their operational scale.

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Marketing Strategies Driving Growth

Eddie attributes a significant portion of Brown Roofing’s growth to strategic marketing initiatives. Their annual marketing budget stands at $1.4 million, split between branding (40%) and lead generation (60%). Key tactics include:

• Local Service Ads (LSAs): Maximizing visibility through platforms like Google My Business (GMB), which Eddie describes as their "single most impactful organic lead channel."

  “We sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a week through our GMBs. And I think last week we got 900 phone calls.” (00:32)

• Diverse Advertising Platforms: Utilizing radio, TV, mailbox campaigns, wrapped city buses, and continuous SEO efforts through updated city pages.

Eddie underscores the importance of not scaling back during slow seasons, maintaining consistent marketing efforts to capture market share:

“If you're not there, you're definitely not going to get the roof.” (18:58)

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Navigating Market Challenges and Competition

The roofing industry is highly competitive, with Eddie noting an overwhelming number of roofing companies—approximately 20,000 in the Waterbury area alone. Despite this, Brown Roofing distinguishes itself through quality and reliability:

“People want a quality roofing system. People want people that are trained, people want a company that's going to be there when they need them the most.” (23:37)

Eddie highlights the dangers of unlicensed contractors and the importance of choosing reputable companies to ensure safety and quality workmanship. Brown Roofing's commitment to superior products and meticulous installation practices sets them apart from many short-lived competitors.

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Scaling Through Training and Partnerships

A cornerstone of Brown Roofing's expansion is their investment in training facilities and strategic partnerships. Eddie, alongside partner Klaus Larson, leveraged insights from the School of Entrepreneurship to develop proprietary products and systems:

“We have our own ice and water shield made, our own synthetic felts made to a higher standard.” (37:20)

Their state-of-the-art training facility spans 65,000 square feet, enabling hands-on training in various roofing techniques. This commitment to education ensures that their crews maintain high standards, facilitating the company's scalable growth trajectory.

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Future Vision: Scaling to $50 Million

Eddie Griffin is optimistic about scaling Brown Roofing to $50 million within the next five years. The primary barriers identified include:

• Training and Quality Control: Ensuring that every new crew maintains the company's high standards.
• Project Management Excellence: Project managers play a vital role in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Eddie plans to continue enhancing training programs and leveraging technology to streamline operations, ensuring sustainable growth:

“Technology is changing so much. AI, I mean, you name it, I can tell you what we're going to do. We're going to keep up with the times.” (42:27)

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Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Eddie offers valuable advice for those looking to enter the roofing industry or similar home service businesses:

“If I could have did one thing in the beginning, it would have been hired a CFO to keep their eyes on the books.” (41:05)

He emphasizes the importance of understanding financials and investing in the right personnel early on to avoid common pitfalls and ensure informed decision-making.

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Conclusion

Eddie Griffin's story is a testament to the power of dedication, continuous learning, and strategic investment in people and processes. Through unwavering commitment to quality and effective marketing, Brown Roofing has achieved remarkable success and is poised for even greater growth. Listeners gain invaluable insights into scaling a home service business, managing competition, and the critical role of education and training in sustaining long-term success.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The only way I see is to just keep your foot on the gas, man. If you're not there, you're definitely not going to get the roof.” – Eddie Griffin (00:32)

• “We're on just about seven different radio channels, tv, mailbox… We wrap… Google, you name it. I don't think there's a platform we're not really on.” – Eddie Griffin (18:10)

• “Building codes are constantly changing. You need to, you need to be out there in the forefront.” – Eddie Griffin (42:27)

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For more insights into scaling and growing your home service business, visit www.ownedandoperated.com.

Transcript

[Eddie Griffin]

Not every home has a basement, but every home's got a roof. I realized very quick that I was really good at swinging a hammer and I knew absolutely nothing about the inside of a functioning business. I need good freaking people to help me scale this business. The only way I see is to just keep your foot on the gas, man. If you're not there, you're definitely not going to get the roo.

[Jack]

So the latest thing that we've been working on is maximizing our LSAs, which is local service ads, and also optimizing our Google my business profiles. So what that means is we're making sure that all of our LSAs are on when we need them and they're maximized to give us the best ROI. And then for GMBs, it's been partnering with service scalers to drive way more traffic through our GMBs. GMBs are almost like the new SEO. The more you put onto them, the better the performance. So our GMBs have been consistently getting better week after week after week. And it is our currently our single most impactful organic lead channel. So we'll sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a week through our GMBs. And I think last week we got 900 phone calls. So really impactful, awesome investment. And we've been able to partner with service killers on both of those things. If you want to hear a little bit more about service scalers, check out service scalers.com welcome back to Owned and operated. I beat Jack before he could even say it. So. Sucks. Suck, bro. Today on the show we have Eddie Griffin from Brown Roofing. Welcome to the show.

[Eddie Griffin]

How you doing? Thank you for having me.

[Jack]

This is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. We're interested in roofing. This comes at a good time. Roofing is getting a lot of, like, really interesting attention. And I have, for some reason or another, I have a lot more roofing friends now than I did six months ago. So I don't know know, I don't know if it's the sign of the times or what, but I'm excited to hear your story.

[Eddie Griffin]

Absolutely.

[Jack]

So you're the owner and president of Brown Roofing in Connecticut, and you've been in the industry for a while. I. I'd love to hear about how you started in roofing and all the way up until you bought your current company in 2012.

[Eddie Griffin]

All right, very good. So I actually started in the roofing industry at the young age of 13 years old on my summer vacations from Gary Brown. I actually, the company that I own today Was my, my first job.

[Tyson]

Oh, that's cool.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Literally work from the ground, you know, to the top. So I started at 13 on my summer, summer vacations. You know, when I got out of school, I was just looking for a job, so I hopped back in and I never left. You know, I liked working for Gary. I liked working with the, with the guys. In 2012, Gary Brown, he got sick. He had cancer. He had a, you know, kids himself. But he reached out to me and said, Eddie, you know, you work for me your whole entire life. I'm going to sell the company, but I'd like to sell it to you. You know, at that time I didn't have, I didn't have much money. You know, I was able to move a few things around and I purchased Brown Roofing in 2012. At this time, you know, we were maybe doing, you know, five, six hundred thousand dollars in business. We were not a big company by any means. And you know, I took the company over and I, I realized very quick that I was really good at swinging a hammer and I knew absolutely nothing about the inside of a functioning business. So I really started to do my homework and I started to, I actually landed at this time, I found the school of entrepreneurship, which was a school that Larry Janinsky offered right here in Seymour, Connecticut. And I reached out to them. I think at the time the class was like $20,000. I, I, I didn't have that kind of money and I'm like, nah, I just don't think I'll be able to swing it. But I did. And it was the greatest thing, you know, that ever, ever happened to me. It really helped me build and scale, you know, the business that we have today.

[Jack]

Something that I'm learning about roofing, the more roofers we talk to is the structure can look really different. Yeah, there's storm chasing roofing there, which is like, seems to be insurance driven. There's like retail replacements which is, I'm parked here and we're gonna do roofs here. There's contracted labor, there's W2, there's 1099. Like where do you fall with? What's your model look like?

[Eddie Griffin]

So we, you know, obviously we're, we're, we have, you know, nine different roofing crews, but we use subcontractors. You know, the, the model that we use, we have project managers that are, are in house. So you sell a job, we go out to build the job. We have inside project managers that meet with our subcontractors and their Job, their sole job is to make sure that the roof is being installed exactly to our specs and our standards. They're the liaison for the homeowner. And you know, our subcontracted crews, they don't work for anybody else. They, you know, I think our newest guy's been with us for over six years. We train them, you know, we educate them. We pay a commission to our PMs, we pay a commission to our sales representatives. But the model inside of the company, I mean it's a full functioning business to marketing team, gm, CFO appointment centers, collections, service department. We even have an auto body mechanic. As you can imagine, once your fleet gets up to a certain amount, it's very important that you keep those vehicles rolling.

[Jack]

Yeah. So I would say the nine crews are all subcontracted.

[Eddie Griffin]

Correct.

[Jack]

Okay. And how much revenue is brown roof doing today?

[Eddie Griffin]

18,5. This year we'll probably roofs come right around 20 million.

[Jack]

That's a lot of roofs.

[Tyson]

Yeah. Is that one location, because you talked about it's Connecticut. But how, how big does that area span out? Or is it storm chasing, like, like John said?

[Eddie Griffin]

So I was, I was about to tap back into that. So our, our main focus is retail. We are not storm chasers. I would call us maybe a storm catcher because I don't want the chasers coming in, you know, so. But we're, we're retail. You know, we, we sell to, to homeowners that either we, we've done roofs for them in the past or they found us online and that's, that's really the business that we like to do. You know, the storm industries getting, getting a little squirrely with deductibles. And now, you know, deductibles went from 5,000 to a two or 500 to a thousand to. Now they're a percentage of the property's value. You know, so we're finding that, you know, being a, a struggle now where, say out your way. Right. In Ohio, you're in a, you're in a. You probably see hail every, every four years or so. People are spending 5,6000 buc years to put a new roof on. You know, I think people today are going to start steering more towards, you know, local roofing contractors and people that are putting on a premium lifetime service with a company, you know, that's going to be there when they need them the most. Not saying storm is ever going to go away, you know, that, that model, but it's, it's, it's getting a lot harder for, for a storm Chaser to get paid to, to run a, the insurance companies, you know, holding on to a massive chunk of their money at all times.

[Tyson]

And so when you're looking at service area, how big does your service area expand to be able to, to generate that kind of revenue?

[Eddie Griffin]

So the 20, the, the 20 million 18,5 that we did last year, we are Litchfield, Fairfield, New Haven counties. So I have Klaus Larson Roofing, who is one of my partners and we kind of separate on the, the Connecticut river, you know, but that, that money rated here, you know, in Connecticut, nothing to do with Klaus Roofing Systems.

[Tyson]

Wow.

[Eddie Griffin]

Very cool.

[Tyson]

Very cool.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's awesome. What's like you gave counties, how far is that from your headquarters? Like hour and a half. Is that how far you're willing to go? Hour?

[Eddie Griffin]

Yep, hour and a half right in there. If we can't service you, you know, honestly, if you got a problem, if you got an emergency with a roof, if you can't get there asap, it could be a catastrophic problem. Commercial, flat roof, you know, they could take on a lot of water really quick.

[Jack]

Yeah, that was one that was going to be. One of my next questions is how much of this is residential versus commercial?

[Eddie Griffin]

We're probably 85% residential.

[Jack]

Okay.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah. And in the, the commercial jobs that we're doing are like long term customers of ours that we've had for a really long time. Condos, property management companies.

[Jack]

What makes, what makes residential attractive? Well, yeah, what makes it attractive to you?

[Eddie Griffin]

Well, you can, one, you can control the pricing. Two, you could get paid every day. You know, and I love, I love, I love dealing with homeowners, I love dealing with local people. I like being on a different job every day. There's some excitement to that. Opposed to commercial, you're there for six months or a few months and there's all always somebody else that you have to talk to or beg to get your money.

[Jack]

Yeah, yeah, very true. When, when you were, you know, you bought the business 13 years ago now A little bit. What were some of the big milestones that you can think of? You know, as I think about my growth in our business, there's a couple big ones. We had some acquisitions, we moved headquarters. What were some big ones that helped you get to the next level?

[Eddie Griffin]

Well, you know, I was working out of a garage. You know, when I first purchased a company, I had a building that I owned. So I moved everything over there. And then I realized, you know, in order to, to start hiring good people, I wasn't going to be able to do it out of my garage, you know, so I had to scale to a larger facility. And then I realized, you know, once I got to a million, I said, all right, man, I can, I can scale this, but I need. I need good freaking people to help me scale this business. So I would say when I made the move, you know, the light turned on. I still was grounding out by myself. You know, we got to that million dollar mark, and I said, all right, now we gotta start bringing in some really great people, build an amazing foundation, and start to scale, scale the business. Probably three years into that move, I ended up moving into Seymour, Connecticut, into the industrial park. Brand started, you know, taking off more. The marketing was really, really working. And that was when the company really just started to scale. It was like, all right, if we could do this, you know, at 1 million, one crew, one salesman, you know, we. We got a system, we got a process that works. Now let's start to, you know, scale it.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

And obviously it wasn't as easy as that. There's a lot of bumps and humps in the road.

[Jack]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What were some of the bumps and humps?

[Eddie Griffin]

I think really understanding business, right? In order to set things straight, you got to seize things straight. And if you can't see financials or understand financials, you'll never really understand the whole picture of the business. So I think really understanding, you know, where we were. One of the biggest bumps was not knowing where I was going, what I was seeing, because I didn't have my financials where I needed them or the person that I needed to in my office, you know, But I started to with hiring these great people, right. I needed insurance, I needed benefits. I needed all these things. So I'm like, okay, that's easy. Move with a pen, right? We'll just start it. But then I started to notice, right. My margins started to. To dip. Actually, I didn't know this because I didn't have a CFO at the time.

[Jack]

You noted you noticed cash wasn't there.

[Eddie Griffin]

I noticed cash wasn't there. You know, so a few times throughout this process, you know, I hit those. I've hit those speed bumps.

[Tyson]

And yeah. Was that clarity driven by the school of entrepreneurship or where did you get that clarity from that you decided, hey, I need these things?

[Eddie Griffin]

It was the school of entrepreneurship. It really was. And I think for any entrepreneur, writer, anybody that's new at a business, it's scary when you're looking at these, you know, high dollar amount people.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

And I just, I You know, if I could remember, when I hired the first person in the office, I said, I don't even know how I'd be able to afford this, you know, but worked. But the school of entrepreneurship definitely opened my doors to how to run a successful business, how to hire a cfo, train a cfo, questions to ask the onboarding process, things I did not know about. So if it wasn't for the school of entrepreneurship, I definitely would have been looking a lot of other places, you know, to try and figure out, you know, how the inside of an operating business worked.

[Jack]

When you scaled the marketing side of the business, like, how did that start?

[Eddie Griffin]

So I actually joined the Treehouse Internet group, which is a marketing marketing group that kind of builds websites, you know, understanding ROI and return on investment, and, you know, watching lead flow and trying to run a business, it just got to the point where I'm like, I can't, I can't do all this stuff and like, really be good at it. So I realized, you know, between maybe allocating money towards lead sources that really weren't producing, like we needed them to, I said to myself, you know what, like, we need somebody in house that can start to manage and really keep an eye on that whole process. And then over time, it's turned into, you know, social media, all of our different platforms for leads conversion rates. We wouldn't be where we are if we didn't have, you know, Kevin in the marketing department. Kevin's an amazing individual for, for our listeners.

[Tyson]

When, at what size business were you when you hired this? I mean, I don't know if it was Kevin originally, but the marketing person, because I know that's a big question we get a lot is when do you bring that person on?

[Eddie Griffin]

So I'd say I was probably at like that 1 1.5, 1 point or 2 million area when I started to really look out into other avenues of marketing. Right around that time is when I realized I needed to get somebody in house because I was actually losing money because I was just spending money on leads and had no real way of tracking them, rehashing them, cross selling. And right at the end of the day, you know, I think for all of us, I'm, I'm really good at roofing, man. You know, you bring in a professional cfo, they're gonna uncover ways to save, ways to find you. Bring in a professional marketing guy. He, he knows things, you know, that, that I really didn't know at that time. You know, that really helped us making sure we were, we had an allowable cost per lead. What that was a marketing budget. You know, all these things to really focus on. And now in the beginning of the year, we kind of just make our, our business machine and our model. And I can almost predict exactly, you know, where I'm going to be. Based on leads, based on average dollar per sale, based on closing ratio, I could paint the path to 20 million. I could paint the path to 50 million. You know, it's just.

[Jack]

How much is, how much is spent on Marketing today?

[Eddie Griffin]

1.4 million is our marketing budget for this year. But we're.

[Jack]

What's the, what's the breakdown of that? Like, how much of it's branded versus, you know, direct legion or. Probably 40.

[Eddie Griffin]

40% of that is, is branding and probably another 60% is, is lead gen and is, you know, we're on just about seven different radio channels, tv, mailbox. You know, I'm, I'm wrapped. We wrap, I think eight city buses, you know, fully 100% wrapped. Google, you name it. You know, I don't think there's a platform we're not really on, so. Yeah, but branding is huge.

[Jack]

Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel, do you feel like a constraint yet on leads? I mean, 1.4 is a lot to put into a market, so I would assume that you are running out of places to spend on leads.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah. So I mean, traditionally when we're selling, right. Like, the percentage of marketing spend might not be that much, but when you're in a slow time. Right. Like my marketing spend right now might be 13% on our, on our balance sheet, but that's due to not a lot of leads. Right. We're not, we're not getting a lot of leads, so the sales volume isn't up, but typically we spend like, from anywhere from 6 to 8%, you know, of our, of our money on the, on the marketing.

[Jack]

But, but you feel like you could, you know, one, one of your goals, it was to grow to 50. Do you feel like you can do 50? Like the market can take more dollars into advertising? Because for us, like, that's a real concern. Our marketing budget this year is 2.2, and we haven't hit our cap yet, but we're not far off. A lot of our. There are only so many active leads in a market at a time, and at 1.4, you're going to be close. I mean, there's only so many roofs a year in Seymour, Connecticut that are going to get replaced.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah, we do a lot of, I mean, so our website, like, we have people in here right now. Widget masters we call them, but they're constantly going to city pages. So like Cost Cob, right? How many roofs do we do in Cost Cob? But I could guarantee you if you went to Kas Cob, you could read 50 blogs because we're constantly updating city pages so organically, more ranking. So you know, if you're, if you're looking for a local roofer, I'm going to pop up on every page in my area. You could go canvassing. There's so many, so many ways, you know, to create leads. But yeah, you're right. You know, when the market's down, you could eat through stuff if you're, I'm spending as much money now in marketing as I will in August, you know, because I don't, I just don't take my foot off the gas. My GM will tell you a different story. He's like, next year I'm not doing this, bro. You know, next year we're, we're slowing back in the, in the slower months. But I was always just taught, you know, when, when things are, are slow. Unless you own 90% of your market share right then I don't, you know, at 20 million, believe it or not, I don't have 10% of my market share. So the, the, the, the only way I see is to just keep your foot on the gas, man. If you're not there, you're definitely not going to get the roof. If you're there, at least you have an opportunity and a chance. Yeah, and that's why the branding I think right now is so big, is because, right, we've been in business for 53 years. People know of brown roofing. But at the end of the day, if, if, if keyword searches and intent is down, the only way to get in front of people is to get in front of them. And that's in the branding. Highway signs, radio mailers. So we switch it up. But really intent drives the bus.

[Tyson]

What does competition look like in your area? You say you only own 10% of the market share. Is there's a lot of small owners or is there some big private equity back? What does that whole.

[Eddie Griffin]

Believe it or not, in my area, we're right in the Waterbury area, there's probably 20,000 roofing companies. I mean I, we do have big competitors. De Georgie Roofing is a, is a competitor that's been in business for 80 years. About three miles away from my building. We probably have 10, 15 really competitive long term roofing companies around us. You know, the. I would say out of the 20,000, probably 90% of them have been in business for two years. Like, I can't tell you how many. Maybe it's the same in your area where it might have, you might have seen Fiesel enable forever, right? And now you got 20,000 roofing companies because just like private acquisition is seeing it, you don't really. You could, you, you don't need to be licensed to install a roof, you need to be licensed to sell a roof. You need to be licensed to be a company, but the people that work underneath you don't, you know, so anybody chucking a truck can just go and, and really open a roofing business and start knocking doors tomorrow.

[Tyson]

How has that changed the landscape of, of what you've been doing? I mean, I would say over the last, you know, 36 years since you've started this, but really over the last, you know, five, two to five, as you started to see all these, these.

[Eddie Griffin]

Pop up, I think it's all in the quality, man. People, people want a quality roofing system. People want. People that are trained, people want a company that, that's going to be there, you know, so part, part of what we do is we're fortifying the roof decking, right? We're, we're. Anybody could put a shingle on. It's what's done to the underside of the, the roof decking and what's put on that decking that really separates good from bad, right? And we build a roofing system or even if the shingles got ripped off your roof, we're still protecting the inside of your home, you know, And I think, you know, by offering quality products, it really opens the door for, for those people that are looking for quality, that are looking for, you know, a roofing system that's going to last and not a company that's going to be here today and gone tomorrow.

[Jack]

For, for your vision to, to grow to 50 million of revenue, do. Is that out of one location for you? Is that how. Yeah. When do you think that happens? Like, what's your timeline?

[Eddie Griffin]

I mean, I could hit 50 within the next five years easily.

[Jack]

You know, what's the big, like, barriers that you see between where you're at and 50?

[Eddie Griffin]

It's, it's training and educating the teams to go out and build a quality roof every day like that. It's, it a very, very difficult one on the, the project manager side, you know, they are the, the guardians of happiness for us to make sure that that homeowner is in is in good spirits from start to finish. You know, so training and, and get in the good crews too. You know, it's, it's taken us a long time to get to nine. We have amazing, amazing staff, amazing employees. So to, to, to make that happen overnight is, is impossible. So but in a five year period we can definitely make it happen.

[Tyson]

With, with that current nine crew status, I'm assuming there's a series of project managers that kind of go along with that. What do you view as the top capacity for your current situation though before you have to go and train a whole nother crew and bring on more project managers? Like where are you at right now?

[Eddie Griffin]

So we're in the training process. We're constantly, so we're just coming out of winter, you know, we just, we just finished up a large sales training to add a couple more people onto our sales team and as them new people start to generate, you know, more sales and we come to a three to four week backlog, it is a key indicator to pull down another crew and you know, get that process going. We are in the process of training another crew right now up in Wyndham. So really it's the, it's the, it's the systems and the processes that tell us, you know, when it's time. So we go past that three week to four week backlog, depending on the time of the year, it's time to add another crew. If we're consistent to the three or four weeks and we can't get out of that, then we will obviously go into marketing and see, see what's happening out there in the universe and if we can capture more or if we're intent is down, you know, but we use all those things as gauges for when it's time to start that scaling process.

[Larry Janinsky]

We're about eight months into using Evoca and Evoca has been an awesome partner for us in our call center. So what Evoca does for us is they do two different things. One, they have their coach product and coach has been helping us do what it says, coach our csrs every single day. It listens to every call and uses AI technology to basically pick apart that call and tell us where we can improve. And for the last eight months we've been consistently improving our scores, which has been awesome. The other product they have is just conventional booking and it's an AI tool that books over the phone. A customer calls in and it either handles overflow as in our phones are full, or it does nights and weekends for us and a Customer will call in and actually deal with an AI agent all the way through booking. And the savings inside call center has allowed us to ramp up our marketing to continue to grow even more. Thank you, Voca, and thank you, Tyson, for your partnership.

[Tyson]

I would imagine that, that the business is high. We've kind of dug in on seasonality a little bit. I don't know the weather in your specific part of Connecticut all that well, but I would guess that it's a. It's a snowy environment at points in time. How seasonal does your business get? And then in the off season, do you just completely shut down or what does that look like?

[Eddie Griffin]

No. So unfortunately, right. To get good people, man, you gotta keep them going. You gotta keep them going. And, you know, this part of the model, I'm sure a lot of people would say I could never be like that. But I make my money nine months out of the year. I hang on to my team. You know, we made it through this winter and it was probably the slowest winter I've had in five years. And I kept 98% of my force, you know, so when we hit the ground running in March, you know, we're. We're capitalizing right away, which, you know, has hung true because leads opened up for us and we're out there, you know, kicking butt. So.

[Tyson]

That's good to hear. Yeah.

[Jack]

How much? So is it three months that tend to be the slow months? What is that, January through March?

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah. And you know, the last five years though, honestly, it was like, I think ever since COVID we really just. What was. Just got blown out of the waters, you know, so you weren't seeing traditional numbers. You know, we, we were doing 1.4, 1.5 million in January, February, you know, so now if I went back to 2019, that would. That, that wasn't happening. You know, we were.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

600, 000 consistently in them slow months.

[Jack]

So you're. And what's a peak month? Like 2 million?

[Eddie Griffin]

Oh, yeah, yeah. We could sell 3 million. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's. When the boom is on, it's on.

[Jack]

It's on. Yeah. Yeah, that's a huge swing. Like 600 to 2 and a half. 3 million is a crazy swing.

[Eddie Griffin]

Definitely.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's got to be a ride. I. I talked to, I talked to a guy he was interviewing for a position here, and he helped build a. I think they're 30 or 40 million dollar power washing company and they have like 15 locations and they, they're headquartered like 10 minutes away. From here. They, so they started here like 20 years ago. And their, theirs was similar, but it's like six, seven months out of the year. And so like right now it's, you know, March 15th or whatever it is today, and they're onboarding like 300 people right now to train for the next 30 days. And then those 300 people are gonna start power washing houses and then every single one of them's out of a job in like October.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And I think, I think they said they only expect like half of them to make it a month.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah, we see, it's crazy. We actually, we. Larry Janinsky, one of my partners, actually bought a business called Bright Brothers. And Bright Brothers does, does roof cleaning or house cleaning, soft wash. But what they did, because Larry, once again, right, it's all in the people. We need really great people. They, they incorporated Christmas lights and like they, so from that time they go out, they, they hang Christmas lights. And that's becoming a really big thing around here. You didn't see it before, it'd be me and you hanging lights on our own house. Now they come in, they cut them to size, they, they keep them and they come back and hang them up. Or you can even do it, you know, based off of holidays. You know, you could do green for St. Patty's Day, red for Valentine's. Some people keep them all year.

[Jack]

Yeah. Yeah. It seems to be a thing that's blown up in popularity. I've seen it a lot on like Tick Tock, Facebook.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Jack]

You know, it feels better coming from.

[Tyson]

A roofing company though, where you have the PPE and, and the know how to be on roofs. Because I, I posted a while back, I saw, I was taking pictures, I was driving through my neighborhood. It's a giant two story McMansion and there's just some kids walking up on the roof with their, with their van out front and probably unlicensed, uninsured. I'm going, that is an absolute nightmare as a, as a business owner.

[Eddie Griffin]

Oh yeah.

[Tyson]

So, you know, I don't know how they're, they're running it without having kind of the insurance that you would need for being a roofing company.

[Eddie Griffin]

This is a dangerous trade, I think top three in the, in the world, you know, and things could go wrong quick, man. You know, you got 20 tons of asphalt coming off of a roof. You could destroy properties, you know. And then like I said, some people, you know, they're just. There's so many roofers out there. This price is 20,000. This price is 10,000. This one's 5,000. And we run around all day long and clean up other people's messes. So it's, you know, they definitely got to be careful who they're, who they're looking for and who they get. And then once you do get them, you got to pray that, you know, they're a good enough company to care about safety and protecting, you know, the people. Because I'm sure you could drive around your area, you'll see those, those roofs going off. People aren't even harnessed up, you know, just running around. And at the end of the day, somebody comes tumbling off that roof and, and, and dies. God forbid it's coming back to the homeowner. Typically.

[Jack]

Yeah, right.

[Eddie Griffin]

Smaller companies only got so much coverage.

[Jack]

When you were probably, you know, a couple years ago, when did you break 5 million? Do you remember what year that was?

[Eddie Griffin]

That was probably 2019ish somewhere in there.

[Jack]

When was it you felt like you got a really good handle on, like, the systems and processes to scale?

[Eddie Griffin]

I knew I had it at a million. You know, I knew, I knew I was there now confidently today. I mean, you know, I don't even have to. There's not really too much work for me other than telling somebody it's time to bring on another team, another salesperson. That probably the real confidence that, that I got this, you know, probably 20, 2018, 2017. I really started to find my groove. You know, like I said, those bumps, man, I tell you, I had times where I' all right, I just need somebody, if they smile, if they, if they look somewhat good, put them in the seat, you know. Yeah, that wasn't a winning strategy, you know, so a lot of bumps, a lot of bumps along, along this journey, but I'm very confident. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very hard. You know, I don't think anybody, anybody understands the life of an entrepreneur. You know, you, I leave here, you're always working, your brain's always spinning. I don't think anybody feels the lows quite like you or nobody really rides the highs quite like you either, but I still wouldn't have it any other way. I love what I do. I love the business. I love the people. I love scaling. You know, I love being able to, to have the ability to do that.

[Jack]

Can you help? You know, I don't know that we brought it up, but you brought up Klaus Roofing Systems and I think how they've helped you and you become a partner in that. Can you walk us through what that is? And how it's helped.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah. So really, this all stemmed from the school of entrepreneurship. Me and Klaus Larson were actually involved with the school of entrepreneurship. And the school of entrepreneurship was really designed for basement systems. Larry Janinsky's main baby is basement systems, which, you know, they're in probably every state throughout the country. We both graduated, and we both went out and were doing really well in our. In our businesses. And I got a call one day from Larry, and he's like, hey, man, you mind if I come down and check you guys out? You know, I want to see how you're doing and what your business looks like and how the model's going. So I invited him and his team down to my facility in Waterbury at that time. And, you know, he was. He was just very interested in roofing. You know, it kind of got a little personal. He's like, hey, you mind if I, like, open up your checkbook? I'm like, nah, Larry, I don't care. You know, he's just a good man, and I trusted him. We hung out for that day. The next day, he called me back, and he's like, hey, let me ask you a question, Eddie. Would you. Would you partner with me? And I'm like, partner with you? I'm like, larry, what. Why would you want anything to do with roofing? He's like, you know, Eddie, he's like, not every home has a basement. He's like, but every home's got a roof. He said.

[Tyson]

That'S a good point.

[Jack]

I like this guy. Every home also has a sewer. I'm just throwing that out there. Everybody shits.

[Eddie Griffin]

Yeah, absolutely, man. But, you know, I think what happened there was we. We all connected, and we realized that there was such a void in the roofing industry between quality and crap work, you know, and the products and the materials.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

So we went through, really, all of our competitors and the best products that they had, we went into manufacturing. We had our own ice and water shield made, our own synthetic felts made to a higher standard. And, you know, that's really where. Where it all started. Larry obviously had the national presence, so it was very easy for us to, you know, reach out to. I'm trying to think of one of our basement companies in. In Ohio. But we reached out to them and basically started to build companies right outside of these other companies that already knew the. The. The systems between marketing and advertising, and it just really helped us scale. And now what we do is we reach out to, like, roofing companies that are kind of having that Hard time getting above that 1 million area. And we really show them a system and help them scale just like we did.

[Jack]

And I think before we got on air, you talked a little bit about the training facility, which you guys have. We should, whoever's editing this should like add some, some photos because it sounds cool as hell.

[Tyson]

It sounds really awesome.

[Eddie Griffin]

Oh, it's, it is wild. We have a 450 person arena, you know, where we do live trainings. We have the, the warehouse facility where we have buildings actually built inside of the building. Low slope, steep slope, turrets, you name it, it's there.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And that, that's the train roofing. So, you know, before on camera you were describing how they were waist high roofs to bring people in to help train installers and. Yep, 65,000 square feet. Was that right?

[Eddie Griffin]

Yep, 65,000 square feet. And we, you know, it's, it's super safe, you know, to just go in with a service guy and, you know, see how he puts on, you know, shingles or metal when you're getting into chimneys and really technical, detailed flashing.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

But at the end of the day, right, this is the stuff that truly separates us from everybody else. You could be a GAF Master Elite. I'd love to see their training facility that they're taking you to and teaching you how to become who you want to be.

[Jack]

What do you think the next couple of years holds for you?

[Eddie Griffin]

You know, I think it holds a lot for me and my company and my people. We're focused on being the leader in the industry. We're focused on our people. I think if you help enough people in this life get what they want, in the end you'll get what you want. So just a lot of fun, man, A lot of fun. You know, living the dream. I'm a big hiker, you know, so hiking is, is, is a big part of my life. But scaling, man, it's what we do. It's what we're gonna do, it's what we're gonna continue to do. Monitor the numbers and make sure we're healthy and just, just keep going.

[Tyson]

For, for either people getting new, getting into this industry that are new, or maybe someone that's thinking about starting up just like all the other ones. In the last two years. Do you have any advice for them? What, what should they do right now that will help them be successful in the.

[Eddie Griffin]

If I could have did one thing in the beginning, it would have been hired a CFO to keep their eyes on the books. And you know, like I said, in order to set things straight, you got to see things straight. And if I could have seen things straight from the beginning, I. Man, I would have steered clear from a lot of negative waters. I would have made sound decisions because I had the evidence to back them up. So hiring somebody on the financial side is going to keep you out of a lot of trouble right away.

[Jack]

Yeah. That's a lesson that I've learned too many times, too. I think I'm on five times now. So you, you learned it faster than me.

[Eddie Griffin]

Well, I hope it was. I hope it wasn't as painful.

[Jack]

It probably was.

[Tyson]

I was gonna say. No, it definitely was. We've just rounded that corner and it. The last six months have been absolutely full of pain. Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

I'll tell you what, man, when you got it dialed in and you got your margins dialed in, there's nothing better. There really isn't.

[Jack]

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. You know, you brought up, you brought up training being one of the big barriers between now and 50 million. Do you feel like the, you know, investments that Klaus has made and you guys have made in the training facility, do you think that solves it or is there additional investment that you're going to be thinking about?

[Eddie Griffin]

Oh, there's always, there's. I mean, technology is changing so much. AI, I mean, you name it, I can tell you what we're going to do. We're going to keep up with the times. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to keep up with all these new things that are coming in, in. The training will never stop. It's something that we believe in wholeheartedly. Building codes are constantly changing. You need to, you need to be, you need to be out there in the forefront. Ascent trendsetter and training and educating is something that, you know, we hold close to the heart and it's what will help us get to that 50 million and beyond.

[Jack]

What is a big misconception about roofing that people outside of it just don't.

[Eddie Griffin]

Understand the difference between, you know, chucking a truck and a legitimate company. You know, I think a lot of people are stickered shot. Are stickers shocked with the, with the price tag of a roof. And a lot of people that are just starting out really don't know how to price them properly, know how to, to bid them right. So just really understanding the difference between a reputable company and somebody that's just starting up and not saying that people that are just starting up aren't, aren't. Aren't good or reputable there's just a lot more risk.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Eddie Griffin]

You know, and a roof isn't something that you really want to do twice.

[Tyson]

I think that transcends to most home service businesses, actually. You sometimes get what you pay for more often than not. And when trusting your plumbing, your very expensive H vac system, or your extremely expensive roof to somebody, making sure that the reputable license insured is absolutely huge.

[Eddie Griffin]

Definitely reviews. You know, we have, I think in our area here, we have like 830ish reviews, were 5.4.8 stars. You know, so looking at those things, right. When you see a roofing contractor that's a 4.5 with 30 reviews, you know, just doing your research, obviously we're doing something right or we wouldn't have such a high rating with so many reviews. So things like that to look into.

[Jack]

Well, I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your story. This was. This was a lot of fun. I feel like I got to know roofing even a little bit more, and I'm. I'm looking forward to following along and tracking. When you guys hit 50, we'll have to have you back.

[Tyson]

Yeah, When Eddie hits 50, he's coming back.

[Eddie Griffin]

I'd love to be on before that, man, but definitely, definitely. Thank you guys for having me. I truly appreciate you allowing me to share my story.

[Jack]

All right, thank you. If for the listeners out there, if you like what you heard, make sure you give us a five star wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. And thanks for tuning in.