Dustin Van Orman Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Lance: People think it’s easy. Has it been easy what you’ve done?
[00:00:02] Dustin: It’s not easy, but at the same time, it is easy because you surround yourself with the right people. You can accomplish anything. Uh, I I here hanging out with you in in your business at LB Capital, and I’ve been able to meet your team here. And I’ve worked closely with you and with Bill for years now, and you’re surrounded by the right people, and you’re seeing tremendous success because
[00:00:19] Lance: of it. Right? Oh, with with but it’s still not what people think.
[00:00:23] Dustin: Yeah.
[00:00:23] Lance: You have great people, but those great people are working hard too. They have stresses.
[00:00:28] Dustin: You’re you’re one of those leaders that is willing to do whatever it takes. You’re you’re up, uh, crack of dawn, even before dawn, making sure things are getting done.
[00:00:35] Lance: Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I wanna give a quick shout out to our sponsors, ServiceTitan and Rola, our technology of choice to helping us scale and grow our business
[00:00:45] Unknown: and making sure all of our viewers have the technology to scale their business so when they wanna sell it, they’re able to.
[00:00:50] Lance: I’m here with Dustin today. We had a great conversation. Make sure you subscribe and never miss an episode. It’s up to date with all your roofing and home services insights to grow your business. Welcome to the Roofing CEO Playbook podcast. Build it to sell it. We’re here to cut through the noise, all the rhetoric to show you how to build your roofing business, make it profitable where you make a boat ton of money. And the chart on top, when you’re ready to sell, you can sell to a private equity firm and change your family’s life. I have Dustin Van Orman, the president of business development of any hour services in Salt Lake City, doing over a100,000,000 a year, started out as a service tech in the car. Now he’s handled all their m and a. I think it’s over 20 different m and a. Correct?
[00:01:34] Dustin: Correct. Right now, we’re in 30 locations. We’ve got, uh, 24 different brands.
[00:01:39] Lance: 24 well, first of all, thank you for being here.
[00:01:41] Dustin: Glad to be here. This is fun. Fun fun to be in your town.
[00:01:43] Lance: Drove all the way from Salt Lake City just to see me. Drove.
[00:01:47] Unknown: He’s He’s like,
[00:01:47] Lance: I gotta drive. Take this ride. Now he drove. Tell him why you drove. It’s pretty cool. You tell your son for your service, first of all.
[00:01:53] Dustin: So, yeah, my my son here, he’s he’s stationed in Washington, DC. He’s, uh, decided when he turned 18. It was it was interesting. We sat out and had a conversation, and, uh, he was trying to figure out what to do with his life. And he said, well, dad, well, should I go to college? Uh, should should I do this? Should I do that? And he didn’t even think about it. He said, well, you know, son, you could actually, uh, consider the military as well. He’s like, really? You’d be okay with that? I said, you know what? We we’d be honored if you chose to serve in the armed forces. Uh, something we’re very proud of. So, yeah, he’s stationed here in Washington DC. He’s working as a marine security guard, and we’re excited to see what his his career looks like. But my, uh, he wanted a vehicle. And I said, well, why don’t we just fly out there and help you get a a vehicle in DC? And he’s like, no, dad. Can you just pick 1 and and get it out here? And I said, oh, okay. So I picked him a vehicle. We got a great great thing for him to to use, and and then I said, alright. I’ll ship it out there. And then my wife’s like, no. We’re not shipping it out there. We’re driving it out there. I’m like, you know how far that is. Right? So it’s a little over 30 hours. And so we drove all weekend long, and here we are.
[00:02:58] Lance: Well, I appreciate you being here. So, Dustin, tell everybody your backstory. Well, tell them what you do now currently because I think it’s fascinating what you do. Um, it’s not easy what you do, and you definitely are the right guy for the job because you had a great personality. People love you.
[00:03:12] Dustin: I appreciate that. Um, I don’t know if they love me, but I think we get along alright. Right?
[00:03:17] Lance: Seems like they do.
[00:03:18] Dustin: So what I’m doing now is I work with people to understand the experience they can have by being a part of the team at any hour services, any hour group. Um, and it would help to have a little history on that. So I I’ll I’ll back up just a little bit. But I started with any hour services. It was, uh, July 1st 2011, little almost 14 years ago. And like you were saying, I I jumped in a truck, and I went and ran service calls. And we didn’t just run service calls. We went and we diagnosed the calls. We gave them options for replacement. If they chose replacement, we called dispatch and said, hey. Can you, uh, postpone the calls for a little while? I’m gonna go and do this install. So we did all our own installs. Right? It wasn’t super efficient, so we had to develop our business to where the bigger you get, the stronger you can be as a business you can specialize. Absolutely. And so we we built the business. We started to establish a team in in the the different areas of the service we’re running to where you didn’t have to do your own installs. Um, anyway, we did whatever it took. We we worked hard, and we surround ourselves with great people. And that’s key to your growth is surround yourself with the right people. After a short amount of time, I was asked to come and help build the marketing program with any of our services. So I’d ran the marketing in the business from the time we were 6,000,000 to 18,000,000. At 18,000,000, they they saw a need to work on the sales team, so I ran the HVAC sales team from 18,000,000 to 36,000,000. And at 36,000,000, uh, believe it or not, Wyatt, if you’re familiar with Wyatt in the business, uh, Wyatt is the principal founder of the business. And, uh, he was running the recruiting as the owner operator in the business until we were 36,000,000 in revenue. Uh, I know a lot of people, they’ll come to us and ask us, well, what do you do for recruiting? Because, well, that’s a whole another podcast where you talk about recruiting. Right? But, um, up until 36,000,000, why it was earning the recruiting, then he asked me to come in and help develop that program. And I ran that clear till we were call it 75,000,000 as a business, and then I moved into this new position where I’ve been involved in all the partnerships that have joined any of our services, any of our group. Um, so right now, we’re in 30 locations. We have 24 different brands. As a group, we’ll do about 500,000,000 in revenue right now, um, and we’re looking for more people all the time. So pretty awesome experience I’ve been through here.
[00:05:44] Lance: Is it so people were just talking, and let’s just get down to it. Right? People see what they see on social media and all the nonsense. Mhmm. And people think it’s easy. Has it been easy what you’ve done? Has it been easy?
[00:05:59] Dustin: Not even a little bit. Um, Yeah. Let me let me change that answer just a little bit. It’s not easy, but at the same time, it is easy because you surround yourself with the right people. You can accomplish anything. Uh, I I here hanging out with you in in your business at LB Capital, and I’ve been able to meet your team here. And I’ve worked closely with you and with Bill for years now, and you’re surrounded by the right people, and you’re seeing tremendous success because of it. Right?
[00:06:23] Lance: Oh, with with but it’s still not what people think. Yeah. You have great people, but those great people are working hard too. Do you have stresses? They do. You know, I said to you I was telling you the story about the guy I called 1 of my guys. I said I’m going to roofing because I see all the success Lance has happened. What time did you get a text from me this morning, Dustin?
[00:06:42] Dustin: Uh, 403 AM.
[00:06:43] Lance: 403 AM. How many other people text you at 4 o’clock?
[00:06:47] Dustin: Not many. It’s interesting, though. The one other person that does is Wyatt.
[00:06:50] Lance: There you go.
[00:06:53] Dustin: And that says a lot.
[00:06:54] Lance: I mean, it’s the the
[00:06:56] Dustin: you’re you’re one of those leaders that is willing to do whatever it takes. You’re you’re up, uh, crack of dawn, even before dawn, making sure things are getting done.
[00:07:03] Lance: And that’s what people don’t see. They only see the social media. They see the podcast. They see the BS vehicle, the hat. Like, whatever they whatever Yeah. Whatever shiny object they see, they think it was easy to get there. And I know what you guys have done to do 500,000,000. Yeah. We might have fun at times, but it ain’t easy.
[00:07:25] Dustin: No. We we have fun all the time, but having fun means that you’re enjoying the work experience.
[00:07:30] Lance: Without a doubt.
[00:07:31] Dustin: Right? We’re not goofing off all the time.
[00:07:34] Lance: You know, let’s talk about why do you think because we’re we’re just talking,
[00:07:38] Unknown: you know, full transparency. Me and Dustin known each other for years. I consider you a friend.
[00:07:42] Lance: You’ve always been good to me. And any hour is not in roofing. And I said you you should I’ve told you multiple times you guys should get in the roofing. You guys run a great organization. I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t. And you said you’re not sure if you guys are going to. But you’ve said something I found interesting. Roofing has never really been looked at home services prior, you said to me. And I said to you, well, private equity’s coming in like you’ve never seen before, and you said, yeah. Can you explain to people why you thought HVAC plumbing electrical made sense, but now you’re starting to see roofing might make sense too now? Well,
[00:08:16] Dustin: step back a little bit. I didn’t know that private equity was gonna be a thing in any of the services years ago, um, but they’ve seen the the sustainability of our business. Um, they’ve seen that in a hard economy, people still have to get stuff fixed.
[00:08:31] Lance: No doubt.
[00:08:33] Dustin: Um, they’ve seen that when, for example, the the COVID crisis that we went through in in the world here, um, we grew. We didn’t go backwards because we’re a, uh, necessary service. People need us.
[00:08:45] Lance: Everybody grew then.
[00:08:47] Dustin: That’s right. Right? Um, and so why do they have their eye on us? Well, those are those are the reasons why the margins are good. Um, uh, if if you’re like me, and I know Yara, we like working in that blue collar work environment. The people are good. And, I mean, these these are my people here. Um, they’ve seen that it’s a solid market to be in. And, you know, you you talk about your your question was about roofing versus plumbing, electric, and HVAC. Well, to me, it always felt like plumbing, electric, electric, and HVAC, that was the the the trades. Right?
[00:09:18] Lance: Yes.
[00:09:18] Dustin: Those were the main they were considered the trades. Um, roofing and some of these other industries have moved in now, and it feels like it’s just all the trades now. Right? Uh, roofing used to kinda I don’t know if my if I’m going in the right direction here, but in my mind, it was plumbing, HVAC, and electric, but now it feels like roofing’s moving moving into that group as well.
[00:09:39] Lance: Well, I think people look down on roofing up until last year or 2. You know, I I got into roofing. People thought I was crazy. People were like, what are you doing? I’m like, um, I I see it pretty clear. Yeah. I’m like, I’m like, this is Dave Geiger, Ken, all those guys 30 years ago when probably people were looking at them like they’re nuts. What are you doing?
[00:10:00] Dustin: Here’s the reason why maybe I didn’t consider it as part of that grouping is because in my mind, you put a roof on and you don’t touch it for 30 years. That’s false. It is false. I’ve discovered that now, but up until not that long ago, you know, with HVAC, you’re going in every single year for maintenance. And plumbing, you’re in every couple of years for whatever, and and electric electric was harder because you weren’t in there quite as often. But in my mind, my perception was that you’re only on the roof once every 30 years.
[00:10:27] Lance: No. And
[00:10:28] Dustin: that’s false. Right?
[00:10:29] Lance: Average roof gets replaced almost every 12 to 13 years. Mhmm. Um, once you get the roof, most people have some type of siding or stucco. We don’t do stucco in any of our locations, but siding or stucco, which, you know, siding is very huge hardy. Um, then windows and doors, which make up a very small percent of any of our sales anywhere, but we are going to add that in and grow that side too. Yeah. So if you really think about it, if you can do the roof, right, I do believe this is gonna be the ultimate what happens. I I do believe this is where it will go. Roofing, HVAC, windows, doors, plumbing, electrical will all be owned by a Bain Capital or one. Like, they’re just gonna say, okay. Listen. We got because you gotta think about this. Right? Um, GreenSky is already doing it. Right? They’re doing they’re getting into the home services through their own. Right? They’re looking to build their own they already have a HVAC platform. Now they’re saying, okay. And think about what GreenSky has. They have all the data everyone’s ever applied for a loan, and they also own a mortgage company. I don’t know if you know that. So Mhmm. So that PE firm themselves, it’s very easy for them to say, okay. Let’s go use this as lead generation. And we now email to the people that have our home our mortgages with us and say, hey. Listen. This is who we recommend as our roofers, who we recommend as our HVAC people. If you use them, you get x amount off. And they automatically have them in their email list. Yeah. Because they’re owned by the mortgage company. So I think you’re gonna see that at the top of the funnel happen eventually. Now do you do you think people really care who owns the roofing company, the plumbing company, the electrical company? They want good quality service. You know? Some of the comments I read about people saying online, you know, because my build up to sell it. I believe every company should be built to sell. Mean that you’re capable of selling your company. Right? That don’t mean you have to sell your company. Right?
[00:12:22] Dustin: Whether you do or you don’t.
[00:12:24] Lance: Some people said, well, this guy just doesn’t get it’s about the people, and it’s about taking care of the people in the community. You wanna be and I’m like, these people just can you explain by actually building your company and having it profitable that you actually are? Can you explain that? People think, like, if I run my company, I don’t pay my taxes and at the same 20 employees for 50 years, that’s success. When I die, everybody loses their jobs.
[00:12:47] Unknown: Yeah. You’re it’s it’s your moral obligation, your responsibility as
[00:12:51] Dustin: an owner to build your business so that it’s sustainable. Uh, you owe it to the people that have helped you find success. I mean, you’ve put on these hours and you’ve got, uh, all I mean, how many employees do you have right now, Lance? Between everything, probably 500. 500 people. Any hour group has 2,000 plus.
[00:13:07] Lance: Yeah.
[00:13:07] Dustin: Um, there are 2,000 people, 500 people, and if if you figure the average family is, what, 4 people? Yeah. So if you got 500 people in your business, you’re responsible for the livelihood of 2,000 people. They’re relying on you to eat. Yeah. And if you built your business so that when you leave this world, because I don’t care who you are, there’s no way out other than I mean, eventually, you have to build your business so that these people are taken care of. It’s your responsibility, um, whether you retire and sail off into the Caribbean or, heaven forbid, we we we pass away. Right? That’s gonna happen.
[00:13:40] Lance: No
[00:13:40] Dustin: doubt. Yeah. Those people, they they’re trusting you to create a livelihood that they can count on when you’re not in the business anymore.
[00:13:49] Lance: You you get it. And being that you deal with the partnership side of things, do you mind if we talk about that, what you’re looking for? Because as you know, we have multiple divisions here, I call them, but multiple partnerships Mhmm. We have. I just call them divisions. I think it’s from my corporate background, but I guess partnerships is the best better word to say. Right?
[00:14:08] Unknown: We have multiple partnerships. You have them.
[00:14:10] Lance: Talk to us through the journey of when you’re because not everyone is gonna be in any hour partner, and not anyone’s gonna be at LV Capital. You want the right partners. We just had this discussion. The quickest way to stop your growth is have a division or 2, a partner or 2 that’s not growing, and that’s gonna become your focus to try and turn it around, which obviously stops you from growing. What’s your process look like? Because, I mean, anyone is anyone knows anyhow is a great reputable company, which it’d be an honor to be a partner of yours. Right? So talk about that process for the people that are watching.
[00:14:44] Dustin: Well, it’s my responsibility to go out and find great people to join the team, and there’s a few things I’m looking for. But first and foremost, and before we ever even talk about financials of any kind, um, I’m gonna insist on meeting people, having a real conversation. We’re gonna go eat dinner together, uh, not because I wanna show off and and talk to y’all about the NER group and how cool we are, but because I wanna find out if we even like being around each other. Uh, relationship is key to us, and, uh, the people that are joining the group, we’re hoping to have a long term relationship. Um, partners in building the business, but also as investors together because we’re, uh, I mean, our success relies on each other. So first and foremost is relationships. Um, second thing for me is I wanna find businesses that can benefit from the tools and resources that we can offer, but also that brings a level of intelligence and expertise to share with the rest of the group. So there’s there’s gotta be some mutual mutually beneficial contribution. Right? Um, and then 3rd the the third thing we’re looking for is it’s gotta be a financial win for everyone involved. Right? And so we’re if we can find alignment where, first, we’re friends and there’s a relationship, second, we know we can help each other, and there’s a level of contribution, and third, financially, it’s a win for everyone involved. We can typically find a pretty solid partnership. Um, the other things we’re looking for, I mean, if you wanna dive into that more, is we wanna understand your leadership team. You know, you’re you’re building a business, and for those of you out there that are looking to long term find a company to partner with, um, the things you should be building is the people around you because whether you plan on staying in the business and working with a group or not, uh, they’re gonna wanna know that if for some reason you were removed from the business, the business isn’t gonna crumble. Right? And so for me, it’s important to understand who your leadership team is, how cohesive are they as a team, uh, and what’s gonna need to be you know, is there some missing pieces that we would need to fill in in your leadership team if you were gone? So
[00:16:45] Lance: I think people, you know, when they partner, they think you’re gonna come in and just fire everyone and change everything right away. Can you talk about that? Because that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
[00:16:57] Dustin: It is the furthest thing from the truth, but there’s a reason why people have that perception because they’ve all heard a story about somebody that had that happen. Right?
[00:17:07] Lance: Um, I never have. No. No. No. I never heard where someone just came in and said I’m terminating 75% of the staff and letting people go. I know, like, I know people said it’s happened, but have you ever truly heard and could verify that’s ever happened?
[00:17:21] Dustin: You know, I haven’t gone in afterwards and and really dialed in on who and how and what actually happened, but that’s their perception. That’s their reality whether it’s
[00:17:28] Lance: true or not. Right? I I I buy that. Okay. I can see that. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
[00:17:32] Dustin: But the reality is your business is interesting to us because you have a strong business. At least have what we’re trying to find, um, and we don’t want to go into a business and replace managers. We don’t want to go disrupt the business. We don’t want the employees to leave. Right?
[00:17:48] Lance: They’re the asset, I say.
[00:17:50] Dustin: That’s correct. You’re trying to find established, strong, well running machines. Um, now I’ve heard the story same as others. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. Um, but what I would say to that is you are choosing who you team up with. And if you’re considering joining any private equity company or any doing any type of a merger of any kind, you need to know who you’re getting into business with. Um, if all they wanna do is look at your balance sheet and make a decision off of that, that might not be the best fit because you don’t even know who they are yet. And so that’s why to me, the the that spending time together, we wanna go to your business. We want you to come to ours. We want you to interview us and see if it’s a good fit for your beliefs, for your company standards. We’re trying to find alignment. And and, honestly, if you can find alignment with a business where you know, uh, that there’s a strong team there to support you, uh, as long as you don’t just sell your business and walk away, they’re not gonna go in and and disrupt. The goal is to keep it intact.
[00:18:52] Lance: You know, it’s funny you said spend time with people through the process. So I’m always trying to give because I have such, like, such gratitude for my life. Like, just I I feel like I’ve been the most blessed man. Like, sometimes I gotta pinch myself. Like, man, just the life I have. Beautiful kids, wife, happy. You know? I’ve I, you know, I had levels of success, I think, that I’m very happy with. That makes sense. You know? Sure. Um, and I’m still strive striving to be better, but, you know, last year, when I said to Bill, we’re gonna do these masterminds. We start these masterminds. And the mastermind, first one, I made free. And I said, we’re gonna, like, do 10, 20 people, pull them together, right, give them all of our knowledge, the things I’ve learned from so many great people, just, you know, from p and l’s to marketing. It’s everything that you take to run a business from sales leadership. 2 people showed up. We gave, like, 20 tickets out, but no one showed up. And Bill kept saying, you can’t do this shit, Lance. Like, this is how you lose money. Research said, Bill, just give back. Trust me. It’s gonna come back and be tenfold on us. So Bill said, no. We’re gonna do $5,000 a person, Lance, because people will just spend 2 days with you. We’ll pay $5, easily. I was like, yeah. But, Bill, you’re not gonna make money anyway by the time we give resources. I mean, you see the amount of money cost around here for things.
[00:20:09] Dustin: That.
[00:20:09] Lance: I said, so you lose money, but either way, because they put I promise you, no one’s gonna miss when they put down $5,000. Our 2nd mastermind was sold out. Every mastermind’s been sold out. Because so many people have ever missed a mastermind now that we charge $5,000.
[00:20:25] Dustin: Probably not any.
[00:20:26] Lance: Not any. Not 1 person. Right? Yeah. So that was, like, mind boggling to me about people and time and getting to know people. But when I used to handle the partnerships for LB Capital, you know, people would just go to my calendar, put times on, 50% would show up, 51. I’d invite people here that cancel. I never charged to go through the process. So do you know who Christina Deere is from Zoom? She used to work for Alan Rohr. Right? I
[00:20:56] Dustin: do. Yeah.
[00:20:56] Lance: So she works here now. I don’t know if you know that. Yeah. Yeah. We recruited her.
[00:20:59] Dustin: That’s awesome.
[00:20:59] Lance: Yeah. We did. So she helped take them from 15 to 60. So So she says, Lance, you got this all wrong. I go, what do you mean? She goes, you’re not just gonna go and talk to someone about being a partner with them and spend a half a day of your time. She’s like, we’re gonna have a whole standard checklist. Yeah. And they’re gonna come to a mastermind. And if they can invest $5,000 into their business, because they’re gonna get something out of it. We know that. Why would you partner with them? And, like, it blew my mind. And she’s like, Lance, if you partner with them, just hand them back to $5,000. Yeah. She just hand them back to $5,000. Here you go. I don’t want your money, my partner. And I don’t know how old she is, Kyle. Like, I guess that question, but I’m assuming she can’t be more than 27, 28 years old. I’m like, there’s a young woman that just taught me something about my own time and it’s worth. And guess how many people call and say, I wanna partner. I wanna partner. I wanna partner. I wanna partner.
[00:21:57] Dustin: You reminded me of, uh, participating in your conference recently.
[00:22:02] Lance: Yeah. Obviously, I appreciate you coming.
[00:22:03] Dustin: Yeah. Well, I I loved it. I mean, I I went there and I saw the engagement of the people who were there, and it was a true show of people’s, uh, interest in the industry. You know, we’re talking about roofing, and and it’s a movement in the industry of, uh, private equity now. So I I went to your conference, and people are hungry in roofing to participate and understand what you’re offering and and what you’re bringing to the industry for people. They wanna know what’s going on, and and you’re really making a difference. But, um, you know, you talk about people wanting to become partners. I I watched at the end of the show where you talked about how you’re not there to sell anything. You had no hook in the show. Your show is to give back. Um, but then people almost wouldn’t let you get off the stage because they wanna know who to talk to and and how to become a partner with your team. And, yeah, you’re you’re really making a difference.
[00:22:51] Lance: I’ve not met with 1 person to be their partner. Yeah. Because I just won’t because I had nothing to sell. If I was truly trying to sell something, I would have met with
[00:23:01] Dustin: That’s exactly what you saw on stage. Yeah.
[00:23:02] Lance: And I haven’t met with 1 on my children’s life, I’ve not met with 1 person to be their partner, and people have reached out to me, everything. I’m just like, guys, you gotta go through the process of what Christina put out. And not being rude, it’s just it’s I’m in no rush. Yeah. Like, I’m not no different than you. You’re probably never gonna retire.
[00:23:23] Dustin: Like Probably not.
[00:23:24] Lance: And and people say that like, how did you say that, Lance? Like like, my kids the best years of my kids’ lives right now, your kids in the military, the marines. I think you said you had a 16 year old daughter and another daughter. Mhmm. Like, when your kids leave the house, if you don’t work, I don’t know what you do. So the best years of my lives, I got young children. It’s here. So if I was gonna retire, it woulda happened. Right? So I can’t see me and my wife. I love my wife to death. In 10 years, my last kid’s out of the house just sitting around looking at each other like, what are we doing today?
[00:23:55] Dustin: So, you know Probably not gonna happen.
[00:23:58] Lance: And that’s where I think people don’t realize when you’re building something special, you want the right partners. And someone like you that had all your success. I mean, think about it. You guys are gonna do $500,000,000. People don’t realize how much revenue that is. 24 different brands. How many lives you guys have? 2,000 employees. Can you talk to me about the leadership? Because the one thing I noticed about all your top leadership is I never really see you guys drink. I never see you guys really, even at shows, go to parties. It it reminds me very similar to how we operate here at. Like, we go to conferences. Everyone knows there’s no drinking. You have 1, 2 drinks max, and let’s not being rude. I I did depart. Like, I’m not a throwing a stone at anyone. Listen. I was the guy that was drunk at 2 in the morning, missing things, but you can’t have success being that. Can you talk about your leadership and your team of leadership? And
[00:24:52] Dustin: That’s what appealed to me when I joined the team. Um, before coming to any hour, I was self employed, and and, uh, I’d experienced the stresses and challenges of running a business. And then I saw the opportunity to surround myself with like minded people that really wanted to accomplish big things. Uh, so I joined the team, and and then I I look at the journey and some of the things that stand out with your question. Uh, one, the 1st week when I started at any hour, uh, we’ve always believed in personal development. Uh, one of our foundational books is Good to Great by Jim Collins.
[00:25:24] Lance: I hope
[00:25:24] Dustin: you’re familiar with that. Yep. Anyway, why Eddie, he said, hey. We’re gonna go on a little trip. Can you pack a bag when you come to work tomorrow? Told me the night before. Right? That’s just what we do. We get things done. I’d been there for 2 days maybe. And so we jumped in a truck. We pressed play on the CD player, and, uh, we drove all the way to Denver from Utah, 9 hour drive, and we listened to the book Good to Gray, and we talked business the entire time. Um, when we go out of town to a training, we don’t participate in drinking and and partying. Why? Because we’re there to take it serious. We wanna develop our business. That’s that’s our that’s our drive. That’s our motivation. And so um, when training is done for the day, some of the most valuable conversation on an entire training conference is the conversations you have in the lobby after the conference is over or the people you can meet. Uh, and so we we take it serious. We’re not out there to party. We’re there to invest in ourselves, uh, and that’s what it takes to to really grow.
[00:26:20] Lance: Do you see that people just feel about conferences? What did you think of the Roofing Conference?
[00:26:25] Dustin: Fantastic. Uh, I hadn’t been to a roofing conference before. I’ve been to lots of other trade conferences, but to see the level of participation and the interest that the people had there I don’t know how many people you had there. There had to have been about a1000. 800. It was impactful. Um, I I talked to a lot of the different people that were attending and and heard the feedback and all positive. Um, my personal experience was top notch. I I think that it was structured and organized. Uh, you had well thought out presenters. Uh, they were prepared. Uh, things had good flow, lots of energy, um, vendors that were there. I mean, you go to these conferences and you didn’t just let people pay to be a sponsor. You hand selected the people that were there offering tools to the roofing industry because you know that it’s gonna affect people’s businesses. And so the vendors, I could tell, were hand selected in who you’d even let be there. And so the tools were amazing.
[00:27:22] Lance: We picked so we only did 60, uh, partners.
[00:27:26] Dustin: Mhmm. And we’re
[00:27:26] Lance: only doing 60 again this year. It was close to a 100 people offered to pay, and we just said no. We had our 60. Yeah. And we felt like it was the best 60 that was gonna have impact on the roofing space that we found. Listen. We’re not perfect. Right? We probably left a few people out we shouldn’t love. Yeah. Um, but that’s who we limit it to, and that’s what we wanted. We wanted to have people that listen. The partners are there to sell you something. Yeah. But I’m gonna say of the 60 partners, we probably use between 1 of my roofing companies or another, probably 30 of them, 25, realistically. So we knew the products worked. Sure. So, like, that was big to us. Like, we didn’t wanna have a a a partner there that we couldn’t at least say
[00:28:08] Dustin: anything about. And all that being said, what that shows me is that you care about investing in the people in the roofing industry. It’s not about making a buck off of them. It’s about providing a service. You your your conference really provided a service for people to come and be edified to to learn and to make themselves better and their business is better.
[00:28:29] Lance: We lost money on the conference. We’re hoping not to this year, but we actually lost money. And we said to Bill, like, it’s okay because you can’t win at everything. Yeah. But we feel like we won with the product we gave. We just lost financially, which I think over time, you’re not there to make money on the conference. You could break even on the conference. And people like you gotta have something to sell. I’m like, but I really don’t because I don’t have a coaching group. And if you think of Mastermind, 4 times a year is something that you’re selling, I couldn’t sell that out without the conference. I think you’re delusional.
[00:29:01] Dustin: So I’ve heard several people now say they lose money on the conference. I’ve decided I’m not going into the conference business.
[00:29:07] Lance: You you will lose you you will and I think why you lose money, people don’t realize how much. You know, I was at a wrestling tournament, uh, tyrant, and I’m friends with the guy, Corey. And the guy next to me said to me, he must make $200,000 off of this event. We’re just here
[00:29:20] Dustin: this weekend.
[00:29:21] Lance: Yeah. And I started, like Corey’s one of my very good friends. I know him. I just started laughing. I’m like, what do you think? Like, you you pay a team pays $1,000. There’s probably 50 teams in the whole thing versus $50. Yeah. You pay $50 for 2 days to get in. Right? There’s probably whatever. So the total takes probably 50, 60. What do you think the rent this gym is to pay all these employees, insurance that like, he might have made for that whole weekend, which he takes a whole week to build, set up, few days, you know, logistics. People will see all the back shit. He probably made on that tour. I’m not here counting his money. I don’t wanna be disrespectful. Probably 10 to 20% net on the whole entire thing, and people don’t understand that.
[00:30:05] Unknown: Yeah. Yeah. The and and that’s what’s neat though is you’re doing these this this event, and you’re gonna do it again. And you
[00:30:11] Lance: We are.
[00:30:11] Dustin: Have you picked the dates already?
[00:30:12] Lance: We are. Same exact dates as last year, back in Marco Island. Um, I can say that we haven’t released it yet, but by the time this airs, hopefully, it will be. Um, but, yeah, we’re doing the same. We thought the location was great.
[00:30:23] Unknown: Fantastic. We thought
[00:30:23] Lance: it was a great location. We thought it was an easy we thought it was easy for people to stay there, stay at the hotel next door, and get to the conference and back and not have to jump in cars. And, um, some of the complaint the biggest complaint we got was there was nothing off-site. But my thing is there is if you wanted a conference to go to a nice dinner, don’t come to my conference. Yeah. Like, that’s not what we’re here to learn. We’re here to build your business. And if you wanna go read that Ruth Chris take it I’m not being rude. Like, you can do that, but I’d rather I’m I have your mentality of it’s a business trip.
[00:30:54] Dustin: That’s right. I thought your venue was topnotch. The conference was topnotch. Um, the participation, the people, it was really good.
[00:31:02] Lance: Yeah. I don’t know why people wanted to go off-site, but a few people said that. Correct? Like, hey. We wanna go off-site.
[00:31:06] Dustin: What’s the reason they’re there for? They’re there they’re there for different entertainment.
[00:31:10] Lance: That’s why I
[00:31:10] Dustin: thought yeah. It’s not we’re not there to entertain you. We’re there to to work hard and build together, and that’s what you accomplished.
[00:31:16] Lance: People look at you, and they look at the success you had. I believe your success would translate because you were in a concrete business before this. I believe your success would be in anything you did. What makes you do you think different as a leader compared to most people that unless your leadership team let’s put that one because your leadership team is very solid compared to other leadership teams that never get off the ground. Could you I could give me because people probably I think that’s a good question to ask.
[00:31:45] Dustin: It is. I think, um, you could tie this into our conversation about your your conference and investing in yourself. Uh, there’s leadership ability in everybody. Uh, if you have kids, you’ve gotta be a leader to your kids. Uh, if you’re in in scouts or church or this or whatever, there’s so many things in life where you have opportunity to be a leader. Um, when you’re put into a position that has the potential to lead, what are you doing to be that leader? Are you just taking a management role? Because there’s a difference between a manager and a leader.
[00:32:19] Lance: Absolutely.
[00:32:19] Dustin: Um, I know as a business at any hour, we invest in our managers to help them develop into being great leaders. And you can tell you you can see their progression. You know? You don’t you’re not just gonna be born to lead. You need to nurture that that that ability. Uh, everyone has some leadership ability in them, and you either in are investing in yourself to develop that or you’re surrounding yourself with people that might invest in you. Um, but people come to our business all the time. I have 2, 300 businesses per year come to any hour services to see how we’re growing as a business, and they’re there because they wanna call it steal. Now you hear people talk about rob and duplicate?
[00:33:03] Lance: Yeah.
[00:33:04] Dustin: People are willing to share with you. I think that that that might be, uh, the wrong way to look at things. If people are offering you a shop tour, for example, go there and learn and innovate. Right? Take the knowledge people are giving to you and learn and innovate. And so people come to our business trying to learn ideas to take home to their business. And, uh, I’ll get asked regularly, well, what’s the silver bullet in your business? And it’s really easy to say it’s the people that it is. But if you look at the processes, um, just everything involved in running a business, um, the culture, all those things, all of that is the people, but it’s a a level deeper than that. It’s the leadership. Uh, leadership is what holds the culture, the processes, and everything in that business together. And so where should you invest your time as a an owner in the business? Well, it’s in leadership development because that’s what’s holding it all together. Uh, that’s the silver bullet is what are you doing to develop your leaders?
[00:34:00] Lance: We were talking earlier, and we’re talking about struggling divisions, struggling partners. And I said to you, it’s the same thing everywhere I look. It comes down to that leader. Does Zach was that our conversation an hour and a half ago? Like Yeah. It comes down to that leader isn’t performing. That leader doesn’t wanna do it. That leader just thought he was gonna partner, and it was gonna be easy street. My last question to you is this. If you had a struggling partner in one of your divisions, what would you say to them?
[00:34:32] Dustin: What would I say to them? Yeah.
[00:34:33] Lance: Because right now, there’s people out there saying, man, my partner’s struggling. I’m struggling. I gotta figure this out.
[00:34:40] Dustin: This may sound harsh, but honestly, I’d say get in or get out. You know? If if they’re not getting out of the way so we can build the business successfully, like we talked about, there’s thousands of people counting on us for their livelihood and to feed their kids. And if if you’re thinking you’re gonna come join a business like ours and just take a free ride and, uh, be in the way, uh, that’s that’s not gonna work for us. Um, and so for people that are in our business, we wanna be invested in it, and and we want people to come beyond the journey with us. And it’s okay to get out. Right? If people wanna join our team and get out of the way and just stand on the sidelines and watch, that’s fine, but don’t stand in our way. So that that’s it. It’s it’s either get into the business and engage and and apply yourself or get out of the way so we can make sure things happen for those people that are counting on it.
[00:35:28] Lance: Yeah. Dustin, thank you so much for taking a ride out here. I appreciate it. You bet. You’re the best. Thank you. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I wanna give a quick shout out to our sponsors, ServiceTitan and Rilla, our technology of choice to helping us scale and grow our business
[00:35:44] Unknown: and making sure all of our viewers have the technology to scale their business. So when they wanna sell it, they’re able to.
