Roofing Insights Podcast

Stop Chasing Revenue: Build a Profitable Roofing Company | Sean Moriarty

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In this episode, Dmitry talks to Sean Moriarty, Executive Roof Coach. 

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Sponsor of This Episode: Work Ninjas
Expert Back Office For Roofing Companies - https://workninjas.com/
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Today's guest:
Bridget Como
Forensic Building Science: https://www.forensicbuildingscience.com/ 
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Dmitry’s coaching program: https://roofing-school.com
Have a question? Text me: 612-558-4881
Connect with Dmitry: https://dmitrylipinskiy.com/
Contractors I recommend: https://directorii.com
Best Deals on Underlayment: https://BemDirect.com
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Insights:
00:00 Introduction & Studio Setup – 4 Years Later
01:15 Going Sober – The Turning Point
08:30 From Sobriety to Systems & Executive Roof Coach
09:40 Partnerships, Lawsuits & Rebuilding the Business
15:30 Commercial Roofing Reality – Systems vs Workflow
20:20 Million-Dollar Contracts & The Margin Trap
23:00 Payment Disputes, Retainage & GC Conflicts
27:30 Business, Coaching & Building a Foundation
33:00 What Makes a Real Coach?
38:00 CrossFit, Discipline & Personal Standards
39:30 Stuck at $2–3M? Systems vs More Leads
41:00 AI in Roofing – Leverage, Not Replacement
42:00 Marketing Mistakes & Why Agencies Fail
44:30 Money, Lifestyle & Owner Discipline
46:00 When Should an Owner Step Out of Production?
47:00 Customer Experience & Industry Reputation
49:50 Service & Maintenance as the Real Opportunity
52:10 Why Roofers Stay Broke
53:00 Ego vs Ignorance
54:30 Roof Rejuvenation Debate (Roof Max, GoNano)
58:00 Storm Chasers & The Future of Sales
01:00:50 Leadership, Hiring & Owning Your Role
01:02:40 $1M vs $10M Company – Mindset & Investment
01:03:30 Advice for Overwhelmed Entrepreneurs
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SPEAKER_01

I'm not gonna sit there and try to convince you why I'm right and you're wrong. If you're doing $20 million a year at a 5% f ⁇ ing margin, you don't have a company.

SPEAKER_02

What separates $1 million company from $10 million company?

SPEAKER_01

If he's only willing to put $1,000 into changing himself, he will never see the $600,000. They need to get that point to a system to where all they do is say, all right, well, why did you skip this step? And he's still around two, two and a half million dollars in work for me. I had $80,000 to my name, and I want to say $70,000 of that went to my attorney. You know, all of a sudden working on their Ferrari is working on the company, right? My coach is worth $100 million. And I go, tell me what coach you have has a hundred million dollars in their account. Well, uh, I said, have a good day. Click.

SPEAKER_02

So it's the first time we're doing a podcast here. And the story here is we actually have a fireplace in our garage, another studio, and unfortunately, something happened to it, and the smoke kept coming in. I didn't want to kill both of us and my videographers, so I decided to move it here. First time in this studio, comment below if you like our setup. I think it looks dope. But uh Sean Marie Art is in the studio. We visited his company and did a podcast four years ago. Feel like it was in another life. Um, brother, I want to start with you with the biggest change over the last four years, uh, because we've talked on the phone the other day, is you went sober. I remember last time we were drinking, and you told me, Demitra, I want to quit drinking. And you were not just drinking that night, you were like taking shots, I remember, tequila or something.

SPEAKER_01

It was like oh no, I I I never took shots. It was I was always Tito's.

SPEAKER_02

But it was a hard leaker.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, vodka. Yeah, we were both drinking Tito's and scratch, like they were going out of style.

SPEAKER_02

I don't think I was doing Tito's. I I'm pretty sure I had wine, but um, tell me the story of you going sober. What did it do to you? Like, I want to hear the whole story.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I drank for 21 years. My dad was an alcoholic. Um my sister is an alcoholic. Um my mom is, I guess, mediocre, you know, can kind of is getting better. Um, never was really a full alcoholic. I think that's why she left my dad. Um I would always be in the habit, come home at five o'clock. I would never drink during the day, I would never be a closet drinker, but you know, get done with work, come home, pour a drink, and drink until you go to sleep. Um I decided to um take a take a look at my life. Uh I would gone to a golf tournament. Um so I belong to a country club, Flying Horse. That's where uh we met last time. And I'll tell you what, those old fucking guys can drink, man. Like they're pulling flasks out of their bag, they're pulling them like everywhere, and it's like, take a shot here, take a shot here, take a shot here. And it's a three-day tournament, you know. And then after golf, they stay until nine or ten o'clock in the clubhouse, and you know, everybody drinks, and then you go home, and then you start it again at seven o'clock in the morning. There was a guy um in Colorado Springs, and I won't mention his name, uh, but he snuck in and he stole around two, two and a half million dollars in work from me. Um I had done, I was under contract, I had the choice to sue the contractor, um, and I didn't. That contractor decided some few months after that, or a year after that, uh, he bought a brand new Corvette. He bought a brand new Corvette, and he was, from my understanding, is that he was drinking. Well, he was going down one of the main drags in town and he rolled the Corvette. And he didn't just die Um in a car accident. He burned to death. And there was something about it that just hit me. There was something about it that I didn't look at his death, I looked at look at every all the businesses he left behind, look at all the family that he left behind. Um I started uh realizing, you know, do I if I was to die tomorrow, would my wife know how to get to my crypto? If I died tomorrow, would my wife know what to do with my businesses? Would you know what what would how set up have I really set my family if something was to happen to me? Um and I realized that they would be screwed. I realized how much I had to focus on them. I stayed uh at the hotel that night. Um and in the morning I called my mom, and my mom um I I I have a love-hate relationship with my mom. It's a very tough relationship. And I told her I need help. I don't want to do this. I tried to do this alone. Um she sent me to a counselor to go uh uh probably 45 minutes away, and I talked to the counselor, and they wanted to do uh the micro dosing of mushrooms. They basically put you into a room and they watch how you react while you're you know tripping out or whatever it is. Um and I I sat there and I'm like, what the hell am I doing? Like, just you know, get your shit together. Uh I went home and I talked to my wife. I never drank again. All I had to do was I have such a love-hate relationship with my mom that I was motivated just by telling her that I had a problem to stop drinking. Because that goes a lot further. Um, I was just on Brad Lee's podcast where we talked a lot about Casa by the Sea. Did you ever hear about um did you ever watch the Netflix series, The Program? Did you ever hear about uh Paris Hilton and the school that she went to where she got abused and a boarding school? So there's a boarding school. You recommend it? Uh yes. So I I sent you a text in it, um, and you're gonna watch the Brad Lee podcast. But I was I was locked up in Mexico for 18 months. And it was a worldwide association uh WASP uh program. It was a level system, but I had a lot of regret, a lot of anger towards my mom for sending me. Um I don't think that she she didn't know what she was really sending me to. It was just I was a handful um and she it's it was the best thing for my life at that time. I I I needed the correction. Uh but it still left a lot of anger in me. Um it's it's it's a huge story. There's a lot. I won't bore every it's not boring actually. It's I I won't go into everything that I did with with Brad Lee, but it's just me saying that I set myself up. I knew that if I could set myself up, that I would run into a wall and I would quit drinking. Um that's what I did. I immediately started getting into building companies, writing books, doing all the things that I felt like I'd missed out on the last 21 years. All of a sudden I was in a hurry to make up for all this time that I spent drinking.

SPEAKER_02

So would you say that uh extra time from drinking gave you opportunity to do those things? Or just a fork was for hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um when you're drinking, it's not it's you don't want to do anything. You don't have it's a lot of people don't have a drinking problem, but have a couple cocktails and then say, hey, I'm gonna go run five miles. You just don't want to do it. It doesn't mean that you're a piece of shit or that you know anything's wrong with you or you run a bad business or anything. It's just kind of it messes with your priorities. And so yeah, I it's I found a I found two lifetimes that I never had.

SPEAKER_02

Two lifetimes.

SPEAKER_01

And you know, especially in the time that AI is coming out, you know, Chat GPT, you know, learning how to write books. I started really diving into this is why I I wrote the book and started executive roof coach, was I wanted to, everyone's always told me how good I am at commercial roofing and how they can't believe how much I know in commercial roofing, and how they want to do what I do in commercial roofing. And I just do what I do every single day. You know, it's just like any residential roofer that wakes up, you know, they go into the office, this is their schedule, this is their plan, uh, this is our process when a storm comes through or anything like that. It was just it's commercial roofing is what I do. And so I started dissecting everything. I just decided to, you know, start breaking apart how I learned, what I learned, the systems, the procedures, the ones that I tried, the ones that didn't work. I just I absolutely went through everything because I was doing two things, right? I was analyzing my own self and I was analyzing my business because I was in a sober state of mind. And at the same time, I'm like, why don't I do this for other people? Why don't I break this out?

SPEAKER_02

Here's my next question on what I really want to dive into it. We'll come back to the podcast in just one minute, but first let me tell you about a sponsor of this video, Work Ninjas. A lot of contractors complain to me that they have a lead generation problem. Dimitri, we need more leads. I always answer most contractors don't have a lead problem, they have a receptionist problem or back office problem. Work ninjas is your styling business partner in that department. Work Ninja can help you with absolutely anything in your office from optimizing your TRM, following up on your appointments, creating estimates, or do exactimates for your insurance companies. Check out work ninjas.com, tell them Dimitri sends you. Let's get back to the podcast. You are in a category of people in my book who I personally met who've lost it all several times probably and rebuild it. So I see in the roofing industry we have a business of middlemen, right? Like when you don't have liability, you have a whole bunch of subs, a whole bunch of sales guys, and that's the problem with the PE firms. They uh don't want to buy a business where it's owner-operator, because what do we have? You remind me another guy here in Minnesota, Ryan. So let's say you run a $10 million company, you have five sales guys, and then they bring you 90% of your business, and then you know, lead sales rep takes other three, quits, and starts his own business. Now you back to zero essentially. You need to, you know, hire five more sales reps, and a lot of times they will not just go with the sales reps, they'll take your production manager, they'll take your employees, they'll take, and now they have more of your company than your company. Can you explain to our audience what is it like the mindset and what we know between our ears to rebuilding because we think about business like PE thinks about business as you know, employees, payroll, some kind of attachments. But I look at people like you and a few others who've lost it all and rebuild it all because essentially they are the business, they have that mindset, and you cannot take it away from them.

SPEAKER_01

I I think that the story got misconstrued a little bit from before. I have never lost a company due to my own actions or due to financial. I had um so I when I first started, I started with Moriarty Roofing and Sheet Metal. That was when I was in the basement, that was with the wife, that was the very first startup. I brought a partner on in 2017, um, beginning of 2017. That was a bad seed. I was a partner with him for three or four years. He was stealing money, he was it here, it was driving me to drink crazy. Like, like I didn't like my life. I was always worried about if he was gonna take the money, if you know, we I didn't have stability in my life. So the second time that I restarted was when we actually um made the decision with the attorneys and the forensic accountants that we had enough information that we wanted to serve him and get him out of the company. So, given part of the process of getting out of Moriarty Roofing and Sheet Metal, that I was a partner, it was another company that I won't mention that was the parent company for Moriarty Roofing and Sheet Metal, I was still the poster child. Um there it was a long, drawn-out process. So we went to our so he hid for a long time. For three or four months, nobody heard from him, attorneys, anything like that. And then all of a sudden, when he realized uh maybe Discovery came out or something like that, and they realized kind of what we had and what we had noticed, um he decided to come back to town. And so now he hired an attorney, he um it was a back and forth game then. I had $80,000 to my name, and I want to say $70,000 of that went to my attorney. We uh completely moved locations, completely moved all of the assets, um, we put all the money into a bank account um that was held by another um by the forensic accountant and the attorney, whatever that they worked up. Um and I can go into the whole story, and I won't go into the whole story, but my point in being is I've never lost a company because I did because I failed at something. I lost it because A, there was a partnership, and before that was I I joined into the partnership, and then I got out of the partnership. That alone is three companies. Um now I I've been in a ton of lawsuits uh when you start dealing with uh these big general contractors that are the PE companies that are an all-in-one ecosystem. They buy the parcel of land, they uh have their own engineers, they have an architect inside their company, uh, then they have a construction uh company inside their whole ecosystem, and then they go all the way through to lease it out. It's kind of like getting into residential because they take shit so personal, right? They don't want to sign a change order, their plans are always shit. It's like track homes. It's like, all right, it's just on a bigger scale with apartment complexes. We've got these three types of par uh these layouts for apartment complexes, and that's what we're gonna we're just gonna do those three uh models over the next 20 years. Um a lot of a lot of them have kids that are just coming out of you know college that uh know construction on paper. Um I think that's a problem with today's industry, big time. Uh when we get when in the commercial world is uh people that don't have the field experience, the people that don't understand that water still doesn't go uphill, that hey, I understand that that looks great on a set of plans, but come build it in the field. You can't do that.

SPEAKER_02

What's the biggest challenge in the commercial roofing right now, besides what you just said? Compare it to residential. Is it oversaturated? Do we have too many commercial companies? No.

SPEAKER_01

I think that I think I think more and more are are jumping into it. Um I know I know they are. I think it goes into the mindset. You know, a big thing that I talk about in the in in the book is um the mindset you have to have going into commercial roofing. Is you can't step over uh dollars to save pennies uh i i i in the in the best way. Um the biggest struggle is getting the systems in place and staying consistent. I feel that uh residential still has that same problem. When I build a system, I build a whole ecosystem. I build a factory. So instead of building a workflow, I build a factory. And so anyone can come in and we can set up, okay, this is this workflow here, this is this workflow here, this is this workflow here. But if you look at things more in an ecosystem, in a factory setting, I do I set this process to accomplish this, to accomplish this, to do this and realize the full circle, it makes everything a lot more digestible and you understand a lot of things. When people grow, they actually step back from the company a little bit. Um, it gives them an excuse not to work in the company as much as because they're always working on, you know, all of a sudden working on their Ferrari is working on the company, right? You know, it's um it's a it's permission for an owner to step back and let the system take place and then in a few months or a year sit there and be like, why are we having money flow problems? Well, because the main brain left the fucking scene.

SPEAKER_02

Let me ask you something. My perception of commercial, a big commercial business is probably one of the most corrupt businesses in construction. The the I've read a lot of stories and I've seen a lot of bankruptcies and stuff. The way I see it, uh it always goes the same. So someone at the top have these big contracts, whether it's HOAs or some kind of organization, some kind of board somewhere, they're sitting on $10 million, $20,000, you know, $300 million projects, right? Like stadiums, lifetime fitness contracts, Amazons, right? So you have someone at the top who holds the bag, and then you have next layer who wants it, right? And everybody wants a little kickback, right? And then people at the bottom, they usually get screwed the most, and someone will always file bankruptcy at the end of the construction. How do you explain a raise of the cost? I mean, in this country, it's corrupt. Like where I come from, I remember when um Russia won Olympic Games, uh like the contract. So 2018 believe it's either Olympic Games or yeah, we got world soccer, uh uh world soccer uh championship, and then we got they built one stadium. The winning bidder was one billion dollars, the end cost was eight billion. Yeah, how do you go from one billion dollars to eight billion? Welcome to Russia. But here, you know, I believe you also increase the cost and stuff, but someone just files bankruptcy because you can't just keep building.

SPEAKER_01

But we also have a it gets they get put into a system. I will give you a very example, a very good example of my own life. So I was talking to you about the um the contractor that I was doing all their apartment complexes. I was doing shit, I was doing four to five a year. I I think in the four-year relationship, five-year relationship, I did $12 million in apartment complexes for them. I got stuck. I couldn't get out. I had to keep taking contracts. I had a relationship with them to where it's like, no, well, you're you're gonna keep giving me jobs and I'm gonna have to do it for what I need to because my whole my whole company became dependent on that. It was that was when I was like, holy shit, we have to change something big time. It was I was stuck, I couldn't get out of it. So I won I I'll I'll I'll take it even a little bit further. So we just signed a contract, 3,500 squares, um, a large industrial building, two million dollar contract. And you know, you got the estimate. It's oh it's the biggest roof I ever did. And I'm sitting there and I'm just not even a smile on my face, and I'm like, show me your numbers. And I look at the margins and I go, man, I really hope you have room for a mistake in there. I like I really do. Like it's like um he's sitting there, he's going and celebrating at night, and I'm sitting there looking at my wife and like, well, all right, I'm gonna put um I'm gonna do this quality control, uh, I'm gonna go in and bid it myself, I'm gonna look at everything, and I found one mistake that he made that was a hundred thousand dollar mistake. And so I I actually was able, I was up front with the GC, I talked to him, I explained what had happened. They had found something like $70,000 and another sheet metal line item. They said, we'll turn this over to you. And I was like, okay, so that makes it a little bit, you know, easier to swallow. But people just think they want to be in commercial because, oh, we got million-dollar contracts, they have all this. What the fuck's a million-dollar contract on a 3%, you know, on a margin? Oh, I'm gonna get, you know, I'm gonna get um I'm gonna get my supplier to give me a kickback. I'm gonna get my manufacturer to give me a kickback. Okay, um, I just did one insurance job for a hundred and it was 117 squares. It started at 300,000, um, closed it at 900,000. And it's 117 squares. Yeah, it might be a hell of a fucking tear-off, and we did really good with insurance. But you gotta stop looking at the numbers. You can't say it doesn't matter that you do 20 million dollars a year. If you're doing 20 million dollars a year at a five percent fucking margin, you don't have a company.

SPEAKER_02

I remember US Bank Stadium here at one of the largest subs, it was a giant uh jury last proportion. The sub who did the sub who did it filed bankruptcy, like same thing. They made a giant mistake. I think it's hard to even calculate the you know percentages on those. And then Thor Construction here in Minneapolis, $350 million bankruptcy. They did US Bank Stadium, they they did like biggest contracts you can think of. $350 million in bankruptcy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, I I uh so my question would be: was it a chapter 11, a chapter 7? You know, what type of bankruptcy it is? Most likely it was a chapter seven. Um that's one thing about commercial roofing. If you're gonna get into commercial roofing, you need to get into your company setup, you need to get into how your assets are protected, because it's not about if, oh, I'll just do everything better and I'll never find myself in these fucking lawsuits.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Bullshit. You will absolutely find yourself in the lawsuits. Um I used to have an in-house attorney. Like that's how much that it was play in the who is suing who?

SPEAKER_02

Like like who is usually suing who? Like, give me an example. Yeah. Why do you have your attorney?

SPEAKER_01

So most of the time, um change orders not getting approved, pay applications stop. Here's how it works in the commercial game. Is and this is new construction, worst part of commercial to be in, um, but I will tell you how it works. I go in and I'm doing a $2 million apartment complex, and I get halfway through and I get into an argument with a general contractor, they decide, all right, we're gonna hold pay on this, we're gonna hold pay on this. Their contract allows it. You sign their contract. It's their it's you can have your revisions to the contract, but there it's at the end of the day, it's still a contract. So I am stuck having to finish this project and they have stopped payment on everything. Well, here's the problem: if you stop working, then they can supplement you and charge whatever the hell they want. Whether they were right or they were wrong, they're gonna come after you and you're not gonna get anything. So it's a whole um, so I I have an apartment complex that I just finished. Guess what? I finished it, turned over their warranties, I handed over the 10-day intent to lean, and I believe in a few days they will get the lawsuit because they removed $248,000 from one of our contracts. You can't do that. It's just like like legit, like I can't even believe I I had I thought I had seen it all. I hadn't. Like this, my attorney looks at this thing and goes, oh, this is a slam dunk. But here's the deal: for me to be in the slam dunk position for the past year, I have personally had to fund this project from everything from the half-round gutters to the paver systems to you know providing the warranties, paying for the warranties, turning everything over, paying for all the materials that they didn't pay for.

SPEAKER_02

Why do you feel like GCs are so bad at paying roofers and everybody else? Is it because they're also broke and they also uh mismanage their No, I think it's the owners.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's the people that they respond to. I don't think I think a lot of GCs are misappropriate their funds and don't because get get it straight, uh a GC's job is to manage, is to organize the job site, is to organize all of the trades and make sure everybody stays on a schedule and trust that all of their trades are doing the right thing. But these owners, think all you roofers out there, think about how many times it's time for you to review invoices for people that have done your jobs, and you're like, oh, you didn't install that sidewall. Nope, I'm not paying that much for a skylight flashing kit. I'm not doing that. That's what the owners are doing to them, and they have no choice but to pass it down. So I think that when it comes to the owner and the bank, that that is their excuse to say, nope, be strict here because laws went from 10% to 5% on retainage. People can no longer hold 10% of a contract for retainage, they can only hold 5%. And that changed in 2023, 2022.

SPEAKER_02

Um so people for like cosmetic and for change orders or like retainage on uh so if you've got a million dollar contract.

SPEAKER_01

And they don't turn it over, they don't release depreciation, or it's like depreciation, yeah. They don't release retainage until the whole project is complete. That's like one of the first things that my contract, all right, hey, cool, we got this two million dollar roof. All right, I have my accounting department review, then I have my estimator review, and we've got our checklist. You know, all right, what are the payment terms? When do we need to have pay applications turned in by? When do they need to pay by? Uh how do they treat change orders? There's so many steps and processes you have to put in place.

SPEAKER_02

Well, um are you officially in a coaching game now? Like what what what do you see? Like if I sit next to an airplane and say, what do you do, Sean? What do you answer? You you wear a more executive roof coach hat or business owner hat?

SPEAKER_01

I run so I I run three businesses. Um we are starting a foundation. Um and I also have a coaching service.

SPEAKER_02

Is a foundation nonprofit or for-profit?

SPEAKER_01

Non-profit. Nonprofit. It's it's kind of like the um the Tony Robbins Meals on Wheels type deal. I wanted to be, you know, all right, if I could save a billion animals, provide a billion meals to animals a day, it's kind of it's kind of along those lines. I can save a billion broken legs of, you know, when an animal falls from a tree, they don't just get better, you know, they take them in, and the foundations we work with release the animals back into the wild. Um why animals?

SPEAKER_02

And what kind of what and what kind of animals?

SPEAKER_01

It's real simple, it's because that's what my wife and kids love. Um, I am a builder, I'm a creator, I enjoy the chaos of building.

SPEAKER_02

Colin, it's funny because last time I see that saw this guy, we were at a zoo. Like fun fact. We were at a zoo in a silverback gorilla. Yeah, silverback gorilla. It was so freaking cold, too. They did a job there, like probably not related to this, but yeah, we we did it, we did, we did a million-dollar slate job.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, uh, we on the admin building, uh Vermont hand slit slate. It was it was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02

It was a cool project, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um so any animal animal, just uh two cans, sloths, um, and monkeys, like the howler monkeys and things like that, real exotic jungle. Um I'm to the point now where I have been focused, my whole life has been focused on making everybody happy.

SPEAKER_02

Have you seen videos with the punch? Punch the monkey? Oh man, like my kids hate me for it. Like we started the morning and was like, guys, there's update. He has new friends, and they're like, You and your monkey. Like, I I love that story. And the funnest newest trend I've seen yesterday, I I thought I will fall off the chair. This guy at the gym just bought the same orangutan as he's carrying and just goes at the gym and just carries it around. He's like, I don't have any friends in my gym, and just just goes around like I'm gonna buy the freaking orangutan. I'm lonely. Like, I I need that. I'm punch.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's like all the AI video. Like, I actually did one, I'll show you after we're done. So I built um one of the ways I quit drinking was I filled my mind. And I want to talk a little bit uh after this. I want to get into so remind me in talking about stress isn't bad for you, boredom is. I would are I would agree with it. I I I I I do want to talk about that a little bit. Um where was I before that? Monkeys. I am to the point in my life where I want to put smiles on my kids' face, I want to put smiles on my wife's face. I have been grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, and I kind of forgot that I need to that I have a family that is supporting me through this whole thing. That my best cheerleaders, like I could read my text messages to you right now of on the way over here. You know, hey, we're about to get this done. And my wife's just cheering me on, you know, you you've got this, you know, have fun. Um that's that that that smile, that happiness is so much more to me than a paycheck. And I'm to the point now where I want to express that to people, I want to share that to people. At the same time, I'm sick and fucking tired of getting all these roofs that look like shit, is paying attention to people's contacts, tent content that's just wrong. That's like, no, that's not how you flash a curb. This is how you flash a curb. Uh, that's not how you proboseam. This is how you probose him. Um, all the way into, you know, I'm not going to mention the name. You might drop the name because you know who I'm talking about here, but I took a very big program of theirs when we first met. I paid $50,000 for it. Um, and we started getting into the weekly coaching course, and the weekly coaching course was people from all over the United States. And everybody had an opinion on how to do something. Well, here's the problem. I have people in Florida telling my people in Colorado all the ventilation codes down there and everything that you have to do. My Colorado guy's gonna say, all right, we're gonna be dealing with this humidity and we're gonna be No, it's the driest fucking climate in the world. It's just the rooms were mixed together and there was no control. And so ever since that I really had in the back of my mind, I've always been a teacher, I've always been a speaker, um, that I want to teach people this stuff. I had to quit drinking to be able to get to that point.

SPEAKER_02

Let's talk about coaching. What's the difference between um snake oil salesman and a really good coach in this industry?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Do we need another coach?

SPEAKER_01

I don't think the world needs more coaches, but I think that last time that we talked, we talked about coaching, and I've learned something from them that coaches need to evolve with your state of life. When I met with you the first time, I was just trying to get through every day to day. I was trying to get through the stresses. I had a different coach. Now my coach, my coach is worth $100 million. Um, he he's got three Ferraris, a few Lamborghinis. It's he has the success. He's built his company up to 400 agents. Um, and he has nothing to do with the roofing industry. So he can sit back and he can reflect that mirror on me and say, dude, this is nothing that you have. I don't even know the roofing game. And, you know, this is where you are. And it's like, fuck, the writing was right on the wall the whole time. Um I think that there's a lot of people that try to be coaches. I can tell you I've probably spent at least $750,000 on coaches in my lifetime. Um I my most expensive coach that I ever had uh was one session for $5,000. I was like, hey, I just gotta try this experiment. I got I gotta see what's this person selling for five? Like, what's this hour gonna be that's worth $5,000? Um it was amazing, is what it was. Uh it was uh she taught me gratitude. Um she taught me how big tech industry uh CEOs think, she coached the CEO of Reddit. Um it's like, for example, you know Brad Lee. My buddy is really good friends with Bradley, Josh Galindo. And Josh Galindo is actually uh was in um Mexico with me in that program. I realized the lifestyle difference. I realized how he runs a company. I realized that, hey, he's worth millions and millions and tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. He looks really fucking stressed out. That it doesn't change, that it's it's about how you perceive things. So I go back to saying I believe in coaching with people that have experienced coaching, not just someone that has been through the experience. Not someone that, oh, I lost $100,000 on this job, now I can I can coach millions of people that are in that position. No, Dimitri, I I I I I need to be able to relate to the way that you're operating in business. I need to have dealt with people that are worth millions and millions and millions of dollars so that I know what the difference is between them and someone doing $10,000.

SPEAKER_02

When you hire your coach who is worth you know three Ferraris, $100 million, is your goal to get to that level? 100 million, yep. Do you hire people, do you hire a coach because where he's at or because of his experience, how he can help you? How does someone hire his first coach?

SPEAKER_01

You have to be able to connect. Um you have to have somebody that can take control, you have to have somebody that can take the reins. My biggest thing about having a not every coaching, I do weekly coaching every Wednesday. Not all of them are beneficial. You know, sometimes we're just chatting about things. But what he is, is he is there for me when I need him the most. When I have stuff that I don't want to talk about to other people, not even to my family, that can help turn that around and put me into a position to understand the meaning of why it's happening. So my first thing that I would look at if I was looking for a coach is I would look at, hey, what is their experience? I would look at their revenue, I would look at their financial, and I would say, um, this guy has been through these pains, this guy has been through these gains. I don't want somebody guessing on what my next future was. I just had somebody call me yesterday, and I was leaving the airport uh to go to the Airbnb, and they were trying to sell me coaching. And I go, tell me what coach you have has a hundred million dollars in their account. Well, uh, uh I said, have a good day. Click. Because I don't, it's I'm to that state in my life to where I need to learn from my coach.

SPEAKER_02

I don't need somebody that's just on ChatGPT, you know, that's just what what if it's a fitness coach or a religious coach, like spiritual coach?

SPEAKER_01

Like what what if you have compassion and confidence in you? I just started um CrossFit. So um I've been doing it for weeks ago.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the cult, brother.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the fucking uh five 5 15 um in the morning. How long have you been doing it? Oh, we're talking three weeks. Oh, okay. Like just started. But it it was part of that, it was, you know, hey, I've good for you. I have to make that change eventually.

SPEAKER_02

You'll never be the same.

SPEAKER_01

No, I don't think I will. And it's I can sit here and I can stress out about $100,000. I'm more stressed out about what I'm gonna do in fucking fitness. I'm more stressed out of how I'm gonna handle the bar. I'm oh shit, am I gonna remember how to do all of this shit? You know, um, I'd stress out more than that than a million-dollar lawsuit, you know. Uh, but what kept me with the CrossFit coach, um, or trainer, I should say, in that state, is he had confidence in me. And he genuinely cared. It wasn't oversaturated. You know, we're kind of in a smaller town, we're outside of Colorado Springs. Um, and I remember looking at him and I go, you know why I'll show up tomorrow? I said, because you genuinely, genuinely care. You care about me being a better person, and I can tell that this isn't some bullshit spiel off the street. You truly want to see you. I see you have a goal to see how much you can transform in me. And I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02

If someone's stuck at two, three million dollars a year, what advice would you have for them? Like they just can't pass, but they're trying to pass two, three million dollars. Not that it's two, three million dollars bad, but they're just stuck. Is that a market limit? Is it a mindset limit? Is it can anybody go to ten, fifteen million dollars?

SPEAKER_01

Anybody anybody can scale to whatever they want. It's about systems, it's about the systems that you integrate into your company. A lot of people think that the answer is, oh, I need a I need a hundred leads. That's what I need. You wouldn't know what to fucking do with a hundred leads. How do you nurture them? How do you you know put them into the proper funnel? Um I didn't really learn that until I started building trying to until I started advertising things outside of the roofing company. Until I started, all right, hey, we've got executive roof coach, we're gonna punt put this in this go high-level funnel from here, here, here, here, here, and here. And now I need to push this to here, I need to push this to there. The problem is, is people think that the answer is quantity. No, the answer is staying in front of those people, the answer is nurturing those leads, the answer is making sure that you don't lose sight of them. Because guess what? They might not need a roof in six months or a year, and they might be going through some financial troubles, but I can tell you that they reached out to you for a reason. So whether it's now or if it's in five years, you've got to stay in front of them. And that is, you know, I go into a big deal about how to use AI. All these guys, oh, if you're not implementing AI, you don't know what you're doing. Well, that fucking person saying that doesn't know what AI is. Like he really doesn't. Like, we don't come in and replace people from AI. What we do is we go in and we determine what in our system we can make faster by implementing it. So, for example, I don't my goal in my estimating department is we are implementing AI. We're doing AI blueprint takeoffs. It's not to fire my estimators, it's how do I increase the confidence in them and how do I make them do times 10 with those two guys? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

What's dead in marketing, in your opinion? How much money you lost in marketing?

SPEAKER_01

Um you're gonna love this shit. So last time we talked, I lost I lost a lot of money in marketing, and uh there's a lot of people that I, even to this day, that I I'm still a little sour on. I think that a big problem is people trust in agencies. And what I've learned is I have learned a certain ecosystem using Upwork, Fiverr, whatever it may be, to be able to build something that I am the core in. And where I can, hey, like I said, I like building companies, I like operating. So now I've got three content editors, I've got uh two SEO guys, I got an AEO guy, I've got, you know, I've got someone that's constantly looking at um the metrics of my website. It's I I look at marketing agencies now as a spray and pray kind of type deal. Um I went through a very bad experience after we met last time, worse than even before that. And the owners had no clue what was going on. They they just didn't. Um and after two years, I I was a bigger person in Denver than I was in Colorado Springs because I had made so much money outside of the marketing uh throughout like my new construction and everything, I had made so much money that I had an excuse not to pay attention. And then that stepping away just really opened my eyes up. Um but I think the worst thing that somebody can do is hire an agency. And the reason is is because that's all right, here is this. You have uh I'm gonna step back, and I'm just gonna expect results, respect results. It's why I started executive roof coach. How can you sell roofing when you don't know roofing? You've got to know the fundamentals. You've got to know how the car starts, right? Before you can go and sell a beautiful Range Rover or a wonderful Catholic room. Stop with the Range Rovers.

SPEAKER_00

We've moved on to it.

SPEAKER_02

Mercedes Benz.

SPEAKER_01

The new Cadillacs are pretty awesome. So I'll take that. We got a platinum sport, and that's uh little roofing show-off. It's um it's confidence. It's uh it makes you feel good. Nice things make you feel good. Um it's hard to keep the headspace and the motivation when you're getting into the same broken garage, the same broken car. There has to become a point where you choose in your life that I have gone through enough struggle and enough pain that I deserve something a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02

If you can afford it, you deserve here. Here's I'll I'll push a little bit back, but I agree 100%. So I tell my wife all the time, like, we spend most of our time in our cars, in our houses, right? Like in the in the hotel room. Like I don't want to stay in a tiny hotel room. I want a little bit bigger. I want my mind sweet. Yeah, like I just want to be open, like your brain works better in a bigger space. You drive a nice car, you drive home, you're actually enjoying yourself. You don't beat up in yourself. But we have too many roofers with the mentality, I work too hard, I need it. I work too hard, I deserve it. You deserve what you can afford. So if you sold 10 roofs, yeah, you might have hundred thousand dollars on your account. You don't deserve a hundred thousand dollar truck yet.

SPEAKER_01

If you can't buy it cash, don't fucking buy it.

SPEAKER_02

Or you I love the one where uh it says like if you cannot buy it twice, you can't afford it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So 100%. Uh next question: When should an owner step out of production? Fast as possible.

SPEAKER_01

Um and I'm not talking about like working with the hands, but like production As soon as you have the system in place on how the factory of the workflows should happen, then that owner needs to step back and oversee the metrics of that department. Does that make sense? Yep. So I'm not an owner should never jump out completely unless you know you bring in the COO and they kind of handle everything. And um they need to get that point to a system to where all they do is say, All right, well, why did you skip this step? Why did you skip this step? Okay, how do I make sure they don't skip this step? And that's how they keep the temperature.

SPEAKER_02

What's something roofers overcomplicate? Life?

SPEAKER_01

Um I think they overcomplicate getting customers. I think that it's customers. Absolutely. It's not the marketing, it's anything like that. It's they overcomplicate keeping a customer. A lot of owners don't know the ecosystem of a customer. Like we were talking earlier about Lee Height. Lee height and knowing the ecosystem. Treat people like you want to be treated. Do not bring somebody in the middle, don't bring the homeowner or the building owner in the middle of your own battle. Um keep keep the customer's happiness in mind. At the end of the day, I think that a lot of these roofers come in, ah, this is how you do this, this is how you do this. Fuck your insurance company, we're gonna sue them. Fucking sue and whatever that Lee Hike says. It literally is. And it goes to show the immaturity in the mind. And this is from a coach that has coached a lot of people. If I step back and I look at that and I say, hey, and I look at him, I sit there and I say, he's got some battles in his head. He's gone through some trauma.

SPEAKER_02

Boxing comes with the trauma.

SPEAKER_01

Boxing comes with the trauma. And I don't know the guy to save my life. I I I I really don't. He could be a great guy. But what I perceive from what he puts across the internet is that no, he's not a good guy. That he's gonna put customers in a position that they don't want to be in. It creates a bad taste in the mouth for all of us in the industry. So he deals with somebody like Lee Hyde, and then that adjuster immediately comes to my inspection. Well, he's gonna be all pissed off, and now I'm because of some bullshit that just throw your ass off the roof, whatever it may. You know what I mean? It's just it's gives all of us a bad name. It gives all of us a bad name. What happened to respect? What happened? I don't give a shit what a fucking adjuster tells me. I really don't. I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna listen to him and I'll have my couple points, but at the end of the day, I'll deal with it afterwards. Uh okay. I'm not gonna sit there and try to change your mind. I'm not gonna sit there and try to convince you why I'm right and you're wrong. Because that's you, I don't know who you've seen before this. So give me your opinion, do what you do what you do, admit there's damage, and I'll handle it from there.

SPEAKER_02

Love it. Um what's the big opportunity that roofers aren't paying attention to?

SPEAKER_01

The big opportunity that roofers aren't paying attention to service.

SPEAKER_02

Like maintenance?

SPEAKER_01

Like service and maintenance. Repeat business, property managers, uh, maintenance programs, um, like we've got the RAM program, a roof asset management program. Uh, we actually just came out with 2.0 where we integrate AI and you know, all of that good stuff. But I think that everybody is constantly trying to get new customers instead of trying to keep everybody a repeat customer. I'm not saying don't find new customers, but I'm saying once they do something for them, they're gone, they're out of their life. What happened to the Christmas card uh going to your customers? What happened to um this person really uh I've had a few customers that stick out in my mind. I had one that give me, gave me a bunch of coral. We did like a half a million dollar insurance claim from the Broadmoor storm that we talked about in our in our previous deal. I barely remember his insurance claim, but I remember him. I remember the coral that he gave me. I remember kind of like the story with the flag. People forget that people are still human. And that person that personability, I think that's how you say that, um is gone. It's I I think that people need to step back and treat somebody like, hey, um, this is your home. You've worked your ass off to get it. Um I'm gonna do the best service for you. I'm not gonna sign a contract and you'll never see me again, turn it over to production, and oh, what do you mean you don't have that done yet? And it's six months later. Well, no, it's because the person that sold them that is the per they didn't sell the company, they sold the person sold themselves, stepped out. And so I I think that that personal relationship and repeat business. Rufers they broke because I think that they uh they don't know their numbers. I I I think that it's they chase the big numbers, not paying attention to the small numbers. And they don't realize how much the small numbers make up. Um back to you know, the big job that we sold, 3,500 squares, 2 million. All right. The risk compared to the reward it would make you throw up. It really would. It's a job that could sink you for what a few hundred thousand dollars? Like it's it's just it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_02

Which kills more companies, ego or ignorance?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's both. I think ignorance leads to false ego. And I think that ego gets in the way of systems being implemented into your company. It makes it emotional.

SPEAKER_02

I think that it's both if you would lose everything tomorrow, what's your first move?

SPEAKER_00

What motivates me. I would focus on um I would focus on what motivates me to be a better person to build again.

SPEAKER_01

I would focus on my internal self and then I would look at absolutely everything. I would look I would research everybody's failures. You always hear everybody's wins and how wonderful everybody does. I don't pay attention to any of that shit. I want to know the people that lost, I want to know the people that are struggling, I want to know I want to learn from other people's mistakes. So I think that that's the big deal. I I think that if you can learn to pay attention to someone else's mistakes and learn from their mistakes makes you a lot more powerful in being able to fix something when things get hard.

SPEAKER_02

What's your take on uh rejuvenation? Umano, Roofmax, all of those products.

SPEAKER_01

How do I feel about Roofmax and all those products? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

What do you think? Do they work? Fuck no.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02

I think it's a band-aid on a on a But you you you you previously said that you think the future isn't a service. That's one of the services.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's not a service. That's a band-aid on a that's not a fixing a leak, that's a rejuvenating, let me bring the moisture back in the shingle so I have vibrant colors.

SPEAKER_02

If you get five more years, like I'll give you examples. You're the first roofer who came to my house and did not say that I need new roofs. So I have a three-tap, right? And I said, I'm not gonna actually do it. You know, it doesn't leak. My chimney does not work, but my leak, my roof does not leak. And I treat it with a go nana on each photo, like just half and half. I'm like, my goal is to see how much I can get out of it. I want to test every product out there. By the way, this here's an idea: roof max, ugly roof, go nana. Let's put all of them on each photo and let like half and half, and let's see which one will last more. Because if I can get extra five years, why do I need to replace roof today?

SPEAKER_01

I think that we should do something like that. We should do it together. And you should do it on the residential side, and I should do it on the commercial side of comparing acrylic silicone coatings, you know, me doing my commercial maintenance compared to your roofmax side. And then I would sit back and I would say, hey, um, at the end of the day, a product has benefit if it benefits you. I don't know their financial situation. So if they haven't started budgeting for a new roof, but they have uh does roofmax claim to solve leaks?

SPEAKER_02

Well, you have to repair it, and that's where service comes in. So you have to go and repair it, like if you have blown shingles, if you have flashing, you still have to repair it before you do it. Otherwise, it makes no sense.

SPEAKER_01

So my question is what benefit if you go in and you repair it? Because that's very similar to a roof asset management.

SPEAKER_02

It makes it more pliable, so more repairable. If you have very dry shingles, you can't like lift them. Now, if you reactivate it, it's more pliable, it's actually more repairable. So it actually does have benefits even for repairs.

SPEAKER_01

So I I would I would go a little bit further and I would say, well, I know that, for example, with a coating, that they say they don't want you to coat anything that is um less than two years old because they want the product to be able to absorb. They don't want it to be a brand new product. So I would flirt with it in the line of A, um I can't tell you if it's a good product or a bad product without knowing the customer that it is receiving it. Because if the if it is a repair and it's gonna give them another five or ten years and they can barely make ends meet, then I'm gonna say, yes, that's a good product for that person's scenario. But when it comes into, hey, these are the standards, it's uh, you know, it's um a roofing company owners roof and they're making plenty of money, um, I would say, okay, hey, would you use Roof Max or would you just reshingle it? So I think it depends on the financial situation of the customer.

SPEAKER_02

Most overrated thing in the roofing right now.

SPEAKER_01

I'm starting to see it. I think wind down, um, but I think storms. Um, I think that uh storm chasers is probably more how I should get a little bit more storm. Everybody's getting in the retail game. I agree with that, and I see it, and that's a good thing for the market. I think we're gonna see it rapidly, just the generation that's growing up, and it's there's gonna be a lot more technology involved. There's not gonna be the three-man band that wants to jump in a truck and we're gonna go set with a company in Minnesota and we're gonna sit we're gonna make you a poster child and we're gonna sell you know five million. No, I think people are building their own companies and they're choosing to stay in their territories and make a brand for themselves. It's really nice to see. It it really is. Um so I think store I I think last year I only had one storm chaser try to come set with me compared to it's usually three or four or five.

SPEAKER_02

Uh high pressure sales dead or alive. Do you still see a lot of companies doing high pressure sales? No.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think I barely see custom I barely see companies doing sales. It's like I I it's what are they doing? Praying. I think um I think that um it's a turn and burn game. I think that you are running into less and less people that have a pipeline that are reliant on the company for bringing in the leads instead of my book of business goes everywhere with me. Give me one second.

SPEAKER_02

I'm just gonna start my car so we can go for lunch. Yeah, um come on in. But I'm fucking bougie in my Range Rover. Are you okay with the Grand Bugoneer for lunch?

SPEAKER_00

I I I will settle.

SPEAKER_01

You gotta talk shit or you you you gotta you gotta have that friendship. If if somebody can't take the heat, then get the fuck out of the kitchen.

SPEAKER_02

You you just like it that I went to CrossFit by myself today. Uh one hire that changed everything. Me. You me. Explain.

SPEAKER_01

I work for a company. All of you guys work for a company. You own LLCs, you might have an S-corp. At the end of the day, and the way of the system is you work for a company. And so for me, it used to be put a COO in place, right? Now it's you've done it, right?

SPEAKER_02

Well, can you put a CO?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've got three right now across all my companies. But my mentality is changed in a way that I have to pay attention to what that person is doing so much. And it's easier for me to put a system in place and automation these days compared to somebody running my operation. So I think that business owners need to remember that you are gonna have repercussions if you get out of your company as fast as possible. I learned that the hard way. Um, I don't have everything perfect, uh, but I can tell you that if I had to do it over again, I would have forced myself to go through more of the trenches, go through more of the process and procedure instead of pushing it off on somebody to just, you know, hey, take care of these problems while I went off and started other companies and did all this other stuff. I would have gotten more control of what I had before I went and built, built, built, built, built. Got it.

SPEAKER_02

Last question. What separates one million dollar company from $10 million company?

SPEAKER_01

I think that there's a big part of mindset in that, but again, I think here's a good example. I got a lead this morning on an executive roof coach and or a lead the other day, and they had their sales call this morning. And the guy said, I budgeted $1,000 to make $600,000 in 2026. Our course is not in his budget, so therefore he doesn't want to do it. And I kindly wrote back in the internal message and I said, He is not a fit. If he's only willing to put $1,000 into changing himself, he will never see the $600,000.

SPEAKER_02

So give advice to someone in the industry who've never hired a coach before, who wants to grow and scale. Uh I see that information is no longer a problem, right? Like you can go to YouTube, you can go to Netflix. You have an influx of information now, right? Yeah, too much. So give advice to someone who may be overwhelmed with information, doesn't know how to grow, and doesn't have money. Channel it.

SPEAKER_01

There is five million people out there that give, and I'm using real estate for an example, that everybody knows how to flip a house. Everybody knows the ins and the outs. Find that person that you enjoy and realize that everything else is noise. You can listen to what somebody else says, but you still have to stay on your path. Other words, all the noise is just gonna pull you aside, and you're gonna sit there and you're gonna be sitting at ChatGBT, and you're gonna sit there and you're gonna I don't even know where to start. You still have to pick a lane and stay in it.

SPEAKER_02

Love it. We're gonna wrap it up for today. Comment below what you guys think about this episode. I'll put Sean's uh information with a link to his awesome new book in the description. Hope you get it. Highly recommend. And uh follow Sean on all social media. Uh what's the best way to contact you?

SPEAKER_01

I am Sean Moriarty. Uh that's S-E-A-N-M-O-R-I-A-R-T-Y uh on Instagram and the same thing on Facebook. So uh appreciate everything and follow us on Executive Roof Coach as well. Awesome. Thank you for flying in.

SPEAKER_02

Uh let's go have lunch. Let's do it. See you guys next week.