Business Owner's BEST ADVICE to be Successful in Roofing.

In today's episode, Mike is joined by Corey Combes, the founder of SouthShore Roofing & Exteriors in Tampa, Florida. Corey has built up his company from the ground up to become one of the premier roofers in Tampa. He gives some fantastic insights into how he has gotten to this point. Corey is highly knowledgeable, and the conversation includes a wealth of valuable information. Stay tuned to learn his best tips and tricks.

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00:00:00:09 - 00:00:16:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So we're back for another episode of the Mission Control podcast. Kristen, what episode is this? What number? I think this is number eight. We're creeping up on 100 folks. They say a very high percentage of podcast last, like, you know, like one episode, three episodes. But I mean, we are we are vetted. We've withstood the test of time.

00:00:17:01 - 00:00:34:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I want to take a minute to to welcome Corey Combs, South Shore Roofing and Exteriors to the show. But I also want to acknowledge that the team over at roof is fantastic. So if you need instant roof measurements and a roof quotes clean and pristine proposals which will give your audience no choice but to buy from you. Hit up the team at roof or down below.

00:00:34:03 - 00:00:50:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns There's going to be a link. Click it. Let them know I sent you. You're going to love that you did. What's up Corey? Nothing man. We love roofer around here. Yeah, there are a team partners and they help bring the show to life. And, they're just a great company, you know, a great company run by great people.

00:00:50:13 - 00:01:10:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I'm sure we're going to have some conversation around centered around roofer today. We will. And we might as well jump right into it. So you've recently done a tour de America, with the team over at Roofer. So why don't you talk to me? What about what those events have looked like? what it's been like for you.

00:01:10:13 - 00:01:33:02 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The interesting thing about roofer is I think they're coming from their position a different spot than most people are. Because, you know, Richie and Nick and some of the higher ups came from the roofing industry, their family still in roofing. And so their goal isn't just to create tools for roofers, but it's also to help roofers understand how to use those tools.

00:01:33:04 - 00:01:52:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And part of that roofer Ray show was really about bringing good information that they can plug into their business right away. So we had things on, you know, how to market your business. We had things on how to present in the home. So people say yes to you and buy from you. And that was what I was doing with them.

00:01:52:07 - 00:02:22:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Then they had a, a guy named Dan that came in and talked about the client experience, and he's from a different industry altogether. So he came from the credit card space, and then he came from the technology space, and he talked a lot about the client experience from a vantage point of overall, how do you make your, your deliverables much better for your clients, or how do you put something in place to make your client experience different and better?

00:02:22:17 - 00:02:37:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So that was the framework of it. And I learned I actually learned a lot from Dan. Some stuff that I was able to put in my company. And you and I talked about it the, the where we dropped the ball and what we could have done better on the client experience. So it was it was really good.

00:02:37:21 - 00:02:53:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I love that. Yeah. So you're not one of those guys that you've been doing this for 20 years. So you know everything and nobody can teach you anything. it depends on what day you ask. to be fair, it sounds like we're asking on the right day because you seem very receptive to what Dan had to offer.

00:02:53:16 - 00:03:10:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And. And one of those things in your business. That was great. What I find a lot of the times is even one good information is given. It's not the absence of the information, it's the lack of execution and implementation of that information. Yeah, I say that a lot. execution is the secret sauce. It's not the information. Yeah, yeah.

00:03:10:12 - 00:03:28:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So what would you be your advice to all the roofers that are tuning in as far as how to take something from concept to being implemented? It's a good question. I think that, you know, in my experience and what I've done and, you know, what I've helped others do is you first got to figure out what your biggest gap is.

00:03:28:08 - 00:03:58:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns and how can you solve that and how that's going to affect your overall business. Right. And I think one of the big data services that the industry is doing right now is telling everybody that sales cure all, and that's, that's a Band-Aid statement. That's not a, that's not a solution statement. Yeah. I'll add that a lot of the times, not only does it not cure everything, it makes a lot of things worse.

00:03:58:14 - 00:04:21:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It does because it covers up the actual problem. So you think things are fine, but then when those sales stop coming in, or the issue that you had is so great, you can no longer conceal it. Now you have a bunch of sales and you still have this big problem. Yeah. And that's a really good point. I was actually I wasn't even on that line.

00:04:21:03 - 00:04:41:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I was thinking more. So like if you have production issues and it's a result of a breakdown of a process, inundating more projects into the pipeline is only going to put more stress in and exacerbate that existing issue. Right, exactly. That's exactly right. And then it makes it more far reaching and results in a shitty customer experience. And it's just counterproductive to what we want to accomplish.

00:04:41:21 - 00:05:04:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The insidious part of that, though, is on the surface, it makes everything look okay because you hang on to that. Well, we sold X like, you know, here's our gross revenue or whatever. And as we've seen with some of these bigger companies that have recently closed, that gross sales number means nothing. And you talk about it a lot just being a vanity stat.

00:05:04:20 - 00:05:24:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns and this is proof that it's a vanity stat. Your sales, if not followed up with the rest of what it takes to run a good construction company. If that doesn't follow suit, those sales are just a vanity stat period. And it feels good. It makes our ego feel good. I did $20 million in revenue. It's like, oh, this guy's doing 7 million, made twice as much as you.

00:05:24:17 - 00:05:40:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah, well, I realize I didn't answer your question about the implementation. That's okay. We'll get there. We'll get there. but I went through that myself last year in 23. You know, we had a we had a really big year sales wise. We had a it was, you know, from a revenue perspective, you look at it and you're like, wow, this was amazing.

00:05:40:13 - 00:06:07:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns By far the hardest year that I've had in business in my 30 year roofing career. We just were not handle we were not able to handle all of the issues. Some were ours, some were not ours. in a way that we could continue to produce the customer experience that we were used to producing. We had a lot we had a lot of problems.

00:06:07:09 - 00:06:35:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns We had a lot of problems on the installs because of material availability, our lack of planning, the inability for my team to so I for about half the year last year, I kept talking to them about we're getting right to the goal line and we're not scoring the touchdown. Like for some reason we would get 90% there and then everybody would just stop and then we would leave it there and then we would upset the customers.

00:06:35:12 - 00:06:58:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I don't I don't know how we got there, but we did. And so I had to sit back and thank God we had the processes and the documentation and all of those things in place already. So we could diagnose where the issues were and plug the holes really quickly, put the right people in place, get them trained. And now, you know, we're back to knocking it out of the park for our customers.

00:06:58:07 - 00:07:16:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns But if you don't have that stuff in place, then how are you going to solve the issues first, if you don't know actually what the issu