Introduction

After working for seven years at a local Colorado roofing company named Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration, I decided that it was time to move on and start my own roofing company.  I had started in the roofing industry at a very small company called Denver Roof Systems as a door to door salesperson and that was just short of a living nightmare. I was supposed to go out and knock on doors asking people if they were interested in a free roof inspection so that I could check and see if they had hail damage. This alone took a great deal of effort and addition to that I had a Sales Manager who micromanaged my schedule and expected me to go out and knock on doors daily for at least three to four hours at a time. This was a straight commission job which was supposed to give me some flexibility in my schedule, but this Sales Manager did not adhere to any flexibility at all. Every day I considered quitting and after six months I finally did decide to quit at Denver Roof Systems.

I scoured Craigslist and had phone calls and meetings with nearly every roofing company on Craigslist. The Owner of Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration was willing to give me the highest commission split that I could negotiate and he seemed flexible in terms of my schedule and products that I wanted to sell and complimentary upgrades that I wanted to offer to entice a customer to go with me. I decided I would give it one more last ditch effort to be a roofing salesman and I signed on with Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration in August 2012.

From Sales Manager to Owner

I never really wanted to become a roofing salesman or roofing contractor. My purpose in life and passion in life was to be a writer. After many failed attempts at being a professional writer, mainly due to having undiagnosed ADHD, I began to doubt my purpose of becoming a writer. I really needed to pay bills and earn a decent living and sales was something that I seemed to progress in. Looking back, I think that getting a sale was a way to chase down the dopamine that my frontal cortex needed.  ADHD is essentially the lack of dopamine in the frontal cortex of our brain, and people with ADHD will go great lengths to get that dopamine. Getting the sale of a roofing job was an enormous dopamine rush and so that chase gave me the motivation needed to go out and knock on doors and generate leads despite the dread that I would feel every Saturday morning as I would get ready to go out and knock.

I remember knocking on doors from 10am to 2pm and generating leads and then after 2pm I was burnt out and ready to stop working for the weekend. I would head over to a local market that had fresh steak and I would get a nice Ribeye cut with a potato and take it to my little studio apartment and cook and enjoy while I would watch TV feeling satisfied after a hard day of work. This went on for a couple years until I began to move up the ladder and asked the company owner for the opportunity to become a Sales Manager and start recruiting and training sales people. I had experience doing this and I had the confidence that I could figure it out with roofing sales.

The Owner agreed and it was a chance to earn commissions from not only personal sales, but also from the sales of people that I had recruited and trained. During this time I had also gotten my girlfriend who later became my wife pregnant with our first child. I felt the pressure more than ever to pay my bills and now provide for a family so I began to take my job much more seriously.  When I started as a Sales Manager in 2013 the company hovered around $2m in sales and by the time I left in 2019 the company was on track to hit $6m in sales. As a Sales Manager I learned the intricacies of operating a small roofing company and I began to get the itch to go out on my own.

I never found roofing personally rewarding despite the financial success that I was experiencing and I think that my desire to go out on my own was an attempt to re-invent myself and give roofing another chance to make it personally fulfilling. Starting a company from scratch was a new challenge that I found exciting and rewarding and it gave me plenty of dopamine to fill frontal cortex with the dopamine that I needed to continue on.

The Early Roots of Foothills Roofing and Exteriors

While I was working as a Sales Manager I rented a tiny office near my home because back then the idea of working from home felt impossible.  That office was private and was about $300 per month and had no windows and was in a shared building with other business people. I got some basic office furniture and a desk and turned it into a nice little place for me to get work done. I had twenty four hour access which was important because I would spend many late nights there. After I would put our kids to sleep and my wife went to bed I would drive over to the office and work on many random things.  There was so much to be done.  My main objective was to essentially develop a well thought out business plan including a good marketing approach, financial projections, personnel plan, and so much more.  I used an online business plan software that made things much easier but it was still a lot of work. I was going to launch the business in 2018 after planning for a few months but then a big hail storm hit in May 2018 and I got extremely busy nearly overnight so my launch was going to have to wait. I took another year to develop the business plan and worked through as many details as possible. I spent many weekends and late nights doing this while still raising my young family and looking back I can see that this began to take a toll on my marriage and my personal mental health.

Launching the Roofing Company

Once I had decided to go out on my own, my wife and I started saving money and living in a more frugal way. I knew how capital intensive operating a roofing company is and I knew that we would need as much money as possible. We had a good year in 2018 after that big hail storm and so we had built up a sizable nest egg to use as operating capital and launch the business comfortably.  It was a difficult time for me because I was still working as a Sales Manager at Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration and I also had my sights set on launching my company. I was a 1099 independent contractor and operated under my own corporate structure and on a full-commission pay structure so I was not violating any employee laws or guidelines but I did feel like I was living a double life. I had many doubts about launching and part of me really wanted to stay as a Sales Manager. One of the main problems was the the owner of Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration had promised me a partnership but he never followed through with the paperwork despite my numerous attempts at getting the paperwork done. He also wanted to change things and add sales quotas and recruiting quotas and was implying that my pay may have to be adjusted which made even more nervous and motivated to go out on my own.

I was ready to go in April 2019 and somehow the company got word that I had placed an order for a roofing job with another company and I got a very disturbing phone call from the Office Manager of Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration asking how I could do this to them and giving me the biggest guilt trip I had ever experienced, and I grew up Catholic. She nearly cried saying that I was destroying her life and the life of the employees and explained to me how upset the owner was. I attempted to explain my situation but it fell on deaf ears and that ended up being the last conversation that I had with her after working together for seven years. She was also promised a partnership that I suspect never happened and I heard the she is still working there to this very day. I never spoke to the Owner since then despite the deep relationship that we had developed. This was a very difficult business experience both emotionally and financially.

The First Month in Business

Once I was officially separated from Rocky Mountain Roofing and Restoration and working for my company Foothills Roofing and Exteriors, I was truly on a roller coaster ride of emotions ranging from a utopian ecstasy to finally be free to create my own destiny to a gripping terror that my world was going to crumble violently and I would be left to survive as a street dweller.  My wife was an enormous support and my children also gave me great satisfaction because I looked forward to the day that I could tell them that dad took a leap of faith and went out on his own.

I also had a nest egg and operating capital that allowed me to pay myself and my wife a salary through the company and we had numerous jobs on track to get built right away. I personally signed about $160k in contracts that first month alone and I operated as a one man show intentionally for about a month. As you can imagine I was an extremely busy guy working literally from 6am to 9pm and more every day. No weekends off. I did my best to have some home life but that became non-existent. My wife was supportive but our marriage continued down a not so great road.

I quickly recruited a sales person who I had trained from scratch at my previous company and the production manager who I had also trained from scratch. Needless to say, my previous company was not happy about that, however, the three of us made an amazing team. I also recruited an administrative assistant and after a month I had a great team with a good capacity and we were rockin’ and rollin’.

We continued like this for a couple years and I continued to develop the business, but when Covid 19 hit, things began to take a turn for the worse. Check out my blog on Running Roofing Company During the Pandemic to learn more about that.

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