Buyers and Builders
00:00:00 · Mikk, Sam Allsopp
[00:00:00] S0: My guest today is Sam Allsopp, cofounder and managing partner of Neal Roofing. Sam and his partner started the company in 2020. And what makes this and their story particular interesting is how quickly they've been able to scale the business, not through M and A, but organically, from zero to roughly 50,000,000 top line this year. And today, we are going to break down how they did it: marketing, sales, operations, hiring and the systems required to build and grow a roofing company at scale. But first, thanks a lot for coming to the podcast, Sam. [00:00:34] S1: Yeah. Thank you, man. I'm excited. I was looking into your podcast. You've got an awesome, awesome community, and you've done well. So I'm excited to get on here and and and give a give a little rundown on how we got here and how to how to start a roofing company, maybe. [00:00:48] S0: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And I... I'd like to make this, like, as practical as possible and maybe even title it as as like a practical masterclass on how to build and grow a roofing company because what you've done, it's it's very fascinating. So maybe we can start off you just giving us an overview of of the first and the early days of Neal Roofing all the way to today.
00:01:11 · Sam Allsopp
[00:01:11] S1: Sure. Yeah. I mean, the, you know, kind of the... What we run with and what we say a lot is, you know, we we obviously built a roofing company, right, but more than anything, we built a customer acquisition and sales system that happens to install really high quality roofs that, you know, customers enjoy doing business with us and we'll and that's kind of the thesis and that's people ask like why were you able to grow so fast. I mean, you have to have a huge emphasis on your marketing and sales to be able to kind of buy market share and and actually sell the jobs. And then if you're not doing a good job, your reputation's gonna catch up to you, and that kinda has a pretty short stent. You see it all the time. You see companies go really fast and then kinda implode. So it's a little bit of a balancing act, but, yeah, we definitely focused a lot on sales and marketing from early on. You know, I started this with my partner, Andrew. He... I'll go a little bit... I won't go too far back, but I was running... I had a marketing agency. Was pretty much just accepting anyone and everyone who would pay me. I was right out of college. Found a nice little niche in roofing and solar actually at the time. Was running a bunch of advertising for 10 plus roofing companies, doing everything myself, and, you know, started realizing that some companies get a huge return and some don't. So started looking into, well, what's your booking process? What's your CRM? What's your sales process? Kinda started consulting in a way. It wasn't even charging for it. It was just like, if these guys aren't making money off my leads, then they're not gonna keep paying me. So started helping with that. And then one day, Andrew gives me a call. I'm living down in Fort Lauderdale. And he's like, hey, man. You... You've helped really grow our company. I didn't even know. He's like, we've pretty much doubled or tripled since you came in. And I just got my license. Let's start a let's start a roofing company. Why are we making this guy rich? So that's how it kinda came to be, and that was in 2020. And I was still... You know, kept a couple clients and, you know, did a little bit of ecommerce here and there. So, you know, I I would say I went all in, like, mid twenty twenty, but it was... You know, I kinda had my feet in some other stuff for for a little bit. But, yeah, that's it.
00:03:37 · Sam Allsopp, Mikk
And then, you know, the headline is kinda we we we did, call it a million first year, then then two and a half, then six, then 14, then 25, and then last year, we ended up around 36. And this year, we're we're kinda tracking for that that 50 number. Knock on wood. But that's the goal. [00:03:55] S0: You running a marketing agency, this is interesting because there is another podcast run by Nathan Latka. He's in a software software space, and he started interviewing those folks who are building those software companies. And he has said that he has so much data that one of the best founders are those who... Before founding SaaS companies were running agencies because of all the skill sets, marketing, and sales. And and I've always wondered, like, how... Like, when are we going to see more people like yourself with all the skills and experience getting into those traditional businesses, and here we are today?
00:03:55 · Mikk, Sam Allsopp
[00:03:55] S0: You running a marketing agency, this is interesting because there is another podcast run by Nathan Latka. He's in a software software space, and he started interviewing those folks who are building those software companies. And he has said that he has so much data that one of the best founders are those who... Before founding SaaS companies were running agencies because of all the skill sets, marketing, and sales. And and I've always wondered, like, how... Like, when are we going to see more people like yourself with all the skills and experience getting into those traditional businesses, and here we are today? [00:04:39] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I talked to, like, a pretty serious variety of of home service, you know, business owners all the way from, yeah, a tech background or a private equity background, you know, to, hey, I was building roofs growing up, actually working on the roofs, and then I inherited the company from my my dad and then, you know, and it was a small company and now it's this massive company. So you kinda see it, but I would say to your point, more often, you know, than than previously people are coming from other industries and and not even close to home services. Right? But with a skill set sometimes around just kind of what I was mentioning, the marketing and sales side of things, you're able to really brute force, you know, growth. [00:05:23] S0: Okay. And what about the business a bit like residential, commercial, and and why this decision?
00:05:32 · Sam Allsopp
[00:05:32] S1: You know, I wish I was like, oh, we knew that private equity was gonna get interested in roofing, and this is the mix that we assume that they're gonna be interested in. Not at all. We just kind of fell into residential retail work. If you're in roofing or familiar with the space, there's two paths you can really go down. Some people do a little bit of both, but you've got your your retail, and then you have your insurance. Right? So retail would just be, hey, we're working directly with the homeowners. We'll provide financing. Ultimately, they're the ones paying us to do the service. Then you have your insurance companies. These are typically, you know, big door knocking, sales teams, a lot of $10.99. Nothing against it. They scale super fast, but you turn into, like, a, hey, we can get you a roof and the insurance company can pay for it. They do a lot of supplementing, I believe, and working with the insurance company, and the insurance company pay. So that's kind of a a definitely a distinction between the two different kinds of companies. And then, yeah, you can either go, you know, residential retail, which is just single family homes for the most part, or you can do commercial. We landed probably, I'd say, this year, we're gonna be, like, 90% residential retail and then about 10% commercial. It's just something that we never really put a ton of effort into until the beginning of this year. We actually started building out that division and it's got a pretty solid run rate. You know, I hope to keep it around 20% of our business, but we really do like the residential retail focus.
00:07:01 · Mikk, Sam Allsopp
[00:07:01] S0: Okay. And now the the the co founder partnership, you and Andrew. So what did each of you own when you when you started? Has it changed over the over the years? And maybe you can take me through different stages because going from zero to two and a half to six and all the way to 50, it's it's it's a pretty drastic change, I can I can imagine? [00:07:21] S1: Just to put it in super simple terms, right, I did everything from going and generating the the demand and then selling the job and essentially handing him a packet and saying, hey. Go build this. So he's like the subject matter expert. He's the roofer. I was able to feel comfortable to put as much emphasis on sales and marketing and bring jobs through and feel comfortable building a sales team and selling a product that I knew we were gonna do we were gonna do a really good job on the fulfillment side of things. So that's... Was super important for me in the beginning stages to have a partner who, you know, I could feel... Sales is a lot of emotion, and, you know, I wanted to be able to kinda translate that through to the sales team and the customers that we're we're going to do an awesome job. So he he took that on. So kind of just a a very clean split from production, fulfillment, and then, you know, lead generation. And we still operate that way. So we're we're still very much on the the sales and marketing tech kind of side, building out SOPs and and whatnot. And then he's very much on the the production and fulfillment.