How Radio Helped Oberg Roofing Sell $15,000,000 in Roofs!

On this episode, Mike has on Caleb Oberg of Oberg Roofing. Caleb's story is unique in the sense that it took him a few years to find his marketing secret to getting his roofing to be as successful as it is today.

In this episode, Caleb shares the ups & downs of starting his business and his top trick for his marketing!

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ep 7

[00:00:00] Caleb: You gotta pick one and you got like, you gotta do the one that works with your market and your business. Especially

[00:00:06] Mike: with branding efforts, consistency and having the right expectation for yourself when you're investing in is really important.

[00:00:15] Caleb: Or if you're gonna do marketing, like do one thing really well and like own that thing before you go on and try and like do everything.

[00:00:31] Mike: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Mission Control podcast. I'm your host, Mike Stears. This is episode seven already. Thank you for tuning in today. We have a very, very special guest, Caleb Oberg of Oberg Roofing, out of the great state of Minnesota.

[00:00:45] Caleb: Welcome, Caleb. What's up? Lucky number seven, let's go.

Listen,

[00:00:50] Mike: man, happy to have you today. For sure. You're gonna wanna stick around from start to finish. You've got a great story. It's compelling, it's enticing, it's everything you could think of, dream of, and so much more again. Thank you Caleb. So just to kind of give you guys some context, I met Caleb at an event that was put on what about three weeks ago.

It was roofing ahead of the curve, thrown by, brought to you by TJ McCormick, the world's greatest roofer and euro shield among many others. And uh, I'm walking into the event and we're in the lobby ish area where vendors are getting set up and I see this guy and he looks like he knows his shit. Alright, so obviously I'm intrigued.

So me being me, we strike up a conversation. I had him like my YouTube channel. That was great. Appreciate you Caleb. Um, but he had a story, It was a story as far as like how he's gone about marketing his company and it truly is. Unique in the sense that I have dealt with hundreds of contractors, and I don't think anyone has gone about acquiring the type of year over year growth that Caleb has by the means he has.

So we're gonna talk about that a little bit. But Caleb, why don't we introduce you in the sense of like, who is Caleb overt? How did you get started in roofing? Give the fans what they want. Let's hear

[00:02:17] Caleb: it. Right on, man. Well, I'm, I mean, I'm 41 years old and I've spent a majority of my life, uh, in the roofing industry.

I've been doing it for 22 years. And, um, I mean, I got, I'm a father of four. I got two grand babies, um, very busy. Loved doing a lot of, lot of everything. Sports, shooting, hunting, you name it. Nice. Just got done playing a, a state softball tournament over the weekend. Came in forth to play. Unfortunately, we, we didn't take down the ship, but you know, Um, so yeah, over roofing, we started in 2017.

Um, just been rocking and rolling ever since. Okay. So you

[00:02:58] Mike: started right around five years ago. You've been in the industry for 22 years, carry the one, so that leaves 15 years before you get between you getting started and over roofing coming to fruition. So what was that journey like?

[00:03:14] Caleb: Oh man, it was a long journey.

Um, started, you know, year one, my, my uncle had a roofing business out in, uh, the southwest corner of Colorado. It's, um, it's not the nice part of Colorado. It's kind of like the desert. Okay. Um, and uh, he asked me to come out there. I was, uh, 20 years old and I was kind of in between jobs. Didn't really ever give roofing a thought.

Um, because I don't know, like my dad's history, whatever, he kind of been, uh, working in like warehouses and stuff like that. He was a supervisor for many years. And, um, I had kind of dabbled in that myself. Um, and yeah, I was kind of looking for something else. A couple of my buddies were doing, uh, framing and some other labor work, and I thought maybe, you know, this could be something for me.

So, gave it a shot. Went out to Colorado, spent, uh, three months in the spring out there. Um, basically it was, uh, you mean I, I'll tell you, the, the first roof I ever did is still, to this day, the worst roof I've ever done, . So that's, that's something, man, cuz uh, literally every job after that, uh, my entire roofing career as a roofing installer has been easier than the first one I did.

So, and, and I mean, and I, for roofers out there, I mean, you'll get this, uh, probably anybody, we were up on this, uh, shack up in the, up in the woods or up in the hills a little bit. Um, and it was this old, you know, handbuilt place. And, uh, the, the framing on the roof, the, the decking was like this really thick, like three quarter to one inch board.

It was all, you know, hand cut or whatever. And there was three layers of cedar shakes installed in this roof that all had to be torn

[00:04:51] Mike: off. A lot of fun,

[00:04:52] Caleb: tearing it off. Right. The third layer was nailed on, was 16 Penny Nails. Um, telling you, I was like, I think I got, you know, carpal tunnel on one roofing job.

I don't know what possessed me to keep going, , you know, But I was like, whatever. I'm like, I'm in Colorado, right? I'm, I'm not gonna like, you know, bail out and, uh, and uh, head home. Now I'm gonna see what's, what else is out there for me. So, um, yeah, I mean, it got started out there. Um, you know, that lasted for a few months.

My uncle was planning on moving back to Minnesota anyways, uh, to where he was born and raised. So he came back to Minnesota. He had some connections here in the roofing, um, industry, uh, other companies that he would kind of subcontract from. He was also getting a few of his own jobs from some people that he knew.

So I was, I was kind of doing that. I had enough, um, Skills. And then he gave me all of his kind of equipment, any anyways to like continue to do roofing here. So, um, basically found a couple guys that wanted to, to work. So we did that for a little while. Um, ended up going down to the cities, doing some work down there in the Minneapolis area.

I'm from St. Cloud, Minnesota. It's about an hour north of, of the Minneapolis metro area, just for context. Um, so yeah, I mean like that ultimately didn't go down like the, the greatest path. It didn't continue, um, too much there. Um, oh, oh, you know, uh, eventually hooked up with the buddy that was roofing for another company in the St.

Cloud area. So I moved back to St. Cloud. Um, we had another friend that joined us, so there was like three of us out of the five guys on the crew. And we were doing a lot of new construction for this company that we were working for. We. Collectively became roommates and we started talking a bunch about, you know, how good we were at roofing.

I was like, man, this is easy. Like we should turn this into a business, right? And so, um, basically we had, we had that idea, uh, we didn't have a plan or anything. Mm-hmm. , the owner of the business, found out, um, I was kind of talking to his sister at, you know, on the weekend or whatever. I didn't know they had a talking, you know, relationship much.

They were kind of two different people. Sure. Hung out in two complet, different crowds or whatever. Anyway, she told him, and uh, he fired all three of us. He called us into his office, said, If you're gonna start your own business, you're gonna do it right now. Fired us. Wow. So, of course we started our own business.

Um, at this point, I'm 21 years old and I've got two business partners and, um, you know, this is 2001. And, uh, in my first year, and it wasn't even a full year, I made $35,000. My first. , Um, it was more money than I had made previously doing anything before. So yeah, I was like, man, that was a, that was a success.

So, um, that kind of continued, uh, for a little bit and then that partnership broke up and then, um, I started a new partnership with, uh, just the one other guy. His name was actually Caleb as well, so there was two Calebs riff and we were What are the odds? Legit. Yeah, literally. So, um, he was a good dude though.

Um, he was sober by this time, so he was like a really good, um, you know, positive, uh, you know, side of him, right