#278 The Dark Side of Roofing: Insurance Scams, Storm Chasers, and Why Homeowners Get Burned

Insurance claims, storm chasers, and broken incentives — welcome to the dark side of roofing.In this episode, John Wilson sits down (again) with Adam Cherup to unpack what really happens behind the scenes in roofing — from “deny, delay, defend” insurance tactics to the storm-chasing playbook that leaves homeowners stuck holding the warranty bag. They also get practical: seasonality, lead gen, cash flow, and what it actually takes to start a roofing business (especially in Florida).
Open modal

Insurance claims, storm chasers, and broken incentives — welcome to the dark side of roofing.

In this episode, John Wilson sits down (again) with Adam Cherup to unpack what really happens behind the scenes in roofing — from “deny, delay, defend” insurance tactics to the storm-chasing playbook that leaves homeowners stuck holding the warranty bag. They also get practical: seasonality, lead gen, cash flow, and what it actually takes to start a roofing business (especially in Florida).

In this episode, we cover:

  • The Insurance Game: “Deny, delay, defend” — and why carriers aren’t your friend.
  • Retail vs. Insurance Strategy: Why some roofers push retail first, then litigate the claim after.
  • How to Win Insurance Work: Xactimate, codes, the paperwork game, and why payouts can double when done right.

🔥 What You’ll Learn:

  • How contractors can guide homeowners through insurance without waiting months for approvals.
  • The biggest red flags of storm-chasing contractors (and how people get burned).
  • Why roofing cash flow can get brutal — and how seasonality + claim delays compound it.
  • What makes roofing “easy” vs. “hard” depending on your model (subbed installs vs. controlled labor).

💼 Extra Special Thanks to Service Scalers!

We’ve been partnering with Service Scalers to maximize our Local Service Ads (LSAs) and optimize our Google My Business profiles, and the results have been incredible. With hundreds of thousands in sales and 900+ calls in a single week, GMBs are now our top-performing organic lead channel.
Want to learn how Service Scalers can do the same for you?

🔗Check Them Out Here

💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC


Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.


🔥 Get $1,000 off your first placement HERE

💸Sponsored by CFO Made Easy


Built a strong trades business? Let’s take it to $10M and beyond. CFO Made Easy offers part-time CFO services for home and trade service businesses—helping you boost cash flow, maximize profit per tech, and make clear growth decisions.

📈 Free Offer: Book a 45-min Financial Insight Session to uncover growth blockers.  

🔗 Connect

John Wilson

Adam Cherup

Send Us Mail!

More Ways To Connect with O&O

Leave a Review

John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
📌 Disclaimer: Some links may include UTM parameters or affiliate relationships, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. Episodes may feature sponsors, but all opinions expressed are our own.

OAO 278

[00:00:00] I'm hoping for a storm every year. I want business.

Yeah. We're gonna be talking about the dark side of roofing.

Deny delay and defend typical insurance. The hardest part is trying to get that customer to understand. Don't listen to the insurance.

Yeah.

They are not your friend. It's really frustrating.

Storm chasers. Oh my.

You've got guys that come in, take the money and run. Yeah. In the storm chasing world, that's the dark side of it.

How seasonal is roofing?

It's a very seasonable business when it comes down to the end of the year. All you gotta fill is you just need more leads. Yeah. You just can't get enough.

What do you think the hardest part of running a roofing business is?

Hmm.

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. I run a plumbing HVAC electric company in Cleveland, Ohio. And for fun, I run a podcast talking about random shit like this. Today I am joined again by Adam Cherp and we're gonna be talking about the dark side [00:01:00] of roofing. Luke,

I am your father.

I am your father. Uh, so the dark side of roofing insurance, storm chasers broken incentives. Oh my

Omi, my

omi, my, uh,

we went from, where did

we start? Yeah, where did start on this? Dunno.

We, we went from Star Wars to, uh, what is it? Uh, the yellow Brick road there.

Yeah. Yeah. Wizard oz.

Wizard Oz, Oz. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah.

Uh, I don't know. I guess let's, let's start with the worst one of 'em all that's, yeah. What's the fun?

Yeah. It seems like

insurance, man. I don't know for you, but for us in the roofing industry and, and especially in Florida.

Oh yeah.

And does it suck to try? Well,

it's gotta be tough in Florida especially.

Does it suck to try and get a, a roof bought through insurance? Yeah. So typical insurance delay, uh, deny delay and defend. They don't want to pay you even though you've paid them thousands and thousands of dollars. Uh,

yeah,

it's, it's really frustrating. So for our business model, what we really found works [00:02:00] best for us is to push 'em towards a retail client.

Let's try and get 'em funded some way through some type of funding, whether that's in-house or through a loan. Let's get the roof done. Let's get 'em in touch with the right attorney. Yeah. Get it litigated on the backend and get them repaid and pay that loan off early if they can. And if they can't, then they still got a loan, they still got a new roof and they still got a lawyer that's gonna help 'em get through the process.

I hate insurance companies.

Yeah,

I really do. I hate paying them.

Yeah.

I hate fighting with them. I just don't like 'em all together.

Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. We, uh, we have to deal with insurance, with our restoration business, and we don't have to deal with it at all really for like, uh, plumbing, HVAC, electric, but with restoration, it's all, you know, it's almost all insurance,

right.

Um, and it is tough. I mean, it's really tough and I think the, you know, it, it's all sort of a bullshit game. The whole thing is a bullshit game. And like, when I think about healthcare, I think what's interesting is when businesses sort of opt out of it. [00:03:00] So like healthcare, there's a, there's a growing trend towards, uh, like insurance list medicine.

So doctors will open up these practices that are cash pay. Mm-hmm. Um, sometimes even, uh, like, hey, 2,500 bucks a year. Never bill your insurance. You can call me as many times as you want. You can come as many times as you want. I'll do any test that you've ever wanted to run, like genetic tests, cancer tests, whatever.

Whereas with normal medicine like that all has to go through insurance. It's complicated. You never get that. You'd never get that done. You could never do preventative testing. Um, or like cash only dentistry or cash Only I or, and what's what's surprising is it's a lot cheaper. Oh yeah. And it's way easier.

I got a, we got a bill for a surgery that my wife had.

Yeah.

Recently. And it was like they didn't pay for anything and I'll bet. If I didn't have insurance and just asked for a cash price, I guarantee it would've been cheaper.

[00:04:00] Way cheaper. Oh yeah. It would've been way cheaper. So my, my friend just did, so I joined one of these doctor things.

It's like $2,000 a year or something, right? Okay. It's called, it's called, uh, concierge Medicine. And so I joined one of these things and I, I have never had a bunch of tests done. 'cause every time I've asked like a conventional doctor, I know this isn't like a medicine podcast, but. Uh, every time I've asked a conventional doctor, they're like, oh yeah, no.

Like, you

don't need that. I want You don't need that.

Yeah, I want like a cancer screening. Like, Hey, do I, you know, am I at risk? Right? Right. What's my genetic screening or whatever. And, uh, I had a friend do a genetic cancer screening through insurance, and it was like $7,000. My cash price was $150, 150 freaking dollars.

And I'm like,

what a scam.

This is crazy. What a scam. So it's, it feels the same way with, uh, with restoration where. Our, their job is to, you know, d what was it? Defend, delay, defend, deny,

deny. Yeah. This is, I've learned this and they, I, I really learned this doing insurance work.

Yeah.

And I was a part of a, a [00:05:00] nonprofit that got started and it still goes today.

It's called, uh, American Policy Holders. Yeah. And they fight against insurer fraud from the inside, from the insurance company. They're really effective against, uh. The lawyer or the insure, the engineers in the hurricane Sandy.

Hmm.

They found insurers and, and that had engineers falsifying reports.

Yeah.

And changing my write-ups, let's say. So if I did the write-up for the roof, they've got an engineer that changes it, that says it's okay. Instead of me saying it's not okay. Or my engineer that said it wasn't okay.

Yeah.

Uh, so this. Nonprofit got started for that reason. Yeah, and what we learned in studying the insurance companies is they actually hand out a manual to their people that teaches them to deny the claim, defend the denial, and then litigate it.

For too long, I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire, and their [00:06:00] marketing looked pretty good. On paper, the reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson Service. Scalers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service companies.

They focus on the channels that actually drive leads, like targeted PPC, local service ads, SEO, Google Business Profile, so that you're showing up. In front of your customers that are actively searching, they'll help you see exactly what's working, so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads. Right now they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on them, so that's up to a hundred thousand dollars in services for the right operator.

If you are serious about tightening up your marketing and 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book a free strategy call and let 'em know that I sent you.

Not only that, and then let's say they would try and approve the claim. They either want to approve it for no money.

Mm-hmm.

Or I can't do it. Or they want to invoke a right to repair for their specific

Yeah.

People that are gonna come out and say, oh, you [00:07:00] don't really need everything. You only need this.

Yeah.

So I, it's just the, it's one of the biggest scams I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty rough. Um, yeah, we, we have found, um.

It's sort of like a two-way street. Over the past, you know, we've run a restoration business now for over five years, and it was only in the last year that we really started to understand like how to win at insurance. 'cause what would normally happen is we would go fill, we would send them an invoice for like $10,000.

Like, Hey, it costs $10,000 to fix this person's home. And they would fire back and be like, actually it was six. Like, we just dealt with that for years and then we, like we negotiated, maybe we got it up to seven or something like that. Yep. But like half of our operator's job over there, Sarah is negotiating with insurance on the invoices that we sent.

Like it's a really big part of the deal. Yeah. Um. And about a year ago, uh, with a help of a friend who's I think a listener, um, he really helped walk us through [00:08:00] like, Hey, well actually you have to add all these codes 'cause they negotiate those less and you have to like, check these boxes so they can't fight.

Like when you submit that a thousand dollars, whatever,

that's crazy.

Um, so yeah, it's, it's sort of like, it's a two-way street of like, okay, they're gonna, you need to give 'em something here, so do something over here. Uh, but in the process, average ticket doubled.

I, I will say you definitely get it a higher payout.

Yeah.

If you're willing to do the insurance work, two things you gotta put the work in. Yep. Which is what you just talked about.

It's hard.

And it's hard. You gotta have a dedicated person that really knows Xactimate, really knows the codes and what they want to see and can fill that report out just right.

And you gotta be willing to wait.

Yeah. '

cause they are not the quickest people to pay.

Oh yeah. And if there's disasters, we found this out. Uh, two, three years ago, there was some disaster, uh, like yeah. Three years ago. And average time to receive money went from 30 days to like 120, 150. Because they got so backlogged they couldn't release any [00:09:00] funds.

And that just came outta like left field.

Yep. Welcome to my world. Yeah. And then you're got a, now you're talking about floating, you know, 20 K in materials. Yeah. And another 5K in labor. You're 25, 30 grand out the hole.

Yeah.

Waiting on a paycheck.

Yeah.

And you're waiting 120 days for that paycheck.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was rough. It was pretty rough.

It's rough.

Yeah. Insurance is tough now, I think with, uh, similar to the medicine. Mm-hmm. You can choose to just not. I mean, I know guys that are like retail roofs only. We don't touch insurance.

We're, I would say we're probably, if you wanna compare just insurance in retail, I would say we're 80% retail and 20% insurance.

Yeah.

Uh, our sister company next door to us, I would say they're doing maybe a little 60 40, a little bit more on the insurance side, 40% on the insurance side there. They'll chase hailstorms. They've got a bigger area that they cover. Um, but for us it's, it's really all, let's [00:10:00] push that to a retail job so a, I can get you done right away.

Yeah.

Right. Speed is the factor in getting this done, and that's one of our pushes a roof's intent days or less. Yeah. I want to get your roof on as quickly as I can.

Yep.

And if you are a retail client, I can get that done a lot faster.

Yeah.

And then let's go about. Getting your claim processed after the fact.

Okay? Mm-hmm. You don't have to, you don't have to wait. That's, I think a lot of misconception with people going through that. You know, they're, they're gonna go through an insurance claim probably once in their life for their house. Yeah. We as a company are dealing with that all of the time.

Yeah. So

the hardest part is trying to get that customer to understand, don't listen to the insurance

company.

Yeah.

They're not your friend.

Yeah.

They're saying they're gonna send an engineer. That guy's not gonna side with you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's against you,

right? Yeah. They're they're not your friend where everybody thinks, Mr. Insurance Man is my buddy. They're really not.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so [00:11:00] if I could caution anybody that's listening or watching or anything.

Listen to your contractor.

Mm-hmm.

They're what they, that's what they do when you go to the doctor. You listen to the doctor.

Mm-hmm.

It burns me when I go to the doctor and then I submit something to my insurance company and somebody at an insurance company who's not a doctor says. Mm-hmm. No.

Yeah.

Did you go to medical school to tell me no?

Yeah. Yeah. Or should the doctor know better? Does the roofer know better about the roof or does the guy sitting at a desk that's never been on a roof know?

Yeah.

So that's where I compare it to. I really try and educate the customer as much as possible.

Mm-hmm.

And, and push them, Hey, let's maybe go a different way and we'll help you out.

Yeah.

We'll help you get that money from your insurance company, but we're gonna do it smarter.

Yeah.

A little smarter.

Yeah. All right, I like that. Let's do storm chasers next. The dark side of roofing. Storm chasers.

Yep.

What do we got? You're kind of storm chaser.

I'm kind of a storm [00:12:00] chaser, so I look at that as a double sided coin.

Yep.

Say you got good and bad in the storm chasing world. You got people who want to come in and actually do what they're gonna do, what they say they're gonna do.

Yeah.

You're gonna get the value out of 'em and they're gonna, they're gonna come calling when you need 'em to.

Yeah.

On the other side of that coin, you've got guys that come in

mm-hmm.

Take the money and run. Literally take the money and run.

Oh, yeah.

Uh, just recently read a post online about a roofing company in Florida, in Tampa. Mm-hmm.

It's always Florida, man. It's always, always, it's always come on. It's always Florida's always, it's always a man in Florida.

Florida, man. It's, yeah, it's Florida always.

So it's why we have the Florida man games now. Come on.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, no. But it, you know, roofing company in southwest Florida taken Yeah. This lady claims he took 30 some thousand dollars from her. Never did any work after Hurricane Ian.

Yeah,

don't doubt it. Probably he, you know, was probably buying himself gifts.

It happens. [00:13:00] Uh, and that's the, that's the really, that's the dark side of it. That's the ugly side of it is you got guys. Chuck in a truck. Yep. Even some of 'em that come in as rep look like they're reputable businesses. You know, hire a local guy if you can.

Mm-hmm.

Hire a statewide guy if you can. You know somebody that's hire somebody that comes to you and is reputable and can prove that they're a reputable person, not, you know, take a look at the truck, take a look at the little things.

Yeah, yeah. Pay attention to those because the cheapest guy isn't always the best guy.

Yeah. I remember we had a hailstorm here like six years ago, five years ago, and. We had a roofer out that had, had done roofs for us before. Um, and we were just like talking about it. I was like, ah, you busy. And uh, he was telling me at the time that one of the storm chase strategies is you come in and you, you buy an old, uh, phone number, LLC, whatever.

So you like, look for someone that's a one man roofing show. You buy it for like 50 grand or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

And then you just like use that name. [00:14:00] Then just ditch. So my point is, even if you're looking for like someone with rapport and history and stuff,

do

your

research

that Yeah, that's actually a part of the, which

I believe it

from, from the roofer's perspective.

To me, that makes actually a lot of sense if you're gonna stick around and do the work. But like, yeah, if you can come in and like, yeah, we have 10 years of history. We've been here since, whatever, you know. It makes sense.

It does. And and I agree. People do that.

Sticking them with the warranties is what usually happens though.

We're gonna replace all these rules and then we're gonna move and like good luck with the warranties. They're on your name.

That's a hundred percent what happens. Yeah. And then those people are stuck calling.

Yeah.

Another company like me to, Hey, can you come look at this? And yeah, hopefully you can help 'em.

Yeah. Yeah.

So a lot of times you can, it's just a matter of chasing down the paperwork if it actually got filed and Yeah. Kinda stuff. But if it's like a warranty that's. Labor warranty, for instance, with that company and your SOL, they're gone. Yeah. You're But if it's a manufacturer's warranty, you got a chance.

Yeah.

You got a chance.

Yeah.

So, uh, yeah. Fly by night [00:15:00] guys. I don't like 'em. I don't like the 1-800-NUMBERS. That's something to be leery about. Mm-hmm. When you're in a storm situation. You want somebody that's got an area code.

Mm-hmm.

You know that, that one 800 number, you don't know where they're, yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's a moment of panic and they probably come knocking on the door.

Oh, big time.

Yep.

Storm chasers are big time door knockers.

Yeah.

Big time door knockers. They will have canvassers out hidden those neighborhoods left and right.

Yep. Yeah,

I don't do a lot of canvassing and door knocking like that.

My sales reps on the roofing side, they'll do it, uh, in neighborhoods where they're working or where we have ongoing jobs. But I'm not actively sending out door knocking campaigns. That's not my business strategy.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, and especially not in a storm situation. That's the last place I wanna walk up to.

Somebody's door. I've heard horror stories of people having guns and

Oh, yeah,

yeah. No, and I'd, and I'd probably be the guy that pulled the gun on somebody if Yeah. It came to my house. Yeah. In that situation, I'm not. I'm not gonna lie. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I just don't want that to happen. I like to have that [00:16:00] introduction.

I like them to know I'm coming. I like them to have called maybe, or that, that initial introduction's already been done.

Mm-hmm.

That's, it's, it's big.

Here's an uncomfortable truth. Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up. I know that finding good people fast is really hard, especially in home services positions like hr, accounting, marketing call center.

It's hard to keep up Quick Staffers helps home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand the trades. Quick staffers provides vetted remote staff who are pre-trained on ServiceTitan and use best in industry SOPs. These are team members ready to integrate into your business on day one.

Handling roles like customer service, lead follow up, scheduling support. And more. We're actively hiring an offshore assistant controller right now through quick staffers. I can't recommend quick staffers enough. They've helped us scale our business without a headache. Head over to quick staffers.com for more.

What, what do you think the hardest part of running a [00:17:00] roofing business is?

Hmm. Leads lead generation.

Yeah.

Speed to lead.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's because

someone's got a problem.

It's, it's the biggest stopgap, I guess. Mm-hmm. It's the biggest. All you gotta fill is you need more leads. More. You just need more leads.

Yeah.

You just can't get enough.

Yeah.

And I think it's a very seasonable, seasonable business when it comes down to the end of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, new Year's. Nobody wants that roof. Yeah. Nobody wants to spend that money because they're spending it somewhere else. You don't want people working on your house like that.

Mm-hmm. Because you got it decorated and it's all fancy, or you got people over. So it's a real slow time of the year for us. Um, other than that, after the beginning of the year, it'll start to pick up taxes and everything like that. Everybody wants to get all their stuff. Oh, it's spring cleaning, let's get, mm-hmm.

Let's get on it. Uh, probably the hardest part about it is that I. Is the planning. Yeah. And the stress that's involved [00:18:00] around that. The cash flow.

Yeah.

Because you know that that's gonna be an issue not only at the end of the year, but like, all right, if I don't have enough leads, I'm not gonna have enough cash flow at the end of the week.

Yeah. It's just, it's that big cycle. So

how seasonal is roofing?

It's pretty seasonable, I would say.

Even in, even in Florida.

Big time

really, because I guess storm season, so like October October's busy,

we're busy through the summer.

Yeah.

It'll, it really will start to pick up like spring break through the summertime.

Okay.

It is warmer.

Yeah.

Not that it gets super cold in central Florida.

Yeah.

But. People are much more receptive to it. They're getting their tax money back. Yeah. That's really what I find is now they're planning on it. 'cause they're starting to see what the taxes they're gonna get are.

Yep.

Next couple of weeks we're gonna get a couple of phone calls more.

A couple of phone calls. More every week it'll ramp up. Yeah. For the next two months.

Yeah.

And then we'll be in full swing in March, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah. March through. End of hurricane season, so September, I guess October, and then we start to see the slowdown.

Yeah.

Yeah.

[00:19:00] Okay. So it slows down going into hurricane season,

coming out of it, coming out of it.

Hurricane season is from June 1st through. October or November.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Okay. I apparently, I have no idea. I thought, I thought hurricane season was like October to January.

No, no. This is our, this is our dry season now. Oh, interesting. And we get all the cold air from you guys. Yeah. So hurricanes

You're welcome.

Yeah. Hey, we appreciate it.

Yeah.

Sixties is beautiful and it's when you're used to 90 with 90% humidity. Yeah. Um. No, the hurricanes all come from the south and, and from, uh, Africa. So it's all summer storms that are coming off of the coast.

Okay.

Of Africa.

Interesting.

The more Saharan dust, the less storm.

Yeah. So seasonal is a big part of the deal. Big

time.

Yeah. That's really interesting. I can imagine that being pretty tough.

I'm, I'm hoping for a storm every year.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

I know that's terrible. But I want business, so.

Yeah. Yeah. We did this, uh, we did this in our other one, but just business model breakdown on a roofing.

Mm-hmm. What, what's average? What's average sale? [00:20:00]

Uh, I'd say average sale, 20, 30,000. Again,

retail.

Retail,

because insurance is like 11, 12, right? 15.

Uh, I mean, you're getting into to, if you're getting into insurance on a house.

Yeah.

I'm trying to get the same dollar amount pretty much, because in Florida, oh, are you

able to really,

you're, well, you gotta, I mean, in Florida the cost of.

Of doing roofing is just so expensive.

Yeah.

It's, it's through the roof. A it's the, ah,

see what you did there?

You didn't even notice. Um, it's, it's, it's really bad. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's the highest, if not one of the highest, the, the highest, uh, insurance category is for roofers.

Yeah.

And that's all I have.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I mean, you're carrying big liabilities. Yep. Uh, million dollar policies and bigger if you wanna do some of the stuff that I'm doing. Yeah. You wanna get on the government basis, you gotta have five and 10 million policies. Alright,

so 20 to 30 a project you're doing. Yep. You're doing [00:21:00] a lot of retail something.

There's

a lot of retail. Some insurance, I would

say. Do you need the big commercial replacements?

I do. And for most of those I try and be a labor only kind of guy.

Yeah. Okay.

So I have, again, bigger fish.

Yeah.

But they want a labor source that's closer. So yeah. The guy that wanted to bid the raise stadium with me, he's out of, um, Louisiana and Texas, but anything he does in Florida.

I'm the guy calls you can

sub in. That's

cool. Yep. I'm the guy he calls. It's my team, my people that go out and do the actual work. Great. So for me it's like cashing a check. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And that's the best part about it. I would say average price on those. You're anywhere from 300,000 to We did a school on Patrick, uh, space Force Base.

That was, I wanna say just under a million.

Yeah.

So. That's big. You get some big numbers, which are really nice, and that's, that's where I like to hang out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I give the residential to, to my, to my GM and my wife. Yeah. They run that division [00:22:00] like clockwork and Mm. I like to take on the more large

Yeah.

Challenging projects.

Mm-hmm.

So. I'm, I'm usually involved for a couple of months on my projects. Yeah. Which is, which is nice. So

how hard do you think Roof, you know, we, rating of a difficulty, how hard is roofing to get into one to 10?

Depends on what state you're in. That's the biggest factor.

Yeah.

Do you have to be licensed or not?

Oh, okay.

Uh, so I

don't think you need licensing in Ohio for roofing.

I don't think you do. I think anybody can go do it. Yeah. You can pull a permit and go do it. In Florida, you have to be licensed.

Really?

A hundred percent. Huh. And it's the toughest state to get licensed in.

That's interesting.

So it's,

I've never even heard of a roofer's license.

Yeah. I'm not smart enough to get one, unfortunately. Oh,

that's all right.

You know, my wife's pretty smart. She's got one. Yeah, she's got a general contracting license. So, uh, it's, you know, it's, it's a tough test to take. I did go try and take the test. It is one of the hardest tests I've ever taken. Hmm. Uh, I missed it by a couple of points.

Mm-hmm. But you know what? Good thing she's already got one.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, but it, it's,

oh, so, so there's some [00:23:00] legislation.

So do you have to get a license is the first thing.

Oh yeah. That's important.

Second thing is, do you have the capital Co to commit to it?

Yeah.

Because you gotta have some capital. You gotta have a trailer.

You gotta have a couple of trucks.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, or are you gonna have it? Well, alternatively

you don't, you know, that's the other side of roofing is like,

you can't,

could you sub it out? Could just be the marketing and sales. 'cause I've talked to some guys that like, that's their deal.

You probably can.

I don't know. It's just not, I don't run a business like that. I've always, yeah, yeah. From my, you want cool

labor?

Yeah. I've, I wanted to control it because if I control it mm-hmm. Then I can get everything out of it. Mm-hmm. When you start losing control, you're giving away your business.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't like to do that.

Yeah.

I'll keep my business.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I'll keep control with my little

soldiers. That makes sense. So what, so one to 10, what do you think if I told you that you could improve bottom line profit by five to 10% just by being a little smarter with finances, would you do it if you're running a home service with good bones, but finances aren't clear on how they contribute to your strategy and decisions?

That's [00:24:00] where Tyler and CFO made easy comes in. What he does is he helps connect your finances to real decisions around pricing, hiring, and big purchases like inventory or vehicles. He ensures your money has maximum growth impact. It's not a firm and it's not accounting, it's just Tyler. There's no handcuffs, there's no confusing reports, and Tyler has also scaled home service company himself to 25 million before selling it.

So the advice comes from real world experience, not bs. If you want clearer financial visibility without the noise book a free 20 minute strategy call with CFO made easy. You'll know your numbers, you'll be able to spot cash or margin pressure, and you're gonna leave with clear next steps and make sure you let 'em know that owned and operated since you

one to 10, start a roofing business.

State of Florida. Nine.

Okay.

Non-licensed state. Probably a five.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, um, including the crews, I'd probably put it like a six. If you're controlling the labor, if you are just sales and marketing, like two or three.

Oh yeah. Easy peasy.

I mean, you just literally go [00:25:00] knock doors and then

can hire people to do

so It out, it's, yeah, it's kind of wild.

Yeah. You can do that.

Yeah. I, I have a friend that spun up a roofing business. I think we've had him on the show. He spun up a roofing business and it got to like six or 7 million in the first year, and they just subbed all the installs. They're a sales and marketing business. I believe that He was really, he's not

a roofer.

He is a sales and marketing guy. He's

a

sales marketing guy. Yeah.

I'm a roofer. That's the difference.

Yeah.

So, so, so I guess when you compare it that way, yeah. If you're running a sales and marketing mm-hmm. Roofing business. Then

I think difficulty's pretty low. I mean, pretty low. I mean, you're just buying leads and selling

pretty easy.

Yeah.

If you're actually,

if you have to invest into, uh, equipment and staffing, I think that is more challenging.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's millions of dollars in equipment invested, so

Oh, I bet. Yeah, I bet, I bet.

It's, uh, it's, it's fun though. You got toys to play with.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and walking through roofing.

This was a bunch of fun.

Yeah, absolutely. This is great.

Cool. Thanks

for having me.

Yeah, you like what you heard? Make sure you hit like, subscribe and give us a five star review wherever it is that you listen to shows. Thanks. I.