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Alex Roofers Edge (00:00) welcome to the fifth episode of Roofing Stories. This time we have Willem Campbell, who is the owner of All or Nothing Construction, somebody who has been in roofing before, and then he decided to start his own company, and his company currently has four locations, if I'm not mistaken. William Campbell (00:17) We operate in four states, we have three locations. Alex Roofers Edge (00:19) four states, which relocation is amazing. And he's going to tell us more about his, um, no insurance, restoration strategies. And I know many of us struggle with, um, with restoration and insurance. And some say that it's a long process. Some say it's a short process, but you know, could you introduce yourself? You know, we, we spoke a little bit before the, we went live, you know, about your story, you know, from Walmart to have to being a roofer to leaving the company, to making your own, could you give us some background information on that. William Campbell (00:51) Yeah, yeah, we mentioned those previous jobs, but yeah, I started all or nothing roofing back in 2020 end of the year You know and Basically focus on insurance restoration and mostly at asphalt shingles Currently we're getting into the commercial side of things a lot more here this last year Which has been great. So But yeah, I mean you mentioned I we were talking about one of my first job, you know I didn't always, I was not always in roofing. I used to work at Walmart and Hy-Vee and do all of that. And then when I finally decided to get into roofing, it was because I was broke. I mean, I had just dropped out of college. And so I was looking at what to do to make some money. And my buddy, Quinton, shout out to Quinton, he came to me one day and said, listen man, you seem miserable. Alex Roofers Edge (01:21) Yeah. William Campbell (01:49) you should come do what I do. Like I sell roofs and I have a good time doing it and I'm making good money. At the time, you know, when I was, what, like 20 years old, you know, the company that we went to work for only paid $900 a roof flat rate, no matter how big it was. It was 50 square is 900 bucks. It was 15 square is 900 bucks. So at the time I thought I was making great money. And then I realized, you know, about a year in, well, man, you're getting... getting the short end of things here, you need to find a new company to work for. And work with. Started working for a different company that I won't name here, but I worked there for just over a year. Did really, really well. I mean, I made way more money than I had even. Alex Roofers Edge (02:44) You muted. William Campbell (02:50) I got to have a phone call to put it on do not disturb. But no, I made great money there until the end of it when winter hit basically they terminated my contract and held all the commissions that were unpaid. It was half a million dollars in unpaid commissions, right? So 50 grand or so, which obviously is a lot of money but I luckily saved up enough that I could start my own thing and I could fund the first five or six jobs and not have to. Alex Roofers Edge (02:52) Mm. Ha ha, nice. William Campbell (03:19) worry about it all that much, right? And luckily I knew because of the style of leadership and project management, I guess the duties we had, right? I knew everything from first inspection, door knocking first inspection to ordering materials, to building estimates, to invoicing everything. So... in my mind, I said, if I can do a million and a half here, what can I do for myself? And so that's what started it all back then in 2020. Yeah. Alex Roofers Edge (04:01) I see. So this sort of, you know, company, I see that your company has been founded in 2020, right? On your profile. And you're already in four different states, which is, you know, pretty much one state each year. Like that's some sort of explosive growth, at least in my, in my opinion, maybe I'm mistaken. What is the reason why you guys grew so fast? William Campbell (04:10) Yes, sir, yeah. Part of it is connections. Obviously, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. So I spent 22-ish years there. I knew a bunch of people. And then when I moved to Des Moines, as part of when I went to work for the second roofing company, I obviously made a lot of connections there. And part of the group that I was working with there, we were going to move to Kansas City and start this thing as a group. And I ended up... they ended up backing out like the week before we were supposed to pull the trigger on everything. I'd already signed a lease and everything else. So, you know, I was here, I had to be here, you know, and then just with those connections and the crews I had developed relationships with and everything else, I already had the, you know, the skeleton of it set. I just had to really, you know, execute on it. So it's been good. I mean, other than that, it's just licensing. You know what I mean? Alex Roofers Edge (05:21) Mm-hmm. Yeah. William Campbell (05:30) Because of the location of, you know, with Kansas City, we have access to both Kansas and Missouri extremely easily. So. Alex Roofers Edge (05:39) Right, so what was the revenue if you don't mind me asking in the first year and what is it now? And what is the main factor besides the experience you brought to the revenue growth? Hi. William Campbell (05:52) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Year one, we did 1.2, 1.2 million. And year two, we did 2.3 million. And last year in 2023, we did 5.1 million. So it's been amazing. There's been growing pains, obviously, with that kind of explosion of business. But yeah, no, it's been awesome. Alex Roofers Edge (05:55) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. So how does all or nothing construction currently generate leads? What would you say is the main factor or way of getting clients for your company at the moment? William Campbell (06:32) We bang doors. We knock on a lot of doors. Yep. So most of it is door-to-door sales. Obviously, we use local service ads and such for call-in leads and whatnot. But yeah, a vast majority of our business comes from knocking doors, doing free inspections, and then walking people through the insurance process. Alex Roofers Edge (06:34) Huh? Do nothing? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Previous guest on the podcast, Trey, maybe you checked it out, maybe you didn't, we discussed, we both hate door knocking, I mean, of course, but it seems to be your primarily lead generation source. How do you get these leads? I mean, I imagine by knocking doors, that's a harder way to sell than having an inbound lead from LSA or maybe I'm mistaken. Could you share how, what is the main reason why you are so successful in door knocking? William Campbell (07:25) Uh, it's- So part of the reason I'm so successful in the door knocking areas, because that's where I started out, right? When I started with Premier Roofing back in the day, and that's how they pay, I mean, you didn't get leads. There was no leads. You went and you knocked doors. So that's what I was introduced to, right? I was used to grinding out, you know, 100, 200 doors a day to make bills, you know what I mean? Especially paying $900 a roof, you gotta really grind it out to- Alex Roofers Edge (07:33) Mm-hmm. William Campbell (07:57) to make anything shake. So, that's what I was accustomed to, that's what I was originally trained in, which is why we're so good at it. Now, honestly, I love local service ads. I do, they're great. And I wish, and as we are in business, our phone will ring even more just from the reputation, right? But, door knocking is the most direct marketing that you could ever do. Right, you're getting a customer who you know wants your service, right? Because who's gonna turn down a free inspection? Right, obviously some people will, right? And they do, right? But in reality, that's because they don't know you or they don't trust you or whatever. But most people, you know, if you have any kind of charisma or you can, you know, like smile and nod and, you know, get through the intersure action, it's a free inspection. If they have any reason to suspect that... Alex Roofers Edge (08:35) Nobody, huh? William Campbell (08:56) there may be even a little damage. Why wouldn't I take this opportunity to get my free inspection? Right, and we operate in storm, like heavy storm markets. So we get storms every year, if not every other year typically, that are fairly large, right, and multiple times a year. So the chances that they have damage is going to be high, especially when we're utilizing software like Hailtrace and such. And... Alex Roofers Edge (09:24) Mm-hmm. William Campbell (09:25) and RoofLink has their own weather tracking data, or CRM, that help us do that more accurately, but I mean, it's as direct as it gets. Alex Roofers Edge (09:37) Definitely. So, do you think that as we move in the future, these online ways of getting clients will increase or decrease? What is your stance currently on using those digital platforms for promoting your business? Do you think that door knocking is where it ends, the main traffic source, or do you think that there is something with this whole marketing thing? Because you know... I imagine your DMs are getting flooded daily by marketing guys. William Campbell (10:08) Marketing, yeah, of course. Marketing guys reach out 10 times a day, it seems like. But no, marketing has its place, right? Brand recognition is huge. People have to know who you are before you even approach the door, right? That makes it even easier for us to go door knock, right? They've seen our sign on the interstate, they've heard our voice or seen our logos on the TV. or whatever, right? Because we do these things for marketing as well. But the guys who go, I think that door knocking is always going to have its place because the guys that are the hungriest are gonna go find the business. They're not gonna wait for it. You know what I mean? And that's what we like to see when we bring somebody on is we want them to go find it, right? Go hunt for it, be hungry. Because we'll... Alex Roofers Edge (10:55) Yeah, I mean, it definitely builds, you know, door knocking definitely builds confidence, I would say, and probably improves the sales skills the most. Right. Because you get instantly, you get the prospect and you need to sell him right here and then. And I imagine it can be stressful, but it builds the best sales guys you can have. Right. William Campbell (11:03) 100 percent. Well, it does, but the thing is too, is we're not high pressure sales guys, right? We're not out here to pressure somebody into working with us. We are offering a free inspection and we're educating them, right? Hey, this is the kind of damage you have. This is what's typically looked for. We believe this will get approved, right? We're not adjusters, you know, we don't read policies, don't do any of that, but we've got a pretty good eye for what's damaged by a storm and what's not. Alex Roofers Edge (11:19) Yeah. William Campbell (11:44) Right? So, you know, that's our thing. That's what we do. Alex Roofers Edge (11:49) Yeah, you're big into insurance and as you said, you do everything insurance related and insurance restoration is your primary, you know, way of doing things, right? And I know many of roofing contractors struggle with insurance. Could you rank your top five insurance companies to work with? William Campbell (12:11) top five insurance companies to work with. Shoot. Alex Roofers Edge (12:12) Yeah, yeah. Which one are the best and easiest? William Campbell (12:20) Chubb insurance is always number one. I mean, anyone who's worked with Chubb knows that you don't, it's the smoothest process in the world. Of the typical insurance companies though, that people have, right now, and this is probably controversial outside of, I guess, Missouri, but I love Liberty Mutual Safeco right now. You know, they have been by far the best to work with. for us personally. Other than that, I mean, they all kind of fall in the same category, man, which other than state farm, which is just horrible, they all kind of fall in that range. And it really depends on the adjuster, it depends on the supervisor, you know, and they can, on how far you're gonna get. We make it a point, like I said, we educate homeowners throughout the entire process and explain to them what their rights are, you know, as far as we are allowed to within the law. Alex Roofers Edge (12:48) Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Mm-hmm. William Campbell (13:17) Right? Because there are laws that govern this whole industry, obviously. So homeowners, once they're told about their right to appraisal, meaning if there's a disagreement between the contractor and the insurance company on the cost or the total price, that a third party can decide that, that's usually the route they go. Because obviously they'd rather do that than pay the difference. Right? So, and that... Alex Roofers Edge (13:44) Yeah, for sure. William Campbell (13:47) And that's worked very well for us to utilize that and actually push things all the way through the process, not just settling for whatever insurance dictates is going to be approved. Alex Roofers Edge (13:52) Hehehe Yeah, so from a time that you suggest, obviously, somebody to go through insurance and have their roof restored, to actually doing the work and getting it approved by the insurance, how long does it usually take? Do you struggle with insurance companies or you are able to get it sold as quickly as possible? Because from my knowledge with the clients I work for, The time is around two months until they get the cash for their work. So I'm not sure if these numbers are correct or not, but as somebody who specializes in insurance, your times are probably way shorter. William Campbell (14:36) It can vary. I mean, don't get me wrong. We have, shoot, we've got some pretty large jobs. I think there's around 600K that's tied up and has been tied up for almost eight months. So sometimes it takes forever. I mean, there's no doubt about that. But the majority of the time, from start, and obviously it depends on the adjuster and everything else and how busy they are and how aggressive we are as contractors, but. From start to finish, from inspection to adjust your appointment, to signing the contract, I mean, a couple weeks, and then from there to actually building, right, a week or two, and then from there, you already have the first check, typically before the work starts. You know what I mean? So, you're getting a portion of it up front. Now, the depreciation, the supplements, you know, if you're not agreed to on the price, all that. Alex Roofers Edge (15:23) Mm-hmm. William Campbell (15:34) Yeah, absolutely. I mean dude, I have over a million and a half dollars in accounts receivable that's over 60 days. So that's the constant problem with insurance restoration work, is that it's a cycle because you have to be aggressive. And if you're not aggressive with your billing and your follow-up, well, you're going to be left hanging for a long time. Alex Roofers Edge (15:41) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, so what I noticed and what my clients are actually constantly saying is that they have really big cashflow struggles while waiting for insurance to actually approve it. What is your play? As we said, you do insurance most of the time, right? Maybe was it 80 or 90% or maybe 100%? William Campbell (16:24) It's over 90% of his insurance. Alex Roofers Edge (16:25) over 90%. So how do you keep the cashflow going? You know, that's the biggest struggle I have with one of my clients and they struggle to keep the cashflow going. You know, they're in a very, very bad spot. You know, we got them like 30, 30 insurance roof replacements, but cashflow is absolutely horrible. Like, you know, he's waiting for this money, but there's no cashflow to keep the business going. You know, how do you manage to keep your business running while actually doing insurance work in 90% of the time? William Campbell (16:54) Yeah, cash flow is obviously that's always I think that's I think that's pretty much every roofer's number one issue and especially when they're in insurance restoration, right? And I you know, jokingly, and you know, and kind of seriously, sales fix all issues, right? So besides we're really good at generating sales, that's part of door knocking, we don't have a down season, right? We might not be able to build all year long, but I'm still bringing in jobs and first checks from the insurance company all winter. Alex Roofers Edge (17:11) Mm-hmm. William Campbell (17:24) Right, so there's no massive down, it slows down heavily, but there's no dead season for us. So that's part of it. But the other part of this, man, we're just on top of it. We have our amazing office woman here, Emily, she's in here and she's following up with insurance every day, all day, that's what she does. Right, as far as, hey, where is the depreciation at? Where is this, where is that? Have you added ice and water, have you added this? Alex Roofers Edge (17:31) Hehehe Mm-hmm. William Campbell (17:52) I will say part of our process to help eliminate some of the cashflow issues is that we are and like I said we're constantly following up but when we have a disputed amount with insurance so for instance let's say you know let's say we've collected you know of a $15,000 job right insurance is approved 15k we've collected seven but we're saying it's worth 20 right so we have a $5,000 difference we are pushing to collect that undisputed amount Right? We may not agree on the price, but we have agreed on this last, you know, $8,000. So send me that $8,000 while we argue for the rest. Right? Which has obviously that has helped us a lot because we're not just waiting for insurance to give us the green light. Alex Roofers Edge (18:35) Yeah, that's definitely helpful, you know, because any cash flow is beneficial. You know, I have a rovers who pay their workers, you know, 8k a month, right? I'm not sure if that's a good pay grade, but that's, you know, that's how much it goes for. Right. And when you built all or nothing construction, what was your biggest obstacle? You know, getting your company to what it is now, you know, four states, three different companies, right. And. What is your biggest, what was the biggest obstacle doing and getting to your point? William Campbell (19:10) I mean, it's cash flow. Cash flow is number one, right? Because part of it is, as a new company, we don't have lines of credit. We have lines of credit, but they're not massive. Right? These $50 million, $100 million companies, I mean, shoot, even $20 million companies who have been around for multiple 10-plus years, they've got lines of credit with their banks and whatnot, and they can rely on those when there are cash flow issues, right? So cash flow is number one. I think the other... Alex Roofers Edge (19:14) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. William Campbell (19:40) obstacle would be just managing people, right? Getting processes in place while also growing, as you always hear, right, the biggest downfall of a lot of companies, they grow too fast. So keeping that under control and trying to build a structure and processes all at the same time. Like I said, there was some growing pains last season with subcontractors and just the volume of work that we had to bring on and bring in. Alex Roofers Edge (19:43) Mm-hmm. William Campbell (20:10) people to deal with that obviously came with its own issues. So those two things, I mean, just cash flow and then with the growth, have an influence structure and processes as we go. And now that they've been ironed out, things are a lot smoother, obviously. Alex Roofers Edge (20:25) Yeah, so as a roofing and construction company, do you yourself prefer an actual full-time employee? I think it's V8 employee or V9, you know, fix me if I'm wrong, but... Or you prefer, you know, hiring subcontractors? W2? Okay, yeah. Do you prefer doing that and having your workers under that, or you prefer actually doing subcontractors? William Campbell (20:38) Yeah, W2 or 1099. So we have both, obviously we have production managers, we have sales managers and such that are W2, they're all W2 employees. All of our project managers are 1099 contractors, they have their own insurances, they operate as a partnership, right? They don't work for me, we work together. So. Alex Roofers Edge (20:55) Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's interesting. You know, usually, trust-roofing, when I spoke to them, they do pretty much V2 all the way, right, for all of them. And my clients actually do subcontractors only. So it's interesting to see that somebody is actually doing a mix of both. And you know, when it comes to your company, what are the plans in this year? I mean, we are still, you know, in Q1, right? But what is the plan? by the end of the year for your company. William Campbell (21:40) This year, this honestly this year we're focusing a lot on just getting things Getting things extremely efficient right where we can it's smooth and we have all those I said all those growing pains are done You know we anticipate going from five like I said around five point one million to over nine million this year Just based on you know recruiting because we would heavily recruited over the last few months, especially over the winter season We've got a strong team of guys. We got Alex Roofers Edge (22:00) Mm-hmm. William Campbell (22:09) I think we've got 18 total guys that are gonna be out here crushing it, knocking doors, and bringing in work, as well as implementing the different advertising strategies, as well as connections we've made throughout the years. So, along with, like I said earlier, we're pursuing commercial quite a lot this year. So. Alex Roofers Edge (22:27) Yeah. So you mentioned that you have now 18 employees, correct? I mean, you're planning to get them on boarded, but could you share your major, let's say, advice and tips on how to hire good people? I know many people struggle with hiring proper people in their business, and then it usually ends up being their downfall because they hire bad people. And hiring bad people can definitely destroy businesses, right? William Campbell (22:55) Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so we have, so I mean, just to clarify, we have 18 project managers. Those are all 1099, they're 1099 guys, right? We've got five W2, W2 guys here. But as far as hiring goes, we have been blessed. I can't say it any other way. We, indeed, has not been good for us. All these, you know, recruiting sites and whatnot have not been, have. Alex Roofers Edge (23:03) Mm-hmm. Yeah. William Campbell (23:24) been very unfruitful to say the least. All of our good hires that have stuck around that have been solid are organic, right? Just people that they know because we're trying to build a culture that is a place where people want to be. And it's, I mean, we're doing something right. You know what I mean? We've got 18 guys here, most of which have been here for five, four or five plus months. We're not having that turnover of constantly cycling out guys. And frankly, I haven't had to invest a lot into Indeed, other than outside of a few thousand dollars of trying to hire and stuff. But it seems like people don't wanna show up when you do Indeed interviews. You get like one out of every 10 shows up for the interview. And when they hear the nature of the job, they're not super interested. You know what I mean? So yeah, like I said, our hiring has been Alex Roofers Edge (24:07) Yeah, I mean... Mm-hmm. door locking. Yeah. William Campbell (24:23) We've been blessed with some really good organic hunters. Alex Roofers Edge (24:49) Yeah, yeah, You know, it still takes time and you can probably deal with some bad people that are going to get mad at you. William Campbell (25:01) Oh yeah, yeah. It's funny you say that. I mean yesterday, and it got removed already. Google is awesome about this kind of thing, but we knock doors. That's what we do. You know what I mean? Alex Roofers Edge (25:05) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. William Campbell (25:17) It's what we do. So we got a one star review because somebody, one of our guys knocked the door and the guy was unhappy, right? I mean, he can't please everybody. He was just an unhappy, you know, older guy and he left us a one star review, right? And obviously we didn't do work for the guy. It was taken down right away. But you deal with that all the time. I can't tell you how many times we've been cussed at, we've been yelled at, doors have been slammed in our face, Alex Roofers Edge (25:18) You Mm-hmm. What was the worst thing you dealt with? William Campbell (25:50) Oh, the worst one? Alex Roofers Edge (25:51) Yeah. Maybe you got shot at? William Campbell (25:55) There's there's so many man. I think the one that comes to mind right and sometimes you get you get couples that aren't On the same page. That's that's one that'll get you right so we knock on the door Husband we talked to him at the door great guy. He's like yeah Shoot yeah, give me a free inspection. That sounds awesome As we're getting on the roof the wife comes out Grabs my clipboard and launches it to the end of her driveway Alex Roofers Edge (25:59) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. William Campbell (26:25) And it's like, you know, get the, on my roof, blah, it's just yelling at us. Obviously, I mean, you get down and you leave, right? But, you know, we have things like that all the time. I can tell tons of stories, yeah. Alex Roofers Edge (26:31) Oh well. That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, feel free to say one more or two more. It's exciting to hear those things because that's, I guess, the downside because you never know who opens the door, right? For sure, you know. William Campbell (26:53) That's the exciting part. It's a new adventure every day. When our guys start, especially our sales manager, most notably, I told him, I said, dude, this is treasure hunting, man. Door knocking is looking for treasure, right? You're going and you're just following up on leads, you're trying to find the damage to the roof. Find the hail damage, that's the treasure. And then from there, it's easy, right? Like, hey, look, you've got X amount of damage, here's some photos. Alex Roofers Edge (26:55) This is the exciting part? Oh wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. William Campbell (27:22) this thing should get approved no problem, you know, and take it through the process, yeah. Alex Roofers Edge (27:22) Yep. Yeah. They definitely understand it. Yeah. So you mentioned that this guy gave you a, you know, a one star review simply because you door knocked. I have a similar issue with the client. Actually, three weeks ago, they went to inspect their, I guess, fireplace or something like that. You know, it was on the roof as well. And because my client doesn't work with his insurance or credit provider, he was, he had to actually refuse the job. The guy goes on his LSE profile and gives him one star and calls him unlicensed, which is a big issue. So how do you get rid of these bad reviews? Because ultimately, as we can see, those people will give you a one star review simply because they're unhappy. How do you get rid of those? William Campbell (27:58) Right. So as I understand it, the best way is to simply report it to Google and don't respond to it until there's a decision made. Because in my experience, once you've responded to it, it's there. You almost cross-referenced your own bad review to make it stick. I don't pretend to be a computer guy. I don't know how this all works, so this is just my thought process. Because it's not the first time, right? It's not the first time we've had someone who was unhappy that we knocked the door. At the end of the day, we just report the review as someone we didn't do work for. It either wasn't with our company or we didn't do work for them, is the report, and it disappears within 24 to 48 hours. And if you look on our Google, if you look on Google right now, we have 93 five-star reviews, right? There's not a single one. We've never had, I mean, Alex Roofers Edge (28:55) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. William Campbell (29:06) We do good work obviously as well, right? We don't have bad reviews. But the bad reviews that we have gotten are all from people who are, we either knocked their door or we had one who did mistake us for a different company. But it's things like that are just silly things, right? Nothing to do with the quality of work or anything like that. And if you can't get them to go away, you just respond to them politely, hey, you know, I don't. Alex Roofers Edge (29:09) No. William Campbell (29:35) I don't see your name in our system, please reach out to our office if you have any questions or concerns, we'd love to address it. You know, a bad review doesn't necessarily mean a bad image. You know what I mean? You can, responding to it can make you look almost more legit. Alex Roofers Edge (29:40) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, but in the, in this case, you know, in this case, it instantly led to a negative response, you know, so basically, yeah. William Campbell (29:54) Now, when you have like legitimate slander, like saying you're unlicensed, you're this or that, yeah, you call your attorney and you send a letter or two. You know? Alex Roofers Edge (30:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually a wise advice. You know, I'll tell that to Robert, you know, because he had a client yesterday scheduled inspection. Then he calls again. He wants to cancel it because he saw a review that called him unlicensed and nobody wants to work with unlicensed contractors. William Campbell (30:21) Now, depending on his state, and I don't know, he can always respond to that with his license number. Typically, when you have a license, there's a license number to go with that. You could respond to it and say something like, here's our license number, I apologize, that you feel this way, however this is not true, here's our license number, please go ahead and look us up, so on and so forth. Because that would be extremely frustrating. That would be super frustrating. I mean, I, yeah. Alex Roofers Edge (30:24) It's a roba man Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep, yep. Makes sense. William Campbell (30:50) I promise I did. Alex Roofers Edge (30:51) Yeah, even the worst part of all is that he definitely called him back and the guy was like, next time do better job of working with companies and banks, man. People are sometimes weird, you know? I always said that working with people is the most difficult job ever. Yeah. William Campbell (31:11) It's bound to happen. It's bound to happen man. You can't make everybody happy and sometimes people have extra energy and they feel like going out of their way to make somebody's life miserable because Probably because they're having a bad day, right? Like that's what I try to chalk it up to even like when we're knocking doors A lot of people hate it because you told no over and over like if someone's rude. They probably had a bad day Right. So like whatever just move on to the next one. So Alex Roofers Edge (31:21) Hm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. William Campbell (31:38) Same thing for that guy, but you just might have to get in contact and schmooze him over a bit. Alex Roofers Edge (31:43) Yeah, maybe definitely to the worst. So during your time as the owner of the company, what would you say is your most proudest moment? When you felt most proud as the owner of this company? William Campbell (31:59) uh... from a business standpoint i think that Alex Roofers Edge (32:01) personal and business equals your blood. William Campbell (32:04) Oh, I had, man, personal was easy. We hit my wife when I had our son seven months ago. So yeah, that's obviously, that's the best personal moment over ever. But as far as business goes, I think probably the first really big commercial contract that we signed, it was year one. I mean, that was awesome, right? Like it's like you signed your first, like it was $820,000. It was a, yeah, it was nice. Alex Roofers Edge (32:09) Congrats. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oof, that's... That's insane. William Campbell (32:35) It took most of the year and that was my main focus, but to be able to do that the first year, it was like confirmation from God for me. I was like, all right, I heard you loud and clear, man. I found it. So it felt good. Alex Roofers Edge (32:49) Yeah. Mm-hmm. For sure, for sure. Yeah. So what was your, I mean, maybe I'm, you know, asking the same question because you already told me about this huge job. Was that your biggest job ever? Or you had something bigger than that in your career? William Campbell (33:07) Revenue wise, that's our biggest one to date. We've got, obviously we've got some things in the pipeline that are over a million dollars and that's, you know, God willing we'll get those contracts as well. But yeah, that's our biggest total job, you know, total number to date. Alex Roofers Edge (33:08) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Definitely, definitely. So, what is you know, I already asked you about the revenue goals, but do you have something in the mind when it comes to expanding to other states? Or you think you'll be sticking to grow slow so you don't mess up something? William Campbell (33:42) Oh yeah man, if I could show you, let's see, can I flip the camera on here? Alex Roofers Edge (33:45) Yeah, I think you can. Probably. William Campbell (33:47) No, I can't. That's okay. I've got, we've got a whole map over here, man. We're, you know, over the next 10 years, I've got kind of a, like a future offices map here on my wall that we're willing to expand. Alex Roofers Edge (34:00) Mm-hmm. I mean, you can turn the camera around, and then you can show it, I think. William Campbell (34:04) Yeah, so we, I mean, it's far away. I'm not gonna get there. But we're looking at like Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee. You know, we wanna expand south so we can keep that, you know, it's warm, man. Crazy volume down there. We can keep working on it all year round. And then just expand into states that, like Tennessee, specifically because it's a matching state, right, I want to operate in states where it's beneficial for us to do insurance restoration. Alex Roofers Edge (34:07) Yeah, okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. So if you because you are already expanding and you have this idea of expanding to different states and stuff, what would you say is the best state for roofing and what is the worst state for roofing and why obviously. William Campbell (34:34) and be successful there. It depends in what way you're asking, brother. If you're talking about total volume, Texas is where it's at, man. Texas, you get, you know what I mean, they get big hailstorms and they get multiple, multiple times per year. Colorado, Texas and Colorado, man, that's where it's at. If you're looking for volume, yeah, Texas and Colorado. Don't get me wrong, I love the Midwest. You know, Colorado is part of that and we plan to expand there as well eventually. Alex Roofers Edge (35:05) So Texas the best. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I work with three clients from Denver that have been crushing it, you know, in... William Campbell (35:24) Yeah, I'm sure their leads list is just going crazy. Alex Roofers Edge (35:26) Yeah, but what surprised me is Birmingham definitely in Alabama. It's been crushing it, but I cannot really compare Colorado yet because season is starting around 15th of March. Right. So it's really not comparable, but we'll see when the season really starts there. But I trust your opinion on that. And now I'm excited for March because it's been quite slow at the moment. William Campbell (35:36) Right. Yeah, yeah, it'll pick up buddy. We've got, we're just getting into the season. People are just starting to just come off the winter, you know, and the weather is gonna start coming in like crazy here in the next two, three months. So April, when April comes around, that's when it starts to get really fun. Alex Roofers Edge (35:58) Mm-hmm. Yeah, and... Oh, okay. That's exciting because you know, I've been running this company for like a year, but I have started in November and that's already when the season is closing down, you know, there is there is really no, there's no really a lot of jobs, you know, everything slows down, we cut the budgets and so on, but I'm really excited to see how it's going to go, you know, this year in April, right? And what is the worst state for Rufing? William Campbell (36:30) Oh man, I don't know. I'm sure a state where the weather is all the same. Arizona? I have no idea, right? So I'm just guessing, I don't know. I'm sure Alaska's not very fun to work in either. Yeah, I don't know. Alex Roofers Edge (36:34) Alaska? Yeah. I mean, it's a bit too far, you know, got across the Canada. Like it's horrible for expansions now. Right. So, I mean, so if you had to pick another swear of doing, you know, would you pick remodeling or construction? What, or maybe concrete, something like that, you know, what would you pick if you had to expand your business? Where would you expand it? William Campbell (37:05) Oh. Um. Alex Roofers Edge (37:08) What what niche, let's say. William Campbell (37:09) New construction, new construction, I mean building custom homes and... I'd love to get into like hanging steel and building bridges and all that kind of stuff as the years go on. That's way off in the future. Sure, man. Yeah, there's big money in all of that. So that's way in the future, obviously. Alex Roofers Edge (37:22) Mm-hmm. Some government work? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I already asked, you know, before, but I also asked the previous guest about this, but if you had to rank all lead generation for roofing companies, door knocking, referrals, Facebook ads, Google ads, organic and lead generation sites such as Yelp, HomeAdvisor and others, how would you rank them? Obviously we know that door knocking is at the top for you. But besides that, William Campbell (38:01) Yeah, door knocking is number one for me. Other than that, local service ads have been phenomenal. I mean, they really have been really good. Just as far as a cost perspective, I mean, you're getting, you know, there was one month where we had, you know, like 80 plus call-in leads, right? And that happens fairly often in the middle of season. So that's awesome. Alex Roofers Edge (38:04) Yeah. Yeah. I'll cut it. William Campbell (38:30) You know what I mean? And don't be wrong, some of them are things we don't maybe take on. Like it'll be a run of gutters or a piece of siding or whatever, but a lot of the time we can turn those into full roofs because if they want their gutters done and they want two or three runs of gutters done, well that's more than deductible. And if we go out there and if we look at a house and they've got hail damage to it, go ahead and file the claim. Alex Roofers Edge (38:47) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You can always sub-sell it. William Campbell (39:00) I would go as far to say as gutter leads with local service ads are like a hidden gem of roofing because with insurance restoration, because you go out there, you say, hey, I'm gonna be out there, I'll inspect the property for you and not a problem, I'll tickle your gutters. While I'm up there, I'll look at the roof too. You're already up there. You show them pictures, you come down, hey, for less than you would pay me out of pocket, you can file a claim and insurance would cover this. You pay $1,000 for your deductible or whatever it is. Alex Roofers Edge (39:07) Hello. Mm-hmm. Yeah. William Campbell (39:30) depending on what the deductible is. And you pay $1,000 for this deductible, well, shoot, this job would cost $1,500. Right? For gutters, you might as well get the roof and gutters done for the same, for less than that, for 1,000. Right? So that's part of the sell. It's a no-brainer. You know, for less than you would pay anyways, let's get the whole thing done. Alex Roofers Edge (39:45) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm not enabling gutter ads for all my clients now, I guess. All right. And. William Campbell (39:57) I'm telling you, hey listen, if they know how to sell it, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. Alex Roofers Edge (40:00) Yeah, yeah. Robert constantly does that in Birmingham. I mean, he's my most successful client, you know, in January and February had over like 200 leads from LSA. And you know, it's Birmingham, he has only one company in Alabama. So I definitely think he does something right here. You know, he always tries to upsell and while he's speaking to somebody, he's Googling their name. And in some cases, these guys have doctors or something like that. And then he says, are you a doctor by chance? And that it just builds connection after connection. I mean, I guess he's a good salesman then. So yeah, I mean, another question I have for you is if you had an advice and what advice would you give to your younger self? Somebody who's just starting the company right now and then, what is the biggest advice that would be a game changer for younger William like six years ago? William Campbell (40:54) For a younger William, get an accountant on the first day. That's number one. It doesn't matter how much money you make if you can't track it. Alex Roofers Edge (40:56) Yeah. Mm-hmm. William Campbell (41:07) And then just probably patience, man, honestly. That's my thing is I wake up and I'm on, use it on 10, like from, I wake up at 4.30, 5, 5.30 in the morning and I'm at the gym and I work all day and I'm in love with progress. Like I love progress, that's what my passion is. And just so seeing it grow is fun for me, it energizes me, so that's, you know, just being patient. I think that's the big one. Alex Roofers Edge (41:36) So patience is the key, right? William Campbell (41:39) Patience is the key to doing this and doing it in a way that's stable. Right. You can't, you know, it's like, it's, it's controlled. It has to be controlled growth. You can, you can grow fast, but you got to control that growth and make sure that you have processes and structure in place so that as you continue to grow, things don't get like really messy because they're, you know, if you don't have the processes, you'll get lost. Alex Roofers Edge (41:44) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, definitely. Yeah, so something you know that the way I like to end this podcast and something I forgot to ask my previous guests, but what is your question for our next guest? I mean, you don't know his name, you don't know anything about him, but what would you ask him if you had a chance? Anything. William Campbell (42:26) I guess that would depend who it is, but my main question always be how you, I mean, yeah, the main question is if you got your accounts receivable down to zero, let me know how you did it. Because that's always the biggest thing, dude. Cash flow, every person you talk to, unless someone's really got it down, and I wanna talk to that guy if you talk to him, but cash flow's always the biggest thing. That controls, dictates everything. Alex Roofers Edge (42:29) Let's see if it's a roofer. Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha. Yeah. I mean, I'll ask, I'll ask, you know, trust roofing because these guys seem to be doing quite well. They have like 70 million and he's pretty young. He's like 26 and he's doing very well. 17 million Florida. Pretty, pretty solid. Right. Yeah. William Campbell (43:05) Florida's crazy dude, you get, you get hurt. At that hurricane market, you get, I mean you're getting all kinds of, all kinds of stuff. Alex Roofers Edge (43:09) Yeah, I'm trying to get to me in Mississippi market right now, you know, and for it as well. We had a No, I talked with a few companies, but I heard that Florida is a gold mine. I'm not sure right? You know, I We're quite new, right? Yeah William Campbell (43:24) If you got the licensing, Florida's a gold mine for sure. Alex Roofers Edge (43:27) for sure. Okay, so Willem, thank you for being the guest. You know, I don't want to take more of your time. We've been going for around 45 minutes, but you know, I hope you enjoyed the episode. I hope that I asked good questions. I mean, I'm quite new to podcasting, so hopefully you don't mind and hopefully you enjoyed the episode. William Campbell (43:46) Yeah, no, thanks for having me, Riller. I